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