Vagina Day, usually shortened to V-Day, embodies a world-wide movement to empower women with knowledge of their bodies, their sexuality, and the dignity and honor that comes with possessing both. Most importantly, V-Day lets people everywhere know that women don’t deserve to be raped, manipulated or abused. In other words: the beatings stop here.

Everyone is aware of the world’s sexist past. One thing most people don’t realize is that the feminist movements of the twentieth century haven’t obliterated sexism or violence against women. In Latin America, gang warfare between drug cartels has led to women being kidnapped and raped. Thailand enjoys a thriving sex trade of women and children. In the Muslim world, women who refuse to wear a veil or a full-body burqa may be subjected to “honor killings” performed by their male relatives. The Japanese government still has not issued an official apology to the thousands of “comfort women” who were abducted from China and Southeast Asia and were forced to have sex with Japanese soldiers during World War II. Wherever or whenever war may be found, whether it be in Iraq, Bosnia, Vietnam, Darfur, or Nanking, women have been gang-raped, tortured, and killed. Most of the aforementioned atrocities were remedied after the fact, if they were remedied at all. These atrocities should have never occurred in the first place.

Vagina Day began as a play by Eve Ensler called the Vagina Monologues. The aim of these monologues, narrated by women of different ethnicities, cultures, ages, sexual orientations, and economic backgrounds, was to allow men and women to learn more about female sexuality so that it would be honored and respected. You would be surprised to know how little women know about their sex organs and their sexuality, even in the present day. Many women have never had an orgasm, even if they are sexually active. Some older women have never even seen their vaginas and probably would not be able to locate their clitoris if asked.

There is too much misunderstanding and mystery surrounding female sexuality. The wonders of female sexuality and sexual organs were deified by ancient cultures for their ability to create life. In ancient India, both male and female sexuality was understood and encouraged. The symbol for female sexuality, the yoni, held just as much, if not more importance, than the male sex symbol, the lingam.

However, the rise in power of patriarchal religious systems such as Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Christianity throughout the centuries made a major switch from the earlier religions now collectively referred to as “pagan.” Male sexuality was deified while female sexuality was demonized, crushed and effectively silenced. The remnants of this systematic subjugation are still evident today. For example, why is male masturbation widely accepted and female masturbation hardly spoken of? Did you know that as late as the last century, young girls could have their clitoris medically removed if they masturbated too much? According to the Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, the last clitoridectomy in the United States occurred in 1948 and was performed on a five year old girl. And you thought “female circumcision,” a.k.a. genital mutilation, only happened in Africa. Did a boy ever have his penis removed for masturbating too much?

The silence and the mystery surrounding female sexuality enable women to be misunderstood, abused and ignored. Many women are afraid of saying the word “vagina.” They use other words to describe “down there.” If women are too uncomfortable to even use the right word to describe their primary sexual organ, how can they voice their sexual desires? How can they defend themselves? Are any men afraid to say the word “penis?

“?The Vagina Monologues empower women to reclaim their bodies, their sex, and their vaginas. Women need to realize that their sex organs and their sexual pleasure don’t belong to their husbands, but to them. Women need to know how to be masters of their own sexual pleasure. They should see masturbation as a liberating force, not as something shameful. Did you know that the clitoris is the only organ in human anatomy whose purpose is solely for pleasure? With 8000 nerve fibers the clitoris has more nerve endings than anywhere else in the body including the mouth, lips, fingers and tongue. That is twice the number of penis. Twice! Can you believe that? Natalie Angier, author of Woman: An Intimate Geography, couldn’t believe it either. If men had such an organ, everyone would know about it. Why is there so little focus on women’s sexual fulfillment?

Right now, most of the world’s focus is on male sexual pleasure, from porn to pole dancers. The world must learn to see female sexuality on the same level as male sexuality. That way, the abuse of females physically, emotionally, psychologically, and sexually will not be excused. Many see masculinity as aggressive while femininity is recessive. This is only because female sexuality remains silent, unknown, mysterious, lost on the world and lost on women themselves. Women are then defenseless when it comes to protecting their displaced sexuality, a sexuality that has been used for centuries to prop up male sexuality. Vagina Day has helped women worldwide reclaim a sexuality that must be able to stand strong and alone on its own two feet.

I encourage women (and men) to read the Vagina Monologues or attend the public readings held on Vagina Days all over the globe. Money raised at these readings goes to providing workshops for women struggling with abuse or hoping to learn more about their sexuality. More importantly, the money also goes towards opening safe houses in places like Africa and India, where women fleeing abuse may have nowhere to turn.

The world is slowly being forced to realize that domestic abuse can’t be ignored. It can be found at all levels of society and doesn’t just go away. Even in a feminist society, domestic abuse and sexism still exist. Those who support Vagina Day are fighting for women who are being abused now, but they are also fighting to prevent women from being abused in the future. Hopefully men’s and women’s mindsets about female sexuality can be changed, and changed for the better.?

I thought Dennis Kucinich was going to be just about the best Democratic congressman I’d ever come across. He was straightforward, told the truth, said all the things I wanted to hear (different from the things most Americans/Democrats want to hear)…. until he started talking about aliens. I was beginning to forgive and forget, let him maintain the best congressman award in my mind, until I heard about Ann McLane Kuster.

Kuster, candidate for the Representative of New Hampshire’s 2nd district, came to speak to a packed Class of 1930 room at the College Democrats meeting last Monday. A quick pre-meeting browse on her website piqued my interest: it looks as though it were designed by whoever created barackobama.com, and she has the support of both EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Turns out she was an Obama delegate at the Denver DNC, and is pro-choice! (No, like she actually says she is pro-choice and doesn’t skirt around the issue with vague and contradictory statements) She is of course opposed to the Stupak amendment, advocates for a public insurance option, and if elected, would insist that the banks pay back the bailouts in full.

To the Class of 1930 room crowd, she said we “[have] two wars we never should have been in”— a more direct and honest statement from a politician than I have heard in a while. A second look at her website, however, left me a little confused. Her issue statement on Afghanistan maintains that we are at war with Al Qaeda, and seemed to form a strong link between our military presence in Afghanistan, and our security at home. I imagine (or hope, rather) the first to be a more honest comment, and the second a “necessary” statement required to gain the votes of Democrats.

While there seem to be a few contradictions, and a few statements obviously devoted to gaining support of moderate democrats on her webpage, she seems more genuinely liberal than any candidate I have seen in a while (since Kucinich, or Barack Obama). What she will do if elected, no one can tell. Despite this, hearing her speak made me willing to once again support a progressive candidate and hope that they will live up to their liberal values, and not let me down.

As Barack Obama continues to massage the “Recovery Act” in an attempt to bridge the disparate demands of Republicans and Democrats over health care, the economy, and the government, energy has once again gained his focus—albeit with a more pro-nuclear tone than before.

Lying somewhere between the low-carbon diets of the donkeys and the insatiable appetites of the elephants, nuclear power appeals to many as a panacea for our rampant energy crisis, especially when this panacea comes from the mouth of our Fearless Leader.

The carbon emissions generated by nuclear power are minimal, and with enough money we can construct power behemoths that will each survive for over forty years. Obama recently stated—to the uproarious applause of both Democrats and Republicans (but mostly Republicans)—that he plans to “triple loan guarantees required … to finance safe, clean nuclear facilities” in order to “revive the nuclear industry in the United States”. Sounds like a squeaky-clean plan, right?

Wrong. First of all, there is no such thing as “safe, clean nuclear power.” Although nuclear power is safe in the sense that it won’t have you choking on smog every time you walk past the local reactor, the fact remains that there is no existing long-term way to dispose of radioactive nuclear waste systematically. Even the fact that Barack Obama describes it as “safe” suggests an intrinsic fear of the poorly studied dangers of nuclear power: we don’t hear people saying that coal mining is “safe” because we assume that it will not precipitate an explosion or permit the construction of a nuclear warhead.

As of now, our methods of nuclear waste disposal are temporary solutions at best and economic and environmental catastrophes at worst. In order to find out exactly what these “solutions” for disposing of waste are, I went to Steele Hall to interview professor Anthony Faiia, professor of Isotopic Chemistry.

DFP: ““How do nuclear power plants normally dispose of waste?”

Professor Faiia: “After a Uranium fuel rod is spent, they will typically put it in a pool inside the power plant until it cools down a little. Then they will seal it in a cement or iron cask, which they then put outside on the premises of the plants… Some of those isotopes will last millions of years, some of them will last hundreds of thousands of years.”

DFP: “Is there any more centralized way of storing the radioactive waste that would be better?”

Professor Faiia: “The truth is that putting nuclear waste all in one place is not the best way to store it. There is too much risk concentrated in one area. People have suggested storing the waste in places like Yucca Mountain, or even sending it into space. But then there is the [problem of] transportation: what happens if the spacecraft full of Uranium 238 explodes before it reaches space, as a handful of spacecraft have in the past? And all those semi trailers making the pilgrimage to Yucca Mountain or wherever would have to drive on the same roads as many civilians.”

DFP: “Yeah, I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable driving next to an 18-wheeler full of radiation.”

Though there have been no additions to our 104 nuclear facilities in America in over thirty years, Obama’s proposal wants to increase this number to 106 with the construction of two new reactors in Georgia. It seems that political inertia has proven to be no obstacle for Obama’s “Recovery Act”.

Unfortunately for nuclear supporters, a group of anti-nuclear progressives has made itself known just across the river in Vermont. Last week, in the state’s Senate chamber, the long, storied life of one such nuclear reactor was cut short. Since Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant’s (VY) first day of operation in 1972, it has provided over a third of Vermont’s electrical power.

If that seems like a long time, it’s even longer when you consider the 70-year half-life of uranium, or the virtually infinite amount of time before it’s completely gone. For what it’s worth, it appears that our nation’s energy schema has taken two steps back and one important step forward.

In front of an audience of over 100 anti-nuclear citizens, who had been staying in hotels in the capitol over the course of the 3-day hearing, a vote of 26-4 overruled Vermont Yankee’s license to operate, effective in 2012. The event was covered in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, ABC, and even The Guardian in the UK. A public ruling to decommission a power plant has not taken place in the US in over 20 years, as such legislation is usually considered by members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

A loophole opened up in 2002 when VY accepted a contract according to which it deferred to the authority of the Public Service Board of Vermont (PSB) in exchange for an increase in power output by 20%. This loophole was further exploited when lobbyists helped to pass Act 160 in 2006, which stated that all nuclear power plants in Vermont needed a “certificate of public good” from the PSB in order to renew their licenses, making it even harder for VY to extend its operation.

And now, what appeared to Vermont Yankee as an understandable bargain seems to have derailed the future of the plant. Thanks to the incremental progress of so many anti-nuclear activists, a slew of once-futile testimonies against the plant made adequate ammunition to take down the giant in a battle akin to David and Goliath.

Citing a water tower collapse and a transformer fire in the last decade—and, more recently, evidence that Yankee not only denied the presence of underground drainage pipes, but also denied tests that found that these pipes had leaked traces of radioactive tritium into our very own Connecticut river—the lobbyists were able to corner Vermont Yankee defendants.

Despite the attempts of VY and Entergy (VY’s parent organization, whose slogan, ironically enough, is “the power of the people”) at corporate coercion, the chances of turning over the Vermont Legislature’s vote are slim.

Bob Walker, director of the Sustainable Energy Resource Group (SERG), reiterated in a phone interview with the DFP that “the Senate’s decision was not dependent on the economics of the situation so much as the issue of trust, or a lack thereof, in Vermont Yankee.”

Other activist groups are not so confident. One of the main groups responsible for the long-standing battle against VY is the Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG). In order to look deeper into the fears and ambitions of the activists, I interviewed James Moore, the Director of the Clean Energy Program at VPIRG.

DFP: “Will you be expecting any amount of “corporate coercion” on the part of Vermont Yankee and Entergy to reverse the Senate’s decision?”

J.M.: “Yes, absolutely. The main problem that we’re facing is that we have a [senate] election in November. [In order to renew its contract], Entergy needs permission from the state legislature, and the concern is that they could try to buy votes in the next legislature and overturn what has been accomplished.”

DFP: “What can we do to prevent that from happening?”

J.M.: “Well, we can work to make sure that the people who vote for legislators are educated. If we can expose what is going on enough, I am sure the voters will support closure [of VY].”

DFP: “I heard the figure for decommissioning VY is over $1 billion. Why is it that decommissioning costs so much?”

J.M.: “Well, in that billion-dollar number there are two things. The first is cleaning up the building, getting rid of contamination, digging up foundations, etc. The second part is keeping the radioactive waste on the premises until the federal government comes in and takes it away. That could be decades, since we have no standardized solution for getting rid of that waste in this country.”

DFP: “But Vermont’s annual budget is only about $1 billion, and the state is already in debt. Who is going to pay that cost?”

J.M.: “That is actually a highly debated question. When Entergy bought VY in 2002, it promised to be responsible for the full decommissioning of the plant, and all the clean-up costs. Now they are trying to go back on their promise by deferring the cost to their limited-liability subsidiaries, which presumably would not pay the full price. We don’t want the big parent corporation in Louisiana to take all the profits and then walk away from the liability.”

Although Vermont Yankee has its fair share of problems, it is neither the oldest nor the most decrepit of the 104 nuclear reactors in our country. There is a rising trend of similar management and infrastructure problems in nuclear power plants in the US: 27 of them are still currently leaking radioactive waste.

Even if these leaks have not yet been connected to any widespread health concerns, as is the case with VY, this is no proof that nuclear power is safe. The effects of radiation are long term and sometimes unknown for decades, as was the case after Russia’s Chernobyl incident.

Nor does this take into account the latent potential for weaponizing nuclear material at any nuclear plant. In addition, we must remember that uranium is by no means an unlimited or cheap resource.

In the face of such daunting odds, the success of progressives in Vermont should serve as a model for energy legislation in all states. On our side of the Connecticut River, for example, is Seabrook Nuclear power plant.

Although Seabrook is one of the newest plants in the country, New Hampshire may look to what is happening in Vermont and decide that as Seabrook gets older, New Hampshire must be sure to have a voice in its fate.

Hopefully, President Obama will hear the cries of Vermonters and begin to change his energy policies. There is simply no getting around it: nuclear power is dangerous, unsafe, and an unsustainable long-term energy source.

If Barack Obama must continue to build new plants, we progressives need to make sure to resist by shutting down old plants, exposing corporations like Entergy for their lies, and looking for alternative sources of energy.

Warning: the details of the sexual violence against women in the Democratic Republic of Congo given in this article are disturbing.

“Yes, it’s difficult to hear about,” said playwright and activist Eve Ensler in an interview with The Women’s Media Center, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hear.” The 2009 V-DAY spotlight is not a story of Valentine’s Day love. It addresses the prevalent rape of women by armed groups in an Eastern Congo conflict that has been supposedly “over” since’99.Most people prefer to avoid hearing tales about thousands of women being gang raped, developing fistula, contracting HIV, or having gun barrels and sticks shoved into their vaginas. But these aren’t just tales: they are the true stories of real women. In order to put a stop to practices that have now become commonplace, we must listen and take action.

The’99 Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement officially ended a conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that involved several African nations, a conflict that developed as an outgrowth of the mid-1990s Rwandan genocide. However, foreign troops remain in the Congo today, as do numerous armed groups representing different foreign and domestic interests, as well as ethnic groups. The unending conflict has displaced over two million civilians, caused the deaths of another 2.5 million and the rape of over 200,000 women and girls—taking only the years 1998-2001 under consideration.

Even these horrifying numbers don’t accurately represent the conflict’s true devastation: estimating the true number of women, girls, and boys raped and sexually assaulted is nearly impossible. For fear of being stigmatized or ostracized, victims keep silent about their attacks and refuse to seek medical treatment.

Sexual violence against women and girls has been committed by every armed group in the Eastern Congo, opportunistic bandits, and even a few U.N. troops. Survivors who have sought medical treatment and support tell similar stories: Many were attacked while working in the fields, or kidnapped in looting raids on their villages. Many were subjected to rape more than once, and by multiple men.

Twenty-year-old Generose N., from Kabare told Human Rights Watch her story:
I was on the road from Kalonge to Mudaka. I had money that my fiance gave me to buy a wedding dress. A soldier attacked me on the road. He said things in Kinyarwanda. [Later she said he was Hutu]. He took me away to a place in the forest where there were three other soldiers. They roughed me up. This was August 8 [2001] and they kept me until August 25 and each one of them raped me every day.

This is a far too common story: 3,500 incidents of rape were reported in North and South Kivu (in Eastern Congo) during the first six months of 2008 alone. Fifty percent of the survivors were under the age of five. In the aftermath of the rape, survivors are stigmatized by their community, rejected by their loved ones, and often become pregnant, contract HIV, or develop fistulas. Fistulas are ruptures that appear between the vagina, bladder, and/or rectum, which cause extreme pain and frequently interfere with women’s ability to control her urination and defecation. They can be repaired with a costly surgery—but few women have the ability to travel to a hospital, while underfunded medical centers are already overwhelmed by the treatment of the small percentage of rape victims who do come to them.

Even though rape has unfortunately often been utilized a tool of war, the figures reported in the DRC are of an unprecedented magnitude. Armed groups have used rape to disable community and thereby win and maintain control over territories they claim. After violent rape, many survivors are unable to give birth, and they are often turned away by their fiances and husbands; this, in addition to mass looting and killing, disrupts individual families and whole communities.

I wish I could end this article on a positive note, but I’m afraid that is virtually impossible. Perhaps hope can be found in the increasing numbers of Congolese women now telling their stories to the world in hopes of preventing these acts from reoccurring. More hope might be found in the arrest of Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, accused of war crimes by numerous human rights groups, in Rwanda earlier this year. His arrest could possibly lead to the punishment of more perpetrators of sexual violence.

A real solution to the crisis must involve the leadership and participation of many nations and the U.N. to demobilize armed groups, achieve a peace settlement, punish war crime offenders, and prevent rape. Hopefully, the awareness raised by the international V-Day spotlight will inspire a renewed effort to stop sexual violence in the Eastern Congo and to end the persistent and devastating conflict.

Once again, angry people are challenging the constitutionality of the federal “Hate Crimes Act.” This time it’s three Michigan ministers and the Michigan chapter president of the American Family Association who allege that the act threatens their right of free speech and religion—essentially, their right to viciously condemn homosexuality.

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiffs “have a deeply held religious belief that the Bible is the unalterable and divinely inspired Word of God.” So, the only reason they’re preaching hate is because the Bible, the “ultimate authority,” says so.
But there’s a catch: you can’t pick and choose where the Bible has authority. By stating that the Bible is the “ultimate authority for both belief and behavior,” these ministers assert that they live their lives in accordance with this claim. However, these men do not live what they preach; they do not obey all explicit rules commanded in the Bible.

Logically, it is possible to use the laws of Leviticus, which condone the killing of homosexuals, to justify anti-gay bigotry. Leviticus 20:13 clearly states: “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

But what else does the Bible tell us to do? Don’t touch a woman on her period: “When a woman has a discharge of blood which is her regular discharge from her body, she shall be in her impurity for seven days, and whoever touches her shall be unclean until the evening” (Leviticus 15: 19). Grow yourself a Beard: “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads” (Leviticus 19:27). Stone all psychics, wizards, and the like to death: “A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:27). Kill all adulterers: “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife, both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death” (Leviticus 20:10)… And so on.

Obviously, these three anti-gay pastors and Michigan AFA president do not unequivocally follow literal biblical rules, or we’d see them with foot long beards and multiple arrests for stoning adulterers. Therefore, these men cannot claim that “the Bible is the ultimate authority for [their] beliefs and behavior,” because like other religious practitioners, they pick and choose holy verses to suit their own moral purposes.

The three pastors and Michigan chapter president of AFA allege that the sole reason for their bigotry against homosexuals is their faith in the authority of Bible verses. They would like for us to believe that their deeply held religious convictions are the ultimate cause for their antipathy towards gays, which would absolve themselves of all responsibility. But quoting the Bible does not excuse them of the public ministry of hate.

Let’s not forget that many Christians choose to live their lives according to the biblical verses of love, such as: “With justice you shall judge your neighbor” (Leviticus 19:15) and “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). These commands are as authoritative and distinct as those found anywhere else in the Bible, and contrast explicitly with homosexual intolerance stated in other parts of the book.

It is important to realize that people use different biblical passages to justify a multitude of actions, precisely because the passages cover such a wide range of interests. Deeply held religious convictions are used only to explain and justify human actions, whether they are actions of love, or denouncements of hate.

If I choose to hate, it’s not hard to cherry-pick Leviticus 20:13 as my defense. Conversely, if I want to love, it is just as easy to cite Leviticus 19:18. Therefore, we find that religious convictions are not the cause of human love or hate, but rather the results of human agency and will. The choice originates not from an abstracted external source, but rather from within each individual. Anti-gay bigots will do well to remember this distinction.

Just as one chooses to not stone witches, disobedient children, and atheists to death, one also chooses to either love his neighbor or condemn him. If you decide to condemn homosexuals, you cannot simply cite the Bible as the originating authority for your beliefs. After all, it’s not the “ultimate authority” of the Bible that influences homosexual intolerance, but the perverse appeal of hate itself.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called a bunch of liberal activists “retarded” for running ads against Democrats who opposed progressive aspects of healthcare, and the Wall Street Journal of all places, spilled the beans. Now Sarah Palin is upset because her son has Down Syndrome and she wants Rahm Emanuel fired—just this once, I agree with her.

Not because “retarded” disparages mentally handicapped people—he wasn’t talking about mentally handicapped people—rather he should lose his job because he’s an idiot for alienating his own political base.

What Emanuel probably meant to say is that it isn’t prudent to upset senators who are needed to pass healthcare reform. While true, the progressive political ads were actually pretty smart. What is not smart, however, is to upset the people who vote for you.

When you do that, you tend to lose office. That’s what Rahm Emanuel seems to not understand. He’s fixated on moving pieces around in the Senate. His thought process must be: “How can I get Senator X to do Y when he is beholden to Special Interests A, B, C, D, E…etc.?” Great. But politicians are ultimately beholden to the people who vote, or would vote for them. Piss off the people, they don’t vote for you, and you lose office.

Within the Democratic Party itself, “liberals” outnumber “centrists” by a wide margin. “Liberals” also tend to vote more heavily in primaries. So if a Democratic senator seriously upsets the “liberals” that’s a problem.

Liberals can mobilize against the aforementioned senator, and knock him out in the primary. And what is the only real goal of any good politician? To stay in power. The threat of losing power will have a greater impact on a senator than any sort of cajoling would. Senators do what lobbyists tell them to because lobbyists give them money that they need to win elections.

If liberals can present a bigger threat than a lack of campaign donations, then senators will tow the liberal line rather than the lobbyist line.

So why are the liberals “retarded?” The liberals want their agenda items to pass. By mobilizing their base they can easily unseat whatever Democratic legislator they want.

Why shouldn’t they run ads scaring the hell out “centrist” democrats, so as to encourage them to tow the liberal line? That’s the line they want. Would centrists otherwise do what the liberals want them to? Of course not—that’s why liberals are upset in the first place. Centrists are not liberal enough for the people who vote for them. Rahm Emanuel is playing stupid politics.

The “people” vote in elections. They may be susceptible to advertisements, paid for by lobbyists—but they aren’t lemmings. You ignore their concerns and interests and they destroy you. That is the way it works in a democracy.

Does Rahm Emanuel get that? Does he think that by “pandering” to the “liberal base” he’ll lose the “moderates”? The moderates also wanted a public health insurance option and who was he pandering to then? The crazy minority who didn’t want the public health insurance option? No. He’s pandering to craven, self-interested senators who would fold in a second if they thought they’d lose power by rejecting their base.

People who could fire Rahm should be asking themselves: why do people hate the healthcare bill now? Why did more than 60% of Americans support a public health insurance option and only 30% or so support the present bill? Could it be that Americans don’t like corrupt, back handed deals with craven special interests without any visible, overt benefit to themselves? No! No!

Actually, yes. Yes! Yes! That’s the reason. The bill now exudes sleaze and most Americans don’t like that. Americans want their government to do something for them, or not do anything at all. It’s either, “a bill that helps me and seems on the level,” or, “no deal.” And in this instance, the people have chosen the latter option.

People who could fire Rahm should also be asking themselves: why, in a New York-CBS Poll yesterday did only 8% of Americans want their congressperson re-elected. Why did 79% of Americans think special interests controlled the United States Congress? Because of people like Rahm Emanuel, who work within a broken, corrupt system, but have no intention of fixing it.

Does President Obama want to be perceived the same way the Congress is perceived? Does he want an 8% approval rating?

What Rahm says is, “Great, let them hate me, let me be the bad guy, they still love the president after all.”

Assuming, anyway, that they still do love him. But even if they do, it may be because they still feel the President has their best intentions in mind. What happens in a year, when he still hasn’t done what they want him to do—when he’s still beholden to special interests and when he still seems too weak to do most things he promised to do? What happens then? Will people still love him? Will people go out and vote for him in droves?

The Obama Administration should get the message: Get rid of Rahm Emanuel.

Yesterday. Not today. Not tomorrow.

Yesterday.

Replace him with some guy like Howard Dean.

Howard Dean won an enormous number of seats in 2006 as head of the DNC. They should get rid of Geithner too while they’re at it. He’s not evil but he is stupid (despite his education).

The economy did collapse under his watch. Why employ a stupid person when you can hire a smart guy like Joe Stiglitz? Not to mention people hate Geithner as much as (if not more than) they hate Rahm.

Congress, the Beltway, has lost touch with reality, and although Rahm Emanuel may be in touch with the Beltway, that won’t do his party a whole lot of good when election time comes. Did President Obama ever want to stick up to the special interests? Did he think he could both be a conciliator and an agent of change?

I can see how one might say: “Look, Rahm is evil, but he’s a necessary evil,” but Democrats are already losing seats on Rahm Emanuel’s watch, and the primary hasn’t even happened yet. Why does Obama keep him? Does Obama like him? Does Obama want lobbyist money for the next president election? Remember who raised his money the first time around? Individual donors—people who are pissed off at Rahm Emanuel-tactics and will be less inclined to give next time unless they change.

Rahm needs to go. It’s not only good politics. It’s just smart.

American TV news is famously factious. In this country we have preserved the individual’s right to trust any, all or none of the many domestic, “serious” TV news channels like Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, among others. This gaggle of non-government-funded news reporting affirms, to a degree, our Americanness often at the cost of accuracy and of candid, level-headed discussion of world events.
Having backed away from the forefront of international news reporting, today’s America has no unbiased, singularly multi-voiced channel for world news, and we are left then to listen around for one. Seek and ye shall find…

Cue the Al Jazeera news channel, which emerged in Qatar a year after a successful generational coup in 1995.  Al Jazeera first descended from BBC’s Saudi station, which was dropped when the Saudis attempted to censor the news. It was then picked up as the first ever 24-hour Arabic news channel by the recently self-appointed Emir of Qatar.

The BBC’s influence is clearly apparent in the tone and aesthetic of Al Jazeera’s shows and website. It is bold and objective—much of the time an Al Jazeera report will opine in one direction and rapidly follow up with a dissenting report from a fresh, foreign perspective. This honest and objective presentation of world events, commonly called “contextual objectivity,” has so far earned the network international acclaim and made Al Jazreera English, its newest network, America’s best new chance at a grown-up domestic media scene.

Al Jazeera is not without some bias. While devoted to “contextual objectivity,” it is unafraid to take a clear stance on a regionally significant issues. When Al Jazeera Lebanon warmly welcomed home (from prison) anti-Israeli terrorist Samir Kuntar in July 2008, the network was forced to admit to having violated its own ethics. The station responsible for airing the story threw a party in honor of his release, part of a 2008 Isreal-Hezbollah prisoner exchange. Israel took the station’s behavior personally, promising to boycott Al Jazeera, a move which later prompted a formal apology from Al Jazeera’s general director. It was not until last spring that the Israeli government sanctioned Al Jazeera—but the sanctions were temporary, a response to Qatar’s having shut down its Israeli trade office (itself a move made in response to Israeli actions in the Gaza Strip).

According to a March 2009 article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, this Qatari-Israeli conflict climaxed in a summit after which Hamad bin Jassim, the Qatari foreign minister, declared that the two nations, “which had formerly enjoyed a working relationship,” would “be cutting ties.” Tensions with Israel, stemming largely from Jazeera’s coverage of Gaza, also contributed to enduring American mistrust of Al Jazeera English, a newer network contingent founded in 2006. Now, Al Jazeera is poised to change the world of news media.

Contrary to the American-Israeli perception, the Al Jazeera network is not anti-Semitic. The news itself, the unaltered truth of what’s going on, cannot discriminate even if it wants to. Only a tilted presentation may steer facts into anti-Semitic territory. And such a tilt, remarkably, has no place in the game with Al Jazeera English, which recently made its way to Canadian cable thanks largely to the exuberant efforts of former Canadian Broadcasting Company executive Tony Burman. Canadian Jewish media leaders are reportedly planning to protest AJE’s introduction, in expectation of its perceived anti-Semiticism. As Frank Dimant, executive vice president of B’nai Brith Canada, has argued, “the introduction of an English-language Al Jazeera into Canadian homes can only provide yet another outlet for vicious anti-Israel propaganda.” Yet North Americans should welcome this kind of controversy. It is exactly because of Al Jazeera’s devotedly unbiased presentation of world news—both sides of Gaza, for example—that this network is so controversial. The most boat-rocking opinions are hoisted to the forefront of the network’s programming, where they belong.

Take Al Jazeera’s coverage of Iran, for example. A recent online headline, referring to Secretary Clinton’s call on Iran to reconsider its nuclear programming, had three video links below: one an Al Jazeera interview with John Kerry; another, the Iranian view of a nuclear standoff with Mashaie arguing that “there is nothing illegal about 20% enrichment;” and another, an explanation of Iranian political gridlock since the 31-year-old revolution. Al Jazeera’s thorough reporting style offers many views of an issue, each set prominently and credibly against the others. Al Jazeera has the journalistic gumption, the influence, and the reputation for fairness to put together such a story.

  But the U.S. has a complicated relationship with the network. Before 2001, America’s stance on the already burgeoning Al Jazeera was that of a disinterested older brother, proud of its perceptible progress but unconcerned with its potential. Then the Osama tapes made a splash: after September 11, Al Jazeera released videos of Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, pleased with themselves, celebrating and defending the attacks they had orchestrated.  The American government accused Al Jazeera of propagating terror, but when the network responded that its only intention was to make known as much true information as possible, many American news stations nationally rebroadcast the tapes.

Still, in October of 2001, Colin Powell—who particularly disapproved of Al Jazeera—recommended that the Emir of Qatar disband the station entirely. Tension grew when an American missile destroyed Al Jazeera’s Kabul headquarters in November of 2001. One of the network’s cameramen was detained, uncharged, at Guantanamo Bay for more than six years, during which time he was asked repeatedly whether Al Jazeera was a front for al-Qaeda. Most recently, a 2008 US election broadcast on Al Jazeera English, including an interview with a Sarah Palin supporter who claimed that Obama “regards white people as trash,” blew up on YouTube. And again, Colin Powell accused Al Jazeera as being anti-American, arguing at the time that “those kinds of images going out on Al Jazeera are killing us.” He apparently does not understand the idea of contextual objectivity.

Truly democratic reporting is distasteful to the United States—for decades, it has deemed itself the premier promoter of democracy unto the lesser world.  We are slow to change here in the U.S., and it is no surprise that Canada would pick up Al Jazeera English before us. But the network’s popularity has escalated as of late. Eventually, we can guess, it will make its way into American homes. Although many Americans still think of Al Jazeera as “Terror TV,” there’s hope for progress—so listen up. Al Jazeera has reached our shores despite years’ resistance, and it is a-knockin’ on the front door. Al Jazeera English is waiting, with all the characteristic persistence of the truth, to be received into America’s living rooms.

Diversity has been coming up a lot lately. The First Year Forum held a talk on race at Dartmouth recently. A week ago Beta had a student panel called “Branded” on the stereotypes that limit the Dartmouth experience, and my floor had a meeting about floor diversity. And of course, it’s Black History month. It seems like the discussion of diversity is everywhere and everyone has a unique opinion. But just what is diversity, and when have we achieved it?

The celebration of diversity is hailed as an emblem of progress in the realm of race relations. But when looked at closely, it’s not very progressive, or at least it’s not the most progressive option.

Diversity today sometimes boils down to pointing out that there is a white, black, and person of Asian descent in a room without bloodshed, so yeah us! However, while pointing out diversity points out that race relations have taken a turn for the better, it only continues to draw attention to race instead of transcending it. Real diversity, which exists in the hearts of the people, does not need to be noted—it simply exists.

In A Paler Shade of White, Eric Arnesen writes that “the very solidarity of language, of clear cut and well-understood categories and definitions of who was black and who was white, has given way to the widely accepted notion that race is not a biological category or a trans-historically fixed phenomenon, but is itself, socially constructed.”

Now if this is true, which I believe it is, then pointing out diversity of race is also a construct. It is excitement over a particular point in history where race is no longer taken as a natural indication to certain proclivities, and people of different races can exist in peace and harmony, but the troublesome notion of race still exists.

This age of diversity is not the end-all of racial history, but simply a happier period of it. Now we should focus on progress and trying to move beyond this period of celebrated diversity. The fact that diversity is held up as the ideal that institutions must be pushed to attain reveals that diversity does not address the real root of the problem: continuing to use race as a social category.

Also, the fact that diversity is applauded and pointed out shows that we are still far from diversity being the norm. Diversity is all well and good, but it is annoying to draw attention to it with such glee as if we’re being exceptionally good for exhibiting it. This means that diversity is not yet accepted as a common good.

Morgan Freeman’s views on Black History Month correlate to this celebratory stance on diversity. In a 60 Minutes interview in 2005, he said, “You’re going to relegate my history to a month? I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.” As Freeman rightly points out there is no “white history month,” for it is commemorated all year long. Freeman goes on to say to the interviewer, “I am going to stop calling you a white man, and I’m going to ask you to stop calling me a black man,” because the labels of “white” and “black” merely bring attention to and reinforce race (or racism). Pointing out race or diversity of race does not do anything to de-construct the divides of race.

I’m not advocating silence on race or the cessation of the social and academic dialogue on race; we still need these things for progress. But we should understand that a diversity of labels is not true diversity. We should understand that it is possible to move towards being a society that doesn’t need to draw attention to race, a society that doesn’t need to feel good about diversity, because lack of diversity is no longer a problem.

Enter Timothy Geithner, the man of the hour, just last week paraded through the House in a small populist ceremony, a rite of exfoliating outrage. Wasn’t he the perfect whipping boy? Calm, assertive, with a hint of Robert McNamara’s steely assurance—Geithner might have been every man’s wolf in sheep’s clothing as he faced a battery of accusations surrounding his involvement in AIG’s titanic bailout.

Geithner, the onetime President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, now Secretary of the Treasury, now stares down the barrel of a host of charges that would place him at the ever-tense nexus of Wall Street power and Main Street outrage.

The obvious and common argument is that Geithner is guilty by implication. As the story now seems to go, Geithner’s hands were simply too close to some sordid doings—in shortest form, the Fed’s recommendation to AIG that it not reveal information about overvalued, politically suspect “counterparty” payments to other major banks with holdings in the company—despite his having resigned from the Fed and recused himself from its future doings. Issues like these, it need not be said, do not lend themselves to nuanced reasoning. Today, finance finds its alternate definition in guilt­—an irredeemable stain on the record of any politician unlucky enough to be on the wrong side of popular rage. Where the economy continues to falter, and where Wall Street connections loom in the background, Geithner will be an object of derision and distrust.

This, you could say, is where the dialogue loses its momentum, and when the political sharks begin to circle. It’s here, too, that the narrative arc of Geithner’s story freezes between two poles that depend on one another for their dramatic tension. In one corner, there’s populist fire and brimstone; Geithner, here, is a conduit for the survival of moneyed interests within a system whose excess was its undoing rather than an agent of an outraged people—the herald, as it were, of a morally bankrupt and ever-powerful status quo’s endurance into the future. In the other corner is the image of Geithner as multi-billion-dollar bearer of necessary evil, an inside man whose position was less a measure of his corruption than it was of his ability to do the necessary thing, whether right or popular. Which side do we pick, and where do we—as citizens—choose (or not choose) to draw the battle lines?

We’re inclined to believe that the answer to this question lies in the answer to another, much simpler one. Did Geithner behave in a way that was morally and ethically suspect, or did he not? At the end of the day, there has to be some factual truth at the bottom of this inherently necessary inquiry, and we might guess that it lies somewhere in the middle—Geithner the public servant and Geithner the inside man worked in tandem, each bound by what must have seemed like, in a time of crisis, suffocating institutional logic on public and private ends of the equation. Yet that truth is well beyond the scope of this column, and we might guess that it’ll be well beyond the public imagination for some time to come as well. For it’s rarely, if ever, the nature of events like these to disclose themselves until well after the worst is over. What we instead get are stories for our time—stories whose utility lies not in factual resolution but instead in a kind of popular therapy.

Why, after all, has Geithner’s skewering unfolded without his ousting, or without some fundamental policy shifts within the Obama administration? Geithner’s ordeal has been, it would seem, a lukewarm crucifixion capable of sustaining itself indefinitely. And this is its brilliance as a narrative device—Geithner has become at once a lightening rod and sponge for angry catharsis, capable of enduring pundits’ wrath without pushing the boundaries of political acceptability too far afield. If Obama is a fundamentally pragmatic president, as has seemed (despite soaring rhetoric and enthusiasm) to be the case so far, his willingness to retain Geithner speaks to a keen understanding of tortured compromise as both policy and presentation. Without throwing his treasury secretary, and his policy, to the wolves, Obama navigated more severe calculations of public right and private wrong by placing authority in the hands of a morally gray technocrat. But where are we left when, frustrated, jobless, and frenzied with betrayal, we abstract our anger and thereby sap it of propulsive force?

Maybe that’s a question we just don’t want to ask. Maybe the intimate details of some high-profile stories, for all our good intentions and furious energy, are sometimes condemned to history’s garbage pail, indefinitely obscured, psychologically and emotionally inaccessible. And maybe these details, the essential meat, the lifeblood, of political drama, are denied to us—lost as we are in the face of a system broken beyond our understanding—by our own willing. To expose them or to treat them too frankly would be, really, to take the taut, tortured entertainment out of those narratives necessary to sustain a country in need.

The politicians and media pundits who claim that the U.S. Supreme Court recently “handed our democracy over to corporations” are wrong. The truth is that corporations and other monied special interests have had illegitimate yet intimate access to the inner workings of our supposedly representative, democratic government for some time. This most recent Supreme Court ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission didn’t change much. Corporations have enjoyed many of the rights of “natural persons” for the past century. Our own Dartmouth College was involved in one of the landmark cases, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, that helped establish the dubious precedent for corporate legal personhood.

This recent decision, which removed ineffective and arguably unconstitutional limits on corporate campaign financial support, came from a case originally about a right-wing anti-Hillary Clinton film that was funded by corporate interests.

That case was then expanded to address the broader question of corporate campaign funding and advertising. On this issue, the Bush-stacked court overturned years of precedent by ruling that corporations should have all the free speech rights of “natural persons.” To the Supreme Court, spending money to advertise for, or otherwise support, a political issue or candidate is equivalent to political speech. We can all thank the Supreme Court for cementing corporations and other powerful (read: financially well off) interests as the loudest political speakers in our “democracy.”

This decision brings about many questions. Are unions included in this new corporate freedom? Can foreign corporations with operations in the U.S. freely inject piles of cash into our politics? Are American corporations American citizens? Can corporations make unlimited direct donations to candidates’ campaigns? Can corporations run for public office? This issue has already come up in Maryland. These debates are far from over and will be big issues in the near future. Most central to the broader issue of corporate personhood, however, is the idea of the corporate person. This fantasy underlies the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision to allow a new class of “people” more leverage in our political process.

In this case, Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke for the majority when he wrote, “Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the ‘discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas’ that the first amendment seeks to foster.”

In other words, corporations and other associations are good democratic citizens that help our democracy function properly. Legally barring them from spending money to alter the political process is a violation of free speech, and a stupid idea if you like democracy. Unfortunately for us, this view of the corporate person clashes with reality. History has proved that corporations, by their very nature, often have decidedly anti-democratic interests.

At its core, a corporation is designed to make a profit and increase in size and prestige. In the 2003 documentary The Corporation, corporate insider and “management guru” Peter Dunker says, “If you find an executive who wants to take on social responsibility, fire him. Fast.”

William Niskanen, chair of the conservative think-tank the Cato Institute, echoed the same sentiment when he said he would not invest in a company that promoted corporate responsibility. These calculating investors stay away from responsible corporations because they think that social responsibility has a way of interfering with maximized profits. The basic idea here, according to investment manager Robert Monks, is that “the corporation is an externalizing machine in the same way that a shark is a killing machine. There isn’t any question of malevolence or will.

The enterprise, and shark within it, has those characteristics that enable it to do that for which it is designed.” Corporations are incredibly efficient at producing goods and making money precisely because they are designed to ignore, among other things, the democratic and social responsibilities that might limit their outputs and profits.

They will destroy environments and poison water supplies to avoid expensive but environmentally appropriate waste disposal costs—that is, if they can get away with it. Why pay for something themselves when they can get someone or something else to bear the cost? They will pay people unfair wages and lock-in their overnight employees. They will sell harmful, lethal, or addictive products while hiding the damning scientific evidence. They can do these things because, according to the CEO of the largest commercial carpet manufacturer in the world, they are specifically designed to “externalize any cost that an unwary or uncaring public will allow it to externalize.”

Far from democratic citizens that constructively contribute to the democratic process, corporations are profit-making machines that are rewarded for any behavior, no matter how anti-social or undemocratic, that increases their bottom line. And they are also frighteningly good at manipulating consumers not only to buy their products, but also to identify with their highly polished and misleading images. The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will unleash corporate marketing machines on a largely “unwary or uncaring” public, and their wealth will allow them to speak their mind on a scale that no private citizen can match.

Strengthening the paradigm of corporate personhood in this way clearly gives the “rich” special interests an even greater, ever more unfair advantage in the exchange of political ideas. It gives a certain minority group of entities with some similar interests that are often anti-democratic, anti-social, and non-transparent a megaphone to drown out dissenting viewpoints by supporting favorable political candidates and running political issue and campaign ads. Our electoral system already makes it nearly impossible to run a successful campaign without corporate support (unless you are a billionaire who can finance your own campaign), and this decision will only worsen the problem.

But the alternatives, like limiting the amount of money corporations can give to candidates and barring them from running political advertisements, do seem unfair or even unconstitutional. How can we, as a country that values free speech, arbitrarily deny certain interest groups the right to participate in the political process? It is clearly in our democratic interest to have a more level “playing field” of political discourse, but how do we achieve some semblance of fairness without being unfair in the process?

The Oregon Supreme Court faced this dilemma, and their clever solution is a hopeful sign in the ensuing struggle for parity.

A lobbyist for an Oregon-based corporate firm sued the state for limiting the amount of money a corporation could give a politician as a “gift” (a strange Orwellian term for bribe in our system of legalized bribery).

He argued that it was unfair of Oregon to put a “gifting” limit on corporations but not other organizations, and the state court agreed. They conceded that they could not, in good conscience, restrict the freedom for any particular group or person to give a “gift” to a public servant, but they could restrict the amount of money the public servant could accept from any one group or person. This ruling shows us that it is possible to have a fairer political system without trampling on individual or group rights. It is perfectly reasonable for the state to promote fairness in this way.

A better system of public financing for political campaigns would also make it easier for non-corporate candidates to compete with their privately funded counterparts. Policies and politicians have already become products (the “Obama brand” was wildly successful with consumers in 2008). And now corporations and other interest groups are free to spend as much money as they see fit to manipulate us into buying the political products that serve their interests. But the Federal Election Commission could regulate political messages by trying to eliminate the subversively persuasive marketing techniques that have and increasingly will become commonplace in politics.

The inevitable debate over Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission will predictably break down across political party and ideological lines and will unfortunately descend into all-or-nothing hyperbolic arguments: the complete corporate takeover of American politics thanks to the evil Supreme Court on one side, and the tyrannical federal government’s attempt to restrict our freedom on the other. This oversimplified and sensational debate will boost network TV ratings and might help a few candidates get elected, but it won’t help us.

Right now, we are stuck with a political system that has been heavily favoring those wealthy special interests for the past century. This reality has had a drastic, anti-democratic effect on the laws and political landscape of our country, and this decision only made it worse.

But the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision gives us hope for a fairer system. The Supreme Court decision doesn’t change much, which is a testament to how bad things already were, but it does bring an all-important issue to the forefront of people’s minds. It provides proponents of democracy an opportunity to search for novel ways to challenge the very real problem of corporate dominance in our political process. After all, it’s “We the People,” not “We the Incorporated.”