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(12/06/16 4:52am)
After Donald Trump was elected the next president of the U.S., some feared that there could be a national ban on abortion, which would likely threaten the biological and psychological security and health of American women.
During the late 20th century, a fascist dictator in Romania forced women to sacrifice their mental and physical health, and caused one of the world’s greatest orphan crisis. Bans on abortion in Romania were underpinned by the state’s invasion into the sexual practices of private citizens and by a strictly enforced national quota — women were expected to provide the Romanian nation-state with at least three or four children.I was adopted from Campulung, Romania, at age 2. I am a product of fascism, the totalitarian horrors of Nicolae Ceausescu and one of the most severe orphan crises the world has ever seen.
National bans, or partial bans that forced women to obtain dangerous birth control alternatives in Romania, led to mass health epidemics, economic turmoil, widespread depression, despair and alcoholism. As a result of the bans on all forms of birth control, Romanian mothers tragically abandoned hundreds of thousands of children, and the state placed them in orphanages.
Google Books summarizes the Gail Kligman’s book “The Politics of Duplicity Controlling Reproduction in Ceausescu’s Romania,” which also helps explain what life was like under Ceausescu’s rule:
“Ceausescu’s reproductive policies, among which the banning of abortion was central, affected the physical and emotional well-being not only of individual men, women, children, and families but also of society as a whole. Sexuality, intimacy, and fertility control were fraught with fear, which permeated daily life and took a heavy moral toll as lying and dissimulation transformed both individuals and the state.” If you are for birth control, that’s fine. However, we should talk about what the actual efforts to honor these restrictions have looked like in the past and how we are to implement such policies here in the U.S.
What will happen if we overturn Roe v. Wade? What will America’s totalitarian erasure of women’s autonomy look like in your family? How do you actually think a government can prevent abortion? How can a nation and a government live with the severe consequences, such as the horrific orphan crisis of Romania and post-war Europe?
Cynthia Paces, a history professor at the College and a historian of modern Europe and gender, taught the students of her Holocaust Genocide Studies class this past summer that we should shy away from an exclusive focus on Adolph Hitler’s vision. Instead, Paces and many others in her field suggest that we fixate on how everyday Germans perpetrated and tolerated anti-Semitic ideologies and white supremacy that galvanized around the National Socialist Party and the toxic rhetoric of Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels.
In the 1930s, Germany oversaw mass deportations and enacted to prevent the problem of illegal immigrants, based on racist stereotypes that fabricated and manufactured claims about the Jewish race. I have had conversations with people who adamantly assert that the American state is justified in abruptly and violently deporting Latino and Muslims based on the similar stereotypical notions of their racial makeup.
If you oppose immigration, or forms that you deem to be “illegal,” what are the policies you expect us to support? Choose carefully America. Trump may not be Hitler, but Germany and Romania are part of the world we live in, and we are deeply embedded in it
(10/22/14 9:56pm)
By Vincent Aldazabal, Shannon Kane and Hailey Marr
There are times when tragedy catalyzes an urgent response that compels necessary criticism in the defense of hope and the preservation of human life. Paige Aiello, Michael Menakis and, most recently, Sarah Sutherland each committed suicide during their time at the College. Their absences are deeply felt on campus and our hearts are indeed broken.
Sutherland is the third student to have taken her life in the last two and a half years, while Paige Aiello and Michael Menakis committed suicide in the spring of 2013 and 2014, respectively. This number does not include attempts or even the number of individuals contemplating such a choice, but it does give us an insight to the abysmal state of mental health care on campus. This is a brutal reality that we cannot ignore, and we would be remiss in placating the shortcomings of our campus’s institutional leadership and the student body’s own lack of empathy. This piece is dedicated to the memories of three beautiful people and intends to initiate a campaign of hope predicated upon serious institutional reform and individual empowerment which are now both overwhelmingly essential for the very sustainability and survival of the College’s students. If our students and administrative leaders cannot work to heal broken hearts through the mobilization of humanitarian efforts and committed economic measures for its students, just like it has for academic interests, our public education system is fundamentally broken.
The tone expressed in President Gitenstein’s email following this recent tragedy is ultimately symptomatic of the willful ignorance of systemic hindrances to student’s mental health, as it exists at the highest levels of this college. This disregard is evidenced by the critical lack in funding given to resources like Counseling and Psychological Services, or CAPS. Many students who have attempted to utilize CAPS have expressed that the work counselors tirelessly participate in is admirable, but they are obviously underfunded and, as a result, understaffed. Given the continuous thrum of construction equipment present on all corners of campus, the message sent to students is clear. For those in charge, the outward appearance of the College is being addressed as a higher priority than that of students’ mental healthcare. The fact is, while our mental health resources are of a high quality in their limited availability, they are not as “extensive” as Gitenstein claims. They will not be extensive until they are allocated funding and resources proportional to their importance, which are now of tantamount value. That students should sometimes have to wait upwards of three weeks to speak with a mental health professional after an initial intake with CAPS, and that they are only allowed to see a professional for a very limited number of appointments, is regrettable. Students are forced to look elsewhere for help. This marginalizes individuals who do not have access to transportation to and from campus or those with subpar health insurance that leaves them unable to afford treatment. There is a very clear bottom line in this situation, and it’s high time that the College’s administration adjust its priorities and put students’ mental health and safety as an immediate platform of essential reform. It will take more than rhetorical gestures and reactive measures to prevent any further tragedies.
This change will be difficult, as we are faced with an increasingly rigorous corporate strangling of academic institutions by private power. Yet our moral consciences are gravely threatened. We must cease praising the accelerated pace of constructing Campus Town if we cannot center financial resources and humanitarian plans to provide serious constructions — institutional and personal — that secure acceptable tools for long-term mental healthcare. In the face of overwhelming grief, we must re-evaluate how we are utilizing the precious time we have here in college. This will require leadership and student collectives to re-emerge from the loss that compels us and be propelled to move forward to build support lines, media campaigns, academic outlets and crucial long-term care for those struggling with mental health. The College must be provoked from the top administrative corners to the brightest minds and largest hearts to form an inclusive community that prioritizes empathy in the pursuit of safety.
Perhaps of paramount importance is the need for bureaucratic interferences with care to be dismantled — most certainly limited by the political power of insurance companies — so healthcare professionals are not limited to healing voices of desperation, most poignantly when the very real expressions of suicidal ideation and feelings are conveyed. Any voices that immediately respond to say radical change is impossible must consider the tragic ramifications of current practices. Either we challenge what we’ve been told is “just how it is” or knowingly await the next heartbreaking and pitiful email from Gitenstein.
Suicide is not an inevitable occurrence of our existence, and the struggle for what is ideal must be continually pursued in the face of social injustice. The best way to honor the memories of those we have lost in the struggle with mental health is to take serious preventive measures. Institutional reform is but the beginning. How we reconstruct our hearts’ intents will only be realized if there is a consensus that three suicides are three too many. Shall we rigorously pursue the protection of our humanity, or shall we continue to adhere to the same order that the powers at be have implemented?
(09/23/14 3:38pm)
By Vincent Aldazabal
Staff Writer
The following definition of “feminism” to be examined in this context is the targeting, confronting and dismantling of a system of oppression that is exercised by those in positions of major power. Such a system is one that generates oppressive norms, limiting self-autonomy and breeding hostility toward categorically-defined “others.” This system has been described as the patriarchy, and as it is manifested in the realm of language, it is extremely harmful to growing minds.
It is very common for “men” to dismiss the existence of this system of oppression, simply because it does not seemingly pertain to them or overtly work punitively against them. Yet, a closer examination reveals a more poignant truth. Men of various sexes, sexualities, genders and races are systematically coerced to conform to the narrowly defined images of manhood. Examples of this exist on the institutional level, such as with the global military indoctrination processes that impose enormous burdens upon the identities of men and women as a means to create “order among the ranks.”
In stark contrast, one micro-level manifestation of such oppression is the interpersonal degrading of perceived feminized “others” that is consciously and unconsciously produced in daily dialogue. This is, I believe, a type of linguistic terrorism that does a great deal of psychological harm to human minds, and in this case particularly, those of “men.”
When males who are forced to live without their fathers are pressured to become the “man of the house,” a great deal of harm is done. The damage is embedded within the mythologized role that we assign, impose and discipline in a carefully evaluated “performative” manner as termed by the philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler. The linguistic terrorism of patriarchal oppression does not just affect young boys who, through grief, loss, divorce or other means, lose their fathers. Most boys are consistently indoctrinated with the phrases such as “be a man,” “don’t be a girl” or “man up.” The traumatic effect of this common form of patriarchal propaganda is that it imposes a will of gender conformity that does not have any linguistic stability. This destabilized linguistic existence is present whether it is in the sociolinguistics or psycholinguistics. There is no uniform definition of this supposed masculinity to be grasped psychologically, let alone “performed” physically.
Allow us to evaluate what such rigidity does to the sexual minorities targeted by the fraternal language of brotherhood. When we instruct men of every age to “not be a queer” or “not be a princess,” we perpetuate the psychological suffering of our gay brothers. Furthermore, this language sentences men to patterns of deep self-hatred of which the bearing on mental health is clearly documented. Of equal significance is to evaluate this narrative as it spans across all socioeconomic landscapes and evaluate the effects of patriarchal doctrine expressed within communities unfamiliar with the wealth of the more privileged classes. The language of mythological manhood creates a mold of masculinity that works to perpetuate “performances” of masculinity that, seemingly, can only be validated in the battlegrounds of the drug trade and fulfilled through devastating gang violence.
It has become readily apparent that this analysis only tells, if you will, “half of the story,” in the sense that the effects of linguistic terrorism against “female” populations have not been documented. Perhaps the point of such a demonstration may very well be that we as “men” may not change or effectively build peaceful environments for the “women” we love until we change both how we speak about ourselves and to one another.
(09/09/14 3:27pm)
This article was written in response to Zach Khan’s piece, “Summer recap of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” published on Aug. 26, 2014.
By Vincent Aldazabal
Staff Writer
In reading the piece in last week’s issue of The Signal by Zach Kahn titled “Summer Recap of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the main thing that stood out to the eye was the writer’s gross misrepresentation of the stated facts in order to satisfy the familiar discourse of Zionist rhetoric of Israel’s “right to return” and “defense” initiatives waged against the “terrorism of Hamas.”
This misinformation campaign as propelled by the writer of this piece is startling in its abject contempt for the nature of the truth of Israel’s latest expansion of crimes against Palestinian civilian populations — both within the Israeli state and directed against the Gaza Strip and along the West Bank. The writer wrote the following:
“On July 30, CNN reported that roughly 5,000 rockets had been fired between Israel and Hamas during the past few months. And unless something changes soon, that number will continue to increase.”
The above statement is a misrepresentation of the facts in the sense that the arsenal of Hamas is incredibly minute compared to that of Israel’s military. Hamas is mostly funded by local Palestinian collectives of small minority groups of militant forces. Israel has had the full diplomatic support, financing and arms supplementation of Washington for quite some time, a fact that a basic read of the historical literature overwhelmingly points to. (Norman Finklestein’s Image and Reality of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is one of the most comprehensive.) The significance of this is that Israel’s “Defense Forces” (a misnomer indeed) have an institutional level of military industrial power fully supported by the world’s global hegemon. Hamas’s violence, while clearly immoral, does not have the overwhelming backing of any global hegemon. This realization serves as a bridge to further critique the next fallacious claim of the story’s writer:
Throughout the summer, there has been a steep death toll. Sixty-four Israelis and roughly 2,000 Palestinians have been confirmed dead as of Aug. 21, according to CNN. While these numbers may seem lopsided, there is more to this story than what meets the eye.
Kahn’s numbers for the Palestinian death toll lacks precision in number and status of persons murdered. According to the latest U.N. Report, confirmed by The Washington Post, The Guardian and The New York Times, here is the correct report: 65 I.D.F. soldiers, four Israeli civilians. Meanwhile the total number of Palestinian dead is 2,104, of which 1,462 are civilians, 465 children civilians.
The only point Kahn and I will agree upon is that indeed, “there is more to this story than meets the eye.” As it relates to the bigger picture, a clear pattern of Israeli killing of Palestinian civilian life extends into the late 1960s. From this is the narrowly represented surface history of Israel’s “defense initiatives,” which have been executed with a severe amount of aggression that is now becoming readily apparent.
What is more to this story is the deliberate misappropriation of food, water and medical care that Israel has controlled and restricted access to for years. Israel’s latest operation of enormous destruction of Palestinian population and property with the misnomer of “Protective Edge” has crippled any Palestinian source of commerce, dietary needs and other basic standards for human living. According to the same U.N. report, 109,000 Palestinians have lost their homes, while only 10 percent of Palestinians “receive water once a day, 6-8 hours a day.”
“According to a CNN report, Hamas has fired roughly 3,500 rockets into Israel as opposed to the 1,300 air strikes from the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). With the fate of the country at stake, Israel was forced to make a move. On July 8, Israel initiated Operation Protective Edge. The goal of the operation was to deter rocket attacks from Gaza and the West Bank.”
This portion hardly needs any thorough critiques as it seriously ignores the difference between “rockets” and “air strikes.” The rockets fired by Hamas are by individual persons, mainly mounted on shoulder, again by a small segment of Palestinian “militants.” Israeli airstrikes are crippling forms of military superiority, built and financed by American power.
The last portion of this piece worth citing is the following:
“Hamas needs to be removed from power — they are known as a terrorist organization internationally that is intent on destroying Israel,” junior psychology major Michael Levi said.
This surely can’t be taken as credible journalistic consultation. While no offense is intended to be brought against Kahn and Levi, whose credibility shall we rely upon, theirs or that of major media outlets?
(08/26/14 8:18pm)
By Vincent Aldazabal
Staff Writer
American drone strikes in the Middle Eastern countries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia are the newest additions to the repertoire of politically sanctioned instruments of American terrorism.
President Obama has long since dropped the rhetoric of his predecessor’s propaganda campaign of American decreed “War on Terror,” and instead is consistently asserting that American drone warfare against those with suspected terrorist ties is simply the “right thing to do.”
Amnesty International has declared Obama’s military campaign as war crimes and cites 4,000 civilian deaths, nearly a quarter of which have been children. Amnesty International also has made clear that these death tolls are probably underestimated due to the increasing difficulty in accounting for American destruction in these regions.
The practice of anonymous killing via unmanned drones has created a culture of unaccountability from the persons controlling the machines to the leadership initiating their use. Any inability to absorb the war crimes being perpetrated at the current moment is reflective of the obfuscation of particular historical patterns of presidential wartime violence against civilian populations. More significantly, if we are willing to mount a domestic resistance to such crimes, we must look to the valiant efforts of anti-war dissidents in the experiences of World War I, World War II and Vietnam.
When looking at the critiques that Sen. Robert Lafollette produced on the rhetorical justifications of Woodrow Wilson, which led up to the U.S.’s entrance into WWI, we are given a solid pretext to the development of American domestic opposition to the hypocrisies of Western imperialism.
Wilson stated that America would be “making the world safe for democracy,” yet Lafollette believed this was a false pretense and creating double standards in the aggression of the United States and its allies compared to that of the Axis Powers.
Lafollete pointed to the fact that while the U.S. supported the U.K and France’s right to adequate military defense, they would not have to terminate the crippling imperial policies in India and Africa, respectively.
Lafollette was right to be suspicious, as his critiques were proven valid in the release of the Nye Report in 1935.
The Nye Report was the strongest force in creating a new, reinvigorated body of anti-war American dissidents. The most poignant example was in the growing force of Pacifism amongst American citizens. When angered by the revelations released in the Nye Report, 500,000 students opposed American involvement in World War II on Pacifist grounds and demanded “scholarships not warships.”
Honoring Robert Lafollette’s legacy of dissent was perhaps most vocalized in the American experience of the Vietnam War. Indeed, hundreds of thousands of American men — war veterans and civilians alike — publicly condemned the war, and young women and men of the Student Nonviolent Coalition Committee were also audible voices of dissent.
It is essential to recognize the effect public opposition had in bringing an end to the tremendous loss of both American and Vietnamese life as a result of the schemes of Washington.
This past summer, the Obama administration disclosed its withdrawal policy related to Afghanistan, beneath which a more elusive political impulse is buried.
According to the editorial board at USA Today, Afghans are being ordered to “step up their game,” as a terrorist threat that now stretches “from South Asia to the Sahel” is becoming more of a threat to overall hegemony.
Drone strikes are the cause of enormous sources of both psychological and physical destruction. Their current use will only continue to exacerbate the despair that breeds an all-too-familiar, unquenchable thirst for vengeance.
The logic of the need for American public dissent is simple: We must be able to connect the themes of our own personal, collective and national levels of trauma to the trauma ravaging those on the other side of the world. For if we don’t, our humanity and democracy very may well remain enslaved to the illusion of security given by self-righteous displays of violence.