Hollow Women of the Hegemon

Hollow Women of the Hegemon

By Dr. June Terpstra

3-8-08

This article is a call in honor of International Women’s Day warning the people not to follow the woman leader who stands by her hegemon. This is a call for new women leaders who will stand with men to resist and defend the people against tyrannical governments posing as democracies. This is a call to us all, women and men, to end the oppression of globalized debt based economics that funds all wars, profiting from state terror while fomenting all states of terror. The interlocking directorate of rulers who employ women leaders, such as Margaret Thatcher, Benizer Bhutto, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Corazon Aquino, Madeline Albright, Janet Reno, Condoleezza Rice, or Hillary Clinton, do so because they are loyal supporters to the men of the hegemon reveling in the greed, wars, invasions, occupations, and the New World Order. As such, they along with their power hungry husbands, fathers and brothers must be stopped.

Today’s women in power are focused on power for themselves “in solidarity” with the men of the hegemon. They neither represent the liberal feminists “ethic of care” or the revolutionary women’s demand for a radical reordering of society. Instead they have joined the front lines in the agenda to, as Kissinger stated, “depopulate” the women, men and children of the planet. They are power hungry women who want to be included in the process of “add women and stir” to the list of acceptable positions of power and profit of the hegemon.

Let us begin with Condoleezza Rice, who is said to be the most powerful woman in the world today. She is a highly educated woman who fronts for the oil companies and bankers as a neoconservative secretary of state. Her stated ambitions for the sons and daughters of the people of the USA, red or yellow, black or brown, is to be the dead and wounded “investment” that the people make in the 21st century’s hundred year war. She says Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars and that the United States can still win a conflict that has been more difficult than she expected.

Rice represents a dramatic and symbolic historic shift in the way imperial monarchies, oligarchies and plutocracies worked in the past. The traditional paradigm was of the male military hawks working with Catholic Priests and the Protestant intelligentsia to con the public into feeding their boys to the military cannons profiting the kings, bankers and weapons manufacturers. Women in general and mothers in particular, historically decried wars and abhorred sending their sons to battle. Yet since WWII, we have Golda, Indira, Margaret, Benazir, Corazon, Madeline, and perhaps Hilary, if she becomes the President, all representing for the bankers, military complex and oil industries.

Here is hegemon’s historical array of women leaders urging their country’s children to die, and celebrating that suicidal military “service” to the Judeo-Christian god and plutocracy with college educations to the tune of cheesy “proud to be” country and western patriarchy songs. More young women — some married with infant children — are joining the US branch of terrorism training camps because they have been told they are “free to be all they can be” so “sign on” for training with a company and a unit that their government and corporations care nothing about as is evidenced in the jobs or healthcare they will never have. Those jobs were outsourced to India and the healthcare is too expensive.

Here is what has been and is preached by the hegemon’s women war lords who pose as government leaders:

“I know from the point of view of not just the monetary cost but the sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been invested in Iraq," Rice said.

“Bush would not ask for continued sacrifice and spending "if he didn’t believe, and in fact I believe as well, that we can in fact succeed", Rice said. Stand by your man, Condi!

Hilary Clinton was asked about the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and said in skillful doublespeak, "I have said that those are very rare but if they occur there has to be some lawful authority for pursuing that," she responded. "Again, I think the President has to take responsibility. There has to be some check and balance, some reporting. I don’t mind if it’s reporting in a top secret context. But that shouldn’t be the tail that wags the dog, that should be the exception to the rule."

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says, referring to a half million children dead in Iraq, more children than died in Hiroshima, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price—we think the price is worth it.”

“The significance of the Falklands War was enormous, both for Britain’s self-confidence and for our standing in the world. Since the Suez fiasco in 1956, British foreign policy had been one long retreat… Victory in the Falklands changed that. Everywhere I went after the war, Britain’s name meant something more than it had, ” Thatcher says in her memoirs.

Or the O.G., Golda Meir, who once put it: "… we cannot forgive you for making us kill your children."

As is evidenced today, women’s participation in the military industrial complex is embedded in every way. Legislation for the draft submitted after 2001 explicitly defined both men and women of the ages between 18 and 26 as “conscripted” for military service. In 2004 women, including a woman general, officers and grunts stationed at Abu-Ghraib prison in Iraq are on trial for torturing Iraqi men, women and children. One of the women of Abu-Ghraib had also been accused of torture in Afghanistan.

Media and educational systems now include women experts and representatives of legal organizations such as the National Organization of Women are quick to appear publicly to criticize women’s oppression in Middle Eastern countries. These accusations become part of the rhetoric of American women’s liberation under “American democracy” fronting as an excuse for US invasion and occupation. The hegemon uses the subject of women’s oppression selectively when stirring up sentiment for war against Muslims and Arabs. Without consulting Arab and Muslim women about their purported oppression, or only consulting exiled women who are agents and assets of the US state, there occurs a double form of imperialism and racism perpetrated by the American women “experts.”

While ignoring the statistical realities of the obscene numbers of women raped, beaten and killed by men in the USA these “experts” are used to gain women’s support for war. As women in the USA support war under the guise of democracy and liberation a divisive diversion is wedged between women and men who are resisting hegemonic invasion and occupation. Visible token women leaders clucking sanctimoniously over “women’s rights” as bombs are being dropped on their “sisters” are examples of Western feminist “success” within the hegemon; women such as Margaret Thatcher, Corazon Aquino, Condoleezza Rice and Hilary Clinton.

The hegemon makes and breaks the rules that govern domestic global political and economic relations by controlling most of the research, legal and governing international institutions. Women’s increased participation and support in these institutions is crucial for continued maintenance of the hegemon. Whether in media, education, government, or corporations, women play critical roles as leaders, managers and foot soldiers paving the way as role models for future obedient leaders and workers for the hegemon. As the hegemon minimally provides for the needs of its poorest women the illusion of equal opportunity and equity is fostered when a Hilary and Condi take the stage together.

In the same pattern in which Fanon described the desire of the “native” for the white man’s power so do many women of the world desire the power of their master’s. Desiring the master’s power is the opposite of desiring liberty. Liberation and resistance means desiring freedom, it is struggle, and the struggle requires we build ties by nurturing the desire for liberty in each specific situation. The historical tragedies of torture and genocide now are commandeered by the “powerful” women allowed to act as overseer for the global masters.

Resistance to the state terror of the New World Order (NOW) carries even greater risks than those posed by the danger of the car bomb or dynamite rigged vest. The US combatant has left their humanity at the boot camp door. A moment’s hesitation costs innocent lives, like the four doctors allegedly killed by one of my students at an Iraqi checkpoint or the 14 year-old girl raped by the US combatant who laughs about it on You Tube. One could be the next innocent victim rendition to Poland or incarcerated by the NYPD in an asbestos laden condemned warehouse on the docks.

Our failure to hesitate to stop these leaders has a price here and there. As more women and children are recruited by their women leaders more defenseless women and children will be tortured, shot and killed. It is all part of the grand depopulation plan of the US lords of war. All the hegemon’s boys and girls are to follow the "harsh arithmetic of pain," whereby civilian casualties on both sides "play in their favor," the favor of the ruling class that is. They like to pose that democracies lose, both politically and emotionally when they kill civilians, even inadvertently. Yet, the state terrorists are dropping bombs on civilians from Somalia to Iraq killing numbers thousands weekly, far surpassing the numbers killed by the bits of dynamite strapped to the resistance fighters vest.

Since WWII women in power have been agents and assets for the state and the corporations behind the state. With a clear political agenda they are caught up in the tendencies and values of imperialism. They revel in the hegemon and in the benefits that come with rising to the top of it. So total is hegemony now established over the mind and spirit of American women who almost never perceive it at all, striking the mind as ‘normal” as capitalism markets the “uncovered” woman who is “free to be” having “sex in the city” buying $400 shoes (even when her historical people are drowning in New Orleans) because she is “worth it.”

It will come as no surprise to the people that the answer to the question “who benefits” from these women leaders is the “new world order”. I refer here to the term “new world order”, by which I mean the globalizing hegemonic force, as announced by George Herbert Walker Bush on the eve of “declared” war against Iraq in 1991. The hegemon benefits the most from women’s leadership and if it did not, they would not be there.

People who are standing with the oppressed and for liberation need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively and fairly with these dangerous realities of the new gender and color blind imperialism . We cannot simply wait until the next generation of sons and daughters decide to follow a Condi’s or a Hillary’s demands for more cannon fodder. We must stop these leaders, whether female or male, before they export their perverted propaganda, their sick and dangerous militaristic terrorism, their culture of death to the children and grandchildren here so they do not spread it to the children and grandchildren over there.

Those of us who are dedicated to ending the terrorism and imperialism of the hegemon need new rules, strategies and tactics to deal effectively with the dangerous realities of US military aggression here and abroad. We cannot simply wait until another son or daughter of people decide to follow the leader’s con jobs and deceptions. We must stop this madness of pre-emptive war games and the Judeo-Christian culture of death that the leadership of the hegemon, male, female, GLBT, left, right, red or yellow, black or white, is spreading from sea to poisoned sea.

June Scorza Terpstra, Ph.D. is an activist educator and university lecturer in Justice Studies, Criminal Justice and Sociology. She has founded numerous programs for homeless, abused, youth and oppressed people in the USA. She is presently teaching courses on Law and Terrorism, Social Justice, Resistance, Criminology, and Juvenile Justice. She is a former Community Research Fellow and doctoral graduate of Loyola University Chicago.