Stop the Quotes 4

by a LIFE member, July 2007  

Unsent email to PAR-L moderators written by LIFE July 31, 2007:

PAR-L Moderators wrote: "I suggest that all further messages sent to PAR-L include an editorial comment and contain a maximum of five quotes. And blanket attacks against 'feminism' are not very helpful."

Compare the above words you emailed to Livable Income For Everyone (LIFE) to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees ALL Canadians' "rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society [including] freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication" (Constitution Act, 1982)."

Given that it is PAR-L's moderators who are censoring LIFE's post -- and not the other way round -- whether you admit or not, PAR-L's moderators are 'our' posts' prosecutors, 'our' posts' judges, 'our' posts' juries and and 'our' posts' executioners. In other words, PAR-L's moderators have power over LIFE's 'words' and we have none over your words.

This paradoxical situation can only mean that either a LIFE stops posting to PAR-L or that PAR-L must post a complete sets of rules on PAR-L as to what exact 'words' a LIFE can post to PAR-L to avoid be told that accused of making "blanket attacks against 'feminism'".

The paradox is that unless there is a complete set of PAR-L 'feminism' posting rules, a LIFE can in good faith inadvertently compose a post to a PAR-L that is against PAR-L's rules. Thus to be more specific, the paradox is that unless there is a complete set of 'feminism' posting rules, a LIFE can be accused of making "blanket attacks against 'feminism'" for just about any words we write -- even though we have no intention of making blanket attacks on the women who are roughly half of the world's population currently estimated to be 6,608,295,642.

The further paradox is that unless PAR-L posts a complete sets of rules on PAR-L as to what exact 'words' a LIFE can post to PAR-L, it would fair and accurate to say that a PAR-L does not know what rules constitute a valid "feminism" argument. In this regard, John Adams wrote, "Society can be governed only by general rules. Government cannot accommodate itself to every particular case, as it happens, nor to the circumstances of particular persons" ("John Adams to James Sullivan on women, the poor, and voting rights," May 26, 1776).

Moreover, the Constitution of Canada is the supreme law in Canada, which means that PAR-L's rules must be subject to the Constitution or there is no way that a LIFE can defend it itself if we disagree with PAR-L on what constitutes a valid 'feminism' argument.

After all, do you honestly believe that a group such as Livable Income For Everyone (LIFE) would want to tarred and feathered for making blanket attacks on the women who are roughly half of the world's population currently estimated to be 6,608,295,642?

After all, what would motivate a group such as Livable Income For Everyone (LIFE) to destroy it reputation by making blanket attacks on all women? More to the point, isn't 'feminism' the means by which all women can defend themselves against patriarchy? Therefore, would it not be in the best interest of a group such as LIFE to use feminism to defend women who need a guaranteed livable income to escape poverty?

The problem is that LIFE sees nothing in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or in feminism as a political and economic science that gives PAR-L Moderators the political or philosophical right to censor LIFE or even to "suggest that all further messages sent to PAR-L include an editorial comment and contain a maximum of five quotes."

Therefore LIFE disputes that PAR-L moderators use democracy and feminism as legal principles, which means LIFE also disputes that PAR-L moderators can stop LIFE from posting to PAR-L (or that any PAR-L subscriber can get away with sending emails to LIFE calling its members an "idiot" or "women hater") without being forced to present hard evidence to back up ALL statements in the court of public opinion, which is what the PAR-L list serve is supposed to be.

Of course if it turns out that PAR-L moderators have the legal right to censor LIFE, we want the constitution rewritten to take that legal right away from PAR-L moderators! What other choice do have given that the right to defend oneself is a life or death matter! (“The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.” -- Audre Lorde)

In other words, when did Canadian Citizens vote on whether we want PAR-L moderators to define the word "feminism," and, therefore, to decide who is a "feminist" who can post to PAR-L and, who, simply by virtue of having their posts rejected by PAR-L moderators are, by implication. "not feminists".

Oh! PAR-L moderators have rejected my post! This must mean they are the 'true' feminists and I am not and should just shut up and let PAR-L moderators speak for every women in the world! What if I'm an "idiot" and "women hater" who doesn't know how to argue or even state a simply point of law? Shouldn't I take a university course to learn how to think identically to how PAR-L moderators think?

However, if PAR-L moderators use money to stay healthy and alive, has it ever occurred to you that all women need an equal amount of money to yours to stay healthy and alive?

In other words, words such as "feminism" and statements such as "Hammering the same message over and over and disregarding the tremendous work accomplished by feminists from a range of locations on a range of issues, is disrespectful of others and borders on harrassment" are -- unless defined in constitutional law -- purely subjective in nature, which is why democratic countries such as as Canada have constitutions and Supreme Court Justices to decide such disagrees regard the political and economic sciences.

Did ever occur to you ... that at least some of us think that university professors are 'harrassing' poor people by virtue of their 'disrespectful' beliefs? For example, McGill professor Margaret Somerville recently 'critiqued' Oxford professor Richard Dawkins's ("The God Delusion") by saying: "Basic presumptions matter in decision-making because they allocate the burden of proof" (canada.com/ottawacitizen, July 23, 2007).

It should be merely axiomatic that the "burden of proof" is not on "poor people" to prove that "the professors" are wrong, but for professors to prove that their scientific statements regarding poverty are universally true. After all, what would be the point of paying university professors to tell poor people they are poor, year after year after year.

It was circa 370 BC that Plato wrote, "Any city however small, is divided at least into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are each other's enemies." But in 2007 we still pay economics professors to tell us that there is scarcity of money to end world poverty.

But if there is not enough money for all of us then surely you would agree that every penny must be spent preventing people from dying in poverty?

Yet in 1833, William M. Gouge wrote, "there is a scarcity of money and a glut of manufactures" (A Short History of Paper-money and Banking in the United States), and on a blog titled "Solving the scarcity of money," Bob Benson, wrote, "Ask any economist and they’ll tell you: money is scarce."

Trent University Economics department home page quotes the economist Lawrence Summers as saying, "Start with the idea that you can't repeal the laws of economics. Even if they are inconvenient."

So do you think that poor women are poor because they have been disobeying Summers ' 'scientific laws'?

However, Hannah Arendt said, "Economic growth may one day turn out to be a curse rather than a good, and under no conditions can it either lead into freedom or constitute a proof for its existence." And Al Gore said, "Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced."
http://www.climatecrisis.net/aboutthefilm/

Moreover, George Orwell put it: There is no use in multiplying examples. We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield."

Orwell also said, "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," and, in fact, it is the apex of Orwellian doublethink for PAR-L's moderators to (1) censor LIFE's posts and then (2) email LIFE on the issue "harrassment" when we merely point out that we have the constitutional right to hammer away at any issue we so chose.

And surely you must know that many anti-feminist accuse feminists of persisting in hammering at feminists issues, even though women have the right to vote and can run for political office and, if elected, can write any laws they so choose.

In short, if PAR-L moderators had not attacked LIFE by censoring its posts to begin with we would not be pointlessly exchanging emails on a 'political' problem that the PAR-L moderators caused!

By way of example, Christina Sommers said (WHICH LIFE DISAGREES WITH), "The orthodox feminists are so carried away with victimology, with a rhetoric of male-bashing that it's full of female chauvinists, if you will. Also, women are quite eager to censor, to silence. And what concerns me most as a philosopher is it's becomevery anti-intellectual, and I think it poses a serious risk to youngwomen in the universities. Women's studies classes are increasingly a kind of initiation into the most radical wing, the most intolerant wing, of the feminist movement" ("Has Feminism Gone Too Far?").

Camile Paglia who is "professor of humanities at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia & author of Vamps and Tramps" said (WHICH LIFE DISAGREES WITH): "Well, I have been an ardent feminist since the rebirth of the current feminist movement. I'm on the record as being -- as rebelling against my gender-role, as being an open lesbian and so on.In the early 1960s I was researching Amelia Earhart, who for me symbolized the great period of feminism of the '20s and '30s just after women won the right to vote. When this phase of feminism kicked back in the late '60s, it was very positive at first. Women drew the line against men and demanded equal rights. I am an equal opportunity feminist. But very soon it degenerated into a kind of totalitarian 'group think' that we are only now rectifying 20 years later" ("Has Feminism Gone Too Far?") |

It is PAR-L moderators Michele Ollivier and Wendy Robbins constitutional right to disagree 100% with both Sommers and Paglia's definitions of "equal opportunity" feminism -- but what is the point of censoring a Sommers & a Paglia on a PAR-L list serve rather than providing hard evidence as to why they are dead wrong!?

In other words, if PAR-L moderators thinks that "blanket attacks against 'feminism' are not very helpful" then it must be prepared to also deal with a Christina Sommers and a Camile Paglia, whose words are not so easy to dismiss as PAR-L moderators have done with LIFE's words.

Clearly, if PAR-L moderators emailed a Sommers or a Paglia using the same condescending elitist rhetoric you have subjected LIFE to such as "I suggest that all further messages sent to PAR-L include an editorial comment and contain a maximum of five quotes. And blanket attacks against 'feminism' are not very helpful," you might find yourself being publicly pilloried by a Sommers or a Paglia in the identical manner that you have pilloried LIFE privately -- thus not allowing LIFE to have others defend us -- or for LIFE to defend itself by providing scientific evidence that poor women do not cause their own poverty!

In this regard, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote, "In the present state of society it appears necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths, and to dispute with some prevailing prejudice every inch of ground. To clear my way, I must be allowed to ask some plain questions, and the answers will probably appear as unequivocal as the axioms on which reasoning is built; though, when entangled with various motives of action, they are formally contradicted, either by the words or conduct of men ("Chap. I. The Rights and Involved Duties of Mankind Considered. | A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" 1792).

The United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women: "More than 1 billion people in the world today, the great majority of whom are women, live in unacceptable conditions of poverty, mostly in the developing countries." -- | Beijing, China - September 1995 | Action for Equality, Development and Peace

Hillary Rodham Clinton: "Women comprise more than half the word’s population. Women are 70% of the world’s poor, and two-thirds of those are not taught to read and write" (Remarks to the U.N. 4th World Conference on Women Plenary Session | delivered 5 September 1995, Beijing, China)

What would PAR-L moderators post to PAR-L if you were poor and never taught to read or write?

Time Magazine wrote: "We can banish extreme poverty in our generation--yet 8 million people die each year because they are too poor to survive. The tragedy is that with a little help, they could even thrive."

What would PAR-L moderators post to PAR-L if you were dying in poverty and needed money to stay alive?

TO REITERATE: The only reason that the Livable Income For Everyone (LIFE) society, which promotes the implementation of a universal Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) in every country in the world to end world poverty, has been FORCED to send emails to PAR-L's moderators is because PAR-L moderators have been denying LIFE its constitutional right to have its emails posted to the PAR-L list serve, which "was founded as an email list on March 8, 1995, by the former Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW); it now operates from the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton."

Given that the world's population is now estimated to be over 6,602,224,175 (July 2007 est.) & the GDP - per capita only $10,200 (2006 est.) (and is much lower in the poorest countries), it means that feminists are living in poverty and many are dying for no other reason than university-trained social scientists persist in believing that it unscientific for we the voters ("government of the people, by the people, for the people" -- Lincoln The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863) to demand that our elected representatives write a constitutional amendment providing a universal guaranteed livable income to all world citizens.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html
http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm

National Post columnist David Frum wrote, "Jean Chretien's post-election brainwave of a guaranteed annual income isn't merely sneaky, although it surely is that. It's not just a bad idea, although it is that, too. It is just about the worst idea that this government has had -- one that will accelerate Canada's trend toward a U.S.-style underclass all our own. We have always had poor people in Canada. But underclass poverty is different from the poverty of farm and fishing village. Underclass poverty is a poverty that separates people from the life of their society in an entrenched, permanent, helpless dependency, characterized by substance abuse, crime and suicide." (December 16, 2000, "Chrétien's plan for a Canadian underclass")

But "The Hon. Conrad Black Chairman and CEO, Hollinger Inc." wrote: "We have Bob Stanfield and Dalton Camp, not Pierre Trudeau, to thank for the insanely profligate idea of the Guaranteed Annual Income, a salary for anyone who survives childbirth" (The Empire Club of Canada Speeches 1993-1994).

WE READ: "Social scientists, sociologists, political scientists, economists and others are obsessed with studying harms, poverty being amongst the popular area of research. Yet we learn very little from studying poverty, which has been the natural condition of man since we’ve roamed the earth, with still nearly four out of five people in the world living in abject want. What needs to be explained is not poverty, but wealth -- the best known antidote to poverty." |

"Michael Novak also said, 'The only thing you can learn by studying poverty is how to be poor'." -- NIGERIAN TRIBUNE

"Our message and mission is inspired by George Bernard Shaw: “It’s the first duty of everyman not to be poor”. Another person made a statement “I have been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better”. | The only thing you can learn studying poverty is how to be poor. With a heavy heart I personally invite you to make a donation to our program because poverty is dirty, uncomfortable, degrading experience. It is a form of disease."
http://www.glmediagroups.com/fightpovertynow/president.htm

"I am studying poor people and their strategies for survival, but what will be their direct benefit from my work here?"

Sample Exam Questions: Examination 2: "You are studying poor people in America (the United States). How might you explain the fact that they are poor?"

COMPARE: "In 1960, Playboy magazine asked [J. PAUL] Getty to write a series of articles about his life and wealth. His whole approach to this series was not How To Get Rich, but How To Be Rich. He realized that being rich means discharging the responsibilities that come with wealth, including making the world a better place.

"While Getty was deciding what to do with his first million, his father said, 'You’ve got to use your money to create, operate and build businesses. Your wealth represents potential jobs for countless others -- and it can produce wealth and a better life for a great many people as well as yourself.'" -- Frederick Mann, "HOW J. PAUL GETTY BECAME THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD - WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM HIM"
http://www.buildfreedom.com/tl/tl13d.shtml

LIFE rests it case that in fact, staggering amounts of money and time have been squandering paying for list serves such as PAR-L and for paying the salaries of 'progressives' who then write many millions of useless words during their careers many of which end on list serves such as PAR-L where they accomplish nothing whatsoever.

Moreover to call this statement "harassment" or "anti-feminist" is profoundly elitist it that it would mean that the voices of all of the women who are living in poverty have been heard on PAR-L and that they all agree that it more important to give money to universities to study the sociological behavior of poor people that it is to give money to poor people so they can buy food, housing and medical care.

In point of fact, what is profoundly harassing and anti-feminist is that poor women are dying in poverty even while men brag about how much money they have and blame poverty on women!

Bill Gates: "I have 100 billion dollars... You realize I could spend 3 million dollars a day, every day, for the next 100 years? And that's if I don't make another dime. Tell you what-I'll buy your right arm for a million dollars. I give you a million bucks, and I get to sever your arm right here."

Katha Pollitt, May 30, 1994 issue of The Nation:

"Women have been unfairly blamed for a lot of things over the years--the Fall of Man (sic), their own rapes and beatings, autistic children. Male journalists are particularly ingenious at the game of cherchez la femme: Kenneth Woodward, religion reporter for Newsweek, blames women for the impending collapse of the Church of England (selfish ordination-seekers driving traditionalists to Rome); Murray Kempton playfully suggests that Mafia dons are merely small-time grifters trying to support their layaboutmarrying daughters. And, as is well known, behind every serial killer is a bad mother--just ask Jeffrey Dahmer's father, who in his recent memoir points out that Mrs. Dahmer was a reluctant breast-feeder.

"But poverty? Women cause poverty? That is the emerging bipartisan consensus, subscribed to by players as far apart as Charles Murray and Eleanor Holmes Norton, Dan Quayle and Bill Clinton, National Review and The New York Times. All agree that unwed mothers, particularly teenagers and, to a lesser extent, divorced moms, are the driving force behind poverty, crime and a host of other ills. If mothers got married and stayed married, children would be provided for, the economy would flourish, crime would go down and your taxes too. "Welfare dependency" would vanish, replaced, as God and nature planned, by husband-dependency."
http://feminism.eserver.org/theory/feminist/women-cause-poverty.txt

FOX News' Bill O'Reilly: "It's hard to do it because you gotta look people in the eye and tell 'em they're irresponsible and lazy. And who's gonna wanna do that? Because that's what poverty is, ladies and gentlemen. In this country, you can succeed if you get educated and work hard. Period. Period. " http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bill_oreilly.html

Livable Income For Everyone, http://www.livableincome.org/

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ABOUT PAR-L: According to their website, PAR-L is "a bilingual, electronic network of individuals and organizations interested in women-centred policy issues in Canada". PAR-L stands for "Policy, Action, Research List" and their moderated email list has 1500 participants from across Canada.

"This bilingual (English/French) list is open to any individual or organization interested in discussing policy, action, and research on issues of concern to women in Canada. The scope is intentionally broad to provide an open forum where feminist activists, scholars, and researchers can come together, communicate, share, and disseminate information in a supportive environment."

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