Human Rights: Going, going...

 
 
 

And, the Supreme Court strikes again.  Yet another victory for the rights of corporations at the expense of human beings.

Now, the court says companies have the right to exclude birth control from employee health insurance on religious grounds.  Predictably, we've been inundated by crass vulgarities from right-wing Neanderthals who say it's not a company's responsibility to subsidize medical coverage for the "recreational sex" of its employees.  They never miss a chance for a crude, misogynistic cheap shot.

So, I guess if a woman gets raped by her manager during the late shift, her employer doesn't have to pay for the abortion, if it's against his religion.  And, I guess if he's anti-Semitic, he doesn't have to hire Jews, since that would violate his beliefs.  If he claims his religion forbids race mixing or gender equality, he doesn't have to hire minorities or women.  If he's a Christian Scientist and you cut yourself on the job and you're bleeding all over the floor and in imminent danger of dying, all he has to do is advise you to pray.

Religious freedom trumps all other human rights, apparently.  Or, is religious freedom merely the pretext the right-wing majority of the SC is using to once again advance the power of the companies to control our lives?

The basic human rights our society is supposed to confer on its citizens is based on rule of law, laws being passed democratically within the parameters of constitutional principles.  The Supreme Court gave women the right to control their own bodies, to use birth control and to terminate unwanted pregnancies.  But, that has no meaning if employers have the right to selectively turn healthcare coverage on and off, based on their own beliefs, effectively over-ruling the Supreme Court.  There are three branches of government that are supposed to facilitate the right of all citizens (regardless of income) to control their own lives through a democratic process.  Company owners shouldn't be able to form a de facto fourth branch that trumps the other three.

The SC seems to currently fall on the side of corporate rights over all.  The freedom to truly control the lives of all belong exclusively to those who own the means of production (a number that seems to be shrinking fast.)  The rights of the individual are fading fast.  There are no inalienable rights if each company becomes like a self-determining nation.

The right-wing ideological mindset is that freedom is based not on inalienable rights, but on the absence of government.  In the right-wing lexicon, government = tyranny, no government = freedom.  The freedom of the jungle.  Survival of the fittest.  Got the money?  You rule.  That's freedom for the few at the expense of the many.  Rule by representative governmental regulation and law means the majority rule.  The government is the one guarantee of freedom because We the People elect the government.  In the chaos of dog-eat-dog, companies getting endlessly bigger and fewer, the law giving them carte blanche to own and control everything (including political campaigns) there is no freedom for 90% of the population, because we do not elect the companies.  They're in for life, and we have no place to go to escape them.  Absolute freedom for the companies means absolute power for them and zero freedom for everyone else.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Machiavelli's response:

"That would in fact be a problem, if you were powerless."

I guess Machiavelli's ghost must be possessing somebody on the Supreme Court.

Mocha Memoirs Press - Big July Sale!

Happy Birthday to Us and U.S. too!

If you've been a part of Mocha Memoirs for the last four years, you know that July is our BIRTHDAY Month! Not only is this the month of the United States' birth, but also ours.

Mocha Memoirs Press began in 2001, but reopened our doors in July 2010 with the hope of spotlighting fantastic fiction in the genres of science fiction, horror, fantasy, and romance. Each year we do something fun for our birthday, and this year will be no different.

Since we’re giving gifts, it’s Christmas in July! What’s in our holiday sack?

Gift #1-New fiction! Four new titles will launch our TOIL, TROUBLE, AND TEMPTATION line.

Gift #2- MMP GIFT bag. It will include the following:

1.      A sample of our books (both horror anthologies, a science fiction title, two erotic romance titles, and a fantasy title).

2.      A MMP tee-shirt.

3.      A MMP journal to write down your own inspiring ideas.

4.      Starbucks® coffee

5.      Other surprise goodies.

6.      All will be contained in a MMP cloth bag.

(You have to sign up for the MMP Newsletter to enter. More details to follow on our blog and our Facebook group).

Gift #3-Black Friday sale in the summer-All Christmas and holiday stories are .99!

Gift #4-Sizzling Deals for HOT summer nights-All erotic romance titles are $2.99 or LESS!

Gift #5-Select science fiction, fantasy, and horror titles are $1.00 or 0.99.

$.99  or $1 Horror, SF, and Fantasy titles:

Drink My Soul by Rie Sheridan Rose

Descent into Madness by Michael LaRocca

Still Another Day by Janet Eckford

Dragon’s Champion by Wynelda Ann Deaver

Huntress by Siobhan Kinkade

The Soul Cages by Nicole Givens Kurtz


http://mochamemoirspress.com/news/1272 to join.

 

 

 

 

The Truth Behind the Illusion

 

 

 

 

Our nation seems divided between two fundamentally different and irreconcilable visions of reality. One is called Progressivism or, (more negatively) Liberalism.  The other is called Conservatism.

So, what is Conservatism?  How is the term defined in the modern political context, and what are its distinguishing characteristics as an ideology?  The word literally means to conserve the status quo; to resist change.  But, it's not that simple in the modern context.  Sometimes, it means going backwards.  Other times, it means going places no one has ever gone before.

So, what are the key defining political/ideological issues that form the divide  in modern American society, and how do they define Conservatism?

Government - Conservatives always say they want less of it.  They always say they want government to stop trying to run people's lives.  That's the face they show the world.  But, is it real?  They certainly have no problem with government telling women they can't have abortions, or telling people of "alternative sexual identity" what they can and can't do in private.  Did conservatives ever have a problem with government spying on us, tapping our phones, even kidnapping us off the streets, torturing us and shredding the Constitution they (conservatives) claim to revere?  They love to compare Progressive presidents they despise (especially Obama) with Hitler or Stalin, but they had no problem with Nixon controlling the electoral process, Reagan running death squads and supporting racist regimes abroad, or George W. Bush running secret prisons or limiting free speech, all in defiance of Constitutional law.  No, obviously Conservatism is not defined by its hatred of big government.

Life - They claim to revere it.  That's why they consistently oppose a woman's right to abort her pregnancy.  They say they want a "culture of life."  But, wait...They're always the ones to favor capitol punishment.  They have no moral compunction against waging war, even against countries that have never attacked us.  They shed no tears and recite no prayers for thousands of innocents...pregnant women and children included...killed by village raids, napalm, atomic detonation, carpet bombing and predator drones.  They offer no apology for the attempted genocide of the Native American.  No, clearly Conservatism is not defined by its love of life, since it clearly has none.

Tradition - They claim to embrace it.  The old familiar ways.  The time-honored ways of our forbears.  But, Conservatives always view those values with 20-20 hindsight, don't they?  Those who opposed abolition, integration and suffrage for women were the conservatives of their respective eras, were they not?  Those opposed to change, liberalism, radical attacks on the established order?  But now, the contemporary Conservatives find cunningly Orwellian ways to use the traditional words of "liberals" - words like racism - to attack their enemies.  Traditionally, in fact, abortion was never equated with murder.  Modern conservatives invented something radically new in leading that charge.  No, Conservatism is clearly not defined by tradition.  Only by conveniently selected bits and pieces of it.

Judeo/Christian Values - They claim to be defined by them, and to want them as the moral foundation of our system of government.  But, they're very selective about which "Judeo/Christian" values to embrace.  In fact, they seem to draw more from the Old Testament, with its emphasis on harsh moral judgment and revenge than from the New Testament, with its emphasis on forgiveness, mercy and love.  They want the law to prohibit abortion and any love they deem "sodomy," but God forbid the notion of feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless should ever find its way into government.  Turn the other cheek?  Love thine enemy? Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the vault of Heaven?  Hell, no.  No, Conservatism is clearly not defined by Judeo/Christian values.

So, from all this, what is consistently Conservative, in the modern sense of the word?  And, the answer is based on the results of their policies, not the pretexts they give for having them.


They oppose the right of the people to control their own lives through democratic governmental regulation of commerce.  Even to the point of denying clearly real and present ecological threats, they delude the people into unshackling big industry (which clearly thinks nothing of enslaving or destroying our lives) while irrationally  fearing big government.

They oppose a woman's right to control her own life.

They oppose any social innovation which may weaken the power of established monetary or social elites.  They favor the comfort of the few at the expense of the many.

They scorn science and pervert religion, both for the purpose of keeping the population docile and resistant to change or free thought.  In government, they form alliances with religious fanatics, using them to the extent it helps them (conservatives) secure power, but then discard them when they are no longer useful, not really embracing their spiritual beliefs at all.


In short, the true face behind the rhetoric is one of absolute control by the few over the many.  The purely materialistic domination by the wealthy and privileged over the poor and downtrodden.  The complete disregard for the future, embracing only the present, as defined by pure material greed.  The past, they embrace only because it serves the purpose of the all-white boys club that happens to comprise their membership.  They serve only themselves and expect all others to do the same.  And, they use hate and fear to direct the public's attention against women and minorities, and away from what the corporations are doing to our economy, our environment and our lives.

The gentry raping the land and the peasants.  Yeah.  That's traditional.

Free Speech for those who can afford it

 

Science fiction often frightens, even terrifies us with visions of totalitarian futures where the freedoms of western civilization are swallowed up by regimes that burn our books, rule by fear and crush our individuality, regulating even our most private emotions.  Sometimes, the nightmare of future tyranny comes in the overt and brutal form of the government's boot on the neck of a materially deprived and starving populace, as in George Orwell's "1984."  Other times, the evolution of tyranny is more subtle, and disguised in the pleasures and frivolities of a spoiled, opulent society, as in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451."

But, in the real world...are those the creeping footsteps of future tyranny we hear coming up behind us now?

Our way of life is based on the public's sacred right to elect their own leaders, and to base their decisions on the free and open flow of information.  Freedom of speech + Freedom to vote = Freedom.

But, maybe not anymore.  Not since the Supreme Court ruled (inexplicably) that freedom of speech can take the form of cash flow.  A while back, the Supreme Court declared that corporations are people and have absolute freedom of speech.  (Now there's science fiction for you - Corporations are people?  People who never die and don't have to pay taxes?  Night of the Living Dead comes to Wall Street.)  Now, the Supreme Court has taken it a step further by saying that wealthy individuals need adhere to virtually no limits on how much they contribute to their favorite candidates.  In other words, to paraphrase a line from "Animal Farm":  "We're all equal in our freedom of speech, but some are more equal than others."  The more money you have, the more free speech.  Wait...that means free speech isn't free.  You have to outspend the other guy, or your voice will be drowned out by his endless and omnipresent ads and propaganda, both subtle and covert.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower foresaw a time when "Politics in America would be just for the rich."  Way to call it, Ike.  If cash flow is free speech, then what is conflict of interest?  If you're a financial adviser working in a bank and you make a side deal with a customer for your own gain, that's conflict of interest, and you get fired for it.  If you're a news reporter who makes a side deal with a company you're covering for a story and "adjust" the story to benefit that company, that's conflict of interest and you get fired for that.  But, if you're running for an elected office whose occupants are sworn to uphold the interests of the public, and you accept huge amounts of money from private interests, that's not conflict of interest; that's business as usual.  If it's all right for political candidates to shape their campaigns in accommodation with legalized bribery from wealthy campaign contributors, how long before the Supreme Court says it's legal for office-holding legislators to accept bribes and favors from private interests in exchange for shaping policies and sponsoring bills according to what their pay masters tell them to do?  After all...citizens certainly have the right to speak out at public forums and through petitions in telling their elected officials what they think of the issues, and of their job performance.  And, if money is just another form of free speech, then why should exchanging cash or favors for votes be considered a crime?

The answer, obviously, is that money is not free speech.  For, as the saying goes: "Money talks louder than words."  The exchange of units of currency for service is not free speech; it's commerce.  The two are not the same, because one can be regulated for the public good, and the other can't.  We can vote to regulate commerce, in order to protect the health and general welfare of our communities, but if the only candidates we can vote for are candidates that are owned by the very commercial interests that threaten us, then we have no protection or control of our lives at all.

Free speech is supposed to be a guaranteed right accorded to all, rich and poor alike.  And, electoral politics, the ultimate expression of free speech, is supposed to be the great equalizer of society, the one absolute guarantee that the poorest citizen's vote counts no more or less than the richest, and that everyone's voice is heard.  If political free speech becomes a commodity to be bought and paid for, then the great equalizer of democratic society is gone, and speech is no longer free; it becomes just another function of Social Darwinism.  They might just as well start charging for admission to the polls, or deny admission altogether to anyone with a yearly income of under $600,000.00.

Political campaigns for public office are public utilities, like the police or fire departments, and as such should be publicly funded.  Each candidate should be limited to the same resources, just enough to get their message across.  Anything extra should depend on the degree of transparency and properly moderated debate the candidate agrees to.  Anyone applying to be a servant of the public interest should act like it, not like a servant of private interests.

So, why are we in this mess, to begin with?  If there's one thing the public loves to do, it's complain.  If there's one thing the public hates to do, it's vote, or do anything to contribute to the political process.  The less meaningful the vote becomes, of course, the more this will be the case.  If we don't get on our legislators now (while we still can) and get them to sponsor meaningful campaign finance reform bills and push them through Congress, we may yet wake up in a world in which freedom is an illusion, democracy a sham, and government a dictatorship of the 1% lording it over the groveling peasantry below.

Meilin and The Challenger by Cate Masters

 

Cate Masters, talented author of Romance, Fantasy and all things wondrous offers a strange and intriguing new mix of action, romance, magic and horror:

Meilin and the Challenger

Futuristic urban fantasy/fairy tale
73 pages
Coming:  April 11, 2014 from Musa Publishing

Action-adventure, futuristic, reimagined fairy tale, Grimm, kickass heroines,  sweet romance, zombies...

 

Who could ask for more??

 

 

 

 Blurb:

Meilin King has never believed in fairy tales. Happy ever afters might have happened in the old days—before zombies. But this is 2089. When her father promises riches to the one who can rid their city of zombies, Meilin and her sisters rush to develop a solution that won’t bankrupt Dad.

The war overseas left Will MacGregor disillusioned, but fighting zombies at home is a cause he can embrace. Meilin’s another. Tough but sweet, she might make him believe in life again, and maybe even love, if she doesn’t kick his ass first.

 

When zombies kidnap her family, Meilin must rescue them. But can she and Will save them from the worst fate of all?

Excerpt

A click sounded beside him. Meilin propped a rifle to her shoulder and sighted her aim toward the advancing zombies. “Let’s annihilate the party crashers, sisters.”

A lopsided smile quirked his lips. “Not all the party crashers, I hope.”

Her stance steady, she glanced over. “I might spare you.”

Oh hell, I’m in love. Gunfire erupted on either side, but he couldn’t tear his focus from her. Amazing, how she braced against the kick of the rifle—her slight frame absorbed it and she fired away. Like you should be doing.

As trained, he lifted the Uzi. Stunned, he could only watch as the girls split the zombies’ heads with one shot apiece, the most efficient kill he’d ever witnessed. The zombies at the front of the charge fell first. Those in the center scattered to either side. Hell, these women didn’t need his help. If only the soldiers in his platoon had been so deadly accurate.

Better at least try to be helpful. He let the bullets fly. Too bad the walking dead couldn’t run; soon they dropped to the forest floor with the others.

 

The tallest blonde held a strange set of binoculars to her face. “There, two more getting away.”

Hard to sight them in the dark. He swiveled one of the dance floor spotlights in their direction. Momentarily blinded, the walking dead stopped walking. Meilin and the tall blonde aimed, and their shots cracked the zombies’ heads in two.

Meilin tapped his shoulder. “Aim the light to three o’clock. I think I see a few more.”

She stood so close, he grew woozy. Cherry blossoms. He struggled to fight off her intoxicating scent. He did as she asked, but his acute awareness centered on her. Built the way he liked, petite but powerful. She moved with purpose and grace, surety and intense focus in every action. Like the others, she felled the three zombies with one shot each, in exactly the spot needed for the final kill: their heads. Oh yeah, a woman who knew what she wanted and went after it, a force to be reckoned with.

She rested the rifle butt against her hip. “What do you think, Lakshme? More hiding out there?”

The girl with almond eyes shrugged. “Probably.”

Yeah, most likely. Better make sure. “I’ll do a sweep and check.”

The tallest blonde winced. “By yourself?”

Lakshme smirked. “Aren’t we lucky? Superman’s here.”

Meilin’s gaze swept over him. “Oh, I thought he was the Green Hornet.”

The blonde’s lip curled. “Horn dog, more like.”

****

Coming April 11 at:

 

 http://musapublishing.com

 

Book video

Direct link:  http://youtu.be/1B_1Ahmy-sc

 

 

About Cate

Cate Masters has made beautiful central Pennsylvania her home, but she’ll always be a Jersey girl at heart. When not spending time with her dear hubby, she can be found in her lair, concocting a magical brew of contemporary, historical, and fantasy/paranormal stories with her cat Chairman Maiow and dog Lily as company.

Look for her at http://catemasters.blogspot.com and in strange nooks and far-flung corners of the web.

 

Catch up to Cate

Email: cate.masters@gmail.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cate-Masters/89969413736?ref=ts

Twitter:  @CateMasters

 

 

Black Goddess

Lovers of  SCIENCE FICTION,

 

                     Paranormal Romance,

                   

                            Intrigue and Reality Askew...

 

Check out my latest release from Mocha Memoirs Press:  BLACK GODDESS:

 

http://mochamemoirspress.com/black-goddess

 

Joshua Sinclair, a deeply troubled Gulf war veteran desperately seeking answers volunteers for an illegal physics experiment that regresses his being into pure energy, projecting him backwards billions of years through time, towards the beginning of the universe.

 Reality shatters, ancient time periods and long-dead alien civilizations crashing through into our world. As people begin disappearing in inexplicable incidents defying the laws of matter, Joshua finds himself at the center of a government investigation, deadly covert agents closing in.

From the dark recesses of the sub-conscious mind to the furthest reaches of inter-galactic space, a dark quest for ultimate truth and ultimate evil could lead to the apocalypse. Or, straight into the mind of God…

 

Shifting backward in time...

 

Science fiction sometimes deals with the concept of traveling backward in time.  But, in real life, it looks as though western civilization is truly shifting backward in time, in terms of the basic human rights of women.

In 1973, Roe v. Wade gave women the most basic right of all:  the right to control their own bodies.  Public opinion remains pretty solidly opposed in the U.S. to any outright ban on abortion rights.  But, if present trends continue, it looks as though the right of choice may suffer the death of a thousand cuts.  Reactionary forces bent on shifting the country back through time to the 1950's on women's rights are again using underhanded, sideward legislative attacks to slowly but surely whittle down a woman's right to abort an unwanted pregnancy.  Texas has been one of the main battlegrounds in this ongoing war of attrition of late.  Now, Michigan has become the next battlefield where women's rights have suffered a defeat.

Ironically, in a time when the country is hotly debating insurance coverage, a new restrictive anti-abortion law passed by the Michigan State Senate uses insurance coverage rules as a weapon against a woman's right of choice.  Under this new law, a woman must purchase her abortion coverage under a separate rider, but is not allowed to do so if she's already pregnant.  (So much for the conservative battle-cry of not letting big government interfere with our insurance choices!)  So, basically, if a woman's just been raped and impregnated, she's out of luck unless she already bought a rider she would not have otherwise needed.  Just the latest in a parade of utterly unscrupulous tactics for taking down a woman's right to choose, not with an axe, but with tweezers.  The conservatives know they can't win this fight in a fair stand-up vote, so they hope to sneak in their anti-freedom agenda an inch at a time.

So, what is the end-goal of this anti-choice crusade?  What do the conservatives ultimately want the U.S. to look like?  Well, perhaps much like El Salvador does today.  What is little reported in the U.S. media is that El Salvador currently has one of the most brutal and draconian anti-abortion laws in history.  Women in that country are currently being imprisoned for years on charges of "aggravated murder", if they so much as suffer a miscarriage which the authorities consider "suspicious."  Once incarcerated, they are subject to beatings and severe abuse.  Abortion has been banned without exception in El Salvador since 1997.  (Those of us old enough to remember the 1980's remember Ronald Reagan's merry death squads in Central America, his support of right wing butchers in El Salvador, all in the name of freedom.  Look how wonderfully that all turned out.)

This cruel turn against women's rights in El Salvador is largely reflective of a general rightward shift in a largely Roman Catholic society.  The anti-choice group Si ala Vida (Yes to Life) in alliance with the ruling ARENA party has played a large role in shaping public opinion in a severely anti-choice direction.  (Ironic that a group so concerned with the sanctity of life should ally itself with the right-wing coalition ARENA, founded by the infamous war criminal and mass murderer Roberto, "Blowtorch Bob" D'Aubuisson, mastermind of the assassination of famed human rights defender Archbishop Oscar Romero in 1980.)  The Salvadoran Bishop Miguel Moran Aquino justified the anti-choice policy this way:  "We cannot accept any law that goes against life.  It is not a question of faith and religion, but of humanity."  

The sincerity of Bishop Aquino's pro-life statement must be called into question by another statement the Bishop made, in explaining to western journalists that he interpreted the current conservative shift in El Salvador a back-lash against feminist groups and their efforts to impose what he termed liberal social legislation counter to Salvadoran culture:   "They want to promote therapeutic abortion.  This would open the window to other kinds of abortions, then same-sex marriage and adopting children by homosexuals or lesbians."

Clearly, it's not about the sanctity of life.  It's about power, fear and hate.  Power of men over women, fear of progress and hate of those who are different.  That's the heart and soul of the rightward shift in western civilization which masquerades behind hypocritical fig-leaf slogans of "pro-life" and "godliness."  What is pro-life about a culture that slaughters thousands with predator drones?  What is godly or Christian about a culture where crowds howl like savages outside death houses in gleeful anticipation of executions?  Those who call themselves godly and pro-life are often the same people who blow up abortion clinics, kill abortion doctors and slaughter gays and lesbians however they can.  Oh sure, the public disavows support for such extremism.  But, put it into law, if only little by little, and they'll howl in support of that, too.  If conservatives got their way, homosexuals, women accused of abortion, illegal immigrants, the racially impure... any one who doesn't fit in with their simplistic, colorless view of life would be quietly exterminated, all in the name of godliness and pro-life.

No, it wouldn't be done openly.  The laws that permitted it would come about only slowly, bit by bit and from a dozen crooked angles.  As it was in Germany once upon a time... no one would notice.  Because, no one would want to.