Comment 75128

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted March 09, 2012 at 13:06:21 in reply to Comment 75121

I'm not trying to single you out, and I totally agree with your basic point. In today's context, though, these arguments need some context. Words like "chattel" have very specific meanings dripping with racial connotations. Allegedly "feminist" attacks on Muslims and others are way too common these days - it was an important part of the rationale given for the war in Afghanistan, and that alone should give us pause.

Afghanistan didn't look like this until the US and USSR decided to use it as a piece in their chess board. Until the end of the 70s is was a comparatively modern, mildly socialist society where women were more than able to attend university. The folks imposing strict radical forms of Islam were set up by the CIA. Similar religious rules in Saudi Arabia are carried out by a regime utterly dependent on American aid and arms sales to survive. In Iran, a fundamentalist regime rose out of revolution against a despised, Western-backed dictator. Westerners can't "fix" other societies, and the history of our attempts to do so is utterly bloody and totally self-serving. That can't be left out of the discussion.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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