Sadistically Socializied

The cuts, which left many low-income women with inconvenient or costly options, grew out of the effort to eliminate state support for Planned Parenthood. Although the cuts also forced clinics that were not affiliated with the agency to close — and none of them, even the ones run by Planned Parenthood, performed abortions — supporters of the cutbacks said they were motivated by the fight against abortion.

Now, the same sentiment is likely to lead to a shutdown next week of another significant source of reproductive health care: the Medicaid Women’s Health Program, which serves 130,000 women with grants to many clinics, including those run by Planned Parenthood. Gov. Rick Perry and Republican lawmakers have said they would forgo the $35 million in federal money that finances the women’s health program in order to keep Planned Parenthood from getting any of it.

Although Texas already bars clinics that take such money from performing abortions, the new law is intended to prevent any state money from benefiting Planned Parenthood. “Planned Parenthoods across the country provide abortions, are affiliated with abortion providers, or refer women to abortion providers,” said Lucy Nashed, a spokeswoman for Mr. Perry.

—

Texas Women’s Clinics Retreat as Finances Are Cut - NYTimes.com

“Abortion” seems to have become a catch-all term for women’s health care in general.

(via dendroica)

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

[TW: Rape]

And until you’ve been raped, you don’t really wake up and see how much rape is out there for the casual consumer. You didn’t really hear those offhand comments when walking down the street – “oh, you know she totally made that up for attention” – you didn’t really notice that the sex scene in Blade Runner actually really looks like a fucking rape scene, you didn’t really hear how the TV news focuses on what she was wearing, and calls it “sex,” and digs for details about where and how he penetrated her, when you don’t really need to know that, do you? And you don’t realize how many of the people you know and love do not take rape seriously, because they have been sucking up all the same TV shows and movies you do, and they don’t think they know a real person who has been raped. Of course, some of them you might tell, and they can accept that, accept the secondary trauma, begin to start thinking of you whenever they see a rape in a movie, hear of one on the news, hear a rape joke. Or they can disqualify you as a real person. Guess which one happens most.

—A Woman Walks Into A Rape, uh, Bar (via andyouhavetogivethemhope)

(Source: fugitivus.wordpress.com, via stfuconservatives)

anti-propaganda:

‘For those that followed the unjust attack of aggression against the Libyan people, a phrase that cropped up often was “in-line with the UN resolution”. If the UN says its ok, everybody else follows like it’s some kind of omnipresent power that must be obeyed.

In truth the UN is a globalist tool that allows the tyrannical leaders of the powerful western nations and Israel to exert their dominance over everybody else, while hiding behind an illusion of a global democratic system. Because of this illusion all actions undertaken are deemed moral and legal, and with full support of the “global community”, despite the majority of countries following whatever the Anglo-American-Israeli establishment have dictated in fear of being ostracized.

Enter Ron Prosor, Israel Ambassador to the UN. He told the Security Council in New York on Tuesday, that Iran is the single greatest threat to the world, and the United Nations needs to take action against them immediately [1].

Translation: I want the UN to pass some kind of resolution so when Israel, the US, Britain and the tag-alongs attack Iran, the thousands of deaths can be brushed off as “in-line with the UN resolution”, and therefore perfectly acceptable.’

anti-propaganda:

‘Months before the debate about Internet censorship raged as SOPA and PIPA dominated the concerns of web users, President Obama signed an international treaty that would allow companies in China or any other country in the world to demand ISPs remove web content in the US with no legal oversight whatsoever.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement was signed by Obama on October 1 2011, yet is currently the subject of a White House petition demanding Senators be forced to ratify the treaty. The White House has circumvented the necessity to have the treaty confirmed by lawmakers by presenting it an as “executive agreement,” although legal scholars have highlighted the dubious nature of this characterization.’

Faith has degenerated into the confident belief in certain facts, and a poverty-stricken hope for the next world.

—

Moltmann (via azspot

)

(via azspot)

There is no place yet in America for a third party, I believe. The divergence of interests even in the same class group is so great in that tremendous area that wholly different groups and interests are represented in each of the two big parties, depending on the locality, and almost each particular section of the possessing class has its representatives in each of the two parties to a very large degree, though today big industry forms the core of the Republicans on the whole, just as the big landowners of the South form that of the Democrats. The apparent haphazardness of this jumbling together is what provides the splendid soil for the corruption and the plundering of the government that flourish there so beautifully. Only when the land — the public lands — is completely in the hands of the speculators, and settlement on the land thus becomes more and more difficult or falls prey to gouging — only then, I think, will the time come, with peaceful development, for a third party. Land is the basis of speculation, and the American speculative mania and speculative opportunity are the chief levers that hold the native-born worker in bondage to the bourgeoisie. Only when there is a generation of native- born workers that cannot expect anything from speculation any more will we have a solid foothold in America. But, of course, who can count on peaceful development in America! There are economic jumps over there, like the political ones in France — to be sure, they produce the same momentary retrogressions.

—Friedrich Engels (via azspot)

(via azspot)

Institutionalized rejection of difference is an absolute necessity in a profit economy which needs outsiders as surplus people.

—Audre Lorde (via revolutionnow)

Why would the language of “class warfare” gain any traction or credibility today? I cannot understand it except among those who are used to being on the winning side of most “wars”? If you are poor–or marginalized by almost any definition–you have always been the victim of class warfare. Class warfare is also called capitalism: Those who have the most capital win. Those who have less invariably lose. What Pope John Paul II called “rigid capitalism”, as clearly exemplified by the United States of America, has always been a de facto class warfare against the powerless and the poor. That is its very definition. John Paul, from a communist country said that such capitalism was just as evil, and the moral equivalent of socialist communism! If you doubt me, read his encyclical Laborem Exercens, or several others of his and other Popes–which make the same point. Conservative Catholics conveniently ignore almost all social encyclicals, while pretending to love and obey the Pope.
I am not impressed when the Republicans accuse President Obama of inciting class warfare. Class warfare is structural and agreed upon in most Western countries, and it is the powerful against the powerlessness. The only change, the only thing new, is that the argument is now both ways! Power has always taken advantage of powerlessness, and powerlessness has the total Christian right to take back that power. Show me one time when Jesus did not take the side of the poor and powerless!

—Richard Rohr (via azspot)

(via azspot)

Most Americans won’t notice these lost opportunities. They don’t get out much or realize America’s growing backwardness. They don’t comprehend that a modern rail network, including high-speed rail, is a given is every populous advanced nation. They are stuck in 1970, when gas was cheap, when we had 100 million fewer people and less congested urban areas, when in many places it was like those car ads on television that show only one vehicle on an empty road. Somehow they think highways and airlines aren’t subsidized; they think many things that are not true, including this. Every transportation system is subsidized. In our case, we just have fewer choices. It’s an outrage that there are not frequent and fast trains linking, say, Phoenix and LA, Phoenix and Tucson. No, they’re happy to spend a huge portion of our lives stuck in traffic, changing the planet for the worse. Too bad that reality, in the form of oil scarcity and higher prices, increasing congestion and, ooops, climate change, will throttle these American delusions.

—Rogue Columnist (via azspot)

(via stfuconservatives)