PRAXIS AND THEORY AND EMANCIPATION
No.
1122
BIENVENIDOS!!
WELCOME!! WILLKOMMEN!!
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Sospechas de Engaño mundial
Por: Felipe josé Rodriguez
Publicado el Jueves, 07/07/05 09:44pm |
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Published:
Sunday, July 10, 2005
Bylined to: Patrick J.
O'Donoghue
President Hugo Chavez Frias: there is no such thing as good or bad terrorism
During
his Sunday radio address, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias has
sent condolences to the people of London (UK) recovering from last
Thursday's bomb attacks.
The President states that he rejects terrorism, wherever it comes from.
Speaking at the Cecilio Acosta Complex in Los Teques (Miranda), Chavez Frias says that for his government there is no such things as good or bad terrorism.
"We do not have double morals ... one cannot respond to this with more terrorism like the USA does, throwing more wood on the fire."
"G8
Nations and those of the South must sit down at the table and debate
problems of violence and seek a world of peace through justice."
The President points to the USA's refusal to extradite Cuban terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles for blowing up a plane full of Cuban sportsman over Barbados in the 1970s.
During the radio address, the President has launched Mision Cultura aimed at promoting local culture to meet the onslaught of the dominant Western culture emanating from the USA.
A series of actions and projects will emerge during the project to rescue "what we have been and put it into action in the ideological battle ... ideas and culture are an essential part and the soul of the Revolution."
Culture Minister
Francisco Sesto says the
Mission will kick off with 9,000 "activators" who will form the
backbone of the program.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=41014
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Publicado: Viernes, 08 de Julio de 2005
Articulo por: Jutta Schmitt
Jutta Schmitt: "No puede haber revolución sin el hombre"
Jutta Schmitt de la
Universidad de Los Andes (ULA) escribe: Las
sesiones del mes de junio de nuestro Círculo Bolivariano de
Estudios en
Chiguará han girado en torno a las debilidades y signos de
deterioro
interno de la Revolución Bolivariana en el plano institucional y
organizacional, y en torno al fenómeno de cómo se sigue
manteniendo
intacto el viejo sistema capitalista, cuartarepublicanista y
oligárquico, que pone en peligro y entredicho a este experimento
audáz
y hermoso.
Varios integrantes de nuestro círulo de estudios con experiencia y participación propia en cooperativas, misiones, procesos electorales y con profundo conocimiento de las instituciones del Estado (viejas y nuevas), han dado su testimonio acerca de los mil y un obstáculos que a menudos se les coloca en el camino sobre todo a quienes realmente toman la revolución en seria y reclaman serenidad y seriedad a sus compatriotas, colegas, compañeros del partido y del trabajo.
El testimonio de una amiga auténticamente revolucionaria, que ha renunciado a su trabajo en uno de los ministerios del gobierno por considerar, que algunas autoridades ahí están desconociendo lo esencial del actual proceso de transformación que vive Venezuela, es decir, precisamente el factor humano, consciente y con compromiso revolucionario para ayudar a materializar el proyecto humanista y socialista liderizado por el presidente Chávez, ciertamente ha impulsado nuestra discusión sobre el significado del factor subjetivo en la revolución, y el engranaje entre las condiciones objetivas y el factor subjetivo – engranaje, que constituye la Dialéctica interna de la Revolución.
Retomando entonces nuestro acostumbrado debate teórico y considerando, que para nosotros, la teoría no sólo es un instrumental conceptual que nos instruye en nuestras investigaciones, sino al mismo tiempo puente e instrucción para nuestro actuar o nuestra práxis (de la cual, a la vez, se retroalimenta la teoría), hemos hecho un inventario de las debilidades reales y realidades débiles de la Revolución Bolivariana. Hemos coincidido, en que el discutir y analizar la Revolución Bolivariana, sus realidades, posibilidades, tendencias (visibles) y latencias (invisibles), es un empeño espinozo, que debería ser guiado por la fría agudeza de la razón, más que por el impulso caliente del corazón – tentación, por supuesto, siempre presente en cada debate vivo y dinámico.
Primero y antes de poder aclarar la interrogante, qué entendemos bajo el „factor subjetivo“ de un proceso revolucionario, nos hemos visto obligados a elucidar brevemente aquella concepción de la historia que tiene que acompañar este concepto, ya que ambos son directamente relacionados. En este sentido hemos constatado, que la concepción común y corriente de la historia que prevalece en nuestras latitudes y según la cual „Dios“ es el gran actor de la misma, por cuanto que todo lo que pasa bajo el sol corresponde a su „voluntad“ (lo que queda expresado, entre otras actitudes, en la infinitésimamente repetida expresión „si Dios lo quiere“), es estricta y esencialmente incompatible con la noción científica de una verdadera revolución social, en el marco de la cual el ser humano actúa conscientemente hacia la total y completa transformación del orden social establecido, inclusive sus tradiciones y – precisamente – creencias obsoletas.
Consecuentemente, un „factor subjetivo“ (el ser humano consciente) sujeto a la „voluntad de Dios“ no es, en realidad, ningun factor subjetivo, histórico.
De manera que la concepción de la historia, que lógicamente tiene que subyacer a los conceptos de „revolución social“ y „factor subjetivo“, es aquella que asume, que la historia es producto no de un ser supremo, sino de la interactuación entre sociedad y naturaleza, con sus respectivas formas históricas de organización, producción y reproducción social, y que constituye como tal un proceso dinámico, abierto, no pre-determinado, diagnosticable no sólo hacia el pasado sino también hacia el futuro, y sobre todo moldeable y transformable por la acción consciente del ser humano, específicamente del ser humano con conciencia de clase.
Después de estas reflexiones hemos constatado lo siguiente en relación al concepto del factor subjetivo, y su determinación en el contexto del proceso revolucionario bolivariano de Venezuela:
1. Entendiendo por „factor subjetivo“ la convergencia entre una radical consciencia crítica y su correspondiente acción revolucionaria como se presenta en el verdadero sujeto revolucionario, no cabe duda que en los últimos seis años hemos visto emerger aquí en Venezuela los contornos de un factor subjetivo-revolucionario, como „respuesta“ al anterior (y en parte todavía existente) orden social explotador, opresor, discriminador y alienador Venezolano.
2. Estos contornos del factor subjetivo Venezolano se han perfilado y manifestado a raíz de la miseria, rabia e insatisfacción objetiva de la mayoría de la población, es decir, en franca y directa negación del viejo sistema político y económico de la Cuarta República, negación que contiene, al mismo tiempo, el germen o „borrador“ de un necesario nuevo orden social justo e igualitario. Sin embargo, hemos visto y somos testigos de cómo la realización de este contenido potencialmente revolucionario todavía no se ha podido materializar, por una serie de razones objetivas y subjetivas.
3. Entre las razones objetivas figuran en primer lugar la ausencia de una visión, estrategia y táctica de lucha de clase de la Revolución Bolivariana, y en segundo lugar su „toma institucional del poder“ y las limitaciones originarias de la asamblea nacional constituyente, esto es, la plena permanencia dentro del juego y orden burocrático-institucional de la democracia burguesa. Esto le ha impuesto a las fuerzas del cambio un estrecho marco de acción, que es esencialmente el de la mera reforma social, sin tocar las relaciones de producción capitalistas existentes y muy a pesar de algunas formas de organización política y económica no dominantes, que se salen del marco democrático-burgués. Directamente relacionado a estas limitantes figura otra de las razones objetivas, que es el descrédito mundial público y notorio de cualquier alternativa socialista a partir del colapso de la Ex Unión Soviética, que sin duda dificulta enormemente su tan necesaria reivindicación en terminos de un nuevo humanismo socialista y socialismo humanista, con inclusión de la dimensión naturalista, donde se le concedan a la naturaleza sus propios derechos inalienables, para que ceda aquel atropello eterno que, de seguir así, terminará extinguíendola.
4. Entre las razones subjetivas que han impedido la materialización del contenido potencialmente revolucionario del experimento Venezolano, aparte de la „carga religiosa“, figura el enorme peso de los usos y costumbres de la „cultura política“ Venezolana, con su asimilación de los anti-valores institucionalizados e interiorizados durante décadas, como lo son la mentira sistemática, la corruptibilidad total de la persona, la mercantilización del individuo, el egoismo consumista, la competencia inhumana, el oportunismo descarado, el cortoplazismo ciego, etc. etc. De ahí el planteamiento de algunos, de que „la revolución sea cultural o reproducirá la dominación“, como lo expone Carlos Lanz al correctamente proponer y urgir un „cambio de mentalidad en nuestro proceso“.
Finalmente hemos coincidido, que en la dialéctica de la revolución, que consiste en la relación fructífera, mutuamente estimulante entre condiciones objetivas y el factor subjetivo, es absolutamente indispensable el fomento y la consolidación de este último, en función de provocar, develar y romper la perversa „normalidad“ psicológica y de conducta arriba denotada, que se siente cómoda en medio de la más aberrante alienación, y que le teme a su propia liberación. No basta con que las condiciones objetivas apunten hacia la posibilidad y necesidad de una verdadera revolución social. Sin factor subjetivo, sin hombre, sin mujer, sin el ser humano consciente, no hay revolución.
Hemos acordado profundizar, en las sesiones venideras, el estudio sobre las complejas relaciones existentes entre las condiciones objetivas que empujan hacia la conciencia revolucionaria, y esta misma conciencia revolucionaria (a menudos deficiente), que trata de acercarse y aproximarse a la realidad objetiva, para transformarla no sólo a nivel nacional sino internacional
Jutta
Schmitt
jutta@aktionspotenzial.de
<>http://espanol.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=40755
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Published: Friday, July 08, 2005
Bylined to: Franz J.T. Lee
Towards developing a new science and philosophy for the Bolivarian Revolution
University of Los Andes (ULA) professor
Franz J. T. Lee writes:
In
a recent two hour interview with President Fidel Castro in the Dossier
program of Walter Martinez, in Venezolana de Television (VTV), it was a
real, intellectual joy to experience how this "praxical" and
theoretical student of political economy and Marxism, not even once
used the already so worn-out, empty, confusing concept "ideology" to
identify revolutionary, superstructural phenomena with reference to the
Bolivarian Revolution.
In Venezuela, this forms part and parcel of:
a) the creation of revolutionary subjectivity,
b) of revolutionary subjective factors,
c) of strengthening the revolutionary subject within the Bolivarian Revolution, and
d) of developing our own revolutionary praxis and theory.
However, as revolutionaries and emancipators of the Third Millennium, our theoretical and methodological problems go much deeper, have profound historical and "praxical" implications. For example, currently, the natural sciences, physics or chemistry, biology, the "life" sciences, they all change their fundamental concepts nearly every decade; on the other hand, our Marxist political and economic basic terms like "use-value", "surplus-value", "exchange-value", forces of production, relations of production, class struggle, class consciousness, etc., in their social contents, have only changed very slightly; in spite of the fact that dramatic changes have taken place in the capitalist mode of production ever since Marx wrote Capital in the middle of the 19th century.
Because of the absence of proper words and concepts to express fundamental current revolutionary and emancipatory processes, we already had to invent some new words and terms, inter alia, terms like "transhistoric", "praxis", "transvolution", "trifference", etc.
Before we briefly comment on the trans-historic necessity of developing an urgent New Revolutionary Science and Emancipatory Philosophy for the Bolivarian Revolution ... that is, a kind of "Lógica y Cosmovisión Sur" for Latin America, that should reflect the concrete new projects, Telesur, Petrosur, ALBA, Petrocaribe, etc. ... let us at first generally explain the practical, ideological and religious stumbling-blocks, that hinder its immediate global materialization. In future commentaries we will further highlight fundamental aspects of such a momentous revolutionary, emancipatory endeavor.
Until now, within the socialization and educational processes, by means of language, words and logics, the ruling classes, the international mass media and their "information" campaigns, have created a social medium across and along which they can (and in fact do) control, steer and canalize thought processes and their contents. Furthermore, by means of intra-systemic, reformist "freedom of expression", by usage of certain words and concepts as for example the term "terrorism", by coining their meaning in a determined way, it is quite easy to control revolutionary ideas, thinking and thought, to eliminate contradictions, to discover "thought-crime" and to globalize Newspeak.
Ever since kindergarten, kids have been taught to learn things by memory, to pray, to rattle down the credo, the Holy Mass, the Holy Mary, the Rosary, all by rote; likewise to learn poetry by heart, to repeat passively and to the point what the teacher and the priest teaches, to be afraid to ask questions at the risk of revealing one's "stupidity", to parrot every five minutes "¡Gracias a Dios!", "Si Dios lo quiere" - thank God!, if God so wishes.
As Fidel Castro stated, we respect all beliefs, all religious creeds, but we also respect those who do not believe; thus and in a true, Christian sense, we want to know the truth, so that the truth could make us free. In this scientific, philosophic spirit, we continue with our comments.
It is well known by now, that in the colonial world, the systematic destruction of native, independent, creative action, thinking and thought, of autochthonous, natural, simple theory and indigenous, social philosophy, that is, the very cruel, brutal Mental Holocaust of millions, was part and parcel of the Conquest, of "civilizing and christianizing" the "uncivilized", of "the white man's burden". In reality and for reasons of the extension of capital accumulation across many continents and centuries to come, colonialization was about conquering our very minds and souls, about developing master-slave mechanisms and relations, so that we would internalize and eternalize our very economic exploitation in defense of the feudalist, oligarchic, dominating, divine, papal status quo, far into the global reality of corporate imperialism of the 21st century.
Thus and in an anachronistic way, to this very day, millions in Asia, Africa and America still defend their "personal religion" or "private God" ... Alas, even the latter have already long ago been mercilessly swept away by Reason, Enlightenment and "Western Civilization", and as far as they referred to non-European gods they have been arrogantly degraded by Europe to heathen superstition, pagan voodoo or savage animism.
Sad to say, de facto the colonial, European God of Conquest ... like Caesar and Napoleon ... long ago has crossed the width and breadth of the planetary Rubicon, the vast oceans and endless continents, and as globalized Reason ... that is, as Capital ... is currently celebrating its victorious, imperial, spiritual veni, vidi vici over Africa, Asia and Latin America.
At the same time, this Christian exported divinity has caused a huge, complex problem for today's Bolivarian Revolution, that needs to be overcome by a New Revolutionary Science and Emancipatory Philosophy, by the possible New Socialism of the 21st Century. The toppled clergy and nobility historically never really understood what happened to them, they could do nothing against the onslaught of Dialectics and Reason.
All these physical and mental massacres, genocides and "mentocides", were launched by the militarized feudalist Church State, engaged in "A Thousand Years War", by the coming bourgeois, capitalist missionary societies, like Wilberforce's London Missionary Society, who re-educated the peasants, serfs and chattel slaves as future capitalist wage-slaves, who till this day has filled our brains with European, colonial ideology, with capitalist belief systems, egoistic customs, racist values, cannibalistic, religious rites and rituals, ruling class ethics and alienating, monotheistic, patriarchal, racist religions, that schooled us how to become docile "drawers of water" and pacifist "hewers of wood" for our new imperialist slave masters.
This alienating anti-intellectual process destroyed many brain capacities and functions or deactivated them at least; functions, that are very hard to later recover in the public schools and universities. In this way, the fallacy was engineered that we think in words, and that words think for us; in fact, many students believe that they should just learn to acquire hundreds of words by rote, accumulate as many sentences as possible, and, consequently, they will have a real chance of becoming walking, encyclopedic, intelligent think tanks. In the same way, daily we read the newspapers, searching for "information" related by words. However, if we do not think for ourselves, that is, if we do not read between the words and lines, we never will know what is happening to us, what is going on in the world, in Venezuela.
Over the last half-a-century, and even before, in Venezuela and the world, this is what has mostly been happening in our university social science classes, in schools, in social and cultural institutions, and in nearly all presidential speeches to our respective nations, especially those of Bush, with the exception of few revolutionary leaders like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro.
In a previous writing, we explained that for the bourgeois, democratic, capitalist revolution to triumph in the superstructure, it had to replace geocentricism and formal logics with heliocentricism and dialectics, that reflected the transformation of slave-holding and agricultural modes of production into dominant, technologically superior industrial production; also the energetic, driving, productive forces were changed, and therewith all the natural and social, labor and capital relations. We also pointed out that globalized imperialist, corporate capitalism can only be annihilated and replaced by a superior mode of micro-, meso- and macro-cosmic creation and creativity, with a completely New Science, Philosophy and Emancipation.
In tendency and latency, this is probably the transhistoric context of what President Hugo Chavez has in mind, what he anticipates with a New Socialism for the 21st Century.
This emancipatory endeavor presupposes that we assess our current global panorama in precise, spatial paradigms and incisive, temporal parameters, taking into consideration what I once have formulated as the Polynesian Syndrome.
Allow me, in a very simplified manner, to explain something fundamental for emancipatory victory, that has to do with the complicated, combined processes of the various levels of Scientific Praxis and of the different degrees of Philosophic Theory, that is, of the complexity of revolutionary Human Activity and Thought on planet Earth, and with acquiring historic consciousness and philosophic knowledge of current global realities.
Over the last six years, the strange secrets of the above have caused severe headaches to the Bush administration, and produced a series of major setbacks to the interventionist plans of the fascist Washington clique; whatever they tried to topple the Bolivarian Government in Caracas, all ended in a total fiasco.
Nobody really has studied this Bolivarian phenomenon scientifically and philosophically, that is, concretely and consciously, in order to place it into the context of a new logic, a new world outlook, a new socialism.
Let us thus briefly summarize the "Polynesian Syndrome" to explain this matter.
Of course, what we explain here, must have happened all across the "Third World" during the epoch of "Discovery" and the "Conquest". Captain James Cook, the infamous British 18th Century explorer, whose name can be found all over Polynesia, related once in his diary, how his huge Caravelle was approximating one of the islands, and that the natives were playing and running around on the beach, attending to their daily activities.
Nobody of them noticed anything strange. Their life continued as usual, as the Caravelle came nearer. Nobody had a premonition of the immediate danger, of the beginning of the end of their world. The inhabitants looked towards the ocean, but they registered nothing strange on the horizon, in fact, nothing at all. An excellent proof that one perceives things, reality, not only with one's eyes or senses, that is, by physical action, but also with mental relations, with thought, with theory. Something that has no relation whatsoever to our brains, to our thoughts and intellect, something we have never seen, heard or been told or taught of, remains incomprehensible for us; we cannot capture it with our imagination, it simply does not exist for us.
However, as Captain Cook relates further, his ship anchored, and the crew prepared itself to go on shore, for the purpose of which they lowered their small boats into the water.
The very moment the small boats touched the surface of the ocean, pandemonium broke out on the beach of the natives. Fearfully running in all directions, they lost their heads, not knowing what to do. It was the similarity with their own canoes that had made it possible for them to notice Cook's boats rowing towards them. This was the relation that had to be established for this historic encounter and for mutual perceptibility.
However and what concerns us here, are precisely the things that were not and could not be recorded. Let us imagine, that at that time, some type of social communication between the British crew and the Polynesians could have been established. Captain Cook would have told the native Polynesians of the existence of other worlds, entire continents, civilizations, cultures and peoples that shared the same planet with the Polynesians. He would have also told them, that the British had already discovered and colonized parts of Asia, Africa and America, and more importantly, that the earth was round and moved; also, that the colonizers were practicing a religion called Christianity, in which its believers, symbolically, eat the flesh of their savior, Jesus Christ, and drink his holy blood.
Of course, all Polynesians would have declared these Europeans as cannibals and vampires, of being totally crazy, ripe for the loony bin. On the other hand, if the Poynesians would have explained to Captain Cook their logic and world outlook, their actions and beliefs, he, like all Europeans, would have declared them as wild animals, soulless pagans, barbarians and savages.
Now, what is the moral of this story, with reference to our New Science and Philosophy, to our Bolivarian Revolution?
Compared to the Polynesians, with reference to what is really happening currently on Earth, we are in a worse situation. If the Polynesians were hundreds of years away from the knowledge and understanding of the then current colonial, capitalist reality, we are even worse off today. Judged from what we "know" about old stale news, about deciphering the human genoma, manipulating climate patterns, ripping football fields into comets some several million kilometers away from planet Earth, creating mini-suns in laboratories, spreading international lies about "September 11", about "Bin Laden and Al Qaeda", about Venezuela and each and every effort to counter this system, we have to come to the conclusion that billions of us modern-day Polynesians are light years away from the current realities and dangers that threathen our very survival. NASA, the Pentagon, the Secret Services, have knowledge about things that we could not even imagine in our wildest nightmares, even if they appeared right in front of our eyes.
Finally, within the context of the current information wars, the disinformation campaigns, the obsolete educational systems, the blatant lies and barefaced hoaxes of the mass media, the already inhuman conditions of life on this planet, the accumulated, metropolitan weapons of mass destruction, the tragic limits of a formal logical, bi-cameral, binary mind, caged in a rigid universal system, chained by religious fangs and pangs, we should be aware that unless we do and think something really new really fast, our human consciousness, our revolutionary action, our emancipatory transcendence, our very human transvolution, that is, our very hell, heaven, purgatory, limbo and nirvana, are all in serious danger of global and universal conflagration. Even more so, if something should go wrong with the experimental creation of future suns in our French laboratories.
Unless the "wretched of the earth", in unison with their threatened allies all around the globe, immediately decide to act scientifically and think philosophically, to find an emancipatory exodus out of the epicenter of this perverse system, we will all perish in this Corporate Imperialist Moloch.
Franz J. T. Lee
franzjutta@cantv.net
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Franz John Tennyson Lee, Ph. D (University of Frankfurt), Author, Professor Titular & Chairholder of Philosophy and Political Science, University of The Andes, Merida (Venezuela) -- http://www.franzjutta.com ; http://www.franz-lee.org ; http://www.geocities.com/juttafranz/publications00001.html |
More VHeadline.com commentaries by Franz J.T. Lee
“Each
day the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean will be increasingly
convinced that there is no other road but revolution. For us there is
no other road but revolution.” — Hugo Chavez
A revolutionary process is unfolding in Venezuela, part of a
continental rebellion unparalleled since the 1960s and ’70s. Bourgeois
power is being challenged by the emergence of a counter-power of the
working classes. The reforms of the Chavez government have re-ignited
the class struggle after years of defeat and decay of the left. This is
not a simple replay of the Salvador Allende government in Chile 30
years ago. The Venezuelan army is now dominated by a revolutionary
current of officers and soldiers. Chavez himself has radicalised and
fallen back, not on the institutions of bourgeois democracy but on the
revolutionary power of the working masses.
Internationally the left has become all too accustomed to analysing
defeat and is unfamiliar with the measure of a revolution. The
development of the Venezuelan class struggle is an important
opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with the real-world development of
class consciousness and the tactical complexities of a life-and-death
struggle for power.
This publication is only a condensed introduction to the evolution
of the struggle and its key challenges but we hope that it might
inspire others to study the Venezuelan revolution and draw from it the
inspiration now feeding rebellion across Latin America.
http://www.resistancebooks.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=296
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De la comunidad Caracas, 16 de junio de 2005 Sres. De nuestra consideración: Es un hecho público y notorio que el discurso misógino y descalificador contra la mujer se ha acentuado a través de distintos medios de comunicación agravando los problemas de desigualdad y violencia de género que dichos discursos alientan. Al subrayar que estos mensajes contravienen lo que nuestra Constitución establece en sus artículos 2 y 21, viola la Ley de Responsabilidad Social de Radio y Televisión en sus artículos 1, 9 y 26, y la Ley sobre la Violencia contra la Mujer y la Familia en sus artículos 2 y 6. Con esta carta queremos denunciar el caso concreto de la campaña publicitaria de Cerveza Draft como expresión manifiesta de lo que aquí exponemos. Bajo el lema de “La verdad es dura” desplegados en los medios impresos, radioeléctricos y vallas publicitarias, se propaga el aliento misógino de Draft: “La diferencia entre una esposa y una amante son 30 kilos”.”¿Qué les cuesta a ellas bajar la tapa si tanto les molesta?”. “Ellas son así porque sólo les dimos una costilla”. “Los hombres maduran, las mujeres envejecen”. Es indigno que las agencias publicitarias y las empresas vendan sus productos utilizando estrategias contrarias a la dignidad de los ciudadanos y ciudadanas. Ya esa misma empresa había tanteado el terreno con una publicidad que muestra una mujer sin cabeza y con poca ropa en una valla de 18 mts para la cerveza Regional sin contar que esta misma imagen es la cubierta del producto, como no hubo protesta, se lanzaron con esta campaña. El Instituto de Protección al Consumidor, CONATEL y la Defensoría de la Mujer deben tomar este asunto bajo su responsabilidad y ejecutar las medidas correspondientes para que la Cerveza Draft retire estas vallas y otras piezas publicitarias. Igualmente la Asamblea Nacional debe interesarse en este problema y hacer cumplir las normas de la Lopna ya que estos mensajes afectan más que todo a la población adolescente. Las instituciones y personas que firmamos esta carta exigimos a las o los responsables de esta campaña publicitaria contraria a los intereses de la ciudadanía que retiren de inmediato estas piezas y en el futuro promocionen su producto sin reforzar ni acentuar la misoginia ni la degradación de la mujer, que es también la degradación del hombre. Igualmente exhortamos a potenciales compradores del producto a abstenerse de hacerlo hasta tanto la Cerveza Draft modifique radicalmente sus pautas publicitarias. Quienes suscriben - Centro de Estudios de
la Mujer de la UCV editorial@amazonasdevenezuela.org |
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Published: Monday, July 04, 2005
Bylined to: Chris Herz
If a religiously manipulated state takes jurisdiction over the uterus...
VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: There is heated legislative discussion now underway among the Bolivarians and in the opposition over the question of abortion. This is also the big hot button issue between “liberals” and “conservatives” here in the North American republic.
Whether
or not a woman may be captain of her own body, and may for herself
decide whether or not, she is ready to assume the burden of twenty
years or so of parenting is the position of the one side.
And then the church and the other hierarchies wish to nationalize the uterus just as they wish to circumscribe and regulate all other aspects of life. They hold that sinful man (or woman) must be carefully controlled by their superiors and betters for the good of all.
And so they say that life begins at conception and the fetus must enjoy legal protection.
All kinds of extreme and rare examples are pushed into the public eye by each side: The proponents ask why a woman must bear a child, and then spend her life in care for a progeny of rape or incest. The opponents say that women will use abortion as a means of contraception (which they mostly also oppose). And that freely available abortion, like freely available contraceptives, encourages immorality and promiscuity. And of course they wish, honorably, to protect the life of a “child,” even if that child is no bigger than a few cells.
But the real issue is who owns us?
All of us, men and women alike. Let us say it plainly ... if a woman is incompetent to the ownership of her own uterus; if she is unable to responsibly manage her own reproductive and medical needs, surely she is also incompetent as a citizen too. She is thus clearly unable to take on the burdens of a state officer, or even to intelligently exercise the franchise. Thus the state must take charge of these things for her.
And if women are so deficient in judgment that a part of their bodies must pass under state stewardship, why then men must not be so great either; in no way are we superior to our sisters.
All will require the attentions and the control of their betters.
If a religiously manipulated state takes jurisdiction over the uterus, surely too, it may take a few cells from each of us, so that all our genes may be mapped, or insert a little chip under our skins so that it knows where we are at all times. All in the manner of a kind and loving parent ... or a big brother.
And of course here in the USA, the reactionary state possesses the technological resources, and the will, to do these things as soon as expedient, however fanciful this may seem to Venezuelans.
Obviously, you can see already the threads of my argument: I must criticize the women’s organizations who have brought up the matter in your parliament for not having the courage to declare their absolute sovereignty over their own bodies. And I have no patience for these worthies of the church and the country club, who seem to believe with hubristic sincerity that their own elite selves have the power to define for everyone what is true morality, what is legal.
We have practical problems too...
We live in a world which is approaching the Malthusian limits of its resources. We know that women have always in the past and will always in the future practice abortion. And certainly it is better that this be done under medical supervision rather than in back-alley abattoirs. And just as certainly the law has enough to do in the regulation of the violence and greed of men than in any of these matters which take place South of our underwear.
Furthermore, the “pro-life” types carefully stop their concern for other peoples’ children at birth: Here in the USA there is certainly no interest in these quarters in assuring the resources necessary to the proper care and nurture of children between birth and adulthood. This might mean they must pay a few more dollars in taxes. One may reasonably expect a similar situation in Venezuela.
Should the churches and other conservative interests be prepared to put their money where their mouths are, to make sure, for instance, that no woman must find the resources to raise a child alone, I for one, might listen a little more carefully to their moral strictures.
No normal woman ... in my experience ... undertakes lightly the termination of her pregnancy.
No normal man ... if he possesses either heart or conscience ... desires either to force her to have sex, or to force her to bear an unwanted child.
Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com
