The recent fusion of state and financial interests that culminated in the federal bailout of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae and AIG will eventually cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars. While some may see the financial slowdown as evidence of the decline of the American Empire, others view recent developments in the giant government bailout as steps toward fascism. While comparisons between the current times and the 1930s are being made regularly by pundits and politicians, the likeness could be even more troubling than the apparently unsettling economic similarities. Although seen as a turn to the left by free-market adherents, the giant government bailout of financial institutions (or the nationalization of risk and loss, and ) more close resemble classical fascism.

Yet, by the time the PTRC released its report; sexual violence was increasingly acknowledged and condemned by an international community that was more responsive to reports of systematic sexual violence. Women testified to the PTRC, and their experiences will forever be a part of Peru’s official history. Remaining adherents to the Shining Path, such as the Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru (CSRP) exploited the PTRC’s report, as seen in an article in the weekly newspaper, Revolutionary Worker , and reprinted by the CSRP: “One of the most heart-wrenching sections of the Commission report documents case after case of torture of women revolutionaries by the military and police,” the article goes on to describe acts of torture, and ends by quoting the PTRC, “The Commission concludes that sexual violence against women by the armed forces of the state was a 'generalized practice that took on a systematic character connected to the repression of the subversives in the provinces of Ayacucho, Huancavelica, and Apurimac.’” [50] In the production of memory, the Shining Path has won an important victory, and even after its destruction in the mid-1990s, the movement continued to celebrate its treatment of women. Later in the article the authors remarks, “One of the things that really stands out about the People’s War in Peru is how steadfastly the PCP (Peruvian Communist Party) has struggled against women’s oppression, and how it has led the masses against every form of degradation faced by women in Peru.” [51] The power of...

http://locationofcontestation.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/your-life-is-a-lie/