She Didn’t Wear A Burkha But…..Thoughts On Earth Day

I had been troubled for weeks by the graphic photograph of a burkha-clad woman beheaded by the Taliban.  The burkha bothered me.  Even in death the woman had no identity.  Strangely, to the spectators (all male) it was more indecent to uncover her head than to cut it off.  Whose rules?  I said f… the damn burkha.  F… the Taliban.   And then I saw this:

Tripla was just 17 when the man who bought her took her into a field and decapitated her with a sickle.  Her crime? Refusing to sleep with her owner’s brother, who cold not find a “wife”.  Her parents had sold her for 170 pounds.

India has nuclear weapons, a thriving business district in Mumbai, and (a shock to me) the highest number of labor slaves in the world. Most of them are women and girls (not so shocking) but…

From The Price of Being a Woman

Just 25 miles from the mall is a slave market for women.

Desirability is based on skin color, age and virginity…that is

if the purchase is for sex or resale.  If it’s for labor, anyone will do.  Labor slaves are 96% of total number of slaves although the sex-slaves are more profitable.  A single female may be resold many times, whenever a deal can be struck or a profit made.  Mummia was a great deal.

Mummia was considered particularly beautiful.  She was sold three times in just three weeks.

Girls are now so few in number in some areas there is no one for the men to  marry.  The desire for the financial benefit of sons and onerous dowry  requirements has resulted in the abortion of female fetuses.  Doctors use coded language and write their charts in red and blue ink to circumvent the laws against sex-select abortion.

Sometimes the women’s mothers-in-law demand the abortion of the female fetus.

No one involved in the trafficking and killing of women seems to connect the treatment of the female gender with the long-lasting social consequences of their acts.

So, what you say, does this have to do with Earth Day?

Everything.

Because as it goes for women, so it goes for the ultimate female, for Gaia, for Mother Earth. Rape, exploitation, slavery, a lack of regard for the integrity and rights of another.  Anything that can bring a profit: strip mining, chemical dumping, depletion of the oceans, global warming, annihilation of species, war.  Whatever.  It’s all of a piece.

A new poll indicates the populous is less committed now to saving the planet than it was forty years ago. It was President Nixon that signed into being much of the environmental legislation such as the EPA, Toxic Control Act, Clean Water Act, that we now take for granted.  He did it because the people demanded it.  And it was also nearly forty years ago that the push for the Equal Rights Amendment seemed strong and headed for victory.  But the regressive movements fought back and we are at a standstill.  Economic matters now concern us most, our jobs, mortgages, childrens’ futures, the gigantic economic engine,so wizard-like,  really powered by greed and imagination.  Our fauxgressive new president talks the talk on women and the environment but so far he has done everything BUT walk the walk.

And yet….There is an awful portent in the destruction and extinction of women.

As the number of women born declines their utility and profitability in whorehouses, fields and factories has become more obvious.  We all want to be rich.

Villagers attacked the police who came to rescue the purchased brides.  Villagers enforce the women’s silence about their plight.

Women are shipped by container to brothels in New York.  The profits on the sale of female labor rivals that of guns and drugs. 

They’re handed over by their husbands and families for a few rupees to the:

carpet sheds of Brohadi, as prostitutes and kitchen slaves in West Asia, the U.K., Korea. They’re sent to the Philippines for pornography.  If they are children they might be sent to Saudi Arabia as beggars.

And so it goes.  Cheap goods on the backs of female slaves.  Disposable everything because it’s all free for the taking.

So I’ve come full circle, back to the burkha-clad woman and her shameful head on the ground. It still troubles me.

It’s All About Oil.

To quote the French:  The more things change, the more things stay the same.

Change you can believe in.

On January 28, 2009, Obama appointee, retired 4 star Admiral Dennis Blair was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Director of National Intelligence.  The DNI chief reports directly to the president and defense department chief and co-ordinates all other national intelligence agencies. It prepares the National Defense Estimate annual report to congress.  The office of DNI was created by the Bush administration in response to the 9/11 attacks.

Admiral Blair has an impressive resume: Rhodes Scholar, Russian speaker, attended East-West Center at the University of  Hawaii in 1968, former Commander-in -Chief of U.S. Pacific Command:

PACOM area of responsibility

From 2003 to 2007, Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit corporation that manages federally funded national security research and development centers. He stepped down in the face of concerns that his positions on the boards of major defense contractors presented a conflict of interest.

Excerpt from article by

Author:	Joanna Klonsky, Associate Editor

updated: February 9, 2009

Retired four-star Admiral Dennis C. Blair is President Obama’s director of national intelligence (DNI)–confirmed by the U.S. Senate on January 28, 2009. Blair, a thirty-four-year Navy veteran, is the former commander-in-chief of U.S. Pacific Command.

He also served as associate director of central intelligence for military support, coordinating intelligence and military operations under the Clinton administration. He was director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Strike Group aircraft carrier and the destroyer Cochrane.

Admiral Blair advised congress in 1999 that U.S.-Indonesian  military co-ordination should be resumed. The above article does not mention that Admiral Blair’s 1999 advice came  just one day after the outbreak of an Indonesian Army massacre of civilians in Dili, East Timor.  Blair has contended that he was not aware of the Indonesian army’s  massacre, although evidence has been produced indicating that he did.  The army killings in Dili increased after the congressional approval of the new pact.  What is clear is that for some time the U.S. military and intelligence agencies have had a cordial relationship with Indonesia’s murderous dictators.

The massacre in Dili was about oil.

The top U.S. officer in the Pacific (unidentified, not Blair) met with Indonesia's president to reaffirm the U.S. commitment to the region and applaud Indonesia’s role in security initiatives.

Blair Senate Appearance.

In a 2007 appearance before the Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation,  retired admiral Dennis Blair urged the U.S. to pursue increased automobile mileage efficiency among the major auto makers in order to relieve stress on the military in the security of oil supplies.

Blair clearly emphasizes, throughout his senate testimony, that a large part of U.S. military commitment in the Pacific theater and Central Asia and the Middle East is the protection and preservation of energy (oil, natural gas) supplies.  In my post of March 1, 2009 I noted that the U.S. interest in Afghanistan and support of the Taliban throughout Afghanistan’s war with the invading Soviet Union  (which began in 1979-1980), included  an interest in extending an oil pipeline connecting the Middle East and Asia.  An effort to build the pipeline with the aid of trained Taliban workers was discontinued due to pressure from American feminist groups over the Taliban’s treatment of women.  Unocal attempted to take over the pipeline project from the U.S. Government but dropped the proposal.

It’s about oil.

Here’s an excerpt from Dennis Blair’s committee presentation:

In the late 1970s two serious threats to Persian Gulf oil were identified by the Carter Administration, which became seized by the issue. The first was a potential Soviet invasion from the north into the oil regions around the Gulf, a concern heightened by the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The second was an aggressive and fundamentalist Iran, which was led by a regime that had permitted and then exploited the takeover of the American Embassy in Tehran. In response, the department of defense created the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force, the RDJTF, a planning headquarters and contingency force that could quickly deploy to the Gulf to defeat a major land invasion.  In 1983 as part of its general military build up against the Soviet Union, the Reagan administration upgraded this task force to a regional command like the European Command and the Pacific Command, where I served and where I ultimately commanded. So this Central Command had full time responsibility for U.S. interests in the region.

U.S. interests in the region – does that mean oil?

This article has an interesting timeline of events for U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.  I can’t vouch for all the facts but it is tantalizing.

Obama plans to send 17,000 additional troops into Afghanistan to beef up the “war on terror”.  Along with this change comes an offer by his administration to “negotiate” with the “moderate” factions of the Taliban.  Thus Obama can argue that he will have two options for bringing peace to Afghanistan, a carrot and stick approach, if you will:  more troops and more bombing, or a settlement of differences.  In addition to bringing peace, the carrot and stick will also help build a new pipeline.  I doubt that feminist groups  this time will be able to stand in the way of the pipeline — not under a “progressive, feminist friendly” president.

Recall Ann Dunham Soetoro’s resume of helping poor women:  with microloans in Pakistan and Indonesia, cataloging various native crafts during major massacres in Indonesia under the auspices of the Ford Foundation (working for Peter Geithner, the Treasury Secretary’s father), USAID, and the World Bank (all of which are widely believed to have CIA associations).  Ann Dunham Soetero’s connection to these mineral rich regions is Barack Obama’s connection to these mineral rich regions.

Here’s a little bit of history about past DNI chiefs:

George W. Bush’s first DNI chief was John Negroponte, who previously held a position under Condaleeza Rice when she was NSA chief.  Negroponte served under Ronald Reagan as ambassador to El Salvador during Reagan’s dirty wars in Central America in the 1980’s, and was implicated in the training of death squads and the cover-up to congress of their barbarous activities.  A staunch anti-communist, he was appointed ambassador to Mexico during the populist Chiapas uprising, and suspected of using ruthless countermeasures against them. George Bush’s second DNI chief was Mike McConnell, a member of the controversial and influential quasi-governmental body, the Carlyle Group. Recall that the Carlyle Group is a conglomerate of American defense department chiefs, the two Bush presidents, and Saudi oil interests, among others.

Dennis Blair is Obama’s new DNI chief –another man with a strong resume protecting oil.

The more things change … the more it’s still about oil.