Lessons posted:

Along with Wittig and Kristeva she's one of the most-cited authors in Gender Trouble, the founding document of queer theory, so I would say she's fairly important. The word "foundational" comes to mind.

two of my uncles were killed by care bombs during the Gender Troubles. have some reaspect

AmericanNazbro posted:

This is a really good article w/r/t topic of the thread. I want to quote the entire thing, it's pro-read

https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-west-created-the-islamic-state-dbfa6f83bc1f

blinkandwheeze posted:

lessons do you know anything about catherine malabou

Nope, I really don't know much in French feminism beyond the basics

c_man posted:

redfiesta posted:

what's the 'zonE thinks about the US mil deployment in W. Africa to ostensibly contain the ebola outbreak? had to do a figurative spit-take when they mentioned 3000 troops. but of course, "serious" commentators don't see that as anything noteworthy.

I remember people claiming the humanitarian response for Haiti earthquake was a gigantic sham. can anybody guide me to good sources on that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_history_of_the_United_States

redfiesta posted:

what's the 'zonE thinks about the US mil deployment in W. Africa to ostensibly contain the ebola outbreak? had to do a figurative spit-take when they mentioned 3000 troops. but of course, "serious" commentators don't see that as anything noteworthy.

I remember people claiming the humanitarian response for Haiti earthquake was a gigantic sham. can anybody guide me to good sources on that?

http://www.thenation.com/article/161459/wikileaks-haiti-earthquake-cables

“Security” vs. Humanitarian Relief

Following her boss’s talking points, Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, “assured Preval...that the military was here for humanitarian relief and not as a security force,” explains a January 19 cable.

But that’s not what journalists on the ground saw.

On January 19, Democracy Now!’s crew along with Haïti Liberté’s Kim Ives arrived at the General Hospital around 1 pm, shortly after troops from the 82nd Airborne Division. They found the soldiers, guns in hand, standing behind the hospital’s closed main gate. The troops had orders to provide “security” by denying entrance to a crowd of hundreds, including injured earthquake victims and family members of patients bringing them food or medicine.

“Watching the scene in front of the General Hospital yesterday said it all,” said Ives in a Democracy Now! interview the next day. “Here were people who were going in and out of the hospital bringing food to their loved ones in there or needing to go to the hospital, and there were a bunch of...US 82nd Airborne soldiers in front yelling in English at this crowd. They didn’t know what they were doing. They were creating more chaos rather than diminishing it. It was a comedy, if it weren’t so tragic.... They had no business being there.”

The journalists finally managed to get into the hospital and alerted the hospital’s interim director, Dr. Evan Lyon, about the problem. He immediately sent word down that the soldiers should stand down and open the gate. They did, but then positioned themselves in the driveway, among the injured hobbling into the hospital, as an unnecessary and unrequested security force, contrary to what Mills had promised Préval.

Three months later, US troops walking around in what appeared to be foot patrols could still be seen in downtown Port-au-Prince. “I don't think we need soldiers with guns. We need engineers the most," Brital, a rapper in one of Haiti’s most popular hip hop group, the Barikad Crew, told Inter-Press Service. “I'd prefer to see soldiers who could educate instead of those with guns. Soldiers that can come and build roads, bridges, universities and hospitals.”

The enormous influx of US military personnel, weapons and equipment into the airport prompted a chorus of protest from mid-level French, Italian and Brazilian officials, as well as the aid group Doctors Without Borders. They were outraged that planes carrying vital humanitarian supplies were being prevented from landing, or delayed, sometimes for days.

“We had a whole freaking plane full of the friggin’ medicine!” Douglas Copp, an American rescue worker, said outside a UN base not long after the quake. The US military, which had taken over the Port-au-Prince airport, would not give clearance for the Peruvian military plane to land. It had to divert to the Dominican capital, 150 miles away. “In Santo Domingo, we got a bus, and we came into Haiti with just the things we could fit in the bus,” Copp exclaimed.

Clinton: “Get the Narrative Right”

Hillary Clinton brooked no criticism, which was growing worldwide, of the US military’s role in the relief effort. “I am deeply concerned by instances of inaccurate and unfavorable international media coverage of America's role and intentions in Haiti,” she wrote in a stern January 20 message to embassies around the globe. “It is imperative to get the narrative right over the long term.”

She asked that embassies report back to her, “citing specific examples of irresponsible journalism in your host countries, and what action you have taken in response.”

In countries all over the world, from Luxembourg to Chile, diplomatic officials scrutinized the media and hit back against criticism of the US military’s buildup in Haiti, sending back dozens of detailed reports.

For example, a January 20 cable from Doha tells how a hard-hitting Al Jazeera English segment described the relief effort’s militarization and compared the US-run airport to a “mini-Green zone.” This report resulted in a phone call “during the early morning hours of January 18" from the US Embassy in Doha to Tony Burman, Al Jazeera English’s managing director.

But the airport story was true. “They had taken over the place,” Jeremy Dupin, 26, said about the US “joint coordination” of the airport. After his home had collapsed, Dupin, a Haitian journalist, had wandered the streets for a day before linking up with an Al Jazeera English crew to work as a producer.

“There were 20,000 soldiers, so this was, you know, a big move,” Dupin said. “I think that we pointed out there were serious problems, and that's why the US didn't like the news, but we told the truth. And if we had to say it again, we would say it again.”

Many cables reported widely positive coverage in their countries. But instances of negativity toward the United States, no matter how small, were flagged and dealt with. In Colombia, for example, “the only negative coverage” was from a newspaper cartoonist who drew “a colonial soldier planting a U.S. flag on the island of Haiti,” the Bogota Embassy reported on January 26. “Post will meet with the cartoonist this week to discuss this cartoon with him and provide information refuting its inference, as well as engage with El Espectador's editor to express our strong concerns.”

Militarization of Humanitarian Aid

There is a growing movement among aid groups worldwide, and even in the UN, against the militarization of humanitarian aid. The report "Quick Impact, Quick Collapse: The Dangers of Militarized Aid in Afghanistan," by Actionaid, Oxfam International and other NGOs, could have been as easily written about Haiti, where the Pentagon’s “government in a box” strategy was being applied as the study was released in late January 2010.

“As political pressures to ‘show results’ in troop contributing countries intensify, more and more assistance is being channeled through military actors to ‘win hearts and minds’ while efforts to address the underlying causes of poverty...are being sidelined,” the report’s introduction reads. “Development projects implemented with military money or through military-dominated structures aim to achieve fast results but are often poorly executed, inappropriate and do not have sufficient community involvement to make them sustainable. There is little evidence this approach is generating stability....”

But no matter where one comes down on the question of the US military’s role and contribution in post-quake Haiti, one thing is for sure. The massive troop deployment was not set in motion because of demands from President Préval and the Haitian government, whose concern was with the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

Haitian business owners were the most worried about security, especially for their factories, according to the cables. Five days after the quake, Ambassador Merten met with representatives of Haiti’s business sector, who said “their major concern is security at all levels, to include security of goods, at marketplaces, and for ports of entry.” Later, they asked the UN occupation troops “to provide security for reopened factories, and pledged to re-open in weeks.” Embassy officers met again with Haitian business leaders one week later.

In a January 26 cable, Merten commented that “apparel manufacturers in Haiti operate on a high volume, thin margin, low capitalization basis where cash flow is extremely important for the business to survive.” He relayed a factory owner’s suggestion for a $20 million loan to the sector. Days later, he applauded the introduction of legislation in the US Senate “intended to provide short-term relief to Haiti's apparel sector” by extending trade preferences.

Some longtime Haiti observers suggest other explanations for the quick and massive US military response to the earthquake crisis.

“It is certain that one important reason for the US troop deployment to Haiti after the quake was to bar any revolutionary uprising that might have emerged due to the Haitian government’s near collapse,” said Haitian activist Ray Laforest, a member of the International Support Haiti Network. “Also the perception of Haitians in Washington, since the time of its 1915 occupation, is that they are savage, undisciplined and violent. In fact, the 2010 earthquake proved the opposite: Haitians came together in an exemplary display of heroism, resilience and solidarity. Washington’s military response to the earthquake indicates how deeply it misunderstands, mistrusts and mistreats Haiti.”

http://blackagendareport.com/content/coming-soon-phoenix-death-squad-program-west-africa posted:

The pace of U.S. penetration of West Africa has quickened dramatically since 2011, when Obama bombed Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan government out of existence, setting a flood of jihadists and weapons streaming east to Syria and south to destabilize the nations of the Sahel. Chaos ensued – beautiful chaos, if you are a U.S. military planner seeking justification for ever-larger missions. NATO’s aggression against Libya begat the sub-Saharan chaos that justified the French and U.S. occupation of Mali and Niger. Hyperactive North African jihadists, empowered by American bombs, weapons and money, trained and outfitted their brethren on the continent, including elements of Nigeria’s Boko Haram. The Hausa-speaking Islamic warriors then bequeathed AFRICOM a priceless gift: nearly 300 schoolgirls in need of rescuing, perfect fodder for “humanitarian” intervention.

Nobody had to ask twice that Obama “Do something!”

The heads of Nigeria, Chad, Niger, Benin and Cameroon were summoned to Paris (pretending it was their idea) where they declared “total war” on Boko Haram, as “observers” from the U.S., France, Britain and the European Union (Africa’s past and future stakeholders) looked on. French President Francois Hollande said “a global and regional action plan” would come out of the conference.

Of course, the five African states have neither the money, training, equipment nor intelligence gathering capacity for such a plan. It will be a Euro-American plan for the defense and security of West Africa – against other Africans. Immediately, the U.S. sent 80 troops to Chad (whose military has long been a mercenary asset of France) to open up a new drone base, joining previously existing U.S. drone fields in Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Seychelles Islands, Djibouti (home to a huge French and American base), and CIA sites that need not be disclosed.

The new West African security grouping became an instant imprint of NATO, an appendage to be shaped by imperial military planners to confront enemies chosen by Washington and Paris.

What a miracle of humanitarian military momentum! The girls had only been missing for a month, and might not be rescued alive, but five neighboring African countries – one of them the biggest economy on the continent – had already been dragooned into a NATO-dominated military alliance with other subordinate African states.

It soon turned out that AFRICOM already had a special relationship with the Nigerian military that was not announced until after the schoolgirls’ abduction. AFRICOM will train a battalion of Nigerian Rangers in counterinsurgency warfare, the first time that the Command has provided “full spectrum” training to Africans on such a scale.

With the American public in a “Save our girls” interventionist frame of mind, operations that were secret suddenly became public. The New York Times reveals that the U.S. has been running a secret program to train counterterrorism battalions for Niger and Mauritania. Elite Green Berets and Delta Force killers are instructing handpicked commandos in counterinsurgency in Mali, as well. The identity of one Times source leaves little doubt that the previously secret operations are designed to blanket the region with U.S. trained death squads. Michael Sheehan was until last year in charge of Special Operations at the Pentagon – Death Squads Central – where he pushed for more Special Ops trainers for African armies. Sheehan now holds the “distinguished chair” at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center. In the 1980s, he was a Special Forces commander in Latin America – which can only mean death squads.

and now????

http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=123171 posted:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 16, 2014 – U.S. Africa Command will set up a Joint Force Command Headquarters in Liberia to support U.S. military activities and help coordinate expanded U.S. and international relief efforts to fight the West Africa Ebola outbreak, senior administration officials said on a call previewing President Barack Obama’s visit today to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

In Africa, in terms of the Defense Department’s role, by the end of the week a general officer will be in place in Monrovia, Liberia, leading the regional effort known as Operation United Assistance, the officials said, describing the second of three new lines of effort DoD is adding to ongoing efforts.

“The Department of Defense is committed to supporting our interagency partners, specifically and the Centers for Disease Control, as we collectively -- working together every day -- respond to the outbreak in West Africa,” the official added.

As a third line of effort, U.S. Africa Command will establish a regional intermediate staging base to facilitate DoD support for operations of USAID and other counterparts.

redfiesta posted:

what's the 'zonE thinks about the US mil deployment in W. Africa to ostensibly contain the ebola outbreak? had to do a figurative spit-take when they mentioned 3000 troops. but of course, "serious" commentators don't see that as anything noteworthy.

I remember people claiming the humanitarian response for Haiti earthquake was a gigantic sham. can anybody guide me to good sources on that?

http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-29Hidden%20Epidemics.htm