From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 3 11:33:15 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 10:33:15 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Ward Churchill on Transforming Columbus Day 2005 Message-ID: http://www.transformcolumbusday.org/ Ward Churchill on Transforming Columbus Day 2005 One hundred years ago the City of Denver instituted the first Columbus Day holiday. It was then, and continues to be today, a celebration of the genocidal legacy of colonization upon which has allowed the United States to become the world's sole superpower. October 12 also marks 512 years of indigenous resistance to the slaughter and mass incarceration of our peoples, the elimination of our cultures, and the expropriation of our lands and resources ? all of which mainstream America proclaims an "acceptable" price for the so-called progress which now threatens to make the planet uninhabitable. The American Indian Movement of Colorado has been in the forefront of the effort to transform this holiday from a celebration of race-based hatred and destruction to an affirmation of the human rights of all peoples. We have helped form a multiethnic coalition of over eighty organizations which has mobilized tens of thousands to protest Columbus Day. The City of Denver has resisted our attempts to create an alternative which respects all peoples. Instead, it has repeatedly ? and illegally ? arrested those who protest this celebration of genocide. Since 1992 three separate juries have acquitted all 11 of the protesters who have been brought to trial, and the City has had to drop the charges against 400 others. Last year the City arrested over 240 people, including children and elders, who protested the expression of hate speech represented by the so-called parade. When the jury understood *why* we considered it necessary to do so, all seven of the defendants in the first trial were acquitted and the City was forced to drop the charges against all remaining defendants. On January 25, 2005 we announced this victory at a press conference. Since our protests began in 1992, the Denver area media and, in particular, the *Rocky Mountain News* have been overtly hostile to our efforts to transform Columbus Day. Thus, it is no accident that on January 26, the very day after our press conference, the media began its barrage of attacks on me. In February and March alone the *Rocky Mountain News *and the *Denver Post*ran roughly 400 articles featuring false and defamatory allegations against me. For the most part these did not address my supposedly controversial comments about the causes of 9/11, but were designed to systematically discredit my testimony at the Columbus Day trial. Predictably, these smear tactics are now being extended from me to all those who oppose the celebration of Columbus' legacy. What the editors of the *Rocky Mountain News* and the political forces behind them do not understand is that we have been fighting this same pattern of lies for over 500 years. They have not and will not silence me, but that is not the point. The movement to Transform Columbus Day will continue because our collective future, the well-being of all generations to come, is at stake. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 3 11:43:28 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 10:43:28 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Reducing the horror: Guidelines should include information on preventing pregnancy after rape Message-ID: http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_3002052 Reducing the horror: Guidelines should include information on preventing pregnancy RAPE-TREATMENT PROTOCOL Salt Lake Tribune The federal government had a chance, with its first-ever protocol for treating sexual assault survivors, to help victims prevent pregnancy, a horrifying possible result of the nightmare of rape. Unfortunately, it let that chance go by. Even worse, it may have removed information about emergency contraception from the original protocol, which now includes only a single sentence on pregnancy prevention and does not mention emergency contraception or recommend that it be offered. That omission is unconscionable, given the statistic found by Princeton University and University of California researchers that such emergency care could prevent up to 22,000 pregnancies resulting from rape each year. It appears prompted by the same anti-abortion political agenda that has indefinitely delayed Food and Drug Administration approval for non-prescription sales of the emergency contraceptive Plan B, or the "morning-after pill," to women over 16. A group of religious leaders, women's health experts and advocates for victims of sexual assault is asking the U.S. Justice Department for records that might explain how references to emergency contraception or pregnancy prevention disappeared from the protocol. They want rape victims to have that information, and so do we. The protocol, to be used by doctors and other health-care providers, should be revised to include the recommendation, apparently eliminated from the current version, that "treatment providers discuss treatment options with patients and provide them with immediate access to a full range of reproductive health-care services." To do otherwise would be negligent, since, as the protocol states, pregnancy is "often an overwhelming and genuine fear" of rape victims, and doctors have the ability to allay those fears and reduce the possibility of unwanted pregnancy. Emergency contraception can reduce the chances of pregnancy by as much as 89 percent if it is administered within days of the rape. Offering that option is the compassionate thing to do for victims of one of the most physically invasive and emotionally traumatic crimes. The groups that filed for more information from the Justice Department want to pressure the agency to include the information in revised versions of the protocol and to make it a part of the training provided to health-care providers. The Justice Department should listen to their arguments and revise the protocol. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 3 11:44:25 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 10:44:25 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Opium farmers sell daughters to cover debts to traffickers Message-ID: The Independent - 03 October 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article316683.ece Opium farmers sell daughters to cover debts to traffickers By Justin Huggler in Laghman, Afghanistan Afghan farmers prevented from growing poppies under a British-led eradication programme have been forced to hand over their daughters to drug traffickers to settle their debts, according to reports from Afghanistan. The claim is the latest in a series to dog the British effort to curb Afghanistan's opium industry. Opium dominates Afghanistan's economy, accounting for 60 per cent of its income. Critics say the country is turning into a narco-state under the noses of Nato peacekeeping forces, and of the Western governments involved in reconstruction. The latest claims come from Nangahar province, which has been held up by the British, put in charge of the fight against opium in Afghanistan, as their biggest success. Opium cultivation fell by 96 per cent there this year, part of a 21 per cent fall nationwide. But farmers are now coming forward to say that the forced loss of their poppy crop has left them unable to repay debts to drug traffickers who lent them money to buy the seeds. In desperation, they have had to turn to a traditional Afghan practice in which a family can pay off its debt by handing over a daughter to a relative of the creditor. Usually, there is a marriage ceremony for the sake of propriety - but the woman is treated as property. The problem is familiar to Mohamed Hanif Isamuddin from Laghman province, next to Nangahar. He has given up his poppy crop under pressure from the authorities. For one acre of poppies he can make 150,000 Afghanis (?2,000). If he sows the same acre with wheat, he makes only 6,000 Afghanis. Mr Isamuddin, 68, says that when the local authorities first started pressuring the farmers to stop growing poppies, the Westerners promised to help them grow alternative crops by providing them with free seed, but they got nothing. Mr Isamuddin gave up growing poppies of his own volition when he heard that the government was going to clamp down. But further up the valley, he says, helicopters sprayed the poppy fields with insecticide. The British, put in charge of the effort to curb the opium trade, say there has been no spraying. Although the Americans proposed spraying poppy fields, it was rejected because of opposition from the Afghan government. "The government is doing the right thing," said Mr Isamuddin. "According to our religion, opium is prohibited. But if you have to feed your family, you do what you have to do. "If people here cannot earn enough to feed their families, they will start growing opium again." Although he has not had to take measures as drastic as some farmers in neighbouring Nangahar, his son has had to leave home and go to Iran to find work. At least Mr Isamuddin's son left voluntarily. Richard Danziger, of the International Organisation for Migrants, says that when poppy farmers in northern Afghanistan have a good crop it means they do not have to sell their children. In Afghanistan's barren landscape, no other crop brings a return close to that of opium. A French think-tank called last week for the legal cultivation of opium in Afghanistan. The Senlis Council pointed out the irony that, while Afghanistan today provides 87 per cent of the world's illegal opium, legal opium-based medicines are in short supply in Afghanistan and all over the developing world. A handful of countries, including Australia, India and Turkey, grow opium legally for use in medicine under licences granted by the United Nations. But drug companies have resisted the production of cheap versions of their opium-based medicine, according to Jorrit Kamminga of the Senlis Council. The group's proposal was that legally grown opium in Afghanistan could satisfy its domestic medical need, and might even allow it to export opium for medicinal use. But the proposal was rejected by the Afghan government after being rubbished by the US and by the UN Office for Drug Control. The Afghan government said it could not put in place safeguards to ensure legally grown opium was not channelled into the black market. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 3 12:44:29 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 11:44:29 -0700 Subject: [m2c] New Political Party in the Making - FemINist INitiative of Canada Message-ID: http://www.wise-bc.org/feministinitiative/feminism.html The FemINist INitiative of BC goes Federal!! Bringing INnovation to politics Welcome to the FemINist INitiative of Canada. It's time for change. Politicians through all levels of government say that voters are apathetic. Apathy implies passivity and tacitly faults the individual in whom it resides. Voters are not apathetic; they are disgusted and that disgust is rapidly turning to aversion. The FemINist INitiative of Canada recognizes that politics in must be done differently. It must be civil and inclusive of diversity; it must reflect the balance of the feminine and the masculine in the electorate; it must focus on solutions, not problems; and it must respect the wisdom of its people and communities. A fundamental goal of the FemINist INitiative of Canada is to bring innovation to politics and demonstrates its benefits to all Canadians. The FemINist INitiative of Canada will, through a process of grassroots consultation and consensus building, develop a party and candidates guided by the values of INclusiveness, INtegrity, INvolvement and INnovation. These values, together with our Constitution, will guide the development of our policies, procedures, platforms and conduct. We will strive for harmony by working toward achieving a society in which its cultural, social, political and economic institutions reflect the balance of the feminine and the masculine inherent in Canada's people. We will reach out to members of our society who have been marginalized by societal biases, the bureaucratic wall of silence, and political bungling and lack of awareness. We will encourage their meaningful participation in the formation of policy affecting their lives, because we respect that they ? not politicians, not bureaucrats, not academics ? are more apt to know what is best for them. We will bring civility and openness to the political realm and respect for those whose views we may not share. We will demonstrate through action, and talk without double-speak, that INclusiveness, INtegrity and INnovation can reignite the electorate, inspiring the INvolvement of voters in the political process. ______________________________________________ This is just a part of what the FemINist INitiative of Canada has been talking about. For more information about this innovative new group of very dedicated people, please visit the website: http://www.feministinitiative.ca/ and email: feminit-ca at wise-bc.org This burgeoning Canadian federal political party originated from British Columbia, Canada, where the FemINist INitiative of BC became an officially-recognized provincial party on June 22, 2005. Now the FemINist INitiative movement is spreading across Canada in hopes of securing the party's official place in Canadian federal politics. THE FIRST, AND MOST IMPORTANT STEP in the official federal party registration process is for Canadians to sign up as members! If we can build our membership to the number required by early November, FemINit-CA will be eliglble to endorse candidates in the upcoming federal election. This is the second step of registration. If we do not build our membership in time, we will have lost four years of party registration - until the next federal election. If you are not Canadian, you can still show your support by emailing FemINist INitiative and letting us know what you think. We would appreciate hearing from you. Thank you all for taking the time to read this. Sincerely, The FemINist INitiative of Canada Team feminit-ca at wise-bc.org http://www.feministinitiative.ca/ --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 3 23:41:17 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 03 Oct 2005 22:41:17 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Decriminalizing prostitution, a magnet for pimps and johns Message-ID: source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1965 - Decriminalizing prostitution, a magnet for pimps and johns 10 septembre 2005 par Melissa Farley Source : Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws, 30 March 2005. Thank you for inviting me here. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you about some of the things I've learned about prostitution after a decade of research. I dedicate my remarks today to a young aboriginal woman in a Vancouver park who said to Jacqueline Lynn and me, "We don't talk much." It's my understanding that the goal of the subcommittee is to avoid violence against women. Unfortunately, once we understand what prostitution is, it becomes apparent that there's no way that prostitution can be transformed into a job that's safe for women. Prostitution is a gendered survival strategy that involves the assumption of unreasonable risks. The very definition of the job is sexual harassment. It's simply not possible to protect someone whose source of income exposes them to the likelihood of being raped, on average, once a week. I want to quote a survivor who said the following : I cannot avoid expressing my deepest grief in learning of the efforts of pro-prostitution organizations to decriminalize the act of purchasing a person for sex. It is simply not possible for me to convey in words the intense pain and struggle I have endured as a result of my experience in prostitution. I chose to work as a prostitute because I believed I had no other options. I entered prostitution due to extreme emotional and financial stress and a lack of a supportive family system. I was able to work in "upscale" massage parlours.... [I]t is completely erroneous to assume that the brothels were immune to violence. There were incidents of attempted strangulation and forceful restraint. Customers would intentionally remove condoms against the prostitute's wishes.... I now choose to be an advocate for the right of prostitutes to be free of the forces that restrict their escape. I...urge all compassionate people to consult the data and research that has been conducted regarding the...desires of the women, men, children, and transgendered who are in prostitution. This illustrates that those involved in the advocacy of prostitution as a job represent a very, very small minority. I think people are genuinely confused about how to address what they instinctively understand to be the harms of prostitution. People have asked me, wouldn't it be a little bit better if it was decriminalized ? Wouldn't there be less stigma, and wouldn't prostitutes somehow be protected ? The answer is no. Decriminalization does not decrease the stigma of prostitution and increase women in prostitution's safety When people talk about the harms of prostitution, they're usually referring exclusively to physical harm--HIV risk, rape risk, physical assault risk, and murder risk, all of which are exceptionally high among those in prostitution. My research has included people who willingly assume the role of a prostitute, only to discover later that it's far more dangerous and far more profoundly damaging than they initially suspected. Prostitution is an institution where one person has the social and economic power to transform another person into the living embodiment of a masturbation fantasy. In prostitution, the conditions that make genuine consent possible are absent : physical safety, equal power with customers, and real alternatives. It's not a choice the way we ordinarily think of a choice as being made from a range of options. One woman in Amsterdam referred to prostitution as "volunteer slavery", an expression that I think accurately represents both the appearance of choice and the coercion behind that choice. An act of deshumanization Researchers and public health experts don't usually talk about the psychological harms of prostitution. The psychological harms of prostitution happen because, like rape and incest, prostitution is an act of sexually invasive dehumanization, as Michelle Anderson put it. Public awareness about the traumatic harms of prostitution and sex trafficking lag many years behind public awareness of the harms of incest, rape, and battering, yet the harms are essentially the same. The difference is that prostitution, unlike rape, incest, and battering, offers financial reward for perpetrators. As we all know, there's massive money in this business. And for her, the payment of money makes sexual exploitation invisible, and taking pictures of her in prostitution turns her humiliation into sexual entertainment for someone else. It took me many years of listening to women in prostitution to understand that the most severe damage of prostitution is not physical, it's psychological. The rates of post-traumatic stress disorder-PTSD or combat trauma-are among the highest of any group of people ever studied. We interviewed more than 850 people in prostitution in nine countries, including Canada, and found that PTSD among women in prostitution is comparable to that of battered women, rape survivors, and war combat veterans. Women in prostitution suffer extremely high rates of depression, substance abuse, dissociation, head injury, and suicide attempts. Family abuse and running away from home We interviewed gay men and transgendered people in Canada and in other countries and found that the same reasons that channel women into prostitution also channel gay and transgendered youth into prostitution-family neglect, family abuse, running away from home-and that once in prostitution, gay youth and transgendered youth are treated just the way girls and women are. Does it make a difference whether prostitution happens indoors or outdoors ? Well, we have some indication that there is slightly less physical violence indoors, but this is relative. The fact that some types of prostitution are associated with more severe harm than others does not mean that the marginally less harmful types of prostitution are not harmful at all. This is a logical fallacy that some people make. The myth of indoor prostitution In one study that was recently done in San Francisco, 62% of Asian women in San Francisco massage parlours had been physically assaulted by johns. This data was only from half of the massage parlours in San Francisco. The other half, those massage parlours that were controlled by pimps and traffickers who refused access to the researchers were, I would guess, probably much more violent to the women inside. But even in the ones that admitted people in, there was a 62% rate of physical assault in indoor prostitution. Dutch researchers-as you know, prostitution is legal in the Netherlands-found that two factors are associated with greater violence in prostitution : the greater the poverty, the greater the violence ; and the longer one is in prostitution, the more likely one is to experience violence. Women don't just prostitute in one location. They all have cell phones. Cell phones mean you can work on the street, you can go to an escort agency.... A cell phone means you can do a range of types of prostitution, and today that's how it works. They move to different locations, both indoors and outdoors. There's not some absolute separation between indoors and outdoors in prostitution. According to many studies, the rates of psychological violence in indoor and outdoor prostitution are comparable. In practice, what indoor prostitution does is increase the john's safety and comfort, but it does nothing to decrease psychological trauma for the prostituted woman. In fact the social invisibility of indoor prostitution may actually increase its danger. Acknowledging the lethal damages of indoor prostitution, a Dutch pimp said, "You can 't have a pillow in a brothel ; it's a murder weapon." By the time women in indoor prostitution hit a panic button and the door is broken down by a bouncer, they've already been badly injured, according to bouncers in Australia, where prostitution is decriminalized. The panic buttons can never be answered fast enough to prevent violence. Panic buttons in brothels make as little sense as panic buttons in the homes of battered women. Edifying recommendations For another non sequitur, imagine this. This is not a joke. The Australian occupational safety guidelines for women in prostitution recommend that women entering prostitution take classes in hostage negotiation skills. This is what you have to learn if you're going to enter the job of prostitution in a decriminalized context. A South African organization recommended that while undressing, the prostitute should accidentally kick a shoe under the bed, and while retrieving it should check for knives, handcuffs, and rope. This is an everyday part of the job of prostitution. In San Francisco we have de facto decriminalized indoor prostitution and massage brothels. Recently a prostitutes' rights group recommended that women should always know where the exits are, that they wear shoes they can run in, and that they should never wear necklaces, scarves, or anything that can be tightened against the throat. Prostitution is an institution that systematically discriminates against women, against the young, against the poor, and against ethnically subordinated groups. In Canada, my research with Jackie Lynn and Ann Cotton included many first nations girls and women who did not have a range of alternatives to prostitution for economic survival. Those promoting decriminalized prostitution rarely if ever address poverty, race, and ethnicity as factors that make women even more vulnerable to entrance into prostitution and danger once in it. Why are first nations women overrepresented in prostitution in Canada ? This is a burning question that must be answered. I wanted to give you some preliminary findings on my research with customers, but I won't be able to get to that unless someone asks me questions about it. Conclusion Let me just conclude by talking about what we know happens when prostitution is decriminalized, because there's a great deal of evidence in parts of the world where it has been decriminalized. Decriminalized prostitution is a magnet for pimps and johns. Decriminalized prostitution offers these people a legal welcome, and they will take you up on the offer. What happens is both legal and illegal prostitution are dramatically increased when prostitution is decriminalized. It becomes just another purchase of a commodity, like toothpaste or popcorn. Trafficking of women into Canada will increase. Good business strategy on the part of pimps means they can move women and children to countries where there are no legal barriers to the operation of sex businesses. Organized crime increases. New Zealand has been mentioned by a couple of people this morning. We're seeing a massive increase in organized crime in just the little over a year and a half since prostitution has been decriminalized in New Zealand. That should be looked at very carefully. Finally, the prostitution of children increases wherever you have decriminalized prostitution. A coffee and a chat and a condom are not what women in prostitution need, or a union. Of the women we interviewed in Canada, 95% said they wanted to escape prostitution, and they even told us what they needed. They need stable housing. They want to escape prostitution. They didn't say they wanted to escape illegal or outdoor prostitution ; they said they wanted to escape all prostitution. And they said they wanted drug and alcohol addiction treatment, and they wanted job training, and counselling. Source : Subcommittee on Solicitation Laws, 30 March 2005. To read Melissa Farley's articles : prostitution research website. On Sisyphe, September 16th, 2005. Melissa Farley Source - http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=1965 - Melissa Farley An activist feminist researcher based in San Francisco and a psychologist for 35 years, Melissa Farley has done a decade of research in ten countries, including Canada. Her work and that of 30 other writers, appears in a recent book, "Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress," 2004, Haworth Press. Her solidly feminist analysis springs from listening to the experience and demands of over 850 women, men, transgendered people and children who are either trapped in or have escaped from the prostitution network. She has published 25 studies. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 5 01:59:16 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 00:59:16 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Violence Against Women Act: Expired Sept 30th, new amendments strip special provisions for women of colour Message-ID: http://afscme.org/action/weekly_reports/index.html#14 Manager's Amendment to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Passes and Compromises Services for Racial and Ethnic Populations The House passed legislation (H.R. 3402) this week that would reauthorize Justice Department spending through FY 2009, and weaken language regarding help for minority victims of domestic violence. The bill would reauthorize provisions of a 1994 law aimed at reducing violence against women. However, language to provide adequate services to meet the needs of victims of domestic and sexual violence from racial and ethnic communities was stripped from VAWA in the manager's amendment. This language is important because many victims in racial and ethnic communities are not now receiving the services they desperately need. All victims of domestic and sexual violence must have access to counseling, legal advocacy, emergency assistance, and other aid they require to keep themselves and their children safe. http://www.now.org/issues/violence/100105vawa_alert.html Anti-Violence Act Expired 9/30; Take Action! October 1, 2005 September 30 came and went, and Congress failed to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act before it expired, leaving millions of women without protection until they decide to act. And every day counts. Urge the Senate to bring VAWA to the floor for a vote immediately On Friday, Sept. 30, the Senate was set to pass their version of VAWA 2005 (S. 1197) by a voice vote, but one Senator objected to voting and VAWA expired at midnight. Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was insisting on changes in the immigration portion of the bill, before he would waive his objection to holding the vote. Despite advocates' best efforts, the Senate adjourned Friday afternoon without a vote, unwilling to meet Sen. Sessions' demands. Supporters of VAWA 2005 must continue to talk to and work with their Senators in the days ahead to ensure that a strong Senate bill passes, without weakening amendments such as Sen. Session proposal. Another attempt to vote on the bill could come as early as next week. Call or email your Senators TODAY and ask them to request that the Senate's Republican leadership schedule the bill for a vote as soon as possible without weakening amendments. Call their state and DC office or send an e-mail: Email your Senators right now Background: On Wednesday evening the House of Representatives passed a weakened version of the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, which had been attached in July to the Department of Justice (DoJ) Reauthorization bill. The DoJ bill, with its VAWA additions, was passed by a 415 to 4 margin and is still awaiting Senate action and a conference committee in order for some version of VAWA reauthorization to be signed by the President. On Wednesday, the Republican leadership, after huddling earlier in the afternoon to elect a replacement for indicted Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX), returned to the floor of the House and presented the body with a version of VAWA that perfunctorily continued valuable funding and program support for the landmark 1994 legislation but dropped important provisions dealing with immigrants and women of color. These hard-won improvements had been in the bill just 24 hours earlier but were stripped by the bill's chief sponsor, James Sensenbrenner, R-WI, in his role as Chair of the Judiciary Committee. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, in her role as House Minority Leader, pinpointed the shortcomings of the final bill: "Judiciary Committee Chairman Sensenbrenner offered an amendment that eliminated carefully crafted provisions of the bipartisan bill that recognized that racial and ethnic minorities face unique challenges in reporting and getting help for domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking and stalking. With this change, domestic violence prevention and treatment services specifically targeting women of color and immigrant victims of domestic violence and sexual assault will continue to be shortchanged." A bi-partisan effort was made to defeat the stripped-down offering, but lost 191 to 225 despite many last minute calls from the advocacy community. The greatest tragedy was that the real VAWA 2005, H.R. 3171, the truly effective one, which is sponsored by Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and 131 cosponsors, never got to see the light of day. Start the month of October ? Domestic Violence Awareness Month ? with a call or e-mail to your Senators. We need to have VAWA 2005 passed by the Senate without weakening amendments, and a strong version sent to the President for signing before this month is over. TAKE ACTION NOW --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 5 02:54:47 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:54:47 -0700 Subject: [m2c] "The Only Good Indian Is A Dead Indian" Message-ID: http://www.countercurrents.org/us-owatica110405.htm "The Only Good Indian Is A Dead Indian" By Owatica 11 April, 2005 Al-Moharer "The Only Good Indian is a Dead Indian" That's what Europeans used to say about my ancestors. Some Americans still say it. When I see the savage murder of the Iraqi people and the destruction of their culture for the purpose of stealing their resources......I am devastated. It reminds me of the history of my own American Indian ancestors. You will not read about it in the history books but there were concentration camps in America long before Hitler built them in Germany. The Europeans called this place the "new world" even though Native people had been living here for thousands of years. A famous chief once said of the Europeans, "...they made many promises, more than we can remember, they never kept but one, they promised to take our land... .And they took it". When the Europeans rounded up Native people for a forced march to an alien place, they laughed at us when we held the sacred earth of our ancestors in our hands and wept. We were "savages" they said. They said they had a right to kill us and steal our land because of "manifest destiny". They were good Christian people and they said their god gave them our land. Some of those good Christian people visited Arab lands, leaving death and destruction in their path, not long before they came here. Now they have returned to the Middle East because they want the oil. There is nothing new about war or merciless and murderous invaders but if the people of the world are to survive, we must understand the truth about how it is done to us, over and over. The map to understanding is always the same...follow the money. An American general said, in 1935, "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket]. It is international in scope, the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes." The American neocons, their friends and the others who are like them throughout the world, are getting rich from the bloodletting of the people. How many times are the people of the world going to fall for this before they figure it out? We know why war happens; it is only about money, and we know it has happened over and over. Let us step back from the immediacy of the current horrors in the Middle East and take a good long look at how this happens. Most of the people on this earth are good and decent human beings who would never deliberately hurt others or consider stealing from their neighbor, their family. We are the human family. The Iraqi people are our brothers and sisters. How is it possible that Americans with guns are killing their own family? Remember what the general said, war is not what it seems to the majority of people. It is understood only by a small "inside group", the people in charge, the ones drooling over all that oil they want to steal. How are they going to get it? The Iraqi people aren't going to give it to them so, clearly, the neocons must take it by force. They cannot say to their people, we want to steal Iraqi oil and we want to use your tax dollars, after we take it out of social programs for schools and so forth, to pay for it. And, by the way, we want your children to go over there and murder the Iraqi people, to kill and be killed so we can make ourselves even richer than we already are. You can easily see that wouldn't work. Naturally they began spewing lies and inciting hatred and fear in order to get the American people and the military to do their bidding. If the human race is to survive at all, we absolutely must understand how we, the people of the world, are being manipulated into war by others who wish to enrich themselves through our blood. They prey on our fears and prejudices to manipulate us. We have a perfect example in the "Bush Administration", which has been organized by a group of criminals called the "neocons" who are actually nothing more then murderous thugs, liars and thieves; the Bush mafia. We know many of their names; Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney et al, they created and signed a document called the "Project for the New American Century" which basically said they had decided to dominate the world at the point of a gun. They reckon they can kill everyone who gets in their way as they attempt to acquire control over all the resources of the world and make all the people of the world their slaves. Obviously they can't tell the people that, so they tell them something else. They make up every sort of lie, whether it is religious, racist or political, in order to set people against each other. The neocons, which control and or are supported by the corporate owned war profiteering mainstream media, constructed a vast propaganda machine and began putting ideas into people's heads to create the desired response. The desired response, of course, is always hatred and fear. Anger is a manifestation of fear. So now everyone, being lied to up one side and down the other, is full of hatred, anger and fear. When you have all that going on in your heart and mind, you can't think clearly. The neocons love that. They depend upon it. In order to dominate the world, it is imperative they be able to whip the people of the world into a frenzy of fear and hatred and set them against each other. George Bush carefully and deliberately used the words "crusade" and "axis of evil" to inflame Muslims and Christians. These monstrous neocons have incited a religious war on purpose. They are the puppet masters, wrapped in their wealth and safety inciting Christians and Muslims to kill each other. They are laughing with delight that they can make religious people dance to their tune. For the non-religious, they used the fear of "mushroom" clouds and they demonized Muslim and Arab people. These lies were used to manipulate the American people and provide cover for the vicious and illegal imperialist attack upon Iraq. In their written plan, the neocons specifically state the need to have multiple wars going on simultaneously to create "destabilization". Why? Because if people are full of fear, anger and hate and running for their lives, they won't have time to stop and THINK. They will be so busy hating each other and fighting with each other they won't notice that group of guys getting fat and rich from the process of these manufactured "wars". The neocons are past masters at deceipt and manipulation. They understand the language of hate and fear. My ancestors were "savages", "redskins" more currently degraded by the term "sand niggers". The Vietnamese were "gooks", the Arab people, "rag heads", black people "niggers" and "coons", the Chinese were "chinks", the Jews are "kikes", the Italians are "wogs", Americans in the north refer to southerners as "rednecks", Southerners spit the word "Yankee" or "carpetbagger" at northerners. We have the political language of hatred too; the beautiful word "liberal" has become an epithet, "conservative" has become synonymous with hateful.... the list is endless isn't it? This is clearly a method by which one group of people dehumanizes and demonizes another. It makes killing each other so much easier. The "war" in Iraq is NOT a religious war. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with terrorism. The neocons and their associates want everyone to believe it is about religion and terrorism so we won't notice how rich they are becoming from the bloodletting they have created. People just like the neocons told American settlers the Native people were bloodthirsty pagan savages. After the Native people had been attacked and murdered by the settlers, who believed they were "defending" themselves, they attacked the settlers because they actually were defending themselves, which created the cycle of endless killing until we were essentially destroyed. Sound familiar? Why did the "Indian Wars" happen? Because there was a group of people who wanted to be rich. They thought they could accomplish that by stealing the resources of the Native people. Like the neocons, they couldn't tell the white people that so they told them we were dangerous savages whose very existence somehow threatened them. As they took our land and we resisted, it became easy for the settlers to believe we were "murderous" savages. Their lying "leaders" told them "their god" wanted it that way. And so the slaughter commenced. Criminals are attacking Iraq. They are murdering the Iraqi people in cold blood in order to control their oil and everything else is window dressing. The American people were told Muslim zealot terrorists wanted to kill them. The soldiers were told they were defending America and they were heroes for killing "enemies". The neocons told the world this was a war of self-defense. When the lies about WMD fell through, the neocons told the people and the soldiers, they were "liberating" the Iraqi people. Even though they are young and uninformed, many of the soldiers realized the only thing they were liberating the Iraqis from were their lives. Suicides in the military went up, recruitment went down. When the Europeans came to the "new world", the Native people were kind to them. The Pilgrims would have died during the first winter if the Indian people had not fed them. I am not going to rant about how that kindness was repaid, I just want to point out what all reasonable people should already know, the Native people got along fine with the Europeans until the Europeans developed a "government" and had some "leadership". When children play together they are utterly unconcerned about the color of another child's skin or their religious and cultural background. As many wise people have observed, you have to be taught how to hate. It is not natural for humans to be hateful. If we could see, if the people of the world could understand, how we are being manipulated by cruel, greedy, arrogant, self-serving monsters, we could resolve all the problems we face. There will always be destructive people in the world but we do not have to empower them. Yet that's what we do. We give them power by falling for their lies hook, line and sinker. If we could stop hating each other long enough to focus on the truth, we could stop the neocons, and all of those like them, from destroying and enslaving us. At this moment, we must focus our attention on this group of men and their corrupt associates. The best thing for the people of the world, and the worst thing for the neocons and all those who are like them, is for us to stop allowing them to make us fearful of each other and for us to stop fighting with each other. Peace is the worst thing that could happen to these warmongers. We simply must work together and find ways to dismantle "governments" and armies or life will not continue for us. President Chavez of Venezuela has provided the people of the world with a wonderful example of what can be achieved when people work together for the common good, yet he lives in fear for his life and the lives of his people because the neocons want Venezuelan oil too. We all have some responsibility for what has gone wrong in the world and it is our responsibility to fix it. There are so many more of us then there are of "them" it is pathetic we allow them to destroy us with their wars and greed. At this profound moment in the history of human existence, we are faced with a group of men who hold the power to literally destroy the planet. Are we going to continue to empower them and allow that to happen? Or will we stop fighting with each other and work together to outsmart these guys? --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 5 02:54:49 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:54:49 -0700 Subject: [m2c] UN report on the 'Third World' in the U.S. Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0908-06.htm Published on Thursday, September 8, 2005 by the lndependent/UK UN Hits Back at US in Report Saying Parts of America are as Poor as Third World by Paul Vallely Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a shocking United Nations report on global inequality. Claims that the New Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment as emotional rhetoric. But yesterday's UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great American Dream is an ongoing nightmare. The document constitutes a stinging attack on US policies at home and abroad in a fightback against moves by Washington to undermine next week's UN 60th anniversary conference which will be the biggest gathering of world leaders in history. The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinizes inequalities in health provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is retarding the eradication of poverty. It reveals that the infant mortality rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites to die before their first birthday. The report is bound to incense the Bush administration as it provides ammunition for critics who have claimed that the fiasco following Hurricane Katrina shows that Washington does not care about poor black Americans. But the 370-page document is critical of American policies towards poverty abroad as well as at home. And, in unusually outspoken language, it accuses the US of having "an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security". "There is an urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism," it continues. " Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat." The document, which was written by Kevin Watkins, the former head of research at Oxfam, will be seen as round two in the battle between the UN and the US, which regards the world body as an unnecessary constraint on its strategic interests and actions. Last month John Bolton, the new US ambassador to the UN, submitted 750 amendments to the draft declaration for next week's summit to strengthen the UN and review progress towards its Millennium Development Goals to halve world poverty by 2015. The report launched yesterday is a clear challenge to Washington. The Bush administration wants to replace multilateral solutions to international problems with a world order in which the US does as it likes on a bilateral basis. "This is the UN coming out all guns firing," said one UN insider. "It means that, even if we have a lame duck secretary general after the Volcker report (on the oil-for-food scandal), the rest of the organization is not going to accept the US bilateralist agenda." The clash on world poverty centers on the US policy of promoting growth and trade liberalization on the assumption that this will trickle down to the poor. But this will not stop children dying, the UN says. Growth alone will not reduce poverty so long as the poor are denied full access to health, education and other social provision. Among the world's poor, infant mortality is falling at less than half of the world average. To tackle that means tackling inequality - a message towards which John Bolton and his fellow US neocons are deeply hostile. India and China, the UN says, have been very successful in wealth creation but have not enabled the poor to share in the process. A rapid decline in child mortality has therefore not materialized. Indeed, when it comes to reducing infant deaths, India has now been overtaken by Bangladesh, which is only growing a third as fast. Poverty could be halved in just 17 years in Kenya if the poorest people were enabled to double the amount of economic growth they can achieve at present. Inequality within countries is as stark as the gaps between countries, the UN says. Poverty is not the only issue here. The death rate for girls in India is now 50 per cent higher than for boys. Gender bias means girls are not given the same food as boys and are not taken to clinics as often when they are ill. Fetal scanning has also reduced the number of girls born. The only way to eradicate poverty, it says, is to target inequalities. Unless that is done the Millennium Development Goals will never be met. And 41 million children will die unnecessarily over the next 10 years. Decline in health care Child mortality is on the rise in the United States For half a century the US has seen a sustained decline in the number of children who die before their fifth birthday. But since 2000 this trend has been reversed. Although the US leads the world in healthcare spending - per head of population it spends twice what other rich OECD nations spend on average, 13 per cent of its national income - this high level goes disproportionately on the care of white Americans. It has not been targeted to eradicate large disparities in infant death rates based on race, wealth and state of residence. The infant mortality rate in the US is now the same as in Malaysia High levels of spending on personal health care reflect America's cutting-edge medical technology and treatment. But the paradox at the heart of the US health system is that, because of inequalities in health financing, countries that spend substantially less than the US have, on average, a healthier population. A baby boy from one of the top 5 per cent richest families in America will live 25 per cent longer than a boy born in the bottom 5 per cent and the infant mortality rate in the US is the same as Malaysia, which has a quarter of America's income. Blacks in Washington DC have a higher infant death rate than people in the Indian state of Kerala The health of US citizens is influenced by differences in insurance, income, language and education. Black mothers are twice as likely as white mothers to give birth to a low birthweight baby. And their children are more likely to become ill. Throughout the US black children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday. Hispanic Americans are more than twice as likely as white Americans to have no health cover The US is the only wealthy country with no universal health insurance system. Its mix of employer-based private insurance and public coverage does not reach all Americans. More than one in six people of working age lack insurance. One in three families living below the poverty line are uninsured. Just 13 per cent of white Americans are uninsured, compared with 21 per cent of blacks and 34 per cent of Hispanic Americans. Being born into an uninsured household increases the probability of death before the age of one by about 50 per cent. More than a third of the uninsured say that they went without medical care last year because of cost Uninsured Americans are less likely to have regular outpatient care, so they are more likely to be admitted to hospital for avoidable health problems. More than 40 per cent of the uninsured do not have a regular place to receive medical treatment. More than a third say that they or someone in their family went without needed medical care, including prescription drugs, in the past year because they lacked the money to pay. If the gap in health care between black and white Americans was eliminated it would save nearly 85,000 lives a year. Technological improvements in medicine save about 20,000 lives a year. Child poverty rates in the United States are now more than 20 per cent Child poverty is a particularly sensitive indicator for income poverty in rich countries. It is defined as living in a family with an income below 50 per cent of the national average. The US - with Mexico - has the dubious distinction of seeing its child poverty rates increase to more than 20 per cent. In the UK - which at the end of the 1990s had one of the highest child poverty rates in Europe - the rise in child poverty, by contrast, has been reversed through increases in tax credits and benefits. ? Copyright 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd. -------------------- http://www.workers.org/2005/us/un-0922/ UN report on the 'Third World' in the U.S. By Fred Goldstein Published Sep 18, 2005 9:09 PM At the very moment that the profound racism and class oppression in the U.S. has been highlighted by the disastrous toll on the poor, largely African-American population of the Gulf Coast, the United Nations has issued a report about racism and poverty affecting the U.S. health-care system. The highly prestigious UN report has singled out the U.S. health-care system as being fraught with such inequality that sections of the population are at health-care levels comparable to that of countries suffering from the long-term effects of colonialism. The U.S. leads the world in health-care spending on a per capita basis. But ?U.S. public health indicators are marred by deep inequalities linked to income, health insurance coverage, race, ethnicity, geography and?critically?access to care,? said the 2005 annual UN Human Development Report (HDR). The Indian state of Kerala ?has an urban infant death rate lower than that for African Americans in Washington, D.C.? And Malaysia, like India a country long ruled and kept in a state of underdevelopment by British colonialism, with an average income one quarter that here, ?has achieved the same infant death rate as the United States,? according to the HDR. Although the U.S. is the richest nation on earth, ?infant mortality trends are especially troublesome,? continues the report. ?Since 2000, a half century of sustained decline of infant death rates slowed and then reversed. The infant mor tality rate in the U.S. is now higher than for many other industrial countries.? Racism is a major feature of the inequality in health care. ?African American mothers are twice as likely to give birth to a low birth weight baby. Their children are twice as likely to die before their first birthday.? The lack of health-care coverage is cited as a major cause of the declining health of the population. Over 45 million were uninsured in 2000, one in six of the non-elderly population. And racism deeply affects health-care coverage. ?Hispanic Americans are more than twice as likely to be uninsured as white Americans and 21 percent of African Americans have no health insurance,? according to the report. ?One study finds that eliminating the gap in health care between African Americans and white Americans would save nearly 85,000 lives a year.? Poverty and lack of health care for all races and nationalities kills. ?The Institute of Medicine estimates that 18,000 Americans die prematurely each year solely because they lack health insurance.? Many of the uninsured have no place to go for vitally needed health care. And when they are admitted to hospitals, they are far more likely to die. The high-tech revolution in healthcare is out of reach for millions of poor workers and oppressed people. The study of deterioration of health care in the U.S. is only the tip of the iceberg. Declining health care as a social indicator linked to poverty, race and nationality is not isolated from other basic conditions of life among the people. Those with no health care or poor coverage generally have low incomes and live from paycheck to paycheck; have poor housing; lack social services; are pushed into the poorest neighborhoods; suffer the most police brutality; are most likely to be in prison; and are disproportionately African American and Latino, including many, many immigrant workers, documented and undocumented. The findings of the UNHDR are consistent with the racist oppression of Black people during the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the overwhelming toll it took on the African American population of New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast. It is estimated that 130,000 families had no cars in New Orleans. The likelihood is that families that cannot afford a car cannot afford health insurance. They lived in the poorest neighborhoods, with the highest poverty rates. Many of those 130,000 families who were on the roofs in the Lower Ninth Ward and other poor Black neighborhoods probably were reflected in the UN statistics about lack of health care in the U.S. They are not isolated, either. Look in any urban center, from St. Louis to Pittsburgh, New York to Los Angeles, and the same so-called ?Third World? conditions, that is, neocolonial conditions, exist for African Americans, Latinos and other nationalities. The vast majority of the people in these neighborhoods are workers, employed or unemployed. The suffering revealed by Katrina and documented by the UN report points in the direction of renewed struggle against racism, national oppression and class exploitation. This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License. Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011 Email: ww at workers.org --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 5 02:54:50 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:54:50 -0700 Subject: [m2c] New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Message-ID: From: http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked in Cells (New York, September 22, 2005)?As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city?s jail, Human Rights Watch said today. Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level. ?Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,? said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. ?Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.? Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the conduct of the Orleans Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail, and to establish the fate of the prisoners who had been locked in the jail. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which oversaw the evacuation, and the Orleans Sheriff?s Department should account for the 517 inmates who are missing from the list of people evacuated from the jail. Carey spent five days in Louisiana, conducting dozens of interviews with inmates evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison, correctional officers, state officials, lawyers and their investigators who had interviewed more than 1,000 inmates evacuated from the prison. The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Marlin N. Gusman, did not call for help in evacuating the prison until midnight on Monday, August 29, a state Department of Corrections and Public Safety spokeswoman told Human Rights Watch. Other parish prisons, she said, had called for help on the previous Saturday and Sunday. The evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison was not completed until Friday, September 2. According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman 1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside. These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge, and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New Orleans. But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish sheriff?s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers at Templeman III had left the building before the evacuation. According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food or water from the inmates' last meal over the weekend of August 27-28 until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29, the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable stench. ?They left us to die there,? Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after the evacuation. As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them, however, remained trapped in the locked facility. ?The water started rising, it was getting to here,? said Earrand Kelly, an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. ?We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ?I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was crying.? Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from their cells. Inmates broke jail windows to let air in. They also set fire to blankets and shirts and hung them out of the windows to let people know they were still in the facility. Apparently at least a dozen inmates jumped out of the windows. ?We started to see people in T3 hangin' shirts on fire out the windows,? Brooke Moss, an Orleans Parish Prison officer told Human Rights Watch. ?They were wavin' em. Then we saw them jumping out of the windows . . . Later on, we saw a sign, I think somebody wrote `help' on it.? As of yesterday, signs reading ?Help Us,? and ?One Man Down,? could still be seen hanging from a window in the third floor of Templeman III. Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been evacuated during floods in the 1990s. ?It was complete chaos,? said a corrections officer with more than 30 years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said: ?Ain't no tellin? what happened to those people.? ?At best, the inmates were left to fend for themselves,? said Carey. ?At worst, some may have died.? Human Rights Watch was not able to speak directly with Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin N. Gussman or the ranking official in charge of Templeman III. A spokeswoman for the sheriff?s department told Human Rights Watch that search-and-rescue teams had gone to the prison and she insisted that ?nobody drowned, nobody was left behind.? Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at Orleans Parish Prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, ?All Offenders Evacuated?). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the jail, including 130 from Templeman III. Many of the men held at jail had been arrested for offenses like criminal trespass, public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Many had not even been brought before a judge and charged, much less been convicted. ? Copyright 2003, Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue, 34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299 USA --------------------- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/oct2005/katr-o01.shtml New Orleans prisoners left to drown after Katrina struck By Fergus Michaels 1 October 2005 A statement issued by Human Rights Watch reports that the New Orleans Sheriff?s Department abandoned hundreds of prisoners in the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) compound for several days after Hurricane Katrina hit on August 29. The report documents a particularly brutal example of the indifference and contempt for human life that characterized every aspect of the government?s response to the disaster. Prisoners interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they saw bodies of drowned inmates floating in the surrounding waters, and the human rights organization says many prisoners remain unaccounted for. According to the Human Rights Watch report (?New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters?), officers who worked in building Templeman I and II, part of the OPP complex, state that prisoner evacuation commenced in their buildings on August 30, as waters began to rise to chest level. The prisoners of Templeman III were not afforded the same treatment, and were left stranded, locked in their cells, for two more days. In interviews with Human Rights Watch, inmates of Templeman III, which had some 600 prisoners, said that they were not evacuated until Thursday, having spent three days without food or water. They said there were no correctional officers in the building to get the prisoners out. The prison generators died, leaving the trapped inmates without lights or air circulation. The toilets ceased to function and the stench became unbearable. Those inmates on the ground floor of the prison had water up to chest level. The situation for prisoners in Templeman III became increasingly desperate as the water continued to rise. Earrand Kelly, an inmate, told Human Rights Watch, ?We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool with, he was saying ?I?m scared. I feel like I?m about to drown. He was crying.?? Dan Bright, another Orleans Parish Prison inmate said, ?They left us there to die.? Corinne Carey, researcher for Human Rights Watch comments, ?At best, the inmates were left to fend for themselves. At worst, some may have died.? Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no evacuation plan for the prison, despite the fact that it had been evacuated during floods in the 1990s. One described the situation as ?complete chaos? as the storm approached. A spokeswoman for the Orleans Parish Sheriff?s Department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the officers had left the building before the evacuation. She also said that search and rescue teams had gone to the prison and that ?nobody drowned, nobody was left behind.? However, this claim was contradicted by inmates who spoke to the human rights organization. Many prisoners remain unaccounted for. According to the report, ?Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at Orleans Parish Prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department of Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, ?All Offenders Evacuated?). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the jail, including 130 from Templeman III.? Many of the prisoners who were left in these horrible conditions were being held for minor violations, and some had not even been charged. A September 25 article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported on the same incident. It cited a letter from Paul Kunkel, who was being held on a misdemeanor charge. He wrote to a friend saying that guards had abandoned their posts on Sunday, the day before the hurricane hit. ?I thought I was going to die in that jail,? Kunkel wrote. ?I was locked down in a cell made for two, with five people, no working toilet, no food and no protection. People were panicking, breaking windows, setting fires?anything to try to get someone?s attention from the outside. No one knew if we were forgotten. Three days later, they cut the jail bars and let us out.? He continued, ?The water was up to my chest. I was drinking that water for a day and a half. It was filthy and contaminated. But I did not know what else I could do. I wanted to live.? The trauma for the inmates did not end when they finally made it out of the prison. Boats were used to move them to the Broad Street overpass. The Post-Gazette cited a letter from Robie Waganfeald, a friend of Kunkel, who wrote to his father, ?I sat in the sun from 8 am to 6 pm?10 hours?[with] no water and with National Guardsmen threatening to shoot people. Some [prisoners] got hit with rubber bullets, others with pepper spray. It was the most humiliating, unjustifiable thing I?ve ever seen.? While Waganfeald was moved to another corrections facility six hours away, Kunkel was taken to a fenced-in field in Elayne Hunt Correctional Centre near New Orleans, where he was held for another four days along with several thousand other prisoners. He gave the following description of the conditions there: ?We lived in 90-degree-plus sun with no protection from the elements. One day it poured, and the ground was wet and muddy. We were given one blanket, and we were freezing at night... Inmates were stealing blankets, and convicts were armed with homemade knives. There were no sanitary facilities. It was like a concentration camp. I [was] very afraid.? Cynthia Meyers, Kunkel?s friend, commented that the two prisoners ?were part of a number of people who didn?t do anything serious but were left to drown. The pet animals have been treated better than those inmates. It says to me there is a total lack of compassion for these [people].? --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 5 02:59:55 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2005 01:59:55 -0700 Subject: [m2c] The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1552921,00.html The wealth of the west was built on Africa's exploitation Britain has never faced up to the dark side of its imperial history Richard Drayton Saturday August 20, 2005 Guardian Britain was the principal slaving nation of the modern world. In The Empire Pays Back, a documentary broadcast by Channel 4 on Monday, Robert Beckford called on the British to take stock of this past. Why, he asked, had Britain made no apology for African slavery, as it had done for the Irish potato famine? Why was there no substantial public monument of national contrition equivalent to Berlin's Holocaust Museum? Why, most crucially, was there no recognition of how wealth extracted from Africa and Africans made possible the vigour and prosperity of modern Britain? Was there not a case for Britain to pay reparations to the descendants of African slaves? These are timely questions in a summer in which Blair and Bush, their hands still wet with Iraqi blood, sought to rebrand themselves as the saviours of Africa. The G8's debt-forgiveness initiative was spun successfully as an act of western altruism. The generous Massas never bothered to explain that, in order to benefit, governments must agree to "conditions", which included allowing profit-making companies to take over public services. This was no gift; it was what the merchant bankers would call a "debt-for-equity swap", the equity here being national sovereignty. The sweetest bit of the deal was that the money owed, already more than repaid in interest, had mostly gone to buy industrial imports from the west and Japan, and oil from nations who bank their profits in London and New York. Only in a bookkeeping sense had it ever left the rich world. No one considered that Africa's debt was trivial compared to what the west really owes Africa. Beckford's experts estimated Britain's debt to Africans in the continent and diaspora to be in the trillions of pounds. While this was a useful benchmark, its basis was mistaken. Not because it was excessive, but because the real debt is incalculable. For without Africa and its Caribbean plantation extensions, the modern world as we know it would not exist. Profits from slave trading and from sugar, coffee, cotton and tobacco are only a small part of the story. What mattered was how the pull and push from these industries transformed western Europe's economies. English banking, insurance, shipbuilding, wool and cotton manufacture, copper and iron smelting, and the cities of Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, multiplied in response to the direct and indirect stimulus of the slave plantations. Joseph Inikori's masterful book, Africans and the Industrial Revolution in England, shows how African consumers, free and enslaved, nurtured Britain's infant manufacturing industry. As Malachy Postlethwayt, the political economist, candidly put it in 1745: "British trade is a magnificent superstructure of American commerce and naval power on an African foundation." In The Great Divergence, Kenneth Pomeranz asked why Europe, rather than China, made the breakthrough first into a modern industrial economy. To his two answers - abundant coal and New World colonies - he should have added access to west Africa. For the colonial Americas were more Africa's creation than Europe's: before 1800, far more Africans than Europeans crossed the Atlantic. New World slaves were vital too, strangely enough, for European trade in the east. For merchants needed precious metals to buy Asian luxuries, returning home with profits in the form of textiles; only through exchanging these cloths in Africa for slaves to be sold in the New World could Europe obtain new gold and silver to keep the system moving. East Indian companies led ultimately to Europe's domination of Asia and its 19th-century humiliation of China. Africa not only underpinned Europe's earlier development. Its palm oil, petroleum, copper, chromium, platinum and in particular gold were and are crucial to the later world economy. Only South America, at the zenith of its silver mines, outranks Africa's contribution to the growth of the global bullion supply. The guinea coin paid homage in its name to the west African origins of one flood of gold. By this standard, the British pound since 1880 should have been rechristened the rand, for Britain's prosperity and its currency stability depended on South Africa's mines. I would wager that a large share of that gold in the IMF's vaults which was supposed to pay for Africa's debt relief had originally been stolen from that continent. There are many who like to blame Africa's weak governments and economies, famines and disease on its post-1960 leadership. But the fragility of contemporary Africa is a direct consequence of two centuries of slaving, followed by another of colonial despotism. Nor was "decolonisation" all it seemed: both Britain and France attempted to corrupt the whole project of political sovereignty. It is remarkable that none of those in Britain who talk about African dictatorship and kleptocracy seem aware that Idi Amin came to power in Uganda through British covert action, and that Nigeria's generals were supported and manipulated from 1960 onwards in support of Britain's oil interests. It is amusing, too, to find the Telegraph and the Daily Mail - which just a generation ago supported Ian Smith's Rhodesia and South African apartheid - now so concerned about human rights in Zimbabwe. The tragedy of Mugabe and others is that they learned too well from the British how to govern without real popular consent, and how to make the law serve ruthless private interest. The real appetite of the west for democracy in Africa is less than it seems. We talk about the Congo tragedy without mentioning that it was a British statesman, Alec Douglas-Home, who agreed with the US president in 1960 that Patrice Lumumba, its elected leader, needed to "fall into a river of crocodiles". African slavery and colonialism are not ancient or foreign history; the world they made is around us in Britain. It is not merely in economic terms that Africa underpins a modern experience of (white) British privilege. Had Africa's signature not been visible on the body of the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes, would he have been gunned down on a tube at Stockwell? The slight kink of the hair, his pale beige skin, broadcast something misread by police as foreign danger. In that sense, his shooting was the twin of the axe murder of Anthony Walker in Liverpool, and of the more than 100 deaths of black people in mysterious circumstances while in police, prison or hospital custody since 1969. This universe of risk, part of the black experience, is the afterlife of slavery. The reverse of the medal is what WEB DuBois called the "wage of whiteness", the world of safety, trustworthiness, welcome that those with pale skins take for granted. The psychology of racism operates even among those who believe in human equality, shaping unequal outcomes in education, employment, criminal justice. By its light, such all-white clubs as the G8 continue to meet in comfort. Early this year, Gordon Brown told journalists in Mozambique that Britain should stop apologising for colonialism. The truth is, though, that Britain has never even faced up to the dark side of its imperial history, let alone begun to apologise. Dr Richard Drayton is a senior lecturer in imperial and extra-European history since 1500 at Cambridge University. His book The Caribbean and the Making of the Modern World will be published in 2006. RHDrayton at yahoo.co.uk Guardian Unlimited ? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Oct 6 01:50:26 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:50:26 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Melting Planet: Species are Dying Out Faster Than We Have Dared Recognize Message-ID: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1002-04.htm Published on Sunday, October 2, 2005 by the lndependent/UK Melting Planet: Species are Dying Out Faster Than We Have Dared Recognize, Scientists Will Warn This Week The erosion of polar ice is the first break in a fragile chain of life extending across the planet, from bears in the north to penguins in the far south by Andrew Buncombe in Anchorage and Severin Carrell in London The polar bear is one of the natural world's most famous predators - the king of the Arctic wastelands. But, like its vast Arctic home, the polar bear is under unprecedented threat. Both are disappearing with alarming speed. Thinning ice and longer summers are destroying the bears' habitat, and as the ice floes shrink, the desperate animals are driven by starvation into human settlements - to be shot. Stranded polar bears are drowning in large numbers as they try to swim hundreds of miles to find increasingly scarce ice floes. Local hunters find their corpses floating on seas once coated in a thick skin of ice. It is a phenomenon that frightens the native people that live around the Arctic. Many fear their children will never know the polar bear. "The ice is moving further and further north," said Charlie Johnson, 64, an Alaskan Nupiak from Nome, in the state's far west. "In the Bering Sea the ice leaves earlier and earlier. On the north slope, the ice is retreating as far as 300 or 400 miles offshore." Last year, hunters found half a dozen bears that had drowned about 200 miles north of Barrow, on Alaska's northern coast. "It seems they had tried to swim for shore ... A polar bear might be able to swim 100 miles but not 400." His alarming testimony, given at a conference on global warming and native communities held in the Alaskan capital, Anchorage, last week, is just one story of the many changes happening across the globe. Climate change threatens the survival of thousands of species - a threat unparalleled since the last ice age, which ended some 10,000 years ago. The vast majority, scientists will warn this week, are migratory animals - sperm whales, polar bears, gazelles, garden birds and turtles - whose survival depends on the intricate web of habitats, food supplies and weather conditions which, for some species, can stretch for 6,500 miles. Every link of that chain is slowly but perceptibly altering. Europe's most senior ecologists and conservationists are meeting in Aviemore, in the Scottish Highlands, this week for a conference on the impact of climate change on migratory species, an event organised by the British government as part of its presidency of the European Union. It is a well-chosen location. Aviemore's major winter employer - skiing - is a victim of warmer winters. Ski slopes in the Cairngorms, which once had snow caps year round on the highest peaks, have recently been closed down when the winter snow failed. The snow bunting, ptarmigan and dotterel - some of Scotland's rarest birds - are also given little chance of survival as their harsh and marginal winter environments disappear. A report being presented this week in Aviemore reveals this is a pattern being repeated around the world. In the sub-Arctic tundra,caribou are threatened by "multiple climate change impacts". Deeper snow at higher latitudes makes it harder for caribou herds to travel. Faster and more regular "freeze-thaw" cycles make it harder to dig out food under thick crusts of ice-covered snow. Wetter and warmer winters are cutting calving success, and increasing insect attacks and disease. The same holds true for migratory wading birds such as the red knot and the northern seal. The endangered spoon-billed sandpiper, too, faces extinction, the report says. They are of "key concern". It says that species "cannot shift further north as their climates become warmer. They have nowhere left to go ... We can see, very clearly, that most migratory species are drifting towards the poles." The report, passed to The Independent on Sunday, and commissioned by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), makes gloomy predictions about the world's animal populations. "The habitats of migratory species most vulnerable to climate change were found to be tundra, cloud forest, sea ice and low-lying coastal areas," it states. "Increased droughts and lowered water tables, particularly in key areas used as 'staging posts' on migration, were also identified as key threats stemming from climate change." Some of itsfindings include: Four out of five migratory birds listed by the UN face problems ranging from lower water tables to increased droughts, spreading deserts and shifting food supplies in their crucial "fuelling stations" as they migrate. One-third of turtle nesting sites in the Caribbean - home to diminishing numbers of green, hawksbill and loggerhead turtles - would be swamped by a sea level rise of 50cm (20ins). This will "drastically" hit their numbers. At the same time, shallow waters used by the endangered Mediterranean monk seal, dolphins, dugongs and manatees will slowly disappear. Whales, salmon, cod, penguins and kittiwakes are affected by shifts in distribution and abundance of krill and plankton, which has "declined in places to a hundredth or thousandth of former numbers because of warmer sea-surface temperatures." Increased dam building, a response to water shortages and growing demand, is affecting the natural migration patterns of tucuxi, South American river dolphins, "with potentially damaging results". Fewer chiffchaffs, blackbirds, robins and song thrushes are migrating from the UK due to warmer winters. Egg-laying is also getting two to three weeks earlier than 30 years ago, showing a change in the birds' biological clocks. The science magazine Nature predicted last year that up to 37 per cent of terrestrial species could become extinct by 2050. And the Defra report presents more problems than solutions. Tackling these crises will be far more complicated than just building more nature reserves - a problem that Jim Knight, the nature conservation minister, acknowledges. A key issue in sub-Saharan Africa, for instance, is profound poverty. After visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo last month, Mr Knight found it difficult to condemn local people eating gorillas, already endangered. "You can't blame an individual who doesn't know how they're going to feed their family every day from harvesting what's around them. That's a real challenge," he said. And the clash between nature and human need - a critical issue across Africa - is likely to worsen. As its savannah and forests begin shifting south, migratory animals will shift along with them. Some of the continent's major national parks and reserves - such as the Masai-Mara or Serengeti - may also have to move their boundaries if their game species, the elephant and wildebeest, are to be properly protected. This will bring conflict with local communities. There is also a gap in scientific knowledge between what has been discovered about the impact of climate change in the industrialised world and in less developed countries. Similarly, fisheries experts know more about species such as cod and haddock, than they do about fish humans don't eat. Many environmentalists are pessimistic about the prospects of halting, let alone reversing, this trend. "Are we fighting a losing battle? Yes, we probably are," one naturalist told the IoS last month. The UK, which is attempting to put climate change at the top of the global agenda during its presidency of the G8 group of industrialised nations, is still struggling to persuade the American, Japanese and Australian governments to admit that mankind's gas emissions are the biggest threat. These three continue to insist there is no proof that climate change is largely manmade. And many British environmentalists suspect that Tony Blair's public commitment to a tougher global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, aimed at a 60 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, is not being backed up by the Government in private. Despite President George Bush's resistance to a new global climate treaty, many US states are being far more radical. Even the G8 communiqu? after the Gleneagles summit in July had Mr Bush confirming that the climate was warming. In Alaska last week, satellite images released by two US universities and the space agency Nasa revealed that the amount of sea-ice cover over the polar ice cap has fallen for the past four years. "A long-term decline is under way," said Walt Meier of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. The Arctic's native communities don't need satellite images to tell them this. John Keogak, 47, an Inuvialuit from Canada's North-West Territories, hunts polar bears, seals, caribou and musk ox. "The polar bear is part of our culture," he said. "They use the ice as a hunting ground for the seals. If there is no ice there is no way the bears will be able to catch the seals." He said the number of bears was decreasing and feared his children might not be able to hunt them. He said: "There is an earlier break-up of ice, a later freeze-up. Now it's more rapid. Something is happening." And now, said Mr Keogak, there was evidence that polar bears are facing an unusual competitor - the grizzly bear. As the sub-Arctic tundra and wastelands thaw, the grizzly is moving north, colonising areas where they were previously unable to survive. Life for Alaska's polar bears is rapidly becoming very precarious. Vanishing from the earth Mountain gorilla Already listed as "critically endangered", only about 700 mountain gorillas, including the distinctively marked adult male silverbacks, migrate within the cloud forests of the volcanic Virunga mountains of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. After a century of human persecution it faced extinction. Now its unique but marginal mountain forests - already heavily reduced by forestry - are shrinking, because of climate change. It will be forced to climb higher for cooler climates, but will effectively run out of mountain. Across Africa, habitats are shifting as temperatures rise, or disappearing in droughts, affecting the migrations of millions of wildebeest, and savannah elephant and Thomson's gazelle. This will hit game reserves and national parks - forcing many to move their boundaries. Green turtle The number of male green turtles is falling because of rising temperatures, threatening their survival. Turtle nests need a temperature of precisely 28.8C to hatch even numbers of males and females. On Ascension Island, where nest temperatures are up 0.5C,females now outnumber males three to one. On Antigua too, nest temperatures for hawkbill turtles are higher than the ideal incubation level. Hatchling survival rates are also cut by higher temperatures. Egg-laying beaches for all species of turtle are being lost to rising sea levels. A third of nesting beaches in the Caribbean would be lost by a 50cm rise in sea level. Saiga antelope This rare antelope, thought to be half-way between an antelope and a sheep, and found in Russia and Mongolia, is "critically endangered". Hunted heavily, its autumn migration to escape bitter weather and spring migration to find water and food are being hit by unusual weather cycles. The antelope will be forced by climate instability to find new grazing areas, coming intoconflict with humans. Bad years can cut its numbers by 50 per cent, because of high mortality and poor birth rates. Sperm whale The migration of the sperm whale, one of the earth's largest mammals, made famous by Herman Melville's epic Moby-Dick, is closely linked to the squid, its main food source. Squid numbers are affected by warmer water and weather phenomena such as El Ni?o. Adult male sperm whales up to 20m long like cold water in the disappearing ice-packs. Warm water cuts sperm whale reproduction because food supplies fall. Around the Galapagos Islands, a fall in births is linked to higher sea surface temperatures. Plankton and krill, key foods for many cetaceans such as the pilot whale, have in some regions declined 100-fold in warmer water. ? Copyright 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd. ### --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Oct 6 01:55:31 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:55:31 -0700 Subject: [m2c] I Like Women Like Me! ASWAT in palestine Message-ID: http://www.countercurrents.org/gender-bala041005.htm I Like Women Like Me! By Sruti Bala 04 October, 2005 Countercurrents.org It all started in 2003 with what seemed like a harmless e-mail list: a handful of Palestinian and Arab women living in Israel as well as in the occupied territories of the West Bank began an exchange on the internet, to share with each other in a secure space their experiences related to sexuality. For a society torn by violent political conflict and shattered by various levels of social tensions and interlinked oppressions, this small step was significant, for it meant voicing for the first time an issue that is absolute taboo. There was a lot to share and talk about: from the discovery of one's own sexuality, to experiences of sexual harrassment and abuse from family and outsiders for daring to divert from the compulsory heterosexual norm, to the invisibility of women in general, but in particular of women who questioned their prescribed gender roles. For these women, it involved a great deal of struggle from wanting to raise their voices to actually being able to speak. To begin with, it meant having to search for an appropriate language. This was not only for practical reasons of enabling communication, since some of the women living in Israel used Hebrew just as well as Arabic, and others English, but also, as Rauda Morcos, one of the initiators of the list, points out, because finding one's voice implied that language needed to be re-appropriated: "I have forgotten my language, I don't know how to say to make love in Arabic without it sounding chauvinistic, aggressive and alien to the experience." The search for words to express oneself, the search for different voices led to the founding of ASWAT (Arabic: voices), a group of Palestinian Gay Women. To be women, to be Palestinian, to defy the norms of heterosexuality: ASWAT decided to draw the links between these layers of oppression, which for a long time felt too overwhelming to confront all at once. It also aims to create a community that allows for a space where differing identities do not constantly have to be negotiated and explained and fought for. Running an organisation, arranging regular meetings and conducting concrete work is no small task in a country which is, at least for holders of Palestinian documents living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, in fact one large open air jail. On the one side, the expanding wall constructed by Israeli Security Forces, which stretches right through Palestinian land, added to the already heavy travel restrictions, make physical meetings of the group a challenge in themselves. The actual cultural and class differences between different Arab women whether from within occupied Palestine or in Israel, also raised other types of barriers, which had to be overcome in the search for support and solidarity in a common cause. To politicise the issue of sexuality means to draw connections between discrimination on grounds of sexual preference, the patriarchal social set-up in Palestine and life under Israeli occupation. In doing this, ASWAT women are taking immense personal risks. As the women from ASWAT say, in their working statement: "As long as we women participate in the struggle for national liberation, we are welcomed and our efforts are appreciated. The moment women want to focus their energies in establishing independence from the male occupation and structure, we are transformed instantly into enemies." Currently, Kayan, Arab Feminist Organization provides an office for ASWAT. Several women in ASWAT, already active in other political associations and in peace and anti-occupation work, now strive towards bringing sexuality to the agenda of political and social change. Rauda Morcos, writer and educator, living in a small town in Northern Israel, relates her own experience of facing hatred and outrage because of what she stands for. A journalist working with a leading conservative Israeli newspaper (Yedeot Ahronot/ The Latest News) interviewed Morcos and published an article about her poetry in July 2003. Although she mentioned her lesbian identity in passing during the interview, this L-word gave the article its juicy title, enough to make people want to read on. All of a sudden, the Arab population of her home town, which she generally assumed to have no interest in the literary supplements of Hebrew newspapers, seemed to have read the article and had something to say about her. Local corner shop owners made photocopies and distributed it, because, after all, everyone knew it was about the daughter of so-and-so from their own town. The consequences of that article were far more serious than Rauda had imagined: her car windows were smashed and tyres were punctured several times, she received innumerable threatening letters and phone calls, and to top it all, 'coincidentally' lost her job as a school teacher, since parents of pupils complained that they did not want her as a teacher. Whether she liked it or not, Rauda had taken a step out of the closet, at the risk of endangering her own life and being criminalised in return. She however used this experience as a means of self-empowerment. "In such situations," she comments in a tongue-in-cheek manner, " you realise very quickly who your true friends are and who is a waste of time. Once you step out of one closet, it becomes easier to step out of the next." Rauda is one of the few women in ASWAT who is "out". The women in the group come from all kinds of backgrounds and circumstances: some bisexual, some lesbian queers, transsexual, and transgender, inter sex, some, in her own words, just confused. Yet ASWAT provides the forum to be open about these questions inside the group, and nevertheless find the arsenal with which to fight their common battle. At the same time, it also allows for searching for role models outside of Western gay-lesbian lifestyle codes, for an expression of diversity in female sexualities from within the diversity in Arab society. ASWAT can be contacted at: palgaywomen at yahoo.com Sruti Bala can be reacged b.sruti at web.de --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Oct 6 01:55:33 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:55:33 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Does Breast Cancer Awareness Save Lives? Message-ID: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Oct05/Marshall1003.htm The Booby Trap Does Breast Cancer Awareness Save Lives? A Call to Re-think the Pink by Lucinda Marshall www.dissidentvoice.org October 3, 2005 You know that it's October when the leaves start turning and the world turns a glorious pink. Yes pink, the mascot color of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM). Each year we are exhorted to race for the cure and go for our mammograms because, according to the NBCAM mantra, "Early detection saves lives". We buy pink lipstick and wear pink ribbons because part of the proceeds goes to benefit breast cancer research. The question we fail to ask however is does being 'aware' save lives? To begin with, it is inconceivable that there is a thinking adult in this country who isn't aware of breast cancer. According to the American Cancer Society, one in seven women will develop breast cancer during her lifetime (in 1975, the risk was only one in eleven). More than 250,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year. Each year, more than 40,000 women die from breast cancer. Maddeningly, the treatment options offered to women with breast cancer vary little from the treatments used 40 years ago, radiation, chemotherapy and surgery. It would seem logical to start by asking why the incidence of breast cancer keeps increasing despite advancements in early detection and the continual development of new treatments. As any school child knows, you can't solve a problem if you don't know the variables. Yet most of the money that is thrown at breast cancer gets spent on finding cures and treatments, with very little of the research focusing on the cause. This seems particularly odd since approximately half of all breast cancer cases are unexplained by personal characteristics, leading many to suspect that the cause might be environmental. Since the 1940's tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals have come into use yet only a small percentage have been tested for safety. Pollution has increased dramatically as well. A link has long been established between some pesticides and breast cancer and it is also known that nonsteroidal estrogens are carcinogenic. Chemicals with estrogenic activity include PVC and bisphenol-A (plastic additives found in many household products) and benzene (a gasoline additive). Other chemicals such as parabens and phthalates, which are found in many cosmetics, can act as hormone disrupters and have been linked to cancer. Other compounds that likely contribute to breast cancer include DDT, dioxin and PCB's. Additionally, "State of the Evidence 2004: What Is the Connection Between the Environment and Breast Cancer?", jointly published by the Breast Cancer Fund and Breast Cancer Action, reported the following connections between chemical exposure and breast cancer: Chlorinated chemicals, found in drinking water and many industrial processes such as computer component manufacturing, were associated with an elevated risk of breast cancer in three new studies; A solvent used in many varnishes, paints, dyes and fuel additives (ethylene glycol methyl ether) was found to sensitize breast tissue cells to the effects of estrogens and progestins, thereby increasing the risk of breast cancer and; The Million Women Study in the United Kingdom revealed that all types of postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy significantly increased the risk of breast cancer, underscoring earlier findings from the Women's Health Initiative study in the United States. Another study found that use of HRT after previously being diagnosed with breast cancer tripled a woman's risk of recurrence or development of a new breast tumor. (1) Yet organizations like the American Cancer Society and the Susan G. Komen Foundation routinely fail to address these issues. As it turns out, both groups have connections with numerous corporations in the chemical, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries, many of which have an enormous financial stake in breast cancer. Good intentions aside, it is far more profitable for these companies to detect and treat breast cancer than to prevent it, leading to an enormous conflict of interest between their corporate well being and their charitable public persona. The primary corporate sponsor of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month is AstraZeneca, which makes the popular cancer drug Tamoxifen. Interestingly, Tamoxifen can also cause cancer and until recently, AstraZeneca also made a variety of other cancer-causing chemicals. Apparently the company has a thing about color marketing. Not only do they encourage you to think pink, they are also the maker of a frequent sponsor of the nightly network news, the little purple pill a.k.a. Nexium. Which begs the question of how corporate sponsorship of the news might impact how cancer ?cures? and causes are reported by the networks. AstraZeneca is not the only company playing both sides of the cause/cure game. Dupont makes numerous chemicals that have been linked to cancer (including Teflon) as well as much of the film used in mammography. And General Electric makes nuclear power plants that produce ionizing radiation, a known cause of cancer as well as mammography equipment (which also perversely produces cancer-causing ionizing radiation). GE also owns NBC. What these corporations understand is that supporting breast cancer awareness and funding is a great public relations gambit. As Barbara Brenner of Breast Cancer Action points out, "If you slap a pink ribbon on a product, people will buy it." But where does the money raised by the sale of all these products go? Some companies clearly state what portion of the proceeds are donated, but many just say something along the lines of, 'a generous portion of the proceeds will be donated to finding a cure for cancer'. The definition of 'generous' can vary widely and all too often there is no definitive accounting of how much was raised and who benefited from the proceeds. (2) And what of organizations like the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which sponsors the annual Race for the Cure? According to the Toxic Links Coalition, the race focuses on finding medical cures while ignoring environmental causes. In "Running From the Truth", Mary Ann Swissler reports that the Foundation's stock portfolio has included holdings in several large pharmaceutical companies as well as General Electric, one of the largest makers of mammographic material. (3) Their 2003-2004 Annual Report lists Ford (automobile exhaust has long been linked with cancer) and Johnson and Johnson (makers of numerous cancer drugs and diagnostic equipment) as Partners. In 1998, Komen was the only national breast cancer group to back Tamoxifen as a preventative treatment for some women, which other advocacy groups objected to strongly. As it turns out, Tamoxifen's maker, AstraZeneca is a strong backer of the Race for the Cure and in 2003 received the "Friend of the Fight" award from Komen. The Komen Foundation is also notably silent on environmental issues. Interestingly, Occidental Petroleum, a major environmental polluter (think Love Canal) is a big Komen supporter. While Komen may have the best of intentions, as breast cancer activist Judy Brady points out, the problem is that they simply don't see that "'business as usual' is why we have cancer". (4) ACS and Komen are both big supporters of annual mammography for women over the age of 40. Over and over, both organizations tout early detection as a lifesaver. They both also receive substantial funding from makers of mammography equipment such as GE and DuPont. Unfortunately, the truth about mammography and early detection is not so cut and dry. Mammograms may detect cancer earlier (although the majority of women detect their own cancers) but they do not prevent cancer or protect women from cancer and early detection does not necessarily translate into longer survival. Many women whose cancer is detected by mammograms have slow-growing cancers that will never be life threatening while others are very aggressive and would be lethal no matter when they are detected. Early detection does not appear to impact the life expectancy of either of these groups of women. In addition, because breast tissue in pre-menopausal women tends to be denser, mammograms may miss suspicious masses. The breast tissue of younger women is also more susceptible to damage from radiation. It is interesting to note that no nation other than the U.S. routinely screens pre-menopausal women by mammography. According to activist Jennifer Drew, in England the practice is for "women aged between 50 and 64 who are registered with a General Practitioner (to) receive a letter inviting them to attend a Breast Screening scan. The age is being raised to 70 years from 2004. Women between these ages can have free mammograms every 3 years. The Government here in the UK believes once every 3 years is sufficient based on medical research." In contrast with the United States, only one in nine women are stricken with breast cancer in the UK, a statistic also true in Canada. Routine screening guidelines for Canadian women are to be screened every two years after the age of 40. Only one in eleven women in Australia are stricken with breast cancer and women there are advised to get mammograms every two years between the ages of 50-69. What is perhaps the most important to understand is that survival rates are counted from when a woman is diagnosed. So if a woman is diagnosed in 2000 and lives for 15 years, this is no different than if she was diagnosed in 2005 and lived for 10 years. She would still die in 2015. In other words, a woman may live longer past a diagnosis that occurs earlier, but not necessarily longer overall. It seems likely that the corporate connections to organizations like ACS and Komen play a significant role in determining policy recommendations and how the funds that are donated to these organizations are spent and why funding is so clearly biased towards detection and pharmaceutical treatment. While many useful projects have undoubtedly been funded, the reality is that women, too many women are still dying from breast cancer and we still don't know why or how to stop it. What is clear is that it is well past time to re-think the pink and to quit indiscriminately touting early detection and to focus much more of our research resources on the context in which breast cancer takes place and finding treatments for those women who currently do not benefit from treatment. As the comparison of mammography recommendations and breast cancer incidence in other countries indicates, some hard questions need to be asked as to the benefits of early and more frequent mammograms in this country and what other factors account for our higher breast cancer rates. The role of environmental pollutants and compounds with estrogenic activity in breast cancer must also be addressed in a much more comprehensive manner. Efforts like that of Dr. Susan Love to learn more about the milk ducts where most breast cancer begins should be enthusiastically supported. We also need to focus research on understanding other issues such as how antibiotics may contribute to breast cancer and how breast cancer surgery itself may spread cancer. Above all, we need to make sure that public policy decisions are made in the best interests of the women whose lives are impacted by breast cancer, not for the benefit of corporate profit. (5) Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network, www.feministpeacenetwork.org. Her work has been published in numerous publications in the U.S. and abroad including Awakened Woman, Alternet, Dissident Voice, Off Our Backs, The Progressive, Rain and Thunder, Z Magazine, Common Dreams and Information Clearinghouse. NOTES 1. "State of the Evidence: What is the Connection between the Environment and Breast Cancer", edited by Nancy Evans, Breast Cancer Action and Breast Cancer Fund, 3rd Edition, 2004. 2. "Breast Cancer Month Spurs Pink-Product Debate" by Rebecca Vesely, Women's Enews, October 21, 2004. 3. "The Marketing of Breast Cancer" by Mary Ann Swissler, Alternet, September 16, 2002. 4. "The Marketing of Breast Cancer" by Mary Ann Swissler, Alternet, September 16, 2002. 5. For more information on these issues: Breast Cancer Fund Breast Cancer Action --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Oct 6 01:55:35 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:55:35 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Purple Rose Campaign: Stop the trafficking of Filipino women and children Message-ID: http://www.purplerosecampaign.org/definitions.htm The Purple Rose Campaign is the global campaign against the sex trafficking of Filipinas and Filipino Children Spearheaded by GABRIELA Philippines, the largest and only multi-sectoral women?s alliance in the Philippines, the Purple Rose Campaign is designed to create an international movement against the sex trafficking of Filipinas and their children. It seeks to inform and educate, to arouse and mobilize, and to organize all ? both men and women ? who oppose the sex trade. Because Filipinas are exported to nearly 200 countries, where their fates are barely monitored by a weak and unconcerned Philippine government, a broad campaign designed to inform and to educate, to arouse and mobilize, and to organize all ? both men and women ? who oppose the sex trade, which has become a major component of globalization. The estimated earnings of the sex trade is some $7 billion, excluding earnings of so-called legitimate business such as airlines, hotels, travel agencies, etc. Definitions What is trafficking? Trafficking in persons is the transport of men, women and/or children from one area to another for the purposes of manual and/or sexual labor. While transporting people without the proper travel or migration documents is generally recognized by governments as illegal, governments may themselves cause people to be transported for the same purposes legally. The Philippine government hides its trafficking in persons under the so-called ?labor export? policy. Thus far this year 2002, more than 638,000 men and women have left the Philippines for work overseas. This is an average of 2,600 daily ? a number that does not include those who leave on tourist or visitor or fake visas to seek employment overseas. These are figures from the Philippine government?s Department of Labor. Nearly ten percent of the Philippine population work overseas. Around 60% of these overseas workers are women. Because of the nature of their work, Filipinas tend to stay overseas longer, on open-ended contracts, than the men. The Philippines is the world?s top exporter of women to the international labor market. In some countries, nearly 90% of those coming in from the Philippines are women. What is sex trafficking? Sex trafficking is the transport of persons from one area to another for sexual purposes. Transport can occur within national boundaries or across national boundaries. Recruitment for the sex trade within the Philippines has risen dramatically in the recent months with the return of US troops to the country (see military prostitution). Recruitment and transport of Filipinas for the sex trade in other countries are a component of the Philippine government?s labor export policy. While majority of the women who leave the Philippines work overseas as domestics (maids, nannies, cooks, etc.), the second likeliest overseas jobs for Filipinas are in the sex trade. Filipinas have been found in the sex trade of practically every country, from Nigeria to Canada. When it comes to women workers, setting a demarcation between manual and sexual labor is difficult and sometimes non-existent. A woman recruited in the sex trade is often expected to provide manual labor; and there have been innumerable cases of women recruited as domestic workers being raped by their employers or expected to provide sexual favors to the employer and/or his friends. The Roots of Sex Trafficking of Filipinas Poverty is very often the reason given as to why women, including Filipinas, end up in prostitution. What is not asked is what are the root causes of poverty. In the years following World War II, the Philippines had a standard of living second only to Japan. Poverty intensified in the archipelago with the intensive manipulation of the economy by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Moreover, implementation of such IMF/WB approved economic policies as (a) tourism development; (b) establishment of export processing zones; and (c) export of ?surplus? or ?disposable? labor all negatively impacted the women of the Philippines and turned them into commodity. Under the WTO-protected (World Trade Organization) globalization thrust, the export of Filipinas has risen steadily even as multinational corporations destroy the traditional means of women?s livelihood in the Philippines. Rice and corn farming are being replaced by cut flower agriculture meant for export. And under General Agreement on Tariff and Trade, only knowledge used for commerce can be copyrighted or patented ? which means that all the thousands of years of women?s wisdom about plants, grains and medicine, which are generally used for the community or tribe, can be appropriated and expropriated by corporations. The Purple Rose Campaign demands: ? That the Philippine economy be weaned from dependence on the export of men, women and children; that it pursue a development using local capital instead of foreign investments; that it should hold food self-sufficiency as the top priority in its development plans; ? That the Philippine government stop borrowing money from the IMF-WB and decrease its vulnerability to dictations from the aforesaid lending agencies and the WTO; ? That all factors which exacerbate sex trafficking be removed, including the presence of foreign troops, especially US troops, in the archipelago; ? That recipient countries agree to binding agreements to protect the rights and the physical and moral being of Filipinas who enter their territory to work; ? That Filipinas and indeed all women who are sex trafficked be granted immediate refugee status and given protection so that they may testify against their traffickers; ? That all traffickers and all government officials be prosecuted. Furthermore, the Purple Rose Campaign commits itself to: ? Providing such means as will enable Filipinas to understand the sex trade; ? Providing such means as will enable Filipinas to know and understand their history; ? Providing such means as will enable Filipinas to organize and struggle for their liberation, as well as their country?s liberation. Forms of Sex Trafficking Military Prostitution WITHIN THE PHILIPPINES: Organized and large-scale prostitution for military ?rest-and-recreation? started in the Philippines with the United States military bases ? Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. These were the U.S.?s largest military bases overseas, the last holdouts of 22 areas reserved exclusively for American military use after the WWII. Clark and Subic were turned over to the Philippine government and military in 1992, after a devastating eruption by Mt. Pinatubo, a Senate vote which rejected a new military bases treaty and general popular protest against and objections to U.S. troops in the Philippines. In 2002, under the notorious Visiting Forces Agreement with the US, signed by the deposed President Joseph Estrada, American military troops returned to the Philippines. The justification used was the so-called ?war on terrorism? and the objective ostensibly to train the Philippine military to deal with the Abu Sayyaf, a one-hundred-man band engaging in kidnap for profit. US troops also launched a so-called joint exercise with the Philippine military. Thus, US troops were based in Zamboanga, in Mindanao Island, close to the sea site of a newly discovered vast oil reserves. US troops were also based in Clark Air Base. At one point, there were nearly 3,000 US troops in the Philippines. Another ?joint exercise? has been scheduled for this October, this time in the island of Luzon where there are no Abu Sayyaf. Another treaty has been signed with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, this time a ?mutual logistics support? agreement, which allows US troops to remain based in Zamboanga and other parts of the archipelago. Recruitment for the sex trade has spread from Zamboanga to as far north as Cebu province. The main clientele are US troops. In Luzon, to avoid public dismay at the surge in sex trafficking, such practices as ordering pizza and having it delivered by a prostitute to American G.I.s in Clark Air Base are used. OUTSIDE THE PHILIPPINES: Filipinas are brought to ?entertainment? establishments in places where US military bases are located. These include Okinawa, South Korea, etc., including states in the US where there are military camps and bases. For some of the receiving countries, the Filipinas are used as a crude form of protection against STDs, especially HIV. The idea is to protect the local population by keeping local prostitutes the exclusive preserve of local men while American G.I.s use Filipinas for rest-and-recreation. For many countries in Southeast Asia, the HIV vector has been either American soldiers or Western male tourists. Export of Filipinas for the Sex Trade The top country recipient of Filipinas recruited into the sex trade has been Japan. The women are exported under a variety of disguises: as ?cultural dancers,? ?entertainers,? etc. Filipinas are trafficked into Europe, particularly The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany; into the Middle East where they work in the nightclubs of Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, etc.; and even to such impoverished countries as Nigeria in Africa. Many of these women are tricked and deceived, being promised jobs as waitresses or nannies, only to discover too late that they are meant to be prostitutes. Sex Tourism The Philippines has become a ?hot spot? for sex tourists, in a circuit that includes Thailand and recently, Vietnam and Cambodia. Sex tourism includes traveling pedophiles who considered Thailand, the Philippines and, until the war broke out, Sri Lanka as their ultimate destinations. Sex tourism is highly organized and often imbedded in regular tourism. A small agency operating in the US sends 15 men to the Philippines monthly. A $2,500 payment includes fare, hotel room, hotel breakfasts and a smorgasbord of women nightly. Should the client choose to marry one of the ?girls,? the travel agency also helps in the marriage and immigration documents. Sex tourism started in the 1970s, when the Marcos Dictatorship embarked on an intense campaign to attract visitors to the Philippines so as to raise quick cash to pay the interest on huge loans from the IMF/WB. A portion of the loans was provided by IMF/WB for the construction of shoulder-to-shoulder first-class hotels, which needed tourists to be profitable. The Marcos Dictatorship started its tourism development with the hosting of an international beauty contest. The Ramos government started its tourism development plan by hosting the same international beauty pageant. Mail-order Brides Considered a legitimate business in many countries, mail-order bride (MOB) agencies provide men with names, addresses, telephone numbers, pictures and vital statistics of women listed in their catalog or website. The men pay from $50-$800 for batches of names and relevant information. The agencies claim they do not sell women; they only sell photos, names and addresses. But they do offer extra service to their clientele who are all men. They teach the men what to write to the women (?don?t write you?re a truck driver; say you?re in the trucking business?) and how to use the women?s noblest sentiment ? the dream of lifting their parents and sibling from poverty ? to agree to marry a stranger and live in an alien land. Many, many, many Filipinas have ended up trafficked, battered, abused, raped and/or murdered in this power relationship masquerading as marriage. Although MOBs from Russia and Eastern Europe are widely reported on in the media, a casual perusal of the catalog of the largest MOB agency in the US shows that nearly 70% of the women for sale come from the Philippines. The US is the top recipient of MOBs from the Philippines, followed by Australia and then the rest of Europe. Some aberrant practices are the so-called 30-day warranty (after 30 days, if the man is not satisfied, he can return the woman to the agency), the ?discovery? clause (having sex with the woman to determine if she is satisfactory) and ?specialization? ? i.e., providing wives to the physically disabled so that they save on homecare and nursing costs. Domestic Prostitution The Philippines, per ILO figures, has close to 800,000 women in the sex trade, already overtaking Thailand in terms of the absolute number of prostitutes. The increase is largely due to women?s dispossession under globalization; destruction caused by cultural imperialism of kinship-based safety nets; and the demand for human bodies by the sex trade, as this relies largely on youth and comeliness for profit. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Oct 6 01:55:36 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 00:55:36 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Pharmaceutical colonialism in Africa Message-ID: Le Monde diplomatique, August 2005 http://mondediplo.com/2005/08/11pharma Pharmaceutical colonialism in Africa Big drug companies are conducting clinical trials in Africa with no consideration for ethics, the health of patients or the relevance of the drugs to the needs and the pathology of the continent. Nobody is testing traditional medicine to see if it works, and how. By Jean-Philippe Chippaux Translated by Donald Hounam NOVOFIR is an antiviral drug developed by the United States biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences to combat Aids. The US government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation paid for the organisation Family Health International to carry out clinical trials in Nigeria. But in March 2005 serious ethical shortcomings caused their sus?pen?sion. Trials were also halted in Cameroon (February 2005) and Cambodia (August 2004) (1), but continue in Thailand, Bot?s?wana, Malawi, Ghana and the US. In 2001 30 Nigerian families sued another US pharmaceutical company, Pfizer, in New York over trials of Trovan, an antibiotic to combat meningitis. In the course of the study, during an epidemic in 1996, 11 children out of 200 died and others suffered brain damage and paralysis (2). The developing world is now a place where pharmaceutical companies ignore ethical considerations and the health of patients. Without the informed consent of their subjects, who receive only the most basic information and usually inadequate therapeutic super?vision, they conduct clinical trials with limited benefits to specific patients or the local population as a whole. Before any new medicine is approved and marketed, it must go through formal, rigorous clinical trials designed to establish tolerance and assess its effectiveness. It is estimated that almost 100,000 such trials are carried out worldwide each year, 10% of them in develop?ing countries and 1% in Africa. During the 1990s the number of foreign trials financed by US public and private funding reportedly rose from 271 to 4,458 (3). The concept of evidence-based medicine, using statistics and testing, has prevailed in the West since the end of the 19th century (4). The first formal statement of ethics was the Nuremberg code, adopted after the trials of Nazi doctors in 1947. But the postwar spread of medical ethics was slow to encompass ?pharmaceuticals, and regulation only developed in reaction to scandals and accidents. International declarations extended and refined the code: the 1964 Helsinki declaration defined the main ethical principles of medical research and the 1981 Manila declaration dealt with clinical studies in developing countries. They insist that trials should be confidential, and that those conducting them should be competent and should protect their subjects, whose consent they have secured. These were only recommendations and no sanctions were proposed. An antiseptic, Stalinon, killed 102 patients in France in 1955; thalidomide was respons?ible for 12,000 foetal abnormalities between 1957 and 1962; a powder, Morhange, poisoned 145 infants and killed 36 in 1972. Scandals such as these led to the regulation of clinical trials. But not until 1988 did the Huriet-Serusclat law lay down an authoritative code of ethics - implicit recognition that clinical trials had been conducted illegally for two decades. Africa?s few medical and pharmaceutical regulations date from the colonial era and are now obsolete or ill-adapted to current circumstances. There is increasing danger that ethical considerations will be ignored as drug companies relocate tests to a continent where costs can be five times less than in developed countries. Since African disease rates, especially infectious ones, are higher and symptoms have not been weakened by repeated intensive treatments, epidemiological conditions are more favourable for trials. The weakness of local health structures generates a docile patient pool, making the process easier. Africa is a perfect environment in which to circumvent ethical principles. During the ?trials of Trovan, there was no formal consultation with the Nigerian authorities or Nigeria?s ethical committee about the information given to families involved or about securing of their consent. The tests of Tenofovir on 400 Cameroonian prostitutes between July 2004 and January 2005 failed to meet ethical ?requirements. Tenofovir reduces transmission of SIV, the equivalent in monkeys of HIV. The manufacturers decided to conduct trials among a high-risk group - sex workers in a country with a high rate of HIV infection - to find out if it might work on human beings. Only information in English was given to the volunteers, many of whom were French-speaking and illiterate. The anti-Aids organisation Act Up-Paris and Cameroon?s Network for ?Ethics, Rights and Aids (Reseau Ethique Droit et Sida), claim that some of the women thought they were receiving a vaccine. Those who were given a placebo (5) did not receive any advice on Aids prevention or medical follow-up, which did not worry Cameroon?s national ethical committee. As Fabrice Pilorg? of Act Up points out: ?There is an obvious conflict of interest between offering prevention and testing a preventive medicine - the test is only valid if the women are exposed and become infected.? A recommendation made by the World Medical Association in the Helsinki declar?ation was that ethical committees should examine the experimental protocol before any study, checking that it is relevant and appropriate to the social and economic context in which it is to be conducted. Over the past ?decade, such committees have sprung up across Africa, but can still lack the necessary expertise and funding (6). Not only does Africa have its own pathol?ogies, but conditions under which drugs are administered and their side effects monitored are problematic. It is reasonable to ask whether any trials conducted there are relevant to African needs. Out of 1,450 new medicines marketed between 1972 and 1997, only 13 were for tropical diseases (7). Since ?trials are determined, financed and organised by the pharmaceutical industry, decisions as to which drugs should be tested and how are inherently biased. African governments find it difficult to develop clear, coherent policies that would allow them to have real control over the activities of profit-driven drug companies. The mismatch between the poverty of developing countries and the power of the medical industry exacerbates the conflict between scientific and commercial interests. By the end of the 1990s the pharmaceutical industry?s global turnover ($480bn) was greater than the GDP of all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa ($380bn). Scientifically, it is possible to justify the trial of Trovan on the grounds that it allowed the effectiveness of the drug to be tested under consistent conditions on a suitable number of subjects. But the study overlooked the fact that the cost of the product and the limited chances of its commercialisation without state subsidy make its use in Africa highly unlikely. The appropriateness of Tenofovir in an ?African context was similarly ignored. If the trial confirms that it prevents HIV transmission, it will be marketed as a prophylactic against Aids. But it is not a realistic one in a continent that struggles to treat its sick and to promote the cheap and more widely available condom. ?Experience in malaria prevention demonstrates the impossibility of persuading healthy people to take medicine every day for the rest of their lives, especially if it is ?expensive. Some conclude that trials of Tenofovir were done in developping countries, among prostitutes, to secure quick, clear results without administrative complications or excessive costs. Some scientists, such as Philippe Kourilsky, director of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, maintain that the health crisis in the third world is so urgent that it justifies the relaxation of regu?lations (8). But to override the ?precautionary principle - under which the harm trials cause would demand their regulation despite the absence of scientific consensus - because of cost would imply that different criteria apply to different parts of the world (9). In the rich world all that matters is that the product works. Among the poor, safety would be subordinated to the ability to pay, forcing them to make do with what they can afford, whatever the result of trials. The result is strategic imperialism, which imposes rules upon the poor without their consent. Kourilsky?s insistence that it would be ?ideological imperialism to apply the rules of the rich to those who are not in a position to endorse them? permits an unacceptable relativism. Third parties, especially those who make the rules, cannot decide who can ?endorse those rules. If they are to meet their health needs, Africans must be able to conduct their own trials. The issue is all the more important since it ?affects traditional medicine, which is cheaper and more widely accepted. Clinical tests proving the uselessness or effectiveness of these traditional remedies could enhance heritage and allow an indigenous pharmaceutical ?industry to emerge. There are many African plants with reputed anti-infection, anti-inflammatory and diuretic properties that might be used against infections, rheumatism, hypertension or cardiac insufficiency; some might prove as important as quinine extracted from cinchona bark, ?aspirin from the willow, reserpine from an African Rauwolfia, and anti-cancer agents that have been derived from the Madagascar periwinkle. Only drugs that meet Africa?s needs should be tested there. They should satisfy specific criteria determined by their potential use. They should be effective and, given the inadequacy of local mechanisms to monitor side effects, harmless. They should be accessible, and easy to distribute, prescribe and administer. They should have a long shelf-life and encourage patient adherence to treatment, compensating for weaknesses in the health system. But the priority is to allow local communities to make their own decisions about trials, ?oversee and carry them out, allowing developping countries to make independent use of clinical research. Notes: (1) Compl?ment d?enqu?te, France 2, 17 January 2005. (2) The case remains unresolved. (3) US department of health & human services, Washington, 2001. (4) See Harry M Marks, The Progress of Experiment: Science and Therapeutic Reform in the United States, 1900-1990, Cambridge University Press, 2000. (5) To verify the effectiveness of the drug, those participating are divided into two groups, one of which receives a dummy tablet that does not contain the active ingredient. (6) See the Pan-African bioethics initiative website (7) See Patrick Trouillet, C. Battistella, J. Pinel, Bernard P?coul, ? Is orphan drog status beneficial to tropical disease control ? ?, Tropical Medecine and International Health, Oxford, 1999, 4, p. 412-420. (8) Philippe Kourilsky, Vaccination : quand l??thique devient immorale, Pour la Science, Paris, 2004. (9) See the report to the French prime minister, Philippe Kourilsky and Genevi?ve Viney, Le principe de pr?caution, Odile Jacob and Documentation fran?aise, Paris, 2000. [Jean-Philippe Chippaux is a doctor and director of research at the Institute of Development Research at Dakar in Senegal. He is the author of ?Pratique des essais cliniques en Afrique? (IRD Editions, Paris, 2004)] --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 7 03:28:06 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:28:06 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Blood, Sweat & Tears: Asia's Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq Message-ID: http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=12675 Blood, Sweat & Tears: Asia?s Poor Build U.S. Bases in Iraq by David Phinney, Special to CorpWatch October 3rd, 2005 Jing Soliman left his family in the Philippines for what sounded like a sure thing--a job as a warehouse worker at Camp Anaconda in Iraq. His new employer, Prime Projects International (PPI) of Dubai, is a major, but low-profile, subcontractor to Halliburton's multi-billion-dollar deal with the Pentagon to provide support services to U.S. forces. But Soliman wouldn?t be making anything near the salaries-- starting $80,000 a year and often topping $100,000-- that Halliburton's engineering and construction unit, Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) pays to the truck drivers, construction workers, office workers, and other laborers it recruits from the United States. Instead, the 35-year-old father of two anticipated $615 a month ? including overtime. For a 40-hour work week, that would be just over $3 an hour. But for the 12-hour day, seven-day week that Soliman says was standard for him and many contractor employees in Iraq, he actually earned $1.56 an hour. Soliman planned to send most of his $7,380 annual pay home to his family in the Philippines, where the combined unemployment and underemployment rate tops 28 percent. The average annual income in Manila is $4,384, and the World Bank estimates that nearly half of the nation's 84 million people live on less than $2 a day. ?I am an ordinary man,? said Soliman during a recent telephone interview from his home in Quezon City near Manila. ?It was good money.? His ambitions, like many U.S. civilians working in Iraq, were modest: ?I wanted to save up, buy a house and provide for my family,? he says. That simple dream drives hordes of low-wage workers like Soliman to travel to Iraq from more than three dozen countries. They are lured by jobs with companies working on projects led by Halliburton and other major U.S.-funded contractors hired to provide support services to the military and reconstruction efforts. Called ?third country nationals? (TCN) in contractor?s parlance, they hail largely from impoverished Asian countries such as the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Pakistan, as well as from Turkey and countries in the Middle East. Once in Iraq, TCNs earn monthly salaries between $200 to $1,000 as truck drivers, construction workers, carpenters, warehousemen, laundry workers, cooks, accountants, beauticians, and similar blue-collar jobs. Invisible Army of Cheap Labor Tens of thousands of such TNC laborers have helped set new records for the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war. They are employed through complex layers of companies working in Iraq. At the top of the pyramid-shaped system is the U.S. government which assigned over $24 billion in contracts over the last two years. Just below that layer are the prime contractors like Halliburton and Bechtel. Below them are dozens of smaller subcontracting companies-- largely based in the Middle East --including PPI, First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting and Alargan Trading of Kuwait, Gulf Catering, Saudi Trading & Construction Company of Saudi Arabia. Such companies, which recruit and employ the bulk of the foreign workers in Iraq, have experienced explosive growth since the invasion of Iraq by providing labor and services to the more high-profile prime contractors. This layered system not only cuts costs for the prime contractors, but also creates an untraceable trail of contracts that clouds the liability of companies and hinders comprehensive oversight by U.S. contract auditors. In April, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the U.S. Congress concluded that it is impossible to accurately estimate the total number of U.S. or foreign nationals working in Iraq. The GAO's investigation was prompted by concerns in Congress about insurance costs that all U.S.-funded contractors and subcontractors in are obligated by law to carry for their workers--costs which are then passed on to the government. "It is difficult to aggregate reliable data,? said the GAO report, ?due in part to the large number of contractors and the multiple levels of subcontractors performing work in Iraq." The menial wages paid to TCNs working for the regional contractors may be the most significant factor in the Pentagon?s argument that outsourcing military support is far more cost-efficient for the U.S. taxpayer than using its own troops to maintain camps and feed its ranks. But there is also a human cost to this savings. Numerous former American contractors returning home say they were shocked at conditions faced by this mostly invisible, but indispensable army of low-paid workers. TCNs frequently sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in line in 100 degree plus heat to eat ?slop.? Many are said to lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day, for little or no overtime pay. Few receive proper workplace safety equipment or adequate protection from incoming mortars and rockets. When frequent gunfire, rockets and mortar shell from the ongoing conflict hits the sprawling military camps, American contractors slip on helmets and bulletproof vests, but TCNs are frequently shielded only by the shirts on their backs and the flimsy trailers they sleep in. Adding to these dangers and hardships, some TCNs complain publicly about not being paid the wages they expected. Others say their employers use ?bait-and-switch? tactics: recruiting them for jobs in Kuwait or other Middle Eastern countries and then pressuring them to go to Iraq. All of these problems have resulted in labor disputes, strikes and on-the-job protests. While the exact number of TCNs working in Iraq is uncertain, a rough estimate can be gleaned from Halliburton?s own numbers, which indicate that TCNs make up 35,000 of KBR?s 48,000 workers in Iraq employed under sweeping contract for military support. Known as the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program (LOGCAP), this contract ? by far the largest in Iraq -- is now approaching the $15 billion mark. Citing security concerns, however, the Houston-headquartered company and several other major contractors declined to release detailed figures on the workforce that is estimated to be 100,000 or more. High Risks, Low Benefits ?They do all the grunt jobs,? said former KBR supervisor Steve Powell, 54, from Azle, Texas. ?But a lot of them are top notch.? Powell returned home from at Camp Diamondback in May this year. He was disillusioned, he said, with the high staff turnover of KBR employees and the treatment of TCNs that a KBR subcontractor from Turkey had hired as mechanics. ?The Filipinos were making $600 to $1,200 a month. That?s good money for them, but there was tension from time to time. They sometimes thought they were doing all the work,? says Powell who drove trucks for 30 years before working as a KBR truck maintenance foreman in Iraq for a year for $6,000 to $8,000 a month. ?We weren?t supposed to get our hands dirty.? The TCNs not only do much of the dirty work, but, like others working for the U.S. military, risk and sometimes lose their lives. Many are killed in mortar attacks; some are shot. Others have been taken hostage before meeting their death. In particularly gruesome set of murders on August 30, 2004, the captors of 12 Nepalese cooks and cleaners working for a Jordanian construction company beheaded one worker and posted a video of the execution on the internet with the message: "We have carried out the sentence of God against 12 Nepalese who came from their country to fight the Muslims and to serve the Jews and the Christians . . . believing in Buddha as their God." The murders led Kathmandu to bar its citizens from working in Iraq, although companies doing business there continue to employ Nepalese workers. The Pentagon keeps no comprehensive record of TCN casualties. But the Georgia-based nonprofit, Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, estimates that TCNs make up more than 100 of the estimated 269 civilian fatalities. The number of unreported fatalities could be much higher, while unreported and life-altering injuries are legion. Soliman was one TCN who barely escaped death on the night of May 11, 2004, when his living trailer at Camp Anaconda was blown apart by a bomb attack. Sardonically dubbed ?Mortaritaville,? the camp sits 42 miles north of Baghdad. Some 17,000 US soldiers and thousands of contractors have dug into the former Iraqi airbase for a long-term occupation. Three others were injured along with Soliman that night. One roommate, 25-year-old fuel pump attendant Raymund Natividad, was killed. Soliman flew home to the Philippines in a wheelchair days later because he wanted medical treatment in his own country. But even after surgery and skin grafts, he sometimes feels nagging pain in his leg, he says. Doctors tell Soliman he will walk with a piece of shrapnel lodged in his left leg for the rest of his life. ?It was too deep? to remove, he explains. The attack ignited shock waves of fear among the 1,300 Filipino workers at Camp Anaconda. Some 600 PPI employees immediately quit over safety concerns. ?Filipinos don't want to work anymore in the mess halls, laundry and fuel depot,? a Filipino embassy official in Baghdad said at the time. ?There's a paralysis of work.? By mid-July, 2004, the Philippines would resign from the "Coalition of the Willing" and withdraw its modest military presence of 43 soldiers and eight policemen from Iraq one month earlier than scheduled. The precipitating event was a threat by Iraqi militias to behead Filipino hostage Angelo de la Cruz, a 46-year-old truck driver for the Saudi Arabian Trading and Construction Company. One day after the withdrawal, his captors released the father of eight. He returned home to the storm of media attention hailing his safe return and offers of a free home and scholarships for the children. Only fleeting headlines in Manila greeted Soliman?s homecoming just months earlier. Now jobless, he speaks fondly of the U.S. troops to whom, he says, he was forbidden to speak to by his company supervisors at PPI. "The Army treated us like friends," he said, boasting of a certificate the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded him in recognition of his service as a warehouse worker who handled and received food supplies for the camp. His memories of PPI are less congenial. His managers were foul-mouthed and verbally abusive and lunches served on the job sites were unfit to eat, Soliman said. PPI restricted employees to two 5-minute phone calls home a month and deducted the cost from their paychecks. "They were $10 more expensive than at the PX (the retail store on the military base), but if they see you making a call at another location, they would send you home," Salomon said. A number of former KBR supervisors say they don?t know why TCNs continue working in Iraq when they face much more brutal working conditions and hours than what their American and European co-workers would tolerate. ?TCNs had a lot of problems with overtime and things,? recalls Sharon Reynolds of Kirbyville, Texas. ?I remember one time that they didn?t get paid for four months.? The former KBR administrator, who spent 11 months in Iraq until April, says she was responsible for processing time sheets for 665 TCNs employed by PPI at Camp Victory near Baghdad. The 14,000 troops and the American contractors based at this former palace for Saddam Hussein have use of an Olympic-sized swimming pool and a manmade lake preserved for special events and fishing. But TCNs have to make do with far less . ?They don?t get sick pay and if PPI had insurance, they sure didn?t talk about it much,? Reynolds recalls. ?TCNs had a lot of problems with overtime and things. ...I had to go to bat for them to get shoes and proper clothing," As for living conditions, TCNs ?ate outside in 140 degree heat,? she says. American contractors and U.S. troops ate at the air-conditioned Pegasus Dining Facility featuring a short-order grill, salad, pizza, sandwich and ice cream bars under the KBR logistics contract. ?TCNs had to stand in line with plates and were served something like be curry and fish heads from big old pots,? Reynolds says incredulously. ?It looked like a concentration camp,? And even when it came to basic safety, the TCNs faced a double standard. "They didn?t have personal protection equipment to wear when there was an alert," Reynolds said. "Here we are walking around with helmets and vests because of an alert and they are just looking at us wondering what?s going on.? Contractors Respond PPI in Dubai has failed to respond to numerous phone calls about the accusations of mistreatment. ?I don?t think anyone will want to comment.? said a representative who answered the phone and decline to provide phone numbers or e-mail addresses of company executives. There is little public information about PPI, but other contractors say the company?s leading officers boast of a close association with Halliburton and say that it was formed by staff who previously worked with local firms sponsoring Halliburton?s business activities in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Several sources say PPI was active as a major Halliburton subcontractor in Bosnia and at the high-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Halliburton spokesperson Melissa Norcross denied that the company has ownership or investment ties with PPI. The Halliburton unit is proud of its employees and subcontractors ?who daily face danger to support the troops serving in Iraq and the Middle East,? said Norcross, adding that Halliburton requires all subcontractors to provide acceptable living and working conditions for its workers. ?KBR operates under a rigorous code of ethics that describes not only its standards of integrity, but its commitment to treat all of its employees and subcontractors with dignity and respect,? Norcross wrote in an e-mail. The company ?is aware of past disagreements between subcontractors and their employees, and KBR has interjected itself into the situation as appropriate and worked with the subcontractors to address these concerns.? Norcross did not offer details of past problems involving working conditions for TCNs, nor did KBR?s project manager for Iraq and Kuwait, Remo Butler, when contacted by e-mail. But if allegations of wrongdoing or contract violations are found, Norcross said, Halliburton would address them, and ?would also report any wrongdoings to the appropriate authorities, including our customer, the U.S. military.? The military, however, is apparently either unaware of the conditions or has simply chosen not acknowledge them. Margaret A. Browne, spokesperson for the U.S. Army Field Support Command which manages KBR's LOGCAP contract, confirmed that the company is expected to fulfill health, security and life support requirements for subcontractors in the LOGCAP agreement. These are ?serious issues and we are presently investigating the specific incidents you've addressed,? she said referring to problems outlined by former KBR supervisors and TCN workers. ?We are concerned about employment conditions for all employees,? Browne said in an e-mail, adding that KBR is expected to fulfill a number of requirements outlining the health, security and life support requirements for subcontractors under the LOGCAP agreement, but that oversight for those requirements is under the purview of Halliburton and its subcontractors. Diverted to Iraq Challenging Halliburton and Army assurances, former KBR supervisors say they frequently witnessed subcontractors failing to meet required conditions , while some TCNs share horror stories with claims that they were falsely recruited, believing they were signing up for work in Kuwait and then having their contract changed to Iraq. ?I had no idea that I would end up in Iraq? says Ramil Autencio, who signed with MGM Worldwide Manpower and General Services in the Philippines. The 37-year-old air conditioning maintenance worker thought he would be working at Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for $450 a month. He arrived in Kuwait in December 2003, only to discover that First Kuwaiti had bought his contract. The company, which now holds U.S.-funded contracts valued in the neighborhood of $1 billion, threatened that unless he and dozens of other Filipino workers went to Iraq, the Kuwaiti police would arrested them, he says. ?We had no choice but to go along with them. After all, we were in their country.? Once in Iraq, Autencio found that there were no air conditioners to install or maintain, so he spent 11 hours a day ?moving boulders? to fortify the camps, first at Camp Anaconda and then at Tikrit. Food was inadequate and workers were not getting paid, he says. ?We ate when the Americans had leftovers from their meals. If not, we didn?t eat at all.? Working and living conditions were so bad, that in February 2004 Autencio escaped with dozens of others. A U.S. soldier born in the Philippines helped them leave the camp, and sympathetic truck drivers working for KBR offered them rides through the country. By the time the Filipinos reached the Kuwaiti border, Autencio said the number of fleeing workers was so great that the border police let them pass through without proper papers. First Kuwaiti general manager Wahid al Absi says Autencio is lying. His proof is a working agreement, purportedly signed in the Philippines by Autencio. Al Absi admits that unscrupulous recruitment agencies do sometimes misrepresent jobs and take money from people eager to work, but he provided Autencio?s undated contract with First Kuwaiti that identified the job site as both Kuwait and ?mainly? Iraq. The agreement also lays out salary: $346 a month for 8-hour days, seven days a week, plus $104 a month for a mandatory 2 hours overtime every day. Al Absi insists that Autencio was paid in full. ?He sued me in court over this, and he lost,? Al Absi said. ?He doesn?t have a case against us.? First Kuwaiti holds $600 million in Army contracts, Al Absi said. The company is also a leading competitor for $500 million contract to build the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and presently holds contracts for more than $300 million for preliminary work on the project. Pattern of Recruiting Abuses Autencio is not the only former TCN worker with a grievance against Halliburton subcontractors and the layers of third-party recruiters. The Washington Post lays out an intricate recruiting scheme involving dining service workers from India who were lost in a maze of five recruiters and subcontractors on several continents. The Indians claimed to have been falsely recruited for jobs in Kuwait, only to end up in Iraq. During their time at a military camp in the war zone, they lacked adequate drinking water, food, health care, and security, according to the July 1, 2004 article. "I cursed my fate -- not having a feeling my life was secure, knowing I could not go back, and being treated like a kind of animal," for less than $7 a day, Dharmapalan Ajayakumar told the newspaper. Ajayakumar?s case is a study in the convoluted world of Iraqi contracts: Workers were reported to have been first recruited by Subhash Vijay in India to work for Gulf Catering Company of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Gulf Catering was subcontracted to Alargan Group of Kuwait City, which was subcontracted to the Event Source of Salt Lake City, which in turn was subcontracted to KBR of Houston. And KBR, of course, is a subsidiary of Halliburton. Nepalese worker Krishna Bahadur Khadka told a similar story of false recruitment in a September 7, 2004 news report in the Kathmandu Post. After being recruited for a job in Kuwait, he says, he arrived only to be told by First Kuwaiti Trading that if he and 121 other workers they refused work in Iraq, they would be sent back to Nepal. ?I was not happy at first as my contractors did not provide me a job as heavy vehicle driver as pledged. But they had offered Rs 175,000 [$2,450], and one would not be able earn half that amount in Kuwait. So I signed the papers,? Khadka said, adding that he had already invested $1,680 as payment to an agent in Nepal. First Kuwaiti?s general manager claims that this allegation, too, is a lie and that Khadka misrepresented his skills. Again al Absi presented a contract identifying the work site as ?mainly Iraq." It bore Khadka?s signature and fingerprint. ?Khadka is a troublemaker who was trying to organize the workers,? al Absi said, noting that thousands of TCNs working for First Kuwaiti have renewed their contracts with raises. ?We treat our workers with excellent care,? he said. Labor Strike, You?re Out But cared for or not, hundreds of Filipinos in Iraq face being fired for staging labor strikes and sickouts to protest their treatment at military camps. In May 2005, 300 Filipinos went on strike at Camp Cook against PPI and KBR. The workers were soon joined by 500 others from India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal to protest working conditions and pay, according to the Manila Times. The dispute was settled with intervention from the Philippines Department of Foreign Affairs. At the time of the strike, the Philippines offered the strikers free flights back to the Philippines, an invitation first made in April when the Philippines reiterated its ban on work in Iraq. The offer sparked concern at the U.S. embassy in Manila, according to news reports, because a loss of Filipino workers threatened military support services in Iraq. The U.S. embassy then clarified its position on April 27. Embassy spokesperson Karen Kelley acknowledged that while Filipinos ?play a crucial role in the allied effort to bring peace and democracy to a people who have been too long deprived of both,? embassy officials also ?recognize the government of the Philippines' concern for the welfare of its citizens.? Other strikes have gone unreported, recalls former KBR employee Paul Dinsmore. Hired as a carpenter, he later transferred to Logistics as a heavy truck driver at Camp Speicher, a sprawling 24-square-mile installation near Tikrit in northern Iraq. Dinsmore says the work crews he supervised at the former Iraqi airbase were made up of Hindis, Pakistanis, Nepalese, and Filipinos working for First Kuwaiti. Working at Camp Speicher for seven months before returning home in May 2005, Dinsmore said he knew of three different instances of TCN construction workers who refused outright to work or showed up only to sit out most of the day. Asked what was going on, TCNs told him that First Kuwaiti had not been paid them for several months and that they didn?t want to be treated that way. ?I heard that several hundred Filipinos were fired in September 2004 before I got there because of labor problems,? Dinsmore said. After discovering that the TCN assistants were not paid any overtime, he was careful to get them back to their compound after their 10 hour day. Like Powell and Reynolds, Dinsmore recounted dismal working conditions. ?One of the construction Filipinos told him that they were treated like human cattle by some of the Western employees there and that they did not receive enough medical treatment when they were ill.? Many times, Dinsmore said, he would buy non-prescription drugs from the PX for his crews, especially when a very bad virus was going around during the winter of 2004-2005. If the case was bad enough, he would take the workers to the KBR clinic. His supervisor and the clinic medics told him that treating TCNs violated company policy. ?We were told that First Kuwaiti was supposed to take care of them,? Dinsmore said. Dinsmore also turned to the Army for food. He says the food First Kuwaiti served was so poor, that he and other KBR employees would hand out military field rations ? known as ?meals ready to eat? or MREs. "When the Army stopped that practice, many of us KBR people would pick up ?to go? plates from the DFAC [dining facilities] and hand them out to the TCNs we were responsible for. If you want them to work well, you?ve got to feed them.? Despite these conditions, TCNs finished jobs ahead of schedule, says Dinsmore. He credits these workers for personal praise he won from KBR and the military for his own performance. ?The reality was that without the TCNs, very little construction would get accomplished on time on Speicher,? said Dinsmore adding that "I heard that eventually KBR took care of the pay issue." First Kuwaiti manager Wadih Al Absi insists that his company provides the same quality of living and food that the U.S. Army provides to its soldiers and that the company has received commendations from the Army. ?We have no problems with our employees; they get excellent care,? he said. First Kuwaiti holds $600 million in Army contracts, Al Absi said. The company is also a leading competitor for being awarded a forthcoming $500 million contract to build the U.S. embassy in Baghdad and presently holds contracts over $300 million for preliminary work on the project. Let Them Eat Sand Randy McDale, who rose to be a KBR foreman for heavy construction equipment at Camp Victory and other installations near the Baghdad International Airport, confirmed many of the other contractors? and TCN?s charges of miserable conditions and inadequate safety. ?Everyday was like T-bone steaks for us, but I would starve to death before eating what they had,? he said of the workers with PPI. ?Guys would just go and get lunch for them and bring it to the work site. The TCNs couldn?t get it fast enough.? McDale, a KBR foreman for heavy construction equipment at Camp Victory and other installations near the Baghdad International Airport, spent 15 months in Iraq before returning home in April to an eight-year-old trailer house on 35-acres of land in cattle ranch country outside of Bogata, Texas, ?halfway between Paris and Texarkana.? Earning about $7,500 to $8,000 a month before his promotion, McDale said many American workers saw a clear line between themselves and the TCNs. ?There?s a prejudice among some Americans that they are not equal and just labor force,? he said. ?Americans are supposed to be the experts.? The division was made all the more clear to McDale by TCNs? lack of protective armor for threat alerts and boots and hard hats for construction work. ?Some were wearing sandals walking in the mud when it was winter and 40 degrees,? he said of the Indians, Sri Lankans and Filipinos he worked with. ?One guy didn?t even have a coat.? KBR gave McDale grief after he requested 20 hard hats for his workers, he said. ?I don?t know why KBR wasn?t giving PPI a hard time for not getting the right equipment. That?s the way it works in the States. If a subcontractor isn?t ready, you fire them.? Willing to Return Although Filipino passports now explicitly ban entry into Iraq, the ranks of Filipinos sneaking over the border from neighboring countries has as swelled from an estimated 4,000 before the 2003 ban to 6,000 today. Filipinos ?believe it is better to work in Iraq with their lives in danger rather than face the danger of not having breakfast, lunch, or dinner in the Philippines,? said Maita Santiago, secretary-general for Migrante International, an organization that defends the rights of more than a million overseas Filipino workers. Despite complaints about First Kuwaiti, Autencio said he would return to Iraq if he had guarantees for proper food and pay. ?I would take my chances abroad if I couldn?t find a decent job here,? he said during an interview at his home in Pasig City, an urban area in metropolitan Manila ?But I?d take any job here that pays enough to buy me a second hand car and start my own business.? Soliman, now finds his problems with PPI and injuries in Iraq pale in comparison to life back in the Philippines. Jobless, he sees his life teetering on the edge. He may be splitting up with his wife, and plans for providing a new home to his family are on hold. He says he doubts that PPI will be sending money for his final medical checkup or even the several months salary he says he is still owed But those things don't matter so much. What really matters now is finding another job. ?If you hear of anything, let me know,? Soliman said at the end of the interview. ?I would even go back to Iraq.? David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS. He can be contacted at: phinneydavid at yahoo.com. Lucille Quiambao and Howie Severino reported from the Philippines for this article. Additional research by Pratap Chatterjee. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 7 03:28:04 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:28:04 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Incident at Oglala repeats in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico (Leonard Peltier Defence Committee) Message-ID: http://lpdctexas.blogspot.com/2005/09/incident-at-oglala-repeats-in.html Thursday, September 29, 2005 INCIDENT AT OGLALA REPEATS IN HORMIGUEROS, PUERTO RICO Subject: Incident at Oglala repeats in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico Filiberto Ojeda Rios: He crossed over to the Spirit World like a warrior The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee strongly condemns the assassination of the Puerto Rican Independentista movement leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios by the FBI and urges its supporters to understand the parallels with our history and extend their solidarity to the Puerto Rican freedom fighters. On Friday September 23^rd, 2005, a day in which Puerto Rico celebrated the 137^th anniversary of its independence from Spain, a day when the people renew their struggle against colonialism in all its forms, the US government sent its forces to strike right at the heart of the boricua people. As hundreds gathered to hear the recorded words of Filiberto Ojeda Rios exhorting all to unite for truth, justice and a better life for the hard working people of that beautiful island, the FBI executed a paramilitary operation, surrounded Ojeda Rios house and started shooting hundreds of rounds, just like they did in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on June 26^th, 1975 (one day after the anniversary of the Battle of Greasy Grass, when the Lakota nation was victorious over Custer and the invader army). He tried to defend himself and his family, just as our beloved warrior Leonard Peltier did, and was murdered by an FBI sniper, just like our own Joe Stuntz. The colonial forces then blocked access to ambulances and anybody who could help so that Filiberto would bleed to death. There was no need to kill this man. Even in the colonial courts he had been absolved from any wrong doing and had only been accused of robbery. He was considered a fugitive because he removed the electronic anklet used to track him and lived in hiding tending his garden in the mountains. The governments real reason for targeting him was that he wanted to lead the people towards freedom from colonialism and justice. We need to understand that this is the reality and it makes all of us who struggle for justice potential targets. Just as Don Filiberto called for the unity of the Puerto Rican independentista movement, we must also unite through the threads of our collective history of struggle. We do not need to use our imagination to see that this is a long standing modus operandi of the US government and its leading paramilitary agency. The only difference is that today this terror is wanton and global. When will the so called american people wake up from the stupor of their indulgences and comfort to put a stop to this? They are the only ones that can rein in the monster that goes on killing and destroying in their name. For the sake of the planet, our mother Earth, the international community also has the responsibility to face the real criminals and let them know their behavior is intolerable and must cease immediately. After centuries of the same practices, our colonial oppressors should wise up and learn they do not work. Our thirst for justice is not placated through more injustice, the murder and imprisonment of our leaders, this only deepens it. Those of us who are left are guided by those brave spirits and so inspired. If they gave so much, how can we be in peace doing nothing? Their call, from the Spirit World and from behind the iron bars and stun lethal fences, is irrepressible. Wanbli Watakpe Director Leonard Peltier Defense Committee --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 7 03:28:11 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:28:11 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Britain in the dock for human rights failures Message-ID: The Independent - 03 October 2005 http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article316691.ece Britain in the dock for human rights failures after more than 100 'guilty' judgements filed By Robert Verkaik, Legal Affairs Correspondent Britain has one of the worst human rights records in Europe and faces investigation over its failure to comply with a series of European court rulings. More than 100 findings have been lodged against Britain to which the Government has not adequately responded, five years after Tony Blair said he had fulfilled his promise to "bring rights home" by implementing the Human Rights Act. These range findings from violations of the rights of mental health patients to the failure to protect children from unlawful corporal punishment in the home. Of the 47 signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, Britain has 107 guilty judgments - the sixth highest number - issued by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Most of these are expected to be resolved by Britain, but many of the most serious violations date to the first few years of the Labour government. Because these cases require urgent remedial action, they have been sent to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, the body that funds and oversees the court. A declassified report from the council's committee on legal affairs and human rights, seen by The Independent, shows that Britain is one of 13 countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Turkey, where further action is necessary. The committee is particularly concerned about 15 judgements against Britain that have not been properly addressed by the Government and are more than five years old. It has recommended that its rapporteur, Erik Jurgens, investigate the worst offending countries with a view to taking further action, "including the proposal to commence specific monitoring procedures in the most serious cases of non compliance". Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, said: "The Human Rights Act is under attack as it has never been before. Not only do we have various Conservative pledges to do away with the legislation, but its own parent, the Labour party, is making veiled threats of derogations and abolition. This is a far cry from the words of Tony Blair, who once said that Labour's greatest achievements would be its commitment to an ethical foreign policy and the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights." In a separate, detailed report, recently declassified by the committee, the Council of Europe highlighted six British breaches of the convention that are of most concern. Investigations into the death of Patrick Finucane, a republican lawyer, and five other killings of prominent Catholics, were found to be in breach of the human rights of the men's families, who were allegedly denied a fair inquiry because the security forces had colluded with the killers. The Government has now agreed to set up independent inquiries into some of the deaths and says new legislation will address any further concerns about the independence of such investigations. But the committee says it has received statements from members of the British judiciary who have sat on previous enquiries that "cast doubt on the capacity of an inquiry set under the 2005 Act to fulfill the procedural requirements of Article 2." In another violation of the convention, from a judgment in 1998, a man who beat his stepson was acquitted of assault by a British court by relying on his right in UK law to use "reasonable chastisement". The Government told the committee that the introduction of Britain's own Human Rights Act and a Court of Appeal case from 2001 had changed the law so that trial courts were now bound by article 3 of the convention. The committee disagrees with the Government's interpretation of the law. Some members of the committee remain unconvinced that the Children Act 2004, which stipulates that "battery" of a child can no longer be tolerated under the justification of reasonable punishment, meets the requirements of the European court's judgment and the Council's own interim resolution adopted in 2004. The report says: "the defence of reasonable punishment remains available in England and Wales, but is restricted to cases where the charge is one of common assault." How Labour has tried to get around its obligations to civil liberties Opting out of human rights Labour first sought to sidestep its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights after the 11 September terror attacks. Anti-terror legislation rushed through Parliament gave the Home Secretary the power to indefinitely detain foreign terror suspects by derogating from the ECHR. That was ruled unlawful by the House of Lords in December last year. Control orders quickly followed which, lawyers argued, amounted to house arrest, another form of indefinite detention. These measures have now been dropped in favour of deportation orders, this time requiring Britain to derogate from international prohibitions on torture. Since the London bombing in July, Tony Blair has talked about how the rules of the game have changed while his ministers have made veiled threats about opting out of human rights conventions. Freedom of expression Part of the Government's crack down on terrorism is a new offence of glorifying terrorism. Civil rights groups argue that it is so broadly drafted that it will restrict legitimate debate within Islamic communities. Such debate is vital because it can help persuade young Islam extremists that it is better to follow paths of peaceful protest than a course of violent action. Right to a fair trial The Government's assault on jury trial can be traced back to 2000 when Jack Straw proposed an end to the right to trial by jury for thousands of defendants accused of crimes such as shoplifitng, burglary and criminal damage. The Government was forced to withdraw the measure after fierce opposition from its backbenchers. But it has succeeded in "tipping the scales" in favour of the prosecution through the introduction of judge-only trials for serious and complex fraud cases as well as cases where jury nobbling is a risk. Further measures, including allowing juries to know of a defendant's criminal record and the abolition of the double jeopardy rule, have also been interpreted as an attack on the citizen's right to a fair trial. Internment Proposals before Parliament would allow police officers to keep terror suspects in detention for up to three months without charge. This is the equivalent of a six month jail sentence and strikes at the heart of habeas corpus, the right of a citizen to be charged or freed. Critics say that the measure would turn Britain into a police state with some suspects "disappearing" for long periods. Right to privacy The new ID cards are being resisted by civil rights groups which believe they will give the state unrestricted access to confidential information that is currently protected by privacy and data legislation. Further concerns centre on the way the police will use the new laws to target groups of citizens who do not have ID cards or individuals who cannot provide ID. The Information Commissioner has expressed concern about the fraudulent use of ID cards and the potential for ID theft. Right not to be tortured The Government is negotiating with several Muslim countries, most notably Algeria, to obtain written guarantees that ministers hope will permit them to deport foreign terror suspects. But lawyers says these "memoranda of understanding" have no legal standing and will not protect suspects from torture if they are sent home. Next month, the Government will defend its right to use evidence that may have been gained through torture carried out by another state or its security services. Ministers hope the House of Lords will uphold an earlier Court of Appeal ruling which said that, with certain safeguards, torture evidence obtained by a third party could be admissible in a UK court. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 7 03:28:12 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:28:12 -0700 Subject: [m2c] October 12th: In Venezuela they call it "Day of indigenous resistance" Message-ID: http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org/day_indigenous_resistance.htm October 12th: In Venezuela they call it "Day of indigenous resistance" By Hands Off Venezuela Wednesday, 05 October 2005 On October 12, 513 years ago, Christopher Columbus "discovered" America. According to the official story, he spread the benefits of civilisation across the continent; in reality, his arrival heralded a new age of terror and genocide which took the lives of over 100 million native Americans. All this has been erased from popular consciousness, but in Venezuela the schools are now finally teaching the truth about this mass-murderer. President Ch?vez has described Columbus as being "worse than Hitler" and renamed October 12th as "Day of Indigenous Resistance". Last year in Caracas a statue of Columbus was toppled after a "popular trial" and actions against the "conquistadors of today" also took place in London and Bogota. This year we shall be outside the Colombian embassy from 4pm to 6pm in solidarity with workers in Colombia who are on general strike. The poor majority in that country want a president like Ch?vez, while the rich in neighbouring Venezuela would rather a right-wing fascist like Uribe. After the demo, from 7pm, the National Union of Journalists (Central London branch) is holding a "Venezuela night" social event at the NUJ headquarters to which all supporters and friends of the Hands Off Venezuela campaign are invited. Richard Gott, long-time leading journalistic authority on Latin America, will be signing copies of his new book on Ch?vez, with Venezuelan food and music later on. This is an opportunity to hear first-hand about the extraordinary transformation taking place with the poor majority finally getting a share of Venezuela's vast oil wealth, which is now being spent on new schools, hospitals and houses. Learn how the US government has tried and failed to overthrow Ch?vez on at least three separate occasions and is still plotting against this democratically-elected and popular leader of the "Bolivarian" mass-movement. Get involved to defend Venezuela's peaceful and democratic revolution and help bring it here to the UK! 7pm til late, Wednesday 12th October at the NUJ headquarters, 308 Gray's Inn Rd WC1, nearest tube King's Cross. That same day, in Colombia, there will be a general strike in protest against the terrorising of trade unionists, and solidarity protests are taking place around the world. Hands off Venezuela will be joining the Colombia Solidarity Campaign and Justice for Colombia to protest outside the Colombian embassy, 3 Hans Crescent SW1 (behind Harrods), nearest tube Knightsbridge from 4pm to 6pm. Speakers include: Tony Benn, Soraya Gutierrez (President, Colombian Human Rights Lawyers' Collective) and Andy Higginbottom (Secretary, Colombia Solidarity Campaign). More information can be found on our Latest Events page. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 7 03:28:13 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 07 Oct 2005 02:28:13 -0700 Subject: [m2c] "Too Much" US Influence in Drafting Iraq Constitution Message-ID: http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/hard_news/000273.php September 05, 2005 U.S. Influence 'Too Much' Inter Press Service Dahr Jamail London, Sep 5 (IPS) - U.S. influence in the process of drafting a constitution for Iraq is excessive and "highly inappropriate", a United Nations official says. "It is a matter of public record that in the final weeks of the process the newly arrived U.S. ambassador (Zalmay Khalizad) took an extremely hands-on role," Justin Alexander, legal affairs officer for the office of constitutional support with the United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) told IPS. "Even going so far as to circulate at least one U.S draft." Alexander, who oversaw the recent proceedings in Baghdad added: "This involvement was highly inappropriate for a country with 140,000 soldiers in country." Zaid al-Ali, a legal expert who also oversaw the drafting process in Baghdad, made a similar case at a meeting at the International Association of Contemporary Iraqi Studies in London. "There are three ways in which the occupation intervened in the context of Iraq's constitution-writing process," he said. "Firstly, the occupation authorities selected and affected the makeup of the commission that was charged with drafting Iraq's transitional law, and its permanent constitution. Second, the occupation determined the limits and parameters within which the constitution was to be drafted. Third, the occupation authorities intervened directly in order to safeguard its interests in the context of the constitutional negotiations." Al-Ali said it was significant that one article in the draft constitution on foreign military bases was dropped from the final version. "One article contained in a previous draft provided that setting up foreign military bases in Iraq was to be forbidden, and that the only way in which this could be deviated from would have been by a two-thirds majority vote in Parliament." Al-Ali said "this article was dropped from the final draft of the constitution." An alliance including the Sunni Association of Muslim Scholars and the large movement of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr said it rejected the draft and a "political process which had been led by occupiers and their collaborators." The group said in a media statement: "We consider this draft as a next step of this process which does not represent the peoples' will." The alliance also expressed "major suspicions about the honesty of the next referendum, which will take place under occupation and with neither international nor Arabic and Islamic supervision." Dr. Marinos Diamantides, senior lecturer in law at the University of London, said the entire drafting process could be illegal under international law. "One could argue the entire process is against the law," Diamantides told IPS. "According to the 1907 Convention (the convention for the pacific settlement of disputes), the occupying power has a duty to maintain the legal system of the country it occupies. This is the first time ever that an occupying power has dismantled the internal law system of the country it occupies." He also pointed out that ironically the Sunnis now have power to derail the upcoming referendum vote by a two-thirds vote in three provinces. That power was originally intended to give Kurds power to veto the constitution. When Iraq's Kurdish and Shia dominated parliament recently approved the draft, Sunnis immediately began campaigning for a 'no' vote in the upcoming October referendum. If the draft were to pass the referendum, it would be followed two months later by election for a government. At least four provinces are predominantly Sunni, and Sunni clerics have urged their followers to reject the draft if it does not meet Sunni demands. Adding further complexity to the already muddled situation, former UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq during the sanctions Denis Halliday believes that even the United Nations has no place in occupied Iraq. "The UN doesn't have a position in Iraq today," Halliday told IPS. "Once the invasion took place, the UN became collaborators with the enemy (the United States)." Halliday, who had resigned from his UN post in protest against "genocidal sanctions" added: "This lesson should have been learned in August, 2003 when our office in Baghdad was blown up, as we were collaborators. The UN has simply become a tool of the U.S., and Iraqis can no longer distinguish between the U.S. and the UN." Justin Alexander said Iraq might need a new constitution. "If Iraq creates a progressive and effective constitution and laws to implement the constitution, then this could benefit Iraqis. But in the absence of mutual reconciliation and an end to the occupation this is all futile." --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Oct 8 03:34:04 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 08 Oct 2005 02:34:04 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Who's Blowing Up Iraq? New evidence that bombs are being planted by British Message-ID: Uruknet - Sep 20, 2005 http://www.uruknet.info/?p=15926 Who's Blowing Up Iraq? New evidence that bombs are being planted by British by Mike Whitney "The Iraqi security officials on Monday variously accused two Britons they detained of shooting at Iraqi forces or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES." Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer, 9-20-05; "British Smash into Jail to Free Two Detained Soldiers" In more than two years since the United States initiated hostilities against Iraq, there has never been a positive identification of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Never. That doesn't mean that he doesn't exist; it simply suggests that prudent people will challenge the official version until his whereabouts and significance in the conflict can be verified. At present, much of the rationale for maintaining the occupation depends on this elusive and, perhaps, illusory figure. It's odd how Al-Zarqawi appears at the precise coordinates of America's bombing-raids, and then, miraculously vanishes unscathed from the scene of the wreckage. This would be a remarkable feat for anyone, but especially for someone who only has one leg. Al-Zarqawi may simply be a fantasy dreamed up by Pentagon planners to put a threatening face on the Iraqi resistance. The Defense Dept has been aggressive in its effort to shape information in a way that serves the overall objectives of the occupation. The primary aim of the Pentagon's "Strategic Information" program is to distort the truth in a way that controls the storyline created by the media. Al-Zarqawi fits perfectly within this paradigm of intentional deception. The manipulation of information factors heavily in the steady increase of Iraqi casualties, too. Although the military refuses "to do body counts"; many people take considerable interest in the daily death toll. Last week, over 200 civilians were killed in seemingly random acts of violence purportedly caused by al-Zarqawi. But, were they? Were these massive attacks the work of al-Zarqawi as the western media reports or some other "more shadowy" force? One member of the Iraqi National Assembly. Fatah al-Sheikh, stated, "It seems that the American forces are trying to escalate the situation in order to make the Iraqi people suffer.. There is a huge campaign for the agents of the foreign occupation to enter and plant hatred between the sons of the Iraqi people, and spread rumors in order to scare the one from the other. The occupiers are trying to start religious incitement and if it does not happen, then they will try to start an internal Shiite incitement." Al-Sheikh's feelings are shared by a great many Iraqis. They can see that everything the US has done, from the forming a government made up predominantly of Shi'ites and Kurds, to creating a constitution that allows the breaking up to the country (federalism), to using the Peshmerga and Badr militia in their attacks on Sunni cities, to building an Interior Ministry entirely comprised of Shi'ites, suggests that the Pentagon's strategy is to fuel the sectarian divisions that will lead to civil war. Al-Zarqawi is an integral facet of this broader plan. Rumsfeld has cast the Jordanian as the agent-provocateur; the driving force behind religious partition and antagonism. But, al-Zarqawi has nothing to gain by killing innocent civilians, and everything to lose. If he does actually operate in Iraq, he needs logistical supporting all his movements; including help with safe-houses, assistants, and the assurance of invisibility in the community. ("The ocean in which he swims") These would disappear instantly if he recklessly killed and maimed innocent women and children. Last week the Imam of Baghdad's al-Kazimeya mosque, Jawad al-Kalesi said, that "al-Zarqawi is dead but Washington continues to use him as a bogeyman to justify a prolonged military occupation. He's simply an invention by the occupiers to divide the people." Al-Kalesi added that al-Zarqawi was killed in the beginning of the war in the Kurdish north and that "His family in Jordan even held a ceremony after his death." (AFP) Most Iraqis probably agree with al-Kalesi, but that hasn't deterred the Pentagon from continuing with the charade. This is understandable given that al-Zarqawi is the last tattered justification for the initial invasion. It's doubtful that the Pentagon will ditch their final threadbare apology for the war. But the reality is vastly different from the spin coming from the military. In fact, foreign fighters play a very small role in Iraq with or without al-Zarqawi. As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) revealed this week in their report, "Analysts and government officials in the US and Iraq overstated the size of the foreign element in the Iraqi insurgency.. Iraqi fighters made up less than 10% of the armed groups' ranks, perhaps, even half of that." The report poignantly notes that most of the foreign fighters were not previously militants at all, but were motivated by, "revulsion at the idea of an Arab land being occupied by a non-Arab country." The report concludes that the invasion of Iraq has added thousands of "fresh recruits to Osama bin Laden's network;" a fact that is no longer in dispute among those who have studied the data on the topic. The al-Zarqawi phantasm is a particularly weak-link in the Pentagon's muddled narrative. The facts neither support the allegations of his participation nor prove that foreigners are a major contributor to the ongoing violence. Instead, the information points to a Defense establishment that cannot be trusted in anything it says and that may be directly involved in the terrorist-bombings that have killed countless thousands of Iraqi civilians. Regrettably, that is prospect that can't be ignored. After all, no one else benefits from the slaughter. (Note: Since this article was written, the Washington Post has added to our suspicions. In an Ellen Knickmeyer article "British Smash into Iraqi Jail to free 2 detained Soldiers" 9-20-05, Knickmeyer chronicles the fighting between British forces and Iraqi police who were detaining 2 British commandos. "THE IRAQI SECURITY OFFICIALS ON MONDAY VARIOUSLY ACCUSED THE TWO BRITONS THEY DETAINED OF SHOOTING AT IRAQI FORCES or TRYING TO PLANT EXPLOSIVES." Is this why the British army was ordered to "burst through the walls of an Iraqi jail Monday in the southern city of Basra".followed by "British armored vehicles backed by helicopter gun-ships" ending in "hours of gun battles and rioting in Basra's streets"? (Washington Post) Reuters reported that "half a dozen armored vehicles had smashed into the jail" and the provincial governor, Mohammed Walli, told news agencies that the British assault was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible." So, why were the British so afraid to go through the normal channels to get their men released? Could it be that the two commandos were "trying to plant explosives" as the article suggests? An interview on Syrian TV last night also alleges that the British commandos "were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets". "Al-Munajjid] In fact, Nidal, this incident gave answers to questions and suspicions that were lacking evidence about the participation of the occupation in some armed operations in Iraq. Many analysts and observers here had suspicions that the occupation was involved in some armed operations against civilians and places of worship and in the killing of scientists. But those were only suspicions that lacked proof. The proof came today through the arrest of the two British soldiers while they were planting explosives in one of the Basra streets. This proves, according to observers, that the occupation is not far from many operations that seek to sow sedition and maintain disorder, as this would give the occupation the justification to stay in Iraq for a longer period. [Zaghbur] Ziyad al-Munajjaid in Baghdad, thank you very much. Copyright Syrian Arab TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005" And then there was this on Al-Jazeera TV, Doha, 9-19-05; Interview with Fattah al-Shayk, member of the National Assembly and deputy for Basra. ..."the sons of Basra caught two non-Iraqis, who seem to be Britons and were in a car of the Cressida type. It was a booby-trapped car laden with ammunition and was meant to explode in the centre of the city of Basra in the popular market. However, the sons of the city of Basra arrested them. They [the two non-Iraqis] then fired at the people there and killed some of them. The two arrested persons are now at the Intelligence Department in Basra, and they were held by the National Guard force, but the British occupation forces are still surrounding this department in an attempt to absolve them of the crime." Al Jazeera TV and BBC Monitoring, 2005 (Thanks to Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research for the quotes from Al Jazeera and Syrian TV) Does this solve the al-Zarqawi mystery? Are the bombs that are killing so many Iraqi civilians are being planted by British and American Intelligence? We'll have to see if this damning story can be corroborated by other sources.) Courtesy and Copyright ? Mike Whitney ------------------------- Todays Alternative News - Sept. 20, 2005 http://www.todaysalternativenews.com/index.php?event=link,150&values[0]=&val ues[1]=2493 I Told You So: British and American "Special Forces" Were Creating "Terrorist Acts" and Blaming Iraqis By Sam Hamod For the past several months, I have been saying and writing that Americans and British are disguised as Iraqis and doing these "terrorist" attacks and trying to stir up civil war in Iraq. Now, the proof that backs up my assertions is here; the British "speical ops" were caught, disguised as Iraqis, as part of the Mehdi Army no less, and set to do more mischief. So there you have it. This is just another nefarious deed to add to the lies of Bush and Blair--another inhumane and terrorist act on their part to send their men in to do these deeds in order to set Iraq afire with civil war. Add to this that Ahmed Chalabi is still being supported by America and its minions in Iraq, and you have even more evil afoot. Remember also that the American governing authority makes all contracts in Iraq, has already made many binding contracts that will reward American companies, and give little to the Iraqi citizenry. In the meantime, the American ambassador to Iraq is now making sounds of attacking Syria! What further madness is this. So remember, when you hear that Iraqis are killing Iraqis--as I've said for a long time, Don't you believe it. The proof is now here, just as the proof of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is here--now, what will we, and what will the world do to stop these evil twins, Bush and Blair. [Sam Hamod is the former editor of Third World News in Wash,DC; advisor to the State Department and now edits, www.todaysalternativenews.com ] --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From hachew at gmail.com Sun Oct 9 12:51:16 2005 From: hachew at gmail.com (Huibin Amelia Chew) Date: Sun, 9 Oct 2005 14:51:16 -0400 Subject: [m2c] Britain's shameless role in helping sex traffickers keep 1000s in slavery Message-ID: (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article318227.ece) The Independent -- London -- Sunday October 9, 2005 Britain's shameless role in helping sex traffickers keep thousands of women in slavery Those who try to escape prostitution are branded illegal immigrants then deported home to disgrace and poverty By Sophie Goodchild, Marie Woolf and Tom Anderson Criminal vice-masters are making millions profiting from trafficked women in a growing illegal trade, which MPs will this week claim the Government is failing to stop. Senior police say cities are so flooded with sex-trafficked women that turf wars are breaking out between rival gangs as supply starts to outstrip demand. Criminals even use the internet to advertise the services of women tricked into sex slavery. Campaigners accuse the Government of not doing enough to protect the thousands of women, some as young as 15, duped into coming to Britain on the false promise of jobs as nannies or waitresses only to be forced into sex and brutality. Ministers have yet to sign a new European agreement, already supported by 15 states, aimed at combating human trafficking. Tomorrow, an influential committee of MPs and peers will debate whether to launch a formal inquiry into the Government's failure to sign the convention. MPs on the Joint Committee on Human Rights accuse the Government of failing to combat "an evil trade in human misery" by refusing to grant women rescued from trafficking the right to stay in Britain long enough to recover from their ordeal. Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, and a committee member, said it was "disgraceful" the Government was turning sex trafficking into an immigration issue. "The Government is standing by while hundreds of women are exploited and abused as sex slaves in this country." Senior members of the Government are privately uneasy at the failure to sign the convention. They say a similar system operates in the United States with no evidence of immigration abuse. The Home Office has no accurate figures on the number of sex-trafficked women. The unofficial police estimate is that 10,000 illegal immigrants are working as prostitutes in Britain and more than three-quarters of women in brothels are from the Baltic states, Africa and South-east Asia. Police have been raiding massage parlours across the country. Last week, officers in the West Midlands found 19 foreign women in a Birmingham parlour suspected of having been trafficked. But Amnesty International said women involved are treated as illegal immigrants and deported home to face social stigma, poverty and even death threats from the criminals who brought them to Britain. The Poppy project was set up in 2003 to offer support to victims and target traffickers. A consultant for the Home Office-funded scheme said most foreign women in UK brothels had been trafficked against their will and that the only way to tackle the trade successfully is to change the attitude of British men. "There are thousands of UK men who want to have sex with trafficked women in brothels in abject conditions, with women who don't speak the language, often with cigarette burns over their body, who are crying," a spokeswoman said. But police and other social observers say that although some girls do not realise they will be forced into prostitution, for others, prostitution is a way of escaping poverty and deprivation at home. London's Soho has always been the centre of the capital's sex trade. The notice on one door says: "Natasha, young and friendly. No rush. Take your time." The girl, in a bedroom with a stained carpet and small bed, is thin-faced and pretty. She says she is 18, behind heavy make-up. Her story is depressingly familiar. She was brought to Britain from a village in Moldova by her boyfriend in the belief she would work as a dancer. "It was very bad for me there [in Moldova] and I don't care that I left," she says. "I can't afford to go home, and even if I did he [my boyfriend] would find me again. I don't have my passport. He has it. I sometimes have to work all night, and see 20 clients, maybe more. "The maid takes the money and he keeps most of it, but gives me enough for food and cigarettes. He tells me he will take me back if I am bad. I want to stay in England. I like it here and I love him." SPONSORED LINKS Safe environment Feminism Global network Women ------------------------------ YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS - Visit your group "fpn_discussion" on the web. - To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: fpn_discussion-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com - Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service . ------------------------------ -- "There are plenty of women in Fallujah who have testified they were raped by American soldiers... They are nearby the secondary school for girls inside Fallujah. When people came back to Fallujah the first time they found so many girls who were totally naked and they had been killed." -- Mohammed Abdulla, executive director of the Study Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Fallujah, quoted in http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000251.php -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 8533 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/attachments/20051009/fd17f8f8/attachment.txt From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 10 13:28:45 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:28:45 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Columbus Day Promotes Genocide Message-ID: Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit sent by Francis Boyle Columbus Day Promotes Genocide Indictment of the Federal Government of the U.S. for the commission of international crimes and petition for orders mandating its proscription and dissolution as an international criminal conspiracy and criminal organization By Francis A. Boyle, Professor of International Law 18 September 1992 Introduction All citizens of the World Community have both the right and the duty under public international law to sit in judgment over a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental norms of international criminal law committed by any member state of that same World Community. Such is the case for the International Tribunal of Indigenous Peoples and Oppressed Nationalities in the United States of America that convenes in San Francisco during the weekend of October 1-4, 1992. Its weighty but important task is to examine the long history of international criminal activity that has been perpetrated by the Federal Government of the United States of America against the Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color living in North America since it was founded in 1787. Toward that end, I have the honor to present to the Members of this Tribunal the following charges against the Federal Government of the United States of America under international criminal law. In light of the gravity, severity, and longstanding nature of these international crimes and also in light of the fact that the Federal Government of the United States of America appears to be irrevocably committed to continuing down this path of lawlessness and criminality against Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color living in North America and elsewhere, I hereby petition the Members of this Tribunal to issue an Order proscribing the Federal Government of the United States of America as an International Criminal Conspiracy and a Criminal Organization under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles as well as the other sources of public international law specified below. For that reason, I also request that the Members of this Tribunal issue an Order dissolving the Federal Government of the United States of America as a legal and political entity. Finally, I ask this Tribunal to declare that international legal sovereignty over the Territories principally inhabited by the Native American Peoples, the New Afrikan People, the Mexicano People, and the People of Puerto Rico resides in the hands of these respective Peoples Themselves. In this regard, I should point out that the final Decision of this Tribunal will qualify as a judicial decision within the meaning of article 38(1)(d) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice and will therefore constitute a subsidiary means for the determination of rules of law for international law and practice. The Statute of the International Court of Justice is an integral part of the United Nations Charter under article 92 thereof. Thus, this Tribunal's Decision can be relied upon by some future International Criminal Court or Tribunal, as well as by any People or State of the World Community that desires to initiate criminal proceedings against named individuals for the commission of the following international crimes. The Decision of this Tribunal shall serve as adequate notice to the appropriate officials in the United States Federal Government that they bear personal criminal responsibility under international law and the domestic legal systems of all Peoples and States in the World Community for designing and implementing these illegal, criminal and reprehensible policies and practices against Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color living in North America. Hereinafter, the Federal Government of the United States of America will be referred to as the Defendant. BILL OF PARTICULARS AGAINST THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA The Native American Peoples 1. The Defendant has perpetrated innumerable Crimes Against eace, Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes against Native American Peoples as recognized by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles. 2. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Genocide against Native American Peoples as recognized by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 3. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Apartheid against Native American Peoples as recognized by the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. 4. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental human rights of Native American Peoples as recognized by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 5. The Defendant has perpetrated numerous and repeated violations of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination against Native American Peoples. 6. The Defendant has systematically violated 371 treaties it concluded with Native American Peoples in wanton disregard of the basic principle of public international law and practice dictating pacta sunt servanda. 7. The Defendant has denied and violated the international legal right of Native American Peoples to self-determination as recognized by the 1945 United Nations Charter, the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, fundamental principles of customary international law, and jus cogens. 8. The Defendant has violated the seminal United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Territories of 1960 with respect to Native American Peoples and Territories. Pursuant thereto, the Defendant has an absolute international legal obligation to decolonize Native American Territories immediately and to transfer all powers it currently exercises there to the Native American Peoples. 9. The Defendant has illegally refused to accord full-scope protections as Prisoners-of-War to captured Native American independence fighters in violation of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I thereto of 1977. The Defendant's treatment of captured Native American independence fighters as common criminals and terrorists constitutes a grave breach of the Geneva Accords and thus a serious war crime. 10. The Defendant has deliberately and systematically permitted, aided and abetted, solicited and conspired to commit the dumping, transportation, and location of nuclear, toxic, medical and otherwise hazardous waste materials on Native American Territories across North America and has thus created a clear and present danger to the lives, health, safety, and physical and mental well-being of Native American Peoples in gross violation of article 3 and article 2(c) of the 1948 Genocide Convention, inter alia: Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; ... The New Afrikan People 11. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Slavery upon the New Afrikan People as recognized in part by the 1926 Slavery Convention and the 1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery. The Defendant has illegally refused to pay reparations to the New Afrikan People for the commission of the International Crime of Slavery against Them in violation of basic norms of customary international law requiring such reparations to be paid. 12. The Defendant has perpetrated innumerable Crimes Against Humanity against the New Afrikan People as recognized by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles. 13. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of genocide against the New Afrikan People as recognized by the 1948 Genocide Convention. 14. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Apartheid against the New Afrikan People as recognized by the 1973 Apartheid Convention. 15. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental human rights of the New Afrikan People as recognized by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two aforementioned United Nations Human Rights Covenants of 1966. 16. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the 1965 Racism Convention against the New Afrikan People. The Defendant is the paradigmatic example of an irremediably racist state in international relations today. 17. The Defendant has denied and violated the international legal right of the New Afrikan People to self-determination as recognized by the United Nations Charter, the two United Nations Human rights Covenants of 1966, customary international law, and jus cogens. 18. The Defendant has illegally refused to apply the United Nations Decolonization Resolution of 1960 to the New Afrikan People and to the Territories that they principally inhabit. Pursuant thereto, the Defendant has an absolute international legal obligation to decolonize New Afrikan Territories immediately and to transfer all powers it currently exercises there to the New Afrikan People. 19. The Defendant has illegally refused to accord full-scope protections as Prisoners-of-War to captured New Afrikan independence fighters in violation of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I thereto of 1977. The Defendant's treatment of captured New Afrikan independence fighters as common criminals and terrorists constitutes a grave breach of the Geneva Accords and thus a serious war crime. The Mexicano People 20. In 1821, Mexico obtained its independence from colonial Spain as a sovereign Mestizo State, extending from Yucatan and Chiapas in the south, to the northern territories of California and New Mexico, which areas the Defendant today calls the states of Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Nevertheless, in 1836 so-called settlors under the sponsorship of the Defendant began the division of the Mexicano People and State by causing the division of the Mexican state of Coahuila-Texas into the Mexican state of Coahuila and the so-called republic of Texas. 21. In 1846, the Defendant perpetrated an unjust, illegal and unjustifiable war upon the remainder of the sovereign People and State of Mexico that violated every known principle of public international law in existence at that time, including, but not limited to, the Christian Doctrine of just war, which was the then reigning standard of customary international law. As a result thereof, the Defendant illegally annexed close to 51% of the territories of the sovereign State of Mexico by means of forcing it to conclude the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo under military duress. For these reasons, this Treaty was and still is null and void ab initio as a matter of public international law. The Defendant acquired more Mexican territory through the Gadsen Treaty (Purchase) of 1854. 22. Since these 1848 and 1854 Treaties, the Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Genocide against the Mexicano People living within these occupied territories, as recognized by the 1948 Genocide Convention. 23. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Apartheid against the Mexicano People living within these occupied territories, as recognized by the 1973 Apartheid Convention. 24. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental human rights of the Mexicano People living within these occupied territories, as recognized by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the two aforementioned United Nations Human Rights Covenants of 1966. 25. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the 1965 Racism Convention against the Mexicano People living within these occupied territories. 26. The Defendant has denied and violated the international legal right of the Mexicano People living within these occupied territories to self-determination, as recognized by the United Nations Charter, the two United Nations Human Rights Covenants of 1966, customary international law, and jus cogens. 27. Since the militarily-imposed division of the Mexican State, the Defendant and its agents have militarily occupied other portions of the Mexican State, have sought to influence the outcome of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, have practiced a consistent pattern of intervention into Mexico's internal affairs, all of which have resulted in the arresting distortion and deformation of the Mexican social and economic order. In this regard, Defendant's so-called North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) constitutes nothing more than an attempt to impose its hegemonial imperialism, economic colonialism, and human exploitation upon the People and State of Mexico. 28. The Defendant has illegally refused to apply the United Nations Decolonization Resolution of 1960 to the Mexicano People and to these occupied territories that they inhabit. Pursuant thereto, the Defendant has an absolute international legal obligation to decolonize both the Mexican occupied territories and the Republic of Mexico immediately, and to transfer all powers it currently exercises there to the Mexicano People. The People and State of Puerto Rico 29. Since its illegal invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898, the Defendant has perpetrated innumerable Crimes against Peace, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes against the People and State of Puerto Rico as recognized by the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles. 30. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Genocide against the Puerto Rican People as recognized by the 1948 Genocide Convention. 31. The Defendant has perpetrated the International Crime of Apartheid against the Puerto Rican People as recognized by the 1973 Apartheid Convention. 32. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental human rights of the Puerto Rican People as recognized by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human rights and the two aforementioned United Nations Human Rights Covenants of 1966. 33. The Defendant has perpetrated a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the 1965 Racism Convention against the Puerto Rican People. 34. The Defendant has denied and violated the international legal right of the Puerto Rican People to self-determination as recognized by the United Nations Charter, the two United Nations Human Rights Covenants of 1966, customary international law, and jus cogens. 35. The Defendant has illegally refused to apply the United Nations Decolonization Resolution of 1960 to Puerto Rico. Pursuant thereto, the Defendant has an absolute international legal obligation to decolonize Puerto Rico immediately and to transfer all powers it currently exercises there to the Puerto Rican People. 36. The Defendant has illegally refused to accord full-scope protections as Prisoners-of-War to captured Puerto Rican independence fighters in violation of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I thereto of 1977. The Defendant's treatment of captured Puerto Rican independence fighters as common criminals and terrorists constitutes a grave breach of the Geneva Accords and thus a serious war crime. An International Criminal Conspiracy and a Criminal Organization 37. In light of the foregoing international crimes, the Defendant constitutes an International Criminal Conspiracy and a Criminal Organization in accordance with the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles and the other sources of public international law specified above. The Federal Government of the United States of America is legally identical to the Nazi government of World War II Germany. Indeed, the Defendant's President, George Bush, has proclaimed a so-called New World Order that sounds and looks strikingly similar to the New Order proclaimed by Adolph Hitler over fifty years ago. Conclusion Like unto a pirate, the Defendant is hostis humani generis: The enemy of all humankind! For the good of all humanity, this Tribunal must condemn and repudiate the Federal Government of the United States of America and its grotesque vision of a New World Order that is constructed upon warfare, bloodshed, violence, criminality, genocide, racism, colonialism, apartheid, massive violations of fundamental human rights, and the denial of the international legal right of self-determination to the Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color living in North America and elsewhere around the world. Consequently, this Tribunal must find the Defendant guilty as charged on all of the counts specified above beyond a reasonable doubt. This Tribunal must also issue an Order that formally proscribes the Federal Government of the United States of America as an International Criminal Conspiracy and a Criminal Organization. This Tribunal must also issue a separate Order mandating the dissolution of the Federal Government of the United States of America as a legal and political entity. Finally, this Tribunal must declare that international legal sovereignty over the Territories principally inhabited by the Native American Peoples, the New Afrikan People, the Mexicano People, and the People of Puerto Rico resides, respectively, in the hands of these Peoples Themselves. The very lives, well-being, health, welfare, and safety of the Indigenous Peoples and Peoples of Color living in North America and elsewhere around the world depend upon the ultimate success of your deliberations. Respectfully submitted by, FRANCIS A. BOYLE PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL LAW SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Dated: September 18, 1992 University of Illinois College of Law 504 East Pennsylvania Champaign, IL 61820 217-333-7954 See USA on Trial: The International Tribunal on Indigenous Peoples'and Oppressed Nations in the United States. The Book and Verdict are available from Editorial El Coqui, 1671 N. Claremont,Chicago Illinois 60647. Or you can try calling the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago at 312-342-4295. The Video can be obtained from Mission Creek Video, PO Box 411271 San Francisco CA 941141 (phone:415-695-0931). Francis A. Boyle --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That is the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 10 13:28:45 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:28:45 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Navajo receive Nuclear-Free award in Oslo Message-ID: http://www.galdu.org/english/index.php?odas=673 Navajo receive Nuclear-Free award in Oslo Published: 02.10.2005 FARMINGTON, USA ? The Navajo Nation received the 2005 Nuclear-Free Future Award at the Nobel Institute in Norway for its efforts to keep Navajo Indian Country free from all uranium mining. The award was presented September 24, according to a press release at Navajo.org. The Navajo Nation became the first tribal government to prohibit uranium mining on their reservations in April when it passed the Din? Natural Resources Protection Act of 2005. Uranium mining began on the Navajo reservations in the 1950s, and from 1979 through 1991 the largest uranium mine in the world operated on Navajo land. The mining not only caused radioactive material to infiltrate both the water and air, but also caused the Church Rock disaster, the largest-ever radioactive spill in U.S. history in 1979. Sources: The Daily Times and Nuclear-Free News --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 10 13:28:44 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:28:44 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Columbia: Indigenous Women Help Preserve Biodiversity Message-ID: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=29342 COLOMBIA: Indigenous Women Help Preserve Biodiversity Constanza Vieira BOGOTA, Jul 4 (IPS) - Indigenous people in Colombia's Amazon jungle region use a garden for just two or three years before abandoning it to clear a new one somewhere else, thus practising sustainable agriculture in an exuberant but fragile environment where the soil is extremely poor. This was explained by Rufina Rom?n, the daughter of a shaman - traditional healer and priest - of the Uitota-Nipode indigenous community, who for the first time spoke in public about some of the secrets she learned from her mother, the shaman's wife. Her audience included women from the Guambiano, Arhuaco, Kokama, Waunan, Bar? and Way?u ethnic groups from different parts of Colombia, where indigenous people belonging to 90 different ethnic groups make up one million of a total population of 44 million. Five years ago when she was studying in Bogot?, Rom?n, who was 23 years old at the time, told IPS that she had decided to return to the jungles of southern Colombia to learn from her mother the wisdom shared by indigenous women. Araracuara, on the middle stretch of the Caquet? river, one of the largest tributaries of the Amazon river, is the traditional home of the Nipode clan of the Uitoto people. Rom?n felt a strong call to keep the generation-to-generation transmission of indigenous knowledge alive. ?That's when I started learning,? she now told IPS with a smile, although she pointed out that ?only the preservers of culture,? shamans like her father, ?are familiar with the code of life.? Before that, Rom?n had been at school in the capital. She thought that when she returned home, she would be able to teach her community many things. ?I thought I would sow there what I had acquired here. But they rejected what I brought back with me.? She used a large coloured pencil drawing on construction paper of a woman's body dotted with plants and fruit as an illustration during her presentation at the international conference on indigenous women and biodiversity, held the last week of June in Bogot?. The event was organised by the Fundaci?n Natura, the governmental Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), and the World Conservation Union (IUCN). It was also attended by women of the Ashaninka people of Per?, the Mapuches of Chile and the Kuna of Panama. Rom?n explained that each plant had its corresponding place in the body of the woman in the drawing, who symbolised the ?chagra? or traditional garden covering one or two hectares cleared out of the forest by indigenous peoples in the Amazon to grow their food and medicinal and spiritual herbs. The sacred plants of coca and tobacco are at the woman's head, and drawn across her waist are people bringing in the harvest. ?The work on the chagra gives order to human life,? said Rom?n. The majority of indigenous families in the Amazon jungle region live today in ?boh?os? or wooden, palm-thatched huts with dirt floors in small isolated villages located in the large indigenous reserves. The chagras are even deeper into the jungle, sometimes as far as a two-hour walk away. Studies show that communities only return to their old plots three generations later, when the jungle has completely grown back and recovered. ?The chagra sustains the pollen of life of the primary forest,? in Rom?n's words. In this manner, indigenous people avoid depleting the soil in the jungle, where the land cannot withstand continuous farming. ?The soil turns tough as leather,? say the people of the jungle. But due to this semi-nomadic lifestyle based on ancestral knowledge of their surroundings, the indigenous peoples of the Amazon need large territories in which to move about. The spacious wooden hut where Rom?n's parents live is on the banks of the powerful Caquet? river, at the point where it narrows to pass between two imposing rock walls, forming the Araracuara rapids. Across the river is the Predio Putumayo, a 6.5 million hectare indigenous reserve, located in one of the regions of greatest biological diversity in the world. The reservation is shared by seven ethnic groups, comprised of a total of 14,000 people. Rom?n's mother taught her that ?we must plant for the animals, because we hurt their forest. We must replace everything that we cut down.? Indigenous women thus grow more than the community will consume, based on the idea that the ants, for example, have a right to devour part of the harvest. ?The secret of receiving wisdom and keeping it alive is contained in the work on the chagra,? Rom?n told the participants in the seminar. ?Each plant sown has a live spirit, and represents food, healing, education, song, rites, marriage and baptism. ?The chagra is where knowledge takes material form. This means food is sacred and transforms our thinking and our hearts, and educates the human being,? she added. She also said that ?The wise man may have all of the knowledge, but if he doesn't have a wife, he doesn't know anything,? because according to tradition it is women who ?help men's words flourish and come alive,? and ensure that knowledge is not lost but is passed from generation to generation. But Rom?n and her mother are also aware of what is occurring around them in this civil war-torn country. ?We know that there are national politics and international politics and interests, and that all of the sights are now trained on the Amazon jungle region. That a lot of stealthy stuff is going on with respect to indigenous knowledge, and that there is biopiracy and oil prospecting in some parts of the jungle,? she said. ?These are strange issues for us,? Rom?n added. ?I am not an academic, and I don't know about these things. But now, what I'm learning from my grandmothers and grandfathers is for me the best university, and I will never speak in the language of another people, because it is another way of thinking.? ?I live there with them, I suffer with them, I talk to them, I chew (sacred coca) with them, and right now I am happy because I can come out with this strength, with this staff of knowledge which, as I was taught, allows us to manage the two principles, to understand good and evil in-depth, in order to live in harmony and equilibrium with oneself and with one's surroundings.? ?Today, anyone can have a chagra. But if the work code that is written in the law of creation is not put into practice, the human being's spirit will not be sustained, and it will only sustain the material part, providing food, but not nourishment,? said Rom?n. ?That is why we say we are the essence of everything we plant in the chagra.? The conference participants decided to create a network for indigenous women to maintain contact among themselves and with ?white? women as well - the women who organised the event: well-known environmental activists, anthropologists and indigenous rights activists who promote a gender perspective. Anthropologist Astrid Ulloa, with ICANH, described the gathering as ? successful.? (END/2005) --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 10 13:28:37 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:28:37 -0700 Subject: [m2c] The BS in Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS): Critical Questions for Indigenous Peoples Message-ID: http://www.ipcb.org/publications/other_art/bsinabs.html Chapter in The Catch: Perspectives on Benefit Sharing edited by Beth Burrows, published by the Edmonds Institute, 2005. Copyright ? Debra Harry and Le`a Malia Kanehe The BS in Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS): Critical Questions for Indigenous Peoples Debra Harry and Le`a Malia Kanehe Introduction There is a lot of discussion about access to and benefit sharing (ABS) these days. Countries that historically have been robbed of their genetic resources by more powerful states are determined to establish level rules of engagement that allow them a fair share of the benefits arising from use of their resources. Countries relatively poor in biodiversity, a poverty sometimes exacerbated by destructive development practices, do not want to lose access to the genetic resources of those countries rich with biodiversity. The tension between the two sides, between states of the South and the North, has led to the articulation of ?fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources? as a primary objective of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Now, more than ten years later, the discussion at the CBD has arrived at the elaboration and negotiation of an international regime on access and benefit sharing. Unfortunately, the CBD fails to recognize Indigenous peoples as owners of a vast amount of the world?s genetic resources. In fact, the CBD only recognizes states as sovereigns over genetic resources and ignores the proprietary rights of Indigenous peoples in the same territories. In the international debates, discussions about Indigenous peoples? rights are recast in watered down or bracketed language. For example, the CBD refers to "indigenous and local communities" instead of "Indigenous peoples." (1) Thus, it ignores Indigenous peoples' status as rights holders and instead demotes Indigenous peoples to the status of "stakeholders," a category that includes corporations, academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, and just about any other non-state entity. That said, what does benefit sharing mean for Indigenous peoples? What incentive do we have to participate in these agreements, particularly if our ownership rights are sidelined or marginalized? What are the implications of participating in benefit sharing arrangements for genetic resources? How do Indigenous peoples move beyond the narrow market-oriented models being presented to them? These are some of the questions to be discussed in this chapter. I. Conflicting Sovereignties over Natural Resources Indigenous peoples? struggle for self-determination is occurring on many fronts, globally, nationally and locally. The corporate hunt for genetic resources within our territories raises new difficulties for those maintaining permanent sovereignty over natural resources that have long been sought after by colonial governments. Intellectual property rights are being used to turn nature and life processes into private property. Once deemed private property, genetic material becomes alienable; that is, it can be bought and sold as a commodity. This, in the eyes of many Indigenous peoples, is an attempt to legalize thievery, a thievery that we recognize as ?biocolonialism? -- the extension of colonization to the biological resources and knowledge of Indigenous peoples. (3) Below, we discuss Indigenous people?s right to permanent sovereignty over genetic resources and the conflict raised by the CBD?s proposal for an international regime on access to our resources and the sharing of benefits that may arise thereafter. A. Indigenous Peoples Permanent Sovereignty over Genetic Resources The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 1(1), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Article 1 (1), both state, "All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development." (4) United Nations Human Rights Special Rapporteur Miguel Alfonso Martinez states in his study on treaties that, ?Indigenous peoples, like all peoples on Earth, are entitled to that inalienable right.?(5) He further explains that the United Nations Charter itself "recognizes the importance of respect for 'the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples' (Art. 1.2), a simple, direct and unqualified way of saying all peoples, bar none." (6) Despite the existence of these international human rights standards, it is widely recognized that States often deny or diminish the ability of Indigenous peoples to exercise the right of self-determination. Nevertheless, the right of self-determination is the fundamental premise upon which Indigenous peoples have asserted our proprietary, inherent, and inalienable rights over our traditional knowledge and biological resources. Although several international human rights instruments recognize the collective nature of Indigenous peoples? rights of self-determination, (7) the U.N. Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is the international instrument that is the most representative of Indigenous thought and participation,(8) and its standards constitutes the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the Indigenous peoples of the world. (9) The U.N. Draft Declaration states, ?Indigenous peoples have the right to own, develop, control and use the lands and territories which they have traditionally owned or otherwise occupied or used.? (10) A fundamental part of the right of self-determination is a people?s exercise of permanent sovereignty over the natural resources within its territories. The right of permanent sovereignty over natural resources embodies the principle that "peoples and nations must have the authority to manage and control their natural resources and in doing so to enjoy the benefits of their development and conservation."(11) Furthermore, "the principle was and continues to be an essential precondition to a people?s realization of its right of self-determination and its right to development." (12) In the final report of the UN Human Rights Special Rapporteur on Permanent Sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples over their Natural Resources, Erica-Irene Daes, finds that, the developments during the past decades in international law and human rights norms in particular demonstrate that there now exists a developed legal principle that indigenous peoples have a collective right to the lands and territories they traditionally use and occupy and that this right includes the right to use, own, manage and control the natural resources found within their lands and territories. (13) Special Rapporteur Daes further finds that genetic resources are among the natural resources belonging to Indigenous peoples. (14) In relation to the right of permanent sovereignty over natural resources of Indigenous peoples, Special Rapporteur Daes concludes, ?[I]t is a collective right by virtue of which States are obligated to respect, protect, and promote the governmental and property interests of indigenous peoples (as collectivities) in their natural resources.?(15) B. CBD and an International Regime on Access and Benefit Sharing Indigenous peoples' rights to the natural resources within their territories have been marginalized by the CBD. It was not the right of nation states to make agreements that undermined the rights of Indigenous peoples, agreements such as were made in the CBD. (16) Under the CBD, states are the only recognized entities with sovereignty over natural resources. The right of Indigenous peoples to permanent sovereignty over natural resources is particularly threatened by Article 15.1 of the CBD, which states, "Recognizing the sovereign rights of States over their natural resources, the authority to determine access to genetic resources rests with the national governments and is subject to national legislation." Furthermore, Article 15.5 requires that "access to genetic resources shall be subject to prior informed consent of the Contracting Party providing such resources, unless otherwise determined by that Party." Thus, according to the CBD, sovereign rights to control access to genetic resources are only recognized for the contracting Parties, i.e, the states. Thus far, the only link between Indigenous peoples and genetic resources that the Parties to the CBD have been willing to make is the recognition that Indigenous peoples may possess traditional knowledge about such resources. The Parties have yet to recognize Indigenous peoples as sovereign or proprietary owners of genetic resources within their territories. Article 8(j) of the CBD contains a provision to encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity. (17) Article 8(j), however, is subject to national legislation. Although 8(j) requires that wider application of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities should be "with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices," it does not couch the standard for approval in terms of prior informed consent, as it does IN the case of states and access to genetic resources. A major step towards the development of an international regime on access and benefit sharing was taken at the sixth Conference of the Parties (COP VI) held in The Hague, in April 2002. At that meeting, 180 Parties adopted the voluntary Bonn Guidelines on Access to Genetic Resources and Fair and Equitable Sharing of the Benefits Arising out of their Utilization. The Guidelines were "expected to assist Parties, Governments and other stakeholders in developing overall access and benefit-sharing strategies, and in identifying the steps involved in the process of obtaining access to genetic resources and benefit-sharing. More specifically, the guidelines [were] intended to help them when establishing legislative, administrative or policy measures on access and benefit-sharing.?(18) It is important to note that the vast majority of Indigenous peoples represented at COP VI, viewing their participation in the development of the Guidelines as facilitating biopiracy of their own resources and knowledge, made a conscious decision not to actively participate in the discussions on the Guidelines, and therefore later rejected implementation of the Guidelines. Consistent with Article 15 of the CBD, which recognizes the "sovereign right of States over their natural resources", the Bonn Guidelines suggest that access to genetic resources should be controlled by competent national authorities. Paragraph 26 states: The basic principles of a prior informed consent system should include: . . . Consent of the relevant competent national authority(ies) in the provider country. The consent of relevant stakeholders, such as indigenous and local communities, as appropriate to the circumstances and subject to domestic law, should also be obtained. Paragraph 31 further elaborates on this issue by stating: Respecting established legal rights of indigenous and local communities associated with the genetic resources being accessed or where traditional knowledge associated with these genetic resources is being accessed, the prior informed consent of indigenous and local communities and the approval and involvement of the holders of traditional knowledge, innovations and practices should be obtained, in accordance with their traditional practices, national access policies and subject to domestic laws. This language makes evident that the Bonn Guidelines promote national sovereignty over natural resources and subject Indigenous peoples? rights to domestic policies and laws. Although the Guidelines are not binding, the Parties do consider them "a useful first step of an evolutionary process" and see them as serving as some basis for a future regime. (19) A few months after COP VI adopted the Bonn Guidelines, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) called for action to "negotiate, within the framework of the [CBD], bearing in mind the Bonn Guidelines, an international regime to promote and safeguard the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources.? (20) Further, UN General Assembly resolution 57/260 , adopted at is fifty-seventh session, invited COP VII to take appropriate steps with regard to the commitment made at the WSSD. (21) Then, at the CBD?s Inter-sessional meeting on the Multi-Year Programme of Work of the Conference of the Parties up to 2010, held in March 2003, a recommendation was made that the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on access and benefit-sharing (ABS Working Group) consider the process, nature, scope, elements and modalities of such an international regime on access and benefit-sharing at its second meeting in December 2003. Subsequently, at its December meeting, the ABS Working Group prepared recommendations on the terms of reference for the negotiation of an international regime and submitted those recommendations to the Seventh Conference of the Parties (COP VII), scheduled to be held in February 2004, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (22) At COP VII, the Parties engaged in extensive discussions about the mandate and the terms of reference of the ABS Working Group and decided that the Working Group would "elaborate and negotiate an international regime on access to genetic resources and benefit sharing with the aim of adopting an instrument/instruments to effectively implement the provisions of Article 15 and Article 8(j)." The Working Group is expected to meet twice before the next COP in 2006 and is mandated to work ?with the collaboration of the Ad-Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Article 8(j) and related provisions.? (23) For Indigenous peoples, the preambular language of the COP VII decision relating to an international regime, wherein the COP reaffirmed ?the sovereign rights of States over their natural resources and that the authority to determine access to genetic resources rests with the national Governments and is subject to national legislation, in accordance with Article 3 and Article 15, paragraph 1," (24) sets a dangerous stage for future negotiation of the ABS regime. The International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB), which was the full caucus of the Indigenous peoples present at the COP, made an intervention in Kuala Lumpur in opposition to this language stating that international human rights law recognizes that states do not have absolute sovereignty over natural resources. The parties, however, of course, refused to be moved. Although Indigenous peoples are only considered observers at the COP, we vehemently insisted that the parties must recognize our rights throughout the elaboration of the international regime. In the end, Canada and Australia blocked language that had gained the agreement of the other states and was proposed by the EU. That language had stated that the international regime shall recognize the rights of Indigenous peoples. In the end, the preambular language of the decision that was adopted merely stated that ?the international regime should recognize and shall respect the rights of indigenous and local communities.?(25) At the COP VII meeting, Indigenous peoples did successfully lobby for international human rights law, as set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to be included in a long list of other instruments and processes to be considered as possible elements in an international regime. Although such inclusion gives some foothold for lobbying at future meetings, there is no guarantee that the regime that emerges from negotiations will be consistent with international human rights law. At past CBD meetings, Indigenous peoples have pointed out that Article 22.1 of the Convention requires that the decisions of the COP must be consistent with other international conventions, including international human rights law. (26) Unfortunately, some parties (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and some observer governments not party to the Convention (i.e, the United States) do not agree and have requested an opinion from the CBD legal counsel to support their position. Prior to the end of the COP VII deliberations, several Indigenous organizations in attendance sent an alert to Indigenous peoples around the world, warning them about the impending international regime: For the Indigenous peoples anxiously following the discussions in Kuala Lumpur, the agenda of the parties is clear. The parties are developing a regime that will facilitate a biopiracy free-for-all .?Sadly, all we can do is call upon Indigenous peoples to prepare themselves. The biopiracy regime is coming. They must do whatever is necessary to protect their resources and knowledge at the local level. Their most basic rights to self-determination are not going to be recognized at this level.? (27) II. Case Study: An Indigenous Critique of a Benefit Sharing Agreement Because the CBD is remiss in recognizing Indigenous peoples as sovereigns over, owners of, or rights holders in the genetic resources within their territories, an ideal framework for nurturing biopiracy has been created. Therein, Indigenous peoples are seen only as traditional knowledge holders and not as territorial rights holders whose consent must be sought before accessing resources within their territories. The much-touted arrangement involving the San peoples of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa evidences the problems in such a framework for benefit sharing. The traditional knowledge of the San peoples about the stem of a cactus called Hoodia led the UK-based pharmaceutical company Phytopharm to a potential anti-obesity drug. The San had traditionally used Hoodia to stave off hunger while hunting. Phytopharm claimed to have discovered a potential cure for obesity derived from the Hoodia plant. South Africa?s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) sold the development rights for Hoodia to Phytopharm, which later patented P57, the appetite-suppressing ingredient in the Hoodia. Phytopharm later sold the rights to license the drug for $21 million to Pfizer, the U.S. pharmaceutical giant, without even notifying the San, let alone getting their consent to such transaction. Phytopharm representatives later claimed they believed the San peoples who used Hoodia were extinct. In fact, the San number 100,000 across South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola. (28) Only after CSIR and Phytopharm were widely criticized for failing to get the consent of the San or recognize the role that San knowledge had played in identifying the Hoodia?s ethnobotanical properties were the San offered a benefit sharing arrangement. The San?s share in the arrangement amounted to less than 0.003% of net sales and that percentage was only to come out of CSIR?s share in the deal; Phytopharm and Pfizer?s earnings were to go untouched. (29) In fact, Phytopharm and Pfizer were exempted from sharing any benefits directly with the San and were specifically released from any further financial demands by the San. (30) In the benefit sharing contract, the San were rewarded on a one-time-only basis for their knowledge of Hoodia and, further, were explicitly prevented from using that knowledge in any other commercial application. (31) Effectively, Phytopharm and Pfizer purchased a perpetual monopoly on the San?s traditional knowledge of the Hoodia. It is important to note that the San were compensated for their traditional knowledge and not for any right they might have in the genetic resource itself. It was the CSIR, and not the San who consented to access to the genetic resource. Article 28 of the Bonn Guidelines promote ?competent national authorities? as the appropriate gatekeepers to in situ genetic resources. In matters of access relating to genetic resources within Indigenous territories or Indigenous knowledge associated with such resources, Article 31 of the Guidelines only refers to ?established legal rights? and prior informed consent regarding such access as being subject to domestic laws. Therefore, what transpired with the Hoodia was totally consistent with the CBD and the Bonn Guidelines; That is, the CSIR acted as the South African national authority granting access to the Hoodia. The indigenous San peoples had no established legal right vis-?-vis Hoodia under South African law and so their consent was not required. The San-CSIR deal has been hailed by many as a success story for the San who are among the most marginalized peoples in southern Africa. The story has been used to promote benefit sharing as a means of poverty alleviation. The monies derived from the agreement, we have been told, are to be held in the San Hoodia Benefit Trust, to be used for health care, infrastructure and social security. (32) Additionally, a report by the German Development Institute has asserted, because the arrangement includes various San communities across southern Africa, it ?strengthens the cross-border identification of the San as an indigenous people of southern Africa and may do a great deal to improve the position of the San communities in some of the other countries.? (33) What such an analysis neglects to notice is that quality health care, education, and other essential services are among the basic human rights for all peoples. Access to these fundamental needs should not be tied to a requirement for an exchange of traditional knowledge or biological resources. Furthermore, it is outrageous to promote selling a monopoly on traditional knowledge to a Western corporation so that marginalized communities can earn recognition as Indigenous peoples. The San do not even possess complete decision-making power over their minute share of the royalties, royalties to be deposited in ?their? Trust. It is instructive to note that although "their" Trust includes representatives of various San communities, the CSIR and the Department of Science and Technology also sit there, apparently as paternalistic trustees. (34) The intent here is not to criticize the San for their participation in the benefit sharing agreement. In hindsight, it is clear that the only option presented to the San was to accept a share in the deal, or get nothing at all. And had CSIR and Phytopharm not been ?caught red-handed? with the appropriation of San knowledge, the San may have simply remained unknown victims of theft. We see the case as a recent, very instructive example of the power dynamics typical when Indigenous peoples are forced to contend with the actions of colonial states and multinational corporations. The San case also illustrates how the profit potential of genetic material tends to evoke unscrupulous practices. Indigenous knowledge systems reflect the totality of the intellectual traditions of Indigenous peoples from whom they are derived. While Western knowledge systems tend to be compartmentalized and specialized, and are often times reductionist in nature, Indigenous knowledge systems are intricately interconnected with our rich cultural heritage and the territories from which they came. And in that sense, Indigenous knowledge cannot belong to a single individual or a single generation. Thus, how could anyone possibly claim a right to sell Indigenous intellectual traditions when those traditions are a gift from previous generations and the birthright of future generations? For many Indigenous peoples, traditional knowledge is not something their community can sell because it is priceless and its value cannot be calculated in terms of or in service to economic exploitation. Indigenous knowledge passed from generation to generation is an inherent and inalienable part of a peoples? collective heritage and patrimony. When such knowledge is subjected to a benefit sharing agreement, as illuminated by the San?s experience, the knowledge becomes a commodity to be bought and sold on the market. III. Some Considerations for Indigenous Peoples Before Entering into Benefit Sharing Agreements For Indigenous peoples, who are often the most marginalized and economically poor peoples of the world, the promises of benefit sharing agreements may be alluring. By virtue of their right of self-determination, it is of course, the prerogative of Indigenous peoples to make their own decisions about benefit sharing agreements. Inevitably, some will decide to enter into such arrangements. Those who make such decisions, whether or not they recognize it, will be accepting western legal frameworks and concepts that do not respect Indigenous laws and customs, and which, in essence, may compromise their right of self-determination. In this next section, we discuss some of these conflicts and the potential difficulties that may arise in the context of such deal-making. A. Patents Before entering into a benefit sharing agreement, Indigenous peoples must understand that by entering such an agreement, they are submitting to a legal jurisdiction entirely foreign to their own systems of management and protection of natural resources and knowledge. Primarily, the difference involves patents. Those who agree to benefit sharing must accept that patent laws will govern the ownership of the products derived from their genetic resources. A patent is a necessary step in securing commercial control over a product derived from a genetic resource. Patents are a Western intellectual property right originally meant to apply to inventions. The basic tenets of patents are quite foreign to Indigenous concepts. A patent covers a novel invention, not age-old traditions; a patent is issued to an individual, not to a collective peoples; and a patent lasts for a determinate amount of time (often 20 years), after which the information in the patent becomes part of the public domain ? free and open for all the world to use without penalty. Genetic researchers and the pharmaceutical, agricultural, and chemical corporations, and academic institutions for which they work claim that "engineered organisms or molecules are separated from nature through the concepts of 'isolation' and 'purification.'" (35) Thus, in response to numerous comments asserting that genes were nonpatentable products of nature, the United States Patent and Trademark Office asserted that "the inventor's discovery of a gene can be the basis for a patent of the genetic composition isolated from its natural state and processed through purifying steps that separate the gene from other molecules naturally associated with it." (36) Many Indigenous peoples have strongly advocated against the patenting of life. For example, in 1999, Indigenous peoples steadfastly opposed the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPs) in a statement entitled, "No to Patenting of Life." The statement, in part, proclaimed, "Nobody can own what exists in nature, except nature, itself. Humankind is part of Mother Nature. We have created nothing and so we can in no way claim to be owners of what does not belong to us." (37) Further, the report of the ?Workshop on Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, " in summarizing the conclusions of the Indigenous rights experts at the workshop, noted that, ?Patenting and commodification of life is against our fundamental values and beliefs regarding the sacredness of life and life processes and the reciprocal relationship which we maintain with all creation.? (38) Those words remembered, it becomes important for Indigenous peoples to evaluate whether the patenting of life, which will necessarily occur in a benefit sharing arrangement concerning genetic resources, is consistent with their fundamental values. B. Some pitfalls in benefit sharing agreements Indigenous peoples may be asked to establish contractual arrangements with intermediaries such as academic institutions or governments, who in turn have direct contractual arrangements with the commercializing companies. For example, the San?s contractual agreement was with the CSIR; the San have no legally enforceable agreement with Phytopharm in the commercialization of the Hoodia plant. A similar arrangement was established by the University of the South Pacific (USP). The USP first entered into a bioprospecting agreement for coral reef biological resources with the Strathclyde Institute of Drug Research (SIDR) of Glascow, Scotland. (39) Then the University established a separate agreement with the villages that were regarded as the traditional owners of the reef areas. Thus, USP became the effective dispenser of the coral reef resources. Such arrangements are obviously paternalistic, and violate the basic tenets of self-determination. These kinds of agreements treat Indigenous peoples as interested third parties and not as principals in benefit sharing agreements. In these types of arrangements, Indigenous peoples can be left with no legal means of enforcement, and their rights as owners of the knowledge and resources can be subverted. Indigenous peoples thus can be perceived as "worthy" participants in the benefit sharing discussions not because the other parties recognize their rights, but because the other parties consider Indigenous peoples a part of the trickledown system of beneficiaries that they themselves, as "principal" parties, have construed. Another pitfall of benefit sharing agreements is that they often simply compensate Indigenous peoples for use of their associated traditional knowledge, and not for use of the actual biological resources. The only remedy for this is for Indigenous peoples themselves to be proactive in asserting their propriety rights over both their knowledge and their resources. The interests of the Indigenous peoples involved must be reflected in any legal agreements about their traditional knowledge and resources. Otherwise, the hoped-for outcomes will never happen and never be enforceable. On the part of Indigenous peoples, this requires strong skills in negotiation as well as a comprehensive understanding of what rights and interests must be protected in the agreement. Further, Indigenous peoples must remember that even the most brilliant agreement will be a challenge to monitor and enforce on a global scale. Resources for litigation costs will be greatly outmatched by corporate/institutional opponents in the courtroom and the patent office. It is difficult to see how benefit sharing agreements that allow for the monopolization and alienation of traditional knowledge and genetic resources under the veil of intellectual property protection can be of any meaningful benefit to Indigenous peoples. Certainly, there will be a promise of some potential income, an income that could make a difference in the lives of those terribly lacking in resources. But, at what cost? In the end, the benefits that come to Indigenous peoples are likely to be quite insignificant compared to those reaped by the pharmaceutical, agricultural or chemical companies and academic institutions with which they are dealing. C. Culturally-based Decision-making The potential income or other benefits derived from benefit sharing agreements may entice Indigenous peoples to commercialize their knowledge and resources, often in violation of their own cultural principles and values. The profit potential may loom large while other critical factors may remain hidden or even undisclosed. Indigenous peoples would be wise to utilize their own frameworks for evaluating the usefulness, potential, and appropriateness of ventures that affect their knowledge, resources, and culture. One such framework, a five point test utilizing a tikanga Maori framework, has been articulated by Hirini Moko Mead (Ngati Awa, Ngati Tuwharetoa, Tuourangi) of Aotearoa (New Zealand). The tikanga framework facilitates decision-making on contemporary issues based upon the ethics inherent in Maori principles and philosophies. Mead takes "the position that tikanga is the set of beliefs associated with practices and procedures to be followed in conducting the affairs of a group or an individual. These procedures are established by precedents through time, are held to be ritually correct, are validated by usually more than one generation and are always subject to what a group or an individual is able to do."(40) He further explains that, "They help us to differentiate between right and wrong, in everything we do and in all of the activities that we engage in. There is a right and proper way to conduct one?s self." (41) Thus, critical questions are filtered through a five-point test. If an issue fails to withstand this kind of evaluation, then it is determined that the question at hand violates the tikanga or the cultural, ethical standards of Maori. All Indigenous peoples have their own cultural frameworks and worldviews to draw upon in making such judgments. For example, Lopeti Senituli, former director of the Tongan Human Rights and Democracy Movement, articulated the Tongan concept of "NGEIA," which means "awe inspiring, inspiring fear or wonder by its size or magnificence" and "dignity." NGEIA was central to the Tongan people?s opposition to an Australian company?s proposal to collect tissue samples and health data from individual consenting Tongans in the hope of identifying genes that cause diseases such as diabetes. (42) In exchange for the samples, the company, Autogen Ltd., had offered a benefit sharing arrangement that would have provided annual research funding to Tonga?s Ministry of Health, paid royalties on revenues generated from any discoveries that might later be commercialized, and given whatever new therapies might be developed from the research to the Tongans free of charge. (43) As a result of the Tongan community?s opposition to Autogen's proposal - an opposition based on the community's understanding of NGEIA and corresponding belief that "the human person should not be treated as a commodity" - the project did not proceed. (44) Mead says, "A culture that sets aside its pool of tikanga is depriving itself of a valuable segment of knowledge and is limiting its cultural options."(45) Conclusion Nearly every aspect of what we value as Indigenous peoples ? our technologies, our knowledge, the seeds that produce our foods, and our medicines ? is at risk of appropriation. Indigenous peoples, and particularly our leadership, must be active in the discussions related to Indigenous knowledge and genetic resources. There is no shortage of non-Indigenous peoples engaging in these debates in various international fora, allegedly on our behalf. Indigenous peoples must remain vigilant in order to protect their peoples and territories from acts of biocolonialism. Most importantly, Indigenous peoples must be proactive in asserting their rights, particularly those based on long-established international human rights standards. We are referring to the right to free prior informed consent concerning any access to or disposition of our knowledge and resources, the right to deny access to our knowledge and resources, and the right to manage our knowledge and resources based on our own customary laws, to mention a few examples. Legal historian, Steve Newcomb (Shawnee/Lenape) reminds us that, "We have to make the case that they have to respect our systems of law. There isn?t 'the law' - there?s our law and their law. We have to articulate what our law is as far as the protection of our genetic materials, and make that case, and resist their system and their law with every fiber of our being." (46) Endnotes 1. See Convention on Biological Diversity, Article 8(j). Online at . 2. See Decision VI/24: Access and benefit-sharing as related to genetic resources, UNEP/CBD/COP/6/6, para. 56 (?The involvement of relevant stakeholders, in particular, indigenous and local communities, in the various stages of development and implementation of access and benefit-sharing arrangements can play an important role in facilitating the monitoring of compliance.?). 3. For more discussion on ?biocolonialism,? see Harry, D. et al, Indigenous Peoples, Genes and Genetics: What Indigenous People Should Know About Biocolonialism., 2000. Online at . 4. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted Dec. 19, 1966, entered into force Mar. 23, 1976, 999 U.N.T.S. 171; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, adopted Dec. 19, 1966, entered into force Jan. 3, 1976, 999 U.N.T.S. 3. 5. Martinez, M.A., Study on treaties, agreements and other constructive arrangements between States and indigenous populations, Final Report of the Special Rapporteur, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1999/20, para. 256. 6. Ibid., para. 210. 7. See Convention 169 Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989, of the International Labor Organization available at: http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C169, and The Draft of the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples of the Organization of American States, draft approved by the IACHR at the 1278 session held on 18 September 1995. For latest revisions, see online at: http://www.oas.org/consejo/CAJP/Indigenous%20documents.asp. 8. Venne, S.H., Our Elders Understand Our Rights: Evolving International Law Regarding Indigenous Rights, Theytus Books Ltd: Canada,1998, p.137. 9. Ibid. 10. United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/2/Add.1 of 20 April 1994 (Article 26). 11. Daes, E.-I. A., Indigenous Peoples? Permanent Sovereignty Over Natural Resources, Final Report of the Special Rapporteur, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/30, para. 6, July 13, 2004. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., para. 39 14. Ibid., para. 42 15. Ibid., para. 40 16. For a compilation of relevant legal standards concerning Indigenous lands and resources, see Daes, E.-I. A.,Indigenous Peoples and Their Relationship to Land, Final Working Paper Prepared by the Special Rapporteur, E/CN.4/Sub.2/2001/21, Annex. For a summary about the recognition of Indigenous peoples? sovereignty, see Daes,E.-I.A., work cited in note (11), para. 20-30. 17. The text of Article 8(j) states that, ?Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate: . . . Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices?. 18. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-sharing: Bonn Guidelines. Webpage available at . Viewed December, 2004. 19. Ibid. 20. United Nations, Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, para. 44(o). In United Nations, Report of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, A/CONF.199/20*, 35. ?vailable online at . 21. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 57/260, 20 Dec. 2002, para. 8 , Available online at . 22. Report of the Ad Hoc Open-ended Working Group on Access and Benefit Sharing on the Work its second Meeting, 10 December 2003, UNEP/CBD/COP/7/6. 23. International Regime on Access to Genetic Resources and Benefit-Sharing, UNEP/CBD/COP/7/21, Decision VII/19 D., p. 300. 24. Ibid., p. 299. 25. Ibid., p. 300. 26. Article 22.1 states: ?The provisions of this Convention shall not affect the rights and obligations of any Contracting Party deriving from any existing international agreements, except where the exercise of those rights and obligations would cause serious damage or threat to biological diversity.? 27. Press Release. CBD?s International Regime: Indigenous Activist Organizations Call for No Access Zones to Genetic Resources and Indigenous Knowledge, February 19, 2004 . Available online at 28. Barnett, A. , In Africa The HoodiaCactus Keeps Men Alive. Now Its Secret Is 'Stolen' To Make Us Thin, The Observer, Jun 17, 2001. 29. Wynberg, R., Sharing the Crumbs with the San. Available on the Biowatch South Africa website at . 30. German Development Institute, Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS): An Instrument for Poverty Alleviation, November 2003, p. 19. Available online at . 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., p. 20. 33. Ibid. 34. In Wynberg, op.cit., Biowatch South Africa reports that the trust will include representatives of the CSIR, the =Khomani, !Xun and Khwe, other San stakeholders in southern Africa, the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa, and the Department of Science and Technology. 35. Kahn, J., 2003, What?s the Use? Law and Authority in Patenting Human Genetic Material, Stanford Law & Policy Review 14 (417): 426. 36. Ibid. 37. Tauli-Corpuz, V., Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge and Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Third World Network: Penang, 2003, p.25. 38. Ibid. 39. Aalbersberg, W.G. et. al., The Role of a Fijian Community in a Bioprospecting Project. Available on the CBD website at . 40. Mead, H.M., Tikanga Maori: Living by Maori Values, Huia Publishers: New Zealand, 2003, p. 12. 41. Ibid. 42 Senituli, L., Biopolicy and Biopolitics in the Pacific Islands, Edmonds Institute: Edmonds, Washington, 2003, pp.1-3. 43. Ibid., p. 1. 44. Ibid., p. 3 45. Mead, op.cit.,p. 13. 46. Personal interview with Steve Newcomb in San Francisco in November, 2003. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Oct 10 13:28:25 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:28:25 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Justice For Girls: Violence against Aboriginal Girls Message-ID: http://www.turtleisland.org/front/_front.htm Posted: Fri Sep 09, 2005 1:14 am Justice System?s Response: Violence against Aboriginal Girls Submitted to: Honourable Wally Oppal, Attorney General of British Columbia September 2005 Written by: Kelly A. MacDonald, B.A., LL.B., LL.M. On behalf of Justice for Girls TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction 3 II. Background: 4 III. Systemic Issues Identified by Justice for Girls: 6 1) Hate Motivated Crime - s. 718.2(a)(I) of the Criminal Code: 6 2) R. v. Ramsay: 12 3) Justice System 13 4) Support & Advocacy for Aboriginal Girls: 17 5) International Rights: 19 6) Inquiry/Systemic Review: 20 IV. Recommendations: 21 V. Conclusion: 23 VI. Bibliography: 24 JUSTICE SYSTEM?S RESPONSE: VIOLENCE AGAINST ABORIGINAL GIRLS I. Introduction Justice for Girls is a non-profit organization that promotes justice, equality and freedom from violence for teenage girls who live in poverty. Through a program funded by the Law Foundation of British Columbia, we have provided legal advocacy to young women under the age of 19. In addition, one of our important initiatives has been a Criminal Justice Monitoring Program. This program was supported by funding from Status of Women Canada, with a mandate to: increase street-involved and low-income girls? access to justice in cases where girls are the victims of violence or accused as young offenders. On the basis of our observations in court, research, and ongoing consultation with girls, we are developing recommendations to make the criminal justice system more responsive to low-income and street-involved girls. Over the course of five years we observed that Aboriginal girls are disproportionately the victims of violent crimes; they are subjected to extreme rates of sexual and physical violence, and constitute a shocking number of murder victims in British Columbia. A recent McCreary Centre report found that: ?In general, Aboriginal youth, particularly females, report experiencing more violence compared with their non-Aboriginal peers? . Justice for Girls has monitored a number of particularly disturbing cases of male violence against Aboriginal teenage girls. Based upon our court observations, individual advocacy with girls, and our literature and case law review, we have a number of recommendations that we would like to propose and discuss with you. Specific case examples have been identified as a result of our court monitoring of the following cases: R. v. Dezwaan, R. v. Tremblay, R. v. Ramsay, R. v. Kim, R. v. Punn, and the Highway 16 murders (and others). We have enumerated a number of areas of concern which we wish to discuss with you, including (but not limited to): Sentencing: Hate Motivated Crimes; Justice System Responses; Support & Advocacy for Girls; Breach of International Rights; Systemic Review. Most importantly, we believe that it is important that you, as the Attorney General, to conduct a systemic review of the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls in British Columbia. In the background section of this report, we provide you with a contextual overview which informs our analysis of the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls. Our observations and analyses support the conclusion that this violence is perpetrated because of racism and sexism. II. Background: Aboriginal women and their children suffer tremendously as victims in contemporary Canadian society. They are the victims of racism, of sexism and of unconscionable levels of domestic violence. The justice system has done little to protect them from any of these assaults We believe the plight of Aboriginal women and their children must be a priority for any changes in the justice system. [emphasis added] Chief Justice A.C. Hamilton and Chief Judge C.M. Sinclair (as they then were) have poignantly captured what Justice for Girls has observed with our Court Monitoring Program. In her literature review on Restorative Justice, Aboriginal legal scholar Kelly MacDonald notes that many commentators describe the violence against Aboriginal girls and women as being in epidemic proportions. The Native Women?s Association of Canada estimates that 500 Aboriginal women are currently missing or murdered across Canada. In all of the cases that Justice for Girls monitored, which involved the sexual exploitation and/or sexual assault of multiple victims, either most or all of the victims were Aboriginal teenage girls. To date, there has been little focus on the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls. The literature tends to focus on Aboriginal offenders or adult victims of crime, but very rarely on violence against Aboriginal teenage girls. For example, Globe and Mail reporter, Laura Robinson, noted that a recent report on Aboriginal peoples and the justice system did not deal with the law?s inability to protect Native women [read girls] from murder. Notably, in Saskatchewan (as well as in British Columbia) there have been numerous murders of Aboriginal girls and women. Robinson stated that ?Nowhere did it grapple with the violence aboriginal women [read girls] face at the hands of white men in the larger community?; and a ?lack of diligence in crimes against Aboriginal women [read girls] is not uncommon?. Even the available literature we canvassed and utilized in our analysis regarding Aboriginal women and justice is sparse. That lack supports our position that attention needs to be directed toward, and a review conducted of, the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls. In advancing the issues, concerns, and recommendations contained in this document we were assisted in our analysis by reviewing literature that addressed violence against both Aboriginal women and Aboriginal children. The reality of Aboriginal teenage girls intersects both of these groups. In addition, because of the unique issues and vulnerability of adolescent girls, we have added our own observations. Our analysis concludes that at present Aboriginal girls who are the victims of male violence are poorly served, and often further abused, by the justice system. In the words of Dr. Sally Longstaffe: The legal system not only fails to protect [Aboriginal] children [read girls], it fails to systematically punish offenders. A similar sentiment is raised in the literature concerning the justice system?s response to Aboriginal women [read girls] who are the victims of crime: Aboriginal women repeatedly lack confidence in the justice system and its ability to stop violence and they are unwilling to subject themselves to the victim blaming that occurs at different levels of the criminal arena. An international review of literature sets forth similar conclusions regarding the experiences of Aboriginal women [read girls] in Australia and the United States, with the justice system, as those of Indigenous women and girls in Canada. International commentators cite the racist stereotyping of the Indigenous female and the failure of the justice system to address violence against them. One legal scholar argues that this amounts to a breach of Indigenous women?s human rights, as enshrined in international instruments. Our review of academic articles, judicial inquiries and reports - reinforced by our case monitoring and individual advocacy - underscores the necessity for an inquiry or systemic review of the justice system?s response to Aboriginal girls in British Columbia. Justice for Girls has grave concerns regarding what we perceive to be the justice system?s all too often inadequate, inappropriate, and sometimes callous response. An inquiry would canvass strengths and weaknesses in the criminal justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls. By developing recommendations it would thereby provide a blueprint for representatives in the justice system to better serve and meet the needs of vulnerable Aboriginal girls. In the next section we enumerate some specific examples, illustrations and concerns about the criminal justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls. III. Systemic Issues Identified by Justice for Girls: Following are some specific examples and areas of concern regarding the justice system?s response to the endemic violence against Aboriginal girls in British Columbia. As mentioned in our introduction, these issues and concerns are drawn from our review of literature and case law, as well as our experiences advocating with and for Aboriginal girls and monitoring cases of violence against them. 1) Hate Motivated Crime - s. 718.2(a)(I) of the Criminal Code: The Criminal Code was amended to include sentencing principles which provide a guide for the judiciary to determine whether a convicted persons? sentence should be aggravated because their crime was motivated by hate, prejudice or bias. In particular, section 718.2(a)(i) states that the following should be taken into consideration when sentencing: Evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor. [emphasis added] Despite the fact that section s. 718.2(a)(i) specifically enumerates race, age and gender, case law (to date) does not reflect an advancement in the consideration of these factors in sentencing. We have observed in many of the cases we have monitored, that bias, prejudice, and/or hate appear to be strong motivators for the commission of violent crimes against Aboriginal girls. Unfortunately however, s. 718.2 (a)(i) has not been put forward as an aggravating factor in the sentencing of any of the male perpetrators convicted of violent crimes against Aboriginal girls. Alarmingly, this is also true in cases where perpetrators have assaulted multiple victims who are Aboriginal teenage girls. The marginalized status of Aboriginal girls and women is discussed in the report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. Chief Justice A.C. Hamilton and Chief Judge C.M. Sinclair (as they then were) draw a correlation between the contemporary image of Aboriginal women (read girls) and the violence perpetrated against them: The demeaning image of Aboriginal women is rampant in North American culture. School textbooks have portrayed Aboriginal woman as ill-treated at the hands of Aboriginal men, almost a ?beast of burden?. These images are more than symbolic - they have helped to facilitate the physical and sexual abuse of Aboriginal women in contemporary society. [emphasis added] Their observations were informed by community consultations during the Inquiry, as well as by the scholarly work of M?tis academic, Professor Emma LaRoque: The portrayal of the squaw is one of the most degraded, most despised and most dehumanized anywhere in the world Such grotesque dehumanization has rendered all Native women and girls vulnerable to gross physical, psychological and sexual violence I believe there is a direct relationship between these horrible racist/sexist stereotypes and violence against Native women and girls. [emphasis added] Similarly, a recent report on sexually exploited Aboriginal children and youth draws upon literature regarding Aboriginal women (read girls) and cites the following findings: In British Columbia, community consultations reveal that Aboriginal women [read girls] are disproportionately targets of assault. Racism appears to motivate these attacks; patterns of assaults in some areas suggest that victims are selected on the basis of race alone. [emphasis added] As well, the Canadian Panel on Violence Against Women, noted: Racism is a major contributing factor in the continuing violence, oppression and systemic abuse that confronts Aboriginal women in Canadian society today There are no available statistics on racially motivated assaults on Aboriginal women (read girls); however, recent cases demonstrate the magnitude of the problem. [emphasis added] We concur with the above commentators. It has also been our observation, in the cases we have monitored, that racism and sexism has motivated crimes against Aboriginal girls. Furthermore, Aboriginal girls are targeted by violent men because of their vulnerability including the vulnerability created by the non-response of the police and courts to violence against them. Included in this non-response is the failure of actors in the justice system to bring hate motivation forward in court. Legal scholars in the United States have thoroughly highlighted the epidemic of gender-based violence. In particular, they emphasize the importance of understanding and ensuring that there is an intersecting analysis of other enumerated grounds [such as those found in s. 718.2(a)(i) - i.e. race, gender, and age]: There is an important intersection between gender and the other typically enumerated bias categories that is not presently given adequate consideration The mere fact that a bias offender chooses rape as the criminal means to express his bigotry should not preclude bias crime categorization. Bias crimes should liberally allow for the possibility that multiple categories can be implicated at the same time, thereby recognizing the intersecting identities of some victims. These considerations must be at the forefront when the courts are addressing crimes of violence against Aboriginal girls. In our review of Hansards, former Minster of Justice Allan Rock provided clarity as to the rationale for the inclusion of s.718.2(a)(i) in the Criminal Code. He stated that the provision was to be seen as one aspect of sentencing and should not be confused with requiring a hate crime conviction. He noted that where it has been proven that the person committing the crime was motivated by hate, bias or prejudice that must be taken into account as an aggravating factor at sentencing. He also underscored that this provision reflects that when crimes are motivated by hate, bias or prejudice they affect entire groups and: It provides an opportunity for Parliament to make a statement that that kind of attack will not be tolerated and that we stand together in condemning hate motivated crime. The analysis put forward by the judiciary and academic commentators reinforces and mirrors our court observations - that violence against Aboriginal girls is overwhelmingly motivated by bias, hate, and/or prejudice. In light of the former Minister of Justice?s statement that hate will not be tolerated, we are disturbed that cases of violence against Aboriginal girls have not been viewed in light of their hate motivated bias. i) Role of Crown: It is our observation that Crown does not advance Section 718.2(a)(i), in cases of violence against Aboriginal girls, despite the Attorney General?s direction that: Crown Counsel?s role is to act on behalf of and in the public interest When the evidence establishes that there is a substantial likelihood of conviction, and that an offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental, or physical disability, sexual orientation, or any other similar factor, it is generally in the public interest to vigorously prosecute the offence. It is also in the public interest to seek to have the court take into consideration that motive as an aggravating factor in the sentencing of the accused. [emphasis added] Justice for Girls is concerned that this important sentencing principle is not used by Crown in cases of violence against Aboriginal girls. ii) Role of Police: The Vancouver Police have a system in place to identify reports of crimes which have overtones of bias. Reports involve bias on the basis of gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. A review of the reports for 1995 in which women were the victims of bias showed that the majority were racial in origin and involved threats of, or actual violence, racial slurs or mischief. [emphasis added] Police are at the front-line of the criminal justice system. With the recent retirements of many municipal police officers, it is imperative that younger officers are adequately trained to identify and collate whether crimes are motivated by hate, bias, or prejudice. The former Hate Crime Team made significant advancements in this area. Since then, however, a new system of reporting has been implemented and thus training initiatives must play ?catch up? to ensure that officers know how to report whether there are elements of hate, bias or prejudice in the commission of an offence. Both existing officers, and recruits, should receive training at the Justice Institute or during RCMP training, as well as in-service training. At a broader theoretical level this training should provide a basic education in how social inequality leads to and is the context for violence against women and girls. Police training must also include education about how racism and sexism affects and specifically manifests in crimes against women and girls. A significant issue, identified by the former Hate Crime Team, is that CPIC does not identify hate crime convictions. To our knowledge, this concern has not been remedied, and must be: The fact that hate crime convictions are not identifiable on an offender?s criminal record on the Canadian Police Information System (?CPIC?) is of specific concern Thus, if the offender is subsequently sentenced for a further hate crime in another jurisdiction, unless the police, Crown Counsel, or court are aware that a previous sentence was imposed for a hate crime, this specific information would not be available for sentencing. iii) Case examples: Justice for Girls is concerned that s.718.2(a)(i) was not advanced in cases where we observed that the section seemed especially applicable. For example, in the sentencing of Judge Ramsay, we note that in the facts (as presented by the media), Ramsay referred to the girls as ?worthless? and as ?whores?. All of the victims were under 16 (age), Aboriginal (race), and girls (gender). It is certainly arguable that this pattern indicates the assaults were motivated by bias based on gender, and/or race and/or age; yet the Crown did not advance this argument at sentencing. In addition, Justice for Girls monitored the case against Martin Tremblay, a sex offender who was convicted on 5 charges of sexual assault for raping and videotaping 5 Aboriginal girls who were 13-15 years of age. Tremblay was sentenced to 3 years in custody, and 18 months probation. The Crown did not raise hate, bias, or prejudice as motivating factors pursuant to s. 718.2(a)(i), despite the fact that the victims were all young, Aboriginal, and girls. We are disappointed with the sentence but not surprised by it because the courts rarely treat violence against Aboriginal teenage girls seriously. What is shocking, however, is the degree of racism and sexism that is tolerated in the defence of men who commit sexual offences against Aboriginal girls. iv) Summary: Just as with all bias offenders, the victim?s perceived second-class status legitimates the violence. By recognizing the group-based animosity underlying these victimizations, we not only decry the violence but also take the first step to confronting the underlying attitude that allows the violence to occur. Justice for Girls acknowledges that the judiciary?s application of s. 718.2(a)(i) has not been uniform to date and that there are some significant challenges for the Crown in advancing proof of hate, bias, or prejudice as motivators for criminal acts. Regardless, we believe that it is imperative for Crown to advance this sentencing principle. As articulated by former Minister of Justice Allan Rock, these are crimes not only against individuals but are affronts to marginalized groups and Canadian society - most notably Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal girls suffer disproportionately from violent crimes. Our experience, coupled with the literature reviewed (in particular the Manitoba Aboriginal Justice Inquiry), clearly shows that much of this violence is perpetrated because of racism and sexism. Chief Justice Hamilton and Chief Judge Murray Sinclair found this to be the case in the tragic murder of Helen Betty Osbourne, who was only 19 when she was murdered. Young women and girls are especially vulnerable because of their age. Women [read girls] in our society live under a constant threat of violence. The death of Betty Osbourne was a brutal expression of that violence. She fell victim to vicious stereotypes born of ignorance and aggression when she was picked up by four drunken men looking for sex. Her attackers seemed to be operating on the assumption that Aboriginal women were promiscuous and open to enticement through alcohol or violence. It is evident that the men who abducted Osbourne believed that young Aboriginal women [read girls] were objects with no human value beyond sexual gratification There is one fundamental fact: her murder was a racist and sexist act. Betty Osbourne would be alive today had she not been an Aboriginal woman [read girl]. (emphasis added) The literature canvassed supports our observations, and supports the utmost importance of looking at the intersection of bias and hate based on race, gender, and age when speaking to sentence in these cases. 2) R. v. Ramsay: The case against former provincial court judge Ramsay highlighted for Justice for Girls some additional concerns pertaining to the justice system. We have two further issues to canvass with you: i) Removal from Bench? As set out in our correspondence to the previous Attorney General Hon. Geoff Plant regarding this issue, the RCMP began their investigation into Judge Ramsay?s assaults after a complaint in August, 1999. Judge Ramsey was not removed from his duties on the Bench until the summer of 2002. According to media accounts, the crimes committed by Ramsay continued up until 2001; three years after the investigation began. Justice for Girls, and the public at large, must be advised as to why it took so long to remove Judge Ramsay from his public responsibilities on the Bench. ii) Review of Judge Ramsay?s Court Decisions: As set out in our earlier correspondence with the Ministry of Attorney General, Hon. Geoff Plant was quoted in the Prince George Citizen stating that it ?might be necessary? to review Judge Ramsay?s decisions to determine whether the justice system was compromised. We believe that it is essential that a review occur. We have been advised by sources in Prince George that concern has been raised regarding Judge Ramsay?s deliberations, particularly in cases held in remote Aboriginal communities which involved sexual abuse and violence against Aboriginal girls. While our knowledge is based on hearsay, it raises the spectre of impropriety and questions about the proper administration of justice. We ask that an independent fact-finder be appointed to investigate and conduct a critical race, gender, and legal analysis of Ramsay?s decisions. 3) Justice System Despite the fact that there is such horrific and wide-spread violence committed against Aboriginal girls, there has been never been a systemic review/inquiry or report on the justice systems? response to violence against Aboriginal girls in B.C. (or elsewhere). In this document, we have drawn from literature that speaks to the experience of Aboriginal women and children (since there is very little literature on the experiences of Aboriginal teenage girls) as well as our knowledge and experience working with Aboriginal girls. i) Crown: One of the most stressful circumstances for any victim witness is having to face the accused during the trial process. Through the work of support people and attentive justice system workers, this stress can be lessened by ensuring, for example, the child victim witness is not left unaccompanied in the presence of the accused. Make every effort not to have the child witness in the same waiting room as the accused. Consider an application for use of the screen in the courtroom in order to shield the child from having to look at the accused. It is Justice for Girls? observation that screens and other protective measures for child witnesses (pursuant to section 486 of the Criminal Code) are rarely, if ever, requested by Crown or ordered by the judiciary. In our advocacy work, we have often been told by Crown that the teenage girl ?did not ask for a screen?. We believe it is imperative that Crown counsel becomes proactive in utilizing s.486 measures. As noted by consultant Andy Wachtel, in his report on court design: The SCREEN is the most widely used of these alternate approaches. Even so, its use is very uneven, depending on the views of sitting judges, the attitudes and experiences of particular Crown counsel, and the availability and suitability of equipment. [emphasis added] While advocating for the use of section 486 measures in cases of violence against homeless teenage girls (many of whom are Aboriginal), Justice for Girls has been advised by Crown counsel that these measures are meant for ?children?. It would seem that some Crown counsel do not consider these particularly vulnerable persons to be children, and this appears to be especially so if the victim has been street-involved. We recommend that justice personnel be educated regarding the trauma for young women who are testifying in cases of violence against them especially when they are dealing with the compounding effects of repeated victimization due to extreme poverty (homelessness). For those who are most marginalized, Aboriginal girls, this experience is arguably even more traumatic. It is the hope of Justice for Girls, that education of the Judiciary, Crown and others in the justice system would result in an increased acceptance and use of less intrusive measures in court; and thus increased access to justice for Aboriginal teenage girls. Justice for Girls believes that protective procedures such as removing girls from the courtroom to testify should be done proactively in every case that involves sexual violence against teenage girls and especially against severely marginalized teenage girls. Crown counsel must proactively inform young women about their option to request protective procedures and must offer a full range of protective measures, including providing testimony outside of the courtroom. It has been our observation that the most common protective procedure is to employ a screen. Screens principally serve as a symbolic rather than actual barrier between young women and accused. Young women must have the opportunity to testify outside of the courtroom. ii) Police: It is the perception of the Aboriginal community that law enforcement agencies do not adequately respond to violent crimes against Aboriginal girls. This perception is articulated in many reports and inquiries, and is substantiated by our observations. For example, in Northern British Columbia: The entire community of Prince George - especially the women - is on edge, wondering what happened to seven women [five were teenage girls] who disappeared along Highway 16, now dubbed the ?Highway of Tears?. All but one of the victims is Aboriginal. Interestingly, the only case that prompted enthusiastic police investigation, assisted by significant media coverage, was the disappearance of Nicole Hoare, a non-Native woman Native people in the area believe the same kind of efforts should be directed at finding the other victims. In our monitoring of R. v. Kim, a man who was convicted on 27 counts of violent offences against nine teenage girls, a number of serious concerns were raised regarding police treatment of Frank Kim?s victims. These girls ranged in age from 12-15 years old and six of the nine victims were Aboriginal girls. We are concerned about the following police actions/inactions, that we became aware of during our monitoring of Kim?s trial and subsequent dangerous offender hearing: Kim was pulled over with a group of teenage girls in his car and the police failed to question him about this suspicious situation. Instead they focused on a seatbelt infraction. The police failed to treat Kim as suspicious when one of his victims tried to escape from Kim by taking his car. Despite the fact that there was an obvious desire of this Aboriginal young woman to get away from Kim, the police responded to her as a criminal. A young woman who was raped by Kim reported the rape to police and yet the police failed to question Kim even though the young woman told police his identity and address. The police released a 12-year old Aboriginal girl, a victim of Frank Kim, onto the street in the early hours of the morning after interrogating her about Kim?s abuse. She hitchhiked back to Vancouver from Richmond. In our work as advocates, we have been alerted to situations where Aboriginal girls have been disbelieved, treated abusively, or criminalized by the police in response to their reports of male violence. Their particular life circumstances, age, race, and gender leave them especially vulnerable to abuse. Police must be trained to respond to violence against girls pursuant to the values as set out in their code of conduct. Moreover, the actions of the police in the case R. v. Kim must be examined as we believe the police, had they acted earlier and without bias, may have prevented a number of attacks on young women. iii) Bail Conditions: men awaiting trial for violence against girls have no minimum restrictions placed on them. We have seen cases in which men charged with sexual assault of girls have not even had no contact with children conditions on their bail orders. First and foremost we believe that men who have criminal histories of violence against women and girls should be removed from the community when they are charged with subsequent similar offences. This is especially critical when the victims are extremely marginalized and the violence is severe. We question why Robert Raymond Dezwaan, for example, was released on bail after being charged with sexual assault with a weapon and confinement when he had been convicted of a similar crime of violence against a woman, and had a number of other charges related to violence against women. While on bail for the crimes described above Dezwaan murdered a 16 year old Aboriginal girl, Cherish Oppenheim. When Mr. Dezwaan was stopped by the RCMP just hours before he murdered Cherish Oppenheim, he was found to have both duct tape and a knife (8-10? blade ?kitchen knife?) in his van. At the time Mr. Dezwaan was under bail conditions for a recent sexual assault in which he used duct tape and a knife. His conditions included the following: Reside at 1265 Rutland Road, North, in Kelowna; Prohibited from having in his possession any weapons as that phrase is defined by Section 515. Despite his possession of a knife and duct tape, and despite his reside condition (he told the police he was moving, a contravention of reside condition), Mr. Dezwaan was not arrested for breaching his bail. Constable Olsen, who pulled Mr. Dezwaan over the evening of Ms. Oppenheim?s murder, stated at the preliminary inquiry that he knew Mr. Dezwaan was under conditions ?and not to be in possession of explosives, ammunition, restricted weapons, prohibited weapons?. He further clarified that he was told by Telecommunications that there was nothing in the conditions regarding a knife and that the conditions mostly had to do with prohibited weapons, restricted weapons and explosives. This interpretation would appear to be correct as the knife described would not fall within the definition of ?weapon? as enumerated in s. 515(4.1)(d): firearm, a cross-bow, a prohibited weapon, a restricted weapon, a prohibited device, ammunition, prohibited ammunition or an explosive substance. At Dezwaan?s prior bail hearing, Crown counsel had incorrectly asked for ?a weapons prohibition pursuant to section 514?. If they had been more specific, regarding prohibition against a knife, a prohibition pursuant to section 515(4.2)(b) could have been requested and knives (of all descriptions) specifically prohibited. Mr. Dezwaan was sentenced on February 19, 2003 to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 15 years. He was also given a lifetime prohibition against having firearms pursuant to section 109 of the Criminal Code. His sentence makes no reference to a prohibition against knives. Also disturbing is the fact that the Crown, subsequent to Dezwaan?s sentencing for the murder of Cherish Oppenheim, stayed unrelated charges of sexual assault and confinement. We pursued this matter with Crown but were denied explanation. We ask that you review this decision by Crown. 4) Support & Advocacy for Aboriginal Girls: The victimization of Aboriginal women has not only manifested in their abuse, but also in the manner in which Aboriginal female victims are treated. Women victims often suffer unsympathetic treatment from those who should be there to help. Report after report has found that many Aboriginal women [read girls] believe that they experience racism in accessing victim services and that services are inadequate to meet their specific needs. It has been our observation that on occasion girls are assigned victim services workers but have not met them prior to the day of the trial or preliminary hearing. In addition, we have observed cases in which the Crown has not informed young women what support is available to them. In a report prepared for the Victim Services Division of British Columbia, a researcher found that victims were perceived by the justice system as ?deserving? or ?undeserving?. She noted that women from diverse groups, especially First Nations women [read girls] and women of color were often relegated to the ?undeserving? category: Women of colour and Aboriginal women [read girls] don?t get the special care and attention that they need because they are more frequently cycled through the system. It is just treated as routine. An Attorney-General?s consultative report with Aboriginal victims provides a concise summary of the varying concerns that Aboriginal women [read girls] have experienced with the justice system: Racism; Poor lines of communication between justice system personnel and Aboriginal women; The justice systems inability to respond to the needs of Aboriginal people with fetal alcohol syndrome/fetal alcohol effects; Limited understanding of how the justice system works; Lack of information and support for aboriginal sexual assault victims; Fear. In addition, the authors made a recommendation that is mirrored in numerous other reports: Aboriginal women identified the need for inclusion in policy and research. Specifically, Aboriginal women need to be included in all levels of intersectoral and interministerial policy making, as well as long-term research in the area of violence against Aboriginal women [read girls]. A recent report, prepared by the Pacific Association of First Nations Women et al, captures sentiments and observations shared by Justice for Girls. Their report underscores that the recommendations provided in many, many, government reports need to be implemented as soon as possible on behalf of Aboriginal women and girls: The PAFNW, BCW?s and BCASVACP, along with many Aboriginal and women?s organizations and government departments have articulated concerns regarding the extent and magnitude of violence against Aboriginal women, the lack of adequate responses to the violence, and the gaps in related services, programs and policies, numerous times over the years. A number of provincial and federal studies have documented these concerns and made recommendations for ensuring that Aboriginal women [read girls] have access to services and opportunities for protection from violence Despite this little progress has been realized. The recent closures of government offices and reductions to anti-violence, health and related social services in BC compound the urgency of these concerns. [emphasis added] In June of this year, the Saskatchewan Commission on First Nations and M?tis Peoples and Justice Reform released their report and recommended that: Rec. 3.12: This Commission recommends that the governments of Canada and Saskatchewan expand victim services in the province. The report reiterates the findings of many earlier reports, namely that more services are required to attend to the specific cultural needs of Aboriginal girls and women. Justice for Girls believes that Aboriginal girls must have access to support and advocacy in order to ?access justice? in cases of male violence. It is critical that advocacy and support initiatives are lead by Aboriginal women?s groups. Aboriginal Women?s organizations must be supported and funded by the Ministry of Attorney General to define and provide such services to teenage girls. 5) International Rights: American legal scholar Penelope Andrews argues that the epidemic violence, to which Aboriginal women [read girls] in Australia are subjected, is a violation of their human rights as enshrined in international instruments. In particular she argues that the epidemic of violence violates rights, as set out in the Convention to End the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). In Canada there were two reports submitted in 2003, to the United Nations CEDAW Committee: one from the B.C. CEDAW Group, and one from the Canadian Feminist Alliance for International Action. Both reports outlined concerns regarding the abuse, discrimination and violence experienced by Aboriginal women [read girls]. In response to concerns raised by various NGO?s, the United Nations, CEDAW (on the occasion of their 5th reporting on Canada) singled out British Columbia, and made the following recommendations: The Committee is concerned about a number of recent changes in British Columbia which have a disproportionately negative impact on women, in particular Aboriginal women [read girls]. The Committee, through the State party, urges the government of British Columbia to analyze its recent legal and other measures as to their negative impact on women [read girls] and to amend the measures, where necessary. [emphasis added] Justice for Girls urges the provincial government to heed the United Nations ? recommendations and conduct a systemic review of the justice system and its response to Aboriginal girls who have experienced violence, thereby honouring their human rights as enshrined in international instruments. Amnesty International, in Stolen Sisters, provides a comprehensive set of recommendations that should be reviewed and implemented by both Canada and the province. 6) Inquiry/Systemic Review: There are several notorious examples of the justice system failing Aboriginal women [read girls] who have been victims. Specific study of Aboriginal women in the criminal justice system is therefore called for. Over 10 years ago, a report prepared for the then Minister of Justice, Honourable Kim Campbell, recommended a specific study into Aboriginal women [read girls] and the criminal justice system. The example referenced in the above quote related to the murder of Helen Betty Osbourne, a young Aboriginal woman who was murdered in Manitoba. We echo this recommendation, and in light of the cases that we have monitored - R. v. Kim, R v. Tremblay, R v. Dezwaan, R. v. Punn, and R. v. Ramsay- we urge you to initiate a comprehensive inquiry/review of these specific cases and the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls in British Columbia more generally. IV. Recommendations: Systemic Review: Attorney General: commission an inquiry into, or engage an independent systemic review of, the justice system?s response to violence against Aboriginal girls in British Columbia. As part of the above inquiry, conduct an in-depth review of R. V. Dezwaan, R. V. Ramsay, R. V. Tremblay, R. V. Kim, R. V. Punn, and the police investigation of the Highway 16 murders/missing young women. Following are Justice for Girls preliminary recommendations and points for discussion as part of a systemic review: Section 718.2(a)(I): Education of justice personnel (Crown, judiciary, police services, etc.) regarding the background and rationale for s. 718.2(a)(i), and the importance of this sentencing principle as it relates to the discrimination, racism and sexism experienced by Aboriginal girls. Anti-racist education regarding Aboriginal peoples and, in particular, how discrimination facilitates violence against Aboriginal girls; CPIC: include whether the offence was a hate-motivated crime. Police training: ensure training is provided at the Justice Institute or RCMP training for recruits, and in-service training for officers, on how to report hate, bias or prejudice as elements of an offence. Crown: encourage advancement of s. 718.2(a)(i) principles at trial. Conduct survey of cases of violence against Aboriginal girls - as to whether s. 718.2(a)(i) was advanced - if not, why not. R. v. Ramsay: Review of Ramsay?s court decisions especially as they relate to violence against, and abuse of, Aboriginal girls. Provide explanation for delay in removing Ramsay from his public judicial functions. Justice System: Review implementation of recommendations made in the Attorney General?s report on Working with Aboriginal Child Victim Witnesses; Review and provide justice system personnel (Crown, Police, Judiciary, etc.) with training on the use of protective procedures pursuant to s. 486 of the Criminal Code; Provide training for all justice system personnel regarding the impact of violence, poverty, and racism in the lives of teenage Aboriginal girls; provide anti-racist education and cultural sensitivity training to justice system personnel; Police Services: greater sensitivity and attention to investigations of violent crimes against Aboriginal girls; Training regarding their responsibilities pursuant to section 3 (b) of the Code of Professional Conduct Regulation. Encourage more serious, crime specific and comprehensive bail and probation conditions for men facing charges of violence against Aboriginal girls. Create a policy or recommendation to the judiciary to restrict men with criminal histories of violence against women and/or children from accessing bail. Develop policy to proactively employ protective procedures in all cases involving sexual violence against Aboriginal girls Support & Advocacy for Aboriginal Girls: Provide training for all justice system personnel about the traumatic impact of male violence in the lives of Aboriginal girls. This training must address racism as the context for many crimes of violence against Aboriginal girls. Cross-cultural and sensitivity training must be a fundamental component of this training; Provide funding to Aboriginal women?s groups to develop and sustain support and advocacy programs for Aboriginal girls who have been victims of male violence. International: Review United Nations CEDAW recommendations made to the British Columbia government as they relate to services for Aboriginal girls who have been the victims of male violence. V. Conclusion: Given the level of male violence that young women have faced and their marginalization through poverty, systemic racism, and other forms of oppression, programs and services for girls must respond to the compounding effects of multiple forms of oppression and repeated exposure to violence. Justice for Girls looks forward to an opportunity to discuss our concerns and recommendations with you. As set out in this brief, we view it as absolutely essential that an independent systemic review or inquiry be conducted into the justice system?s response to our society?s most vulnerable young women - Aboriginal girls. This was recommended to the former Minister of Justice Kim Campbell over 10 years ago and the matter remains urgent. We also hope that you will invite Aboriginal women?s organizations, front-line women?s anti-violence organizations and Aboriginal legal scholars to be at the forefront of defining the terms and priorities of such an inquiry. VI. Bibliography: K. 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Mack, ?An Australian Perspective on Feminism, Race, and Evidence? (1999) 28 Southwestern University Law Review 367. C. MacMillan, M. Claridge, and R. McKenna, ?Criminal Proceedings as a Response to Hate: The British Columbia Experience? (2002) 15-45 Criminal Law Quarterly 419. Manitoba, Public Inquiry into the Administration of Aboriginal Justice and Aboriginal Peoples, Report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba: The Justice System and Aboriginal Peoples, Vol. 1 (Winnipeg, Manitoba: Queens Printer, 1991). Commissioners: Associate Chief Judge A.C. Hamilton and Associate Chief Judge C.M. Sinclair. McCreary Center Society, Raven?s Children: Aboriginal Youth Health in B.C. (2000). Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, Hansard Debates: Bill C-41 - An Act to Amend the Criminal Code, (June 15, 1995). Native Women?s Association of Canada. Sisters in Spirit Campaign. http://www.sistersinspirit.ca/engremember.htm Pacific Association of First Nations Women, B.C. Women?s Hospital & Health Centre, B.C. Association of Specialized Victim Assistance and Counseling Programs, The ?Start of Something Powerful?: Strategizing for Safer Communities for B.C. Aboriginal Women (October, 2003). M. Russell, Measures of Empowerment: for Women Who are Victims of Violence and Who Use the Justice System (December, 2001). A report prepared for Victim Services Division, B.C. Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General. Saskatchewan, Commission on First Nations and M?tis Peoples and Justice Reform, Legacy of Hope: An Agenda for Action, Vol. 1 (June 21, 2004). Save the Children (Canada), Sacred Lives: Canadian Aboriginal Children and Youth Speak Out About Sexual Exploitation (2001). United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, Twenty-Eighth Session, 13-31-January 2003. CEDAW/C/2003/I/CRP.3/Add.5/Rev.1. S. Bennett Weisburd, B. Levin, ??On the Basis of Sex?: Recognizing Gender-Based Bias Crimes? Spring (1994) Stanford Law and Policy Review 21. Web-Sites: Justice for Girls: http://www.justiceforgirls.org Highway 16: http://www.missingnativewomen.ca/natiev3.html http://www.missingpeople.net/vanished-somewhere_along_the_highway_of_tears Newspaper Articles: J. Armstrong, ?Former B.C. judge admits to sexual assaults against 4 teen girls?, National Post, May 4, 2004. P. Barnsley, ?Disinterested authorities a big part of the problem: Aboriginal women at risk? Windspeaker, Dec. 2002, 2:8 at 3. K. Kwan, ?Judge probe still open, police say? Prince George Citizen, May 6, 2004. K. Kwan, ?Judges rulings could face review? Prince George Citizen, May 5, 2004. L. Robinson, ?The women we?ve failed? Globe & Mail, June 24, 2004. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From bicdance at aol.com Wed Oct 12 09:09:15 2005 From: bicdance at aol.com (Fountainhead Tanz Theatre/Black International Cinema/The Collegium - Forum & Television Program Berlin/Cultural Zephyr e.V.) Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 17:09:15 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [m2c] Fountainhead e-Letter, Berlin/Germany, October 2005 Message-ID: <18047001.1129129755946.JavaMail.root@p15173073> FOUNTAINHEAD? TANZ THEATRE e ? LETTER, Berlin/Germany October 2005 __________________________________________________________________ FOUNTAINHEAD? TANZ THEATRE INSPIRATION - CREATION - FULFILLMENT PERSONIFIED INSPIRATION - KREATION - ERF?LLUNG PERSONIFIZIERT __________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents/Inhalt __________________________________________________________________ 1. PART XLII Grownupism! 1 Day, When I Grow Up! Erwachsensein! Eines Tages, Wenn Ich Erwachsen Werde! __________________________________________________________________ 2. THE COLLEGIUM FORUM & TELEVISION PROGRAM LIVE - OCTOBER 16, 2005, BERLIN Berlin/Magdeburg/Wolfsburg __________________________________________________________________ 3. 10TH ANNIVERSARY...10TH ANNIVERSARY...10TH ANNIVERSARY THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE SPECIAL EDITION NOVEMBER 20, 2005 8-10 pm / 20-22 Uhr __________________________________________________________________ 4. XXI. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA 2006 ?Meet Me In St. Louis? in cooperation with UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, ST. LOUIS, MO. CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES April 19 - 22 UNESCO/PARIS April 27 - 30 BERLIN May 4 - 7 in association with CLASSIC IN BLACK ENTRY FORM INFORMATION http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC06/HTML/bic06_frameset.htm __________________________________________________________________ 5. ODE TO KATRINA Anthony Earl Baggette __________________________________________________________________ 6. XX. Black International Cinema Berlin 2005 FASHION SHOW & FESTIVAL IMPRESSIONS PHOTOGRAPHS/FOTOGRAFIEN: http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC05/XX.BIC2005/HTML/bic05_frameset.htm __________________________________________________________________ http://members.aol.com/bicdance www.fountainhead-tanz-theatre.de www.black-international-cinema.com Please send replies to / Bitte senden Sie Antworten an bicdance at aol.com __________________________________________________________________ 1. PART XLII Grownupism! 1 Day, When I Grow Up! So, I wuz sittin' an' stinkin' 'bout my wounded arm an' watery brain. It's not like I had a car accident or sumthin', but it's on accounta the dragon-teecher an' her nite mare ideas. Man, this woman alwayz has ideas, for other peeple to work on day in, day out! She's alwayz claimin' she's educatin' us victim students an' wut's even wurse my perents agree! But sumtimes you jes can't trust perents on this kinda subject, 'course teechers an' perents cum from the same seed! A work all the time, sweat seed! So, my opinion is, we kidz culd still learn sumthin' or other, without so much darn readin' an' writin' an' homework! I have to stay up at nite till almos' 1 in the mornin' tryin' to finish all the drudgery stuff me an' my pardnurs are forced to do, in the name of education! Man, what a drag! Sum of my pardnurs say, it's not gonna make much difference wut we learn, 'cause there's no jobs to be had anyway! Unless you call slavin' at food stands an' other stuff like that, jobs?! 'Course my perents say: "No matter what the future brings, you will have your education and no one can take that away from you!" O yeah, maybe so an' then agin, maybe no!? So, the dragon-teecher has lotsa water stories for us to write 'bout. Her favorite water story is named Katrina. Man, that's a nice name for such a yukky story! I gotta admit, seein' those peeple on roofs an' streets an' great big halls for days an' days on T.V., wuz hart to look at! Grandma sez, "How can this happen in the richest and one of the most developed countries in the world? Something is wrong, somewhere?" The dragon sed, "Did you notice that almost all the people looked alike?" An' than she asks us to explain, on paper of course, how this culd happen to so many of the same peeple? Oh, oh, when it cums to paper writin', I'm off to grandma an' papa for sum R an' R, research an' releef! So, I waited till after a mama delicious dinner, to git sum answers for my homework! Maybe I shuld say, our homework? 'Cause I write, an' grandma an' papa cum up with the answers! I'm a smart kid, I am, I am! Papa an' grandma sed, "Son, you should read the history of the water people or at least look on the internet for an overview of the folks you are writing about and then you will find some answers, because what we and the world saw, was the result of the historical approach by the USA to the people you saw and Katrina brought all this treatment to light through the light of television and we saw the results which had been hidden from view for so long!" Wow! So, I ran to my room an' started harrasin' the internet! Next day, I red my paper in class an' the dragon-teecher sed, "Thank you young man for your presentation of some of the often hidden and misunderstood dynamics of American and world history." Man, I didn't know I had done all that! But if the dragon is pleased, than I know my perents will be pleased an' I can breeth easy for another day or two or three! Cool man cool! All this brainwork is tirin', so I think I'll go to sleep an' git ready for another day of doin' this an' that an' wutever? G'nite, I luv you, G'nite! Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre Copyright, October 2005 PART XLII Erwachsensein! Eines Tages, wenn ich erwachsen werde! Also, ich war am Sitz'n und Stink'n ?ba mein' schmerzenden Arm und mein schwammiges Gehirn. Nich' dass ich 'n Autounfall hatte oder sowas, sondern das geht auf das Konto der Drachenlehrerin und ihre Albtraumideen. Mann, diese Frau hat st?ndig Einf?lle, and're Leute arbeit'n zu lass'n, tagein und tagaus! Sie behauptet imma, sie w?rde uns Sch?leropfer unterricht'n, und was noch schlimmer is', meine Eltern sind damit einverstand'n! Aber manchma' kannst du Eltern bei diesem Thema einfach nich' trau'n, 't?rlich komm' Lehrer und Eltern aussem gleichen Samenkorn! Einem Arbeite-die-ganze-Zeit-, Anstrengung-Samenkorn! Also meine Meinung is', dass wir Kids auch noch irgendwie oder was and'res lern' k?nn', ohne so viel bl?des Les'n und Schreib'n und Hausaufgaben! Ich muss in der Nacht fast bis 1.00 Uhr morgens aufbleib'n, um zu vasuch'n, diesen ganzen Kerkerkram zu erledig'n, zu dem ich und meine Kumpels gezwung'n werd'n, im Namen der Ausbildung! Mann, was 'ne Qu?lerei! 'N paar meiner Kumpels sag'n, es macht kein' Unterschied, was wir lern', weil's da sowieso keine Jobs zu hol'n gibt! Es sei denn, du nennst die Schinderei in Imbissbuden und ?hnliches Zeugs Jobs?! 'T?rlich sag'n meine Eltern: ?Egal, was die Zukunft bringt, du wirst eine Ausbildung haben, und die kann dir niemand nehmen!? Na klar, vielleicht ja und dann wieder vielleicht auch nich'!? Also die Drachenlehrerin hat 'ne Menge Wassergeschichten f?r uns, um dr?ba zu schreib'n. Ihre Lieblingswassergeschichte hei?t Katrina. Mann das is' 'n sch?ner Name f?r so 'ne scheu?liche Geschichte! Ich muss zugeb'n, diese Menschen auf D?chern und Stra?en und in gro?en Hallen Tag f?r Tag im Fernsehen zu seh'n, war nich' leicht zu ertrag'n! Oma sagt: ?Wie kann das im reichsten Land und einem der h?chst entwickelten L?nder der Welt geschehen? Irgendetwas stimmt nicht, irgendwo?? Der Drachen sagte: ?Ist euch aufgefallen, dass fast alle der Menschen ?hnlich aussahen?? Und dann wollte sie von uns, dass wir erkl?r'n, schriftlich nat?rlich, wie das so vielen gleichen Menschen passier'n konnte? Oh, oh, wenn's ums Aufsatzschreib'n geht, dann geht's ab zu Oma und Papa f?r'n bi?chen ?R? und ?R?, Recherche und Rettung! Also hab' ich bis nach Mamas leckerem Abendessen gewartet, um 'n paar Antworten f?r meine Hausaufgaben zu bekomm'! Vielleicht sollte ich sag'n unsere Hausaufgaben? Weil ich schreib' und Oma und Papa liefern die Antworten! Ich bin ein schlaues Kerlchen, bin ich, bin ich! Papa und Oma sagt'n: ?Sohn, du solltest die Geschichte der vom Wasser betroffenen Menschen lesen oder wenigstens im Internet nachsehen, um einen ?berblick ?ber die Leute zu bekommen, ?ber die du schreibst, und dann bekommst du ein paar Antworten, weil das, was wir und die Welt gesehen haben, das Resultat aus der Geschichte ist, die den Umgang der USA mit den Menschen wiedergibt, die du gesehen hast, und Katrina hat diese Umgehensweise durch das Fernsehen ans Licht gebracht und wir haben das Resultat gesehen, das dem Blick verborgen geblieben ist f?r so lange Zeit!? Wow! Also bin ich in mein Zimmer gerannt und durch's Internet gejagt! Am n?chsten Tag hab' ich mein' Aufsatz in der Klasse vorgeles'n und die Drachenlehrerin sagte: ?Danke, junger Mann, f?r deine Pr?sentation ?ber oft verborgene und missverstandene Vorg?nge der amerikanischen und der Weltgeschichte.? Mann, ich hatte keine Ahnung, dass ich das alles gemacht hab'! Aber wenn der Drachen zufrieden is', dann wei? ich, dass meine Eltern auch zufrieden sein werd'n, und ich kann erst ma' Luft hol'n f?r einen Tag oder zwei oder drei! Coole Sache das! Diese ganze Hirnarbeit macht m?de, also denk' ich, ich werd' schlaf'n geh'n und mich fit mach'n f?r den n?chsten Tag, um dies oder das oder was auch immer zu tun? 'Nacht, hab' euch lieb, 'Nacht! Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre Copyright, Oktober 2005 __________________________________________________________________ 2. THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE UPCOMING EDITION: OCTOBER 16, 2005 9-10 pm / 21-22 Uhr CINEMA "Many Hopes, No Fears" Mona Agbaje / Swaziland "Minister Farrakhan Speaks" ARTS CALENDAR/STATE OF AFFAIRS Osborne Zachary Sykes Jr. & Lady Victoria Tishanska Musicians Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq / Musician & Anthony Earl Baggette / Poet __________________________________________________________________ 3. 10TH ANNIVERSARY...10TH ANNIVERSARY...10TH ANNIVERSARY THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE SPECIAL EDITION NOVEMBER 20, 2005 8-10 pm / 20-22 Uhr GUESTS: J?rgen Linke / Director, Offener Kanal Berlin Peter Unsicker & Claudia Croon / (W)ALL-STREET GALLERY, Berlin Otu Tetteh / Filmmaker, Berlin Amelia Ray / Musician, USA Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq / Musician, Berlin Anthony Earl Baggette / Poet, Berlin Harry Louiserre / Managing Director, Classic In Black, Berlin and additional guests __________________________________________________________________ THE COLLEGIUM FORUM & TELEVISION PROGRAM Berlin/ Magdeburg/Wolfsburg and other cosmopolitan cities und andere kosmopolitische St?dte produced & directed by/produziert und geleitet von Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre/Black International Cinema/ Cultural Zephyr e.V. BERLIN Every Sunday jeden Sonntag 9.00 - 10.00 pm 21.00 - 22.00 Uhr Offener Kanal Berlin Voltastr. 5 13355 Berlin-Wedding presenting / pr?sentiert wird Cinema / Discussion / Arts Calendar Filme / Diskussion / Kunstkalender for program information, please contact: Programminformationen bitte unter: 0049 (0)30-782 16 21 0049 (0)30-75 46 09 46 __________________________________________________________________ THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE THE COLLEGIUM 2005: November 20 December 18 at 9.00 p.m. / 21.00 Uhr __________________________________________________________________ 4. XXI. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA 2006 ?Meet Me In St. Louis? in cooperation with UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI, ST. LOUIS, MO. CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES April 19 - 22 UNESCO/PARIS April 27 - 30 BERLIN May 4 - 7 in association with CLASSIC IN BLACK ENTRY FORM INFORMATION http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC06/HTML/bic06_frameset.htm __________________________________________________________________ 5. Ode To Katrina What would Fredrick Douglas have to say about it, For he has seen Black folks fenced in. Would Chrispus Attucks go for it, put up with it, I don?t think so! Harriet Tubman would surely start searchin? for another place to bury the dead in a respectful manner and not left floatin? face down in The Muddy Mississippi flood waters. All Sojourner Truth could do is turn her pained face to the heavens and moan, please don?t tell me ?cause I?m Black, that?s the reason why!? The Buffalo soldiers would turn in their uniforms and ride off to the hills. It would make even Jesus fall on his knees and weep. Wake Nat Turner from his restless sleep. Couldn?t you see Louis Armstrong walkin? out of St. James Infirmary? Where he had found his loved one stretched out on a long white table, then walk out into the streets and blow a blues that would make the full moon break down and cry. W.E.B. Du Bois couldn?t do nothin? but shake his head and say, tricked ya?ll again into believin? a lie. Marcus Garvey standin? on the deck of his Black Star Line screamin?, if them Black Folks had of been white folks, help would have been there at first light. I told ya?ll to depend on yourself, but no ya?ll won?t listen. Cause when it?s Black folks dyin? they always a day late and a dollar short. Dafur, Ruanda, Burundi, Sudan, Gambia, and New Orleans. Caught ya?ll hangin? out at the wrong place at the wrong time. Down in New Orleans now you ain?t got no means. John Coltrane?s horn would scream, where is A Love Supreme? The Last Poets askin?, will the real Black people please stand up ?cause This is Madness and all the other poets includin? James Weldon Johnson, Lucy Terry, Phillis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Fenton Johnson, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes would turn to T. Bone Walker and ask: What happens to a dream deferred? Does it fester like a sore? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or does it explode? Nikki Giovanni, Lucy Smith, and even Walt Whitman would be at a lost for words, but Martin Luther King Jr. wouldn?t, his words would ring out and Mahalia Jackson would sing out, Nobody Knows The Trouble I?ve Seen, but now the whole world knows. Thurgood Marshall and Paul Robeson would roll over in their graves. Make even Ghandi lose his patience. Rappers rappin? out a flurry of ear burnin? condemnation that would put us all to shame, ?Cause if there?s a hell below we all gonna go, You dig. While African American soldiers fight on the front line, Grand Ma was left stranded for four hot days on the burnin? roof, Uncle Joe served two tours of combat duty in Vietnam and sometimes they was fightin? hand to hand, they even left him, face up in the gutter. Is this what you dyin? for Black soldier? ?Cause if it is, this would have been your homecomin?. Would they, should they lay down there weapons and come on home, ?cause that?s where they?re really needed. That?s what Malcolm X would say. National Guardsmen rifles pointin? at your head, They should have been feedin? you instead. Now you tell me. What would you say? Anthony Earl Baggette, September 16, 2005 _________________________________________________________________ 6. XX. Black International Cinema Berlin 2005 FASHION SHOW & FESTIVAL IMPRESSIONS PHOTOGRAPHS/FOTOGRAFIEN: http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC05/XX.BIC2005/HTML/bic05_frameset.htm _________________________________________________________________ Mottoes: "I may not make it if I try, but I damn sure won?t if I don?t..." Oscar Brown Jr. "Mankind will either find a way or make one." C.P. Snow ?Whatever you do..., be cool!" Joseph Louis Turner ?Yes, I can...!? Sammy Davis Jr. ?Fountainhead?, October 2005 +++ +++ +++ Create your own newsletter with many great features! http://www.free-letters.de +++ +++ +++ Check out http://www.metal-inside.de, one of German's great metal magazines From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 19 12:11:29 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:11:29 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Selling colonialism Message-ID: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer4245.shtml Selling colonialism Anthony Loewstedt, The Electronic Intifada, 13 October 2005 Kingdom of Heaven, directed by Sir Ridley Scott and starring Orlando Bloom, Jeremy Irons, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, has now been released on DVD (20th Century Fox). Watching this Hollywood extravaganza is like seeing the current Iraq war through the eyes of an American soldier, or a portrait of apartheid from the point of view of a rich white South African farmer, or a depiction of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank from the perspective of a Jewish settler. It is also like the foreign news in the quality U.S. and British news media today: no direct or conscious lies, but extremely one-sided. In end effect, it has all the historicity of an early cowboys-and-Indians-movie or Birth of a Nation, the infamous 1916 film that sympathizes with the Ku Klux Klan. The DVD version contains a 'Pilgrim's Guide' which delivers huge amounts of facts about the Crusades, especially about the weapons and the battles, but like the film itself it fails to draw the obvious parallels between modern Israel and the Crusader Kingdoms. The legal discrimination against Muslims, Jews, and Palestinian Christians in the Kingdom of Jerusalem is entirely absent from the DVD. During the century or so of Western European rule in Palestine during Europe's Middle Ages, Roman Catholic fundamentalist fanatics in fact ruled in a barbarous and racist manner. When they first took Jerusalem in 1099, they killed every single Muslim and Jew in the city. This last fact is mentioned in the film but not shown. Rather, the indigenous people, the Palestinian farmers, are unable to water their own fields until Balian of Ibelin, Orlando Bloom's character, a knight/blacksmith straight out of rainy France, shows them how to build a well and irrigate properly. Ever since the birth of Zionism in Austria in the 1890s, many believers in Israel as the Jewish state have propagated that Palestinians would benefit from being closer to a 'more modern people', such as the Jews, seen as bearers of Western civilization. This is the so-called 'leftist' brand of Zionism, which leaves unmentioned such immaterial details as land ownership in this whole equation. The important thing is that Palestinians should be grateful for Westerners wanting to be in Palestine. Instead of even attempting to personalize the Palestinians (the indigenous majority), the film concentrates on armoury and battle (the U.S. soldier point of view), and on the chivalry and courtly love of the western European main characters. There are a few rotten eggs among the European invader caste, but most of them are really good people, an asset to the backwards indigenous mobs. The queen of Jerusalem, Sibylla, becomes a nurse during Saladin's siege of the city. Balian, head of Jerusalem's defence, knights every man able to bear arms. Yes, the feudal Europe is thus, highly dubiously, given the credit of trying to introduce egalitarianism and democracy among the Arabs. Many of the other details in the film, however, have a deceptively high degree of historicity. For instance, some of the all-European-members of the Jerusalem court are shown wearing fashionable Arab clothes. The weapons and the warfare, likewise, are depicted in almost painfully accurate ways. Saladin is not portrayed as a bloodthirsty savage, but as a noble one. Saladin, the liberator of Jerusalem, was actually born in Tikrit, in modern-day Iraq, and just like the Soviet baddies were given some respect in Cold War Hollywood products, an Arab warrior is now considered a worthy enemy. Robert Fisk, a journalist who has fearlessly exposed western and Zionist atrocities against Arabs in the modern Middle East, reviewed this film for the Independent on June 20, 2005. In his review, Fisk related that the Muslim audience in Lebanon with whom he watched it "came to realise that even Hollywood can be fair". Similarly, the American-Arab Anti Discrimination Committee (ADC), in a press release on 29 April 2005, finds the portrayal of Arabs and Muslims praiseworthy in comparison with other products coming out of Hollywood at the moment. Both Fisk and the rest of his Beirut audience, as well as the ADC, were taken in by the 'worthy enemy-noble savage' trap. This film in fact reveals how Western elites sell slaughter, oppression and exploitation of non-Western people to the masses. Like the westerns during the early 20th century: invasion, racism, and genocide are really good, both for us and the victims, but of course only as long as the perpetrators are white and the victims are not. That is the real reason why the film's director - maker of such pseudo-objective films as Black Hawk Down, in which U.S. soldiers kill scores of Somali militants hiding among civilians without shooting a single civilian - was himself recently knighted. Related links BY TOPIC: Films www.kingdomofheavenmovie.com To read ADC comments on the script for Kingdom of Heaven from 11 August 2004, click here Anthony Loewstedt teaches media communications and philosophy in Vienna, Austria. He recently taught at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank and worked for the United Nations Development Programme at Miftah - The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy in Jerusalem. He is currently working on a book on apartheid in South Africa, Israel/Palestine, and elsewhere. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 19 12:11:31 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:11:31 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Occupation/Collaboration in Intercourse (part 1) Message-ID: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseI.html INTERCOURSE Chapter 7 Occupation/Collaboration by Andrea Dworkin Copyright ? 1987 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights reserved. Oh, God, who does not exist, you hate women, otherwise you'd have made them different. And Jesus, who snubbed your mother, you hate them more. Roaming around all that time with a bunch of men, fishing; and sermons-on-the-mount. Abandoning women. I thought of all the women who had it, and didn't even know when the big moment was, and others saying their rosary with the beads held over the side of the bed, and others saying, "Stop, stop, you dirty old dog," and others yelling desperately to be jacked right up to their middles, and it often leading to nothing, and them getting up out of bed and riding a poor door knob and kissing the wooden face of a door and urging with foul language, then crying, wiping the knob, and it all adding up to nothing either. --EDNA O'BRIEN, Girls in Their Married Bliss This is nihilism; or this is truth. He has to push in past boundaries. There is the outline of a body, distinct, separate, its integrity an illusion, a tragic deception, because unseen there is a slit between the legs, and he has to push into it. There is never a real privacy of the body that can coexist with intercourse: with being entered. The vagina itself is muscled and the muscles have to be pushed apart. The thrusting is persistent invasion. She is opened up, split down the center. She is occupied--physically, internally, in her privacy. A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth--literature, science, philosophy, pornography--calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity. There is a deep recognition in culture and in experience that intercourse is both the normal use of a woman, her human potentiality affirmed by it, and a violative abuse, her privacy irredeemably compromised, her selfhood changed in a way that is irrevocable, unrecoverable. And it is recognized that the use and abuse are not distinct phenomena but somehow a synthesized reality: both are true at the same time as if they were one harmonious truth instead of mutually exclusive contradictions. Intercourse in reality is a use and an abuse simultaneously, experienced and described as such, the act parlayed into the illuminated heights of religious duty and the dark recesses of morbid and dirty brutality. She, a human being, is supposed to have a privacy that is absolute; except that she, a woman, has a hole between her legs that men can, must, do enter. This hole, her hole, is synonymous with entry. A man has an anus that can be entered, but his anus is not synonymous with entry. A woman has an anus that can be entered, but her anus is not synonymous with entry. The slit between her legs, so simple, so hidden-- frankly, so innocent-- for instance, to the child who looks with a mirror to see if it could be true--is there an entrance to her body down there? and something big comes into it? (how?) and something as big as a baby comes out of it? (how?) and doesn't that hurt?--that slit which means entry into her-- intercourse--appears to be the key to women's lower human status. By definition, as the God who does not exist made her, she is intended to have a lesser privacy, a lesser integrity of the body, a lesser sense of self, since her body can be physically occupied and in the occupation taken over. By definition, as the God who does not exist made her, this lesser privacy, this lesser integrity, this lesser self, establishes her lesser significance: not just in the world of social policy but in the world of bare, true, real existence. She is defined by how she is made, that hole, which is synonymous with entry; and intercourse, the act fundamental to existence, has consequences to her being that may be intrinsic, not socially imposed. There is no analogue anywhere among subordinated groups of people to this experience of being made for intercourse: for penetration, entry, occupation. There is no analogue in occupied countries or in dominated races or in imprisoned dissidents or in colonialized cultures or in the submission of children to adults or in the atrocities that have marked the twentieth century ranging from Auschwitz to the Gulag. There is nothing exactly the same, and this is not because the political invasion and significance of intercourse is banal up against these other hierarchies and brutalities. Intercourse is a particular reality for women as an inferior class; and it has in it, as part of it, violation of boundaries, taking over, occupation, destruction of privacy, all of which are construed to be normal and also fundamental to continuing human existence. There is nothing that happens to any other civilly inferior people that is the same in its meaning and in its effect even when those people are forced into sexual availability, heterosexual or homosexual; while subject people, for instance, may be forced to have intercourse with those who dominate them, the God who does not exist did not make human existence, broadly speaking, dependent on their compliance. The political meaning of intercourse for women is the fundamental question of feminism and freedom: can an occupied people--physically occupied inside, internally invaded--be free; can those with a metaphysically compromised privacy have self-determination; can those without a biologically based physical integrity have self-respect? There are many explanations, of course, that try to be kind. Women are different but equal. Social policy is different from private sexual behavior. The staggering civil inequalities between men and women are simple, clear injustices unrelated to the natural, healthy act of intercourse. There is nothing implicit in intercourse that mandates male dominance in society. Each individual must be free to choose--and so we expand tolerance for those women who do not want to be fucked by men. Sex is between individuals, and social relations are between classes, and so we preserve the privacy of the former while insisting on the equality of the latter. Women flourish as distinct, brilliant individuals of worth in the feminine condition, including in intercourse, and have distinct, valuable qualities. For men and women, fucking is freedom; and for men and women, fucking is the same, especially if the woman chooses both the man and the act. Intercourse is a private act engaged in by individuals and has no implicit social significance. Repression, as opposed to having intercourse, leads to authoritarian social policies, including those of male dominance. Intercourse does not have a metaphysical impact on women, although, of course, particular experiences with individual men might well have a psychological impact. Intercourse is not a political condition or event or circumstance because it is natural. Intercourse is not occupation or invasion or loss of privacy because it is natural. Intercourse does not violate the integrity of the body because it is natural. Intercourse is fun, not oppression. Intercourse is pleasure, not an expression or confirmation of a state of being that is either ontological or social. Intercourse is because the God who does not exist made it; he did it right, not wrong; and he does not hate women even if women hate him. Liberals refuse categorically to inquire into even a possibility that there is a relationship between intercourse per se and the low status of women. Conservatives use what appears to be God's work to justify a social and moral hierarchy in which women are lesser than men. Radicalism on the meaning of intercourse--its political meaning to women, its impact on our very being itself-- is tragedy or suicide. "The revolutionary," writes Octavio Paz paraphrasing Ortega y Gasset, "is always a radical, that is, he [sic] is trying to correct the uses themselves rather than the mere abuses . . ." 1 With intercourse, the use is already imbued with the excitement, the derangement, of the abuse; and abuse is only recognized as such socially if the intercourse is performed so recklessly or so violently or so stupidly that the man himself has actually signed a confession through the manner in which he has committed the act. What intercourse is for women and what it does to women's identity, privacy, self-respect, self-determination, and integrity are forbidden questions; and yet how can a radical or any woman who wants freedom not ask precisely these questions? The quality of the sensation or the need for a man or the desire for love: these are not answers to questions of freedom; they are diversions into complicity and ignorance. Some facts are known. Most women do not experience orgasm from intercourse itself. When Shere Hite, in her groundbreaking study, asked women to report their own sexual experiences in detail and depth, she discovered that only three in ten women regularly experience orgasm from intercourse. The women's self-reports are not ideological. They want men, love, sex, intercourse; they want orgasm; but for most women, seven out of ten, intercourse does not cause orgasm. The women want, even strive for, orgasm from intercourse but are unable to achieve it. Hite, the strongest feminist and most honorable philosopher among sex researchers, emphasizes that women can and must take responsibility for authentic sexual pleasure: "the ability to orgasm when we want, to be in charge of our stimulation, represents owning our own bodies, being strong, free, and autonomous human beings." 2 Intercourse occurs in a context of a power relation that is pervasive and incontrovertible. The context in which the act takes place, whatever the meaning of the act in and of itself, is one in which men have social, economic, political, and physical power over women. Some men do not have all those kinds of power over all women; but all men have some kinds of power over all women; and most men have controlling power over what they call their women--the women they fuck. The power is predetermined by gender, by being male. Intercourse as an act often expresses the power men have over women. Without being what the society recognizes as rape, it is what the society-- when pushed to admit it--recognizes as dominance. Intercourse often expresses hostility or anger as well as dominance. Intercourse is frequently performed compulsively; and intercourse frequently requires as a precondition for male performance the objectification of the female partner. She has to look a certain way, be a certain type--even conform to preordained behaviors and scripts--for the man to want to have intercourse and also for the man to be able to have intercourse. The woman cannot exist before or during the act as a fully realized, existentially alive individual. Despite all efforts to socialize women to want intercourse-- e.g., women's magazines to pornography to Dynasty; incredible rewards and punishments to get women to conform and put out--women still want a more diffuse and tender sensuality that involves the whole body and a polymorphous tenderness. There are efforts to reform the circumstances that surround intercourse, the circumstances that at least apparently contribute to its disreputable (in terms of rights and justice) legend and legacy. These reforms include: more deference to female sensuality prior to the act; less verbal assault as part of sexual expressiveness toward women; some lip service to female initiation of sex and female choice during lovemaking; less romanticizing of rape, at least as an articulated social goal. Those who are political activists working toward the equality of women have other contextual reforms they want to make: economic equity; women elected to political office; strong, self-respecting role models for girls; emphasis on physical strength and self-defense, athletic excellence and endurance; rape laws that work; strategies for decreasing violence against women. These contextual reforms would then provide for the possibility that intercourse could be experienced in a world of social equality for the sexes. These reforms do not in any way address the question of whether intercourse itself can be an expression of sexual equality. Life can be better for women--economic and political conditions improved-- and at the same time the status of women can remain resistant, indeed impervious, to change: so far in history this is precisely the paradigm for social change as it relates to the condition of women. Reforms are made, important ones; but the status of women relative to men does not change. Women are still less significant, have less privacy, less integrity, less self- determination. This means that women have less freedom. Freedom is not an abstraction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more of it is not enough either. Having less, being less, impoverished in freedom and rights, women then inevitably have less self-respect: less self-respect than men have and less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. Intercourse as domination battens on that awful absence of self-respect. It expands to fill the near vacuum. The uses of women, now, in intercourse-- not the abuses to the extent that they can be separated out--are absolutely permeated by the reality of male power over women. We are poorer than men in money and so we have to barter sex or sell it outright (which is why they keep us poorer in money). We are poorer than men in psychological well-being because for us self-esteem depends on the approval--frequently expressed through sexual desire--of those who have and exercise power over us. Male power may be arrogant or elegant; it can be churlish or refined: but we exist as persons to the extent that men in power recognize us. When they need some service or want some sensation, they recognize us somewhat, with a sliver of consciousness; and when it is over, we go back to ignominy, anonymous, generic womanhood. Because of their power over us, they are able to strike our hearts dead with contempt or condescension. We need their money; intercourse is frequently how we get it. We need their approval to be able to survive inside our own skins; intercourse is frequently how we get it. They force us to be compliant, turn us into parasites, then hate us for not letting go. Intercourse is frequently how we hold on: fuck me. How to separate the act of intercourse from the social reality of male power is not clear, especially because it is male power that constructs both the meaning and the current practice of intercourse as such. But it is clear that reforms do not change women's status relative to men, or have not yet. It is clear that reforms do not change the intractability of women's civil inferiority. Is intercourse itself then a basis of or a key to women's continuing social and sexual inequality? Intercourse may not cause women's orgasm or even have much of a correlation with it--indeed, we rarely find intercourse and orgasm in the same place at the same time--but intercourse and women's inequality are like Siamese twins, always in the same place at the same time pissing in the same pot. Women have wanted intercourse to work and have submitted--with regret or with enthusiasm, real or faked--even though or even when it does not. The reasons have often been foul, filled with the spiteful but carefully hidden malice of the powerless. Women have needed what can be gotten through intercourse: the economic and psychological survival; access to male power through access to the male who has it; having some hold--psychological, sexual, or economic--on the ones who act, who decide, who matter. There has been a deep, consistent, yet of course muted objection to what Anais Nin has called "[t]he hunter, the rapist, the one for whom sexuality is a thrust, nothing more."3 Women have also wanted intercourse to work in this sense: women have wanted intercourse to be, for women, an experience of equality and passion, sensuality and intimacy. Women have a vision of love that includes men as human too; and women want the human in men, including in the act of intercourse. Even without the dignity of equal power, women have believed in the redeeming potential of love. There has been--despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex--a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible. In the words of sex reformer Ellen Key: "She will no longer be captured like a fortress or hunted like a quarry; nor will she like a placid lake await the stream that seeks its way to her embrace. A stream herself, she will go her own way to meet the other stream." 4 A stream herself, she would move over the earth, sensual and equal; especially, she will go her own way. Shere Hite has suggested an intercourse in which "thrusting would not be considered as necessary as it now is. . . [There might be] more a mutual lying together in pleasure, penis-in-vagina, vagina-covering-penis, with female orgasm providing much of the stimulation necessary for male orgasm." 5 These visions of a humane sensuality based in equality are in the aspirations of women; and even the nightmare of sexual inferiority does not seem to kill them. They are not searching analyses into the nature of intercourse; instead they are deep, humane dreams that repudiate the rapist as the final arbiter of reality. They are an underground resistance to both inferiority and brutality, visions that sustain life and further endurance. They also do not amount to much in real life with real men. There is, instead, the cold fucking, duty-bound or promiscuous; the romantic obsession in which eventual abandonment turns the vagina into the wound Freud claimed it was; intimacy with men who dread women, coital dread--as Kafka wrote in his diary, "coitus as punishment for the happiness of being together." 6 Fear, too, has a special power to change experience and compromise any possibility of freedom. A stream does not know fear. A woman does. Especially women know fear of men and of forced intercourse. Consent in this world of fear is so passive that the woman consenting could be dead and sometimes is. "Yeah," said one man who killed a woman so that he could fuck her after she was dead, "I sexually assaulted her after she was dead. I always see them girls laid out in the pictures with their eyes closed and I just had to do it. I dreamed about it for so long that I just had to do it." 7 A Nebraska appeals court did not think that the murder "was especially heinous, atrocious, cruel, or manifested exceptional depravity by ordinary standards of morality and intelligence," and in particular they found "no evidence the acts were performed for the satisfaction of inflicting either mental or physical pain or that pain existed for any prolonged period of time." 8 Are you afraid now? How can fear and freedom coexist for women in intercourse? The role of fear in destroying the integrity of men is easy to articulate, to understand, hard to overstate. Men are supposed to conquer fear in order to experience freedom. Men are humiliated by fear, not only in their masculinity but in their rights and freedoms. Men are diminished by fear; compromised irrevocably by it because freedom is diminished by it. "Fear had entered his life," novelist Iris Murdoch wrote, "and would now be with him forever. How easy it was for the violent to win. Fear was irresistible, fear was king, he had never really known this before when he had lived free and without it. Even unreasoning fear could cripple a man forever. . . . How well he understood how dictators flourished. The little grain of fear in each life was enough to keep millions quiet." 9 Hemingway, using harder prose, wrote the same in book after book. But women are supposed to treasure the little grain of fear--rub up against it-- eroticize it, want it, get excited by it; and the fear could and does keep millions quiet: millions of women; being fucked and silent; upright and silent; waiting and silent; rolled over on and silent; pursued and silent; killed, fucked, and silent. The silence is taken to be appropriate. The fear is not perceived as compromising or destroying freedom. The dictators do flourish: fuck and flourish. Out of fear and inequality, women hide, use disguises, trying to pass for indigenous peoples who have a right to be there, even though we cannot pass. Appropriating Octavio Paz's description of the behavior of Mexicans in Los Angeles--which he might not like: "they feel ashamed of their origin . . . they act like persons who are wearing disguises, who are afraid of a stranger's look because it could strip them and leave them stark naked." 10 Women hide, use disguises, because fear has compromised freedom; and when a woman has intercourse-- not hiding, dropping the disguise--she has no freedom because her very being has been contaminated by fear: a grain, a tidal wave, memory or anticipation. The fear is fear of power and fear of pain: the child looks at the slit with a mirror and wonders how it can be, how will she be able to stand the pain. The culture romanticizes the rapist dimension of the first time: he will force his way in and hurt her. The event itself is supposed to be so distinct, so entirely unlike any other experience or category of sensation, that there is no conception that intercourse can be part of sex, including the first time, instead of sex itself. There is no slow opening up, no slow, gradual entry; no days and months of sensuality prior to entry and no nights and hours after entry. Those who learn to eroticize powerlessness will learn to eroticize the entry itself: the pushing in, the thrusting, the fact of entry with whatever force or urgency the act requires or the man enjoys. There is virtually no protest about entry as such from women; virtually no satire from men. A fairly formidable character in Don DeLillo's White Noise, the wife, agrees to read pornography to her husband but she has one condition: "I will read," she said. "But I don't want you to choose anything that has men inside women, quote-quote, or men entering women. 'I entered her.' 'He entered me.' We're not lobbies or elevators. 'I wanted him inside me,' as if he could crawl completely in, sign the register, sleep, eat, so forth. I don't care what these people do as long as they don't enter or get entered." "Agreed." "'I entered her and began to thrust."' "I'm in total agreement," I said. "'Enter me, enter me, yes, yes." "Silly usage, absolutely." "'Insert yourself, Rex, I want you inside me, entering hard, entering deep, yes, now, oh.'" 11 Her protests make him hard. The stupidity of the "he entered her" motif makes her laugh, not kindly. She hates it. We are not, of course, supposed to be lobbies or elevators. Instead, we are supposed to be wombs, maternal ones; and the men are trying to get back in away from all the noise and grief of being adult men with power and responsibility. The stakes for men are high, as Norman 0. Brown makes clear in prose unusually understated for him: "Coitus successfully performed is incest, a return to the maternal womb; and the punishment appropriate to this crime, castration. What happens to the penis is coronation, followed by decapitation." 12 This is high drama for a prosaic act of commonplace entry. Nothing is at risk for her, the entered; whereas he commits incest, is crowned king, and has his thing cut off. She might like to return to the maternal womb too--because life outside it is not easy for her either--but she has to be it, for husbands, lovers, adulterous neighbors, as well as her own children, boys especially. Women rarely dare, as we say, draw a line: certainly not at the point of entry into our own bodies, sometimes by those we barely know. Certainly they did not come from there, not originally, not from this womb belonging to this woman who is being fucked now. And so we have once again the generic meaning of intercourse--he has to climb back into some womb, maternal enough; he has to enter it and survive even coronation and decapitation. She is made for that; and what can it matter to him that in entering her, he is entering this one, real, unique individual. And what is entry for her? Entry is the first acceptance in her body that she is generic, not individual; that she is one of a many that is antagonistic to the individual interpretation she might have of her own worth, purpose, or intention. Entered, she accepts her subservience to his psychological purpose if nothing else; she accepts being confused with his mother and his Aunt Mary and the little girl with whom he used to play "Doctor." Entered, she finds herself depersonalized into a function and worth less to him than he is worth to himself: because he broke through, pushed in, entered. Without him there, she is supposed to feel empty, though there is no vacuum there, not physiologically. Entered, she finds herself accused of regicide at the end. The king dead, the muscles of the vagina contract again, suggesting that this will never be easy, never be solved. Lovely Freud, of course, having discovered projection but always missing the point, wrote to Jung: "In private I have always thought of Adonis as the penis; the woman's joy when the god she had thought dead rises again is too transparent!" 13 Something, indeed, is too transparent; women's joy tends to be opaque. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 19 12:16:37 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:16:37 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Occupation/Collaboration in Intercourse (part 2) Message-ID: http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseII.html INTERCOURSE Chapter 7 Occupation/Collaboration by Andrea Dworkin Copyright ? 1987 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights reserved. [Continued] Entered, she has mostly given something up: to Adonis, the king, the coronation, the decapitation for which she is then blamed; she has given up a dividing line between her and him. Entered, she then finds out what it is to be occupied: and sometimes the appropriate imagery is of evil and war, the great spreading evil of how soldiers enter and contaminate. In the words of Marguerite Duras, "evil is there, at the gates, against the skin." 14 It spreads, like war, everywhere: "breaking in everywhere, stealing, imprisoning, always there, merged and mingled . . . a prey to the intoxicating passion of occupying that delightful territory, a child's body, the bodies of those less strong, of conquered peoples." 15 She is describing an older brother she hates here ("I see wartime and the reign of my elder brother as one" 16). She is not describing her lover, an older man fucking an adolescent girl. But it is from the sex that she takes the texture of wartime invasion and occupation, the visceral reality of occupation: evil up against the skin--at the point of entry, just touching the slit; then it breaks in and at the same time it surrounds everything, and those with power use the conquered who are weaker, inhabit them as territory. Physically, the woman in intercourse is a space inhabited, a literal territory occupied literally: occupied even if there has been no resistance, no force; even if the occupied person said yes please, yes hurry, yes more. Having a line at the point of entry into your body that cannot be crossed is different from not having any such line; and being occupied in your body is different from not being occupied in your body. It is human to experience these differences whether or not one cares to bring the consequences of them into consciousness. Humans, including women, construct meaning. That means that when something happens to us, when we have experiences, we try to find in them some reason for them, some significance that they have to us or for us. Humans find meaning in poverty and tyranny and the atrocities of history; those who have suffered most still construct meaning; and those who know nothing take their ignorance as if it were a precious, rare clay and they too construct meaning. In this way, humans assert that we have worth; what has happened to us matters; our time here on earth is not entirely filled with random events and spurious pain. On the contrary, we can understand some things if we try hard to learn empathy; we can seek freedom and honor and dignity; that we care about meaning gives us a human pride that has the fragility of a butterfly and the strength of tempered steel. The measure of women's oppression is that we do not take intercourse--entry, penetration, occupation--and ask or say what it means: to us as a dominated group or to us as a potentially free and self-determining people. Instead, intercourse is a loyalty test; and we are not supposed to tell the truth unless it compliments and upholds the dominant male ethos on sex. We know nothing, of course, about intercourse because we are women and women know nothing; or because what we know simply has no significance, entered into as we are. And men know everything--all of them--all the time--no matter how stupid or inexperienced or arrogant or ignorant they are. Anything men say on intercourse, any attitude they have, is valuable, knowledgeable, and deep, rooted in the cosmos and the forces of nature as it were: because they know; because fucking is knowing; because he knew her but she did not know him; because the God who does not exist framed not only sex but also knowledge that way. Women do not just lie about orgasm, faking it or saying it is not important. Women lie about life by not demanding to understand the meaning of entry, penetration, occupation, having boundaries crossed over, having lesser privacy: by avoiding the difficult, perhaps impossible (but how will we ever know?) questions of female freedom. We take oaths to truth all right, on the holy penis before entry. In so doing, we give up the most important dimension of what it means to be human: the search for the meaning of our real experience, including the sheer invention of that meaning-- called creativity when men do it. If the questions make the holy penis unhappy, who could survive what the answers might do? Experience is chosen for us, then, imposed on us, especially in intercourse, and so is its meaning. We are allowed to have intercourse on the terms men determine, according to the rules men make. We do not have to have an orgasm; that terrible burden is on them. We are supposed to comply whether we want to or not. Want is active, not passive or lethargic. Especially we are supposed to be loyal to the male meanings of intercourse, which are elaborate, dramatic, pulling in elements of both myth and tragedy: the king is dead! long live the king!--and the Emperor wears designer jeans. We have no freedom and no extravagance in the questions we can ask or the interpretations we can make. We must be loyal; and on what scale would we be able to reckon the cost of that? Male sexual discourse on the meaning of intercourse becomes our language. It is not a second language even though it is not our native language; it is the only language we speak, however, with perfect fluency even though it does not say what we mean or what we think we might know if only we could find the right word and enough privacy in which to articulate it even just in our own minds. We know only this one language of these folks who enter and occupy us: they keep telling us that we are different from them; yet we speak only their language and have none, or none that we remember, of our own; and we do not dare, it seems, invent one, even in signs and gestures. Our bodies speak their language. Our minds think in it. The men are inside us through and through. We hear something, a dim whisper, barely audible, somewhere at the back of the brain; there is some other word, and we think, some of us, sometimes, that once it belonged to us. There are female-supremacist models for intercourse that try to make us the masters of this language that we speak that is not ours. They evade some fundamental questions about the act itself and acknowledge others. They have in common a glorious ambition to see women self-determining, vigorous and free lovers who are never demeaned or diminished by force or subordination, not in society, not in sex. The great advocate of the female-first model of intercourse in the nineteenth century was Victoria Woodhull. She understood that rape was slavery; not less than slavery in its insult to human integrity and human dignity. She acknowledged some of the fundamental questions of female freedom presented by intercourse in her imperious insistence that women had a natural right--a right that inhered in the nature of intercourse itself--to be entirely self-determining, the controlling and dominating partner, the one whose desire determined the event, the one who both initiates and is the final authority on what the sex is and will be. Her thinking was not mean-spirited, some silly role reversal to make a moral point; nor was it a taste for tyranny hidden in what pretended to be a sexual ethic. She simply understood that women are unspeakably vulnerable in intercourse because of the nature of the act--entry, penetration, occupation; and she understood that in a society of male power, women were unspeakably exploited in intercourse. Society--men--had to agree to let the woman be the mind, the heart, the lover, the free spirit, the physical vitality behind the act. The commonplace abuses of forced entry, the devastating consequences of being powerless and occupied, suggested that the only condition under which women could experience sexual freedom in intercourse--real choice, real freedom, real happiness, real pleasure--was in having real and absolute control in each and every act of intercourse, which would be, each and every time, chosen by the woman. She would have the incontrovertible authority that would make intercourse possible: To woman, by nature, belongs the right of sexual determination. When the instinct is aroused in her, then and then only should commerce follow. When woman rises from sexual slavery to sexual freedom, into the ownership and control of her sexual organs, and man is obliged to respect this freedom, then will this instinct become pure and holy; then will woman be raised from the iniquity and morbidness in which she now wallows for existence, and the intensity and glory of her creative functions be increased a hundred-fold . . . 17 The consent standard is revealed as pallid, weak, stupid, second-class, by contrast with Woodhull's standard: that the woman should have authority and control over the act. The sexual humiliation of women through male ownership was understood by Woodhull to be a concrete reality, not a metaphor, not hyperbole: the man owned the woman's sexual organs. She had to own her sexual organs for intercourse to mean freedom for her. This is more concrete and more meaningful than a more contemporary vocabulary of "owning" one's own desire. Woodhull wanted the woman's desire to be the desire of significance; but she understood that ownership of the body was not an abstraction; it was concrete and it came first. The "iniquity and morbidness" of intercourse under male dominance would end if women could exercise a materially real self-determination in sex. The woman having material control of her own sex organs and of each and every act of intercourse would not lead to a reverse dominance, the man subject to the woman, because of the nature of the act and the nature of the sex organs involved in the act: this is the sense in which Woodhull tried to face the fundamental questions raised by intercourse as an act with consequences, some perhaps intrinsic. The woman could not forcibly penetrate the man. The woman could not take him over as he took her over and occupy his body physically inside. His dominance over her expressed in the physical reality of intercourse had no real analogue in desire she might express for him in intercourse: she simply could not do to him what he could do to her. Woodhull's view was materialist, not psychological; she was the first publisher of the Communist Manifesto in the United States and the first woman stockbroker on Wall Street. She saw sex the way she saw money and power: in terms of concrete physical reality. Male notions of female power based on psychology or ideas would not have addressed for her the real issues of physical dominance and power in intercourse. The woman would not force or rape or physically own the man because she could not. Thus, giving the woman power over intercourse was giving her the power to be equal. Woodhull's vision was in fact deeply humane, oriented toward sexual pleasure in freedom. For women, she thought and proclaimed (at great cost to herself), freedom must be literal, physical, concrete self-determination beginning with absolute control of the sexual organs; this was a natural right that had been perverted by male dominance--and because of its perversion, sex was for women morbid and degrading. The only freedom imaginable in this act of intercourse was freedom based on an irrevocable and unbreachable female will given play in a body honestly her own. This was an eloquent answer to reading the meaning of intercourse the other way: by its nature, intercourse mandated that the woman must be lesser in power and in privacy. Instead, said Woodhull, the woman must be king. Her humanity required sexual sovereignty. Male-dominant gender hierarchy, however, seems immune to reform by reasoned or visionary argument or by changes in sexual styles, either personal or social. This may be because intercourse itself is immune to reform. In it, female is bottom, stigmatized. Intercourse remains a means or the means of physiologically making a woman inferior: communicating to her cell by cell her own inferior status, impressing it on her, burning it into her by shoving it into her, over and over, pushing and thrusting until she gives up and gives in-- which is called surrender in the male lexicon. In the experience of intercourse, she loses the capacity for integrity because her body--the basis of privacy and freedom in the material world for all human beings--is entered and occupied; the boundaries of her physical body are--neutrally speaking-- violated. What is taken from her in that act is not recoverable, and she spends her life--wanting, after all, to have something--pretending that pleasure is in being reduced through intercourse to insignificance. She will not have an orgasm--maybe because she has human pride and she resents captivity; but also she will not or cannot rebel--not enough for it to matter, to end male dominance over her. She learns to eroticize powerlessness and self- annihilation. The very boundaries of her own body become meaningless to her, and even worse, useless to her. The transgression of those boundaries comes to signify a sexually charged degradation into which she throws herself, having been told, convinced, that identity, for a female, is there-- somewhere beyond privacy and self-respect. It is not that there is no way out if, for instance, one were to establish or believe that intercourse itself determines women's lower status. New reproductive technologies have changed and will continue to change the nature of the world. Intercourse is not necessary to existence anymore. Existence does not depend on female compliance, nor on the violation of female boundaries, nor on lesser female privacy, nor on the physical occupation of the female body. But the hatred of women is a source of sexual pleasure for men in its own right. Intercourse appears to be the expression of that contempt in pure form, in the form of a sexed hierarchy; it requires no passion or heart because it is power without invention articulating the arrogance of those who do the fucking. Intercourse is the pure, sterile, formal expression of men's contempt for women; but that contempt can turn gothic and express itself in many sexual and sadistic practices that eschew intercourse per se. Any violation of a woman's body can become sex for men; this is the essential truth of pornography. So freedom from intercourse, or a social structure that reflects the low value of intercourse in women's sexual pleasure, or intercourse becoming one sex act among many entered into by (hypothetical) equals as part of other, deeper, longer, perhaps more sensual lovemaking, or an end to women's inferior status because we need not be forced to reproduce (forced fucking frequently justified by some implicit biological necessity to reproduce): none of these are likely social developments because there is a hatred of women, unexplained, undiagnosed, mostly unacknowledged, that pervades sexual practice and sexual passion. Reproductive technologies are strengthening male dominance, invigorating it by providing new ways of policing women's reproductive capacities, bringing them under stricter male scrutiny and control; and the experimental development of these technologies has been sadistic, using human women as if they were sexual laboratory animals--rats, mice, rabbits, cats, with kinky uteri. For increasing numbers of men, bondage and torture of the female genitals (that were entered into and occupied in the good old days) may supplant intercourse as a sexual practice. The passion for hurting women is a sexual passion; and sexual hatred of women can be expressed without intercourse. There has always been a peculiar irrationality to all the biological arguments that supposedly predetermine the inferior social status of women. Bulls mount cows and baboons do whatever; but human females do not have estrus or go into heat. The logical inference is not that we are always available for mounting but rather that we are never, strictly speaking, "available." Nor do animals have cultures; nor do they determine in so many things what they will do and how they will do them and what the meaning of their own behavior is. They do not decide what their lives will be. Only humans face the often complicated reality of having potential and having to make choices based on having potential. We are not driven by instinct, at least not much. We have possibilities, and we make up meanings as we go along. The meanings we create or learn do not exist only in our heads, in ineffable ideas. Our meanings also exist in our bodies--what we are, what we do, what we physically feel, what we physically know; and there is no personal psychology that is separate from what the body has learned about life. Yet when we look at the human condition, including the condition of women, we act as if we are driven by biology or some metaphysically absolute dogma. We refuse to recognize our possibilities because we refuse to honor the potential humans have, including human women, to make choices. Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us? Being female in this world is having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide- ranging capacity for choice. Objectification may well be the most singly destructive aspect of gender hierarchy, especially as it exists in relation to intercourse. The surrender occurs before the act that is supposed to accomplish the surrender takes place. She has given in; why conquer her? The body is violated before the act occurs that is commonly taken to be violation. The privacy of the person is lessened before the privacy of the woman is invaded: she has remade herself so as to prepare the way for the invasion of privacy that her preparation makes possible. The significance of the human ceases to exist as the value of the object increases: an expensive ornament, for instance, she is incapable of human freedom--taking it, knowing it, wanting it, being it. Being an object--living in the realm of male objectification--is abject submission, an abdication of the freedom and integrity of the body, its privacy, its uniqueness, its worth in and of itself because it is the human body of a human being. Can intercourse exist without objectification? Would intercourse be a different phenomenon if it could, if it did? Would it be shorter or longer, happier or sadder; more complex, richer, denser, with a baroque beauty or simpler with an austere beauty; or bang bang bang? Would intercourse without objectification, if it could exist, be compatible with women's equality--even an expression of it--or would it still be stubbornly antagonistic to it? Would intercourse cause orgasm in women if women were not objects for men before and during intercourse? Can intercourse exist without objectification and can objectification exist without female complicity in maintaining it as a perceived reality and a material reality too: can objectification exist without the woman herself turning herself into an object--becoming through effort and art a thing, less than human, so that he can be more than human, hard, sovereign, king? Can intercourse exist without the woman herself turning herself into a thing, which she must do because men cannot fuck equals and men must fuck: because one price of dominance is that one is impotent in the face of equality? To become the object, she takes herself and transforms herself into a thing: all freedoms are diminished and she is caged, even in the cage docile, sometimes physically maimed, movement is limited: she physically becomes the thing he wants to fuck. It is especially in the acceptance of object status that her humanity is hurt: it is a metaphysical acceptance of lower status in sex and in society; an implicit acceptance of less freedom, less privacy, less integrity. In becoming an object so that he can objectify her so that he can fuck her, she begins a political collaboration with his dominance; and then when he enters her, he confirms for himself and for her what she is: that she is something, not someone; certainly not someone equal. There is the initial complicity, the acts of self-mutilation, self-diminishing, self-reconstruction, until there is no self, only the diminished, mutilated reconstruction. It is all superficial and unimportant, except what it costs the human in her to do it: except for the fact that it is submissive, conforming, giving up an individuality that would withstand object status or defy it. Something happens inside; a human forgets freedom; a human learns obedience; a human, this time a woman, learns how to goose-step the female way. Wilhelm Reich, that most optimistic of sexual liberationists, the only male one to abhor rape really, thought that a girl needed not only "a free genital sexuality" but also "an undisturbed room, proper contraceptives, a friend who is capable of love, that is, not a National Socialist . . . " 18 All remain hard for women to attain; but especially the lover who is not a National Socialist. So the act goes beyond complicity to collaboration; but collaboration requires a preparing of the ground, an undermining of values and vision and dignity, a sense of alienation from the worth of other human beings--and this alienation is fundamental to females who are objectified because they do not experience themselves as human beings of worth except for their value on the market as objects. Knowing one's own human value is fundamental to being able to respect others: females are remade into objects, not human in any sense related to freedom or justice--and so what can females recognize in other females that is a human bond toward freedom? Is there anything in us to love if we do not love each other as the objects we have become? Who can love someone who is less than human unless love itself is domination per se? Alienation from human freedom is deep and destructive; it destroys whatever it is in us as humans that is creative, that causes us to want to find meaning in experiences, even hard experiences; it destroys in us that which wants freedom whatever the hardship of attaining it. In women, these great human capacities and dimensions are destroyed or mutilated; and so we find ourselves bewildered--who or what are these so-called persons in human form but even that not quite, not exactly, who cannot remember or manifest the physical reality of freedom, who do not seem to want or to value the individual experience of freedom? Being an object for a man means being alienated from other women--those like her in status, in inferiority, in sexual function. Collaboration by women with men to keep women civilly and sexually inferior has been one of the hallmarks of female subordination; we are ashamed when Freud notices it, but it is true. That collaboration, fully manifested when a woman values her lover, the National Socialist, above any woman, anyone of her own kind or class or status, may have simple beginnings: the first act of complicity that destroys self-respect, the capacity for self-determination and freedom--readying the body for the fuck instead of for freedom. The men have an answer: intercourse is freedom. Maybe it is second-class freedom for second-class humans. What does it mean to be the person who needs to have this done to her: who needs to be needed as an object; who needs to be entered; who needs to be occupied; who needs to be wanted more than she needs integrity or freedom or equality? If objectification is necessary for intercourse to be possible, what does that mean for the person who needs to be fucked so that she can experience herself as female and who needs to be an object so that she can be fucked? The brilliance of objectification as a strategy of dominance is that it gets the woman to take the initiative in her own degradation (having less freedom is degrading). The woman herself takes one kind of responsibility absolutely and thus commits herself to her own continuing inferiority: she polices her own body; she internalizes the demands of the dominant class and, in order to be fucked, she constructs her life around meeting those demands. It is the best system of colonialization on earth: she takes on the burden, the responsibility, of her own submission, her own objectification. In some systems in which turning the female into an object for sex requires actual terrorism and maiming--for instance, footbinding or removing the clitoris-- the mother does it, having had it done to her by her mother. What men need done to women so that men can have intercourse with women is done to women so that men will have intercourse; no matter what the human cost; and it is a gross indignity to suggest that when her collaboration is complete-- unselfconscious because there is no self and no consciousness left--she is free to have freedom in intercourse. When those who dominate you get you to take the initiative in your own human destruction, you have lost more than any oppressed people yet has ever gotten back. Whatever intercourse is, it is not freedom; and if it cannot exist without objectification, it never will be. Instead occupied women will be collaborators, more base in their collaboration than other collaborators have ever been: experiencing pleasure in their own inferiority; calling intercourse freedom. It is a tragedy beyond the power of language to convey when what has been imposed on women by force becomes a standard of freedom for women: and all the women say it is so. If intercourse can be an expression of sexual equality, it will have to survive-- on its own merits as it were, having a potential for human expression not yet recognized or realized--the destruction of male power over women; and rape and prostitution will have to be seen as the institutions that most impede any experience of intercourse as freedom--chosen by full human beings with full human freedom. Rape and prostitution negate self-determination and choice for women; and anyone who wants intercourse to be freedom and to mean freedom had better find a way to get rid of them. Maybe life is tragic and the God who does not exist made women inferior so that men could fuck us; or maybe we can only know this much for certain--that when intercourse exists and is experienced under conditions of force, fear, or inequality, it destroys in women the will to political freedom; it destroys the love of freedom itself. We become female: occupied; collaborators against each other, especially against those among us who resist male domination--the lone, crazy resisters, the organized resistance. The pleasure of submission does not and cannot change the fact, the cost, the indignity, of inferiority. Copyright ? 1987 by Andrea Dworkin. All rights reserved. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 19 12:16:40 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:16:40 -0700 Subject: [m2c] A Feminist Perspective on Katrina Message-ID: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8912 A Feminist Perspective on Katrina by Loretta J. Ross; Sistersong; October 10, 2005 Since the tragedy of the Katrina hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast and flooded New Orleans, SisterSong has contacted its two member agencies in Mississippi and Louisiana affected by the storm. We reached the Institute for Women & Ethnic Studies whose offices are on Canal Street, ground zero of the flooded part of downtown New Orleans. Their staff is now re-located all over the Deep South, including Atlanta. We also contacted Mississippi Families for Kids, whose offices in Jackson were undamaged by the storm, but who now face a tremendous flood of desperate families with children from all over the Gulf Coast region. They are accommodating many people in their offices and homes and they are seeking housing for hundreds more calling on them for assistance. To directly help these SisterSong member organizations, their addresses are listed at the end of this article along with the addresses of other women of color reproductive justice organizations in the Gulf Coast area needing assistance. A tragedy of this magnitude forces all of us to examine the impact of this storm and the response to it on women and children. The Deep South has some of the highest poverty in America affecting all races of people, and the world witnessed that great dirty secret that is America's shame. Black and brown people drowning in filthy flood waters alerted the world that this country does not protect the human rights of its own citizens. I was moved to write this article because I still have family members missing in New Orleans, one of them an 80-year old relative. I was privileged to attend a meeting September 10-14, 2005 on "Women's Global Strategies for the 21st Century" organized at Sarah Lawrence College by the Women of Color Resource Center, the Global Fund for Women, and the Center for Women's Global Leadership that brought together 100 women from around the world. The workshop on Militarization and Occupation helped me understand some of the issues we face here in the Deep South as we struggle to rebuild our lives after Katrina. From a feminist perspective, there are certain predictions we can make concerning what will happen to some women and children based on our collective experiences in helping women and children survive trauma. Poverty in America is not only racialized but it is also gendered. The aftermath of Katrina must be examined through a gender lens that identifies the myriad of violations experienced by women. A disaster like Katrina is a violation against the entire community, but when threats to women's lives are not recognized, and steps are not taken to ensure that they are, women become doubly victimized -- by the disaster and by the response to it. Vulnerability of Women and Children The hurricane and the subsequent flooding exposed the special vulnerability of women, children, the elderly and the disabled by revealing the harsh intersection of race, class, gender, ability and life expectancy. Many people could not escape not only because of poverty, but because they were not physically able to punch through rooftops, perch on top of buildings, or climb trees to survive. Horror stories of people abandoned to drown in nursing homes and hospitals emphasize that any disaster preparedness planning must take into account those unable to evacuate themselves. Instead, the mainstream media and government sources chose to blame the victims as if these vulnerable people simply made bad choices, ignoring the context in which these "choices" are made. Right wing pundits are already saying that the tragedy was the fault of single mothers who were not married so that their husbands could lift them out of poverty! Those in power do not speak about the intentional chaos in people's lives created by constantly scrambling for survival while living in poverty or with disabilities that leave many women feeling simply overwhelmed by life itself. We also know that women's issues will not be seen as "important" during the crisis, as we are advised that larger issues like maintaining law and order and securing the affected areas are of higher priority. But we need to examine the disaster in the Gulf Coast region from a feminist point of view. We can also learn lessons from the past that can help us understand the present situation, and we can ask for help from our sisters in other parts of the world who have survived military occupations and tsunamis. There is a risk of too much focus on the current crisis, shifting dollars from previous unmet needs, and forgetting older crises around the world and in our country. For example, Mississippi already had only one abortion provider before the storm. Women traveled to Louisiana or Alabama for services. What will an already under-served region do to help women receive reproductive health care? Re-defining Military Occupation We witnessed a very authoritarian militarization of New Orleans during the crisis as police and the military were given permission to forcibly evict survivors, arrest or shoot lawbreakers, and impose martial law on the city. No one in authority questioned whether it is ethical to give orders to shoot flood survivors, even if they are supposedly looting. More recent alternative media reports reveal that many of the alleged "looters" were actually heroes trying to find food to feed their families, securing food and relief supplies from stores whose inventories would have been lost to the flood anyway. The concentration camp like conditions of the Superdome and Convention Center provided no privacy for women, no safety for children and for days after the tragedy, no basic needs like food, water and sanitation. Notably, while the police and military were protecting the property rights of business owners, they somehow neglected to protect the lives of women and children jammed into the Superdome and the Convention Center. Women, children, the sick and the elderly died waiting for help. One of the ways in which the occupation was achieved was by controlling terminology through language coups. Did you notice that some news media reported that white people "find" food while black people "loot?" Control of communications became control of self-validation as the prejudices of the powerful constructed meanings that rendered any countervailing notion ineffective. There are reports of massive arrests, police brutality and even deaths at the hands of the police and military during this crisis, yet these reports were not featured in the mainstream news, just over alternative sources such as the Internet. There are also stories of people being shot by authorities in the Louisiana Superdome. One brief report on CNN told the story about the Gretna Police Department blockading a bridge by firing over the heads of people attempting to leave the city to enter this predominantly white suburb west of New Orleans. The Gretna police even confiscated food and water from women and children on the bridge at gunpoint, claiming they did not want their town "turned into another Superdome," an ominous racist reference to the fact that most of the people were African American. The normal brutality with which cops usually treat poor black people lends considerable credence to these unproven rumors, particularly if the police are operating in situations with little likelihood of formal investigations into their actions because they are "justified" by the crisis. "They came to help" language may thwart really seeing the negative effects of the occupation and may forever obscure any notion of accountability. Unfortunately, actions like these also denigrate the undoubtedly heroic actions many people in law enforcement and the military demonstrated as they risked their lives in contaminated water to rescue survivors. But as feminists, we should not confuse individual compassion with structural injustice. Both can exist in the same place at the same time. While the news media focused on the black/white conflicts during the crisis, little or no mention was made of the Native American, Asian American or Latino communities also devastated by the storm. Erasing these communities from the public's consciousness became another form of structural violence. What we need are expanded definitions and understanding of what is meant by military occupation. Occupation is about space, land, and resources. There is little consciousness in the minds of the American public that we live in occupied land or that we are occupiers. I don't believe the term only applies to Palestine, Afghanistan or Iraq. Communities of color, particularly Indigenous Nations, have always experienced law enforcement and the military as occupiers, but the Katrina crisis exposes how we must expand the concept of military occupation way beyond the narrow and limited definitions of the United Nations. There is a porous membrane between occupation and war as the Iraq invasion proves. It's as if these occupying armies read their orders from the same script. The residents of the affluent parts of New Orleans hired their own private security firms to "protect" themselves against the flood survivors. Our definition of occupation must be widened to include not only agents of the state such as the police and the military, but also must include transnational corporations, some of whom also operate their own private armies. We need to redefine occupation as a violent means to maintain order and confiscate our land. We must connect militarism with occupation and reveal who controls the resources and who benefits from the process of occupation. These are all expressions of the same phenomenon. Ironically, the occupation of New Orleans and the occupation of Iraq share one major obvious commonality. Both are greased by oil -- its production and its shipping. It is no coincidence that a port through much of America's oil flows is quickly militarized while hundreds of people die in flooded houses. Offshore platforms in the Gulf are responsible for about 30 percent of U.S. crude-oil production and states along the Gulf Coast are home to half of the nation's refining capacity. The same company in Iraq -- Halliburton -- will receive major contracts to help in the rebuilding of New Orleans. Was Iraq a practice run? What was particularly telling about the Gulf Coast crisis was that the owners of casinos and Wal-Marts were apparently able to return to their businesses much more quickly to repair storm damages long before federal assistance arrived to reduce the needless loss of lives. Perhaps we will become the United States of Wal-Mart after this. They may be the first businesses to offer jobs to the massive numbers of people forced into unemployment because of the storm. Will we be in any position to challenge their labor practices and impact on communities if they are the only employers available? Wal-Mart already discriminates against the women it presently employs. With President Bush relaxing the minimum wage laws for companies hired to rebuild the Gulf Coast, will more women make even less money, below the paltry $5.15/hour federal minimum wage? You bet they will because more than 400,000 jobs were lost in the disaster. Violations of International Human Rights Standards We also witnessed the incredible violations of the human rights of the Katrina survivors. Not only was their right to survive threatened by the painfully slow response of local, state and federal governments, but their right to stay united as families, their right to adequate and safe shelter, their right to social services, their right to accurate information, their right to health care and freedom from violence. All of these are human rights violations but the one that brings the Middle East most forcefully to mind is the violation of the right to return to one's home. For those of us with short-term memories, keep in mind that the Supreme Court ruled this year that governments have expanded powers of eminent domain that may be used to prevent some survivors from ever returning to their communities as land is turned over to corporate developers. New limits on the protections of bankruptcy laws will also cause further harm to Katrina's survivors. The concept of peace and security is dreadfully misused during this crisis to impose a police state. The United Nations urged societies a decade ago to re-examine what is meant by security, beyond law enforcement, the military and the state. The 1994 Human Development Report by the United Nations introduced a new people-centered concept for human security: "Human security means....safety from constant threats of hunger, disease, crime and repression. It also means protection from sudden and hurtful disruptions in the pattern of daily lives, whether in our homes, our jobs, in communities, or in our environment." Activists in the U.S., especially after 9/11, requested a re-consideration of security that included the protection of human rights and civil liberties, the meeting of people's basic human needs, and the use of peace processes and UN mechanisms that can avoid war and prevent genocides. The reality is that women live in a borderland of insecurity all the time, yet the needs of women are invisible during discussions on security pre-occupied with criminals and terrorists. Poverty, hunger and deprivation of human rights are the real threats to security because security is determined by the extent to which people have their basic needs met and can live in freedom and safety, not by the number of armed occupiers in their communities. A militarized community does not feel safer, just more policed, so that what is allowed and what is accepted is constantly determined by those outside of the community. Our people removed from New Orleans have been called "evacuees," a term that has no legal basis in international law. They are, in fact, internally displaced persons, a status that affords them legal rights and protections. The U.S. government is very careful not to use this term to describe the people from New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast because it would trigger obligations defined by human rights treaties to meet the needs of our people. The U.S. government is always careful not to use language that requires it to protect people's human rights. For example, the government was resistant to using the word "genocide" to describe the theft of Indigenous lands and the enslavement of Africans at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. John Bolton, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations appointed by President Bush, will be busily trying to undermine anti-poverty goals at the UN Millennium Summit which begins this week, instead of focusing on eradicating poverty, improving education, and empowering women. The U.S. government's assault on the human rights framework is unending, and we must not let them get away with it. We must respond by ensuring that the Katrina survivors learn about their human rights and the obligations they are due from our government. Speaking of racism, it was racism that stopped the distribution of the $2000 debit cards to the survivors. Right wing critics, claiming that the (mostly black) poor people were irresponsible and likely to cheat the system, halted FEMA's distribution of this immediate cash relief. Instead, the government switched to a bank account deposit system, ignoring the fact that many poor people don't have bank accounts or can't access them if they do because of the disaster. Many do not have the identity documents required to use standard banking procedures. Some survivors who received the cards before they were discontinued report that they received much less than $2000; some received only $200. Who will do a race, gender and class analysis of who received what relief? Despite the magnitude of the catastrophe, it is amazing that the authorities found the time to harass undocumented immigrant women and men in the affected region. Reports of people targeted by immigration officials have surfaced, and many are afraid to seek help for fear that their suffering will be exploited as an opportunity to forcibly deport people. Those without social security numbers are being denied emergency assistance by some agencies. Another under-reported story is what happened to the survivors in some of the cities to which they escaped. Because of anti-poor ordinances in cities like San Antonio and Atlanta, some survivors have been arrested for panhandling and jaywalking in cities they perceived as refuges. Some have been concentrated into hastily erected camps resembling detention centers, isolating them from the communities that purportedly welcomed them. There will be an increase in the criminalization of the poor leading to a surge in growth for the prison industrial complex. Gender-Based Violence Often poor women and children are the first ones forced into prostitution to survive. There will be an increase in the demand for prostitution created by the massive military and police presence in the affected states, similar to the rise in prostitution that surrounds our military bases around the world already. Women are not "opportunities to relieve stress" as many soldiers are encouraged to believe. Because of the limited real choices women face, we expect that there will be a rise in the prostitution and trafficking of women and children. We also expect that there will be a rise in the exploitation and sexual abuse of displaced children. Increases in the abuse of women and children will mean rises in other things like unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV/AIDS. We expect these things because they occur to women and children even without the desperation and vulnerability created by such a national disaster. We have already received reports of the rapes and murders of women and children among the survivors herded together in the Superdome and New Orleans Convention Center under inhumane conditions. We do not know whether or not media racism exaggerated these reports, but we already know that some men do not know how to cope with a lack of control over their lives and they often express their frustration by abusing and violating women and children. Domestic violence and sexual assault will increase because women are more vulnerable and more men will become violent as the occupation and displacement continues. This culture of violence breeds more violence against women. This happens every day anyway and a tragedy like Katrina exacerbates these dangerous tendencies, especially in a situation lacking any social control and order. Development for Whom? Using A Gender Lens to Rebuild There is a difference in how women see what ought to happen and how men see what should be done. It will be important during this crisis to listen to the women of the Gulf Coast and incorporate their perspectives on what should be done to help people recover from this disaster. We can learn a lot from our sisters around the globe who have endured terrible tsunamis and callousness from military occupiers and humanitarian agencies. Now is the time to contact our sisters from Asia who survived the December 2004 tsunami or women from the Middle East who have lived for years under military occupations. They can offer valuable lessons about empowering women during national crises. They are the experts we need, not the men with guns pointed at us as we sought food and shelter. This is a moment for global solidarity, even if the Bush Administration is too arrogant to accept help from people in countries they don't respect. This is not only a teachable moment for America but an opportunity for learning as well. This may be the moment to have serious discussions about the lack of human rights protections in this country by asking the question, "Why were we so vulnerable?" Even many government officials had to admit that the unjust war against Iraq decimated our country's ability to respond to this crisis in a timely and effective manner. This is a chance to connect issues of poverty, war, occupation, racism, homophobia, militarism and sexism, and make the distinction between natural disasters and man-made ones. Women's voices must be lifted to evaluate the role of humanitarian agencies that responded to the crisis. There will be many agencies and groups profiting from our suffering while ignoring our local women's organizations and our capacity for making decisions about what we need. In fact, some of these humanitarian agencies may actually facilitate the occupation of our communities by turning over lists of undocumented people to the authorities, not recognizing the family rights of same sex couples, or participating in re-development strategies that ignore the needs and perspectives of women. To counter this, women must seize our power and make our concerns known in the media, to government agencies, and to the humanitarian organizations. There are human rights standards that humanitarian agencies should follow and most require that women's perspectives are respected and incorporated. Women's organizations must work together, giving space to the creativity, energy and brains of young women. We cannot allow them to ignore the voices of local people or ignore the voices of women demanding inclusion. Women must ask critical questions during this crisis. Who are the groups benefiting from the disaster and who are the groups hurting or excluded? Women must help get the attention of people not immediately touched by the catastrophe and reach people who feel too comfortable to be outraged, because everyone is eventually affected by a tragedy of this magnitude. We must work together to address our collective trauma, fear and anxiety so that we can reduce its multi-generational impact. Under the classic style of economic development of poor areas of America, communities are destroyed, people are forcibly relocated, and transnational corporations are invited to re-develop the seized lands. They called this Urban Renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. The 1970s brought us Spatial Deconcentration. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was called Gentrification. Now it will be called Security. It may take as long as five years to rebuild the Gulf Coast, particularly the city of New Orleans, and right now we need to demand that the services to which we are entitled -- that are our human rights -- are delivered with respect, efficiency, and dignity. Our sisters from other countries advise us that disasters can wipe out the past and create an opportunity to better include people to reshape the future. We can use this moment to force bureaucracies to become more flexible, like changing normal admissions procedures to get our kids back in schools or demanding that quality public housing be provided instead of permanent refugee camps. We need schools, voter registration, immigrant services, drivers' licenses, housing, medical care, and public assistance put on the fast track, not bottle-necked services mired down in the typical bureaucratic snarls that characterize government assistance programs. We need to demand economic re-development strategies that center our needs, not those of casino owners, in the picture. It will be mighty tempting to use this as an opportunity to not rebuild our communities in New Orleans or the rest of the Gulf Coast. New Orleans is particularly at risk of becoming a tourist mecca with a French Quarter, plantation mansions, and endless casinos where the only jobs available to people of color will be low-paying ones supporting the tourist and oil industries. We have to claim our human right to sustainable development and insist on the enforcement of economic and social rights in re-development strategies. We have the right to quality schools for our children, jobs that pay living wages, communities free of environmental toxins, and opportunities to develop our full human potential. We have the right to reclaim our land, rebuild our homes, and restore our communities. Because many people lost their identities during the disaster, we can learn from our sisters in South Africa and Palestine who lost their identities when their countries were occupied. They took advantage of the chaos to create their own identities, determine their own facts, and promote community-based definitions of identity. They registered their own people as aid recipients and issued numbers and identity cards to help people have access to services. We have to define citizenship from our own point of view to challenge the powers that are taking over our communities and committing human rights abuses. People who are in occupied territories lose faith in the benefits of citizenship and in legal rights that are frequently denied. This is where international human rights laws become important. Claiming our identities as internally displaced persons forces our governments to not define us as charity cases, but as citizens with rights that must be respected and protected. It is also predictable that the people who name the repression by our government will be attacked and we must defend the women who will come under assault, like the human rights defenders movement. We will be called racist for pointing out the racism in America. Our inability to effectively defend people will lead to their isolation. Women already get attacked even before we're in the public sphere, in our personal lives through gender-based violence, but we can expect an escalation of these attacks if we loudly demand accountability from authorities. They will threaten to take away our children, deny us benefits, and accuse us of being unpatriotic and selfish. We cannot let them scare us because our lives -- and those of our families -- depend on us being united in resistance. Specifically, we must demand the full funding of services women will need to recover from this crisis. Of the billions of dollars that will be poured into the region, we must demand increased funding for domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, abused children's services, reproductive health programs, and services for the elderly, immigrants, and people who are disabled. We must demand that those doing assessments of what is needed not use gender-blind methods that fail to see the differences between the conditions of women and men, and fail to meet our need to be free from all forms of violence but especially sexual violence. It is vital that women and men, girls and boys are researched separately to understand the needs of each group. For example, research indicates that men are most likely exposed to violence in public places whereas violence against women is much more common in domestic spaces. We need to demand support for local women's organizations which are arguably the best way to get information to women and obtain information about women's needs. Yet often women's organizations are ignored either because they are not known to the decision makers or their work is not valued. We need the solidarity of feminists from around to world to help us claim our human rights. Ignoring women as a resource to help recover from this tragedy will affect the entire society for years to come. Following are four reproductive justice organizations affected by this crisis. We encourage you to send donations directly to them to help them out in this crisis: The Institute for Women & Ethnic Studies, a reproductive justice organization that works with young women in New Orleans on teen pregnancy, sexual health education, and training of physicians of color to deliver abortion and other reproductive health services, had its offices at 1600 Canal Street, in the heart of the flooded downtown of New Orleans. Because their staff is dispersed across several states in the Deep South, they are asking that people visit their website at www.iwes.org to make donations. One of their program assistants, La'Keidra Hardeman, has relocated temporarily to Atlanta and her email is hardeman at iwes.org. They will need new computer equipment, office furniture, and a host of other items basic to rebuilding their agency. Mississippi Families for Kids did not suffer direct damage because of the storm, but have responded to unprecedented demands for their services helping kids needing adoption and families in crisis. They are located at 620 N. State Street, #304, Jackson, MS 39202. Their phone number is 601-360-0591. Women With a Vision is a HIV/AIDS reproductive justice organization in New Orleans. They are presently working out of Houston, TX because of the relocation. Their temporary contact and address is Deon Haywood, 11614 Eaglewood Drive, Houston, TX 77089. Phone 504-931-7944. The Children's Defense Fund, Southern Regional Office is located at P. O. Box 11437, Jackson, MS 39283, Tel: (601) 321-1966, Fax: (601) 321-8736, www.cdf-sro.org. Their program, The Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative (SRBWI), promotes the first human rights agenda in the United States aimed at eradicating historical race, class, cultural, religious and gender barriers experienced by southern rural black women. Loretta J. Ross is the National Coordinator of SisterSong. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Oct 19 12:16:46 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:16:46 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Report Says Abuse by U.N.'s Blue-Helmets Persists Message-ID: http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2493 Report Says Abuse by U.N.'s Blue-Helmets Persists Run Date: 10/18/05 By Bojana Stoparic WeNews correspondent A hyper-masculine culture among U.N. peacekeepers, often called blue helmets, creates tolerance for extreme behavior, says a report released Tuesday by Refugees International. (WOMENSENEWS)--Refugees International is keeping the spotlight on the sexual conduct of "blue helmets," the slang term for United Nations peacekeepers. In a report released Tuesday, the Washington-based advocacy group examines sexual abuse and exploitation within peacekeeping missions in Liberia and Haiti and describes a "hyper-masculine culture that has created tolerance for extreme behavior." The problem of U.N. peacekeepers abusing women is not new. It caused a blaze of media and political attention in 2004 when peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo were revealed to be having sex with females as young as 12 in exchange for food, money or jobs. Peacekeeper contingents there were initially more concerned with protecting their national honor against accusations of sexual abuse than investigating the allegations, according to an internal U.N. document from 2004. The U.N. General Assembly has given the organization's independent Office of Internal Oversight Services a mandate to probe all allegations of sexual abuse. Offices are being set up in peacekeeping missions. In the Democratic Republic of Congo a professional team has been investigating allegations since March. The U.N. acknowledged the extent of sexual abuse in peacekeeping missions in its own far-reaching report last March, which was widely hailed as a frank and critical assessment of sexual misconduct in peacekeeping missions. "It really went out on a limb and made some bold recommendations," says Sarah Martin, author of today's Refugees International report. Martin, however, says the U.N. peacekeeping culture is not showing enough signs of change. "These problems will persist until the root causes are addressed: the inequity between men and women." In preparing the report, Martin interviewed about 100 peacekeepers in three trips to Liberia in 2003 and 2004, and one trip to Haiti early this year. She has also traveled to Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She says many peacekeepers told her that it is inevitable and understandable that men will solicit prostitutes when they are away from home for long periods of time. This, she told Women's eNews, reflects a male-dominated environment that treats sexual relations between peacekeepers and local women as justified and not worthy of comment. Vulnerable Women The Refugees International report describes how war-torn societies such as Haiti and Liberia were marred by sexual violence long before peacekeepers showed up. Economic devastation left women and children without any means of survival, forcing them "to offer the only material asset they have to trade, their bodies, to these peacekeepers." Given the economic inequality between U.N. peacekeepers and local women, Martin says, peacekeepers need to see these relationships as a serious misuse of power rather than a matter of consensual sex between equal partners. "These are desperate people trying to survive, to clothe and feed their families," Martin says, "and many women don't see themselves as victims." Sexual violence and exploitation characterizes many of the world's conflicts and both activists and U.N. officials say peacekeepers are supposed to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. "To take advantage of your position of power and influence like that is particularly egregious," says Milkah Kihunah, who monitors peacekeeping missions for the New York-based Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. "It's a developmental challenge that falls to the international community and donors as well as the U.N." Allegations for Past 15 Years Over the past 15 years, allegations of sexual abuse have been made against peacekeepers in each of the U.N.'s peacekeeping missions, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Liberia. Tuesday's report argues for applying the principles of Resolution 1325, which the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted five years ago on Oct. 31, 2000. That resolution called on U.N. agencies to integrate a gender lens into all of their activities in order to address the disproportionate impact of armed conflict on women and to better understand the gender implications of peacekeepers' work. Martin suggests more micro-finance and income-generating projects targeted at women to help alleviate peacekeeping abuse. She said the displaced and refugee women she spoke to in Liberia and Haiti overwhelmingly ask for assistance in starting their own businesses. The U.N.'s own report in March recommended establishing professional investigative units to pursue allegations of misconduct and collect evidence, and on-site courts-martial to prosecute soldiers. It also recommended holding managers and commanders accountable for the behavior of their troops. Martin, however, questions whether enough human and financial resources will be allocated to implement those recommendations and says the United Nations has had difficulty filling key positions to receive and oversee reports of sexual exploitation and abuse in a timely manner. New U.N. Measures The United Nations has instituted a number of new measures to fight abuse in recent months, according to Anna Shotton of the U.N.'s Department of Peacekeeping Operations. In August it announced that eight of its 18 peacekeeping missions would establish specific units to ensure that all incoming peacekeeping personnel are trained on what constitutes sexual abuse and exploitation, as well as reinforce the idea that such behavior is a serious disciplinary offense. They will also set up systems to receive complaints of abuse, review and verify the facts, and forward them to the U.N.'s internal investigators. The U.N. official added that the new conduct and discipline units in the eight missions--including Liberia, Haiti and Sudan--are at different stages of recruitment. A number of missions have also set up hotlines and e-mail accounts to receive complaints. Units for the 10 remaining missions are planned for 2006. Martin, however, worries that the United Nations is focusing too much on conduct and discipline at the expense of putting more women in its ranks. In 2004 only 4.4 percent of civilian police and 1 percent of military personnel working in peacekeeping missions were women, and women were only 27.5 percent of civilian personnel. The report argues that, as a consequence, a "boys will be boys" mentality toward sexual abuse has evolved in peacekeeping missions. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom's Kihunah agrees. "The presence of women in peacekeeping missions makes men adapt their behaviors and brings a gender perspective to relations with the local community," she said. Martin cautions that just having more women on missions won't necessarily prevent sexual misconduct, as the involvement of women in the U.S. military abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows. She emphasizes that male as well as female peacekeepers need to be concerned with how women are affected by the mission and by armed conflict in general. Bojana Stoparic is a freelance writer based in New York. For more information: Refugees International-- Addressing the Sexual Misconduct of Peacekeepers: http://www.refugeesinternational.org/content/article/detail/4047 PeaceWomen: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom: http://www.peacewomen.org/un/pkwatch/pkindex.html Sex-Assault Continues Unchecked in Congo http://womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2218/ --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 21 16:56:53 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:56:53 -0700 Subject: [m2c] How The US Erase Women's Rights In Iraq Message-ID: http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-hassan101005.htm How The US Erase Women?s Rights In Iraq By Ghali Hassan 10 October, 2005 Countercurrents.org Prior to the arrival of U.S. forces, Iraqi women were free to go wherever they wish and wear whatever they like. The 1970 Iraqi constitution, gave Iraqi women equity and liberty unmatched in the Muslim World. Since the U.S. invasion, Iraqi women?s rights have fallen to the lowest level in Iraq?s history. Under the new U.S.-crafted constitution, which will be put to referendum on the 15 October while the bloodbath mounts each day, women?s rights will be oppressed and the role of women in Iraqi society will be curtailed and relegated to the caring for ?children and the elderly?. Immediately after the invasion, the U.S. embarked on cultivating friendships with religious groups and clerics. The aim was the complete destruction of nationalist movements, including women?s rights movements, and replacing them with expatriate religious fanatics and criminals piggybacked from Iran, the U.S. and Britain. In the mean time the U.S. moved to liquidate any Iraqi opposition or dissent to the Occupation. The creation of paramilitary death squads ? from the SCIRI and Al- Da?wa militias ? tied to the current puppet government and Iran have been terrorising Iraq?s secular communities and assassinating large number of prominent Iraqi politicians and professionals (see Robert Dreyfuss - Death Squads and Diplomacy). By using one group against the other, the US is dancing to the ongoing violence and the prospect of civil strife, while its corporations are siphoning off Iraqi resources and assets. During his stint in Baghdad as the U.S. Proconsul, L. Paul Bremer often appeared with pro-Occupation women groups to foster the myth that the U.S is ?liberating Muslim women?, while at the same time signing laws that were detrimental to women?s rights. Like George Bush and Tony Blair, Paul Bremer is no feminist, but he used feminism?s rhetoric to enforce Western imperialism. ?Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists, the idea of feminism essentially functioned to morally justify the attack[s] on native societies and to support the notion of comprehensive superiority of Europe [and America]?, wrote Leila Ahmad, professor of women?s studies and an expert on gender at Harvard University. Hence, feminism serves as the ?handmaid of colonialism?, added Ahmed. Since March 2003, Iraqi women have been brutally attacked, kidnapped and intimidated from participating in Iraqi society. The generation-old equality and liberty laws have been, replaced by Middle Ages laws that strip women of their rights and put them in the same oppressive life as women in Afghanistan, the nation which the U.S. invaded to ?liberate? its oppressed women. The 1970 Iraqi constitution is not only the most progressive constitution in the Muslim World, but also the most equal. Iraqis were mentioned only as ?citizens?, and Iraqi women?s rights were specifically protected. In December 2003, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) ? constituted mostly of the current puppet government ? approved resolution 137, which will replace Iraq?s 1959 Personal Status Laws with religious law to be administered by conservative religious clerics from different religious groups with different interpretation of Islamic laws. The laws could affect women?s rights to education, employment, and freedom of movement, divorce, children custody and inheritance. The 55-member Constitutional Committee, who allegedly drafted ? under the American radar ? the new constitution, is only 17 per cent women. Like the January elections, the drafting of the constitution was undemocratic and lack public participation. Amid the escalation of violence, Iraqis are asked to vote on a constitution they do not understand. Many Iraqis believe ?the new constitution weakens the state and strengthens religion within the government?, which can be used to suppress people?s rights and freedom in general and women?s rights in particular. Its main purpose is to legitimise the Occupation and the puppet government. Iraqis, women in particular do not need a constitution; they need peace and security. Under previous governments, ?Iraqi women have enjoyed some of the most modern legal protections in the Muslim world, under a civil code that prohibits marriage below the age of 18, arbitrary divorce and male favouritism in child custody and property inheritance disputes?, as accurately described by Pamela Constable of the Washington Post. ?Saddam did not touch those rights, but the U.S.-appointed IGC have voted to wipe them out?, added Pamela Constable. It is noteworthy that due to women?s participation in the Iraqi society, modern Iraq was an important cultural powerhouse before the invasion. It exported education, including arts and sciences to the rest of the Arab World. Sadly, no where Iraqi women have been more betrayed than among women groups in the Middle East. When Karen Hughes, the Undersecretary of State and Bush? s personal confident went to friendly Middle East dictatorships to sale the war and lecture them on women?s rights. Her trip was dominated by friendly meetings with audiences filled with U.S.-friendly women and groups who received U.S. funding and consisted mostly of exchange students. Shameful as it was, these Arab women had no concern for the suffering of their sisters in Iraq, and remain silent despite the oppression they endure themselves under despotic regimes. Only among Turkish women the opposition to the war has been apparent even before the occupation. When Hughes went to Turkey, Turkish women turned the table around and lectured her on women?s rights and democracy. According to the Washington Post, Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Turkish women's rights activist told Hughes; ?War makes the rights of women completely erased and poverty comes after war -- and women pay the price?. Vargun has also denounced the arrest of Cindy Sheehan, the America who protested against the war at an antiwar protest. Today, many Iraqi women have been abused, tortured and raped by U.S. forces. A large number of Iraqi women are still in U.S.-run prisons without charge and without access to lawyer. Two prominent Iraqi female scientists, Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha, a biologist and Dr. Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, a microbiologist are still imprisoned without charge since the invasion. Former UN chief inspectors ? David Kay and Hans Blix ? have questioned the continued detention of Iraqi scientists, including the two female scientists, by US forces. The continued detention of Iraqi scientists without charge and incommunicado appears to violate international law, said the human rights group, Amnesty International. ?Women have been subjected to sexual threats by members of the U.S.-led forces and some women detained by U.S. forces have been sexually abused, possibly raped?, added Amnesty International in its February 2005 report. Given Amnesty International interest in the treatment of prisoners and prison conditions, one would expect Amnesty International to be more vocal than just paying lip service. ?There are no lawyers allowed for the detainees and no information is given about the reason or the evidence surrounding the detentions, Amal Kadhum Swadi, a prominent lawyer in Baghdad, told the WTI in Istanbul, Turkey. ?In the process, Iraqi women are being raped. One woman was bleeding for three months and the raping continued. There was no health service. The media does not mention these facts or the fact that all of Iraq has become a prison?, added Swadi. Indeed, there are more prisons in Iraq today than at any time in Iraq?s history. Indeed, Western mainstream media, Western propagandists, and women movements are deliberately concentrating on the role of Islam in the new constitution, ignoring the Occupation as the main violator of Iraqi women?s rights. Iraq has been a secular society for generations. Iraqi women are more literal with their Islam than any of the surrounding dictatorships who alleged to live according to Islamic laws. Since the U.S. Occupation, Iraqi women started to cover their heads which is continuously promoted in Western media as the face of oppressed Iraqi women. On the contrary, the percentage of Iraqi women in traditional wear was miniscule before the invasion. The brutality of the U.S. Occupation and the violent nature of the US military created the right conditions for the current violence against women. All evidence shows that violence has increased dramatically since the invasion, because it served the U.S. main objective. ?Several [Iraqi] politicians [in the puppet government] have actually suggested that the U.S. is involved in the sectarian killings in Iraq; encouraging sectarian strife with the aim of weakening the Iraqi nation and destabilizing the country, which would justify extending its military presence there?, reported Al-Jazeera on 04 October 2005. U.S.-instigated violence and the miserable living conditions created by the Occupation have forced Iraqi women to lock themselves in their homes. And even in their homes, Iraqi women are less safe today than before the invasion. U.S. forces and their collaborators continue to raid, Iraqi homes days and nights, accompanied by terror and human rights abuses of Iraqi women and their families. Iraqi women are arrested, detained, abused and tortured not because of anything they have done, but to force their close relatives (spouses, sons and brothers) to collaborate with the Occupation and inform against the Resistance fighting to defend their people and Iraq?s independence. The U.S. is not the ?guardian? of human rights, as many Americans still living with this fallacy; the U.S. has become the opposite, a creator of misery and injustice. The American people should be made a ware of the path their nation is taking, and the crimes it is committing in their name against innocent people around the world. What ever Americans think of their nation and the crimes their government committing against innocent people, ?for the people of Iraq and the rest of the world, [the torture and abuses of human rights] will serve as a reminder of America?s unyielding sadism against those who have the misfortune of living under its occupation?, wrote Dr. Joseph Massad of Columbia University in New York. ?The [Occupation] proves that the content of the word[s] ?freedom? [and ?liberty?] that American politicians and propagandists want to impose on the rest of the world [are] nothing more and nothing less than America?s violent domination, racism, torture, sexual humiliation, and the rest of it?, added Dr. Massad. The U.S. Occupation of Iraq proves that freedom and liberty were not the words the United States was founded upon. The only hope left for Iraqis to gain their freedom and liberty is the immediate and full withdrawal of U.S. troops, and their collaborators from Iraq. The forming of an Iraqi government based on national unity and independence should provide laws that are legitimate and that guarantee human rights for all Iraqis. Ghali Hassan lives in Perth, Western Australia. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 21 16:56:56 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:56:56 -0700 Subject: [m2c] 'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' Message-ID: This article is a bit old, but i think its really usefull in arguing against total decriminalization of the sex industry. Im posting it here because its always been a hassle for me to find it on the net. Thanks Amee for pointing it out. u http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/30/wgerm30.xml 'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits' By Clare Chapman (Filed: 30/01/2005) A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. Prostitution was legalised in Germany just over two years ago and brothel owners ? who must pay tax and employee health insurance ? were granted access to official databases of jobseekers. The waitress, an unemployed information technology professional, had said that she was willing to work in a bar at night and had worked in a cafe. She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel. Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job ? including in the sex industry ? or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990. The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse. When the waitress looked into suing the job centre, she found out that it had not broken the law. Job centres that refuse to penalise people who turn down a job by cutting their benefits face legal action from the potential employer. "There is now nothing in the law to stop women from being sent into the sex industry," said Merchthild Garweg, a lawyer from Hamburg who specialises in such cases. "The new regulations say that working in the sex industry is not immoral any more, and so jobs cannot be turned down without a risk to benefits." Miss Garweg said that women who had worked in call centres had been offered jobs on telephone sex lines. At one job centre in the city of Gotha, a 23-year-old woman was told that she had to attend an interview as a "nude model", and should report back on the meeting. Employers in the sex industry can also advertise in job centres, a move that came into force this month. A job centre that refuses to accept the advertisement can be sued. Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits. "Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova. Ulrich Kueperkoch wanted to open a brothel in Goerlitz, in former East Germany, but his local job centre withdrew his advertisement for 12 prostitutes, saying it would be impossible to find them. Mr Kueperkoch said that he was confident of demand for a brothel in the area and planned to take a claim for compensation to the highest court. Prostitution was legalised in Germany in 2002 because the government believed that this would help to combat trafficking in women and cut links to organised crime. Miss Garweg believes that pressure on job centres to meet employment targets will soon result in them using their powers to cut the benefits of women who refuse jobs providing sexual services. "They are already prepared to push women into jobs related to sexual services, but which don't count as prostitution,'' she said. "Now that prostitution is no longer considered by the law to be immoral, there is really nothing but the goodwill of the job centres to stop them from pushing women into jobs they don't want to do." Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 21 16:56:58 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:56:58 -0700 Subject: [m2c] UNIFEM portal on women, war, peace: Gender profiles of countries in conflict Message-ID: I found this website pretty useful for a class presentation on the feect of the isareli occupation on palestinian women. I havent had a chance to look at any of the other country gender profiles but i thought i'd paste some of the stuff they have on the occuppied territories. u http://www.womenwarpeace.org/ ? Support for WomenWarPeace.org is provided by the United Nations Foundation/UNFIP, the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) and the Government of Luxembourg. WomenWarPeace.org is intended to address the lack of consolidated data on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls as noted by Security Council resolution 1325 (2000). By no means exhaustive, this portal is meant to serve as a centralized repository of information from a wide variety of sources, with links to reports and data from the UN system to information and analysis from experts, academics, NGOs and media sources. Views expressed in external sources may not necessarily reflect those of UNIFEM or other UN departments, agencies, programmes or funds. http://www.womenwarpeace.org/opt/opt.htm GENDER PROFILE CONTENTS: ? Introduction ? Impact on Women ? Political & Security Impact - General - Curfews & Closures - Israeli Settlers - Violence - Separation Barrier - Political Participation - Peace Processes ? Humanitarian Situation - Displacement - Food & Water - Psychosocial Health - Health Services ? Human Rights ? Economic Security/Rights - Female-Headed Households - Employment - Agriculture - Education ? Women Building Peace ? UNIFEM ? UN Country Team ? UN Documents ? Security Council ? General Assembly ? Human Rights Commission ? ECOSOC ? CEDAW ? Other ? PeaceWomen - NGOs ? The Palestinian NGO Electronic Portal ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- PHOTOGRAPHS OF ACTIVITIES IN UNIFEM-SUPPORTED WOMEN'S CENTRE IN WEST BANK --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 21 16:56:59 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:56:59 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Prejudice in death Message-ID: http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,11812,1597330,00.html Prejudice in death Police attitudes, not the hoaxer, were ultimately responsible for the delay in catching the Ripper Julie Bindel Friday October 21, 2005 Guardian The news that the police have charged a Sunderland man with being the hoaxer during the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper brought it all back. The hoaxer sent letters and tapes during 1978-79 to a national newspaper claiming to be responsible for killing 10 women. His flat, quiet voice was broadcast to shoppers in markets and other public places in the West Yorkshire area. Copies of his letters were displayed on billboards in the hope that someone would recognise his handwriting. No one did. The letter and tapes were full of taunts to George Oldfield, the officer in charge of the case, for having not yet caught the Ripper. Oldfield, appearing red-cheeked on local television, declared that his efforts to catch the serial killer had become personal. "There may be more pawns in this war before I catch you, but I will catch you," he declared. The women of West Yorkshire were all too aware that we were the "pawns" Oldfield referred to, particularly the women working as prostitutes. The Yorkshire Ripper case was my reason for becoming a campaigner against sexual violence. I was angry, like many others, that the police only really seemed to step up the investigation when the first "non-prostitute" was killed. Some public opinion reflected police attitudes of the time. "If you work on the streets, it's what you can expect, but now we are all in danger." One night at the time of the investigation I was followed by a man of medium height with a dark, full beard, wiry hair and dark, piercing eyes. I was 18, and new to Leeds. I ran into a pub, managing to shake him off. Friends persuaded me to report it to the police, but when they heard my north-eastern accent, one officer joked that "I was just trying to cover up for my dad", so convinced were they that the Ripper had a Geordie accent. I completed a Photofit. The next day the body of the final victim, Jacqueline Hill, was found less than half a mile from where I was followed. When Sutcliffe was arrested and his photograph published, my Photofit was almost exactly like him. Sutcliffe was caught by chance on a routine police patrol in 1981. He had a strong Bradford accent. The letters and tapes were exposed as a hoax. The police came under heavy criticism for eliminating him from their inquiries mainly because he did not have a Wearside accent, despite having interviewed him several times as a potential suspect. That was almost 25 years ago. Today, police are more proactive when prostitutes are murdered. But such murders have the lowest clear-up rate. In Glasgow, in connection with eight prostitutes murdered since 1991, there has been only one conviction. As recently as 2002 there was an outcry about the case of Anthony Hardy, the so-called Camden Ripper. When police visited his flat after a complaint about noise, Sally White was found dead, propped up naked in a locked room, on Hardy's bed. White was known to be a street prostitute. She had a bite mark on her thigh and an injury to the back of her head that left a bloodstain on the wall. Police decided not to charge Hardy, believing she had died of "natural" causes. Hardy went on to murder two other prostitutes. The Yorkshire hoaxer diverted attention from relevant inquiries, but the ultimate responsibility was with senior police officers. This cannot be allowed to happen again. If a prostitute is murdered, we should expect police to put the same effort into catching her killer as they would for other women. The Ripper inquiry should have been the last one in which mistakes were made that resulted in women losing their lives. In such cases, there is no such thing as a less-deserving victim. ? Julie Bindel is the co-editor of The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys. juliebindel at yahoo.co.uk Guardian Unlimited ? Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005 --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Oct 21 16:56:57 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 15:56:57 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Celebrating Resistance: Indigenous Women and Sustainable Development Message-ID: http://www.madre.org/articles/int/celebratingresistance.html Celebrating Resistance: Indigenous Women and Sustainable Development By MADRE October 2005 [Related Materials The International Indigenous Women?s Forum Website http://www.madre.org/fimi/home.html Indigenous Peoples' Rights and Resources http://www.madre.org/articles/iprr.html International Human Rights Instruments Relevant to Indigenous Peoples http://madre.org/articles/indigenouslaw.html Check out MADRE's programs in Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua and Peru.] As many in the US celebrate Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples worldwide are celebrating a day of resistance. Indigenous Peoples have fought for centuries against genocide, displacement, colonization, and forced assimilation, preserving their cultures and their identities as distinct Peoples. The ongoing attack has left Indigenous communities among the poorest and most marginalized in the world, disenfranchised by national governments, and alienated from state politics. Yet, Indigenous Peoples have a long history of resistance that remains strong and diverse today. Around the world, Indigenous Peoples are at the forefront of the struggle against corporate globalization and privatization of natural resources, and are redefining the framework of human rights to address their own needs and concerns. Indigenous women play a key role in preserving their Peoples? natural resources and traditional knowledge, and have assumed an ever-expanding role in asserting their rights in local, national, and international arenas. Traditionally, women are responsible for conservation and maintenance of natural resources and for preserving and transmitting Indigenous knowledge. Indigenous women are the primary producers of food in their communities and the custodians of biodiversity for many of the world?s ecosystems. They are practitioners of medicine, pharmacology, botany, and nutrition, and the keepers of the agricultural technology that sustains the polycultures critical to maintaining biodiversity the world over. In addition to being the stewards of environmental, technical, scientific, cultural, and spiritual knowledge, Indigenous women are the primary transmitters of this knowledge to younger generations. As such, Indigenous women hold the keys to combating poverty in their communities and creating and implementing strategies for sustainable development. Respect for collective rights, such as sovereignty and self-determination, is vital for protecting Indigenous Peoples? human rights. Violations of Indigenous Peoples? sovereignty make Indigenous communities uniquely vulnerable to the abuses of corporate globalization. In most places, corporations are not required to compensate or even consult with Indigenous communities before cutting down their forests, drilling for oil on their lands, mining their mountains, or displacing people from their homes. Meanwhile, the vast natural wealth found on Indigenous Peoples? lands makes Indigenous communities a target for profit-minded corporations and governments. Indigenous cultural heritage, including extensive knowledge of plants and animals, is also vulnerable to exploitation. Historically, this knowledge has been developed, shared, and used collectively. But international trade rules like the World Trade Organization?s TRIPS (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) fail to recognize collective intellectual property. As a result, Indigenous Peoples? knowledge?particularly in the areas of pharmacology and botany?is being appropriated by individuals and corporations seeking patent rights. Recently, Indigenous Peoples have made significant progress using the international arena to demand their individual and collective rights. Indigenous activists have established worldwide networks to bring their issues before the highest levels of international decision-making bodies, forcing national governments and international bodies to recognize their human rights. Indigenous women have been at the forefront of the international Indigenous movement, and have stressed that gender equality and increased political participation of Indigenous women are essential aspects of Indigenous Peoples? human rights. Historically, pervasive disparities between women and men within Indigenous communities have been reinforced by colonization and neoliberalism, while those Indigenous beliefs and practices that are egalitarian have been undermined. Indigenous women must therefore defend both the rights of their Peoples as a whole and their rights as women within their communities. Today, Indigenous women activists are working in the international arena to advance a rights-based approach to meeting the UN Millennium Development Goals and win the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Many Indigenous women see the Declaration as key to establishing a framework for Indigenous human rights law?including recognition of Indigenous Peoples? collective rights?that is essential to empowering Indigenous Peoples and defending their social, economic, and cultural rights. Indigenous Peoples? human rights are central to the human rights struggles of women and families around the world. Particularly as issues of global warming, resource depletion, and widespread poverty become increasingly central to the world?s survival, Indigenous women?s expertise and perspectives will play a vital role in determining the future of all the world?s peoples. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- The International Indigenous Women?s Forum (FIMI/IIWF) is a network of Indigenous women leaders from Asia, North America, Latin America, Africa, Europe, and the Pacific who work at the international level to guarantee the inclusion of Indigenous women?s perspectives and the needs of Indigenous communities in international discussions and processes. FIMI/IIWF began in 1999 at the International Indigenous Women's Forum on Beijing+5, when Indigenous women from around the world came together in New York City prior to B+5 to discuss the need to strengthen international relationships among Indigenous women, continue to develop their capacity as Indigenous women, and increase their participation at international meetings. MADRE is an international women's human rights organization that works in partnership with community-based women?s groups worldwide. Our programs reflect a human-rights-based and people-centered approach to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals, which aim to: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development. MADRE provides resources and training to enable our sister organizations to meet these goals by addressing immediate needs in their communities and developing long-term solutions to the crises they face. Since we began in 1983, MADRE has delivered over 21 million dollars worth of support to community-based women's groups in Latin America, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, the Balkans, Asia, and the United States. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Oct 22 13:15:10 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:15:10 -0700 Subject: [m2c] UN report: Gender-based violence is most widespread and socially tolerated violation of human rights worldwide Message-ID: http://www.southasianmedia.net/cnn.cfm?id=244015&category=Women&Country=INDI A Wife-beating OK: 70% abused Indians Friday, October 14, 2005 NEW DELHI: An overwhelming majority of Indian women who have experienced domestic violence believe that wife-beating is justified. Gender-based violence is most widespread and socially tolerated violation of human rights worldwide, says the UNFPA State of World Population 2005 report. In India, 70 per cent of married women who have ever experienced domestic violence believe that "wife-beating is justified for at least one reason." Shockingly, 16 per cent of deaths during pregnancy in India have been attributed by the report to domestic violence. Released in London on Wednesday, the report ranks Indian women third behind their counterparts in Egypt and Zambia for accepting domestic violence as normal. "In some countries, a large proportion of women believe wife-beating may be justified for reasons such as refusing to have sex or not preparing food on time," the report adds. Violence against women in many countries, says the report, is shrouded in a culture of silence. Also, violence against women is accepted as a "normal" aspect of gender relations and many men and women in these societies feel that wife-beating is justified. In India, one survey showed women lost an average of seven working days after an incident of violence. Discrimination against girls may begin in womb, says the report. Sex selection in some countries was more common in the cities where technologies such as amniocentesis and ultrasound were readily accessible and open to misuse. "In many places, it is reinforced by the perception that daughters are an economic liability, either because of low expected contributions to family income or large dowry requirements," says the report. The state of women in India was highlighted on the issue of missing girls. Haryana, which has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the country, came in for a special mention in this regard. The report also highlighted India as a transit point in trafficking of women from the South Asian region, especially Nepal. Gender inequality means that women have no access to contraceptives. Even within countries, contraceptive use is uneven and varies according to income, education and ethnicity. In India, just 29 per cent of the poorest 20 per cent women have some kind of access to contraceptives. In contrast, about 55 per cent of richest 20 per cent women use contraceptives. "Today, we are paying a price too high for gender-based violence. Worldwide estimate reveals one in five women will be a victim of rape or attempted rape in her lifetime; one in three will have been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused, usually by a family member or an acquaintance. Violence is killing and disabling women between the ages of 15-44 as cancer," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid at the launch of the report which coincided with the 60th anniversary of the United Nations. Even in a highly-developed society like Canada, a national survey on violence against women reported that 30 per cent of married women has to cease regular activities due to abuse, and 50 per cent of women had to take sick leave from work because of the harm sustained. The Violence Against Women factsheet of the annual report stated that in one of four cases of domestic violence, women experience sexual abuse. Largescale studies in every country showed that 10 to 69 per cent women have been physically abused by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Between 12 and 25 per cent of women have experienced attempted or completed forced sex by an intimate partner or ex-partner in their lives. In developed nations like Australia, Canada, South Africa and the United States, 40-70 per cent of females were killed by their partners. Asian Age --------------------- http://www.hindu.com/2005/10/14/stories/2005101417831300.htm Gender-based violence reflects inequities: report Gargi Parsai It compromises the health, dignity and security of victims; sex balance indicates nation's well-being At least 60 million girls are "missing'' in Asia Sex selective abortions and female foeticide also prevalent in China, Eastern Mediterranean and a few East Asian countries NEW DELHI: "Men take a stand.'' This is the message in the United Nations' Population Development Fund Report 2005 on gender equity, reproductive health and Millennium Development Goals. It takes note of the efforts to enlist groups of men to promote the culture of "zero tolerance'' for female foeticide, rape, trafficking in women and domestic violence. "Violence is a traumatic experience for any man or woman, but gender-based violence is preponderantly inflicted by men on women and girls. It both reflects inequities between men and women and compromises the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims,'' says the report. Report released On the occasion of the release of the Status of World Population Report 2005 on Tuesday, the UNFPA office here also made available to the media an old report, "Missing''? Mapping the Adverse Child Sex Ratio in India. This report, released in 2003, talked of the decline in the child-sex ratio from 945 girls per 1000 boys in the 1991 census to 927 girls per 1000 boys in the 2001 census, some of the worst States being Haryana, Punjab, Delhi and Gujarat. The statistics and observations in this report were based on Census Office releases and were widely published in 2003. The State of the World Population Report 2005 notes that in Asia, at least 60 million girls are "missing'' due to pre-natal sex selection, infanticide or neglect. Each year up to 8,00,000 people are trafficked in across borders ? 80 per cent of them women and girls, mostly exploited in the commercial sex trade. Sex selection is more common in cities, where amniocentesis and ultrasound are readily accessible and open to misuse. In rural areas, the preference for sons is strong. Governments have banned the practice but it is deep-rooted. Sex selection has become a lucrative business for doctors and producers of medical equipment, says the report. The sex ratio at birth is slightly skewed in favour of boys for biological reasons. For every girl born, there are normally 103 to 107 boys. However, since boys and men normally have higher mortality rates throughout life, in most countries, women outnumber men. "A country's sex balance can be a telling indicator of its social well-being. Eliminating the practice requires changes in the way girls and women are valued by society,'' says the Population Status report. According to UNFPA representative in India Hendrik van der Pol, sex selective abortions and female foeticide are prevalent, besides in India, in China, Eastern Mediterranean and a few East Asian countries. In China, which aims at normalising its sex ratio imbalance by 2010, the UNFPA has worked with the government, academia and the media to raise awareness. The report says gender equity reduces poverty and saves and improves lives. Gender equality and reproductive health are indispensable. The Millennium Development Goals to halve poverty, reduce maternal mortality, child mortality and HIV/AIDS by 2015 and focus on education, gender empowerment and overall development are a means to achieve those aims. The report puts India's population at 1,103.4 million and the projected population in 2050 at 1,592.7 million. The average population growth rate is 1.5 per cent and the average total fertility rate 2.92, a slight reduction over last decade. ? Copyright 2000 - 2005 The Hindu --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Oct 22 13:15:11 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:15:11 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Poverty and women Message-ID: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/comment/2005/Octob er/comment_October14.xml§ion=comment Khaleej Times Online >> News >> COMMENT Poverty and women By Mohammed A. R. Galadari 14 October 2005 A LINK has been established between poverty and women empowerment. "The war on poverty cannot be won unless greater efforts are made to give women equality", says the annual UN Population Fund report. Dear readers, all tall talks about ending poverty, or making poverty a part of past history, have not made any major difference in the lives of the suffering multitudes across the world. Politicians in Third World countries use it as a slogan to win votes, but once they get into power, it is often that they forget not just the slogan but the people as well. Be that as may, the exhortation from a UN forum in the course of the release of the annual report, that world leaders will not make poverty history until they make gender discrimination history. It meant education to all girls, an end to violence against women, which is common in many societies, and granting of "full social, cultural, economic and political rights to women. The irony of it all is that all religions preach respect for women; and tradition everywhere is to respect women, be they mothers, sisters, wife, or daughters. Education helps societies become more civilized and it helps societies treat women with more dignity. Education also empowers women, and helps them stand on their own feet, rather than be dependent on parents or on one's husband. The AGCC region has made major strides in respect of women education and empowerment in recent years. In UAE, in particular, all female children are attending to primary education, while over 65 percent of the girls are having access to higher education. Not just that. They are outperforming males in all educational fields. Some assessments in the just-released report would appear to be grim. For instance, it says one in three women around the world is likely to suffer physical, sexual or other abuse in her lifetime. Yet, women are the ones who literally feed the people around the world. Their hands are behind some 60 to 80 percent of the food production in the developing world. And yet, in many societies, women do not have basic human rights, including the right to own land or property. Amnesty International's annual report this year is educative in this respect: It says: "In countries around the world, poverty and marginalisation continue to fuel violence against women...While globalisation has opened up opportunities for women, it has also had negative effects. It has left more and more women trapped on the margins of society. Such women find it extremely difficult to escape abusive situations and to obtain protection and redress". When the world leaders met at an august function to mark the turn of the century, they had, in all eagerness, committed their nations to the cause of achieving what UN set as "Millennium Development Goals". Eradication of poverty by year 2015 was one of those goals; women empowerment was another. The fact, however, is that there have not been any major improvements in these respects even as five years have passed. Millions of poor people, especially in Asia and Africa, live without the means to have three full square meals a day. And cases of abuses of women are on the increase. Many of the Third World countries had won independence from their colonial masters in the second half of the last century. But, self-rule has not helped improve the plight of the poor, or women, in many of these countries in any spectacular way. Politicians who promised to eradicate poverty have, in most cases, prospered themselves, and ignored-or cheated-the multitudes around them. They must now pay heed to what the UN report has to say. Poverty eradication and women empowerment have to go hand in hand, as they are supplementary and complementary to each other. Its success, however, lies in the kind of seriousness that governments attach to the cause. Readers? response may be forwarded to marg at khaleejtimes.com --------------------- http://www.npfpc.gov.cn/en/en2005-10/enews20051017-2.htm Harmonious society helps eliminate gender discrimination: UN official 2005-10-13 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative Siri Tellier said here Wednesday that China's efforts to build harmonious society help eliminate gender discrimination, echoing the release of The State of World Population 2005 report on the same day. Global efforts to "make poverty history" will fall unless worldleaders act now to end discrimination, according to the report. Tellier said that there is gender discrimination in all countries, and "the emphasis by the CPC (the Communist Party of China) on equitable development towards a harmonious society is very welcome in this respect." While acknowledging China's tremendous strides in eliminating gender discrimination in the last half century, she also pointed out that many Chinese women are also concerned that much of the recent economic progress is not benefiting everyone equitably, especially women. The State of World Population report is released every year by UNFPA since 1978. This year's report, The Promise of Equality, Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals, calls upon world leaders to fulfill promises made to world's women. Considering reproductive health an important part in ending gender discrimination, Tellier said, "China has much to be proud of in terms of improving maternal mortality -- China has made moreprogress on this than most countries." According to a white paper issued in August, in the past decade,the mortality rate of Chinese women in childbirth has declined steadily - from 61.9 per 100,000 in 1995 to 48.3 per 100,000 in 2004. Reproductive health problems -- including HIV/AIDS -- constitute the leading cause of death and illness among women between the age of 15 and 44 and every year more than 50 million women die of pregnancy-related causes, the State of the World Population says. "In some areas of the country, however, maternal mortality is quite high, and there are still counties which have not adopted the new approaches and where services and attitudes of service providers can be improved," said Tellier. (Source : Xinhua General News Service) --------------------- http://internacional.radiobras.gov.br/ingles/materia_i_2004.php?materia=2433 35&q=1&editoria UN report on women's education and gender equality 14/10/2005 Yara Aquino Rep?rter da Ag?ncia Brasil Bras?lia - The 2005 UN Population Fund report shows that worldwide there are 600 million women who are illiterate, compared to 320 million men in the same situation. The report goes on to say that there is a relationship between women's education, gender equality and poverty around the world because where there is education and equality, poverty levels drop. But women continue to have their problems. In Brazil, and the world, there are more girls in elementary school than boys. In many parts of the world the predominance of women continues into high school. And although more and more women are going into higher education, it is at the university level that a change begins to occur. And in the job market the change becomes drastic. "Although women have the education, the training and, often, a university degree, they simply cannot get the same pay as men," explains Tania Patriota, the Population Fund representative in Brazil. Translator: Allen Bennett ---------------------- http://www.timesnews.co.ke/14oct05/editorials/comm1.html Let's give our women a wider berth By Abdillahi Alawy On Wednesday, October 12, 2005, the United Nations Population Fund released its annual report which clearly warned that poverty reduction efforts will fall short without a serious focused-investment in women. The publication reports that rural women are responsible for up to 80% of food production in developing countries, but are still prohibited from inheriting land and other resources of production. The report confirms that African women receive less than 10% of all loans earmarked for small farmers and only 1% of total agricultural credit. The UN report was concurrently released in several cities including Bangkok, London and New York, said that discrimination against women undermines development programs and hurts the productive capacity of women. Unfortunately, the few women leaders in Kenya appear to be quite at home playing politics rather than promoting the issues and grievances of women. Even in the midst of a report like this, our three women cabinet ministers have featured a lot in the news for something that is totally opposite of what the UN report is emphasising for our leaders male and female. For example, Minister Linah Kilimo recently hit headlines for changing her position on the referendum vote, Minister Charity Ngilu received heavy media attention for her muffled indecision on the referendum and Minister Martha Karua was reported commandeering the Banana crusade in different parts of the country. May be this is why women continue to face discriminatory practices, which prevent them from getting the needed access to basic services such as health care, clean water, education and employment. Women voices have been totally silenced. Women?s voices, whether in the media or in the legislative halls are crucial because of their critical roles in the development of this nation. Kenyan women have had an uphill struggle in voicing their positions because they are treated as second-class citizens in Kenya and generally in the rest of Africa. Women?s biggest challenge has been in attracting visibility and recognition for their productive and reproductive roles that they play in our economy. Women protect and nurture our environment and grow our crops. Additionally, they process our food and raise our children. As sufferers and victims of HIV/AIDS, women?s statistics are doubly horrifying compared to men?s. In essence, women are the invisible workhorses of this nation and their voices need to be listened to if at all we are interested in charting a new course for our development. Kenya specifically, as a developing country, we have not done a good job of listening to the women and studying their conditions. What is even disheartening is the fact that even the donor countries do not listen and/or seriously incorporate women in the aid and development policies. As an aid recipient country, we have been given all kinds of conditions except that of meaningfully incorporating women in development. If you examine the latest development strategies that are promoted by the donor nations, you will immediately notice that we have successfully presented our case to them. We have convincingly established that it is a mistake to put conditions on aid. We have even shown donors that attaching conditions to their funds has been catastrophic for our little economies. Additionally, African scientists and economists have been given a bigger role in charting solutions for these problems. It is through this cooperation that many have realised that forced privatisation and other donors? conditions have had disastrous results on the continent. However, the plight of women and the lack of their involvement in these efforts have not occupied the central theme of any meaningful plans that are being implemented today. For example, even though this year has been declared the United Nations Year of Microfinance; supporting small-scale businesses with small loans has never been contextualised within the gaps that inhibit women?s success in acquiring such support. This is happening even in the reality that it is women who are the key forces of small enterprises in developing nations. Furthermore, a lot of research has confirmed that women are better investors than men. Yet, these facts are rarely factored in when we are designing new strategies to address African development crisis. In most cases, gender considerations are always afterthoughts whose importance is secondary appendages to programme reports. We have successfully talked about the evils associated with the Structural Adjustments Programmes. Now, it is very important to look at ourselves and focus on the mistakes that we customarily recycle all the time. Let us advise the donors of how we want our aid and once we have the money, let us all look at our in-country partners, the women, and chart a decent map of equality and visibility for both genders. Although de-linking aid-funds from harmful policies is great, we need to go farther in this by putting in place conscious conditions that will link women to aid monies and fully empower them in doing what they have been doing all along. For once, let?s design and implement such gender-equality-policies ourselves before the donors impose them on us. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Oct 22 13:15:03 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:15:03 -0700 Subject: [m2c] Muslim women in science Message-ID: http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/oct/21/21102005wo.htm#A0 Muslim women in science WOMEN DESK There is an ingrained value in every Muslim, man and woman alike, to pursue knowledge and to learn about God's truth by studying the surrounding world. Prophet Mohammad , advised his followers to seek knowledge wherever it can be found. In keeping with this value, Muslim women are continuing to make headway in the field of science and their graduation ratios often exceed those of western women in pursuing scientific degrees according to figures recently released by UNESCO. Yet, very seldom do positive depictions of Muslim women get portrayed by the western mainstream media. In some cases, media profit depends upon a production team's ability to feed the myopic fantasies and stereotypes etched in the minds of many non-Muslims. Westerners are comfortable with stereotypes that Muslim women are oppressed because of Islam, which could not be further from the truth. The Islamic message, which stresses gender equity and rights for women, is often corrupted by competing cultural values that have no basis in Islam scripture. The quest for knowledge has always applied to women in Islam. God has made no difference between genders in this area. The Prophet once said: "Seeking knowledge is a mandate for every Muslim (male and female)." (Sahih Bukhari) During the International Congress on Muslim Women in Science Towards a Better Future, King Mohamed VI stressed that "...the integrated development of the principles of Islam and of scientific knowledge must be achieved irrespective of gender", according to a UNESCO report on the gathering that took place in 2000. Muslim women in science have become leaders in their fields, receiving awards, earning patents and making contribution that further man's knowledge of the world, and yet the eyes of western cameras see through these women as if they do not exist. A tendency to avoid praise for Muslim achievements hides the seldom explored comparisons. The fact is that the United States falls behind six Muslim countries in the percentage of women graduating in science to the total science graduate population. The countries whose ratio of women science graduates exceeds that of the United States are Bahrain, Brunei Darussalam, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Qatar and Turkey. Morocco exceeds the United States in the ratio of women engineering graduates as a percentage of the science graduate population. Rehab Eman, a Muslim woman with a Bachelor of Science in Architectural Engineering, and a Masters degree in Islamic Studies on Jerusalem credits Islamic values for what inspired her to pursue knowledge in a scientific field. Instead of holding Eman back, the Muslim men in her life, including her father and brother, encouraged her to work hard for her education. "My lecturers were men, my supporters were men, my sponsors were men. They believed in my talents...," she shares. Traditionally, Muslim women have not been discouraged in the sciences to the extent that Western women have, which might be why statistics show such high ratios of Muslim women graduates in science fields as a percentage to the total science graduate population. However, in Muslim countries the real hurdles that affect women's education are the very same hurdles that affect men's education. These hurdles take the form of poverty, illiteracy, political instability and the policy of foreign powers. Data that explains the real problem can be found by comparing the total educated populations of countries and regions of the world. A high degree of illi teracy and low levels of secondary school enrollment account for why there are less graduates overall in poorer countries than there are in wealthier regions like North America and Europe. In locales defined by UNESCO in their recent report, gross secondary school enrollment ratios are very low: Africa (below 40%), West Asia (below 60%), and East Asia (below 75%). While some Islamophobic pundits are all too ready to make a correlation between poor education and what type of religion one practices, more accurate relationships can find their foundation in hard figures. National wealth and education forge a tight relationship. According to data from the UIS (UNESCO Institute for Statistics), national wealth is directly related to educational enrollment. Statistics show that the vast majority of medium-high and high income countries have a secondary school enrollment ratio above 90 percent. Poorer countries don't have the resources needed to make education a priority. Undoubtedly, the next question that gets asked is, "How do countries become poor?" Well, to the dismay of many hostile to the deen, poverty and Islam cannot be correlated any more successfully than illiteracy and Islam. While there is more than enough scriptural proof that Islam encourages education for both men and women, some fail to realize that when the disease of poverty attacks, it does so in disregard to any cultural or religious boundaries. Obstacles to Education Although there are obstacles to education in much of the non-Muslim world today, the Muslim world has endured some of the most hostile attacks in recent decades, which has affected the overall quality and safety for youth trying to obtain education. In war torn Afghanistan and Iraq, schools of all levels have been bombed and shelled by U.S. military forces. Public health is in jeopardy and infrastructure has been damaged and not rebuilt. When state-sponsored super-power terrorism isn't being waged on weaker civilian populations, a form of quiet economic warfare is being waged behind a smokescreen of Public Relations razzle-dazzle by organizations like the IMF and World Bank, the culprits responsible, in part, for increasing third-world national debts and hitting other nations' education systems like a homerun out of Yankee Stadium. A self-proclaimed Economic Hit-Man, John Perkins, former Chief Economist for Chas. T. Main, confesses in a radio interview with Amy Goodman that his job was to build the American Empire by increasing other countries' national debt by using any means necessary. "This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that," says Perkins. Gender Inequity Gender inequity does exist, but it is not relegated to Muslim countries. Some disparaging gender gaps in higher education exist where the religion of Islam isn't even practiced by a majority of the population. For example, only 44% of people enrolled in higher education in Switzerland are women, Guatemala (43%), Rwanda (37%), Korea (36%), Bhutan (34%), Cambodia (29%) and Liechtenstein (27%). On the other side of the coin, in Tunisia, a country where 98% of people practice Islam, there were 5% more female students enrolled than males in higher education. Malaysian women made up 55% of the enrolled population in higher education, Lebanon (54%), Jordan and Libya (51%). Bahrain even exceeded the United States in the ratio of women enrolled in higher education by 6%. If education is freedom, then it looks like Muslim women in Bahrain are more liberated than American women. Rather than Islam threatening a woman's right to education, governments hostile to Islam often set up roadblocks to prevent Muslim women from obtaining education. Both France and Turkey are guilty of this type of exclusionary persecution, all under the false guise of secularism. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), a prestigious nongovernmental organization, these bans exclude thousands of women from institutions of higher learning each year. A 2004 HRW report states, "This restriction of women's choice of dress is discriminatory and violates their right to education, their right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and their right to privacy." Exemplary Muslimah Scientists Despite the fact that the Muslim woman is constantly being harassed about her choice in religion and must withstand relentless western media stereotypes that ridicule her faith and demonize the men of her culture, there exists an Islamic tradition celebrating women in science of which Muslims must remind the world. Today, the Islamic culture in which women are encouraged to participate, excel and lead in scientific fields continues to express itself, not only through statistical data, but in real, living, breathing and praying people. Although these women are exceptional, they are by no means the exception to the rule. Professor Samira Ibrahim Islam Professor Islam was nominated as a distinguished Scientist of the World For the Year 2000 by UNESCO. She made significant contributions in drug safety by defining the Saudi profile for drug metabolism. She has held several academic leadership posts in her own country as well as international diplomatic posts with the World Health Organization. Professor Islam has also been a key figure in building academic infrastructure, beginning in the '70s, to support women studying science in higher education in Saudi Arabia. Sameena Shah Recently at the international Workshop on Machine Learning in Canada, Samira Shah, presented an innovative algorithm in computerized cognitive leaning that she and a team of colleagues developed at IIT Delhi, India. Her previous academic contributions include a "Global Optimizer" for which a patent is pending. She is currently pursuing a doctorate degree from IIT Delhi. Professor Dr. Bina Shaheen Siddiqui Dr. Siddiqui has made significant contributions to medicine and agriculture through her study and classification of indigenous plant materials. She has been awarded several patents for anticancer constituents and biopesticides and has written more than 250 research articles. Pakistan Academy of Sciences elected her as a Fellow and she co-founded the Third World Organization for Women in Science. She received her Ph.D. and D.Sc. from the University of Karachi, Pakistan. She has been honored with several prestigious awards including the Khwarizmi International Award of Iran and Salam Prize in Chemistry. Historic records show that women participated in science and medicine in Muslim societies. By contrast, in America, during the 1890's women could not be doctors, and yet, Muslim women doctors were seen as equals to their male counterparts hundred's of years earlier, they were even responsible for written contributions in the field. Also, women like Ijliya, an astrolab builder, were employed as skilled scientists in Muslim courts. Others made progress in pharmacology like Ishi Nili Seeking knowledge is one of the most rewarding ways to connect to Al-Alim (The All Knowing) besides prayer. The believing faithful hold a deep love for Allah in their hearts. Perhaps it is this deep love that inspires believing men and women to strain and reach with their minds, through scientific learning in order to bring themselves closer to the One to whom they are so thankful. "Iqra!" (read) was Allah's first command to Mohammad (peace be upon him) and its implications are numerous to Muslims living today. Read, be literate, seek and learn, discover and use the gifts and talents that Allah has granted us above animals. Use the mind to move closer to Al-Haadi (The Guide), as the Muslimah scientists have done in the past and are doing today. Women graduates in science and engineering The data for years 2002/2003 contained in these tables describes the percentage of women graduates in science and engineering out of the total science and engineering graduate population in each country, and pertains to higher-education in science (life sciences, physical sciences, mathematics and statistics, computer sciences) and Engineering (engineering and engineering trades, manufacturing and processing, architecture and building) fields in countries with Muslim majorities for which data was available. (Statistics from the "Global Education Digest" report released from UNESCO Institute for Statistics 2005) Bahrain 74% Bangladesh 24% Brunei Darussalam 49% Kyrgyzstan 64% Lebanon 47% Qatar 71% Turkey 44% Compared with... U.S. 43% Japan 25% Women Graduates in Engineering Eritrea 4% Morocco 25% Compared with... U.S. 19% Japan 13% Women?s own would like to Thank, to a freelance writer from St. Paul, Minnesota, USA, Corey Elizabeth Habbas for her rescarch. --------------------- Prospero, you are the master of illusion. Lying is your trademark. And you have lied so much to me (lied about the world, lied about me) that you have ended by imposing on me an image of myself. underdeveloped, you brand me, inferior, That ?s the way you have forced me to see myself I detest that image! What's more, it's a lie! But now I know you, you old cancer, and I know myself as well. - Caliban, in Aime Cesaire's "The Tempest" http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Oct 22 13:15:06 2005 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 22 Oct 2005 12:15:06 -0700 Subject: [m2c] The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm Message-ID: The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm by Anne Koedt (1973) From "Radical Feminism" edited by Anne Koedt, Ellen Levine, Anita Rapone. Pages 198-207 Whenever female orgasm and frigidity are discussed, a false distinction is made between the vaginal and the clitoral orgasm. Frigidity has generally been defined by men as the failure of women to have vaginal orgasms. Actually the vagina is not a highly sensitive area and is not constructed to achieve orgasm. It is the clitoris which is the center of sexual sensitivity and which is the female equivalent of the penis. I think this explains a great many things: First of all, the fact that the so-called frigidity rate among women is phenomenally high. Rather than tracing female frigidity to the false assumptions about female anatomy, our "experts" have declared frigidity a psychological problem of women. Those women who complained about it were recommended psychiatrists, so that they might discover their "problem" -diagnosed generally as a failure to adjust to their role as women. The facts of female anatomy and sexual response tell a different story. Although there are many areas for sexual arousal, there is only one area for sexual climax; that area is the clitoris. All orgasms are extensions of sensation from this area. Since the clitoris is not necessarily stimulated sufficiently in the conventional sexual positions, we are left "frigid." Aside from physical stimulation, which is the common cause of orgasm for most people, there is also stimulation through primarily mental processes. Some women, for example, may achieve orgasm through sexual fantasies, or through fetishes. However, while the stimulation may be psychological, the orgasm manifests itself physically. Thus, while the cause is psychological, the effect is still physical, and the orgasm necessarily takes place in the sexual organ equipped for sexual climax, the clitoris. The orgasm experience may also differ in degree of intensity - some more localized, and some more diffuse and sensitive. But they are all clitoral orgasms. All this leads to some interesting questions about conventional sex and our role in it. Men have orgasms essentially by friction with the vagina, not the clitoral area, which is external and not able to cause friction the way penetration does. Women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases men; our own biology has not been properly analyzed. Instead, we are fed the myth of the liberated woman and her vaginal orgasm - an orgasm which in fact does not exist. What we must do is redefine our sexuality. We must discard the "normal" concepts of sex and create new guidelines which take into account mutual sexual enjoyment. While the idea of mutual enjoyment is liberally applauded in marriage manuals, it is not followed to its logical conclusion. We must begin to demand that if certain sexual positions now defined as "standard" are not mutually conducive to orgasm, they no longer be defined as standard. New techniques must be used or devised which transform this particular aspect of our current sexual exploitation. Freud-A Father o