This is the sixth  of a series of guest posts by Dr Danny Weil from an article (World Class Standards: Whose World, Which Economic Classes and What Standards?) he originally published in Daily Censored.

In this sixth section, Dr Weil argues that conservative ideologues and corporate leaders are concealing their true intent in aggressively imposing educational standards and standardized tests on an unsuspecting American public. Besides hammering home the superiority of European culture, free market values and stereotypically male approaches to knowledge, they reinforce the notion that individual deficiency, rather than pernicious social and political problems, are responsible for human misery.

***

The Standards Debate as Social Prevarication and Myth

By Dr Danny Weil

“Perhaps the greatest tragedy of modern man is his domination by the force of {these} myths and his manipulation by organized advertising, ideological or otherwise.  Gradually, without even realizing the loss he relinquishes his capacity for choice; he is expelled from the orbit of decisions.  Ordinary men do not perceive the task of the time; the latter are interpreted by an “elite” and presented in the form of recipes and prescriptions.  And when men try to save themselves by following the prescriptions, they drown in leveling anonymity, without hope and without faith, domesticated and adjusted.” – Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 1976

Human beings seek to exist in the world, to make sense of their peculiar relationships with external and internal reality.  They seek dialogue and relationships with others in order to claim their humanness and become free from the external and internal bonds that bind them.  Standards, claim progressive post-modernists, are part and parcel of the sickness, the cognitive dis-ease that is rampant in education today precisely because they reinforce the meaningless of education — giving meaning only to what education can do for one materially, not psychologically or subjectively.  They become little more than a prerequisite for accepting and adjusting to a market society.

To begin with, radical pedagogy and progressive post-modern educational theory, hereinafter referred to as post-formalism (Kincheloe, Rethinking Intelligence, 1999), argues that tests and testing do far more than simply seek to measure academic performance or basic skills.  “From a post-formalist point of view, standards and assessment as put forth by both economic and cultural conservatives, give a false illusion—an ideological myth of meritocracy and objectivity that really operates deceitfully as technologies of power and control (Foucault, Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison, 1977).”  Standards operate as part of a modernist project, dissecting thinking into minute fragments and then testing the fragments separate from the whole.  They also are part of a mono-cultural or Eurocentric and androcentric tradition that place value on socio-centric truths and cultural claims to superiority.

Post-formalism would argue conservative standards, hereinafter referred to as universal standards, are culturally biased, gender discriminative, and class based sorting and classifying mechanisms that surreptitiously seek to motivate students by holding out the promise of extrinsic material rewards if the standards are met—i.e., better jobs, college entrance, higher incomes and better employment.  They create a false ideology of “fairness” that proclaims that individual effort is the controlling factor in determining success, regardless of ones’ social class, sex, race, cultural background or particular place in the social system.

Post-formalism argues that the current standards debate actually serves to suffocate a truly genuine dialogue about the purpose of education, of history, of human beings as subjects seeking their freedom in the enterprise of life; instead, the debate demagogues and couches the controversy over schooling as market competitiveness, global production, better goods and services, and strong national identity.

“Unfortunately, and yet understandably, the notion of universal standards resonates with many parents, especially minority parents and the economically and culturally disenfranchised, precisely because they want their children to become successful in a racially and sexually biased, class society where wages, for the majority of people, have scarcely risen in more than twenty five years (Sklar, Shifting Fortunes: The Perils of the Growing American Wealth Gap 1999).”  And as new jobs emerge and old ones die out, education is increasingly looked upon by citizenry as a way to endure rapid changes in economic life—to get ahead —a way out, or at the very least, a way to stay even and survive.  Lower wages, unemployment, and jobs relocated to third world countries have created economic insecurity, misery and uncertainty among American citizens with people scrambling and trying to avoid being the next victim of reorganization, reengineering, downsizing, restructuring or businesses disappearing, merging, and being bought out overnight.  The Right exploits these fears and economic uncertainties with the rhetoric of universal standards, falsely arguing that if we just had higher, normative standards, education would prepare everyone for the “new world order” and assure that security and equality would be re-instituted in mental and material life.  The message is clear:  don’t change life, change standards.

The Illusion of Individualistic Meritocracy

The universal standards debate disguises the way that history constructs meaning and opportunity by eternalizing itself behind false images of meritocracy, scientific rationality, and truth. By giving illusion to the mythology of meritocracy, standards serve to marginalize, discourage and disenfranchise, precisely because they propose that those who fail to live up to the technicistic standards are individual failures, do not belong in education; that they would be better served in vocational programs or, in the alternative, perhaps not be educated at all.  The failure to meet normative standards becomes defined as an individual problem devoid of social context and culpability. The debate refuses to recognize and discuss socio-economic issues such as crumbling school infrastructure, overcrowded schools, inadequate teaching resources, dysfunctional teacher training programs, the clandestine nature of teaching in isolation without mentorship or guidance, the shortage of qualified teachers (especially among minority communities), poverty, dysfunctional families, the lack of early childhood nutrition, health care or preschool, low salaries, the dismal state of parental involvement, poverty, low wages and the economic and political arrangements of post-modern capitalist society that creates, if not allows these conditions to exist.  Nor does the debate recognize intellectual diversity, cultural distinctions, intellectual diversity, epistemological processes and concerns, language disparities and differences, or gender discrimination.

Education is a uniquely public and cooperative activity done in concert with others for the purpose of reading the world, forging loving relationships, living a productive life and developing personal and social understanding.  Yet standards create a scarcity mentality—a win-lose situation where competition and ruthless grade acquisition landscape educational discourse and practice under false claims of meritocracy.  Standardized tests base themselves on, and reinforce, an ideology of insipid individualism where others exist only as rungs on a ladder, to “get over”, to compete and measure oneself against.  What is uniquely a public, collaborative activity, learning, becomes a privatized, competitive activity, getting good grades.  For this reason, universal standards are antithetical to human agency and authenticity; they are testimonies to class, race, and sex-based privilege and the objectification and reification of human intellectual endeavor.  They tear all forms of educational community asunder, pitting students against students, teachers against teachers, and citizens against citizens.  Universal standards rigidly enforce hierarchies, acquiescence and submission in place of cooperation, collaborative problem solving and shared experience and dialogue.  They operate as an ideological moral authority in the hands of an immoral constituency.

Furthermore, the current standards’ debate gives the false illusion that “we are all in this together” and that the standards proposed are objective, fair and not culturally, racially or sexually biased.  The debate does this by couching rhetoric in words such as “we”, “us”, “our”, and “together”. The discussion provides an individualistic rational that serves to temper resentment when somebody else gets into college, or gets the “good” job.  “After all, we’re all working under the same standards, aren’t we?  If you just would have done better!”  They impose an “unnatural selection” on citizens by proclaiming their naturalness, and in doing so they ideologically manipulate the public with the falsity of their own mythology.  All of this serves to surreptitiously beguile students, teachers and community into believing that there is no political agenda, no cultural norms being advocated, no prevalence of hierarchical classifying and sorting—that standards are a neutral, generic conception and operation applicable equally and fairly in the interests of everyone.

(To be continued.)

Dr Danny Weil is a public interest attorney who has practiced for more than twenty years and has been published in a case of first impression in California. He is no longer active as a lawyer but has written seven books on education, has taught second grade in South Central LA, PS 122, taught K-1 migrant children in Santa Maria, California and Guadalupe, California, taught in the California Youth Authority to first and second degree murderers and taught for seventeen years at Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria, CA. in the philosophy department. Dr. Weil holds a BA in Political Economics and Philosophy, a multi-subject bilingual credential in education (he is fluent in Spanish) and has a PhD in Critical Thinking. He is a writer for the Truthout Intellectual Project.

photo credit: marsmet451 via photopin cc

Assam tea pluckers

(This is the second of two posts regarding the recent industrial dispute on a tea plantation in India in which 1,000 tea workers set fire to their employer’s bungalow, killing both him and his wife.)

Why Weren’t MKB Tea Pluckers in the Union?

Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS) is the largest tea workers union. Their general secretary Dileshwar Tanti also appeared briefly on the BBC World Have Your Say broadcast I mention in my last post. He reports the workers at MKB tea plantation weren’t unionized, though most tea workers are. I found the comment puzzling and felt it also deserved further scrutiny. Most of the reader commentary on the BBC Facebook site and elsewhere strongly condemns the women for resorting to violence, rather than going to the union or the authorities to resolve their back pay dispute.

A recent article for the Asia Monitor Resource Center by feminist political scientist Sujata Gothoskar paints an extremely bleak picture of trade union effectiveness in Assam state. Despite strong union penetration, Assam’s tea plantations still operate under a system that amounts to slave labor. All the most difficult work – including carryingmore than 40 kgs of green leaf on their backs every day – is performed by women. In addition over 90 per cent of the tea workers are either Scheduled Tribes or Scheduled Castes – the lowest in the caste hierarchy. According to Gothoskar, many of the workers families were forcibly or fraudulently brought to the tea gardens several generations ago. Injuries are common, as are respiratory and water-borne diseases.

Although India’s 1951 Plantation Labour Act 1951 requires owners to pay minimum wage and to provide basic medical care, clean drinking water, sanitation (toilets) and a “provident fund” for workers who become unemployed, none of these conditions are enforced despite decades of unionization. At present the average wage of the majority of tea pluckers is less than 55 rupees a day (US$2), as against Assam’s minimum wage of 100 rupees per day.

As Gothoskar also explains in her article, most unions in India, including those representing the tea estates, are affiliated with and controlled by political parties. Even though women workers constitute the majority of the tea plantation workforce, the top union leadership that sets policy and participates in collective bargaining consists almost entirely of non-tea worker, middle class men. She also notes that although physical and sexual violence against women are extremely common on tea plantations, union leaders refuse to recognize it as a union issue.

A Virtual Death Sentence

Although reports from UNICEF and other human rights organizations document the routine malnutrition and starvation-related deaths that occur on the Assam tea plantations, it’s impossible to justify what these women did – either morally or strategically. Killing the plantation owner will most certainly cost them their jobs (as well as landing some of them in prison). Fire setting and other extreme labor unrest has already led to the closure of several Assam tea estates, including Rani Tea Estate where Bhattacharya shot and killed the 15 year old. At the same time, there is no question their desperate actions arose from a sense of absolute powerless in the face of virtual serfdom, as well as the bribery, corruption, sexism and racism that plagues the Assam police, government authorities and even union officials.

It’s a pity the corporate media doesn’t tell us any of this. We frequently read and hear about similar “senseless” violence in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq – where desperate people who have exhausted all their options blow themselves up to strike a blow against the people who oppress them. The psychological profiles of gunmen involved in recent rage massacres suggest that here, too, we are dealing with profoundly desperate people who believe they have no other alternative – and, more importantly, that they have nothing to lose.

Society’s Pathological Response to Violence

In a rational world, community and political leaders would be more mindful of the lethal effect of desperation on human behavior. We would also be far less cavalier about ignoring human exploitation and oppression to fulfill corporate demands for ever increasing profit. Sadly with the global economic downturn and growing income inequality, we seem to be moving in the opposite direction. As the corporate elite rushes to dismantle all the federal and state regulations that used to soften the brutality of raw corporate capitalism, you get the sense they are pursuing some misguided scorched earth strategy to squeeze every last ounce of wealth out of the global economy before the whole house of cards collapses.

Meanwhile the corporate media prefers to sweep the industrial dispute at the Assam tea plantation under the rug, unlike Newtown and the other rage massacres they cover ad nauseum. With American union membership at an all time low, heaven forbid increasingly desperate US workers should get any ideas.

19th century prostitute

A Renegade History of the United States

by Thaddeus Russell

2010 Free Press

Book Review

(This book review is divided into three parts. The second part discusses the debt of gratitude Americans owe prostitutes and ex-slaves for many of the liberties we currently take for granted. The third discusses Martin Luther King’s little publicized campaign to rid black people of “un-Christian” and “un-American” habits.)

Part II

The unquestioned heroes of A Renegade History of the United States are prostitutes and ex-slaves. In the 19^th century any woman who owned property, had sex outside of marriage, performed or received oral sex, used birth control, wore make-up, perfume or stylish clothes could only be a prostitute. It was prostitutes who won these and other rights that modern American women take for granted. When women were barred from most jobs and wives had no legal right to own property, prostitutes, especially in the Wild West became so wealthy that they funded crucial irrigation and road building projects. Likewise when most states banned birth control in the early 1800s, prostitutes continued to provide a market for contraceptives that stimulated production and distribution.

The importance of slaves and their descendents in the expansion of personal freedom relates to the tenacious manner in which they preserved a culture characterized by sensuous music, rhythms and dancing in a culture that condemned these activities as depraved and harmful to the work ethic.

The Unique Culture of Slavery

Citing a number of academic sources, Russell presents a very different view of slavery that than is commonly depicted in public schools and the mainstream media. Sociologists have long recognized that the institution of slavery is incompatible with high quality work. Russell cites letters and diaries from 19^th century slave masters expressing frustration about their slaves being “shiftless” and looking for every opportunity to avoid work. Plantation owners complained that harsh punishments, such as beatings, made slaves even more recalcitrant. George Washington (a prominent slave owner) wrote about the problem in a farming instruction manual he authored: “When an overlooker’s back is turned, the most of them will slight their work, or be idle altogether, in which case correction cannot retrieve either but often produces evils that are worse than the disease.”

Most landowners seemed resigned to providing other inducements to work, such as allowing slaves free time for drinking, gambling, dancing and sexual adventures. Slave women weren’t bound by laws against fornication, adultery and promiscuity that white women were forced to live by. This meant they weren’t expected to be virgins at the time of marriage, nor were they scorned for engaging in extramarital sex.

Teaching Ex-Slaves to Practice Self-Denial

Following the Civil War, there was a strong expectation that slaves would renounce these pleasurable pastimes and embrace the work ethic as good American citizens. Many eagerly embraced the discipline and self-denial emancipation demanded of them. Many didn’t. Many relished the “freedom” from responsibility they enjoyed when a slave master looked after all their basic needs.

In 1865 Congress confronted this dilemma by creating the Freedman’s Bureau to train ex-slaves how to become “good citizens.” Most enrolled eagerly, thinking they would be taught to read and write. Instead the classes focused on the ideals the founding fathers had promoted – frugality, self-denial and most importantly a love of work, even poorly paid work, as a source of virtue. Russell cites letters and interviews with ex-slaves who saw no point in being free if it meant they had to work harder than a slave did. Many northerners, who acquired southern plantations cheaply during Reconstruction, complained that ex-slaves made terrible workers. Not only did they come and go as they pleased, but they demanded days off and refused to work in inclement weather. Many ex-slaves also resisted pressure to adopt legal norms of marriage.

By 1872, the Republicans were so frustrated by their inability to teach ex-slaves to practice self-denial and commit themselves to hard work, monogamy and discipline that they abolished the Freedman’s Bureau.

Russell also writes at length about the black face and minstrel shows of the early 1900s. He attributes their popularity among white Americans to their profound envy of the uninhibited abandon they associated with black culture, particularly the passionate and suggestive music and dancing. He acknowledges this is a controversial viewpoint, given the the strong condemnation of blackface and minstrel shows as “racist” during the civil rights era. However the personal profiles he offers of individual performers, especially Al Jolson and other Jewish composers and entertainers, suggest that they idolized what they regarded as black musical genius.

Classification of Jewish, Irish and Italian Immigrants as Non-White

Russell also devotes several chapters to other immigrant groups – Jews, the Irish (white niggers) and the Italians (who, according to 20^th century anthropologists, had African ancestors). All were were initially classified as non-white, in part owing to their fondness for music, dancing, partying, drinking and/or sexual excesses. He then traces the immense pressure their own leaders put on each of these groups to “assimilate” by putting the work ethic, self-denial and restraint ahead of their fondness for personal pleasure. For example, Irish leaders recruited a large number of their countrymen to join municipal police forces, while prominent Italians encouraged their youth to join both the military and police. Russell then traces the gradual changes in the mainstream media, and subsequently immigration law, as each of these groups came to be recognized as “white.”

To be continued.

Happy International Women's Day

Today (March 8th) is International Women’s Day. This year the UN has declared the theme “Empower Rural Women: End Hunger and Poverty.”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), women comprise 43 percent of agricultural workers worldwide and 70 percent in third world countries. More than 60 percent of chronically hungry people are women and girls. According to the FAO, gender inequality is a major cause of both poverty and hunger. Their studies suggest that if women were allowed the same access to productive resources as men, they could increase yields on their farms by 20–30 percent, lifting 100-150 million out of hunger.

Gender inequality and inadequate access to education, health care and credit pose massive challenges for rural women in the developing world. The global food and economic crisis and extreme weather events related to climate change have greatly aggravated their plight.

According to UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), women and girls face still face extremely high rates of educational poverty. They find that approximately 80 percent of the 67 million children not attending school live in rural areas and that the majority are girls.

The FAO cites the West African nation of Burkina Faso as a prime example of rural education and gender gap challenges. According to UNESCO data released today, only about 22 percent of the country’s rural girls attend primary school, compared to 72 percent of urban girls or 82 percent of urban boys.

In Morocco in North Africa, 55% of rural males and 37% of rural women receive at least five years of education.

Addressing Poverty and Hunger by Empowering Women

According to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) , there has been a surge of interest in recent years in rural women and the role they play in agriculture. This has been prompted by the renewed focus on agriculture – sparked by two food crises; droughts linked to climate change, forcing men to seek alternative livelihoods away from home; HIV/AIDS, which has virtually decimated the agriculture work force in southern Africa; and the growing body of research into nutrition and food quality.

A new report IFPRI entitled Engendering Agricultural Research, Development and Extension, which will be presented at the Global Conference on Women in Agriculture in India March 13-15, calls for a more “gender equitable” agriculture. Specifically it argues that the development of homestead gardens should get the same attention from policymakers as male-dominated aspects such as cash-crops. It also calls for an expanded concept of the food sector – to include staple crops, but also fish, livestock, gardens, the nutritional value of food and the use of water. It also advocates for government policies providing microcredit, as well as opportunities for land and livestock ownership, to women farmers. Finally it calls for more investment in women female agricultural scientists and greater attention to food processing, to better preserve the nutrient content of food, as well as ensuring food safety.

Female Poverty in the US

Sadly the feminization of poverty is, by no means, limited to the third world. According to the 2010 census, American women are the hardest hit by the global economic crisis in every category. The poverty rate among US women rose to 14.5% last year, up from 13.9% in 2009 and the highest in 17 years. More than 17 million American women lived in poverty last year, compared to 12.6 million American men. Single mothers are the hardest hit. Forty percent of women who head families currently live in poverty.

“Selling Books” recently did a fantastic interview about my young adult novel The Battle for Tomorrow: a Fable

Tell us something about yourself:

I’m a 63 year old, recently retired child and adolescent psychiatrist, single mother and activist, who emigrated to New Zealand 8 ½ years ago after being targeted by the FBI for my political activities. I write about this in my 2010 memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. I was born and grew up in Milwaukee and raised my own family in Seattle. I have been writing for nearly 25 years and presently serve on the National Executive of the New Zealand Green Party.

What inspired you to write this book?

I have always had in mind to write two novels: the first would explore how real political change comes about and the second how young women become conscious of subtle oppression in their relationships with men. In 2009, it suddenly occurred to me that by making my main character a teenager I could combine the two in one book. Since 2005, my clinical work has focused almost exclusively on teenagers, which gives me unique insight into the difficulties they face in contemporary society. Age discrimination is a biggie, especially in the US. In most parts of the world, teenagers are allowed to leave home, work and live independently at age 16. In some countries, they even vote at 16.

How did you choose the title?

It came to me as I was writing that teenagers should have as much right to a future (a “tomorrow”) as their parents and grandparents. However unfortunately this right is no longer automatic. With the total unwillingness of US political leaders to address catastrophic global warming (or catastrophic food and water shortages) or the major lifestyle changes necessary to prevent these occurrences. This means that teenagers will probably have to fight really hard to even have a future.

(go to  http://www.sellingbooks.com/dr-stuart-jeanne-bramhall-the-battle-for-tomorrow/ for complete interview)

Available in soft cover from Amazon for $18.95 (new) or $13.81 (used)

or as ebook (all formats) for $5.99 from http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51531

A major headache for progressive organizers is that low income workers find ultraconservative Teaparty and United Front groups far more appealing than progressive causes focused on improving their economic circumstances. As Marxist psychiatrist writes in his 1933 The Mass Psychology of Fascism, this is a very old problem, one he links to authoritarian child rearing styles pervasive under western-style capitalism (http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Mass-Psychology-of-Fas-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-100806-347.html).

In North America, the progressive movement is also cursed with the reality that the US and Canada have a large, well-defined professional/academic middle class earning much higher salaries than the minimum wage and casual workforce that comprises 80% of the population. In Middle East and North African countries where mass movements are causing major political upheaval, this elite professional/academic class is very tiny, as the incomes of public sector professionals (such as teachers, social workers and doctors) are only modestly higher than private sector laborers. In fact, in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and eastern Europe, it’s fairly common for doctors and teachers to go months without being paid during an economic downtown – which forces many of them to supplement their income by cab driving and part time laboring jobs. When professionals and blue collar workers face the same economic pressures, it’s far easier to identify with and support each others’ demands.

Is an American Mass Movement Possible with an Intact Middle Class?

There’s no question, given the steady attack in most states on unions, public schools, universities and public sector workers, that the American middle class is being systematically shattered. The important question for many of us is whether the American revolution will have to wait until the middle class disappears completely – until we pay our doctors, teachers and university professors the same wages as janitors and garbage collectors. My answer is a qualified no. Given the recent massive protests in Madison and other state capitols, I see a strong potential for a national mass movement. But only if American progressives address some of the unconscious class prejudices that jeopardize their appeal to low income and disadvantaged workers.

Taking a Page from 1970s Feminists

In fact, I believe the early feminist movement (the real, pre-Gloria Steinem feminist movement) holds important lessons for modern progressives. Our early consciousness raising meetings attracted women of all backgrounds, and unlike the 1970s antiwar movement and New Left, we worked extremely hard to bridge the class divide between our members. Based on personal experience with this early movement – before Gloria Steinem and the Queen Bee (*see below) feminists took it over, I would make the following recommendations.

1. Progressives need to take a hard look at their association with “lifestyle” campaigns, such as anti-smoking, anti-obesity, vegetarianism and gun control. Many low income workers tend to view these as personal freedom issues and the middle class progressives who champion them as moralizing busy bodies.
2. Progressives need to focus more on issues of immediate urgency to the working class: unemployment, foreclosures/homelessness, and sustainability related issues with immediate economic impact – food security, transportation and alternatives to a cash economy for people who have no money (i.e. trading/bartering systems and/or local currencies). In the early feminist movement, we addressed this by organizing to provide direct services to low-income women (which at the time was most of us). Examples included activist-run child care and after school centers, health and abortion clinics, skills exchanges, alternative high schools and reproductive health clinics.
3. Progressives need to incorporate the “welfare committee” into all organizing. In addition to going back to the good old days of providing child care at all meetings (there is no other way for low income women with small children to attend), activists need to commit to addressing the real-time economic needs of fellow activists. Building sustained organized resistance will require more of us to focus full time on movement building, rather than relying on foundation funding and paid organized to pay our organizers. The only way this can happen is for grassroots groups to commit to looking after the survival needs of their members, especially as more unemployed and underemployed workers join our ranks.
4. Progressives need to be far more sensitive to the cultural differences associated with social class. In the early feminist movement we did this by conducting meetings in fishbowls, in which low income and minority women who were reticent about speaking began the meeting at the inside of the fishbowl, while more affluent educated women were prevented from monopolizing the discussion by being placed in the outer circle and instructed to observe and listen.
5. Progressives need to abandon their dogmatic stance around non-violence, which is quite alien to working class culture and tends to be viewed as moralizing (http://www.opednews.com/articles/How-Nonviolence-Protects-t-by-Dr-Stuart-Jeanne-B-110425-73.html

Fishbowl Exercise

*Queen Bee Feminism is focused on creating more women doctors, judges and business executives, in the belief that the lifestyle benefits these women enjoy will trickle down to the 80% of women who live in relative poverty. Aside from the fact that the “trickle down” feminism advocated by Gloria Steinem (both in Ms Magazine and her extremely divisive leadership of the National Organization of Women) represents classic conservative neoliberalism, the takeover by Queen Bee Feminists effectively drove working class and lesbian and transgender women (and working class men) out of the movement and was responsible for the defeat (in 1982) of the Equal Rights Amendment. In fact, there is a growing body of evidence that Steinem was recruited by US to infiltrate NOW and that Ms Magazine was launched with funding from CIA-linked foundations.  See http://www.mail-archive.com/ctrl@listserv.aol.com/msg02217.html and http://rah.posterous.com/black-feminism-the-cia-and-gloria-steinem-fwd

The Battle for Tomorrow (Excerpt Chap 26)

Ange’s primary recollection of her first week in the Alexandria Juvenile Detention Facility, which was actually in Virginia, was one of absolute, soul-destroying boredom. In her mind, it was the relentless monotony, rather than the loss of freedom and degrading treatment, that constituted the “punishment” imposed by her incarceration. In preparing for her arrest, it never occurred to her that she would be stuck in a ten-by-twelve room twenty-four/seven with literally nothing to do but eat and sleep. It seemed unimaginable that she could miss her monotonous deli job or the drudgery of grocery shopping, dishes, cleaning her room, and laundry until she was denied the right to engage in them. She was also denied access to her usual pastimes during the three weeks it took to be arraigned. Not only was her cell phone confiscated, but she had no access whatsoever to TV, radio, or computers.

On arriving at the detention facility, she was immediately separated from Zach and Brian, neither of whom she ever saw again. One of the juvenile officers got out with them at the male facility, while the other drove Ange around the block to the building that housed teenage girls. After helping her down from the minivan, he escorted her through two electronic doors to a glass-walled reception office, where he removed her handcuffs and handed her over to two female guards in pea green uniforms.

The older guard, a stocky, gray-haired woman who towered over Ange by a good three inches, used her electronic swipe card to let the three of them into a large empty room across from the duty office, and ordered Ange to disrobe. Both the older woman, and a petite, sweet-faced African American woman young enough to be her daughter, had bemused looks as Ange laboriously removed the multiple layers of clothing she had put on that morning. As Ange took them off, the younger guard stuffed them into a large plastic garbage bag.

Once she was naked, the younger guard reached out with a gloved hand to inspect her scalp and pubic area for lice. “Turn around, please,” the older guard ordered, “and spread your legs.” Ange, who at some level knew what was coming, found it degradingly impersonal, but not painful, when the guard shoved her gloved finger into her vagina. However, the sudden painful jabbing in her rectum was totally unexpected. The shock caused her anal sphincter to tense up, causing an excruciating tearing sensation that radiated up her spine and persisted long after the woman withdrew her finger. After removing and discarding her gloves into a small, lidded garbage container next to the door, the older guard left the younger woman on her own to monitor Ange’s first shower.

There was a large, open shower area adjacent to the room where she had stripped. Ange followed the guard, who stopped underneath a white-crusted circular shower nozzle.

“Showers are all exactly three minutes here,” the guard informed her officiously. “They are always exactly the same temperature and they’re all on a timer.” She pointed to two large plastic dispensers just below the showerhead at eye level. “The left one is shampoo. The right one is shower gel.”

There was a key-operated switch to the right of the shower gel, and the guard inserted a key attached to her waistband to turn the water on. Removing her glasses, Ange looked around helplessly for somewhere to put them. With an angry sigh, the guard took them as Ange stepped hesitantly under the spray. After shampooing her hair, she helped herself to a generous dollop of gel and scrubbed each armpit with the opposite hand. As the guard continued to watch, she helped herself to more gel and scrubbed her pubic area, between her breasts and butt cheeks, and finally her upper back. She had just finished rinsing her hair when the water shut off. She looked at the guard, who pointed to a two-foot stack of folded white towels on a square folding table just inside the door to the shower room.

“Used towels go in the left hamper,” she instructed, referring to two large laundry hampers on the other side of the table. “Soiled jail uniforms and underwear in the one on the right.”

The guard waited for Ange to dry herself and handed her a shapeless cotton bra and a large pair of cotton, granny-style panties, both of which had the number 1035 handwritten in indelible ink on the size labels.

“We issue three pairs of underwear, though inmates are allowed to have their own brought in. It all has to be labeled with your number, and washable in the same hot water and bleach as the rest of the prison laundry.”

Finally the guard handed Ange what she assumed was the prison uniform, a dark blue long-sleeved sweatshirt and gray track pants. Then she gave her a pair of fluorescent orange flip flops, also marked with the number 1035 on the insoles.

“These can only be worn in your cell and back and forth to the showers. In all other instances you wear the regulation footwear you will find in your cell.”

Excerpt continued (free sample) at http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/51531/4/the-battle-for-tomorrow-a-fable

Special Offer

Nominated for Global Ebook Award

To celebrate my new book, I am offering a 2 for 1 offer (expires May 14th) – a free ebook version of The Battle for Tomorrow with purchase of new, used or ebook version of my memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. Email receipt to stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz for coupon code for a free download.

Links for The Most Revolutionary Act

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ebook (all formats) for $5.99:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/55477

Links for The Battle for Tomorrow

softcover $18.95:  www.thebattlefortomorrow.com

ebook (all formats) $5.99:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51531

From The Battle for Tomorrow (Excerpt Chap 3)

Ange had sent a fourth text, adding for the first time that she was pregnant, when the 43 let her off at Garfield. The response was immediate. Reuben’s text said to meet him at the Segway Coffee House on University Ave at six p.m. She was scheduled to work, as Thursday was a late shoppers’ night. Clearly, confronting Reuben took precedence, so she texted her manager to tell him she was sick.

Reuben was waiting for her at a table near the back when she arrived. Her boyfriend had perfectly straight, brownish blond hair that reached his shoulder blades. He was incredibly vain about his hair and liked to jerk his head to flounce it like a horse’s mane. Reuben, who was actually quite effeminate in a lot of ways, also had a girlish way of sweeping it out of his eyes. He was quite vain about his hands, using his long, hairless, perfectly tapered fingers a lot when he talked. In the eleven months they were best friends and then lovers, Ange did her best to put these imperfections out of mind. However, once she decided to break up, she could allow herself a full inventory of his flaws. This included his straight, perfectly white teeth, which Ange was convinced he secretly bleached, and his affected blue-collar look complete with a faddish two-day stubble, plaid Pendleton work shirt, and unscuffed, crease-free Wolverine work boots.

Reuben gave her a half-hearted smile as she dumped her backpack and parka on the chair across from him. “I have to admit your text was quite unexpected,” he said as she returned from the counter, where she had ordered a chai latte. His tone was superficially pleasant, with a strong undertone of accusation that characterized most of their recent conversations. “It seems to me we’ve been extremely careful.”

Ange bit her lip, determined to keep a lid on her anger. They both knew the relationship was over. It was up to one of them to say it. “It’s your kid, Reuben. I haven’t been with anyone else.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it was someone else’s. I was merely expressing surprise. How long have you known?”

“Since last night. I recognized the feeling about a week ago. You get this continual burning in your stomach. They say it’s heartburn from the pressure of the fetus.”

“You seem to be taking it pretty well.”

She shrugged. “I”m not happy about it. No point getting bent out of shape.”

“Well, it’s my first time, and I can tell you what I feel. It feels like an enormous decision.”

“What enormous decision, Reuben?” Ange struggled to contain herself. “I’m not having it.”

“Ange, we’ve created life.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m sixteen years old!” she exploded. Reuben made such a big issue of her not confiding in him. But how could she possibly share her private feelings with someone who came out with such bullshit? Was her boyfriend seriously entertaining the possibility of keeping it? Worse still, had he had messed up on purpose to keep from losing her? She was learning men did that stuff without being fully conscious of what they were doing.

“Reuben, we are finished. I think we both know that.” The truth was that Ange had become quite bored with the relationship, especially the pressure of continually thinking of things to do together. Reuben had seduced her by convincing her he was the first man on earth to understand her inner thoughts and feelings. It had been an enormous letdown to realize he didn’t understand her any better than any of the other boys she had dated. All he really did was constantly reframe her feelings, like all the counselors they made her see. At first she naively interpreted this as empathy and understanding. Now she hated him for it.

Even the sex had become boring. As the first man to go down on her, Reuben was also the first to make her come. But as the conflict between them grew, Ange lost her ability to respond. Reuben’s solution – that they watch pornography and try new positions and techniques – struck her as obscene and a deliberate avoidance of the real issue: his desire to mould Ange into some preconceived image he had in his head. She believed a man should love her for who and what she was.

“Reuben, there is no fucking way I’m keeping this baby. The only reason I’m telling you about the pregnancy is because I need $350 for the abortion.”

Ange knew that Reuben – who had three part-time jobs at the UW computer lab, the Indy Media Center, and a pet store in Ballard – had the money. Aside from a twenty sack of weed a week, he had no vices and would never buy a book, CD, DVD, or software when he could download it or borrow a copy from a friend.

There was a long silence as he used his spoon to daintily scoop out the cappuccino foam that clung to the cup. “I guess we have nothing to talk about then. I would like to think you found our relationship important enough to work at it. But I guess you don’t.”

He seemed to think this would get a reaction but they had already had this argument too many times. Ange knew exactly what working at a relationship meant because she had seen her mom do it so often – investing so much time in pretending to enjoy a man’s company until eventually she fooled herself.

And I already know you will make my life absolutely miserable if I don’t come up with the money. You would ask my mom for it, wouldn’t you?”

Excerpt continued (free sample) at http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/51531/4/the-battle-for-tomorrow-a-fable

Special Offer

Nominated for Global Ebook Award

To celebrate my new book, I am offering a 2 for 1 offer (expires May 14th) – a free ebook version of The Battle for Tomorrow with purchase of new, used or ebook version of my memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. Email receipt to stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz for coupon code for a free download.

Links for The Most Revolutionary Act

(winner of 2011 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award):

New and used soft cover from $13:  Amazon

ebook (all formats) $5.99:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/55477

Links for The Battle for Tomorrow

softcover $18.95:  www.thebattlefortomorrow.com

ebook (all formats) $5.99:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51531

The Battle for Tomorrow

Chapter 1 (Excerpt)

Ange badly wanted to believe a miracle was still possible, that her period would come and she would just be more careful next time. Yet she never really doubted the blue line would be there – the flu-like fullness in her head and chemical feeling in her stomach were too familiar.

After undergoing her first abortion at thirteen, she would make all the arrangements herself. Most of her classmates at Garfield High School would be more worried about telling their parents than the actual consequences. Neither was an issue for Ange. What she couldn’t stand was handing herself over to adults she didn’t respect and who didn’t respect her. Adults always exacted a price from teenagers. To punish her for engaging in unprotected intercourse, they would now subject her to hours of inane questions and patronizing condescension.

They would insist on repeating the pregnancy test, of course. This time Ange knew she could demand a blood test, which was both faster and more reliable. They would also harangue her about being tested for HIV and swabbed for gonorrhea and Chlamydia. She had already decided not to tell them that her partner was a twenty-three-year-old nursing student and clean. Relationships with adults were like a chess game. Telling them about Reuben would only lead to more questions. What’s more, they would think they had scored points by getting into her head at all. All adults in the so-called helping profession were like that. You could almost see them adding up points in their head. Eventually they reached some magic number and decided they knew you better than you knew yourself.

The worst part would be seeing a choice counselor, even though Ange had lots of practice with all the social workers from welfare and child protective services who tried to insinuate themselves into her life. Listening passively to their lectures and shrugging off their questions worked better than arguing with them. Ange would wait until they were just winding down, then ask, “Can I go now?” She could read their fury in their body language – none of them was immune. Only the blatantly incompetent ones actually vented their anger.

Handling Reuben would be more difficult. She would make him pay for the abortion because the pregnancy was his fault.  The relationship was over. She accepted that. What she hadn’t figured out was how to end it without making a scene, without giving him the satisfaction of making her lose it, yet again, with his mind games.

***

Too stressed out to sleep properly, Ange was up at 5:15 the next morning. By 6:15 she was showered and dressed in a black turtleneck and her best black cords. The clinic was a forty-five minute bus ride from the three bedroom house on 44th and Wallingford that her mother inherited when her grandmother died. Her plan was to arrive a little before nine and convince the receptionist she was too upset to wait for an appointment.

She used the mirror in the bathroom to apply a thin thread of eyeliner under both eyes and put her jewelry in. She decided to wear her full regalia, as Reuben called it – four double loops around the outer lobe of her left ear, three on the right with a pewter ear cuff, a tiny silver loop through her right eyebrow, and a tongue stud.

Squirting a few drops of hair gel onto her fingertips, she rubbed her hands together and ran them through her hair. Despite all the hardware, her new Goth look made her look and feel pretty for the very first time. She loved the way Katherine, her first Nordstrom supervisor, had cut her hair. After her first pregnancy, she cut off her shoulder-length, peroxide-blond hair and made herself over by dying it jet black. She was wearing it in a shag when she started at Nordstrom. Katherine kept saying that it was too long. Ange held out for six months, concerned that a shorter cut would make her look too masculine. As it turned out, her supervisor’s skillful tapering gave her extra fullness and body that made Ange’s face much more feminine by softening her square jaw line.

Finishing in the bathroom, Ange went down the hall to the kitchen, which was at the back of the house. She put two pieces of twelve-grain bread in the toaster, while she boiled water in the electric kettle and emptied a scoop of French roast coffee into her mother’s single-cup drip cone. While she waited for the water to filter through, she buttered the toast with a thin sliver of margarine and put it on a saucer. She placed the saucer, along with her mom’s coffee, on the tray her mother’s caregiver Irene kept in the center of the kitchen table. Carrying the tray, she returned to the front of the house and knocked softly on the door to her mother’s bedroom.

Without waiting for an answer, she opened the door and set the tray on the antique hospital tray stand just inside the door. After wheeling it to the head of the bed, she went to the windows to open the floor length, reddish-brown thermal drapes. Then she quietly approached the enormous electric bed where her mother was curled up on her left side.

Diane was paralyzed on her right side and virtually unable to speak after suffering a stroke a week past Ange’s thirteenth birthday. Ange stayed with her best friend Aleisha while her mom spent three months in a Mountlake Terrace rehabilitation center. After coming home, Diane went through five different caregivers in twelve weeks. Every time an agency nurse failed to show up on time, or quit without giving notice, it became Ange’s responsibility to feed, toilet, transfer, and bathe her mother, as well as to track down Diane’s elusive case manager to get a new caregiver assigned.

Excerpt continued (free sample) at http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/51531/4/the-battle-for-tomorrow-a-fable

Special Offer

To celebrate my new book, I am offering a 2 for 1 offer (expires May 14th) – a free ebook version of The Battle for Tomorrow with purchase of new, used or ebook version of my memoir The Most Revolutionary Act: Memoir of an American Refugee. Email receipt to stuartbramhall@yahoo.co.nz for coupon code for a free download.

Links for The Most Revolutionary Act

(winner of 2011 Allbooks Review Editor’s Choice Award):

New and used soft cover from $13:  Amazon

ebook (all formats) for $5.99:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/55477

Links for The Battle for Tomorrow

softcover $18.95:  www.thebattlefortomorrow.com

ebook (all formats) $5.99:  http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/51531

As I blogged previously, the National Institutes of Health Women’s Health Initiative Study (launched in 1993-95) had to be shut down in 2002, when it became clear the women in the Premarin/Prempro arm of the study were experiencing an unacceptably high rate of breast cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia (http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2011/03/25/wyeth-and-the-multibillion-dollar-menopause-industry/). The massive negative publicity this received caused seventy percent of American women to immediately stop their estrogen replacement therapy – resulting in a 7% reduction in new breast cancer cases over the next year.

Predictably, Wyeth’s response to all this negative publicity was to initiate a massive PR campaign discrediting the WHI study. They started with a letter to 500,000 doctors attacking the study, complaining that the women in the Premarin arm had other reasons for developing cancer – they were too old, too menopausal or weren’t checked for pre-existing heart disease (I find this ironic – in 2002 Wyeth was still aggressively promoting Premarin as a way to prevent heart disease). This was followed by articles attacking the study in various medical journals – articles published under the names of doctors specializing in women’s health which were actually ghost written by the company (see http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/9804/).

Many of the doctors were affiliated with the notorious Council on Hormone Education at University of Wisconsin (where 44 of the 64 doctors have financial ties to Wyeth) Wyeth founded in response to the 2002 WHI study. In 2006 the Council even began offering a continuing medical education course for doctors called “Quality of Life, Menopausal Changes and Hormonal Therapy” – heavily promoting estrogen replacement.

Consumers’ Only Protection Against Big Pharma

Lawsuits: consumers only weapon against Big Pharma

Wyeth’s massive campaign to discredit the 2002 WHI study, at the expense of tens of thousands who would start or continue estrogen replacement as a result of these misguided efforts, has clearly harmed their defense in the dozens or so of the 5000+ lawsuits that have made it through the courts.

Wyeth has yet to win a single lawsuit brought by women (or families of deceased women) who developed reproductive cancers as a result of taking Premarin or Prempro. Moreover there are still active information websites for affected women and/or families who have yet to file suit. If you or a loved one has developed breast, uterine or ovarian cancer as a result of taking Premarin or Prempro click here:

http://injury-law.freeadvice.com/drug-toxic_chemicals/prempro-lawsuit.htm

It’s Never Too Late to Stop Estrogen Replacement

Even more importantly, the WHI and subsequent studies all make it clear that even women who have been taking hormone replacement for years can still reduce their risk of cancer – if they stop now!

Moreover women can’t assume they reduce their risk of cancer by switching to plant-based or “natural” estrogens. Research strongly suggests that the estrogen itself – rather than it’s source – stimulates tumor growth.