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In the category of appalling but unsurprising when it comes to the exploitation of labour by capital, we have this “charming” vignette:
“Joy Lynn, who now co-owns the Whipple Company Store and has turned it into a museum, told Kline she has had as many 10 women visit the museum who referred to the third-floor space as “the rape room” because that is how the mine guards forced the women to pay for their shoes. “They would have to keep their mouths shut tight about what had happened to them upstairs,” Lynn said, because the mining companies would threaten to kick them out of their company-owned houses.”
[…]
Consider the time – this is when the free market was actually very close to being free – unhindered by government and all of its nasty regulations. This was also before the time of much of labour organization in the US. Unbridled power in any one segment of society leads to exploitation and abuse of people, yet as we stumble forward in the humble-bumble forced march of neo-liberalism, these are the sorts of conditions that await us.
“Since the publication of his article on Esau in Appalachian Heritage, Kline writes that “numerous accounts of institutionalized forced sexual servitude in the coal fields have surfaced.”
A woman from West Virginia told Harris and Kline a story about her great-grandmother who was “rented” to coal company agents at the age of 12. She would spend four to six months at a time in sexual servitude in coal camps. “And if the girls had babies, the babies would be taken and sold,” the woman said.
The girls and young women who were taken from their homes in West Virginia were called “comfort girls” or “comfort wives” during their time in servitude. The Japanese government followed the same model, forcing Korean and Chinese woman to work as “comfort women” during World War II. Japan has refused to apologize for forcing the women into sexual servitude, claiming the women were voluntary prostitutes. In West Virginia, state officials have never acknowledged the existence of this formal system of sexual servitude.
The West Virginia woman interviewed by Harris and Kline said her great-grandmother felt so desperate at the time that she did not have any qualms about selling her own babies. “I mean, if you’re a woman and the only thing you have to make money with is your body, and you end up pregnant, you can’t afford to feed that baby. So what are you going to do?” she said.
A woman who needed another week’s worth of groceries or needed new shoes would pay with their own bodies, the woman said.
“My sense is they weren’t ashamed,” Harris said about the exploited women. “It wasn’t something they were embarrassed about. It was very much in the same vein as the men going into the coal mine and taking risks they had no business taking. It’s like you do what you have to do to feed your family. They didn’t talk about it, but they certainly weren’t ashamed of it. Why would you be ashamed of feeding your kids?”
This is the sort of exploitation unfettered and unregulated capitalism can bring to people; it should not be a set of conditions that we aspire recreate.
[Quotes from Mark Hands essay: ‘Rape Rooms’: How West Virginia Women Paid Off Coal Company Debts. (via Counterpunch)]
As far as concise descriptions of the state of the GOP in the US go, this is fairly accurate and sadly amusing all at the same time.
“It is important to bear in mind that the Republicans have long abandoned the pretence of functioning as a normal parliamentary party. Rather, they have become a “radical insurgency” that scarcely seeks to participate in normal parliamentary politics, as observed by the respected conservative political commentator Norman Ornstein of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute.
Since Ronald Reagan, the leadership has plunged so far into the pockets of the very rich and the corporate sector that they can attract votes only by mobilising sectors of the population that have not previously been an organised political force, among them extremist evangelical Christians, now probably the majority of Republican voters; remnants of the former slave-holding States; nativists who are terrified that “they” are taking our white Christian Anglo-Saxon country away from us; and others who turn the Republican primaries into spectacles remote from the mainstream of modern society—though not the mainstream of the most powerful country in world history.”
-Noam Chomsky, in discussion with Vijay Prasad on Counterpunch.
It would seem that the GOP has just said ‘fuck it’ and have laid bare their plutocratic intentions – yet people who are clearly not Plutocrats vote for them. Consider the amount of propaganda required to dupe the poor into voting for the rich.
On a related note, the Canadian election is whirling along. The people who are engaged in politics remain engaged, those who don’t care still don’t care – regardless of how long parties have to campaign. A big thank you to the current conservative government for extending the election period for no other reason than their own political advantage. :/
The mounting Neo-liberal oligarchy couldn’t exists if American christians actually followed the teachings of Jesus, thus Supply Side Jesus was born to fill the gap. Bill Mahr paints the funny, yet troubling, picture of what much of mainstream religious discourse has become in the United States.
Marx said in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right:
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.”
So rather than plucking the flowers from the chain, much of the US seems to have upgraded the flowers instead… :/
Back in 2012, Arb and I got married, bought a house, and adopted a dog, all within the space of three months. When we took possession of the house, there really wasn’t time to paint. Which was a shame, because the previous owners had done the place in a very tasteful, marketable, beigey earth-tone scheme. It was so not us. Last week, we made our beach-head against beige, and redid the bedroom! Before, it was a sickly grey-green colour:
Originally, I wanted to change it to a soft, greyish lavender.
Arb vetoed that: “We’re not going to all that work, to change one boring neutral into another!”
Well. Go big or go home then. How about the purplest purple that ever purpled?
Arb was all over that idea! We decided on “Purplicious” from Benjamin Moore. So last week I took some vacation time, and we made our bedroom, really ours!
We painted:
We finally got the nice bed we’d been pining for:
And it was promptly colonized by the White Cat:
And we got doors for our wardrobe! No more cat nests in our dress slacks! Here’s a selfie from our cozy bed, in the wardrobe mirrored doors, showing the cozy purple walls.
OMG the wardrobe doors, gentle readers. When you assemble Ikea furniture, the screws have to line up with the pre-drilled holes. These didn’t quite. And the doors were heavy and awkward and fragile and had to be held just so to be able to get any holes to line up – which of course put other holes out of alignment… I got so angry trying to get the screws into the mismatched holes, that I said words I never say. And of course, on the last door (there are four), we figured out an easier way of maneuvering that didn’t require any anger or aggression at all.
Our marriage has now survived the Assembling Ikea Furniture Test, and the Picking a Bedroom Colour Test!
I really like this song. Here’s the problem though, try singing it in the same key that JBJ does. Here is the lead sheet and let’s observe the melodic patterns that are going on in this song.
Those black dots keep going up higher on the staff. Damn you JBJ
Male vocal singing comes roughly in three flavours, Bass, Baritone and Tenor. The first highlighted note (E) will raise the eyebrows of most bases. It lies near the upper limit of where they can beautifully sing. Baritones (lazy tenors) are still well within their zone of comfort, however even they are pressed to produce the next series of notes (G). Of course JBJ doesn’t stop there and goes well into tenor territory with long passage of high notes (A’s). The general melodic tendency in this song is a ever increasing ascension of the C major scale. But wait, it get’s better.
If you listen to the song, you’ll notice the music presented here is only the intro and the intro builds into even a higher chorus. We’re now in the famously high C territory of Pavarotti and other classical singing masters. Let me assure you, gentle readers, High C territory is the undiscovered country for many tenors – as a amateur singing I have only once ventured into this land – it was rough and harsh encounter, let me assure you. Yet JBJ bashes out high notes like no ones business.
You may not like Bon Jovi, but one should at least appreciate the musicianship that goes into vocal production of this calibre.
Against human trafficking? Against slavery? Necessarily, you must also be against pornography.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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