Visible token women
leaders clucking sanctimoniously over �women�s rights� as bombs are being
dropped on their �sisters� are examples of
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Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton |
Western feminist �success� within
the hegemon; women such as Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Condoleezza Rice
and Hillary Clinton.
This article is a call in honor of International Women�s Day
warning the people not to follow the woman leader who stands by her hegemon.
This is a call for new women leaders who will stand with men to resist and
defend the people against tyrannical governments posing as democracies. This is
a call to us all, women and men, to end the oppression of globalized debt-based
economics that fund all wars, profiting from state terror while fomenting all
states of terror. The interlocking directorate of rulers who employ women
leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir,
Corazon Aquino, Madeleine
Albright, Janet Reno, Condoleezza Rice, or Hillary Clinton, do so because they
are loyal supporters to the men of the hegemon reveling in the greed, wars,
invasions, occupations, and the New World Order. As such, they along with their
power hungry husbands, fathers and brothers must be stopped.
Today�s women in power are focused on power for themselves
�in solidarity� with the men of the hegemon. They neither represent the liberal
feminists' �ethic of care� or the revolutionary women�s demand for a radical
reordering of society. Instead they have joined the front lines in the agenda
to, as Kissinger stated, �depopulate� the women, men and children of the
planet. They are power hungry women who want to be included in the process of
�add women and stir� to the list of acceptable positions of power and profit of
the hegemon.
Let us begin with Condoleezza Rice, who is said to be the
most powerful woman in the world today. She is a highly educated woman who
fronts for the oil companies and bankers as a neoconservative secretary of
state. Her stated ambitions for the sons and daughters of the people of the
USA, red or yellow, black or brown, is to be the dead and wounded �investment�
that the people make in the 21st century�s hundred year war. She says Iraq is "worth the investment" in
American lives and dollars and that the United States can still win a conflict
that has been more difficult than she expected.
Rice
represents a dramatic and symbolic historic shift in the way imperial
monarchies, oligarchies and plutocracies worked in the past. The traditional
paradigm was of the male military hawks working with Catholic priests and the
Protestant intelligentsia to con the public into feeding their boys to the
military cannons profiting the kings, bankers and weapons manufacturers. Women,
in general, and mothers, in particular, historically decried wars and abhorred
sending their sons to battle. Yet since WWII, we have Golda, Indira, Margaret,
Benazir, Corazon, Madeleine, and perhaps Hillary, if she becomes the president,
all representing the bankers, military complex and oil industries.
Here is hegemon�s historical array of women leaders urging
their country�s children to die, and celebrating that suicidal military
�service� to the Judeo-Christian god and plutocracy with college educations to
the tune of cheesy �proud to be� Country and Western patriarchy songs. More
young women -- some married with infant children -- are joining the US branch
of terrorism training camps because they have been told they are �free to be
all they can be,� so �sign on� for training with a company and a unit that
their government and corporations care nothing about as is evidenced in the
jobs or health care they will never have. Those jobs were outsourced to India
and the health care is too expensive.
Here is what has been and is preached by the hegemon�s women
warlords who pose as government leaders: �I know from the point of view of not just the monetary cost but the
sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been
invested in Iraq," Rice said. Bush would not ask for continued sacrifice
and spending "if he didn't believe, and in fact I believe as well, that we
can in fact succeed," Rice said. Stand by your man, Condi!
Hillary Clinton
was asked about the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and said in
skillful doublespeak, "I have said that those are very rare but if they
occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that." She added,
"Again, I think the president has to take responsibility. There has to be
some check and balance, some reporting. I don't mind if it�s reporting in a top
secret context. But that shouldn�t be the tail that wags the dog, that should
be the exception to the rule."
Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said, referring
to a half million children dead in Iraq, more children than died in Hiroshima,
�I think this is a very hard choice, but the price -- we think the price is
worth it.�
�The significance of the Falklands
War was enormous, both for Britain's self-confidence and for our standing in
the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one
long retreat . . . Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went
after the war, Britain's name meant something more than it had, � Thatcher says
in her memoirs.
Or as Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once put it:
" . . . we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."
As is evidenced today, women�s participation in the military
industrial complex is embedded in every way. Legislation for the draft
submitted after 2001 explicitly defined both men and women of the ages between
18 and 26 as �conscripted� for military service. In 2004, women, including a
woman general, officers and grunts stationed at Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq
involved in torturing Iraqi men, women and children. One of the women of
Abu-Ghraib had also been accused of torture in Afghanistan.
Media and educational systems now include women experts and
representatives of legal organizations, such as the National Organization of
Women, who are quick to appear publicly to criticize women�s oppression in
Middle Eastern countries. These accusations become part of the rhetoric of
American women�s liberation under �American democracy� fronting as an excuse
for US invasion and occupation. The hegemon uses the subject of women�s
oppression selectively when stirring up sentiment for war against Muslims and
Arabs. Without consulting Arab and Muslim women about their purported
oppression, or only consulting exiled women who are agents and assets of the US
state, there occurs a double form of imperialism and racism perpetrated by the
American women �experts.�
While ignoring the statistical realities of the obscene
numbers of women raped, beaten and killed by men in the USA these �experts� are
used to gain women�s support for war. As women in the USA support war under the
guise of democracy and liberation a divisive diversion is wedged between women
and men who are resisting hegemonic invasion and occupation. Visible token
women leaders clucking sanctimoniously over �women�s rights� as bombs are being
dropped on their �sisters� are examples of Western feminist �success� within
the hegemon; women such as Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Condoleezza Rice
and Hillary Clinton.
The hegemon makes and breaks the rules that govern domestic
global political and economic relations by controlling most of the research,
legal and governing international institutions. Women�s increased participation
and support in these institutions is crucial for continued maintenance of the hegemon.
Whether in media, education, government, or corporations, women play critical
roles as leaders, managers and foot soldiers paving the way as role models for
future obedient leaders and workers for the hegemon. As the hegemon minimally
provides for the needs of its poorest women, the illusion of equal opportunity
and equity is fostered when a Hillary and Condi take the stage together.
In the same pattern in which Fanon described the desire of
the �native� for the white man�s power so do many women of the world desire the
power of their masters. Desiring the master�s power is the opposite of desiring
liberty. Liberation and resistance means desiring freedom, it is struggle, and
the struggle requires we build ties by nurturing the desire for liberty in each
specific situation. The historical tragedies of torture and genocide now are
commandeered by the �powerful� women allowed to act as overseers for the global
masters.
Resistance to the state terror of the New World Order (NWO)
carries even greater risks than those posed by the danger of the car bomb or
dynamite rigged vest. The US combatants have left their humanity at the boot
camp door. A moment's hesitation costs innocent lives, like the four doctors
allegedly killed by one of my students at an Iraqi checkpoint or the
14-year-old girl raped by the US combatant who laughs about it on You Tube. One
could be the next innocent victim renditioned to Poland or incarcerated by the
New York Police Department in an asbestos ladened, condemned warehouse on the
docks.
Our failure to hesitate to stop these leaders has a price
here and there. As more women and children are recruited by their women
leaders, more defenseless women and children will be tortured, shot and killed.
It is all part of the grand depopulation plan of the US lords of war. All the
hegemon�s boys and girls are to follow the "harsh arithmetic of
pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their
favor," the favor of the ruling class that is. They like to pose that
democracies lose, both politically and emotionally when they kill civilians,
even inadvertently. Yet, the state terrorists are dropping bombs on civilians
from Somalia to Iraq, killing thousands weekly, far surpassing the numbers
killed by the bits of dynamite strapped to the resistance fighter's vest.
Since WWII women in power have been agents and assets for
the state and the corporations behind the state. With a clear political agenda
they are caught up in the tendencies and values of imperialism. They revel in
the hegemon and in the benefits that come with rising to the top of it. So total is hegemony now established over the mind and
spirit of American women who almost never perceive it at all, striking the mind
as �normal� as capitalism markets the �uncovered� woman who is �free to be�
having �sex in the city,� buying $400 shoes (even when her historical people
are drowning in New Orleans) because she is �worth it.�
It will come as no surprise to the people that the answer to
the question �who benefits� from these women leaders is the �New World Order.�
I refer here to the term �New World Order� by which I mean the globalizing
hegemonic force as announced by George Herbert Walker Bush on the eve of war
against Iraq in 1991. The hegemon benefits the most from women�s leadership and
if it did not, they would not be there.
People who are standing with the oppressed and for
liberation need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and
fairly with these dangerous realities of the new gender and color blind imperialism.
We cannot simply wait until the next generation of sons and daughters decide to
follow a Condi�s or a Hillary�s demands for more cannon fodder. We must stop
these leaders, whether female or male, before they export their perverted
propaganda, their sick and dangerous militaristic terrorism, their culture of
death to the children and grandchildren here so they do not spread it to the
children and grandchildren over there.
Those of us who are dedicated to ending the terrorism and
imperialism of the hegemon need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal
effectively with the dangerous realities of US military aggression here and
abroad. We cannot simply wait until another son or daughter decides to follow
the leader�s con jobs and deceptions. We must stop this madness of preemptive
war and the Judeo-Christian culture of death that the leadership of the
hegemon, male, female, GLBT, left, right, red or yellow, black or white, is
spreading from sea to poisoned sea.
June Scorza Terpstra, Ph.D. is
an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies, Criminal
Justice and Sociology. She has founded numerous programs for homeless,
abused, youth and oppressed people in the USA. She is presently
teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice, Resistance, Criminology,
and Juvenile Justice. She is a former Community Research Fellow and doctoral
graduate of Loyola University Chicago.