Salon.com > International Affairs

Thatcher: A female icon, but not a feminist one

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:44:00 +0000

There have always been women like Margaret Thatcher in power. Never more than one or two at a time, of course. Thatcher was the embodiment of what Katha Pollitt memorably called "the Smurfette syndrome," which is when "a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined." She was not a feminist icon, nor any kind of feminist, as she took pains to remind people. "Some of us were making it before women's lib was even thought of," she once sniffed. To make it any more obvious, she might as well have literally kicked the ladder out from under her.

For decades, Thatcher's gender provided some public relations cover for her most noxious politics. That was true even today in the White House's statement on her death, which included the following treacly sentence: "As a grocer’s daughter who rose to become Britain’s first female prime minister, she stands as an example to our daughters that there is no glass ceiling that can’t be shattered."

Post-Chávez, a new Venezuela?

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 15:00:00 +0000

On live television, Venezuelan Vice-President Nicolás Maduro choked on his words. Hugo Chávez, the improbable President, born in the rural poverty of Sabaneta, in the state of Barinas, in 1954 had died of cancer. To his wealthy and light-skinned enemies he was evil incarnate. To many impoverished Venezuelans, his contradictory and eclectic ideology – a labyrinthine blend drawing on the thought of nineteenth century Simón Bolívar and Ezequiel Zamora, twentieth century left-military nationalism and anti-imperialism, Soviet-inflected, bureaucratic Cuban socialism, social Christianity, pragmatic neostructuralist economics, and currents of socialism-from-below — made a good deal of sense at least insofar as he had come from origins like theirs and had made the right sort of enemies.

The international legacy of the Venezuelan president for sections of the Left has been tarnished by his appalling support of Gaddafi, al-Assad, Ahmadinejad, and the Chinese state. But to begin there for an understanding of the profound resonance of his death for the millions upon millions of Venezuelan and Latin American victims of colonial rule, capitalist exploitation, and imperial humiliation would be to resolutely miss the point.

Hundreds arrested in child pornography probe

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 19:14:00 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 200 adults have been arrested in an international investigation of child pornography, Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Thursday.

The agency's director, John Morton, said 123 child victims were identified during the five-week investigation, which ended in early December. ICE and local authorities found 110 victims in 19 U.S. states, while the others were living in six countries elsewhere.

Morton declined to provide specific details about which foreign countries were involved, saying only that there were some cases in Mexico.

The investigation, dubbed "Operation Sunflower," was part of ICE's effort to find and rescue victims, and arrest abusers and people who make or transmit child pornography.

"We have to attack child exploitation relentlessly and together. There is no other way, there is no other answer," Morton said. "It is a wrong among wrongs. We are literally defending the defenseless."

Morton also announced arrest warrants for two unidentified adults charged in Los Angeles with molesting a girl who appeared in online photos to be about 13 when she was abused. The man and woman were identified only as "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" and authorities believe they may have been in the San Fernando Valley area north of Los Angeles when they abused the girl. Photos of the abuse investigators found online are believed to be about 11 years old, Morton said.

Egypt’s Morsi defends new powers

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 18:33:00 +0000

Few leaders have faced such an intense public opinion whiplash as Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Less than a week after basking in international praise for his role in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, he faces criticism at home and abroad for weakening the judiciary and, critics say, granting himself dictatorial powers.

In an effort to quell the criticism, the BBC reports that Morsi released a statement that, "Reiterates the temporary nature of those measures, which are not intended to concentrate power, but to avoid ... attempts to undermine democratically elected bodies and preserve the impartiality of the judiciary. "