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TechnoratiCorporate Supremacy and the Rape of a Human Girl
We are fast approaching the time of the next great battle over evolution. The Neo-creationists will be corporations, and they will argue that they could not possibly be descended from human beings.
This isn't science fiction. Just the other day 30 Republicans voted in the U.S. Senate to deny justice to a human victim of rape in order to protect the so-called sovereign rights of corporations.
I'm not much for slippery slope arguments, but when we're buried in mud at the bottom of a slope, it might be prudent to see what we slipped on. In this case, as Thom Hartmann and others have pointed out, it was a court reporter's memo attached to an obscure 1886 Supreme Court case. The memo summarized the court's alleged opinion that the 14th Amendment applied to corporations. Corporations were people, too.
The rape case of Jamie Leigh Jones was just a logical step forward in the long-standing Republican effort to lock Americans out of the nation's courthouses, an effort undertaken on behalf of corporate supremacy. A woman is gang-raped by her fellow employees at government contractor KBR. The company says her contract prohibits her from seeking justice in court.
Thirty Republican U.S. senators voted to safeguard corporations from lawsuits in rape cases. You read that right the first time. The amendment they voted against, by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minnesota, would withhold government contracts from corporations that block employees from going to court when raped or sexually assaulted on the job.
The case - and the vote - stirred a little outrage, but not enough.
Jones, of Houston, was drugged and gang raped while working in Baghdad for KBR/Halliburton. She was locked in a shipping container by the company and warned to keep quiet. She didn't keep quiet. Franken and Senate Democrats took up her cause.
The crimes of the rapists and their protectors in the Republican Party reveal "tort reform" as one of the great political cons in U.S. history. Tort reform is the not-missing link in the evolution of corporate supremacy and human inferiority.
The decades-long GOP campaign against civil justice was just part of the effort to place corporations above the law and corporatist elected officials out of the reach of voters. Republican voter suppression was another front in the war on popular democracy.
This is the populist issue of our time. Well, it was the populist issue of bygone times, too, but too damn few took up the cause and the GOP ran away with a victory built on fake field goals, double-reverses, stolen signals and rigged referees.
It sickens me that Republicans could generate faux-populist resentment of wealthy lawyers to seal the public out of the public sphere so corporatists could steal, maim and kill with impunity.
Also, too many progressive organizations stood idly by as the values at the core of democracy were attacked. Where were environmentalists, civil rights groups, women's groups, consumer associations, and campaign finance reformers when Republicans campaigned to give corporations greater legal rights than people? They were sealed away in their silos, their consciences eased by their single-mind focus on their particular issues. It didn't seem to matter to them that their ability to actually achieve anything was being undermined by the attack on democratic institutions and core American values.
Now that we have reached the point where Republicans can argue with a straight face that rape should be overlooked in favor of corporate protectionism maybe this will change.
I think American businesses are waking up to the excesses of the extremist assault on democracy. When all the courthouses are closed, they can't get their business-to-business contracts enforced.
I fear, though, that in many places progressives and their allies are stuck in old habits and personal grudge matches. Moderate business Democrats should finally understand that lawyers did not cause any of the policy problems they care most about: the collapse of public education, support for higher education, a safe environment, a predictable regulatory environment. Progressive advocacy groups should wake up, too. When the public is sealed out of courthouses and capitols, all their earnest work for the environment, civil rights and health care will come to nothing.
It is a sign of our moral confusion that we are forced to have a conversation about whether a woman who has been gang-raped can go to court against her assailants. It is altogether disagreeable that we have to have it with inhuman entities that want us to grant them legal superiority in laws meant for humans.
57 Comments so far
Show Alldumddown old fart
There should be a Meghan's law to register raping corporations.
Its ironic that Saddam probably would have had electrodes attached to those KBR guy's testicles.
The headline is inaccurate: she wasn't a girl, but a woman.
Here's the end of the post i wrote to the first CD article about this tragedy yesterday:
Well i do not doubt that corporations will happily continue to bend society to fit the needs of their own power. The entire construct of "the corporation" is purposefully designed as a protection from liability for the persons who would otherwise be criminally liable for the acts of the business they operate. They will push their dominance and lack of accountability absolutely as far as we let them. Things are (obviously) gone very far already.
We really need to dethrone corporations from rule in our entire culture, not just in the USA but on Earth. We need a global revolution AGAINST corporate power.
That's a big task, that requires consciousness of what we are up against, what is wrong with the present structure of the economy and society, and a widely shared willingness to work together across differences, to build structures of accountability and democracy into our economic system. We have a long way to go.
The 30 Senators did not uphold their decision with a straight face, they upheld it with an InYourFace Smugness that illustrates what nasty beasts they are, basically thumbing their noses and giving the whole country the finger. Makes the name 'GOPSenator' a dirty ten letter word.
I think Jon Stewart on the Daily Show nailed it.
Have the Republicans got a heart (amongst them?)? Or, a moral compass??
well I guess it's either bring on the vigilantes or apply a concerted effort to implement a Human Rights Education Literacy curriculum in all our educational institutions, pre-k through post grad.
view more expanded POV under comments posted after the following article on CD
Teachers' Unions Uneasy with President Barack Obama
It's fun to pile on Republicans with condemnation of their insane defense of "corporate supremacy" even when it involves cases of rape and other crimes. But let us not forget that corporate powers have exercised their control of the executive, legislative and (apparently) judicial branches of government: not only through the "corporate supremacy" as legislated in Congress but that of "corporate personhood" as it is now being adjudicated in the court system. Both Democratic and Republican Presidents have nominated and Senators of both parties have voted to confirm to the Supreme Court those Justices who have already gone far down the slippery slope that looms when corporations are defined as having "free speech" rights that allow them to speak fraudulently in purveying their products; and a further slide down this slope is now impending with cases to come before the present session of the Court. And worse, people of all ideological stripes, conservative and liberal, including the ACLU, allowed the country to go through a confirmation process with Sotomayor that raised not a peep of concern about her record of decisions favoring corporations over the individuals with whom they were litigating. At what point will Americans wake up to the reality that our Constitution has been thoroughly raped in the process of elevating corporations to "supremacy" and "personhood?"
I very much agree, Jerry, as I agree that the Sotomayor nomination was an exercise in identity-politics kabuki; I hope my previous comment didn't suggest otherwise.
I subscribe to the theory that the corporate state takes hold by the gradual commodification of political and civic life, and extending the amoral pragmatism of "free-market" commerce to the exclusion of principle. Even minutiae like the rebranding of School Superintendents into CEOs evidence the ubiquitous and insidious culture of the corporate state.
I don't know whether you'll feel flattered, Jerry, but as soon as I read this wire service report I thought of you; I kid you not:
__________________________
Sotomayor says nomination tightly scripted
Oct 18th, 2009 | NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says her nomination process was so tightly scripted that even her clothes were chosen for her.
Sotomayor made the comments when she appeared at her 30th Yale Law School reunion on Saturday.
The New Haven Register reports that Sotomayor spoke to 1,800 alumni, students and faculty, describing her recent grueling nomination process.
State Sen. Ed Meyer was among those in attendance. He says Sotomayor became teary at times but kept the crowd laughing. He says Sotomayor talked about shopping for clothes to wear to her acceptance ceremony. Government officials, however, told her to bring five suits and they recommended which one she should wear.
Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, attended a luncheon, coffee reception and a 30th reunion dinner with about 50 guests.
------
· Yr Obd't Servant
The use of "girl" in the headline is unforunate. Jones is a woman. Disempowering language toward women is part of the whole pattern that produces rape.
I strongly agree. I'm also quite surprised that no one else has mentioned it.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.
A measure of raw, naked, despotic power is the ability to say STFU About That, and make it stick.
In a compromised and corrupt technobarbaric domain, and in capitalist governments adrift from constitutional moorings and the Cartesian coordinates of the rule of law, the distinction between political and financial power becomes atrophic and vestigial.
Both arrogate and usurp the people's lawful and rightful authority; they ever strive to gag victims and suppress any and all evidence of their heinous wrongdoing. Out of sight, out of mind. There are always excuses and rationalizations made to camouflage the uninterrupted transfer of inconvenient truths into the Memory Hole.
No truths, no consequences.
The mercenary corporations want Jamie Leigh Jones to shut up and go away exactly as Team Obama wants the detainee abuse photos to shut up and go away.
Like sharks, the powerful elite makes common cause in the primacy of Moving Forward.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Please don't compare CEOs and politicians to sharks.
Sharks actually serve a purpose in the biosphere.
Give 'em a break. The Rape-ublicans are just looking out for their interests!! http://www.republicanoffenders.com/ Welcome to AmeriKKKa!!!
If pressed to its logical conclusion, this would also allow potential employees to sign contracts indemnifying their employers in the event that they are murdered. I certainly hope that it is doubtful that a court would ever uphold such a contract. The very idea that a private contract can trump the law is repugnant to our very concept of a political system where laws signify something of importance in our political system. So it is in this case, the contract has no bearing on the culpability of the perpetrators. Furthermore, the corporation, in aiding and abetting the perpetrators are accessory to the crime. As are the 30 Senators who voted to indemnify the corporation. (I note that the few Republican Senators who voted for Franken's bill includes ALL Republican women in the senate. That certainly says a lot. Thanks also to the few Republican male Senators who voted on the side of morality and legality.)
"I wonder if it had been a male soldier sodomized if this matter would have received more press or outrage."
Sioux-Would that soldier have even come forward? Women are shamed enough when they're victims of sexual assault. The shame put on men when they're raped by other men is twofold, especially in a culture of machismo and homophobia.
It's just another atrocity in a long line of atrocities. The elites don't care what soldiers to do each other. They don't care what happens to them. And what they're doing to each other is nothing compared to what they're doing to Iraqi and Afghan civilians.
I would have thought that aiding the commission of rape was a felony, or at least conspiring to aid rape. Apparently not so in the US, or these worthy men would not have left themselves so exposed.
I'm pretty much ready to call for open season on Banksters, Corporadoes and their politico enablers. As this article implies, there is no reasoning with these Barbarians.
I understand the outrage of women over this and other female rapes. I agree with their sentiments and support their issues. BUT
The battle between corporations and people as to the rule of law is one of the most important in the history of Western Civilization. If corporations continue to be protected as both 'people' and created entities, their benefactors will have won their final battle over the 'common herd' and we might as well close up shop. Fortunately, there are those groups who are working to liberate us from this slavery, including some powerful 'women's groups'. Until corporations are 'put in their place', we are all being raped, regardless of sex.
Hey, wait till these Orgs. acquire Artificial Intelligence and actually become conscious entities. Then they will really take over!
"Moral confusion"?? The appropriate word would be not confusion, but breakdown. A group of students majoring in business administration (that is, making money) were asked about following a moral code. They said that a moral code would not be involved in their business decisions.
So what have we become when you cannot distinguish sociopathic corporations from people? I think we are seeing a breakdown of society.
When the people fear their government there is tyranny,
when the government fears the people there is liberty.
~ Thomas Jefferson
I didn't even go to college and if this is what students are being taught, I feel blessed for lack of THAT education. I went to trade school and became a construction worker from there. We need to replace college education with trade school and teach young minds the value of hard work.
Don't lump all college educations into the pile of dogshit that 'business school' is.
My bad. I just hate the white collared schmucks and the way they flaunt their education but prove nothing out of it. I don't know which college education is good and which isn't. I'd like to know. I'm 45 so I'm too late to go back for a degree.
It's not too late. There is no need to go to school, but if you decide you want to you can. i graduated at the age of 43 (and have "done nothing" with my education, i work in a grocery store).
If i were going to recommend education or career choices at this stage in history, i would recommend growing food...
Thanks for the kind words but it's too expensive and there's too many useless courses which have nothing to do with my career. The system is too messed up to allow for education prices to drop. I would rather pay for something that I'll actually put to use.
Growing food in my backyard isn't bad except for the winter months when it's too cold.
Google "Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railway" to see how the corporations fraudulently wrote their own 'personhood' into the law. The GOP obviously worships this false corporate idol.
A nation chock full of narcissists and sadists; making the rules.
USA, RIP
BTK (bind, torture, kill). You betcha.
I have a hammer.
Who has a torch?
I have a list of 30 senators, and some piano wire. There are lamp posts everywhere.
Anyone who believes Republicans are now or ever have been human is an ignorant person.
Do you think the right wing fake christian neo-con lunatics would approve of an abortion if Jamie Leigh Jones had gotton pregenant.
It would be ok if she had the right to abort a baby whos fathers might have been neo-con controlled corporate employees that raped her.
The christian right is where on this issue, thier silence is deafening.,
But what else is new, as long as right wing churchs preach neo-con support, they are left alone, if a left wing church preaches peace and the evils of neo-con war , they are shut down.
I am beginging to wonder if God and Jesus want to see our democracy desolve, maybe they think we dont deserve to have a constitution.
Maybe God and Jesus are corporate neo-cons,,, maybe Americans are destined to become a slave nation to coroporate neo-con fake chritstians.
May we are all being raped, an we just dont know it yet.
Sioux Rose
I didn't comment on this topic when it was posted two days ago because it is so sickening to me.
Reading today's post it occured to me that we are ALL in fact being raped in so many ways by corporations:
1. Forced to eat chemically tainted, genetically modified "food."
2. Breathing in air molecules some of which no doubt carry particles from nuclear tests and/or the "theaters of war" where WMD are being used.
3. Against our wills seeing our money (as taxes and new forms of usurous fees) handed to the very bankers that ruined, or should I say raped, our economy.
4. Expected to believe the high theater that our a democratic republic, in its promise of representation of THE people, has instead collapsed into.
5. Forced to remain essentially passive witnesses to the rape of our treasury to support wars that ONLY profit those sick and sickening individuals (defense contractors, private army mercenaries) that have no moral problem with making a killing ($) on killing.
The misogyny that's notable in this particular pro-corporate/corporation decision at the expense of women's health/women's bodies is so glaring as to require no further comment.
I wonder if it had been a male soldier sodomized if this matter would have received more press or outrage. We know how Republicans make lots of noise about which body orifice gets all the attention. What would Jesus do?
Pat Tillman was murdered, then covered up by Gen. McCrystal. This truth was never fully aired. in fact it was carefully covered up by our government and the media.
Where is the outrage? Where is the press?
Michael Jackson's death got more coverage.
"I wonder if it had been a male soldier sodomized if this matter would have received more press or outrage." Well SR, if the story of American torturers sodomizing a 14yo boy in front of his mother didn't have "legs", nothing else will....feral bestiality is the mark of our age.
And to answer your Q about what the carpenter would do, "He'd have packed up Mary Magdalene and the kids and moved to the Jewish community at the base of the Pyrenees, to await the Inquisition and Spanish Expulsion...."
"I wonder if it had been a male soldier sodomized if this matter would have received more press or outrage."
It would have never have come to light. American men take their butt pluggings like men. Take a look at our prison system as a case in point.
If the male soldier were connected to a wealthy family or was well known like Pat Tillman, it might have come to light.
For once, I agree with your post and thank you for being thoughtful.
You do remember Jessica Lynch? Wall to wall coverage of her heroism and how she had been mistreated and "Raped" by her captors.
Then she comes out and says she was treated kindly and was not raped.
Her story was dropped.
I suggest you scan that story over again. That which had been claimed and later dropped was that she stood alone with machine gun in hand and fought off some 30 to 50 Hussein loyalists. That story turned out to be that another soldier had fired off some 30 to 50 rounds before being subdued and knocked out.
Lynch said that she couldn't do any fighting because she was unconscious. She was raped, repeatedly and in multiple openings - this was verified by the hospital - she didn't remember it because of head trauma, however.
She was taken to an Iraqi hospital, where she was treated well, where they did the rape kit, and it was from there that special-ops forces did an un-necessary rescue mission/overly elaborate hospital check-out.
Her gang rape occured. It was the story of her Rambo-like stand off that had been fabricated and later dropped.
It is very, very unlikely that Jessica Lynch was raped. See her wikipedia entry and her biographer's entry as well. Also see this website:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/11/11/1068329536658.html
Then the hypocrisy even more telling. When Americans rape an American in Iraq, it a non story.
Once they're soldiers, their gender is rendered irrelevant.
Just when I thought it couldn't get worse...
We humans don't own anything that a corporation can't take whenever it wants, not even our own bodies.
Corporations are not human, but neither are the likes of these thirty senators.
Want to stop things like this from happening on a regular basis? Stop eating meat. People who have no respect for life cannot be expected to care about the pain of another sentient being.
The poor in the US and Afghanistan are being systematically raped, murdered, driven insane, tortured, for the sake of profits for the ruling class. Corporations might as well be people, their owners are sick bastards who think everything has a price. They value nothing.
It makes me proud to have a fighting Democratic Senator Al Franken who takes family values seriously. The Republican preach "family values" but have none to show. Here is my favorite quote where Glenn Smith almost gets it:
"Also, too many progressive organizations stood idly by as the values at the core of democracy were attacked. Where were environmentalists, civil rights groups, women's groups, consumer associations, and campaign finance reformers when Republicans campaigned to give corporations greater legal rights than people? They were sealed away in their silos, their consciences eased by their single-mind focus on their particular issues. It didn't seem to matter to them that their ability to actually achieve anything was being undermined by the attack on democratic institutions and core American values."
The organizations did what they could to fight the Republican noise machine. The problem is the politics of personal destruction. Even on this site, there is a lot of conflict going on amongst progressives. Instead of giving progressive organizations and progressive people credit for their efforts, I hear a lot more "you're not progressive enough, you must be a neocon repug" hate talk on this site. I have been forced to retaliate on the occasion by suspecting that some of these same posters are neocon repugs in progressive drag pretending to support third parties. Some of them have admitted to entertaining the idea of Republicans taking over. Can we not understand each other's ideas? I understand everyone's ideas of getting angry and shouting but why is it that most of these people claiming to be progressives refuse to engage in peaceful and uniting means?
It is no different when confrontations between two or more progressive organizations erupts. Labor and environmental groups, farmers and environmental groups, same sex and black groups, and others are examples of internal conflicts amongst progressives. The conservative Republicans and their groups are united. When will progressive groups and people be united?
this could happen only in America, England, Ireland, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, Germany..... wherever there is 'civilisation'. 'progress'. 'profit'. 'externalised costs'. 'collateral damage'. 'court settlement'. 'plausible denial'.
Misogynist, child-hating, nature fearing nasty people, those who did this : including all the 'I was just doing my job!' enablers..... that or emotionally blind. Either way they are a serious problem, and the kind of societal conditioning that breeds such, in such numbers has to be understood and thwarted.
As well as all the other things that need to be done!
Kindest regards
Corneilius
do what you love, it's your gift to universe
It's no accident that the constitution starts with the words "We the People", not 'We the Corporations", "We the Rich Oligarchy" or "We the Fascists". People. Human Beings. Not animals, space aliens, political action committees or any other entity you can think of.
When the rule of law begins to break down at the highest levels, a civil society is in deep trouble. We must fight for our lives here, folks, or we're going to lose everything. The camel's nose is in the tent!
had to read this twice
seriously? women are fair game in the corporate environment now?
that oughta keep 'em in the kitchen, huh?
Franken is worth more than those thirty rape-enablers put together
a Gentleman will always rise to the aid of a woman in need
No corporate fascism here folks. Nothing to see, just move along.
The Roman Slave Republic was ruled by feral, blood drinking, kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician clans. The plebs had no rights that any richfilth animal need ever consider. THIS is the "Republic" that OUR feral, blood drinking, kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician clans DEMANDED when they made their revolution and later when they made their Constitution. They became OUR Oligarchy (and not a dead historical artifact of our past) when White America, by its deliberate actions from about '65 to '99 brought them back from the grave where the Roosevelt Taxation policies had deliberately placed them. Deliberately placed. Democracy or Oligarchy-- never both. Besides, can't have White Male Supremacy, Gender Slavery, Authoritarian Patriarchy and the Rights of Conquest without a feral, blood drinking, kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician clan structure. They are the glue that binds. This not rocket science.
When that Model of our founding was matched to the generalized Celt predilection for the Rights of Conquest and Genocide our "Republic" was conceived in rape and marches to the same drummer to this day...
And yes, to our feral, blood drinking, kiddie raping, slave holding, richfilth patrician clans, "Liberty" meant then and means now, "The right to order the lives of those you control with complete impunity."
Liberty indeed. This IS the society the White Majority demanded when they turned their backs on a society based on Inclusion over 40 years ago. They have been running with their hair on fire back to a pre-literate 12th century corporate techno-feudalism ever since. Remember, serfs and plebs got no need for health care, education, stable jobs, pensions, or a life past 47. Got Prozac?
Dissenters have always been a fungible minority, nothing more. Ask Eugene Debbs.
I know, why don't you get down on your belly, grovel, debase yourself, and beg Master for a few crumbs from HIS banquet? After all, the main course is Worker Meat Flambeau, a specialty of the House.
"I know, why don't you get down on your belly, grovel, debase yourself, and beg Master for a few crumbs from HIS banquet?"
Yes, I agree, we should get out in the streets and "demonstrate".
Politicians don't listen to street protests. Their security and monitoring gear is probably up to date to silence dissent on the street.
When does the American version of that famous French dish, monarchist head on a platter arrive? Corporate fascist dog on a stick. Waiting, waiting, waiting.
An investigation of these thirty senators (Republicans)willshow that most of them like men above women. They were probably sitting at the senates tables tapping toes while the vote was going on. We must remember the repugs are not going to do anything to help any one except themselves and the corrupt bastards they get their bribes from. Hang them all.
I wonder if any of those thirty senators have ever had a daughter who has been gang raped.
Geez, maybe there IS such a thing as "too cynical"; I wondered if any of those thirty senators have ever gang-raped someone's daughter!
· Yr Obd't Servant