The following e-mail (titled "more for the grist") arrived yesterday:

Dear Fidelbogen: As I've not offered your blog anything of import in a while.....

You may entitle as you see fit.

HBO produced The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo released April 2008. Many other articles entitled "Breaking The Silence," "Silence = Rape," etc.. have been produced out of due concern for the atrocities women now suffer in Darfur and the Congo. While I view these contributions to our awareness as invaluable, it has also occurred to me that despite the "silence" no crime gets more press than rape. Nevertheless, there are atrocities more confined to silence; apparently too taboo to mention in the general media -- except rarely:
..................................

From: Brian Steidle of the Washington Post; March 20, 2005.

"Mihad now represents to me the countless victims of this vicious war, a war that we documented but given our restricted mandate were unable to stop. Every day we surveyed evidence of killings: men castrated and left to bleed to death, huts set on fire with people locked inside, children with their faces smashed in, men with their ears cut off and eyes plucked out, and the corpses of people who had been executed with gunshots to the head. Every day, women are sent outside the IDP camps to seek firewood and water, despite the constant risk of rape at the hands of the Janjaweed. Should men be available to venture out of the camps, they risk castration and murder. So families decide that rape is the lesser evil. It is a crime that families even have to make such a choice."

From: Afrique en ligne

"Kampala, Uganda - Uganda has accused rebels of renegade General Laurel Nkunda who is fighting the Kinshasa government of committing crimes against humanity by castrating men and using civilians as human shields. Stung by the revelations from refugees in western Ugandan district of Kisoro, Disaster Preparedness and Refugees Minister, Prof. Tarsis Kabwegyere, has called on the international community, especially the African Union, to move fast to resolve the crisis in the neighbouring Congo Democratic Republic. Rebels are (committing) all sorts of atrocities against civilians. They are castrating men, using civilians as shields against attacks from government forces and wanton killings."

From: The Inner City Press:

"UNITED NATIONS, November 11 -- To explain his government's refusal to speak with renegade general Laurent Nkunda, the Ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Ambassador to the UN Atoki Ileka told the Press on Tuesday that Nkunda's forces "rape women and castrate the men." These words were spoken, in French, at the microphone in front of the UN Security Council, inside which the Department of Peacekeeping was asking for 3000 more peacekeepers. "


From Bayview: U.S. and Rwanda to blame for Congo’s human catastrophe

"U.S. military and national security interests are determined to control Eastern Congo, because its unparalleled mineral riches are even more geostrategically significant than petroleum. They are essential to the manufacture of defense products such as jet engines, missile components, electronic components, iron and steel."

"Tantalum and cassiterite, a.k.a. tin, so abundant in Eastern Congo, are also “strategically significant” in that they are essential to the consumer electronics industry that now plays such a major role in the U.S. economy."

"To control these resources, Gen. Laurent Nkunda and his militia terrorize the Congolese people of North Kivu Province, which borders Rwanda in Eastern Congo. They shatter and uproot communities and families, with systematic rape, castration, torture, looting and murder."

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Please dear reader, ask yourself, how much of the above have you read in your corporately owned local newpapers? Nada? No doubt.. When venturing out of the camps, women are vulnerable to attack and rape. We are rightly informed of this. Castration and male genital torture are also used, like rape, as a means of terror in the Congo and Darfur but we are seldom informed of the casualties. For instance, there is no mention by Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch of the use of castration as a "weapon of war" or "means of terror" in either Darfur or the Congo. It would seem that sexual violence against the male gender is missing from their political focus. Or perhaps, as I suspect, male casualties of war have been traditionally acceptable, regardless of the humiliation they suffer, both in the Congo and America ... and they remain so (even to feminists).

Sadly and Sincerely yours,
_______________

(Fidelbogen's commentary follows

From my examination of the foregoing, and from my years of reading news stories and scrutinizing the world at large, a pattern emerges—one that will be instantly familiar to CF readers of pro-male political leaning:

• If women do bad things, play it down
• If bad things happen to women play it up
• If women have the advantage, play it down
• -------------------------------------
• If men do bad things, play it up
• If bad things happen to men, play it down
• If men have the advantage, play it up

Now, it would be far too facile to note the disparities here, and to speak of a 'double standard'. I can assure you that no such thing is actually occurring, and any feminist would be quick to inform you that the pattern displayed in the list above is in fact a case of of redistribution. Far too many men, you see, are under the mistaken impression that "equality" between men and women means formal equality. However, what feminism seeks to bring about is not formal equality, but rather gender sensitive equality.

The aim is to correct the historical imbalance of justice arising from the oppression of women in the past—to be sensitive to women's oppression, hence the phrase "gender sensitive". Some might call attention to a formal inequality to be found here, but in fact a true equality has been established by means of a sensitive redistribution of "fairness". Which is to say that "fairness" has been redistributed AWAY from men and settled upon women in order to distribute fairness evenly—although not in a "formal" way, but in a gender sensitive way.

So it is inaccurate to speak of any so-called double standard in all of this. It is more correct to speak of a gender-sensitized differential standard.

Do you follow me? Do you see how this works?

In a related vein, let us consider the gender inequality of human misery reportage, to which the news stories lately shared stand as a notable exception. Readers of this blog, being a very keen and savvy group of individuals, are no doubt aware that such orgs as Amnesty International have a long record of reporting wartime atrocities against women while having little to say about the fate of men.

The keen and savvy readers of this blog are doubtless also aware of what the feminists have lost no opportunity to inform us many times over the years: that "women are the primary victims of war", or "women suffer most from war". . . or a number of variant phrasings.

Again, it would be easy to complain of 'double standards', for we know (thanks to such stories as the above, and many others) that men suffer from war at least as much as women do, and even more in terms of sheer numbers. And such being the case, men ought to enjoy the same spotlight in the misery olympics as women do! Or so you might assume. But, would this be a proper assessment of things. . .?

What do the feminists really mean when they say that women suffer the most from war, or are the primary victims? I can only assume that they aren't talking about mere numbers, since I have never heard a feminist say that "greater numbers of women are senselessly slaughtered or hideously injured in war". No, it is always "women suffer most" or "women are the greatest victims"—and various reasons are proffered for this purportedly higher misery index, although none of these reasons have any demonstrably greater poignancy than getting your viscera pulped and scattered in all directions by machine-gun fire or your arms and legs blown off by a hand grenade or. . . getting castrated by terrorists.

Therefore we know that the feminists are not equating war victimization with mere numbers, and we may fairly conclude, in addition, that they aren't equating it with any palpable indicia of suffering. So I feel good that we have eliminated those possibilities, because I feel certain that the feminists mean something else altogether, when they inform us that women are the greatest victims of war or suffer the most from it.

So what DO the feminists mean, when they say that women are the greatest victims of war, or suffer the most from it? I see two possibilities remaining: 1.) that men inherently suffer less from war because they are inherently less capable of suffering, and 2.) that the degree of victimization or suffering is calibrated in terms of the objective value of the victim or sufferer.

Let us consider Item Number One. From a feminist point of view it is not difficult to follow the logic, since any feminist will surely tell you that most violence is committed by men, that wars are started by men, that military technologies are invented by men, and so on. Clearly men lack sensitivity in the first place. And lacking sensitivity, their capacity for suffering cannot be anywhere near to that of women. So it is not the least bit difficult to understand why women suffer the most from war, and are its greatest victims. And as the former United States Congresswoman Barbara Jordan so unforgettably expressed it:

"I believe that women have a capacity for understanding and compassion which man structurally does not have, does not have it because he cannot have it. He's just incapable of it."

Turning to Item Number Two, we find very little remaining for discussion, since this item unfolds naturally from Item Number One. It should manifestly stand to reason that a creature of lesser objective value rates lower upon any possible scale of victimization or suffering. But make note of a subtle distinction: we do not mean that such a creature undergoes less suffering in an absolute sense, but only that his suffering is of lesser import—and therefore less to be concerned about—because he himself is "lesser"on the scale of value. Similarly, his "victimhood" is of lesser import than the victimhood of one who possesses inherently greater import or greater objective value. He is accordingly a secondary as opposed to a primary victim. Do you follow me? Do you see how this works?

Bearing all of this in mind, it is easy to see why Amnesty International does not talk much about war crimes against males: because AI is a progressive, humanitarian organization, and quite current with the requirements of gender sensitivity.

So now at last we are in a position to know what the feminists really mean when they tell us that women are the primary victims of war, or suffer the most from it—and as you can see, it makes perfect sense when you understand the original frame of reference! I hope that I have supplied some insight here that will clear away the misconceptions and misunderstandings and help us all feel better about things!

More...

I am not the Attorney General for America but I come to its defence here.

Where is the mention of China?

America has a general policy embargo on any American Company investing overseas unless the contracts have specific and required clauses about human rights, minimum wages floors, female-oriented sexual harrassment and sexual equality, safe working conditions, etc. The Chinese have no such policies. The African countries' leaders and warlords are generally as uninterested in these issues as the Chinese. That is why America is so little represented in Africa and China found everywhere there.

The mineral riches mentioned are as much if not more in demand by China. Much of Africa, as a continent, has become to China as South America was to the Spanish and Portuguese 400 years ago.

The janjaweed are Communist paid and directed.

Men are routinely slaughtered in Africa, by tribally initiated wars and strife. These form the basis of 'politics' which have little to do with the wellbeing or avancement of the ordinary people. Dictatorships abound. Dictators can do deals with the Chinese 'Organisations' with Beijing's blessing and encouragement.

In these Chinese 'supported' areas, small boys are made into slaves. Men are either made slaves, physically and/or economically, or killed. Boys are inducted into armies and promoted on the basis of 'kills'. It matters little who. It is common for armed platoons to led by 14 year olds who will kill the odd ten y/o just to impose 'authority' and fear.

Women are generally made subservient either to the boys and young men under Chinese control, or rendered ecomonically unviable.

Meanwhile the 'Western' presence is hardly military. It is not even diplomatic. NGOs abound. Aid 'organisations' constitute the entire car driving populations in many regions. You can sit on the verandah of any pub in many minor Arican towns and see only white landrovers passing by. No doubt they are driven largely by good-hearted, intense, marxist-trained western University graduates with more sentimenality than compassion and unhealthy doses of self-satisfaction at their $75,000 a year 'burden', in societies where the average wage is $365 pa.