People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are.

Francela Méndez, the tenth trans woman to be murdered in El Salvador this year

People do not ‘become’ transgender. They just are.

Trans people are assaulted, insulted, vilified, denied their existence and human rights, and murdered, every day, but that’s not what makes them transgender. Although trans people are disproportionally the victims of assault, we now know that Gender Identity is innate. Assaults cannot cause innate identities, by definition. And by the same definition, all the abuse the patriarchy throws at them will not unmake a trans person.

Rape, which is one form of assault, is not about sex, it is about subjugation and control. Women, trans people, gay men are raped by men because they don’t conform to the kind of stereotypes that ignorant men (by and large) think should apply to everyone. Trans people are raped because they are trans. It doesn’t ‘make them’ trans.

To put that another way, people are raped by the agents of the patriarchy because the patriarchy desires conformity, detests women and utterly loathes those whom it sees as rejecting it — which anyone of non-binary Gender Identity is, by definition, doing. These individuals destroy the very basis of the assumed binary that the patriarchy is based on: two sexes with two prescribed Gender Identities and two concomitant Gender Expressions. The whole of life decided by whether you have an ‘inny’ or an ‘outy’ at birth.

It is this that defines one’s status in the patriarchal pecking order: outy — highest status; inny, not so much. The patriarchy is predicated on insatiable misogyny and it expresses its anger at the challenge to that trans people represent by pathologising them, insulting, beating, raping and killing them, and by attempting to deny not only their right to exist but their very existence itself.

This anger is meted out on the victims in the most horrific ways imaginable: it goes way beyond rape, which is bad enough. Trans people are beaten, stoned, set on fire; they are shot, stabbed, beaten to death with shovels, drowned in toilet bowls. They are suffocated, scalped, have their eyes gouged out and are strangled. Their bodies are dumped in the desert, thrown in the trash, left on the street. These attacks do not ‘make people trans’. They are hate crimes that happen because people are trans.

Trans people are beaten, tortured and murdered by complete strangers, by the police, by the military, by religious authorities. If they run afoul of the law — even in the case of trans people seeking asylum in the US because their lives are in danger at home — they are incarcerated in male prisons where they are repeatedly, serially raped and may be killed. In 2012, in Dubai, a young trans woman, after being arrested for being trans, was raped not only by the other prisoners but the police themselves, was then hired out to other men to be raped, under the watchful eyes of her jailers. She escaped to tell her story; she was one of the very lucky ones.

Yet this year, when Jennicet Gutiérrez dared to heckle President Obama about the shocking abuse of trans people by the US government she was shouted down and. tellingly, amongst the most shrill voices in her denunciation were those of ‘gay’ men. The clear signal, now finally out in the open: the ‘gay’ movement couldn’t care less about trans people. It has achieved its end, now to hell with the rest.

Yet if anything, the success of ‘gay’ men in achieving the patriarchal recognition they have so long campaigned for, has seen an upsurge in transphobic hate crime, especially in the United States. The ongoing toll of transphobic murder — that is, for just being trans — worldwide, is hard to determine but it is known that it is at least 300 or so every year. One might have thought that, having had the support of the transgender community in their own struggle, ‘gay’ men might be ready to lend their shoulders to the wheel. Early indications are that we shall wait a long time to see that.

Francela Méndez. RIP. Almost certainly nothing will be done to find her killers. Trans people are murdered with impunity across the globe, with the approval of the patriarchy — and condoned by radfem extremists.

Trans lives are ended by those closest to them too: by their lovers, especially, by those they called their friends and perhaps most horrifically, by their immediate family: in 2014 in Rio de Janeiro an eight-year old girl called Alex confessed to her father that she was trans and he beat her to death. Can you imagine the terror of this poor, innocent little girl, savagely murdered by the man she had most right to expect would protect her? I can’t. But that is what transphobic violence does: it kills trans people, it doesn’t cause them to be.

.

One of the saddest things about the litany of hatred that is levelled at trans people by the patriarchy is the role cis-women play in it. In 2011 Teonna Brown, a cis-woman, pleaded guilty to assault and hate crime after savagely leading an attack on a transgender woman. The woman survived but was traumatised. Brown was convicted, the other attacker, also a cis-woman, 14, was sent to detention. In the murder of Gwen Araujo in 2002 in California, the court heard how the fatal attack was instigated by other women present, who were cis. Gwen’s murderers were convicted, but these women were never tried. I have personally seen cis-women deliberately and offensively misgender trans people — and misgendering is the first step towards violence.

But the insults of the ignorant, the bigoted and the uneducated is not the only expression of virulent transphobia from cis-women. There is a whole subculture of ‘feminists’ who make it their job to do as much damage as they can to trans women. Their leaders are people like Catherine Brennan, Julie Bindell, Suzanne Moore, Germaine Greer… people who adopt the mantle of liberalism, who claim to be ‘human rights activists’ — yet who would deny the very human rights they themselves demand to the most at risk and endangered group in society.

Their vile pronouncements, from behind a screen of academic faux-respectability, provide pseudo-philosophical justification for the torture, rape and murder of trans women. They are the agents of the patriarchy, abusing those weaker and less privileged than themselves in the hopes of being offered some scrap of privilege in return. Their hands may never have personally pulled a trigger that killed a trans woman, but they are as red as those that do.

If there is one light in this dark place it is that today, these so-called radical feminists — who are nothing more than the tools of the patriarchy — are rejected by mainstream feminism, which recognises that you cannot protest the lack of privilege the patriarchy awards you, while denying the same to a less privileged group. To do so would be — and is — sheer hypocrisy.

So if assault doesn’t ’cause’ transgender, what does? We know a lot more now than we did even a decade or so ago. The specific biological causes of transgender are still not fully understood but we now know that they are neurological in origin and that they are a normal part of human variation. Thus, listen up: being transgender is normal.

Whether the stimulus is genetic or environmental has not yet been established, but we can identify changes in brain structure that occur before birth, which rules out any notion of childhood conditioning; if environmental factors are the cause, then these happen in the womb. Trans people have been recorded in history since the invention of writing itself and a recent study in Thailand that showed that 20% of transwomen had one or more trans siblings. These, amongst other factors, strongly suggest a genetic cause which effects changes in the early development of the embryo. These cause the child to be born with the brain (not the mind) of one gender and the sexual organs of the other. Thus it is a form of transsex, a medical condition, and one that is very easily treated.

One does not ‘become’ transgender, any more than I ‘became’ white. One is born that way. Transgender is not made by domestic influence, parental behaviour, peer pressure, fashion or lifestyle. It’s just what some of us are. It’s innate.

How many other medical conditions lead to people being raped, burned, stoned, strangled, stabbed, shot, vilified, denied their human rights, imprisoned, executed and having their very existence questioned by bigoted academics and on-the make lawyers and scribblers?

I can’t think of a single one. Being attacked doesn’t make people trans, but not doing something about these attacks, or worse, condoning them, does make you transphobic, an abuser of the weakest in society and an agent of the patriarchy.

Shame on you.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post People don’t ‘become’ transgender. They just are. appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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We live in a world of terror.

Terror comes in many forms. There is state terror; organised terror which is not state-promoted (NGO terror if you like); and individual acts of terror which are nevertheless encouraged by religion. All of these have one end: to reinforce the patriarchy’s grip on society and they are almost all sanctioned by religion. While a half-century ago, Communist terror was a problem, with the collapse of the Soviet Union that died away: nearly all terror, in every form, present in the world today, is inspired by religion.

Individual acts of terror are where one or a small number of individuals, usually from a majority of some kind, kill, maim, beat, insult, deny service to or otherwise harm persons of another group in order to intimidate them. A good example would be violence against LGBT people. This is frequently a spontaneous act of terror by private individuals with little or no coordination. Yet it causes the deaths of hundreds of transgender women every year. We see the same in beatings of minority races, persons of colour and those who dare to speak out for freedom.

Most of this terror is encouraged by the rantings of deluded religious demagogues preaching hate against gays, trans people, blacks, Jews, women, you name it. What are the recent atrocities carried out in France but religious terror designed to suppress legitimate criticism of Islam? We saw it in Charleston but lately. We see it in the killings of doctors assisting women to assert their rights over their bodies. It is pervasive and religion is the cause of it.

In Muslim families, even in the UK, girls are terrorised from birth. An estimated 1200 forced marriages are carried out in the UK every year, with the mainly female visions of this abuse being told that to resist would mean beating, torture and death — for compromising the ‘honour’ of both her own and the groom’s family. And in these cultures, gay men are sometimes forcibly married, in order to ‘turn them straight’ — with the same caveat: to resist is to dishonour and for that you will die. And this makes no mention of the horror of circumcision, where children’s bodies are mutilated by adults in the name of religion.

We usually forget that 26% of the world’s population is under 15, with no vote, precious little representation and almost no defence against religious terror. This is inflicted directly by parental beatings, usually administered by men, absolutely mandated by religion, and through bullying by peers, acting on the same vile impulse. Taken together with women, we find that a majority of the world’s population are subject to terror by men on a daily, routine basis. Terror is a part of the lives and upbringing of most of the world’s population in other words, and it is sanctioned by religion. Islam even gives instructions as to how to beat and inflict terror.

Children are religious terrorists’ first victims, whether by mental abuse form pulpit or mosque, religiously sanctioned beatings or mutilations. Religion is the herald and enforcer of the patriarchy; terror is its stock-in-trade and violence, mutilation and killing are its tools.

Non -governmental, organised terror covers everything from the KKK to ISIS and all points in between. While maintaining shocking levels of individual terror within the group — witness the defenestration of gay men by ISIS — it promulgates terror against people outside the group. It includes Hamas, Al Qaeda and Boku Haram; but on the other hand we have the Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Church and many others. Only this week we have seen a Baptist ‘pastor’ incite his followers, yet again, to murder LGBT people. In Africa, the Anglican Church ha actively been promoting terror against the same group. And the Catholic Church continues its suppression of women by denying them the right to divorce abusive husbands. Terror being used to keep people in lione.

Remember Rwanda, where the terrorism was promoted by Christians and Srebrenica, where 8000 Muslim men and boys were taken out and murdered by Bosnian Serb nationalists, just because they were Muslim.

Just over the last month, we have yet again, in Northern Ireland, seen the UK’s largest sectarian organisation, the Orange Order, attack and attempt to intimidate Catholics — provoked by Protestant pastors. So far this year there have only been serious injuries but these include a little girl being driven over by an alleged Protestant in his car. She was trapped under it after he appeared to deliberately drive into a crowd of mainly Catholics (she survived, he was arrested.) The Orange Order has never hesitated to proclaim the religious justification for its violence towards and intimidation of anyone who opposes it. It is by definition a terrorist organisation and it is staggering that it has not been banned.

In Africa, Boku Haram has regularly shown the depths of its terrorist depravity, every last bit of it religiously inspired. Yet it is not alone. All across sub-Saharan Africa, religiously-motivated bigots with guns and no education, kill, beat and displace others, while death-squads from the same source terrorise LGBT people.

The appalling brutality of ISIS, ISIL, call it what you will has but one inspiration — religion. Its stated purpose is to fulfil the religious obligation placed on Muslims by the Qu’ran and turn the whole world into the Caliphate: and make no mistake, it will not stop until it is eradicated.

Why did Al Qaeda murder 4000 Americans on the 11 of September 2001? In the name of Islam. Just this month, 30 tourists were murdered in Tunisia — in the name of Islam: which its apologists call, lest we forget, the ‘religion of peace’.

Religiously-inspired state terror is widespread and commonplace. It includes killing, torturing and imprisoning LGBT people in Africa, the Islamic world and elsewhere. Throughout the Islamic world, women are routinely terrorised. Women in Iran are attacked, have acid thrown in their faces, are arrested and imprisoned — for not wearing the veil, the symbol of female subjugation in this miserable culture. This is pure terrorism.

In Saudi, women are subject to similar abuses, and are commonly beaten and executed, as are a whole list of persons who dare to oppose the state-backed religious hegemony in any way. To be LGBT in these terror states is to live in constant fear, and all because of religion. In Indonesia, special police squads enforce Shariaa on Muslims, imposing terror on anyone who has an Islamic name — even if they themselves have never been Muslim. Every nation where the evil code of Shariaa is in place and enforced, or even tolerated, is an example of religious state terror.

Despite the vociferous attempt by misguided liberalists to condemn Israel, its actions, even if they could be described as terror rather than the legitimate self-defence that they are, pale into insignificance compared to the Indonesian government’s actions in East Timor, for example, which was entirely a religiously-inspired state terror against Christians by Muslims. There is evidence of state-sanctioned terror against Muslims in Burma.

The United States, along with many other developed nations, has exported terror across the globe. In the 1970s and 80s, for example, the CIA, with collusion from the administrations of the day, supported fascist dictatorships in South America, and we now know, actively assisted their death squads in selecting and capturing their victims. This may not have been in the name of a specific religion, other than the extreme worship of capitalism, but behind it lies a core of religious justification that it is done in the name of ‘God’ and country.

But let’s look further back: what was Hitler’s principal justification for the Holocaust? Religion. Hitler was a lifelong Catholic and he knew that killing Jews would make him popular with Catholic Germans. This most egregious of terrors was perpetrated in the name of religion, and for his anti-Semitism, Hitler was warmly congratulated by the Pope.

Over the centuries, from the Muslim invasions of Europe and Asia to the Christian ones of the Americas and Asia, the brutal exporters of religious state terror all carried in their vanguard the crosses and crescents that justified the trail of blood and horror that they blazed.

In 1683 during the Siege of Vienna, the Muslim leader Kara Mustafa ordered the execution of 30,000 Christians who had been taken hostage. In the name of Islam.

In South America, rivers off blood ran as the Conquistadores imposed Christianity on a terrified population, using all the brutality of an imperial war machine. Exactly the same was done in the Philippines. Neither Christianity nor Islam have been spread by love, but by the sword and by religious terror that left countless dead.

But to come back to the present. There is one category I have not mentioned, did you notice? Rape is the most common form of terror on the planet. A woman is raped every six minutes in the USA. Worldwide the toll is astronomical and nearly all of it has some religious cause. Rape is not about sex, it is about subjugation — subjugation of women to men and society to the patriarchy, which has always used religion as its preferred method of control. We can’t have pastors out there raping women but they can, and do, impute that women, especially those who do not behave or dress in the ways they specify, are legitimate targets.

There is no doubt that Islamist terror is a major problem in the world today, and has been for decades. This cult of violence is probably the most important single promulgator of terror on every level, today.

But let’s not imagine that lets other religions off the hook. They are all, at root, social control systems that never hesitate to use violence and terror to further their ends. Underneath the smiling velvet glove of Islam — the ‘religion of peace’ and Christianity, ‘the religion of love’ is the iron fist of pure coercion through terror.

It will be a great day for humanity when they are all — every one — forgotten.

Many of these points are explored more widely in Why Men Made God.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post We live in a world of terror. appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Germany has destroyed the European Dream

Today I am spitting nails. I have not been as angry as this for 20 years. The last time I felt my blood boiling like this was in 1995, when Serbian nationalist gunmen entered the Bosnian town of Srebrenica and, with the collusion of the Dutch troops who were meant to protect them, took away 8,000 men and boys, murdered them ion cold blood and buried them in graves they had dug themselves.

That is how furious I am today.

And why? Because I have seen Germany destroy a weaker nation for political ends. I have seen Germany destroy all notion of European solidarity. I have seen Germany reveal its true self — the monstrous bully of Europe that cannot suffer dissent and insists that its orders must be followed, on pain of destruction.

In 1871 the failed. In 1914 they failed. In 1945 they failed — but defeating them cost 2n million lives and the destruction of Europe.

But in 2015 they have succeeded. They have finally achieved their end. They have crushed a sovereign nation, not with tanks and bombers, but with threats and banks.

We believed, in our innocence, that suffering appalling want for years after 1945 so that Germany could be reconstructed, was worthwhile because then, Germany would be a good European nation. Billions were poured into its economy and restructuring under the Marshall Plan, so that Germany would be a good European nation. Further billions were poured in for decades as NATO maintained vast armies along the Rhine — so that Germany would be a good European nation. We allowed Germany to re-unify, believing that it was, by then, actually a good European nation. For the same reasons we allowed it to organise an Exchange Rate Mechanism that favoured Germany by keeping the costs of its exports down, and we then even allowed them to change the name of that and call it a ‘currency union’ — which it is not.

Why did we do all this? Because we wanted Germany to be a good European nation and at the back of our minds, always, were those 72 million dead and the images of the horrors of Auschwitz.

And all of that, all of it, failed. Germany has revealed, one again, the ghastly monster of its true nature. It will stop at nothing to impose its will on others.

What is the deep, rotten cancer at the core of the German psyche that makes Germans think they have a right to tell others how to run their countries? What is the evil in their national character.? I wish I knew because as far as I can see we have done everything that could be done to appease them and the monster that corrupts their national soul.

And none of it was enough. None of it will ever be enough. Germany is the enemy, the enemy of freedom and democracy. It is the dark totalitarian vampire at the heart of Europe, that sucks the blood of liberty and will go on sucking it, until the continent is a dried out husk and freedom itself is dead.

It is too late now to demand forgiveness for errors past; to late to claim that the evils once done were then, not now, and that the sins of the parents should not be visited on the children. It is too late now to insist, yet again, that Germans have changed, because every single living German is guilty as charged in the indictment of the monstrous behaviour of their nation. A nation has been destroyed in their name and with their sanction. Democrcy has beenn snuffed out, because they allowed it, indeed, desired it.

Today’s Germans are are just as culpable as those who sent Jews to the gas chambers or who helped round up gays for execution. There is a rot at the heart of the German soul that we now must understand can never be cut out. If all the effort we have made to make them a civilised, good European nation over the last 70 years has failed, then there can be no hope. Germany is a beast that can never be treated with, and must instead be chained.

For me, this week has been a personal tragedy. I voted twice, in the 1970s, for the UK to join the EEC, as it was then. I believed in the dream of Europe. All thorough the 1980s and 90s, while the ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of Europe worried me deeply, I held on to my faith. I told myself that Europe was bigger than this, that it would be all right. I told myself how apt it was to choose ‘Ode to Joy’ as the European anthem, to express hope for a harmonious, democratic future.

After the millennium I went on believing; I had no interest, ever, in the euro project, an ill-favoured child from the outset, but despite the increasing evidence to the contrary, I told myself that the European commitment to peace, democracy and human rights counted for more than these worries.

This week, Germany pulled aside its mask and I saw how wrong I had been. The entire European project is nothing more than an attempt to turn the whole continent into a satrapy of Berlin. Just as in 1871, in 1914 and 1945. Every one of the German promises was a lie. It will accept our acquiesence in its Master Plan, but if we resist, it will bludgeon us until we surrender.

Just as it has done with Greece.

Oh, in the end, this had little to do with Greece, other than the public whipping of an errant child who dared disobey its master. The real message in the destruction and pauperisation of a tiny, weak, poor country, the message in condemning its children to starvation, is not for the Greeks. Germany doesn’t care about Greece. It’s just more beaches for them to clog up, more locals for them to be rude to.

The message is for the Italians and the Spanish and the Portuguese and the French, to show them what will happen to them if they aver dare to stand up against Germany. That is the real reason why the Greek nose had to be rubbed in urine — except, it’s not even Greek urine, but German.

Well, I say enough. Germany would like to be the economically-driven Gestapo of Europe, but we are still free. We can rally to the Greek side. We can shout from the rooftops, march in the streets, besiege the German Embassies and Consulates, telling them, you shall not do this.

We can boycott their services and products. Don’t buy German cars. Don’t patronise German shops. Let us see a Europe full of boarded-up Aldis and Lidls. German flags should be in flames all over Europe, their pyres surmounted by effigies of Merkel, Hitler’s true daughter.

We can flood the internet with our disapproval of their monstrous and unacceptable behaviour and we should challenge every German we meet, not with violence, but with a patient explanation of why their behaviour is not acceptable and that until they mend their ways, they are not welcome among us; that they should go home and tell their Chancellor that she has disgraced them both as Germans and Europeans, or accept that they really are the monsters they appear to be.

The European Project has no future now. It has been eviscerated, by Germany. Many people’s dreams, including mine, have been shattered. But we will live on.

Today is the 14th of July, Bastille Day, here in France. Today they will read off the roll of the sons of this tiny village who gave their lives for France to be free from the German monster. It is a fitting day to be reminded that Europe is once again under threat from it.

There’s a storm coming.

‪#‎ThisIsACoup‬

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Germany has destroyed the European Dream appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Probability? Get off my doorstep.

I had an unusual experience last week here at Mission Control in Darkest France. I was door-stepped by Evangelists. We don’t see too many of those round here. They were working a nice formula; he was older and avuncular, she was young and very attractive. She was chosen to hook the guys, he because he was not threatening to women.

Having the kind of debate one has with Evangelists is a little harder in French than it is in English, at least for me, but I think I did OK. She seemed to like the bit about stardust…it’s nice and romantic.

He, however, brought up the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is etc etc’ canard. This is meant to show that the probability of Earth’s existence is so low that there must be magic, or as they would prefer, Divine Intervention, involved. Richard Dawkins debunks this in ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ very nicely and I recommend it.

It’s a bogus argument because it proceeds in the wrong direction: we are already here. There is no probability about it. The actual probability of the Earth being where it is, is 1:1 or 100% because that is where it actually is.

But this got me to thinking and I did a little thought exercise. What would the probability of any one of us being born when and where we were?

That led me to do a brief Google and Hey Presto what do you know? I found myself at the blog of an author called Ali Binazir.

Ali addresses a slightly less extreme calculation by removing the specific location and time of birth, but it still works. It’s definitely worth a read and he also put up an excellent graphic which shows exactly what the odds are, and his method but here’s what he says in his own words:

‘Probability of your existing at all: 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000

As a comparison, the number of atoms in the body of an average male (80kg, 175 lb) is 10 to the power 27. The number of atoms making up the earth is about 10 to the power 50. The number of atoms in the known universe is estimated at 10 to the power 80.

So what’s the probability of your existing? It’s the probability of 2 million people getting together – about the population of San Diego – each to play a game of dice with trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice, and they all come up the exact same number – say, 550,343,279,001.’

(The exercise was based on the US population, but even if we used a global sample the figures would hardly change.)

If the probability of any individual human existing is  1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000 then statistically it is impossible for you to exist at all, in practical terms.

But this is a parlour game and that is exactly what the ‘statistical probability of Earth being where it is’ is too. The statistics say it’s impossible, and yet, here she jolly well is, and here we jolly well are too.

The point of this is to show that the logic being used is a nonsense. We are here, all of us. We are not a theoretical future being. The Earth is here and we are on it and we observe the universe from it. Using parlour games like this to show that this implies the existence of a ‘God’ is beyond risible. It’s right through the Tunnel of Stupid and out the other side into the Lake of Total Idiocy.

For the Anti-Apologist, it’s an amusing way to shoot down some of the more scientific-sounding Evangelists. However there are religionards who actually think that ‘God’ really does choose who shags whom and which sperm meets which egg. The Micro-Manager God, we might call this one. Definitely a deity with severe OCD.

The solution is simple: since we are now in the realm of statistics, what is the probability that an invisible man in the sky is hand (or Noodly Appendage) selecting every single sperm from every single ejaculation (including the moon-shots) and deciding which one will enter a specific vagina at the exact right moment and fertilise a particular ovum?

Well there you have it again — that is, by Ali’s method, 1 in 10 to the power 2,685,000.

So in other words, statistically, there is 33,562 times less chance of God doing that than there are atoms in the known universe.

Get off my doorstep. Even if you are cute.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Probability? Get off my doorstep. appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Germany, the bully of Europe

It’s not that often I agree with Suzanne Moore. So that has to be noteworthy for a start. I find myself agreeing with Joseph Stiglitz more often — and why not, I mean he is a Nobel Prize winner. I am pretty sure for all three of us to be in agreement is pretty exceptional though.

And what are we agreeing about? Germany’s atrocious, scandalous bullying of Greece, that’s what.

I am no fan of Margaret Thatcher, but her fears, expressed before Germany was re-unified, have proven correct: Germany is once again Europe’s bad-mannered thug, and it has begun to flex its muscles.

Of course it always was; three times in under 70 years, it invaded its neighbours and created havoc. (Okay, the first was technically Prussia, but that’s a detail.)

The last expression of its natural tendency to be King Rat caused 72 million people to be killed and Europe — as well as substantial other parts of the globe — was devastated. Well, after that one we got smart and took Germany’s tanks and bombers away.

So now they are using their financial power to do the same thing, bully and intimidate smaller countries. Last month we heard the head of the ECB — a German — ask that democracy in Greece should be suspended and a ‘technocrat’ appointed to run it instead. After all, we can’t have an annoyance like democracy getting the way of the Master Race’s plans now, can we? And freedom, what’s that?

Today we hear German Chancellor Angela Merkel insisting that no debt restructuring will be offered to Greece. If they cannot behave like good Germans — which is what, apparently, being European now means — then they can starve. If they wish for forgiveness they must kiss the jackboot of the goose-stepping schoolyard bully and thank it for not sweeping down the Danube and delivering the punishment in person. Except they can’t because we took away their tanks and bombers. Thankfully.

Well, this is where I agree with Stiglitz. It is Germany’s boneheaded insistence on ‘austerity’ that has ruined the Greek economy. And they are determined to reduce all Greeks to third-world status just to show what happens when you dare to stand up to the Master Race. Just like they did in 1914. And 1939. And that Franco Prussian entanglement.

As Stiglitz points out, Germany, after it ruined Europe and killed 72 million people, was given the BIGGEST BAIL-OUT IN RECORDED HISTORY. Its war reparations were written off. Of course none of the other European nations got this free hand-out because they –INCLUDING Greece — were the ones who gave Germany this gift.

Why did we do this? Because making Germany pay for the destruction it caused in the First World War was its reason for starting the Second World War. Better that the other European nations stayed on rations than give the Germans another excuse to do the same again, nein? I mean, 72 million is a lot of people.

Through the Marshall Plan, the US injected vast amounts of money to rebuild Germany — far more than any other state received. For decades, billions more were poured in as part of NATO defence policy. Germany was allowed to re-unite, although this immediately destabilised Europe — which the British and French attempted to defuse by pushing for enlargement of the Union.

Then, Germany was allowed to establish a fixed exchange-rate mechanism that favoured its own economy and ensured that the normal economic pressures, which would have cause its currency to rise and make its products less competitive were negated by the presence of weaker currencies in the group. This then became the euro — which is just another exchange-rate mechanism, not a currency union at all. That is why the Swedes, when asked, refused to join. The Swedes have a proud tradition of resisting German bullying.

And the euro has worked exactly as the Germans planned — it has sucked wealth out of the weaker economies and given it to Germany.

So Germany’s economic success is not because it’s thrifty or hard-working, but because everyone else has been pouring billions — trillions — into its economy for SEVENTY YEARS.

And now, big bully Germany would rather see Greeks starve than do the decent thing and write off the so-called ‘debt’ — mostly, by the way, in favour of German and French banks.

Greece should have none of it. It should leave the euro and go back to the drachma. The US Government has today made it clear: it will not let Greece fall. The IMF has said the same. The Greeks have nothing to fear. If they stick up for democracy, the bully of Europe cannot harm them.

Yet what a bitter taste it leaves, for once again — for the third time in a hundred years — a European nation needs the USA to save it from Germany.

And this is where I agree with Moore: I have always considered myself a good European. I still am. But if being a European means standing by and allowing this appalling behaviour on the part of the bully of Europe, then I want no part of it.

The UK will hold a referendum on EU membership within two years. Thanks to Germany, I will be campaigning for an exit. Maybe nobody will listen, but I will do my little best. It’s time to tell the schoolyard bully to go off and stand in the corner in shame, alone.

The last time we had to stand up to Germany and its shocking behaviour was 1939. It looks like we’ll have to do it again. And we have discovered something — taking away its tanks and bombers has not made Germany a good European.

Very, very far from it. Enough already.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Germany, the bully of Europe appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Greece in Overwhelming Vote for Democracy.

With 15% of the vote now counted, Greece looks set to vote ‘NO’ in its referendum by an ‘overwhelming’ majority of a huge turnout.

We should all congratulate and thank Greece. It has set itself up as a beacon of hope and democracy against the unelected suprastate that would crush it and further enslave it to the failed model of ‘austerity’.

The economic competency of the Germans and the French, the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund has been shown, by far better economists than I, to have been about the level of a bunch of schoolchildren. Greece was forced into unnecessary recession and at the same time expected to make huge loan repayments in order to serve the political ends of Germany and France. The consequence has been an even greater Depression than that which afflicted the USA in the 1930s, with over 25% unemployment and hardship that no-one else in Europe would put up with.

And that is why it has been so important for the lenders to break tiny Greece. Because when they come for you, they don’t want you to think that there’s any way out. They don’t want you to realise that states are sovereign and can just tear up debts. At the moment their targets are Italy and Spain; they dread the consequences if these two states were to tear up their loans and tell their lenders to raffle themselves — which they are perfectly entitled to do. But make no mistake, these people, Merkel, Hollande, Juncker and Lagarde  are out to destroy democracy and the sovereignty of the people, and concentrate power in the hands of oligarchs, bureaucrats, and completely unaccountable quangos and corporations.

Iceland proved them wrong and they have been very quiet about that. But they won’t be able to keep quiet about Greece.

The Greek economy is actually in surplus, by about 2%, if we discount the loan repayments. It is not Greece’s economy or its economic management that is at fault, but the slavish insistence of the European anti-democratic hegemony on ‘austerity’.

Well, it looks like Greece has given these economic bullies a kick in the testicles that they will remember.

It should now declare that all the debt is suspended. It should declare a repayment holiday with no interest increment. It should invite China to invest hugely in its infrastructure and tourism economy. It should print drachmas and float them. And it should continue to tell the anti-democratic hegemony that governs Europe that its day is done.

And then we should all do the same.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Greece in Overwhelming Vote for Democracy. appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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Why would a man not want to date a trans woman?

I’m motivated to write this because of an exchange on Quora last week, which I think is worth developing. The original question, essentially, asked how a man could avoid ‘accidentally’ dating a trans woman, because he ‘didn’t want that sort of woman’. That is both shockingly transphobic and misogynistic and here’s why.

There is a legitimate reason why one might not wish to date any person: lack of attraction or interest. We all respond to our inbuilt attractions and we don’t generally want to pursue, romantically, people who fall outside those. This is maybe a form of objectification, but everyone does it. It’s hardwired into us.

But that was not the point of the question, which was how one could avoid dating a trans woman if one were attracted to her. That’s a whole other can of worms. It’s about a man who finds a particular woman attractive and interesting enough to want to ask out on a date, but is afraid to do so in case she has — or used to have — non-standard genitalia.

That there is pure transphobia, open and shut. The questioner doesn’t even want to buy someone a drink on the very slim statistical possibility that that person might be transgender.

This mindset believes that men have a right to expect sex as a return for buying dinner, effectively, and would consider the discovery of a hitherto concealed penis (past or present) to be a default of this ‘bargain’. But that reduces women to sex objects that can be bought with a couple of meals (or maybe a cinema ticket or two, depending on how cheap we are talking) so it is intrinsically misogynistic AS WELL as transphobic.

Then it gets worse; having paid a woman sufficient attention for her to consent to have sex with him, the man presumes a right to expect her genitalia to be of a certain order. This is what leads to the increasing numbers of purely cosmetic labial removal surgeries, amongst other absurdities, and, in some benighted cultures, far worse.

But like it or not, men do not have this right. Women are not measured by their genitalia. Furthermore, being nice to a woman does not imply a sexual bargain of any kind whatsoever. No amount of movies or dinners can guarantee access to her genitalia, whatever they look like. This is coercive, and reduces women to walking genitalia to be bought by men. It is a primary underlying cause of rape: men are conditioned to think that women, in whom they have invested time and money, who then refuse sex are welching on the deal. Once again, transphobic and misogynistic.

Furthermore, this mindset can be lethal to trans women. I have just spent a week trying to support a friend who was agonising about whether she should tell a man who had been expressing serious hots for her, that she was trans. Of course I advised her to, but I hated myself for doing it, or rather having to. I had no choice because the transphobia inherent in the question can be deadly to trans women.

My friend was under no moral or ethical obligation to tell the man details about her genitalia; she’s a woman. IT SHOULD BE ENOUGH.

But in order to prevent her getting into a situation in which she might get killed, I had to say that she should inform this man about something that he had no right to know, at least at this stage. Because of transphobia, her genitalia suddenly became the only thing that mattered. So what if she’s gorgeous, smart, funny, talented, great company, affectionate, loyal and charming? Doesn’t conform to a rigid patriarchal expectation of women, so none of that matters and she had to cry herself to sleep over yet another guy who suddenly lost interest. Telling her that he’s a fool who doesn’t know what he lost out on seems small comfort.

The trouble is, in reducing this lovely woman to the contents of her pants, transphobia does the SAME THING to every other woman. They are also reduced to genitalia, and not just the genitalia they have now, the organs they were born with. Birth genitalia, in this viciously patriarchal world view, is all that counts. Therefore that’s all a woman is — genitals on legs. How staggeringly presumptuous and demeaning can it get?

If you don’t believe how dangerous the misogynistic, transphobic suggestion that men have a right to expect women’s genitalia to be a certain shape is, please Google ‘Jennifer Laude‘ or ‘Gwen Araujo’. Why would any young woman suffer like that? Because of transphobia, that’s why.

These, and countless thousands of other women like them,  were murdered by their lovers because of their patriarchally-conditioned expectations. And that is about as sick as it gets. Seduce a woman, achieve your desired end and then kill her because her genitalia don’t look like what your buddies say they should.

Not only is all this transphobic and misogynistic, it is profoundly cowardly because it is all about one thing: fear of penises — and even in the past tense. Big tough manly men indeed, so afraid of a few ounces of human flesh that they will bludgeon a woman to death after having sex with her. It is utterly despicable.

Of course, we would be remiss not to point out that suggesting that ‘transgender women are not women’ is directly transphobic too. We could go long into the subtleties of GRS and all the rest, but it would be irrelevant here: transphobia is transphobia, non, pre or post op.

So, the only legitimate reason for not dating any woman is that you’re not attracted to her. That’s fair enough. We all have triggers. We should try to be open and fair, and to look beneath the surface, but attraction is instinctive.

As regards deeper relationships, the only legitimate reason not to enter a marriage or set up home with a trans person might be a powerful desire to have and raise children; trans women are not able to conceive, though trans men often are. (And in return, trans women can often fertilise, and trans men can’t.)

So, perhaps the couple would have to settle on adoption or not go ahead. To do the latter would not necessarily be transphobic, although it would, I suggest, reveal a very shallow outlook on life. But then we are talking about the patriarchy, with its glib religious pseudo-certainties, here.

However, to be afraid of liking and falling in love with a woman, on the grounds that her genitalia might not live up to your expectations, is as deeply transphobic, misogynistic and cowardly as I can think of.

Rod Fleming on Google+

The post Why would a man not want to date a trans woman? appeared first on Rod Fleming's World.

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