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Michelle Goldberg, author of a recent book on reproductive rights "The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World," has an article in the LA Times that summarises the complex arguments made in her book. Both address the conundrum that the world faces twin crises in its demographic future: soaring birth rates globally, with the great majority being amongst the poorest members of the poorest countries, and plummeting birth rates in several leading developed countries, notably Italy, Japan, Spain and Russia. It may seem crazy to assert at first that both problems are the result of women's lack of reproductive and economic freedom, but the arguments are pretty strong. This book is in my Wish List .
Here's an excerpt from the article:
Some social conservatives are using the threat of rapid First World population decline to argue for restrictions on women's rights. But that gets it precisely backward. In developing countries, lower social status for women is associated with higher fertility, but once societies become highly industrialized and women taste a certain amount of freedom, the reverse is true.
Fertility is reaching dangerously low levels in countries where social attitudes and institutions haven't caught up with women's desire to combine work and family. When faced with men who are unwilling to share domestic burdens, inflexible workplaces and day-care shortages, many women respond by having fewer children or forgoing motherhood altogether.
I was sent by my old DS comrade Dan a story from AlterNet, the title of which is The Right Wing's Latest Argument Against Public Health Care -- We'd Like It Too Much. Very good article, and I agree with everything in it except the first three words of the title. It's not "the right wing", whatever that means in America, that's opposed to universal health care. That title, and the mindset behind it, is all down to the regrettable flip side of the mostly wonderful American tendency to focus on the future: their astonishing ability to wipe out the past. And especially that maddeningly ahistorical quality of youthful American radicals to wrongly interpret their own history, forget, ignore or deny huge swathes of it, and reinterpret everything every few years, with often comical effects.
No my dears, I love you all passionately, but you don't know half the time who your friends are, who your enemies are, or what you are fighting for. You wouldn't know an authentic right-wing American if one infiltrated your organisation (and I assure you, one has) and the opposition to universal health care? it is the unholy alliance of insurance, big finance and big pharma, and therefore the entire infrastructure of global capitalism, and therefore your boss, and therefore all your co-workers and essentially you yourself. Yes, you cannot so much as draw a paycheque without making a huge contribution to this behemoth which has a strong vested interest in keeping you just barely well enough to work, in terror of illness and incidentally, of "big government", and vulnerable and malleable. Your mother and father and sisters are very possibly staunch opponents of "socialised medicine", even as they struggle through life underinsured, overmedicated and lied to at every turn. The one or two authentic "right-wingers" I have known were just as likely to be in favour of "socialised medicine" as opposed to it. The concerns of the right-wing in the US, given that there the mainstream would pass as the right wing of any European democracy, are mostly to do with such relatively arcane issues as racial purity, draconian anti-crime and anti-immigration policies, and ruling the third world in a harsh and unflinchingly imperialistic style. The endless dominance of capitalism they either take as given, or believe in a Nazi-style state control, which would include universal health care, along with forced sterilisation and euthenasia of the "unfit". So not really comrades, are they? But pretty sure to latch onto a popular and naive group working for universal health care.
Apart from these few quibbles, the article itself is good though. If only it had said "Big "Health-Care" Industry's Latest Argument ..."
Islam Online, one of a plethora of websites devoted to elements of Islamic culture and worship, reports in its news section the latest controversy over "moon sighting" in Pakistan. Since the Muslim calendar is lunar, and certain holy days depend upon a particular sighting of a new moon or full moon, there are specialist committees of Islamist scholars who make official declarations of the dates of feasts, the end of the Ramadan fast and such matters. In Pakistan, the secular meteorological office took it upon itself to "prematurely" announce the date of Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice (2 February, according to them.) This caused a furore at the Reut-E-Hilal committee, the religious officials in charge. But this body had apparently "dropped the ball" not long ago by failing to confirm the moon sighting to end the Ramadan fast, with the result that this was celebrated at two different times. Don't feel superior, Christians, until you read about the Council of Whitby and all the kerfuffle that occurred trying to get Ireland and England to celebrate Easter at the same time as the rest of Christendom. Sure, it was over 1000 years ago, but really, is the debate over the Ten Commandments in a courthouse or the ordination of female bishops any more seemly? Rather less, I should say.
Unless you are a deadhead or a musicologist or a student of early internet communities, you will not have heard of John Perry Barlow; I am the first and the third, to a small degree, so I have. Therefore, when I read in All the Pages Are My Days that JPB had started a blog, I clicked onto it eagerly. And discovered a hornet's nest. The guy has been in the blogosphere less than a month and already he is the right's favourite political football! Catch it in midstream at "Narcissism and the American Left", by Armed and Dangerous. The statement that aroused the storm of debate was:
"We can't afford to lose this one, folks. If we do, we'll have to set our watches back 60 years. If they even let us have watches in the camps, that is." (Safire Takes A Shot At Us, by BarlowFriendz)
I actually agree with a LOT of what the original post in Armed and Dangerous is saying. Don't get me wrong, I still love JPB as a poet (and they call him an internet uberexpert too, but I don't think that actually requires technical or real-world brilliance), and no one is saying his heart ain't in the right place (on the left, yep, right where it belongs) but the essay pushed a lot of buttons for me. As you may or may not know, I have been in and out of leftist political movements since 1970, and the two things that always drive me crazy and drive me out are : 1) the way polemicists, mostly male, always pull the "ooh I'm such a criminal rebel, the establishment is scared of me and I'm going to be disappeared soon" routine and 2) the way the SWP or even less savoury groups take over everything just as it's growing big.
Looking back at JPB's statement, I say two things. First, there were so many better ways he could have finished that sentence "If we do, . . ." He could have referred to America's eroding image in the rest of the civilised world, to the lurking unsustainability in the economy, to the corruption in corporate circles or to the mostly hidden plight of the poor. To suggest that the greatest threat the Bush admin poses is to wealthy technocrat liberal big-mouths like himself is tragically solipsistic. Second, why 60 years? That would be 1943-44, really a heyday for leftist intellectuals. It bespeaks a certain ignorance of history I have come to expect in so-called intelligentsia of the hippie school. It makes the few of us who care about such things look bad by association.
Johann Christoph Arnold of the Bruderhof Communities was a conscientious objector during Vietnam. However, he welcomes the rumours of an impending return to the draft in the US, providing it has a provision for conscientious objection. He believes it is good for young men to have to choose.
I don't agree with this position; I was an anti-draft activist both during and after Vietnam. A big conundrum about the draft is the fact that it is for men only, always a terrible injustice and a huge anachronism in today's world. Given the Bruderhof's old-fashioned take on sexual relationships, I doubt very seriously if Brother Johann would advocate the draft for women too.
Still, I am very glad to see this out in the open, and I think it needs to be picked up in the Blogosphere and given a good debate. And thanks to my good friend Lance for the link.
. . . if I have any such. (If you know the literary reference above, leave a comment to show off your erudition.) I have been too absorbed in my own petty personal concerns to blog for two days. But I just heard a snippet of Arnold S's great "political" "debate" on the BBC (radio) a few moments ago. Oh dear, oh dear. It is much worse even than I thought.
I haven't been blogging the past day and a half, because I don't feel like commenting on what is almost the only news item going - the apparent suicide of Dr. David Kelly. What I said before is now more so, but this is the way the story unfolds, and it does not make any sense to me. Nothing quite adds up and it all just leaves me feeling very disheartened.
OK. I will say just this. If you have been reading my blog since it started in March, you will know that although I have been very critical of the conduct of the war in Iraq, I was not totally opposed to it; I am not a pacifist although I tend that way, and I do believe that a response and a remedy to terrorism is needed, though I disagree strongly with how the US in particular is pursuing this aim.
What you might not know about me, and this is very controversial I am sure, is that I do not in fact believe that the worst thing a leader in a democratic society can do is lie. There is a part of me, probably the same part of me that loves certain war movies and leads me to study military history, that really wanted to stand up and cheer when that Colonel played by Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men said "You can't handle the truth". Not that I was on his side in that actual instance, but I do think there are times when a leader has to be less than honest with the people, and it is certainly true that a large part of the American public and the British public as well cannot handle the truth, in the sense that they can't process it, can't understand, can't act sensibly on the basis of it. So, for these varied reasons, I feel very out of step with the whole "dodgy dossier" debate. Oh, don't get me wrong, I do think there is a moral flaw at the heart of New Labour, and I do despise the Machiavellian machinations that go on in day to day British politics, just as I despise the lazy cynicism that is at the heart of American national politics these days. But anyway, that's me, and I will probably say no more about dodgy dossiers, missing WMDs and mysterious deaths of government scientists (because it was mysterious, even if proven to be suicide).
Here's another one. Every British blogger, without exception, that I have read, has expressed disgust about this so-called Debate on GM Crops. (And if you think that's bad, you should read the comments on the organic gardening mailing lists.)
I just had a most annoying interface with the UK government. We are in the first week of the lightening-quick one-month Great National Debate On Genetic Modification of Crops. What a joke! They are holding six or seven public forums, not advertised. They have also a website with the "points" of the "debate" set out in a very condescending way. No points are actually made, no information is given, no knowledge is imparted. The language is so Doublespeak that poor Mr. Orwell has surely disinterred himself by now with all that spinning around in his grave. If one is of the subsection of society that does most of its business on the internet (as I am) one is meant to read all this drivel, and then, freshly "informed", register ones views through a multiple choice radio button form. The questions on the form are a lot better than the debating points, I'll give them that. But then that means there is even less of a connect between the "facts" upon which to "decide" and the views that you register. And of course, after reading all this weasel-sh**, one is not likely to believe that ones views, once registered, will make any difference anyway. Oh, it just makes me spit.
By the way, I am not going to put a link here, but if you are British and can convince me of it, and can't find the site on your own, e-mail me at the link above and I'll tell it to you.
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