Reclaiming Gender and Economic Justice in the Era of Corporate Takeover

Abstract

Since Petchesky wrote Globalization, Women’s Health and Economic Justice: Reflections Post September 11, George W. Bush led the US through six more years of waging a global War on Terror whereby he enshrined the US as a saviour ‘ridding the world of evil’. After 9/11, George W. Bush continually portrayed the world in binary terms: a ‘grand conflict between the forces of good and evil, freedom and terror, with the United States as God’s appointed agent for the universal spread of liberty’ (Urban 2007). US democracy and radical extremism were in constant opposition, and few words appeared more frequently spoken in his speeches following 9/11 than ‘evil’ and ‘evil-doers’ with reference to that opposition (Urban 2007). Terrorism and terrorists clearly replaced the old Cold War rhetoric of communist enemies as the evil to overcome, and evil entered the nation’s strategic plans. Even after the change in administration to Barack Obama, the US Government continues expending the lives of US military men and women, as well as military drones and other weapons, against the women, men and children of Iraq and Afghanistan, and surely others who are deemed to be ‘evil’.