DARVO is indeed a favorite tactic of abusers, of pathological families, and indeed, of whole oppressive strata of society. It is hard to fight, because the abuser proceeds from a position of self-righteousness, while the victim is sooner or later convinced of a culpability that is such an ingrained part of her/his identity that no amount of impeccable conduct can ever mitigate it. It is exactly because of this that individual or class victims tend to do poorly in court, as well: these are the people who flunk lie detector tests when they’re innocent, while the insoucience of abusers/psychopaths fool machines and human triers of fact alike.

Thus, it is all the more important that you collect and organize evidence, because the victim herself has been so thoroughly mind f****ed that, when she allows herself to remember at all, she will remember in ways that both trivialize the event and put her at fault. Before you ever have to convince any authority of what happened and how, you may have to convince her first.

You are very courageous and caring. Good luck!

Erika: Yeah, the thread had kind of strayed…:)
I know of several more women in these types of situations in this area as it is endemic and condoned in many ways.
The black eye in a very public place of work after hearing the crowing about the “knock down, drag out with the old lady last night” by her husband two days before in a break room at work… and her statements of it being her “fault”. No Police report filed.
The girl who was assaulted by her father for coming home and asking for help because she was pregnant, the intercession of her brothers to stop him from punching her in the stomach, the stalking and harassment of her later, forcing her to leave the area because of “her Ba*tard kid”… No Police report filed.
The local girls raped at parties for “being drunk”, and the wholesale persecution of some of them for reporting it, or the fear of others to report it because of the “examples” made of those who did… No Police reports filed even though, several years later, one of them had to have surgery for cysts/complications due to trauma of the area.
Much more of this… and it makes me sick.

Aadila and Sam: Yes, I fully understand the situations of some women who stay in relationships through fear, insecurity, or an instigated/instilled situational hopelessness through constant belittling, threats, and gaslighting.
I also agree to the effects of the trauma of constant emotional abuse as opposed to the physical.
I in no way intend to belittle the effects of physical abuse.
Physical abuse can be observed, photographed and documented, whereas emotional is oft DARVO’ed and the glib, superficial, “compulsive lying and charm” of an abuser (and, often, associated “family” members or “friends”) to authorities and others is accepted as fact due to, literally, tens of thousands of years of Patriarchal Misogyny.
Emotional abuse is equated to a rape of the soul, and cannot necessarily be defined in a court where “feelings” are not pictures or recordings, where a woman (or a man) has been “conditioned” to react to certain situations by positive/negative reinforcement.
People can be “Skinner Box”ed in their own homes/churches/schools/families.
Poisonous Pedagogy, NPD, APD, etc. all also play a role: and concurrent dependant situations.
Some abusers cannot have their own Jonestown and personality cult, and must make of it anything they can.

Again, Thank You all for your advice, and Thank You SPLC for all that you do.

Speaking of which, have you ever heard of something called an IL-2?

The fact is that Soviet planes and cars were designed not by “the government”, but by enterprises that happened to be owned by the state. As another poster pointed out, we saw what unregulated capitalism and the free market gave us back in the 1890s till about the 1930s. It wasn’t good. In fact if you want to know exactly how bad things were, you should go out and find a book called The Good Old Days – They were Terrible! by Otto Bettmann. In the ‘Good old days’ the milk you bought would be half water and chalk, your butter would be mostly hog fat and who knows what else, your job would be excruciating, the city would smell, public transport(which at that time was totally private) was overpriced, unreliable, and often dangerous, the streets were flanked by piles of garbage(free market didn’t provide good sanitation) and the entire city would smell terrible.

TsAGI, the Central Hydrodynamics Institute in Moscow is one of the world’s foremost centers for hydro- and aerodynamic studies. I highly recommend you watch the excellent ‘Wings of the Red Star’ series (narrated by Peter Ustinov, woohoo!) on YouTube.

Here, I’ve found one regarding the MiG-25, which was the plane you were referencing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....038;sns=em

The MiG-25 was blazingly fast, but it had very high wing loading, resulting in poor maneuverability. But that was not an issue, as its intended roles of interception (of the abortive B-70 Valkyrie) and reconnaissance had no great requirement for dogfighting.

But nice try, skippy. You can take your American exceptionalism and SHOVE IT.

Thanks for the suggested bibliography. I might add Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America” and Hernando de Soto’s “The Mystery of Capital”, and really anything by Leonardo Boff. And oh, why not… “Empire” by Negri and Hardt.

Unfortunately Sam may not find those in his local Right Wing Reading Room because they had to prioritize such great works as, “The Homosexual Agenda: Exposing the Principal Threat to Religious Freedom Today” by Sears and Osten, and, “The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially” by Waite and Gallagher.

To each their own, I suppose…

radiant personality and intelligence should be after my in the first sentence :)

Those who claim the United States is not a socialist country are forgetting that our state is directly responsible for the world’s largest piece of global policing. The money comes straight out of worker’s pockets and into the vast machine of state-run enterprise.

Yet another Republican hypocrisy debunked…nickel and dime the American people over food stamps, but stick your hands in our pockets to make the Mig look like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Meanwhile, i’m done trying to educate Sam who refuted his own argument himself way better than anyone else could have by citing military aviation as one of the wonders of the free market and private enterprise. According to people like Sam, we should simply ignore the billions of dollars of big government spending on basic scientific research and defense contracts.

But this is all relatively unimportant – MRJ has pointed out what is really important here – the reality of domestic violence and mysogny against women..

Sam pretty much any country in Latin America has shantytowns, as do probably most countries affected by European colonialism. Even the U.S. has its extreme poverty…all the more sign that capitalism has failed to take care of its own.

Now, since you brought it up, would you like to discuss how U.S. corporations such as United Fruit Company and World Bank (i.e. U.S.), backed mega-development loans, protectionism and meaningless political phytosanitary barriers have contributed to the economic distortions in Latin America?

Oh that’s right…bankrupting Latin America was necessary in order to preserve freedom and free markets for misguided socialists who don’t know what’s good for their own countries.

If this is a 27 year marriage, there may be grown children with standing to intervene.

If the victim is still cogent next time you talk to her, intervene her as vigorously as you can, even to the point of presenting her with a packed overnight bag and putting her on a Greyhound to out-of-state friends or relatives, and never forget that women who are actually leaving, as well as both men and women who aid them, are at heightened risk of lethal violence..

Sam, go disport yourself in your new Hall of Mirrors, where you can admire your many excellences without any input whatever from your conspecifics. But since mirrors tend to be made out of glass, hurry up before the tread of Ruslan’s Seven-League Bronze Baby Shoes screws things up.

And that is just one example. There are hundreds of others.

And under a truly free market system, cars would be much more primative and still be playthings for the rich and airplanes would be much more primative and likely even more dangerous as 19th century railroads. Who do you think built all of those roads and bridges? Who do you think pays for the air traffic control system, all of that radar and weather detection technology, airports, etc.? In both cases, it is the government through tax revenue. There are a few private toll roads but they are expensive.

As far as what unregulated capitalism really looks return to the 19th Century railroads which were deadly (see also coalmines of the same period). There was no governmental regulation of the working conditions of the railroads (and no unions either) and about the only requirement in corporate law was that the corporation be registered. Thanks to common law rules regarding the duty of common carriers to provide safe passage to their paid customers (passengers and freight) there was a bit more safety provided to passengers thanks to tort law. But there was absolutely no protection to workers thanks to the common law rules of assumption of the risk, the common servant doctrine, and contributory negligence. Between those doctrines railroads had absolutely no incentive to provide safe working conditions because the workers who were killed or maimed working there had no legal recourse (in part because the railroads knew that the workers had no legal recourse and that people were desperate for any kind of work they could do things like have brakemen ride on top of the cars on fast moving trains to be ready to pull the brakes in case of an emergency – the job of brakeman was so dangerous that killed or maimed brakemen assumed the risk so their widows get nothing). The common servant doctrine which holds that if you are a worker and another worker is negligent which leads to your injury or death you get nothing (example you are an engineer on one train and you are given a clear signal but there is another train coming on you and you are killed, your widow gets nothing because it was the negligence of a different railroad workers).

The railroads ultimately became so deadly that first workers started to organize in unions. The earliest significant strike was the Railroad Strike of 1877 which almost turned into a revolution until the feds sent in the army. The Pullman Strike is also well known in labor history but that was more a manufacturing strike. Naturally unions led to the Poplist and Progressive movements. Ultimately, railroad workers organized and that provided them some more power. And Congress finally noticed the carnage which was going on and stepped in and passed the world’s first worker’s compensation statute the Federal Employees Liability Act in 1906. FELA revolutionized tort law by abolishing the common servant doctrine, introducing comparative negligence, and removing the defense of assumption of the risk in employment cases. It was followed by the Jones Act for Seamen in 1920 and eventually many states turned towards comparative negligence.

It is notable that at the same time that the first inkings of worker safety started was at the same time that the first consumer protection laws (the Pure Food and Drug Act i believe also came out in 1906). There was also a revolution in corporate law at the time – remember in the 19th Century, outright fraud and theft was basically legal in the selling of securities. The rule was caveat emptor. That is why the era was known as the robber baron era. Outright theives like Jay Gould flourished. And government corruption was rampant (most famously was the Credit Mobilier scandal under the Grant administration). Remember that was before direct election of senators so people could actually bribe state legislatures to become senators. There was essentially no oversight over anything at the time – and the results were exactly what you’d expect – a few people became ultra rich, most people became extremely poor, government was a bad joke, people were killed and maimed at appalling rates, children were working in factories, and eventually the common people got mad as hell and decided to not take it anymore.

In fact, everything which Karl Marx predicted would happen through unchecked capitalism occurred in the U.S. between the Civil War and the New Deal – yes, that even includes riots, general strikes, and near revolutions. In fact, contrary to what idiots like Glenn Beck try to claim, the Progressive Movement and the New Deal reforms saved capitalism. Without them, the U.S. probably would have become a fascist government in the 1930s (there was a creditible plot backed by some of the richest men in America to overthrow FDR and install a fascist regime in 1933 which only failed because the right wing General Smedly Butler they tried to recruit was a patriotic American who reported it to Congress – and incidentially, none of the plotters were ever charged with anything even after they threw monkey wrenches into American war production during World War II while arming Hitler.)

So that is why “free market” solutions do not work and why no one really wants a true free market. When left to their own devices a true free market would destroy itself.

Note (and this is the legal theory portion – and yes, my dream job is to be Professor Erika) that some very smart people in the Law and Economics theory – most notably Judge Richard Posner – make an argument that government regulation should be secondary to tort law. This is a very good theory – and its notable that even they argue there should still be vigorously enforced laws such as the Clayton Act (antitrust from around 1914 – passed to improve the Sherman Antitrust Act from 1890) because the free market alone needs some help. Anyway, the theory here is that [in theory] all of the protection you need for workplace safety and consumer protection comes from tort law. Thus, workers will be safe because the company will take all cost effective safety percautions to avoid negligence law suits (oh, i suppose i need to mention that based upon an opinion by Judge Learned Hand in U.S. v. Carroll Towing the basis of an economic basis for law arose – in that case, Carroll Towing had a tugboat with no radio and the barge carrying cargo owned by the U.S. government sunk in a storm. The towing company argued that there was no regulation requiring tow boats to have radios so they were not negligent to not have one. Judge Hand rejected that saying effectively that radios are really cheap and the consequences of not having a radio to learn about approaching storms (loss of life and cargo) are severe so it is negligent to not have one. Of course, the fact that the U.S. has an entire army of attorneys and more resources than Carroll Towing should be apparent and noted). Consumer products, airplanes, cars, etc. will all be safe for the same reason – companies will make them safe because of the risk of law suits. Thus, the deterrence factor of tort law will deter corporate misconduct and negligence so there is no reason for the government to regulate safety because tort law will do it. Its a very nice theory. It really is – except for one thing:

workers and consumers do not have the same level of legal resources and access to attorneys that corporations do. Thus, it may work fine in the shipping context (which the origins of the theory in U.S. v. Carroll Towing were) and other cases where it would be a suit between large corporations. But it doesn’t work for individual with corporation. The corporations – and insurance companies know that consumers will often times not even bother to pursue claims because they aren’t worth it.

Tort law also only works perspectively – yes, McDonnel Douglas had to pay out millions in liability losses for their dangerous cargo doors but only after more than 300 people died in a plane crash.

The tort law solution further collapses because even with the deck stacked in their favor, the corporations and insurance companies through what is called “tort reform” want to completely destroy tort law as a regulatory means. Thus, while in theory a tort law regulated economy (which is actually a “free market” solution, but don’t expect the “free market” cheerleaders outside of the Law and Economics movement to admit that) sounds nice in theory, it won’t work in practice.

As far as discrimination, Judge Posner the leader of Law and Economics theory supports anti-discrimination laws. Other Law and Economic guys such as Epstein oppose them as being unneeded for the argument that Sam is making – that it is not in a rational businesses interest to discriminate against potential workers and customers.

That simply ignores that people are not rational. Lester Maddox closed down a highly successful business and became an international embarassment to the state of Georgia as Governor rather than serving black people. That was not rational behavior because many other businesses found out that openly serving blacks would not destroy their business afterall. Of course, it took a governmental mandate for people to make that discovery. Without it, there would still be “Whites Only” signs up in many businesses throughout the country. It also took governmental enforcement – and some international incidents where ambassadors to the United Nations and U.N. from African countries were denied services at Denny’s service plazas – to actually achieve desegregation even in states with anti-discrimination laws (the first civil rights sit ins actually took place in Chicago to get the state of Illinois to actually enforce its anti-discrimination laws). Denying that is pure delusion.

Good luck to you, anyway, because it really sounds like you are going to need it.

Here’s a hypothetical situation (the names have been changed to protect the guilty as is required by “god’s law”), based upon true events:

What if you knew of a woman, someone you have known for 27 years, someone you have seen abused by her husband for all of that time unmercifully with “covert” threats of later physical abuse (“pretend” slapping, poking, grabbing and being pulled away if she speaks her mind, etc..), constant verbal abuse in the form of “You’re Stupid!”… “You’re too Stupid to understand!”… “Shut Up! You Don’t Know What You’re Talking About!”…. and all of the other manifestations of verbal ridicule and dehumanizing that a man does to a woman who he abuses?

What if you had seen her go from a gregarious, outgoing, fun person to one who apologized for the slightest thing, one who was made by her husband to “admit” that she was: “Too stupid to talk.”, “I’m dumb.” and would say things like “You’re right, I’m stupid.” to him and other signs of repeated verbal and emotional abuse every time that you have seen it?

Let’s say that this woman had been admitted for major hospitalizations with fits and seizures by doctors in two different states in the spring of 2011. These fits were life threatening, and were causing catatonic states in this woman that required severe life saving procedures and, now, she was on physician prescribed medication for these life threatening seizures, and probably will be for the rest of her life.

For those of you that have never seen the miles of footage after WWI of “Shell Shock” victims, or understand anything about severe PTSD, I might suggest that you look at some of those reels and do some research.

What if you had again seen her husband’s constant verbal abuse last summer (2011), covert physical threats, and related abuses… seen/heard her being abused and then suddenly fall into one of those fits and start drooling, shaking, eyes rolling into her head, etc. while her husband stands above her and YELLS: “What’s Wrong With YOU!”, and “Why Are You Doing This To ME?”, “What’s Wrong With Your Brain?!”, and other similar at the top of his very considerable voice?

What if you had heard him saying that her doctors “Don’t know what they’re talking about.” and he admitted to keeping her medications from her, cutting her prescribed dosages, and “prescribing” his own dosages or getting other meds from somewhere else that were “supposed to do the same thing” but were not prescribed?

What if you knew that interfering with the prescriptions of another under a doctor’s care was a Felony, and could very well end her life?

What if you reported this to the authorities, the Department of Human Services on Sept. 9, 2011 because you had had enough of seeing his abuse of this woman, BUT, apparently, nothing was done?
I do happen to know that they have a legal duty to investigate such within 24 hours.

What if you talked with a man at a local convenience store recently (July 3, 2012), an acquaintance of theirs that has admitted repeatedly witnessing the same abuses, heard the same admissions of taking her meds and playing “doctor” because he “believes” that the doctors are “just in it for the money” and that he is more qualified to determine her prescription dosages or whether she needs her medications or not?

What if, due to personal stalking in this area (automatic/semi-automatic gunfire at night, destroyed property, on-line stalking, phone threats, etc..) you always carried a digital recorder, and a digital camera with you (in case of verbal assault, and to protect myself from false accusations by locals), and you got this person admitting these things: that this man was still abusing her, still keeping her meds from her and changing her dosages, etc.. on record?

By the way, in this state it is legal to record conversations in public places if not to be used for tortuous purposes: otherwise it’s a two party state in which consent for recording must be obtained by both parties.

What would you do, knowing that someone’s life or health was in jeopardy due to the manipulations of an abuser, and having in your possession a conformation from another individual to that effect?

Should it just be ignored?
Should this woman be allowed to suffer or die because her husband thinks he knows more about her “condition” than licensed physicians in two different states?

What if she dies, or ends up in a severely deranged or catatonic state similar to Terry Schaivo, and others that you know are hiding, or ignoring the abuses of that woman, that you reported it, and again, apparently nothing was done?

What would you do?

The example of Brazilian state-owned company Embraer proves you wrong that government cannot successfully design aircraft. Did you know that since the 1980s Embraer was the sole subcontractor for the
design and production of outboard flaps for the McDonnell Douglas MD-11, and production of the tail fin and wing tips for the Boeing 777? The company had a long and very successful history of design for decades before it was privatized.

By the way, returning to original topic of “socialist hellholes”, I think it is also worth mentioning that socialism in Brazil led to world recognized programs for best practice in management of AIDS. They did so by breaking patents from pharmaceutical companies who, left to the “free” market, would have happily profitted off human misery. The free treatment, free condoms, and free needle exchanges led to drastically reduced transmission numbers. The government also aggressively led public awareness campaigns while the U.S. was still twiddling its thumbs.

How often right wing stereotypes fall when confronted with facts about socialism…