Women Academics From The United States

"Forget the cliché that if it’s free, “You are the product.” You are not the product; you are the abandoned carcass. The “product” derives from the surplus that is ripped from your life."

"During the last two decades, the leading surveillance capitalists—Google, later followed by Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft—helped to drive this societal transformation while simultaneously ensuring their ascendance to the pinnacle of the epistemic hierarchy. They operated in the shadows to amass huge knowledge monopolies by taking without asking, a maneuver that every child recognizes as theft. Surveillance capitalism begins by unilaterally staking a claim to private human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Our lives are rendered as data flows…."

"We celebrated the new digital services as free, but now we see that the surveillance capitalists behind those services regard us as the free commodity. We thought that we search Google, but now we understand that Google searches us. We assumed that we use social media to connect, but we learned that connection is how social media uses us. …We’ve begun to understand that “privacy” policies are actually surveillance policies.… The Financial Times reported that a Microsoft facial recognition training database of 10 million images plucked from the internet without anyone’s knowledge and supposedly limited to academic research was employed by companies like IBM and state agencies that included the United States and Chinese military.… ….Privacy is not private, because the effectiveness of these and other private or public surveillance and control systems depends upon the pieces of ourselves that we give up—or that are secretly stolen from us."

"In its present form, the legislative filibuster gives the minority party significant power by requiring 60 votes to pass—or even debate—most bills. Just a simple-majority vote is required to weaken or abolish the filibuster, but Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have publicly refused to reform the anti-democratic rule. Those two senators—along with several others in the Democratic caucus—also voted against including a $15 minimum wage bill in the coronavirus relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law in March... "Democracy versus autocracy is the battle of our time," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II."

"Labor advocates have been fighting for a increase in the minimum wage, with some state and local success (CNBC, 1/2/20), though its prospects at the federal level died when Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema infamously gave the boost a literal “thumbs down” (New York Times, 3/7/21)."

"It’s happening again. On Sunday, Politico reported that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema is opposed to her colleagues’ plan to regulate the price of prescription drugs — and voiced her disagreement at a recent meeting at the White House with President Joe Biden...Lowering drug costs is such a popular idea, though, that opposing it actually puts these members far out on the political fringe. According to a recent Kaiser poll, 88 percent of Americans support it... But there is one constituency that very much backs these holdouts—the pharmaceutical industry, which is already running ads in Sinema’s defense and has given her nearly $400,000 since 2017, according to the Center for Responsive Politics."

"Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), the lone Democratic holdout, is now the target of a grassroots campaign by internet advocacy group Fight for the Future, which is crowdfunding a billboard that accuses her of "siding with corporate donors to kill net neutrality." "There's no excuse for not supporting this bill," Evan Greer, deputy director of Fight for the Future, said in a statement. "Voters from across the political spectrum are outraged and overwhelmingly want their elected officials to support real net neutrality protections." According to Fight for the Future, the Sinema billboard will be displayed at "one of the busiest intersections in Phoenix, Arizona." "Senator Sinema needs to decide right now whether the corporate donations she's getting from Comcast and AT&T are really worth the cost of being seen as a telecom shill and one of the most corrupt members of her party," Greer said. "We're crowdfunding this billboard so she knows that there's nowhere to hide—she can do the right thing or be sure that the entire internet will know she sold them out.""

"Chief among the impedimentary lawmakers receiving a spitshine on their image is Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Perhaps the biggest roadblock to a deal, Sinema is portrayed in corporate media as a quirky, party-bucking, principled politician—rather than the reflexive obstructionist she’s proven to be in negotiations (Vanity Fair, 9/30/21).<BR<That lack of purpose in talks with party leaders is paired with her cozying up to big corporate donors. As Sinema has stifled the social spending legislation, she’s reaped the benefits, taking in hundreds of thousands from the financial, insurance and real estate sectors, according to Open Secrets. She held a fundraiser on September 27 (New York Times, 9/27/21) with industry lobbyists opposed to the tax burden they fear would be a byproduct of the bill, and another high-dollar affair on October 2 with her PAC’s major donors (New York Times, 10/1/21)."

"The For the People Act would help more Americans retain their voting rights, while the companion John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would restore and strengthen the federal oversight provisions stripped out of the 1965 Voting Rights Act by the 2013 Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder. The Brennan Center has advocated the passage of both bills... Both bills have passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, only to have been stalled in the Senate by U.S. Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both Democrats."

"Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties' rigid partisanship... [hope to] work proudly with senators in both parties"

"Any spending that we do is targeted, so that it's efficient and effective and fiscally responsible"

"I don't think we would have gotten that across the finish line without all of her hard work. I think without her it wouldn't have happened, so she deserves a ton of credit for that."

""I strongly support, and will continue to vote, for legislative responses to address these state laws, including the Freedom to Vote Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, that the Senate is currently considering*"

"Three Democrats—Reps. Conor Lamb (Penn.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.)—voted for the GOP-crafted measure, which would permanently extend the individual tax cuts under the current Republican tax law. According to the an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC), the House GOP's measure—which progressive critics have denounced as "Tax Scam 2.0"—would send the vast majority of benefits to the very top."

"When it comes to reworking Sinema’s image, Axios (10/1/21) has been one of the worst offenders, setting up the senator to readers as someone you might think has left-leaning politics, but doesn’t: Progressives could be forgiven for presuming that Sinema, 45, the first openly bisexual member of Congress, who’s easy to spot in her trademark sleeveless dresses, wry wigs and acrylic glasses, would share their woke politics. They’ve been befuddled, and increasingly enraged, when she behaves more like the late Republican Sen. John McCain, another Arizonan who didn’t mind challenging party orthodoxies. AZCentral: Here's what Democrats need to understand about Sen. Kyrsten Sinema According to the Arizona Republic‘s Laurie Roberts (9/30/21), “Sinema’s brand is all about being a party unto her own.”"

"Having some disagreement is normal. It is real, it is human. And it’s an opportunity for us as mature beings to work through it"

"My opinion is that legislation that is crafted together, in a bipartisan way, is the legislation that’s most likely to pass and stand the test of time"

"I would suggest that the proof of that method is what we’ve been able to deliver"

"Gannett’s Arizona Republic (online as AZCentral), a conservative paper in Sinema’s home state, has argued in favor of the embattled senator even as her refusal to negotiate in real terms about what she wants frustrates Democratic colleagues. In an opinion piece aiming to recast Sinema’s aimless intransigence as evidence of her independence, columnist Laurie Roberts (9/30/21) claimed that by killing Biden’s agenda, Sinema was acting to save it."

"President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress are facing a crisis as the popular domestic agenda they ran on in the 2020 elections is held hostage by two corporate Democratic senators: fossil-fuel consigliere Joe Manchin and payday-lender favorite Kyrsten Sinema... Real fiscal insanity is what Congress does year after year, taking most of its discretionary spending off the table and handing it over to the Pentagon before even considering the country’s urgent domestic needs."

"A crowd of insurrectionists just chased Senator Sinema into a bathroom at ASU screaming at her while she hid in a stall. No @CapitolPolice in sight for the female Senator."

"Apparently... she decided that if you can only barely beat them, you’d damn well better join them. Sinema quickly joined other Democrats who’d followed the Citizens United path to the flashing neon lights of big money, joining the so-called “Problem Solvers” caucus that owes its existence in part to the Wall Street-funded front group “No Labels.” Quietly and without fanfare, she began voting with Republicans and the corporate- and billionaire-owned Democrats, supporting efforts to deregulate big banks, “reform” Social Security and Medicare, and make it harder to for government to protect regular investors or even buyers of used cars from being ripped off.. Political networks run by rightwing billionaires and the US Chamber of Commerce showered her with support... She’d proved herself as a “made woman,” just like the old mafiosi documented by RFK in the 1960s, willing to do whatever it takes, compromise whatever principles she espoused, to get into and stay in the good graces of the large and well-funded rightwing syndicates... So it should surprise precisely nobody that Sinema is parroting the Chamber’s and the billionaire network’s line that President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan is too generous in helping and protecting average Americans and too punitive in taxing the morbidly rich. After all, once you’re in, you leave at your own considerable peril, even when 70 percent of your state’s voters want the bill to pass."

"All Arizonans deserve access to clean drinking water. Incredibly proud of Navajo Nation grad student Jaden Redhair for his innovative approach to delivering safe, reliable water to Tribal communities"

"And this is a genuine crisis for America because if President Biden is frustrated in his attempt to pass his Build Back Better legislation (that is overwhelmingly supported by Americans across the political spectrum) — all because business groups, giant corporations and rightwing billionaires are asserting ownership over their two “made” senators — there’s a very good chance that today’s cynicism and political violence is just a preview of the rest of the decade. But this isn’t as much a story about Sinema as it is about today’s larger political dysfunction for which she’s become, along with Joe Manchin, a poster child. Increasingly, because of the Supreme Court’s betrayal of American values, it’s become impossible for people like the younger Sinema to rise from social worker to the United States Senate without big money behind them.... While the naked corruption of Sinema and Joe Manchin is a source of outrage for Democrats across America, what’s far more important is that it reveals how deep the rot of money in American politics has gone, thanks entirely to a corrupted Supreme Court."

"I couldn’t agree more"

"A woman’s health care choices should be between her, her family, and her doctor. Overturning Roe v. Wade endangers the health and wellbeing of women in Arizona and across America."

"For weeks, conservative Democrats in Congress have prevented the passage of the Build Back Better Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Congressmember Ilhan Omar of Minnesota has been a vocal critic of Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who have stalled the bills and forced President Biden to radically scale back the price tag of his agenda. “All Democrats are essentially on board,” Omar says, “except for these two, who are essentially doing the bidding of Big Pharma, Big Oil and Wall Street.” ... Manchin and Sinema have also forced President Biden to radically scale back the Build Back Better Act, which began as a proposed $3.5 trillion spending bill over 10 years to vastly expand the social safety net and combat the climate crisis. Biden has reportedly lowered the topline price tag on the package to $1.75 trillion — half the original bill."

"Health care is on the ballot this election. Protections for Arizonans with pre-existing conditions, Medicare improvements and prescription drug costs for seniors, and coronavirus relief all hang in the balance"

"Five members of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Ariz.) Veterans Advisory Council resigned this week over her opposition to multiple aspects of Democrats’ sweeping social spending bill. In a letter released Thursday, the veterans hammered Sinema over her refusal to fully support President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda as well as her opposition to abolishing the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold for most legislation in the Senate that has consistently thwarted Democrats’ legislative priorities. “You have become one of the principal obstacles to progress, answering to big donors rather than your own people. We shouldn’t have to buy representation from you, and your failure to stand by your people and see their urgent needs is alarming,” the five wrote in the letter, which was released by Common Defense."

"She's siding with the legacy of Bull Connor and George Wallace instead of the legacy of my father and all those who fought to make real our democracy"

"Manchin and Sinema are effectively acting like 21st Century-style "Dixiecrats" of the '50s ad '60s, segregationist Democrats such as James Eastland, Robert Byrd (Manchin's mentor) and George Wallace. The Dixiecrats' were committed to racial segregation and white supremacy...The question is whether faced with the potential defeat of historic civil rights legislation due to their opposition to filibuster reform, are Sinema and Manchin willing to go down in history as the Strom Thurmonds, George Wallaces, and yes, Robert Byrds of the 21st century, who stood in the classroom doors to block integration and for years filibustered civil rights laws. Will they want to face headlines like "Two Democratic Dissenters Manchin and Sinema Join Republicans in Blocking Filibuster Reform That Would Allow Majority Passage of Civil Rights Laws." Are Sinema and Manchin willing to face the outrage of the grassroots activists who helped get them elected and who are ready to cash in their chips and mobilize a mass movement to get these two Senators to change their positions? Sinema may be particularly susceptible to grassroots pressure, since her narrow win was powered in large part by organizing from unions and Latino activists. And if Sinema flips, would Manchin be willing to be the lone Democrat allowing Republicans to block historic civil rights legislation? Sinema's and Manchin's decisions may well determine whether America remains a democracy or whether it's indefinitely distorted by minority rule."

"While Biden repeatedly vowed to address the climate crisis, his climate agenda was dealt a major setback back in Washington, D.C., when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia criticized the slimmed-down $1.75 trillion Build Back Plan to address the climate crisis and to expand the nation’s social safety net. The plan will only pass the Senate if Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema come around to support it."

"It was a commonplace in medieval accounts of kings that in fact the Muslims are incarnations of the demons, while the Hindu king who wages war against them is an incarnation of one of the Hindu Gods, whose function it is to descend to earth in human form and extirpate the demons, thus winning one more round in the on-going battle between the Gods and the demons (§). The comparison, then, that the Muslims do no more against the divine images than the demons have always done against the Gods themselves, suggests this deeper identification."

"The Ekalingamahdatmya is clearly sufficiently preoccupied with the Muslim invasions of North India to raise directly the issue of how and why the Muslims could have overrun the land. Indeed as we have just seen it asks forthright how the images of the Hindu Gods, which it regards as the Gods themselves, could have been broken and battered by the unbelievers. The central stories of the text, the stories designed to explain the origins of the holy site and its images, I believe should be understood in this broader context of the text. Doing so reveals the consummate artistry that is at work in the reshaping of the underlying puranic stories to fit its special circumstances: the curse of Parvati, making the hard-hearted Gods into stones, is aptly suited to a period in history when building of more precious materials was a clear invitation to disaster. The Ekalingamabatmya may use the understatement of story telling, but it is nonetheless a valuable testimony to fears and attitudes in this perilous period of Indian religious history."

"Audrey Truschke has engaged in what would in any other context be called genocide denial and Holocaust revisionism. But because her hatred is against Hindus, Rutgers doesn't care. It's a flagrant and vile "standard"."

"The political power equation that facilitates the partisan anti-scholarly conduct of your camp will not last forever. One day it will become feasible to do academic research on the strange phenomenon that an entire academic and mediatic guild has systematically disinformed the public about the communal situation in India, consistently for decades. Your own whitewash of Aurangzeb will serve as a significant piece of evidence."

"Let us note finally that on this issue, Audrey’s book is representative of a wider concern to whitewash Aurangzeb. In their all-out war on Hinduism and specific Hindu ideas, the South Asia scholars tend to practise Groupthink; there is rarely anything original, they only outdo each other in how daring they can make their own articulation of ever the same position.... To sum up, the presently-discussed thesis by Audrey Truschke comes to add to the numbers of what formally look like studies in history, but effectively are meant as strikes in the ongoing battle against self-respecting Hinduism."

"Over the centuries, many commentators have spread the myth of the bigoted, evil Aurangzeb on the basis of shockingly thin evidence. Many false ideas still mar popular memory of Aurangzeb, including that he massacred millions of Hindus and destroyed thousands of temples. Neither of these commonly believed “facts” is supported by historical evidence, although some scholars have attempted, usually in bad faith, to provide an alleged basis for such tall tales. More common than bald-faced lies, however, have been biased interpretations of cherry-picked episodes selected with the unabashed goal of supporting a foregone rebuke of Aurangzeb."

"Shivaji’s return to insurgency was devastating for the Mughals. Beginning in 1670 Shivaji plundered Surat and other places repeatedly."

"More dubiously, some have proposed that Aurangzeb’s alleged austerity was a fatal flaw. For instance, Jadunath Sarkar, who did more scholarly work than anybody else in the twentieth century on Aurangzeb, put it thus in his dramatic style: “[in Aurangzeb’s reign] the Mughal crescent rounded to fulness [sic] and then began to wane visibly.” Jadunath Sarkar spelled out his vision of Aurangzeb in his many books on the man, including the five-volume History of Aurangzib. The final tome begins, “The life of Aurangzib was one long tragedy,—a story of man battling in vain against an invisible but inexorable Fate, a tale of how the strongest human endeavor was baffled by the forces of the age.” For Sarkar, Aurangzeb was a tragic figure."

"Thinking today about Sambhaji, a seventeenth-century Maratha ruler who, by the end of his life, had alienated many supporters through brutal and miscalculated tactics. Seems that those who honor him may honor his legacy too. #Sambhaji"

"Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal Emperor (r. 1658-1707), is perhaps the most despised of India’s medieval Muslim rulers. People cite various alleged “facts” about Aurangzeb’s reign to support their contemporary condemnation, few of which are true. For instance, contrary to widespread belief, Aurangzeb did not destroy thousands of Hindu temples. He did not perpetrate anything approximating a genocide of Hindus. He did not instigate a large-scale conversion program that offered millions of Hindu the choice of Islam or the sword."

"For anyone unfamiliar with these episodes, in Valmiki's telling (I'm loosely translating here): During the agnipariksha, Sita basically tells Rama he's a misogynist pig and uncouth. During the golden deer incident, Sita accuses Lakshmana of lusting after her and setting up Rama."

"Modern historians estimate that 15 to 20 percent of Bengal's population died during the 1769-1770 famine, a starkly different outcome than after earlier failed harvests. For example, 1737 and 1738 witnessed poor harvests in Bengal, but the Mughals and local rulers helped alleviate conditions by buying grain, making loans, and permitting late revenue payments. In contrast, thirty years later, the British did none of those things and, in fact, still tried to collect revenue from starving farmers."

"The British oversaw - and contributed through inaction to - dozens of famines during two centuries of colonial rule, culminating in the 1943 famine (also in Bengal) that cost two millions Indian their lives."

"It may be deeply uncomfortable to reflect on eating savvy creatures who express their emotions. My strong suspicion—which I hope will be tested as a hypothesis—is that some people will decrease their meat and fish intake as they learn more about who they are consuming."

"I could spend a full-time job just responding to the ridiculously illogical, inconsistent, and blatantly stupid arguments supporting Trump. But here's the thing: his supporters DON'T CARE about facts or logic. They aren't seeking truth. Trump probably could shoot someone in the middle of NYC and not lose support. And this is the cumulative reason why this nation is in such terrible shape: We don't have truth seekers; we have narcissists."

"Why should we rest our highest office in America, on a man who fundamentally goes back and forth and really cannot be trusted to be consistent or accurate in anything."

"To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth."

"Trump is right. Pence should have sent back the certifications to the state legislatures, asking whether they were done according to the states' laws. That's what we advocated for. Pence was a coward at his moment in history to stand up for integrity."