feminist blogs

First Woman President of Chile Score Points on Gender Front – IPS News
Malaysia Canes Women for Adultery – AWID
Honoring Dr. Mildred Hanson – Physicians for Reproductive Choice & Health
Did the US Military Spy on Planned Parenthood? – AlterNet
Rachel Maddow on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Pam’s House Blend

In the aftermath of the 8.8 earthquake that killed hundreds in Chile, many are making the inevitable comparison between Chile and Haiti, where a smaller earthquake killed more than 200,000 people. NPR and other news sources have focused on how Chile was more “prepared” — its buildings more sound, its infrastructure more “developed,” its people more [...]

Don’t forget.

• The world is awesome.

• People are awesome. You don’t need plans, or politics, or power. Put them up against people, and people will win every time. People came up with that video. Also, other people came up with this.

• Technological civilization is awesome. (In case you’re wondering, it’s awesome because it’s made of people.)

• Books are awesome. Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times (2009-05-29): Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• To-day is awesome. It’s an anniversary. My love and I were married three years ago today. If the normal online rounds are held up for a while, well, that’s why.

Solidarity.

• In memory of George Tiller. feministe (2009-05-31): In honor of Dr. Tiller (if you would like to donate in memory and in honor of Dr. Tiller’s work). Among others, the National Network of Abortion Funds has established a George Tiller Memorial Abortion Fund.

• IQSN, L.A. I.M.C. (2009-05-27): Solidarity with Queer Bulgaria on 27 June 2009. A day of international actions in solidarity with the LGBTQ Pride march in Sofia, Bulgaria. Last year’s march was attacked by neo-Nazi groups who decided to Keep Our Children Safe with a campaign of roving basher gangs and by slinging molotov cocktails and small explosives at the marchers. International Queer Solidarity Network calls for a European mobilization, with support from the United States, that will stand in solidarity with Queer Bulgaria for this year’s march.

News.

• Underground abortion networks in Chile. Feminist Daily News Wire (2009-05-29): Abortion Hotline Launched in Chile. The Chilean government inflicted a categorical abortion ban in 1989. A coalition of pro-choice feminist groups has now launched a phone hotline which gives women information about how to use Misopristol (usually used in the U.S. together with Mifepristone; in Chile it’s legally available to treat ulcers) to give themselves safe DIY medical abortions in defiance of the law.

• Shoot an unarmed old man, get a four-month paid vacation. Vickie Welborn, Shreveport Times (2009-05-24): NAACP questions Homer officers’ leave status

• The question is who is to be the master — that’s all. The Status of Forces Agreement requires all U.S. troops to be withdrawn from Iraqi cities by the end of June. A Senior U.S. Commander [considers] the security agreement a living document, so he intends to comply with the deadlines by withdrawing the political boundaries of Baghdad from his occupation patrol forces

Comment.

• On knowledge problems and management make-work. quasibill, The Bell Tower (2009-05-28): Scene 3

• On free-market mutualism and open source solutions to the social question. Jesse Walker, Hit & Run (2009-05-27): Mutual Aid: A Factor in Cyberspace. (As for whether the word socialism is the best tag for the kind of mutualist projects under discussion, I reckon that it depends on your intended audience. I use it happily, but then, my intent in doing so is deliberately provocative, as is my use of freed market language around anti-authoritarian Leftists: given the right audience, you can pull some philosophical aikido by using a term’s very unpopularity in order to provoke a conversation about some fundamental premises.)

• The State is male in the political sense. (Cont’d.) Alderson Warm-Fork, Directionless Bones (2009-05-26): The State is Incapable of Submissiveness. (This particular article deals mainly with the external relations among many states; for discussion of the male State in the context of the internal relations between the government and the country that it occupies, cf. GT 2006-05-11: Quidditative essence.)

• The George Tiller I Knew. loree920, Daily Kos (2009-05-31): The George Tiller I Knew

• A Loatian American teen protested No Child Left Behind and Won. Mandy Van Deven, ColorLines: She Said No To The Test. In which a second-generation Laotian-American who speaks, reads, and writes fluent English and graduated 7th in her class was declared illiterate by school officials for refusing to retake a basic English-proficiency test that she’d already aced — and how she and her fellow students protested and won.

• Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes. (Cont’d.) Chris Bradford, Austin Contrarian (2006-05-16): Do roads pay for themseles? (Cf. GT 2008-12-01: Yes, Virginia, government roads really are government subsidized, and no, they don’t approximate freed-market outcomes.

• On public space and the microphysics of male power. Norma, Happy bodies. (2009-05-25): Fighting Unwanted Attention

• On neuro-jargon as modern mumbo-jumbo. Crispin Sartwell, eye of the storm (2009-05-31) […] the problem is that these approaches work backwards from social categories to neurology and enshrine momentary social formations, which are essentially created by power, as inescapable bio-destinies. the entire scientificness of the thing is usually presented in a few phrases - ‘medial prefrontal cortex,’ say - which function essentially as authorities: they’re supposed to show you that you’re too ignorant to assess what’s being said, to put the actual ethical/political/economic conclusions beyond the realm of disagreement, to flummox you into nodding vaguely along. if you don’t, you must be a dolt. they function like phrases from the koran or something. they actually do no work except to assert a kind of prestige. […]

• Against psychiatric coercion and psychiatric contempt. anarchafemme (2009-05-11): I Am Crazy, Yet I Am Human

• On standing up for the marginalized and the enemies of the State. Wendy McElroy, WendyMcElroy.com (2009-05-31): The strategic wisdom of defending prostitutes

• The Conservative (Hive) Mind. Will Wilkinson’s cite class=”article”>The rise of collectivist conservativs is right-on in almost every respect, particularly in emphasizing how belligerent nationalism (I’d add sadistic law-n-orderism and anti-immigrationism) poison any attempt by the pseudopopulist Right to come out with a consistently individualistic position. Towards the end, Will asks Conservatism must stand for something. But here’s the big question: Can a politics of individual freedom be revived? Can it win elections? As you may know, I’m an optimist about the first question, a pessimist about the second, and mainly concerned that people realize that the two are importantly distinct. If you want to know why the substance of Beck’s politics is so much like the substance of Brooks’s politics, underneath the pseudoindividualist rhetoric, well, part of the answer is the structural limitations that you necessarily accept when you start out hitching the success of your political philosophy to victory in government elections.

Historicize.

• Jourdon Anderson authenticity update. Laster Hunt, E pur si muove! (2009-05-14): Jourdon Anderson’s Letter to His Former Master. (Cf. GT 2009-05-06: Wednesday Lazy Linking for my reprinting of the original letter.)

• We apologize for the fault in the historicity debate. Those responsible have been sacked. Roderick Long, Austro-Athenian Empire (2009-05-31): Dragonquest; or, A Voyage to Arcturus

Communications.

• ALLiance Issue #2 (Beltaine 2009) is now available. Thanks to awesome editor Chris Lempa. This issue features articles by Chris, Darian Worden, Fred Foldvary, Kevin Carson, Michael Kleen, Sharon Presley and Lynn Kinsky.

• Portland Anarchist Bookfair, June 6-7 at Liberty Hall, 311 N. Ivy in Portland, Oregon. The event is free to attend; childcare will be provided. Also, keep an eye out for Northwest ALLy Shawn Wilbur, who will be there to promote his new radical publishing project, Corvus Distribution.

• The Cop Watch LA Radio program is looking for volunteers interested in recording, producing, interviewing and researching material for the Cop Watch LA radio program which airs every evening on the Raise the Fist Radio Network.

• An IRC network for liberty builders: agora.anarplex.net:14716. The time for waiting for others to do things is over. … Learn, create, cooperate, advance. (Via Wendy McElroy.)

Abortion is entirely illegal in Chile, without exception. Yet today is International Day of Action for Women’s Health and Women on Waves, a fearless reproductive rights group (on a boat) from Holland that docks in ports worldwide to promote safe access to abortion services, is doing something about it.  They’ve just announced a new hot [...]

This post includes two presentations by Hans Rosling questioning the developed/developing binary. 

In this first 5-minute version he compares Cuba, Chile, and the United States (showing how it’s important to compare the more and less privileged within countries).

Found at GapMinder.

In this 20 minutes, he makes the argument another way:

Are there any latinoamericanistas in the house? I have been incredibly remiss with keeping up with my field of study .... can you believe it?

Eventhough, I walked away from a PhD in Latin American Literature after completing a BA and MA in Latin American and Hispanic Studies at New York University. I spent 10 years doing research, writing and teaching about the region. For crying out loud, I even taught Brazilian literature and have publised in Spanish and Portuguese! It's embarrasing this piece of news is coming to me as a surprise :

[via Chile's woman president-elect wins praise : Mail & Guardian Online]:

Socialist president-elect Michelle Bachelet was praised on Monday as a symbol of reconciliation who can help Chile come to terms with its traumatic political past.

Bachelet, who was imprisoned and tortured under the right-wing dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, decisively beat her conservative challenger, multimillionaire businessman Sebastian Pinera, in Sunday's election. With 97,5% of about 7,2-million votes counted, Bachelet had 53,4% of the official vote count to Pinera's 46,5%.

Bachelet's centre-left coalition has governed Chile since the end of Pinochet's 17-year dictatorship in 1990.

A 22-year-old medical student when Pinochet's led a coup 1973, Chile's president-to-be was arrested along with her mother and forced into five years of exile.

"She had the capacity for reconciliation in spite of the pains she had to suffer," Alejandro Goic, president of Chile's Roman Catholic Conference of Bishops, said on Monday after meeting Bachelet along with other clerics.

Santiago Archbishop Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuris praised her for "overcoming hatred".

"The success of Mrs Bachelet would be the success of the entire country," he added.

In a victory speech on Sunday night, Bachelet recalled her imprisonment and torture under Pinochet, saying that "violence entered my life and destroyed what I loved".

Her father, air force General Alberto Bachelet, opposed Pinochet and died in prison of a heart attack triggered by torture, according to Bachelet.

"Because I was the victim of hatred, I have dedicated my life to reverse that hatred and turn it into understanding, tolerance and -- why not say it -- into love," she said. "You can love justice and being generous at the same time."

Bachelet, a single mother of three, will join other leftist leaders in the region, including Venezuela's Hugo Ch�vez and newly elected Evo Morales of Bolivia, but indicated she will not bring about radical change to the South American country of 16-million.

"We will continue to walk the same road," she said in her victory speech on Sunday, making it clear she intends to maintain the coalition's free-market economic polices that have turned Chile's economy into one of the region's strongest.

We have now Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales and Ms. Bachelet, all left wing politicians. Although many scream "NO", I am going to put Lula from Brazil in that category as well. Can you imagine the PRI losing in Mexico? Can you imagine what that would do to the region?

All lationamericanistas in the house, please report with the blogdiva.

On other feminists news, Liberia has a woman president as well, Harvard educated Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. I am curious about her because as I understand she just recently became a born-again Christian (???); affecting the reproductive rights policies not only of her country but the region?

And then there's Merkel who just got elected as Prime Minister of Germany.

How many women heads of state are out there? Please use the comments to work on that and/or go to our newly minted culturekitchen WIKI and open a working page over there, so we all can help in the research and editing process.