The state is like a violent husband.
It cares about you, but can lash out at any time.

When the state is ‘husbandly’ it helps you, guides you, pays for things you couldn’t otherwise afford.
When the state is violent it warps your sons, starts unnecessary wars, and lands its truncheon fist across your face.

God Bless America

Look at all that Kotex! I guess this person has never heard of the menopause...

I suppose this is the logical conclusion of living in one of the richest countries in this insane, unstable world – having immediate access to every consumer product you may ever think you might need to live comfortably, whilst being shitscared that one day it will all disappear overnight.

Stockpilers, I salute you. Just don’t come near me til the armageddon, and then we can be best friends forever.

Socialist Worker – “Don’t bail out the bankers” demonstration stops the City

Elizabeth Barret Browning

I heard an angel speak last night,
And he said “Write!
Write a Nation’s curse for me,
And send it over the Western Sea.”

I faltered, taking up the word:
“Not so, my lord!
If curses must be, choose another
To send thy curse against my brother.

“For I am bound by gratitude,
By love and blood,
To brothers of mine across the sea,
Who stretch out kindly hands to me.”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
From the summits of love a curse is driven,
As lightning is from the tops of heaven.”

“Not so,” I answered. “Evermore
My heart is sore
For my own land’s sins: for little feet
Of children bleeding along the street:

“For parked-up honors that gainsay
The right of way:
For almsgiving through a door that is
Not open enough for two friends to kiss:

“For love of freedom which abates
Beyond the Straits:
For patriot virtue starved to vice on
Self-praise, self-interest, and suspicion:

“For an oligarchic parliament,
And bribes well-meant.
What curse to another land assign,
When heavy-souled for the sins of mine?”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Because thou hast strength to see and hate
A foul thing done within thy gate.”

“Not so,” I answered once again.
“To curse, choose men.
For I, a woman, have only known
How the heart melts and the tears run down.”

“Therefore,” the voice said, “shalt thou write
My curse to-night.
Some women weep and curse, I say
(And no one marvels), night and day.

“And thou shalt take their part to-night,
Weep and write.
A curse from the depths of womanhood
Is very salt, and bitter, and good.”

So thus I wrote, and mourned indeed,
What all may read.
And thus, as was enjoined on me,
I send it over the Western Sea.

The Curse

Because ye have broken your own chain
With the strain
Of brave men climbing a Nation’s height,
Yet thence bear down with brand and thong
On souls of others, — for this wrong
This is the curse. Write.

Because yourselves are standing straight
In the state
Of Freedom’s foremost acolyte,
Yet keep calm footing all the time
On writhing bond-slaves, — for this crime
This is the curse. Write.

Because ye prosper in God’s name,
With a claim
To honor in the old world’s sight,
Yet do the fiend’s work perfectly
In strangling martyrs, — for this lie
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while kings conspire
Round the people’s smouldering fire,
And, warm for your part,
Shall never dare — O shame!
To utter the thought into flame
Which burns at your heart.
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while nations strive
With the bloodhounds, die or survive,
Drop faint from their jaws,
Or throttle them backward to death;
And only under your breath
Shall favor the cause.
This is the curse. Write.

Ye shall watch while strong men draw
The nets of feudal law
To strangle the weak;
And, counting the sin for a sin,
Your soul shall be sadder within
Than the word ye shall speak.
This is the curse. Write.

When good men are praying erect
That Christ may avenge His elect
And deliver the earth,
The prayer in your ears, said low,
Shall sound like the tramp of a foe
That’s driving you forth.
This is the curse. Write.

When wise men give you their praise,
They shall praise in the heat of the phrase,
As if carried too far.
When ye boast your own charters kept true,
Ye shall blush; for the thing which ye do
Derides what ye are.
This is the curse. Write.

When fools cast taunts at your gate,
Your scorn ye shall somewhat abate
As ye look o’er the wall;
For your conscience, tradition, and name
Explode with a deadlier blame
Than the worst of them all.
This is the curse. Write.

Go, wherever ill deeds shall be done,
Go, plant your flag in the sun
Beside the ill-doers!
And recoil from clenching the curse
Of God’s witnessing Universe
With a curse of yours.
This is the curse. Write.

So the economy is screwed. Even the government’s money-man, Chancellor Alistair Darling, is finally admitting the crisis is serious, telling the Guardian that the economy is at the lowest it has been in 60 years. The post-war boom is over for good and the crisis sparked by the ‘credit crunch’ is spreading economic chaos throughout the system. It’s predicted there will be 2 million unemployed in the UK by Christmas, while company closures rise, banks (like Northern Rock) are hemorrhaging money and taking handouts from tax payers, the cost of living is rising as food bills go up, and 6.8 million people in the UK are in debt to fuel companies which are hiking up prices, expecting customers to pick up the bill despite making a record £3billion in profit. Meanwhile house prices are decreasing dramatically, by up to £150 per day. In the US, where the mortgage industry first hit the rocks, house repossessions are up 121 per cent, while repossession are expected rise by 65 per cent in the UK this year. Millions are heading towards poverty.

Special mention – If you want to pick over the bones of current capitalism in a clear, accessible way, I recommend starting with Economic Crisis: Capitalism Exposed, an article by Chris Harman written for the Socialist Review.

Not being particularly into sports or flags, for me the Olympics is a time in which I can watch the rest of the world go a bit nuts over something I don’t quite get. But since the coverage is there, I have taken some interest in the bits that seem relevant to me in the wider scope of things.

From what I’ve seen, read and heard lately, in print and online, there is a lot of justified (female) anger over the sexist coverage women athletes are getting in the press and on TV (including this post from Shapely Prose). From skeevy, lingering shots of women’s arses to lurid pronouncements about how ‘fit’ (that’s fit as in sexy, not fit as in fit, I’m afraid – it’s a UK thing) the women competing are, it seems we are backing away from equality in sports and turning women athletes into another bunch of tabloid totty that might as well take off the sports bras, don the lingerie and get back to what all young women should be doing, namely preening, primping and looking desperate for some sexual attention.

And it’s not just sexist commentators and stupid red tops that can take credit for this – it’s a part of Olympic officialdom, with rules governing the smallness of women’s uniforms compared to men. For an overview of what this actually looks like, check out this blog post from Hoydon about Town for a side-by-side pictorial comparison of women’s and men’s uniforms. From the pictures it is clear female athletes are increasingly expected to fulfill a dual role, of sportswoman and sex object.

This is one instance when we can look back to ‘the good ole days’ – this post shows how increasingly skimpier cut, tighter and bikini-like women’s uniforms have become over the last 20 years.

So spare a thought for the women athletes next time you hear they’re preparing in the changing rooms – while the men are stretching, limbering up and focusing their minds, the women are worrying about sunburn in sensitive places and waxing their bikini lines ready for the potentially-pube-bearing outfits they have to wriggle into.

See also –

Sexist Olympic Photos of the Day

Indian beach volleyball players refuse to wear bikinis

Patriarchy to world-class female athletes; Okay you can compete but you have to wear porn outfits

Interestingly, on the flip side we have more female athletes than ever choosing to compete while wearing the hijab, 12 in total from Egypt, Iran, Yemen, UAE, Bahrain and Afghanistan. Like Naomi Alderman, as a proponent of women’s equality I respect these women’s right to cover their heads if they so choose. By publicly coupling their religious beliefs with their sporting ambitions, they are breaking down Western stereotypes about Muslim women whilst inspiring other women in their home countries to get involved in sport. This is the first Olympics that the UAE and Oman have sent women athletes to, while Saudi Arabia and Brunei have yet again refused to allow women to compete. Ironically, and frustratingly, considering the increase in practicing Muslim women at the 2008 games, Bejing have provided a mosque only for men, and none for women.

So it seems if you are from the Middle East, female and hold strong religious convictions you can cover up and be judged on your sporting prowess. If you are secular/atheist, however, you must bare all to be leched over whilst being judged on your ‘bikini body’. This is where all this liberation lark gets a little confusing. So how about we just let women wear whatever they are most comfortable competing in, giving them back the control over their bodies that an athletic competition like the Olympics demands? A radical notion, I think not, but it’s something we’re actually moving further away from.

So maybe in 2012 the women’s beach volleyball team should do a Peaches in protest (you really have to watch the video to get the point – NSFW btw) and prove they have better things to do at the Olympics than wax anything for the cameras. Like PLAY SPORT, for example. If only.

The right to work is seen as one of the most basic human rights we have; it means the right to not live in poverty, the right to contribute to society, to take part in social and cultural life. Yet in Britain, asylum seekers, who make up one of the most vulnerable sections of society, are refused this right and forced into a situation of poverty and exclusion.

Up until 2002, asylum seekers were allowed to work in Britain. If your claim had taken more than six months to reach a conclusion, a period then deemed a fair amount of time to wait, you could then apply for the right to work and get on with living in Britain like everybody else.

In 2002 however, the rules were changed and only people whose refugee status had been granted were allowed to work, effectively forcing asylum seekers to live below the poverty line and ensuring their isolation from the rest of society.

There is, of course, an exception to any rule, and this rule is no exception – the only asylum seekers automatically allowed to work are those kept lock up in detention centres, i.e. prisons, where the minimum wage doesn’t apply.

This essentially says that when kept like a prisoner, the asylum seeker (who has committed no crime) can be treated like a prisoner, with low wages and limited freedoms, and exploited accordingly. To add insult to injury, the Home Office says that for detained asylum seekers, the lack of opportunity to do paid work is ‘harmful to their well-being’ while ignoring the fact that this is also the case for those living in communities across the UK.

So what of those asylum seekers not locked up? Right now their benefits stand at 70% of income support, under £40 a week. This is often paid in vouchers and has all the stigma and resultant lack of dignity that comes with that. So not being allowed to work compounds the sense of isolation and frustration many feel after the upheaval of leaving their homeland and whatever traumas they faced there.

On a material level, £40 is not a lot. Anyone who has had to live on Job Seeker’s knows that. It is the official poverty line in the UK, subsistence money – yet asylum seekers actually get less than the government deems necessary for survival.

Most asylum seekers come from countries where there is little or no welfare state – they expect to work for a living, to contribute to society, and to get all the good things that come with that – a decent wage, a social network, security, a sense of dignity – but instead they are kept in a permanent state of insecurity and isolation during their first months or years in Britain. As Kwabe Muka, a pastor from the Democratic Republic of Congo who has been waiting on a decision since 2005, illustrates, ‘Asylum seekers are like fish living in an aquarium that is suspended in the ocean. We can see through the glass at British life but we are trapped in the tank.’

The government’s policy of trying to reduce asylum numbers, not by invading less countries, but changing the rules, putting countries such as Iraq and Zimbabwe on the ’safe’ list and cutting benefits, has led to the numbers of destitute asylum seekers and refugees to double since 2007. People have their claims refused and benefits stopped yet cannot return home since the situation there is too dangerous. These people literally have nothing to live on -they rely on church groups and charities to survive, or end up on the streets. The Independent Asylum Commission estimates there are 283,500 destitute asylum seekers in the UK and when looking at where they’ve come from, it is not hard to see why they are not going back – A survey in Leeds showed 21% were from Zimbabwe,16% from Iran and 12% from Eritrea.

Despite the government making it harder and harder to get refugee status, a quarter of appeals against initial asylum refusals are successful. During the appeal process asylum seekers should be given ’section four’ grants while waiting for the results, but there is often a delay, or errors in the process, which contributes to the numbers facing destitution.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust report on asylum and destitution recommends temporary licenses to work be issued for asylum seekers, recognising the need for individuals to support themselves while going through the lengthy, complex asylum process. To ban asylum seekers from working is to compound what is already a difficult and miserable process, and in practical terms it denies many their human rights, condemning vulnerable people to homelessness and hand outs when they could be contributing to society, paying taxes, and building the skills needed to make a decent life in a new country.

For a government that goes on about integration, it is illogical for it to ignore the very rules that contribute to asylum seekers’ inability to integrate. While asylum seekers are allowed to volunteer for charities, they mostly do so in the refugee sector. This helps build a support network for refugees but this community is still isolated from others in Britain. When they do finally get back into work, they are often bereft of new skills needed as workplaces evolve.

Meanwhile the vast range of skills asylum seekers do have is an untapped source that could greatly benefit the UK as a whole. Interestingly, 11 of the UK’s Nobel Prize winners for science have been refugees or children of refugees. So who is really benefiting from the 2002 rule change banning asylum seekers from work? New Labour seems determined to keep pandering to the immigrant-hating right and use all sorts of unsavoury tactics to discourage people from seeking refuge, which forced destitution and unemployment are facets of. Furthermore, forced unemployment plays up the stereotype of asylum seekers as lazy and benefit-scrounging, a Catch-22 of delight to the Mail and the Sun I’m sure.

Yet it appears in truth the general public is on the side of asylum seekers – a poll last year by the Strangers into Citizens campaign showed two thirds support demands for employment rights, saying they would accept both failed asylum seekers and those overstaying visas if they worked and paid taxes. As a response to this increasing dire and ridiculous situation , the TUC and the Refugee Council are running the Let Them Work campaign, as a part of Just Fair, a campaign to end asylum seeker destitution.

The current asylum system is blind, brutal and unjust, treating people as problems to solve rather than actual human beings. Ending this inhumane ban on working will go some way towards correcting this injustice, bringing an end to forced destitution and nullifying the culture of racist scapegoating of asylum seekers that allows these injustices to pass in the first place.

Enter a room, an office of some sort. A woman sits alone, in typical office wear, seemingly the only occupant of said room. She is unaware that you are watching her, and instead engrossed by her own massive breasts. She looks shocked, as if she has never seen them before, and is observedly aroused by them, in fact worryingly so, since no woman should be particularly surprised, let alone astounded, by having breasts. It’s not like they appear overnight.

So this woman is aroused, and you can tell this by her look of amazement and the little gasps that emerge from her mouth every few seconds, and by the fact that she is now rubbing the front of her workshirt in circles as she gasps. Her expression and exclamations are more than a little like a 5 year old child opening a Christmas present. But it is not cute because of this. It’s weird.

I have no idea why, who or how….this is just what happens.

So suddenly a man in a suit appears from nowhere. The woman looks upset, and it’s pretty clear that this man is her ‘boss’. He proceeds to scold her, and then force her to open her shirt. Her private joy is invaded by this man wielding a proverbial club of power, and though she looks pretty disgusted at the idea, eventually he prises her shirt open and pulls her breasts out of her bra. He then proceeds to play childishly, pulling on her bra straps to make her breasts move up and down.

I have no idea how this is sexy, but apparently it gets Korean men off.

Judging by Korean porn, the kind provided for free in ‘love’ (sex) motels all over the country, women do *not* enjoy sex. At most, and by that I mean in the least revolting way, they are bored by sex and are doing it to get the guy off. Or asleep.

At worst, and I mean in the most stomach-churning way, the woman is having what looks like a fucking-awful-time. Cajolled and manipulated into the set up, either by boss, blackmailer or just plain ole street rapist (there’s little difference between the three in these roles, and that is no accident), she spends the entire time wincing, frowning or being on the verge of bolting out the door.

The woman’s act of resistance and reluctant acceptance of sex portrays a clear message to the viewer – women do not enjoy sex. They are not meant to enjoy sex. They are meant to do it in the end, but put up a respectable amount of resistance first and preferably throughout the whole shebang (ha). Their whimpers are more pitiful than a baby squirrel in peril and their pained expressions are more wince-inducing than the sight of a guy falling crotch-first onto a metal fence.

And this is what Korean men jerk off to?

Western porn on the other hand goes completely onto the other path of misogynistic tendency, not the asexual woman too ‘pure’ to enjoy sex, but the insatiable whore-monster who cannot rest until she has had all the cock in the land. The slag-whore-bitch-ho-cocksucker-fuck-pig route is far more explicit in its dehumanisation of women, but it is just another form of the same misogyny in a different wolf’s clothing. This is the woman who cannot help herself – she is unable to control her lust, she is consumed by it, and so must consume as much cock as possible to satisfy it. Nevermind the fact that most porn is as unimaginative as possible, I guess partly cuz guys need as little help as anyone to actually get off, and if all you want is a palmful of jizzum in the fastest time possible, that is what you need. The formula of insatiable woman, readily available now and always, no matter how fat and ugly the guy is, seems to be the staple undercurrent that is found in modern Western porn. According to the pornographers of today, it seems Western men need to be reassured that women want it, no matter what, and that ’slag’ is the ultimate tool for degrading and finally dehumanising a woman into an object that is as unthreatening as possible. Ultimately, it is a crude backlash against female sexual liberation that dared to speak its name through Women’s Liberation movements in the West in the 1970s.

Submissive or insatiable, both roles indicate that women and female sexuality need to be controlled, subjegated, trussed up or otherwise kept down. The two views of women have run through societies throughout the long history of misogyny, and persist in repeating themselves with the kind of cycles of unimagination reflected in porn today.

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Related post - Pro-sex, anti-misogyny:where’s the non-vile porn? – Hoydon About Town

South Korea is a land that refuses to stand still. It’s as if everything that has ever happened took place only five minutes ago, and everyone is still reeling from the shock and waiting expectantly for whatever comes next. What took the West two hundred years took South Korea twenty; as a result, two generations stand face to face straddling a small expanse of time, bewilderedly trying to make sense of each other.

The consequence of this incredible progression from subsistence to uncompromising capital is a great pressure bearing down on the next generation to keep up and even increase this incredible pace of development. This pressure releases itself in ways most visible – in the face masks hiding yet another teenage nose job, the twenty-something young men moisturising on the subway, the youthful suicides strewn across the tracks at university tube stops. This insurmountable quest for perfect progress, the fear of somehow being left behind and left out of all this visible success, leaves a trail of well-hidden scars, as the past becomes just a speck in the distance of Korea’s eye-view.

The people have even perfected a special kind of walk to keep up with the fast pace of life, a kind of half-run shuffle, feet kept close to the ground to prevent slipping, cautious yet determinedly as fast paced as possible. Only two steps forward, and never any back, for that would spell disaster. With change so hard fought, with change the goal in itself, there is no time to look back.

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The lines on our marbled faces, one for every blow
every fist ducked in defiance and swung again
Desperation in the devil’s work you embraced
We die cold and alone and though we talk now we shall never hold our peace
as every piece has been owned, lost, taken and thrown away
I am so many pieces that I am everywhere and I am nothing.

I have seen enough of the swords, blows and bleeding
200,000 times a lifetime
Our nine faces show the pain of a fifth of a million
and our bodies are heavy with the lost souls of Korea’s daughters

We were so young and now we are old
What happened in between?
They grabbed us, stole us, raped us and scattered us
This house is all that holds us now

There are not enough words to describe the rage of this haunting
Yet words are all we have, for all the good they do
it can never be enough
You or I cannot erase the scars I show you now
Where he stabbed and twisted the Japanese knife in my 15 year old arm

My teeth never came of age
They scattered them on that path in China when I tried to run
Milky white against the blood I would never submit even then
But day after day, man after man
Four years eroded my whole lifetime
Til only survival remained.

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(For the Korean Halmonies (comfort women) of Sharing House, Seoul, who suffered at the hands of the Japanese Army in WWII, and are still waiting for an apology.)

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