gaucha’s blog

Anyone who still thinks McCain is the big contender in '08 is an idiot. He's not a maverick. He's not more reasonable than Bush. The fact that he served in Vietnam and spent five years in a POW camp hasn't made him any more circumspect about starting random wars. And he doesn't have much of a chance at winning the nomination. The gist of this article is basically that he has alienated everyone and is thus having a hell of a time fund raising. To which I say, ha fucking ha. It doesn't really matter though, because I have this sinking feeling that Fred "Buzz Windrip" Thompson will be US President-for-Life by mid-2009.

Taking On Big Donors, McCain Takes a Big Risk [NYT]
Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran [YouTube]

You know, I'm liking this Mike Gravel character more and more.

Gravel Goes Out for the Gays [Queerty]

I have to say, I'm intrigued. If I met a guy who was willing to get one of these inserted I would marry him on the spot.

Wonkette links to a Foreign Policy editorial, that attacks Tony Blair for including a pro-wife beating Egyptian Mufti at a conference for progressive Muslim leaders. Sheikh Ali Gomaa thinks that:

"Women in some cultures are not averse to beatings. They consider it as an expression of masculinity, and as a kind of control, which she herself desires. In other societies, it is the exact opposite. [...]Islam did not command us to be aggressive towards women […]But when Allah permitted wife-beating, He permitted it to the other side of culture, which considers it as one of the means to preserve the family, and as one of the means to preserve stability."

The ladies over at the Christian Domestic Discipline website agree:

"[W]e believe the Bible gives a husband the authority to use spanking as one tool  in enforcing his authority in the home with or without his wife's permission[...]A Christian Domestic Discipline marriage is one that is set up according to Biblical standards; that is, the husband is the authority in the household.  The wife is submissive to her husband as is fit in the Lord and her husband loves her as himself [...]"

Interesting...

Is this Islam's "true voice"? [Passport]
Rumors on the Internet [Wonkette]
Loving wife spanking in a Christian Marriage [ChristianDomesticDiscipline]

 

Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori believed that as robots become more and more human-like, people's empathy for the machine first increases rapidly and then turns to repulsion. Exhibit one:  via Tokyo Times, we learn about an incredibly disturbing technological breakthrough: the human version of the robot dog, who is totally going to be a hot gynoid crimefighter when it grows up.
Uncanny Valley Hypothesis [Wikipedia]
Robotic Realism [Tokyo Times]

I bought myself one of those lavender American Apparel hoodies yesterday and I am feeling guilty. The truth is, I love it. The color is great, and as I was looking at myself in the mirror I felt just like a cool SF hipster. And therein lies the problem. If I had applied myself, I probably could have found something nearly identical for half the price. Instead, I spent $40 on a goddamn hoodie because I thought it would make me look cool.

Of course, Dov Charney is a marketing genius. The brand first  exploded here in California, where young and wealthy

liberals could justify paying AA's freaking outrageous prices on the grounds that the label was "verticallyintegrated"--i.e. sweatshop free. But nothing is ever as good as it seems. The company may have pitched itself as a socially responsible corporation, but its record of union busting and sexual harassment shows that in the end it was really nothing more than slick hype to get the attention of the affluent liberal set.

The lesson here? Corporations never have consciences [and I am a chump.] They are inherently immoral. Just because a liquor company sponsors the Pride Parade, it doesn't mean it gives a damn about gay rights. And just because a beauty product company starts using plus-size models doesn't mean they have any problems with blatanly fucking with women's self esteem.

Indian Women Whiten Their Skin, Fight the Patriarchy [Jezebel]
Understanding American Apparel [knowmore.org]

 

A comment on my earlier post about Interventions sparked my polemic impulse:
"I believe the US works as a force of "we will help if it will is for our own good" which can be said for all nations as far as I can see. While this does not justify the way we, as a nation, act, it does make it more acceptable, which is by far the most dangerous aspect of it. But what is the answer? As you point out, getting more nations involved through the UN will ultimately cultivate not only a fairer world, but a just world. How do we do that?"

The short answer is that the UN should function more like the WTO. In other words, it should be a functional instrument for resolving intra-national disputes.The argument that the U.S. should function as a 'benevolent hegemon' enforcing order in the world rests on the assumption that international relations are inherently violent and chaotic. I would argue that this is not necessarily the case. Properly empowered international institutions--and I am talking here about the UN, the International Human Rights Court, and the International Criminal Court--can lessen the risk of war and provide mechanisms besides military intervention for preventing and punishing human rights abuses.

      Powerful nations like the U.S. believe it is in their best interest to keep international bodies like the UN and the ICC weak and emasculated, because they do not want to see their power curtailed. By keeping these multilateral institutions impotent, they fulfill their self fulfilling prophecy: they justify military interventions and occupations on the grounds that they are the only ones strong enough to maintain order. They avoid making any significant legal concessions to international bodies on the grounds of national sovereignty.

     I believe that national sovereignty is already becoming an illusion, as a result of globalization. In the economic sphere, foreign sources of capital, multinational corporations, and multilateral agreements like the GATT have already encroached on national sovereignty. In the civil sphere, NGOs are doing the same thing. And in the military sphere, terrorism and even national resistance is now a global affair; groups are funded with money from expatriates and store their money in banks halfway across the world and buy their weapons on the international black market. The flaw in the current conventional wisdom about international relations is the disconnect between military issues and civil issues. Nothing illustrates this more than the American experience in Afghanistan and Iraq. Planners were largely disdainful of anything involving 'nation-building' and the result was civil chaos, symbolized by the riots and looting that followed the fall of Baghdad. Bush is now asking the international community for more support--ie peacekeeping--in Afghanistan, but it is now too late. If there had been international support from the start, things could have been better. The best way to cope with the changes globalization has brought about is to embrace international law, because that is what is in our long-term best interest.
 

I got into an argument this weekend with an acquaintance of mine about humanitarian interventions. He was arguing that the U.S. has an obligation to use military force to prevent human rights abuses. The bombing of Kosovo would be the prime example of this type of intervention, and Rwanda--and now Darfur--are held up as cases where the U.S. has failed to live up to this obligation. He was defending this 'America: World Police' meme and was kind of surprised that I wasn't buying it. I think the underlying problem is that U.S. intervention will always be selective. The U.S. sat on its hands during the worst genocides of the century. A case in point: East Timor. Before it had even shed its status as Portugese colony it was invaded by Indonesia, then under the brutal Suharto regime. Because the Indonesian government couched its justification for invasion in anti-Communist rhetoric, and because Indonesia was considered a paradise for Western investors, the American (and British, and Australian) governments turned a blind eye to the genocide against the Timorese, in which 1/3rd of the population of East Timor was murdered. These examples abound. The notion that the U.S. acts a force for good is a cruel farce to those who pay attention. Better to give up the charade and work to empower the U.N. and the Hague. The Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention exist for very good reasons. They are 'just pieces of paper'--but then so is the  Constitution and the Bill of Rights.