PALIN

PALIN DOES NOT SUPPORT IRANIAN WOMEN

For all the people who get excited about Palin's so-called "support" of women's rights and democracy in Iran, I would like to refer you to how Ahmadinejad is a huge supporter of human rights and democracy in the US!! Isn't he accusing Bush of oppressing other people and doesn't he criticize how democracy is not perfect in the US "because you have only two parties"

but do you believe him? do you really think he cares about human rights and democracy in the US? Then why do you think Palin gives a crap about women's rights and demcoracy in Iran?! Do you think the Bush government cared about women's rights in Iraq? Go read about what has happened to Iraqi women after the war and whether women's rights were improved or became HUGELY worse.

So DON'T TELL ME THAT PALIN CARES ABOUT IRANIAN WOMEN. How can you care about Iranian women and be against women's rights in your own country?

Please take a little time to

Please take a little time to look at this 30 second clip. I am interested to know your opinions regarding it. I view it as a clear outline of the Iranian regime and how Senators McCain and Obama would treat it differently.

Are these quotes representative of Sen. Barack Obama?
If they are, do you support these views?

Whatever you think of this video, it is a clear example of how Sen. McCain will have an offensive foreign policy platform as opposed to Obama's defensive one.

In my opinion this is what B. Hussein Obama believes. I disagree with him, and I disagree strongly, but I will try not to insult him. Many people, including myself, view him as under-qualified to be president. Especially when taking his 'present' votes in the IL state senate into account. He is a respectable human being, especially because he admitted his mistakes on the O'Reilly Factor, but so is Senator McCain. Sen. Obama's social policies are very out-of-touch with "White middle America" who is pro-life and anti-gay marriage. Obama opposed something similar to the Born Alive Infants Act in the IL State Senate. Also, Obama opposed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Sen. McCain supported. Obama is for the radical redefining of marriage. This is our chance to also take back the supreme court. Regarding Senator McCain's economic policy, I believe it is truly brilliant! He will cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. 35% is the second highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Only Japan's is higher. Also, for those of you who do your own taxes and know, Sen. McCain will increase the dependent exemption from $3,500 to $7,000. In addition, Sen. McCain will "tax-exempt" the amount of your income (up to a limit) that is paid, in any way, towards your insurance, whether you pay it or your employer does. All of this, in addition to making permanent President Bush's prodigious tax-cuts and fixing loopholes such as cell phone taxes and internet taxes, will be sure to keep our low inflation and HIGH GDP growth rate.

Ey Irandokht cheshm ahoo

If we want to think on conspiracy stuff, yes you are quite right. But the way I see it mullahs are getting along fine with Russia, China and whole lot of South American countries with socialist governments (whatever happened to nah sharghi nah gharbi).
And US is getting along with Saudi Arabia and other dictators around the globe.

Both Iran and US are populated by simpletons who buy the garbage they are told.

After all, Shah said no more oil for blue eye people and US decided to oust his regime, right? ;)

Anonypishi

Why would you say they don't get along? They've been helping one another stay in power with their little game haven't they?

someone said: maast o maahi ro ba ham nakhor ba ham nemissazan, taraf goft: ettefaghan khoob ham ba ham saakhtan, daran pedareh mano dar miyaran...

IRANdokht

Palin attended 5 colleges in

Palin attended 5 colleges in 6 years till she got her journalism degree. I bet she could not find Iran on the map before all this started but she can see Russia from her house.
Palin repeats the speech that was written for her and somebody can paste it on her blog. I’m sorry but people who are advocating teaching of creationism in schools and act crazy don’t appear so bright to me. She is a joke and sadly 50% of Americans are looking up to her. She is getting special treatment on debate with Joe Biden, the qustions and answers have to be short because she does not have the experience like Biden. Souldn't she go back to Alaska and shoot some wolves from her plane?
Free Levi
Free Levi
FreeLevi.org

Palin spoke out for Iranian Women

It's time to give credit when credit is due regardless if you are pro Dems or Rep.

check out this blog:

//www.governorpalin.blogspot.com

Re: Palin remark on Iranian women

Both Palin and Ahmadinejad are anti-women. I always wonder why republicans and mullahs don't get along, surely they think alike.

Gov. Palin remark about Iranian Women..

Here is an excerpts of Gov. Palin remark about Iranian people women today. The only American politician who have mentioned Iranian women:

Excerpts:

Not even Iranian citizens are safe from their government's threat to those who want to live, work, and worship in peace. Politically-motivated abductions, torture, death by stoning, flogging, and amputations are just some of its state-sanctioned punishments.

It is said that the measure of a country is the treatment of its most vulnerable citizens. By that standard, the Iranian government is both oppressive and barbaric. Under Ahmadinejad's rule, Iranian women are some of the most vulnerable citizens.

If an Iranian woman shows too much hair in public, she risks being beaten or killed.

If she walks down a public street in clothing that violates the state dress code, she could be arrested.

But in the face of this harsh regime, the Iranian women have shown courage. Despite threats to their lives and their families, Iranian women have sought better treatment through the "One Million Signatures Campaign Demanding Changes to Discriminatory Laws." The authorities have reacted with predictable barbarism. Last year, women's rights activist Delaram Ali was sentenced to 20 lashes and 10 months in prison for committing the crime of "propaganda against the system." After international protests, the judiciary reduced her sentence to "only" 10 lashes and 36 months in prison and then temporarily suspended her sentence. She still faces the threat of imprisonment.

Link: //www.nysun.com/opinion/palin-on-ahmadinejad-...

Male Hierarchy

For Palin, It’s a (Christian) Man’s World

Posted on Sep 14, 2008

AP photo / Al Grillo (CAPTION OF THE PHOTO)
The Wasilla Assembly of God church in Alaska. In June, Gov. Sarah Palin, now the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket, told ministry students at her former church that the U.S. had sent troops to fight in Iraq on a “task that is from God.”

By Chris Hedges

Sarah Palin may be a governor and a vice presidential candidate, but in the hyper-masculine world of the Christian right, she is subservient to a male hierarchy that claims to speak for God.

A cult of masculinity defines the Wasilla Assembly of God church and the Juneau Christian Centre where she worshipped. This cult propagates a vision of the world where believers are warriors. They are taught to ready themselves to engage in a final cataclysmic clash with the forces of Satan. This cosmic struggle, infused with the language of war, death and violence, leads inevitably to the slaughter by the righteous of all non-Christians. The photos of Palin hunched over dead animals she has shot are not simply images of a woman who is a member of the National Rifle Association. They are images of a woman who believes violence against nonbelievers is ultimately part of her religious life.

The cult of masculinity is used to banish ambiguity, especially sexual ambiguity. It fosters a world of binary opposites: God and man, the saved and the unsaved, the church and the world, Christianity and secular humanism, and male and female. All in life is rigidly defined. Disorder and chaos are banished. Reality, when it is defined in these absolutes, is predictable and understandable, something deeply comforting to believers who have often had trouble coping with the messiness of human existence.

All configurations of human life that do not conform to the rigid Christian model, such as homosexuality, are forms of disorder, tools of Satan, and must be abolished. This is why Palin opposes gay marriage and calls for gays to be cured. A world that can be predicted and understood, a world that has clear markers, can be made rational. It can be managed and controlled. The petrified, binary world of fixed, immutable and established roles is a world where people, many of them damaged by bouts with failure and despair, can bury their chaotic and fragmented personalities. They can live with the illusion that they are strong, whole and protected. Those who do not fit into these narrow definitions must be proselytized and converted.

The decline of America is ascribed to the decline of male prowess. This decline has led to weakness and moral decay. It has resulted in a bewildering human and social complexity that, often seen as feminine, is the work of Satan. This is why Palin consistently celebrates "male" values.

James Dobson, one of Palin's most ardent supporters, has built his career on perpetuating these rigid male stereotypes. On his Family.org Web site he discusses "the countless physiological and emotional differences between the sexes." The article "Gender Gap?" on the Web site lists the physical distinctions between man and woman, including strength, size, red blood cell count and metabolism. For a woman, Dobson writes, love is her most important experience: Love gives woman her "zest," it makes up her "life-blood," it is her primary "psychological need." Love holds less meaning in a man's life than a woman's -- though a man can appreciate love, he does not "need" it.

"Genesis tells us that the Creator made two sexes, not one, and that He designed each gender for a specific purpose," Dobson goes on. And these differences mean different roles: They mean the man is the master and the woman must obey.

"One masculine need comes to mind that wives should not fail to heed. It reflects what men want most in their homes. A survey was taken a few years ago to determine what men care about most and what they hope their wives will understand. The results were surprising. ... What [men] wanted most was tranquility at home. Competition is so fierce in the workplace today, and the stresses of pleasing a boss and surviving professionally are so severe, that the home needs to be a haven to which a man can return. It is a smart woman who tries to make her home what her husband needs it to be."

Dobson says that to achieve this tranquility wives have to be submissive. He instructs the husband in how he "should handle his wife's submission" and goes on in Family.org to insist that " ... submission is a choice we make. It's something each one of us must decide to do. And this decision happens first in the heart. If we don't decide in our hearts that we are going to willingly submit to whomever it is we need to be submitting to, then we are not truly submitting." The choice not to submit to the male head of the household, Dobson makes clear, is a violation of God's law.

By disempowering women, by returning them to their "proper" place as a subservient partner in the male-dominated home, the movement creates the larger paradigm of the Christian state. The men's movement Promise Keepers, which at its height a decade ago drew tens of thousands of men into football stadiums, called on men to "take back" their role as the head of the household. The movement used the verse from Ephesians that calls on wives to "be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord" (5:22). Women were not allowed to attend the events, although some could volunteer at concession stands outside. The founder of the group, former Colorado football coach Bill McCartney, called the movement's battle against abortion the "Second Civil War" and lambasted gays and lesbians as "stark raving mad." He dismissed gays and lesbians as "a group of people who don't reproduce, yet want to be compared to people who do reproduce, and that lifestyle doesn't entitle anyone to special rights." The organization mounted campaigns such as "Real Men Matter," in which men were instructed to recover their maleness in a "morally-bankrupt, godless society." The goal of the movement, strongly supported by Dobson, was to help men regain their place in society. And while Promise Keepers is on the wane, its agenda is embedded in the Christian right.

In the mega-churches, the pastor, nearly always male, is obeyed by the congregation. It is the pastor who interprets the word of God. It is why Palin, along with Alaska Lt. Gov. Scott Parnell, went to be publicly blessed before some 6,000 congregants by Wasilla Assembly of God’s Head Pastor Ed Kalnins. It is why she calls Kalnins, who claims that some parts of the globe are controlled by demons and that family curses can be passed down through generations, for guidance and advice. He is her male conduit to a male God. The male leader in this belief system governs through a divine mandate. He can heal the sick. He can speak in tongues. He can prophesy. And if Palin wants to remain in God’s favor, she must be guided by men like Kalnins.

The movement builds concentric male fiefdoms. They radiate out from the home. They do not permit revolt, discussion or dissent. And women who buy into the paradigm, one that supposedly protects their families, makes their boys into men, their husbands into protectors and themselves into Godly Christian women, cede most of their personal, political and economic power. Those who are weak or different, those who do not conform to the stereotype, those who have other ways of being, must be forced by the stern father to obey. If they do not they will be destroyed by God.

The religious leaders that Palin admires, such as Dobson, are petty despots. They travel on private jets, have huge personal fortunes and descend on the faithful surrounded by a retinue of burly bodyguards. These little kingdoms, awash in the male leadership cult, mirror the America they seek to create. In this America, there is no questioning. In this America, followers surrender their personal and political power. The divinely anointed male leader rules a flock of obedient and submissive sheep. All must hand over their freedom. All must cease to think independently.

The simple-minded earnestness on the part of believers such as Palin gives the Christian mass movement its sense of sincerity and decency. Believers are not brainwashed. They are not mindless automatons. They are convinced that what they are doing is Godly, moral and good. They work with the passion of the converted to bring this Christian goodness to everyone, even those who resist. They believe that what they promote is moral and beneficial. They fear for their own souls and they fear for the souls of those who remain unsaved. This earnestness, although employed for frightening ends, is a powerful part of Palin’s attraction. She is willing to make great personal sacrifices for the cause of Christ. But nonbelievers, in the end, have no place on her moral map.

Danuta Pfeiffer, who from 1983 to 1988 was the co-host on “The 700 Club” with Pat Robertson, was, on some level, the Palin of her day. She reached heights because of her celebrity status, usually reserved for men, although it was clear she always had a role subservient to Robertson’s. She was the first person to be allowed to lead the mandatory half-hour chapel service held before lunch at the Christian Broadcasting Network, where “The 700 Club” is filmed. She was sent to speak at national Christian women’s groups and later mixed audiences, numbering in the thousands, at several of the nation’s largest mega-churches.

Her reception at the gatherings she addressed was frightening. Crowds swarmed toward her. They asked her to touch them and heal them. Her status was nothing compared with that of Robertson, she said, “who stands for his followers as the embodiment of God’s conscience.”

“They were seeking a message, a healing, hope, a little encouragement,” she remembered. “They wanted a little piece of God. They thought I could give it to them. People wept when I prayed for them, touched them or hugged them. It was as if they were meeting a rock star.”

She was increasingly disturbed by the power that had been thrust upon her and the emotions unleashed by those who begged her for guidance. She understood how pliant these people had become and how cleverly they were being manipulated. The realization led her finally to leave the movement. Her experience was a window into how willingly followers hand over their conscience to these male leaders. Followers abandon all moral responsibility to obey those who elevate themselves to quasi-deities.

“They trusted us more than their family,” she said. “They thought we had a clearer path to God because we were on television. They thought we were on television because God put us there. We were prophets to these people. We were seen as people who could walk on clouds and heal and pray. We were God’s special messengers. Pat was seen as having the ear of God. He had words of knowledge that could identify their deepest fears and illnesses. We would identify people on the air by speaking about the color of their clothes or an illness they had. We would say, ‘There is a woman with a blue blouse crying at this moment. She has bad hearing in one ear. She is being healed right now.’ And viewers would claim these healings. They saw our presence on the show as a sign that we were anointed. They wanted to know how to live, how to operate on a daily basis, how to communicate with their family and friends, what jobs to get and how to interpret the world around them, even the daily news. They wanted every type of emotional, spiritual and physical information. We had this kind of authority over their lives. They abdicated their hopes and lives to us because we spoke for God.”

Palin enjoys the enthusiastic backing of the Christian right because she is blindly obedient to the male hierarchy. She does not question. She submits and obeys. Her views on abortion and marriage, on the Middle East, on gays and the war against Islam are precooked. They are handed to her by men who claim to speak for God. And in power she would be the perfect conduit for an ideology that seeks, in the end, to eradicate individual moral choice and replace it with subservience to a terrifying Christian fascism.

Chris Hedges, who graduated from seminary at Harvard Divinity School, is the author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.”

‫نخیر،

‫سارا پالین یک خر است با رُژی قرمز بر لبان.

Lipstick on a Wing Nut

Lipstick on a Wing Nut
//www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/pollitt

By Katha Pollitt

This article appeared in the September 29, 2008 edition of The Nation.
September 10, 2008

John McCain chose the supremely under-qualified Sarah Palin as his running mate partly because she is a woman. If you have a problem with that, you're a sexist. She talks incessantly about being a mother of five and uses her newborn, Trig, who has Down syndrome, as a campaign prop. If you wonder how she'll handle all those kids and the Veep job too, you're a super-sexist. "When do they ever ask a man that question?" charges that fiery feminist Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, Palin, who went back to work when Trig was three days old, gets nothing but praise from Phyllis Schlafly, James Dobson and the folks at National Review, who usually blame all the ills of modern America on those neurotic, harried, selfish, frustrated, child-neglecting, husband-castrating working mothers. Even stranger, her five-months-pregnant 17-year-old, Bristol, gets nothing but compassion and respect from Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and others who have spent their careers slut-shaming teens for having sex--and blaming their parents for letting it happen.

If there were an Olympics for hypocrisy, the Republican Party would have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. And Palin would be wearing quite a few of them. It takes chutzpah for a mother to thrust her pregnant teen into the world's harshest spotlight and then demand the world respect the girl's privacy. But then it takes chutzpah to support criminalizing abortion and then praise Bristol's "decision" to have the baby. The right to decide, and privacy, after all, are two of the things Palin wants to deny every other woman, and every other family, in America. Palin's even said she would "choose life" if her daughter was pregnant from rape. Can't you just hear Bristol groaning, "Mo-om...!"

The Republicans bashed Barack Obama as a "celebrity," but now they've got a star of their own, so naturally the rules have changed. Nothing would suit them better than for the media to spend the next two months spellbound by the wacky carnival on ice that is the Palin family: Todd, aka the First Dude, the kids, Levi the hunky bad-boy dad-to-be--well, maybe not him so much after his expletive-adorned MySpace page briefly came to light ("I'm a fuckin' redneck"; "I don't want kids"--whoops). The snowmobiles, the moose burgers, the guns, the hair, the glasses that are flying off America's shelves (starting at $375 a pair, and she has seven). Fretting over the work/family issue alone should take up enough column inches to employ all the female journalists in America from now to next Mother's Day. And don't forget that op-ed staple, What Does This Mean for Feminism?

Well, I'm not playing. I don't care about Sarah Palin's family. I don't care if she's a good mother. I don't care if she's happily married, or who shops and who vacuums, or who takes care of the kids while both parents are at work. I don't want her recipe for caribou hot dogs, either. Life chez Sarah and Todd might make an adorable sitcom (Leave It to Jesus?) or a scathing tell-all a decade or so down the road (Governor Dearest?). Either way, so what? This is an election, not The View. As for feminism's meaning, what can you say after you've said that her career shows that even right-wing fundamentalist women have taken in feminism's message of empowerment and that's good, but that Palin's example suggests women can do it all without support from society and that's bad?

Count me as a feminist who never believed that being PTA president meant you could be, well, President. The more time we spend on dippy ruminations--how does she do it? Queen Bee on steroids or the hockey mom next door? how hot is Todd, anyway?--the less focus there will be on the kind of queries that should come first with any vice presidential candidate, and certainly would if Palin were a man. Questions like:

- Suppose your 14-year-old daughter Willow is brutally raped in her bedroom by an intruder. She becomes pregnant and wants an abortion. Could you tell the parents of America why you think your child and their children should be forced by law to have their rapists' babies?

- You say you don't believe global warming is man-made. Could you tell us what scientists you've spoken with or read who have led you to that conclusion? What do you think the 2,500 scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are getting wrong?

- If you didn't try to fire Wasilla librarian Mary Ellen Baker over her refusal to consider censoring books, why did you try to fire her?

- What is the European Union, and how does it function?

- Forty-seven million Americans lack health insurance. John Goodman, who has advised McCain on healthcare, has proposed redefining them as covered because, he says, anyone can get care at an ER. Do you agree with him?

- What is the function of the Federal Reserve?

- Cindy and John McCain say you have experience in foreign affairs because Alaska is next to Russia. When did you last speak with Prime Minister Putin, and what did you talk about?

- Approximately how old is the earth? Five thousand years? 10,000? 5 billion?

- You are a big fan of President Bush, so why didn't you mention him even once in your convention speech?â?,

- McCain says cutting earmarks and waste will make up for revenues lost by making the tax cuts permanent. Experts say that won't wash. Balancing the Bush tax cuts plus new ones proposed by McCain would most likely mean cutting Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security. Which would you cut?

- You're suing the federal government to have polar bears removed from the endangered species list, even as Alaska's northern coastal ice is melting and falling into the sea. Can you explain the science behind your decision?

- You've suggested that God approves of the Iraq War and the Alaska pipeline. How do you know?

na

Na kheirrrrrrrr, oo yek olagh asst, yek nafahm, yek harze gooye gaav mish messle bishtare jomhoori khahan.
be rahati mishavad goft ke faravardeye akhoondism hasst.

Dar dorogh gooyee va bache pass endakhtan mahar asst va bass.

Thank you dear Roja

very well researched and clear argument on Palin's feminism stands.

The problem is not that she's not a feminist, there are a lot of decent women who are not describing themselves necessarily as a feminist, but instead as women looking for equal rights/equal pay etc... Palin is not even that.

The problem with Palin is that she's anti-women movement.  She is against everything women have fought for, accomplished and stand for.

She's a republican dude with lipstick.

IRANdokht