From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Dec 1 23:34:12 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 01 Dec 2006 22:34:12 -0800 Subject: [m2c] The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case After 25 Years Message-ID: <158860210.20061201223412@shaw.ca> http://www.counterpunch.org/washington12012006.html The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case After 25 Years: Still More Keystone Kops Antics By LINN WASHINGTON, Jr. Whether the fundamental errors riddling recent actions by opponents of Pennsylvania death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal constitute mere mistakes or malicious misrepresentations, these errors resemble sequels to the Keystone Kops silent film-era comedy series. These error filled antics occur as Abu-Jamal approaches the 25th Anniversary of his December 9, 1981 arrest for fatally shooting a Philadelphia policeman and as a pivotal legal action moves forward in federal appeals court revolving around whether Abu-Jamal received a fair trial in 1982. The latest faux pas by Abu-Jamal opponents regards errors in an October letter sent to officials in Paris requesting that they rescind the honorary citizenship granted three years ago to the death row inmate viewed globally as a victim of injustice in America. This letter states that a delegation of Philadelphia City officials, including the Police Commissioner, planned a late-November trip to Paris to negotiate rescinding the honorary citizenship in exchange for these officials getting Abu-Jamal's death sentence cancelled. However, the four Philadelphia officials listed as delegation members all deny knowing anything about either the trip or the deal. Further, these officials have no power to cancel Abu-Jamal's death sentence. Peter J. Wirs, the Philadelphia figure behind the delegation/deal, says he is surprised by the errors in that letter prepared on his behalf by a lawyer in Paris. "I haven't done anything yet to formalize the delegation or the planned trip. We haven't raised any money," Wirs said recently, adding that he "hasn't seen" the letter sent on his behalf. Wirs also distanced himself from the deal proposed in that letter. "An offer to pull the death penalty is so ridiculous. We have no authority to take the death penalty off the table," said Wirs, a minor figure in Philadelphia's Republican Party, a party that represents only sixteen percent of the city's registered voters. Wirs dismissed errors in that letter as minor mistakes probably resulting from "translations from English to Frenchtoo many chefs' hands in this soup" That October letter also contains the erroneous claim that Abu-Jamal shot Officer Daniel Faulkner five times in the face, a claim contradicted by police, prosecutors and judicial findings throughout the quarter-century tenure of this case. That October letter prompted a written response to Parisian officials from Abu-Jamal attorney, Robert R. Bryan. Bryan wrote that the letter is "appalling since it contains material misrepresentations and errors." Ironically, errors by police, prosecutors, jurists and other authorities during the arrest, conviction and state court appeals of Abu-Jamal fuel the worldwide belief that Abu-Jamal did not receive a fair trial and is thus unjustly convicted. These errors include police failing to give Abu-Jamal the standard hand test after his arrest to determine if he actually fired a gun, prosecutors failing to provide Abu-Jamal's trial attorney with compelling evidence indicating his innocence and the notoriously pro-prosecution trial judge making racist remarks. "Only in America could a trial judge say"I'll help them fry the Nigger," and be considered fair," Abu-Jamal stated in a letter to Parisian officials. "The trial featured lies, just as the threatening letter to you did," Abu-Jamal's letter stated. "If the trial was truly fair, why would the Philadelphia letter propose a deal?" Prior to that error-filled October letter, Philadelphia area legislative leaders mounted equally error-filled actions against the Paris suburb of St. Denis for naming a street in honor of Abu-Jamal. The anti-St. Denis Resolution approved by Philadelphia's City Council at the end of May, for example, contains the erroneous declaration that "Mumia Abu-Jamal has exhausted all legal appeals" Since the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals, headquartered in Philadelphia, approved Abu-Jamal's request for an appeal in late 2005, it is factually incorrect to contend that Abu-Jamal "has exhausted" all of his appeals. Not only did the 3rd Circuit agree to hear the appeal claim of that prosecutors used racial discrimination while selecting the jury for Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial, the Circuit Court also took an unusual step in granting appeal on other items like allegations of judicial bias during a 1995 appeals hearing for Abu-Jamal. The intensity of the bias exhibited by Judge Albert Sabo during that 1995 hearing offended even Philly's normally anti-Mumia mainstream news media to the point of their publishing editorials condemning Sabo for both making a mockery of justice and providing Abu-Jamal supporters with additional ammunition to back their claims of gross injustice. Interestingly, Peter Wirs does not dispute that Sabo made the racist pre-trial remark and Wirs readily admits that police did not follow proper forensic standards while investigating the murder. Yet, Wirs contends Abu-Jamal is guilty as charged, despite seeming violations of his constitutional rights. "When you look at Sabo's statements and his rulings in the trial, they are not perfect but they are fair," Wirs claims. "The errors and problems with the criminal justice system in this case do not mitigate against the fact that Abu-Jamal's gun was found at the scene. That is the heart of this case." The fact that police could not conclusively match bullet fragments removed from the slain officer to Abu-Jamal's gun is immaterial according to Wirs. "This is a circumstantial evidence case," said Wirs, acknowledging that he is working with Philadelphia's police union, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the prime group pushing for Abu-Jamal's execution. That Philadelphia City Council Resolution supported a congressional Resolution introduced in mid-May by two Philly area Congresspersons, Republican Michael Fitzpatrick and Democrat Allyson Schwartz. This congressional Resolution contains fundamental errors. The Fitzpatrick/Schwartz Resolution, in recounting facts of the case, makes the erroneous claim that "Mumia Abu-Jamal struck Officer Faulkner four times in the back with his gun" This claim contradicts the scenario presented at trial by the prosecutor and this claim contradicts the version of events on the official Justice for Daniel Faulkner Web site. This site, according to its founders, exists to provide "an accurate source of information" Pa Republican U.S. Senator Rich Santorum also introduced an anti-St. Denis resolution in the Senate mimicking the congressional resolution. "No one ever claimed Mumia struck Faulkner's back four times. While this may evoke the image of a heroic officer striking back against all odds, it is sheer fantasy," noted Dr. Michael Schiffmann, the German author of a new book on the Abu-Jamal case, "Race Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: a Black Revolutionary in White America." According to Schiffmann, "One might say such "details" are unimportant, but if they are so unimportant, why bring them up?" Answering his rhetorical question, Schiffmann says this erroneous information makes "something these law and order representatives know nothing about seem more real." Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, states Keystone Kops is a term used to criticize any group for its mistakes, particularly if the mistakes happen after a great deal of energy and activity, or if there is a lack of coordination among members of the group. Dr. Schiffmann's book presents new, startling information on this controversial case. Schiffmann provides information blowing big holes in the ballistics evidence presented by prosecutors and police. Further, Schiffmann's book presents previously unpublished pictures taken by a press photographer who arrived at the 1981 crime scene before police photographers that show police personnel tampering with evidence and manipulating the crime scene. Peter Wirs recently filed a lawsuit in France, asserting that officials' in Paris and its St. Denis suburb violated French criminal law by respectively issuing the citizenship to a convicted murderer and placing his name on a street. St. Denis officials did not complain in 2001 when local and state officials renamed most of Philadelphia's Roosevelt Blvd. "Daniel Faulkner Memorial Highway." The intense reaction in Philadelphia to the street naming in far off St. Denis stuns former St. Denis Mayor, Patrick Braouezec, who sees the reaction as surreal. "By doing this, we are just contributing to the possibility of Mumia having a new and fair trial and put the issue of the death penalty on the table," Braouezec said during an interview while visiting Philadelphia in September where the city's mayor refused to meet with Braouezec about the street naming. "There was no intention on our part to provoke or offend the memory of the slain officer or his family," said Braouezec, currently a member of the French National Assembly, the Congress of France. Patrick Braouezec finds it difficult "to conceive that with the problems in the American criminal justice system and issues in the Abu-Jamal case that the level of resistance to this man receiving a fair trial is so intense." The intense resistance, Braouezec said, "is political. There have been lesser cases with lesser doubts that received new trials." Few either opposed to or supportive of Abu-Jamal remember the case of Neil Ferber; a Philadelphia man arrested six months before Abu-Jamal's December 1981 arrest. Philadelphia police and prosecutors framed Ferber for a mob related murder, sending him to death row for 1,375-days before his release. A court ruling in lawsuit Ferber filed over his false imprisonment declared that "this case presents a Kafkaesque nightmare of the sort which we normally would characterize as being representative of the so-called justice system of a totalitarian stateunfortunatelyit happened here in Philadelphia." This ruling noted that a "variety of Philadelphia police" engaged in a litany of misconduct "for the singular purpose of obtaining Ferber's arrest and subsequent conviction on first degree murder charges. Evidence also showed that the jail-house snitch whose testimony sealed Ferber's conviction had flunked a lie-detector test ordered by prosecutors but prosecutors withheld this information from Ferber's trial attorney. Philadelphia officials bitterly opposed Ferber's lawsuit for compensation. Ferber eventually received a million dollar-plus settlement for his false incarceration, however, authorities penalized no police officer or prosecutor involved in the framing of Ferber. Didier Paillard, St. Denis' current mayor, declared during the street naming ceremony this spring that the Abu-Jamal case is not just a "symbol" in the struggle for justice. Paillard said Abu-Jamal's struggle symbolizes "resistance against a system which has the arrogance to reign over the world in the name of those same human rights that it tramples with complete impunity on its own soil." [Linn Washington Jr. is a Philadelphia journalist who has reported on the Abu-Jamal case since December 1981. Washington is a columnist for The Philadelphia Tribune newspaper.] -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 2 03:11:22 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:11:22 -0800 Subject: [m2c] The Rapists Who Run the Israeli Military Message-ID: <55134326.20061202021122@shaw.ca> The New York Times - October 19, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/19/world/middleeast/19israel.html Israel Warriors Find Machismo Is Way of Past By DINA KRAFT TEL AVIV, Oct. 18 ? For decades it was widely accepted that some of Israel?s top military officers and government ministers considered sexual encounters with female employees a seigneurial right. A society built partly on the conscious effort to project an image of strength tended to overlook such harassment. In fact, a certain amount of male rakishness often added to a prominent man?s allure. The alleged womanizing by national legends like Moshe Dayan, for example, was considered part of their mystique. But the ground is shifting rapidly under the feet of the current crop of leaders as a result of legal and societal changes. This week, the police recommended charging President Moshe Katsav with the rape of two former employees, the most serious criminal allegations ever made against an Israeli leader. And on Tuesday, Justice Minister Haim Ramon went on trial, accused of kissing a soldier against her will. ?When I was in the army it was assumed that the office of every senior officer was essentially a harem for him,? said Michael Oren, an historian and a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute, who served in the military 30 years ago. ?Israel is emerging from adolescence into adulthood.? In 1998 a sweeping sexual harassment law, inspired in part by American legislation, was passed by the Israeli Parliament, making such behavior illegal anywhere, whether in the street or the workplace. Soon afterward, a major turning point came: the trial of Yitzhak Mordechai, a former general who was Israel?s defense minister and a prime ministerial hopeful. He was forced to resign after being convicted of sexual assault and harassment. His very public trial followed charges filed by several women who had worked for him in the government and during his long, highly decorated career in the army. For years trying Israeli leaders for such crimes was unheard-of. The founders of Zionism sought to create ?the new Jew? ? aiming to transform Jews who lived in the Diaspora, perceived as bookish and weak, into men of muscle and power. The militarization of Israeli society that eventually followed in the wake of successive wars with Arab neighbors seemed to cement Israel?s male-dominated character. And while that has not changed completely, the question of sexual harassment is getting real attention, especially in the army, which is the epicenter of such activity and the institution with the most influence on the society. In the last 10 years the army, into which nearly all Jewish 18-year-old Israelis are drafted, has begun intensively promoting awareness of sexual harassment and the consequences that can follow for those who cross the line. Several highly publicized cases in which senior officers were suspected of having sexually assaulted female soldiers made the army?s efforts more urgent. Many female soldiers work in clerical positions. A senior officer often has several 18- and 19-year-old women serving as secretaries. The shift in the approach of the army toward harassment comes as it has opened itself up to placing women in roles traditionally thought to be the exclusive purview of men. Women now serve as pilots, artillery crew members, gunnery instructors and officers in charge of men. As part of the army?s efforts to educate its members about sexual harassment, all conscripts receive a letter during basic training describing the issue and where to turn if they encounter such behavior. Workshops are held with soldiers and officers to increase awareness, and there is a 24-hour phone line for complaints and advice. Those suspected of harassment or assault are taken before a special committee that has the power to demote or discharge the accused, said Lt. Col. Liora Rubinstein, the deputy adviser to the chief of staff on women?s issues. Many career officers have lost their jobs that way, she said. ?I can tell you, when I was drafted it was not spoken about,? said Colonel Rubinstein, who has served in the army for 20 years. ?It was not part of our consciousness. Officers know now what is expected of them.? Nonetheless, advocates for women?s rights and others say the hesitancy of many accused men in army and civilian life to acknowledge responsibility is evidence that while the old era may be over legally, much remains to be done so that men understand the new rules. For example, Mr. Mordechai insisted that he had done nothing wrong. ?The more cases we have and the more women stand up and go and complain and are not afraid, there will be a change,? said Rina Bar-Tal, chairwoman of the Israel Women?s Network. But Ms. Bar-Tal said she was hesitant to declare a social transformation in what was still a patriarchal society. ?The law is there and the police abide by the law, and the infrastructure of our legal system is working,? she said. ?I see that as a very positive note.? The high-profile nature of recent cases like that of President Katsav, whose office is largely ceremonial, has made the issue a major topic of public discussion. ?The central ethical issue is the ease with which a respected and authoritative employer can manipulate the confusion, panic and dependence that characterize a young female employee in the public sector,? Avirama Golan wrote in a column in the daily Haaretz titled ?All the President?s Women.? It has also led to broader examination of the country?s history. Old school notions of masculinity were part of being a nation in an almost constant state of war, said Mr. Oren, the historian. ?It was all caught up in Israeli machismo, which had a certain role in order to establish a nation at arms,? he said. Avigail Moor, a psychologist and expert on violence against women in Israel who is chairwoman of the women?s studies department at Tel Chai College, said of the tales of sexual conquest that circulated around some powerful Israeli men, ?It was common knowledge that their titles gave them that prerogative. ?It was also made out to look very romantic. Young women serving in these high-status platoons were almost led to believe that it was something that spoke highly of them if they were chosen to be a sexual partner of a high commanding officer.? The militaristic nature of Israeli society has eased, partly as it feels more secure and partly as Western influence has increased. An effort by the army to prevent its male soldiers from crying at the funerals of their fallen comrades, for example, has failed. In the past such open displays of grief were considered a sign of weakness. Yael Dayan, a former lawmaker and the daughter of Moshe Dayan, sponsored the sexual harassment legislation. She recalls being mocked during debate on the bill by some male colleagues and constituents. The comments, and the sense of backlash, have not ended, she said. She added: ?At traffic lights people stop me and say: ?Are you satisfied now? You got the president.? ? Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 2 03:29:44 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:29:44 -0800 Subject: [m2c] States urged to assure that women can migrate without fear of violence Message-ID: <175641258.20061202022944@shaw.ca> http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/81DD72DC7EA34C7AC12572300081644A?opendocument UNITED NATIONS Press Release states urged to assure that women can migrate without fear of violence 24 November 2006 On the occasion of the International Day on the Elimination of Violence against Women (25 November), the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ms. Louise Arbour, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences, Ms. Yakin Ert?rk and the Special Rapporteur of the Human Rights Council on the Human Rights of Migrants, Mr. Jorge Bustamante issued a joint press statement: The United Nations Secretary-General's Report on Violence against Women confirmed once again that there is no region of the world, no country and no culture in which women's freedom from violence has been secured. Moreover, we observe that violence against women is increasingly emerging as a transnational human rights concern ? a "problem without passport" that transcends national borders and moves in step with global migration patterns. Today, almost half of the world's 200 million migrants are women. They migrate to work, to reunite with their families or otherwise find a better future. While women are sometimes pushed into leaving their home country by profound gender inequality and feminized poverty, the process of migration is potentially an empowering experience that may allow women to seize new opportunities Unfortunately, human rights violations in various forms such as trafficking in women or different types of exploitation often run parallel to women's migration. Local and supposedly "traditional" forms of violence against women, such as female genital mutilation or forced marriages, globalize as well, moving along with their potential victims. These human rights violations are not inevitable consequences of women's migration. They can be curbed if states are truly committed to protecting migrant women against violence, trafficking and exploitation, without denying them the option to migrate legally, if they choose to. In practice, however, migrant women often still find themselves confronted with discriminatory provisions that foster violence. Some countries, for instance, subject female migrant workers to periodic pregnancy tests and expel pregnant workers who refuse to abort. Other countries ban their female citizens from leaving the country in an effort to protect them from trafficking and violence. More often than not, these bans have the opposite effect as women resort to criminal human smuggling networks ? that may turn out to be human traffickers ? to bypass the bans. Other migration restrictions are ostensibly gender neutral, but have unequal consequences for women. In many countries, for example, domestic migrant workers (the vast majority of whom are women) are still excluded from the protection of labour laws or altogether not eligible for work permits, as a result of which they are more vulnerable to violence and exploitation. Increasingly restrictive rules on migration for the purpose of family reunification often also have unequal consequences for women. Immigrants who derive their legal status from a marriage with a citizen or permanent resident, for instance, now often have to wait for years before they can acquire an independent residency permit. This dependency can entrap immigrant women in abusive relationships. Undocumented immigrant women are especially vulnerable to violence, exploitation and trafficking because they fear deportation if they seek legal protection. Unfortunately, only few states have enacted laws that allow undocumented immigrant women facing violence to file criminal complaints, apply for restraining orders or make use of other protective mechanisms without being questioned about their immigration status. Immigrant women's limited access to justice is pervasive. The Committee on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against women has stated that violence against women is inherently linked to discrimination and constitutes a violation of women's internationally recognized human rights. The Committee has also emphasized the vulnerability of women who face multiple forms of discrimination because of their status. This Committee is now to be brought to Geneva to strengthen, and be strengthened by, the international treaty body system, supported by OHCHR. This will help to realize the fundamental aim of addressing violence and securing the rights of all women, highlight linkages between gender discrimination and other human rights concerns, and in effect situate women's human rights at the center of an enhanced and integrated United Nations human rights machinery. On the occasion of this International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, we call for the protection of all women, regardless of their immigration status, against all forms of trafficking, exploitation and violence. States should assure that women have the option to migrate without fear of violence, discrimination or prejudice to their human dignity. Jan Arno Hessbruegge (Mr.) ------------------------------------------- Associate Human Rights Officer Special Procedures Branch Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights tel.: +41 22 917 9192 fax: +41 22 917 9006 E-Mail: JHessbruegge at ohchr.org -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 2 03:38:53 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 02 Dec 2006 02:38:53 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Giving Thanks to Voices of Women's Revolution Message-ID: <615476609.20061202023853@shaw.ca> http://www.counterpunch.org/moses11222006.html November 22, 2006 Giving Thanks to Voices of Women's Revolution Up from Chiapas By GREG MOSES With the storefront door opened to crisp air and curious people, Rosalva A?da Hern?ndez Castillo is for now seated near friends who ask for an autograph of her 2001 book, 'Histories and Stories from Chiapas.' Turning back the cover, she points to a full-page photo of a white stelae, explaining how borders are marked the traditional way, not with walls. "It's a symbolic border," she smiles, showing how the marker sits upon an island in the middle of a lake. From her position not quite in the center of a gathering crowd at MonkeyWrench Books in Austin, Texas, the legendary anthropologist is glowing with words, ideas, projects, and stories. It is time, says an organizer, to get the program started. In her latest collaboration, 'Dissident Women,' published the week before Thanksgiving, Hern?ndez is one of several editors and writers who offer fresh studies about the ongoing indigenous women's revolutions of Southern Mexico, including a first-time-in-English publication of the 1994 Mayan document, 'Women's Rights in our Traditions and Customs.' As co-editor Shannon Speed explains to Monday nights's tightly-packed audience, the women of Southern Mexico are working out terms of struggle that allow them to organize within "cultural spaces" connected to indigenous traditions, even as they assert their rights to reform those traditions. "It is better that we women put down on paper that there are some customs that do not respect us and we want them changed," reads the Mayan document of 1994. "Violence-battering and rape-is not right. We don't want to be traded for money." Yet, as Mayan women make frank complaints against patriarchy at home, they insist equally that "we don't want a paternalistic state coming in to handle this for us," says Speed. The words provoke memories of rapes and beatings committed by police this past May, in an assault upon indigenous flower merchants; an attack that Hern?ndez has described as "some of the saddest and most violent days in the modern history of San Salvador Atenco, on the outskirts of the Mexico City megalopolis." Hearing these words from the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, or Tlaxcala, my mind leaps to Afghanistan and Iraq, where steel-tipped outbursts of masculine temper have been propagandized as women's liberation. Compared to the knowledge that Hern?ndez and Speed bring from Southern Mexico, what do we yet know about all those women who now live under our bombs? Against the deafening violence of gluttonous states, indigenous women of the Americas continue their 500-year struggle for cultural sovereignty. The gathering of Mayan women who produced 'Women's Rights in our Traditions and Customs' was prompted in part by a government official who one day informed Hern?ndez that indigenous women are not interested in politics. Likewise, among academic officials, prevailing attitudes assume that indigenous women don't really think. "We are tired of seeing indigenous women reserved for the appendix of scholarly books," explains Hern?ndez, to an audience that sits at the margins of the University of Texas community. "Indigenous women also struggle with theoretical issues." Although scholars will use narratives of 'native peoples' for source materials, any 'theory' to be heard from those voices will likely be dis-credited. And to tell the truth about it, attitudes about 'women's knowledge' can infect the women themselves. Doctoral candidate Melissa M Forbis, tonight's third and last speaker, has been working for a decade in Southern Mexico, "because what I was reading about Chiapas didn't match what I was experiencing." She helps us to remember that health care was one issue that provoked the Zapatista uprising. The indigenous peoples of Chiapas were dying in high numbers from curable diseases, and women were dying at high rates from childbirth. So one of the first tasks facing the indigenous movement was recovery of their own health. That recovery required theory and knowledge. On the road to their own definition of health, the women of Chiapas worked collectively to recover their knowledge of indigenous herbs, and to remember themselves as the healers who had given care to their communities for tens of thousands of years. To do this, they shook off 500 years of persecution as 'brujos' or witches. And against proximate threats of violence, they traveled in pairs. Yet again, they re-became 'promotoras de salud'--promoters of health. "Health is the well-being of the people and the individual, who have the capacity and motivation for all types of activities whether social or political," declared the Zapatista community Mois?s Gandhi in 1997. "Health is living without humiliation; being able to develop ourselves as women and men; it is being able to struggle for a new country where the poor and particularly the indigenous peoples can make decisions autonomously. Poverty, militarization and war destroy health." Surely on Thanksgiving Day, these are words any true pilgrim would be thankful to digest. Note: Dissident Women: Gender and Cultural Politics in Chiapas. Edited by Shannon Speed, R. A?da Hern?ndez Castillo, and Lynn M. Stephen. Book Fourteen in the Louann Atkins Temple Women & Culture Series: Books about women and families, and their changing role in society. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Greg Moses is editor of the Texas Civil Rights Review and author of Revolution of Conscience: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Philosophy of Nonviolence. His chapter on civil rights under Clinton and Bush appears in Dime's Worth of Difference, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. He can be reached at: gmosesx at prodigy.net. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 4 01:10:26 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 00:10:26 -0800 Subject: [m2c] U.S. Prison Nation: US Prison Population Sets Record Message-ID: <861614241.20061204001026@shaw.ca> http://www.counterpunch.org/sandronsky12022006.html Weekend Edition December 2 / 3, 2006 Locking Up Surplus Labor U.S. Prison Nation By SETH SANDRONSKY Does bigger mean better? Yes, for the conventional wisdom on the U.S. economy, the world's largest in terms of output, or gross domestic product. Thomas Friedman of the NY Times is perhaps the leading voice for this view. Accordingly, citizens of developing nations will prosper if their leaders emulate the U.S. model of growth. Lost a bit in such rhetoric is the fact that the American economy also creates a big labor market surplus. Typically, the likes of Thomas Friedman sidestep this ongoing human tragedy of the grow-or-die U.S. economic model. Nevertheless in the U.S., market conditions of supply, demand and capital accumulation do in fact help to generate a surplus of labor. In short, there are too many workers for too few jobs. Where do some of these American job seekers end up? One answer is behind bars. According to a recent report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 2.2 million people held in federal or state prisons in December 2005, a 2.7 percent increase. The average annual increase of the U.S. prisoner population has been 3.5 percent since 1995. There is a gender dimension of this incarcerated population. The average annual rate of growth for women has been 4.6 percent versus 3 percent for males during the past 10 years. Moreover, the U.S. prison population is not counted in one of Uncle Sam's employment surveys. There were 7.4 million persons unemployed nationwide in December 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Now add the 2.2 million incarcerated people for a total jobless figure of 9.2 million. African American men in their late 20s were locked up at a rate three times that of Hispanic men and over seven times the rate of white men. The numbers for young male prisoners roughly mirror the pattern of the Labor Department's household survey of December 2005 by racial groups, not seasonally adjusted (Tables A-2 and A-3). The jobless rate for black men over age 20 was 8.8 percent versus 5.1 percent for Hispanic men and 3.9 percent for white men. African American females "were more than twice as likely as Hispanic females and over 3 times more likely than white females to have been in prison on December 31, 2005," according to the Justice Department. "These differences among white, black, and Hispanic females were consistent across all age groups." The unemployment rate for white women age 20 and up was 3.4 percent versus 8.1 percent for black women and 6.6 percent for Hispanic women. Without a doubt, harsh laws that sentence non-violent drug offenders to prison are propelling the rise of the U.S. prison population. At the same time, national minorities of both genders are less likely than their white counterparts to be employed. In short, U.S. prisons are caging surplus workers whose labor the American economy increasingly does not need. This employment and imprisonment link is not the irrational working of a rational economy. To the contrary, we see an irrational economy that more and more requires prison cells for those who have no chance of finding their way onto employers' payrolls. Why would people of any developing nation wish to emulate the job and prison conditions of the U.S.? Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper www.bpmnews.org/. He can be reached at: bpmnews at nicetechnology.com --------------- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120206F.shtml US Prison Population Sets Record The Associated Press Friday 01 December 2006 A record 7 million people - one in every 32 U.S. adults - were behind bars, on probation or on parole by the end of last year, a Justice Department report released yesterday shows. Of those, 2.2 million were in prison or jail, an increase of 2.7 percent over the previous year, according to the report. More than 4.1 million people were on probation and 784,208 were on parole at the end of 2005. Prison releases are increasing, but admissions are increasing more. Men still far outnumber women in prisons and jails, but the female population is growing faster. Over the past year, the female population in state or federal prison increased 2.6 percent and the number of male inmates rose 1.9 percent. By year's end, 7 percent of inmates were women. The gender figures do not include inmates in local jails. "Misguided policies that create harsher sentences for nonviolent drug offenses are disproportionately responsible for the increasing rates of women in prisons and jails," Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that supports criminal justice reform, said in a statement. From 1995 to 2003, inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for drug offenses have accounted for 49 percent of total prison population growth. The statistics are from the annual report by the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report breaks down inmate populations for state and federal prisons and for local jails. The study found that racial disparities among prisoners persist. In the 25-29 age group, 8.1 percent of black men - about one in 13 - are incarcerated, compared with 2.6 percent of Hispanic men and 1.1 percent of white men. The figures are not much different among women. By the end of 2005, black women were more than twice as likely as Hispanics and more than three times as likely as white women to be in prison. There were significant changes in some states' prison populations. In South Dakota, the number of inmates increased 11 percent over the past year, more than in any other state. Montana and Kentucky were next, with increases of 10.4 and 7.9 percent, respectively. Georgia had the biggest decrease, losing 4.6 percent of its prison population, followed by Maryland (2.4 percent decrease) and Louisiana (2.3 percent). -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From hachew at gmail.com Mon Dec 4 18:06:28 2006 From: hachew at gmail.com (Huibin Amelia Chew) Date: Mon, 4 Dec 2006 20:06:28 -0500 Subject: [m2c] US Marine Guilty for Raping Filipina In-Reply-To: References: <945277.18896.qm@web61211.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: GABRIELA is an incredible mass women's organization in the Philippines, organizing rural, poor urban, working, student, etc. women. they are a member of the larger mass umbrella org, BAYAN, of largely peasants and workers struggling against imperialism, for democracy and sovereignty. (see http://members.tripod.com/~gabriela_p/home.html, and the Gabriela women's party here www.gabrielaphilippines.net; http://www.bayan.ph/) we can learn a lot from movements overseas like these... if anyone's interested my friend has a documentary on GABRIELA that she made for the org, she might be able to get you a DVD copy for a donation (she's trying to raise funds for them) below is Gabriela's statement about the acquittal of 3 out of 4 marines involved in a gang rape earlier this year. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Women's Anti-Imperialist Leagu Date: Dec 4, 2006 7:34 PM We are pleased to forward two statements from two sister women's organizations. Three of the four US marines under trial for the rape of a 22-year-old Filipina were acquitted; one was adjudged guilty and sentenced to 40 years in prison. ------------- 4 December 2006 Reference: EMMI DE JESUS, GABRIELA Secretary General 09173221203, 3712302 On the conviction of Smith, acquittal of 3 other US Marines JUSTICE FOR NICOLE REQUIRES ABROGATION OF VFA "Though we welcome the guilty verdict against Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, the exoneration of Lance Corporals Keith Silkwood and Dominic Duplantis and Staff Sergeant Chad Carpenter more than offsets such a verdict. And it would not surprise us if Smith got a light sentence, a suspended sentence or a presidential pardon or is smuggled out of the Philippines back to the U.S. Justice for Filipinos cannot be obtained from the US-puppet Arroyo administration. We, the people, should ensure that crimes committed by US and foreign troops in the archipelago are rendered commensurate justice." This was the firm statement of the militant women's group GABRIELA given through its secretary-general, Emmi de Jesus, in reaction to the conviction of Smith in the Subic rape case. "True justice for Nicole can only be achieved with the abrogation of the US-RP Visiting Forces Agreement. Justice cannot be complete if the threat against Filipino women and children represented by the VFA and US military intervention is not removed." Appalled, GABRIELA slammed Malacanang's utter disregard of the massive calls for the abrogation of the VFA despite its being proven as a very lopsided agreement. "The Arroyo government turned a deaf ear to people's call for the abrogation of the VFA, which was proven to be detrimental to Nicole's case, as it ignored the demand for a halt to foreign military exercises, which gives opportunity to US soldiers to abuse and violate the rights of Filipino women and children. Mrs. Arroyo did not mind the fact that VFA is clearly the reason why Nicole's struggle for justice was made more difficult." "Without the abrogation of the VFA, the public will see not only the Arroyo government's incapacity and inability to defend its women but also its subservience to the imperialist US. Its lack of interest and inaction will only further prove that Filipino victims of violence could expect nothing from the Arroyo administration, especially if the crimes were perpetrated by American soldiers." "Adding insult to injury, US troops continue to arrive in increasing numbers to intensify US military intervention in the archipelago, as if there had been no Subic rape case or any crime against the Filipino people. With VFA and US troops around, Nicole will not be their last victim. VFA would only bring never-ending violence to the Filipino people, particularly women and children. The Filipino women and people will not rest until the VFA is abrogated and the Macapagal-Arroyo government ousted." GABRIELA also commended Nicole for standing up for her rights and demanding justice. "We hope that the people of Zamboanga, from where Nicole comes and where US troops are often based, will see through the pathetic allegations of economic gains from the presence of foreign troops. We hope that they will see the crimes, indignity, slavery and abominations such presence brings." ### December 3, 2006 For Reference: DR. ANNALISA ENRILE, GABNet National Chair 619.316.0920 PHILIPPINE-US Women's Group, GABRIELA Network Demands Philippines Assert Jurisdiction- Put US Marine Smith in Philippine Jail At 9 pm this evening (already December 4, 1pm in the Philippines), GABRIELA Network (GABNet) stood vigil waiting for the verdict of the Nicole Subic Bay Rape case. Lance Corporal Daniel Smith, one of the four US Marines accused of the rape of Nicole, was found guilty by the Makati Regional Trial Court. Lance Corporal Smith's three co-defendants were acquitted. For Lance Corporal Smith who was found guilty, women's groups led by GABRIELA Philippines and the GABRIELA Women's Party call for the Philippine government to now exercise their sovereignty and take Lance Corporal Smith into custody to serve his time in a Philippine jail. "We are not happy with the full verdict," Lalee Vicedo, GABNet Campaigns Director said, "We fully believe that the four acted together and so no one should have been acquitted of their actions, but given the verdict, the guilty should be treated as such." GABNet will continue to call for the remanding of Lance Corporal Smith into Philippine custody as well as an overall call to junk the Visiting Forces Agreement. This case is a landmark as it is the first time an American soldier has been found guilty of a crime since the US bases were shut down in 1992. As with the fight for the removal of the US bases from the Philippines more than a decade ago, Philippine women were instrumental in demanding justice for Nicole. It was the women's militant stance, their unwillingness to let Nicole continue to suffer from blatant victim blaming, and their commitment that has been able to expose US Military's exploitation and oppression of the Filipino people. This has occurred on a global level with vigils being held all over the world in Canada, Europe, and the United States. Last week, GABNet held vigil right at the gates of US Marine bases in San Diego, California. This was held amongst catcalls and insults hurled by US soldiers, indicative of the US's view of the Philippines. >From the beginning of the case, the US government has shown absolute contempt of the criminal justice system of the Philippines, not even bothering to go through the motions of as the accused rapists were never put under the custody of Philippine authorities. In fact, the Philippine government under Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has colluded with the United States by complying with the unfair provisions of the Visiting Forces Agreement such as having the judicial proceedings completed within a one year period and the custody of the four accused US Marines being under the supervision of US rather than Philippine authorities. Now that a verdict has been handed down and Lance Corporal Smith judged guilty, he should be treated as any other criminal and serve his time in a Philippine prison. "This is not just a case about one woman," GABNet Chair Annalisa Enrile states, "This case is about the Visiting Forces Agreement and how it has reintroduced the US Military back to Philippine soil and all the issues that go along with that such as rampant violence against women. The judge in this case has ordered that Smith be handed over to a Philippine jail, but we'll see. The Arroyo government has gone out of its way to remain a puppet of the United States than she has done in upholding the rights and dignity of the Filipino people, especially the women." Now that the decision of custody is in the hands of the Arroyo government, we urge the Arroyo government to take a stand for Nicole by taking her rapist into custody for life in a Philippine jail. The United States should not be allowed to invoke the VFA to provide further reasons to keep Corporal Smith out of Philippine custody. GABNet urges all women's groups, all people's organizations, and freedom loving people to stand with us to demand real justice for Nicole and real sovereignty for the Filipino people. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Women's Anti-Imperialist League (WAIL) Member, International League of Peoples Struggles wailcentral at yahoo.com The road to women's liberation lies through the terrain of the anti-imperialist struggle. -- WISAP2004 ________________________________ Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta. -- compadre, if i injected my flesh with silicone did hundreds of situps a day wore lacey push up bras got surgery to correct my Asian single-eyelid wore subtle lipstick, concealer, & gloss made my gaze bruised with shadow & mascara wore dainty stilleto heels & flippy skirts got some hips would you buy me then? hermano, does market follow demand, or demand follow market? i want to be the white girls of your wet dreams with million-dollar prosthetic bodies, $40,000 makeovers, features imprinted on your cock by billion-dollar industries I am beautiful in my mind until you choose them instead slap my ugliness to my face and you tell me you don't understand this kind of competition! i didn't write the rules of this game you don't recognize you just follow the market, the ads, the art, the enterprize... shaping the sadness of my sickness Sisters, come together & incite refugees of false dreams to unite. inciteboston.blogspot.com From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 4 23:39:34 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 22:39:34 -0800 Subject: [m2c] 37th anniversary of the murder of Fred Hampton In-Reply-To: <6.2.5.6.2.20061204132025.048d0d50@freedomarchives.org> References: <6.2.5.6.2.20061204132025.048d0d50@freedomarchives.org> Message-ID: <1257858227.20061204223934@shaw.ca> From: Anti-Imperialist News Today marks the 37th anniversary of the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark - December 4, 1969 in Chicago. "You can kill a revolutionary, but you can't kill the revolution" is a phrase made famous by Fred Hampton, who was killed at 20 by the FBI's COINTEL-PRO and the Chicago Police Department in 1969. Hampton, who was a high school leader and NAACP activist in suburban Maywood, Ill., quickly assumed the state leadership of the Panthers when he joined in 1968. Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark were murdered in an early-morning raid of Panther headquarters. An FBI informant, William O'Neal, provided the Bureau with information on the headquarters' floor plan. http://www.afro.com/Panthers/Hampton/Hampton.html http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/fhamptonspeech.html Power Anywhere Where There's People A Speech By Fred Hampton POWER ANYWHERE WHERE THERES PEOPLE! Power anywhere where there's people. Power anywhere where there's people. Let me give you an example of teaching people. Basically, the way they learn is observation and participation. You know a lot of us go around and joke ourselves and believe that the masses have PhDs, but that's not true. And even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. Because with some things, you have to learn by seeing it or either participating in it. And you know yourselves that there are people walking around your community today that have all types of degrees that should be at this meeting but are not here. Right? Because you can have as many degrees as a thermometer. If you don't have any practice, they you can't walk across the street and chew gum at the same time. Let me tell you how Huey P. Newton, the leader, the organizer, the founder, the main man of the Black Panther Party, went about it. The community had a problem out there in California. There was an intersection, a four-way intersection; a lot of people were getting killed, cars running over them, and so the people went down and redressed their grievances to the government. You've done it before. I know you people in the community have. And they came back and the pigs said "No! You can't have any." Oh, they dont usually say you can't have it. They've gotten a little hipper than that now. That's what those degrees on the thermometer will get you. They tell you "Okay, we'll deal with it. Why dont you come back next meeting and waste some time?" And they get you wound up in an excursion of futility, and you be in a cycle of insaneness, and you be goin' back and goin' back, and goin' back, and goin' back so many times that you're already crazy. So they tell you, they say, "Okay niggers, what you want?" And they you jump up and you say, "Well, it's been so long, we don't know what we want", and then you walk out of the meeting and you're gone and they say, "Well, you niggers had your chance, didnt you?" Let me tell you what Huey P. Newton did. Huey Newton went and got Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party on a national level. Bobby Seale got his 9mm, that's a pistol. Huey P. Newton got his shotgun and got some stop signs and got a hammer. Went down to the intersection, gave his shotgun to Bobby, and Bobby had his 9mm. He said, "You hold this shotgun. Anybody mess with us, blow their brains out." He put those stop signs up. There were no more accidents, no more problem. Now they had another situation. That's not that good, you see, because its two people dealing with a problem. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, no matter how bad they may be, cannot deal with the problem. But let me explain to you who the real heroes are. Next time, there was a similar situation, another four-way corner. Huey went and got Bobby, went and got his 9mm, got his shotgun, got his hammer and got more stop signs. Placed those stop signs up, gave the shotgun to Bobby, told Bobby "If anybody mess with us while were putting these stop signs up, protect the people and blow their brains out." What did the people do? They observed it again. They participated in it. Next time they had another four-way intersection. Problems there; they had accidents and death. This time, the people in the community went and got their shotguns, got their hammers, got their stop signs. Now, let me show you how were gonna try to do it in the Black Panther Party here. We just got back from the south side. We went out there. We went out there and we got to arguing with the pigs or the pigs got to arguing-he said, "Well, Chairman Fred, you supposed to be so bad, why dont you go and shoot some of those policemen? You always talking about you got your guns and got this, why dont you go shoot some of them?" And I've said, "you've just broken a rule. As a matter of fact, even though you have on a uniform it doesn't make me any difference. Because I dont care if you got on nine uniforms, and 100 badges. When you step outside the realm of legality and into the realm of illegality, then I feel that you should be arrested." And I told him, "You being what they call the law of entrapment, you tried to make me do something that was wrong, you encouraged me, you tried to incite me to shoot a pig. And that ain't cool, Brother, you know the law, dont you?" I told that pig that, I told him "You got a gun, pig?" I told him, "You gotta get your hands up against the wall. We're gonna do what they call a citizens arrest." This fool dont know what this is. I said, "Now you be just as calm as you can and don't make too many quick moves, cause we don't wanna have to hit you." And I told him like he always told us, I told him, "Well, I'm here to protect you. Don't worry about a thing, 'm here for your benefit." So I sent another Brother to call the pigs. You gotta do that in a citizen's arrest. He called the pigs. Here come the pigs with carbines and shotguns, walkin' out there. They came out there talking about how they're gonna arrest Chairman Fred. And I said, "No fool. This is the man you got to arrest. He's the one that broke the law." And what did they do? They bugged their eyes, and they couldn't stand it. You know what they did? They were so mad, they were so angry that they told me to leave. And what happened? All those people were out there on 63rd Street. What did they do? They were around there laughing and talking with me while I was making the arrest. They looked at me while I was rapping and heard me while I was rapping. So the next time that the pig comes on 63rd Street, because of the thing that our Minister of Defense calls observation and participation, that pig might be arrested by anybody! So what did we do? We were out there educating the people. How did we educate them? Basically, the way people learn, by observation and participation. And that's what were trying to do. That's what we got to do here in this community. And a lot of people don't understand, but there's three basic things that you got to do anytime you intend to have yourself a successful revolution. A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolutions a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. And Im telling you that were living in an infectious society right now. Im telling you that were living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before its cleaned up is a man whos committing a crime against the people. If you walk past a hospital room and see a sign that says "Contaminated" and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are mighty dumb, you understand me, cause if they weren't, they'd tell you that you are an unfair, unjust leader that does not have your followers' interests in mind. And what were saying is simply that leaders have got to become, we've got to start making them accountable for what they do. They're goin' around talking about so-and-so's an Uncle Tom so we're gonna open up a cultural center and teach him what blackness is. And this n****r is more aware than you and me and Malcolm and Martin Luther King and everybody else put together. That's right. They're the ones that are most aware. They're most aware, cause they're the ones that are gonna open up the center. They're gonna tell you where bones come from in Africa that you can't even pronounce the names. Thats right. They'll be telling you about Chaka, the leader of the Bantu freedom fighters, and Jomo Kenyatta, those dingo-dingas. They'll be running all of that down to you. They know about it all. But the point is they do what they're doing because it is beneficial and it is profitable for them. You see, people get involved in a lot of things that's profitable to them, and we've got to make it less profitable. We've got to make it less beneficial. I'm saying that any program that's brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community. We don't need no n*****s coming into our community to be having no company to open business for the n*****s. There's too many n*****s in our community that can't get crackers out of the business that they're gonna open. We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you do'nt fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism. We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people. We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun! A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something else? If you take it so far that it is two things? As a matter of fact, some things if you stretch it so far, it'll be another thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something else? Ain't that right? That's what were talking about with politics. That politics ain't nothing, but if you stretch it so long that it can't go no further, then you know what you got on your hands? You got an antagonistic contradiction. And when you take that contradiction to the highest level and stretch it as far as you can stretch it, you got what you call war. Politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed. If you don't understand that, you can be a Democrat, Republican, you can be Independent, you can be anything you want to, you ain't nothing. We don't want any of those n*****s and any of these hunkies and nobody else, radicals or nobody talking about, "I'm on the Independence ticket." That means you sell out the republicans; Independent means you're out for graft and you'll sell out to the highest bidder. You understand? We want people who want to run on the People's Party, because the people are gonna run it whether they like it or not. The people have proved that they can run it. They run it in China, they're gonna run it right here. They can call it what they want to, they can talk about it. They can call it communism, and think that that's gonna scare somebody, but it ain't gonna scare nobody. We had the same thing happen out on 37th Road. They came out to 37th road where our Breakfast for children program is, and started getting those women who were kind of older, around 58---that's, you know, I call that older cause Im young. I aint 20, right, right! But you see, they're gonna get them and brainwash them. And you ain't seen nothin till you see one of them beautiful Sisters with their hair kinda startin getting grey, and they ain't got many teeth, and they were tearin' them policemen up! They were tearing em up! The pigs would come up to them and say "You like communism?" The pigs would come up to them and say, "You scared of communism?" And the Sisters would say, "No scared of it, I ain't never heard of it." "You like socialism?" "No scared of it. I ain't never heard of it." The pigs, they be crackin' up, because they enjoyed seeing these people frightened of these words. "You like capitalism?" Yeah, well, that's what I live with. I like it. "You like the Breakfast For Children program, n****r?" "Yeah, I like it." And the pigs say, "Oh-oh." The pigs say, "Well, the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. Its a communistic program." And the women said, "Well, I tell you what, boy. I've been knowing you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, n****r. And I don't know if I like communism and I don't know if I like socialism. But I know that that Breakfast For Children program feeds my kids, n****r. And if you put your hands on that Breakfast For Children program, I'm gonna come off this can and I'm gonna beat your ass like a ...." That's what they be saying. That's what they be saying, and it is a beautiful thing. And that's what the Breakfast For Children program is. A lot of people think it is charity, but what does it do? It takes the people from a stage to another stage. Any program that's revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change. Honey, if you just keep on changing, before you know it, in fact, not even knowing what socialism is, you dont have to know what it is, they're endorsing it, they're participating in it, and they're supporting socialism. And a lot of people will tell you, way, Well, the people dont have any theory, they need some theory. They need some theory even if they don't have any practice. And the Black Panther Party tells you that if a man tells you that he's the type of man who has you buying candy bars and eating the wrapping and throwing the candy away, he'd have you walking East when you're supposed to be walking West. Its true. If you listen to what the pig says, you be walkin' outside when the sun is shining with your umbrella over your head. And when it's raining youll be goin' outside leaving your umbrella inside. That's right. You gotta get it together. Im saying that's what they have you doing. Now, what do WE do? We say that the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people basically that by practice, we thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What's more important? You learn something just like everybody else. Let me try to break it down to you. You say this Brother here goes to school 8 years to be an auto mechanic. And that teacher who used to be an auto mechanic, he tells him, "Well, n****r, you gotta go on what we call on-the-job-training." And he says, "Damn, with all this theory I got, I gotta go to on-the-job-training? What for?" He said, "On on-the-job-training he works with me. Ive been here for 20 years. When I started work, they didn't even have auto mechanics. I ain't got no theory, I just got a whole bunch of practice." What happened? A car came in making a whole lot of funny noise. This Brother here go get his book. He on page one, he ain't got to page 200. I'm sitting here listening to the car. He says, "What do you think it is?" I say, "I think its the carburetor." He says, "No I don't see anywhere in here where it says a carburetor make no noise like that." And he says, "How do you know its the carburetor?" I said, "Well, n****r, with all them degrees as many as a thermometer, around 20 years ago, 19 to be exact, I was listening to the same kind of noise. And what I did was I took apart the voltage regulator and it wasn't that. Then I took apart the alternator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator brushes and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't even that. After I took apart all that I finally got to the carburetor and when I got to the carburetor I found that that's what it was. And I told myself that 'fool, next time you hear this sound you better take apart the carburetor first.'" How did he learn? He learned through practice. I dont care how much theory you got, if it don't have any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right? Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. Thats what we've got to be able to do. Every time I speak in a church I always try to say something, you know, about Martin Luther King. I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced. And I listened to anyone who speaks well, because I like to listen to that. Martin Luther King said that it might look dark sometime, and it might look dark over here on the North Side. Maybe you thought the room was going to be packed with people and maybe you thought you might have to turn some people away and you might not have enough people here. Maybe some of the people you think should be here are not here and you think that, well if they're not here then it won't be as good as we thought it could have been. And maybe you thought that you need more people here than you have here. Maybe you think that the pigs are going to be able to pressure you and put enough pressure to squash your movement even before it starts. But Martin Luther King said that he heard somewhere that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And we're not worried about it being dark. He said that the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward heaven. We got Huey P. Newton in jail, and Eldridge Cleaver underground. And Alprentice Bunchy Carter has been murdered; Bobby Hutton and John Huggins been murdered. And a lot of people think that the Black Panther Party in a sense is giving up. But let us say this: That we've made the kind of commitment to the people that hardly anyone else has ever made. We have decided that although some of us come from what some of you would call petty-bourgeois families, though some of us could be in a sense on what you call the mountaintop. We could be integrated into the society working with people that we may never have a chance to work with. Maybe we could be on the mountaintop and maybe we wouldn't have to be hidin' when we go to speak places like this. Maybe we wouldn't have to worry about court cases and going to jail and being sick. We say that even though all of those luxuries exist on the mountaintop, we understand that you people and your problems are right here in the valley. We in the Black Panther Party, because of our dedication and understanding, went into the valley knowing that the people are in the valley, knowing that our plight is the same plight as the people in the valley, knowing that our enemies are on the mountain, to our friends are in the valley, and even though its nice to be on the mountaintop, we're going back to the valley. Because we understand that there's work to be done in the valley, and when we get through with this work in the valley, then we got to go to the mountaintop. We're going to the mountaintop because there's a motherfucker on the mountaintop that's playing King, and he's been bullshitting us. And weve got to go up on the mountain top not for the purpose of living his life style and living like he lives. We've got to go up on the mountain top to make this motherfucker understand, goddamnit, that we are coming from the valley! (SPEECH DELIVERED AT OLIVET CHURCH, 1969) The Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 (415) 863-9977 www.freedomarchives.org From sandinista at shaw.ca Tue Dec 5 11:37:54 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:37:54 -0800 Subject: [m2c] It's Hard Being a Woman Message-ID: <819087177.20061205103754@shaw.ca> http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000503.php#more December 05, 2006 It's Hard Being a Woman Inter Press Service Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily BAGHDAD, Dec. 5 (IPS) - Once one of the best countries for women's rights in the Middle East, Iraq has now become a place where women fear for their lives in an increasingly fundamentalist environment. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iraqi women enjoyed rights under the Personal Status Law since Jul. 14, 1958, the day Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy. Under this law they were able to settle civil suits in courts, unfettered by religious influences. Iraqi women had many of the rights enjoyed by women in western countries. The end of monarchy brought a regime in which women began to work as professors, doctors and other professionals. They took government and ministerial positions and enjoyed growing rights even through the dictatorial reign of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party. "Our rights had been hard to obtain in a country with a tradition of firm male control," Dr. Iman Robeii, professor of psychology from Fallujah told IPS in Baghdad. Iraqi women have traditionally done all the housework, and assisted children with school work, she said. On top of that about 30 percent of women had been engaged in social activities. "But a tragic collapse took place after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the so-called Islamists seized power to place new obstacles in the way of women's march towards improvement," she said. A significant event was the Dec. 29, 2003 decision by the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to pass a bill which almost cancelled the Personal Status Law, 45 years after it had been passed. Under Resolution 137 Iraqi women would rely on religious institutions for personal matters such as marriage and divorce, as opposed to recourse to civilian courts that they could access before the invasion. Women across Iraq saw the IGC move as one of the first hazardous steps towards implementation of a fundamentalist Islamic law. The bill did not pass, but the slide into Sharia (Islamic law) had already taken root through much of Shia-dominated southern Iraq and also some Sunni-dominated areas of central Iraq. Resolution 137 was defeated in March 2004. A new Iraqi constitution has been introduced, but the adoption of the constitution has not helped protect women's rights. Yanar Mohammed, one of Iraq's staunchest women's rights advocates, believes the constitution neither protects women nor ensures their basic rights. She blames the United States for abdicating its responsibility to help develop a pluralistic democracy in Iraq. "The U.S. occupation has decided to let go of women's rights," Mohammed told reporters. "Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law." Mohammed believes the drafting of the Iraqi constitution was "not for the interest of the Iraqi people" and instead was based on concessions to ethnic and sectarian groups. "The Kurds want Kirkuk (an oil-rich city they consider the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), and the Shias want the Islamic Republic of Iraq, just like Iran's," she said. "The genie is out of the bottle in terms of political Islam (by Shias) and the resistance (by Sunnis). America will tolerate any conclusion so they can leave, even if it means destroying women's rights and civil liberties.They have left us a regime like the Taliban." A woman judge told IPS that she and her female colleagues could not go to work any more because the current system does not allow for a female judge. Iraqi NGO activists have also criticised the new constitution for depriving women of leadership posts in the country. "The constitution mentions some rights for women, but those in power laugh when they are asked to put it to practice," she said. Like the woman judge, she too did not want to be named. The key element in the Iraqi constitution that is dangerous for women's rights is Article 2 which states "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation." Subheading A under Article 2 states that "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam." Under Article 2 the interpretation of women's rights is left to religious leaders, and it provides for implementation of Sharia law which can turn the clock back on women's rights in Iraq. The social environment in Iraq has become acutely difficult for women already. Many women now fear leaving their homes. "I try to avoid leaving my home, and when I do, I always cover my face," Suthir Ayad told IPS at her house in Baghdad. "Several of my friends have been threatened or beaten by these Shia militias who insist we stay home and never show our faces." In southern Iraq, the situation seems even worse. "My cousin in Basra was beaten savagely by some of the Mehdi Army (the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr) because she tried to attend university," said a woman who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now she never leaves her home unless fully covered, and then only to shop for food." Posted by Dahr_Jamail at December 5, 2006 04:43 PM -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Dec 6 03:22:51 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2006 02:22:51 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Solidarity for Human Rights Message-ID: <177192250.20061206022251@shaw.ca> http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/cupehumanrights.html Solidarity for Human Rights December 4, 2006 Itrath Syed This is the text of a speech given by Itrath Syed to the final plenary gathering of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) National Human Rights Conference, on November 26, 2006. Thank you. It is such an honour to be here today and to be a small part of this incredible process. But first let me begin by acknowledging that we are on unceded native land and let me express my respect and my solidarity for the struggles of all people under occupation, everywhere. I?ve been asked to speak today about solidarity and what that can look like in our collective struggles towards human rights. Solidarity. What does it mean? How do we think about it? And what can it do for us? Firstly, I should say that I like the word solidarity. I especially much prefer it to the word, ?unity?. ?Unity? to me implies an erasure of difference, a refusal to acknowledge our different realities. Solidarity to me implies the opposite. It means we are working from our particular realities, our experiences and our struggles and reaching out to eachother from where we stand. This is important because we are not all the same. It is important because we stand in different places with different relationships to power. And while we are all impinged upon, and indeed formed, through the systems of oppression around us, we are not all equally affected by them. And I think this matters. I think power matters. And I think that our struggles have to begin from this place of looking at power with clarity and looking at who we are in relation to the centres of power. Because solidarity is not charity. It is not about ?helping? the helpless or about ?saving? anyone. Solidarity is about seeing the ways by which all of our struggles are interconnected and seeing the ways in which our own relationship to power implicates us in the struggles of others. Whether we are talking about solidarity with the marginalized in Canada or with the 2/3 world that is marginalized globally ? our solidarity must be grounded in the clear understanding of how our own privileges facilitate the marginalization of others. Because surely, feasting is made possible by famine. Surely, over-consumption is made possible by depravation. Surely, greed is made possible by need. Because, my friends and comrades, we are in a time of crisis ? a time of ever increasing sites of exclusion, sites of exception. By this I mean those spaces, those bodies, that are considered to be separate from what is normal. They are the spaces where our comforting notions of who we are, and where we live, do not apply. They are the notwithstanding spaces of human rights, of civil rights. We have these spaces in Canada. And we have these spaces in our world. And we allow these spaces to exist so that we do not have to change our perceptions of reality. It is through this constant separating of a ?here? from a ?there?, and an ?us? from a ?them? that we are lulled into complacency and, indeed, complicity. We think of Canada as a successful multicultural country, we pride ourselves on that. Even though we are ever more so in a time of increased racism, increased islamophobia, where entire communities of Canada are considered threats to the nation. We continue to think of Canada as a country where justice works. We do not think of Canada as a country wherein the police and the government conspire to send a citizen to a torture prison. Because we see the case of Maher Arar as an exception. We do not let what happened to him disrupt our idea, our imaginary, of Canada, or indeed of even the rcmp. We do not think of Canada as a country where 5 men can be held under fascistic laws, in legal limbo, without knowing of what and by whom they have been accused. Because these men, they are the exceptions, not the rule. We do not think of Canada as that country. We continue to think of Canada as a place where women?s rights are respected, because we allow ourselves not to notice that Canada is a country where 500 native women can go missing with nearly complete silence by the police and the media. We continue to think of the U.S. as a place where human rights operate, because we chose to think of Abu Ghraib, Bagram Airforce Base and Guantanamo Bay as somehow separate, apart from what defines the character of the U.S. We continue to think of the state of Israel as the ?only democracy in the Middle East?, despite its apartheid laws, despite its occupations, and despite the fact that Gaza is the largest prison in the world, and that massacres like that of Beit Hanoun happen routinely, with no accountability. And indeed we continue to think of the world as a place of plenty, despite the fact that hunger continues to kill hundreds of thousands. And indeed we continue to think of our age as one of progress and technological advancement, despite the fact that so many are denied clean water and the most basic healthcare. All of this happens because we are willing to accept these truths as reasonable exceptions to our realities. Solidarity is about moving beyond these divisions, about refusing to accept a union, a country or a world where anyone is rendered an exception. And that is the task that we all must take up now, if we are going to turn this thing around. And that is the task that has been before you this weekend. Both within Canada and globally. The systems of oppression are overarching; they cross borders and timelines. And if the forces of capital, of imperialism, of exploitation, are globalized, than so must our solidarity be, so must our resistance be. The solidarity we need ourselves and the solidarity that we extend to others must be grounded in the idea that the same process that includes some of us, excludes others of us. Regardless of how small or large a group we are talking about, the same process applies. Some of us are considered dispensable, in order that others can be considered indispensable. Some of us are considered a threat so that others can be seen as safe. The solidarity we need is one that refuses to allow this to be, one that looks with courage at the mighty, one that speaks truth to power, one that stands up for principles of justice and equality, even when it costs us our own privileges. Solidarity is not about pity, not about charity, not about sympathy. Solidarity is about respect, about listening and about taking leadership from those with whom we are wanting to be in solidarity. It is most definitely not speaking for, but rather speaking with, standing with. Solidarity is not, as has been said, ?being the voice for the voiceless?, but rather it is about recognizing as Arundhati Roy reminds us, that ?there are none who are voiceless, just those who are the preferably unheard or the deliberately silenced.? Solidarity is about refusing to be complicit in the silencing of others, it is about refusing to allow ourselves, through whatever seemingly distant process, be complicit or in any way profit from the silencing and marginalization of anyone. It is about standing up, wherever we are, and demanding that no one be left outside. It is about using all the means at our disposal to highlight and isolate the systems of oppression that separate us from eachother. And above all solidarity work is the practical manifestation of the unwavering belief that we can make change, that we, as activists and unionists and workers and students, are not powerless. That as much as we are aware of the massive and interwoven systems of oppression that crush us down, we are also aware of our own power and our own agency and our own determined, unshakeable, relentless, stubborn insistence to not only rise up, but also to hold one another and to lift eachother as we rise. And this is the task that you alone can take up in your union, in your locals and in your communities. You will have to decide what campaigns, what processes, what systems you will need to take up and take on. You have a long and a proud history of fighting the good fight. I wish you all the best in the work you have ahead of you. And I thank you again for the commitment and the passion with which you have taken up this work and I thank you for allowing me to be here to share a part of it with you. Thank you. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From hachew at gmail.com Sun Dec 10 22:06:13 2006 From: hachew at gmail.com (Huibin Amelia Chew) Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:06:13 -0500 Subject: [m2c] War on Women in Nicaragua: Left & RIght Unite in Total Ban on Abortio In-Reply-To: References: <812295.9316.qm@web60617.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: wow... also, child sexual abuse charges against Daniel Ortega -- http://womensspace.wordpress.com/2006/11/01/war-on-women-in-nicaragua-left-and-right-unite-in-total-ban-on-abortion-trade-womens-lives-and-bodies-for-political-power/ War on Women in Nicaragua: Left and Right Unite in Total Ban on Abortion Protest at Embassies in Nicaragua In a move of catastrophic proportions for the women and girls of Nicaragua, and ignoring hundreds of women protesting the passage of the measure outside of the National Assembly last week ? many calling the decision a "death sentence" for pregnant women and a "violation of human rights" ? the Nicaraguan parliament has unanimously moved to implement a total ban on therapeutic abortion. The measure was approved a week before the national elections. Of the five candidates, three are conservatives ? conservatives having won in elections over the last 16 years ? and two are liberals. One of those liberals, Edmundo Jarquin, of the Sandinista Renovation Movement, was opposed to the total ban on abortions. He had the support of the Feminist Movement of Nicaragua. But the other ? none other than Daniel Ortega, former president of Nicaragua, one time revolutionary Sandinista, and, come to find out, a child molester, having systematically sexually assaulted his daughter from the time she was 11 years old ? supported the total ban. Why? He got religion, yessiree, became a devout Roman Catholic. So hey. Forget about the sexual abuse charges. He denied them, after all, and then refused to give up parliamentary immunity to allow the charges to be tested in court, and so they were thrown out. Forget also about the way Ortega presided over the "disappearances" and imprisonments of political opponents in years past. Ortega's a new man. God forgives him and so should you. These days he's all about peace, love, and all babies all the time for all pregnant girls and women of Nicaragua. In fact, Ortega's former (Contra) enemies, who once fought a bitter civil war against him and the Sandanistas, as well as members of the Catholic Church ? which he once accused of collaborating with the CIA ? stand united as brothers in their belief that Ortega is a new man now. Especially since he has supported the total ban. When Ortega's daughter outed Ortega for his sexual abuse, one-time Sandinista leader and feminist Sofia Montenegro ? one of the many woman Sandinista members who left to work on women's sexual abuse and domestic violence issues ? said Ortega's daughter would do to him what Somoza, Reagan and the Contras never could. But that didn't happen. What's a little sexual molestation charge among bro's? Ortega continued to appeal to the poor and downtrodden of Nicaragua, all the while his jewel-bedecked wife called their daughter a "slut" and took Ortega's side. Corruption amongst conservatives in power allowed Ortega to deflect attention from his own corruption by working the crowds, appealing to them, calling government leaders criminals and "Somozista." Now, without explaining how, he says he will provide jobs, improve human rights and turn Nicaragua into the most developed country in the region. Political analysts say that the total abortion ban comes on the heels of intense political controversy over a 2003 therapeutic abortion provided to a nine-year-old Nicaraguan girl who had been raped in Costa Rica, either by a stranger or her stepfather (who would not submit to tests to rule him out). When the family returned to Nicaragua, doctors agreed that the girls' health would be as jeopardized by a full-term pregnancy as by an abortion. She ultimately obtained the abortion at a private clinic, despite the Nicaraguan "Family Ministry's'" threat to prosecute doctors who provided it. Autonomous Women's Movements of Nicaragua issued this plea last week, before the vote (and sadly, I did not learn of it until after the vote): As part of the electoral campaign, the Frente Sandinista under the leadership of ex-revolutionary Daniel Ortega and his Somocist vice presidential candidate, along with other right wing parties (PLC, ALN) have formed an alliance with the Vatican and its catholic hierarchy and some evangelical churches to rush through a law (in 10 days!!!) to outlaw any form of abortion. This violates established legal process and the secular constitution of the republic as well as basic human rights. It will roll back rights established in a law allowing for therapeutic abortion that has existed since 1891. The only party openly in favor of guaranteeing women's rights and the therapeutic abortion law is the MRS (Movement for Sandinista Renewal) who has signed an alliance with the Autonomous Women's Movement. If the new law passes (probable, due to the correlation of forces in the present National Assembly) it means a death sentence for poor women with pregnancies that threaten their lives and torture for raped women, or any woman who can't or doesn't want to go ahead with an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy for her health or because of problems with the fetus. It will also be an excuse for political persecution against the women's movement and the medical profession if one of these parties wins the election. Women and doctors involved in abortion could face up to 30 years in prison and it will be illegal to promote the right to an abortion, as it will be encouraging a "crime". This is a flagrant violation of women's right to life, to health, to make decision over our own lives. It is also form of institutionalized torture and paves the way for dictatorial measures that violate of our rights as Nicaraguan citizens to free speech and free association, men and women alike. We are facing a new inquisition. Behind this is also the repression of sexual rights which is also on the agenda of religious fundamentalist and their machista and corrupt allies in the political arena. Autonomous Women's Movements Movimiento Aut?nomo de Mujeres (MAM) The Feminist Movement of Nicaragua issued this plea entitled Stop Sandinasta Betrayal! Campaign to stop Sandinistas and Chuch Right wingers voting to pass a law to allow therapeutic abortion In Nicaragua, Catholic Church hierarchy, together with the FSLN and other right wing parties are voting on a law to penalize therapeutic abortion. The present law allowing for therapeutic abortion (since 1891) cite as justified causes: a pregnant woman's life, serious damage to the fetus or embryo and pregnancies due to rape. The President of the republic Enrique Bola?os has sent a document to the National Assembly asking members to vote on the bill without it going through normal procedures in the Justice Commission, but discussing it only in the plenary session. This means the proposal could be approved in only 48 hours. If therapeutic abortion is made a crime this means that a large number of women and girls who have been raped or are victims of sexual abuse in the family will be forced to carry their pregnancies further and give birth, it will condemn to die women who have life-threatening pregnancies, or force us to give birth to children with serious birth defects without necessarily having the adequate conditions (emotional, economic, or family environment) to attend to their need as they should be. WE ARE ASKING FOR YOUR URGENT ACTION IN ORDER TO STOP THIS VIOLATION OF WOMEN AND GIRLS BASIC HUMAN RIGHTS, ESPECIALLY THE RIGHT TO LIFE. Mich?le Najlis Director Department of Theology Ecumenical Centre Antonio Valdivieso Member of the Feminist Movement of Nicaragua Here are actions these feminist groups asked that supporters take on behalf of the women of Nicaragua. Since the vote has already been taken, we're too late. But Autonomous Women's Movements intends to seek an injunction against the ban. If we get our names on their mailing lists by writing to them, hopefully we will continue to learn how to offer our support. In sum, a leftist accused of incest and sexual assault joins forces with conservatives and those backed by the Roman Catholic church in supporting a ban on abortion in the hopes he'll become president. As always, women's and girls' lives and bodies are the necessary sacrifice. Heart _____________ Liza Sabater covered the abortion ban here, Jennifer Woodard Maderazo covers it here, and Costa Rican blogger Julia Ard?n reprinted a public letter signed by the Nicaraguan Association of Writers (ANIDE) [ES] here. Here is a good article about Ortega by Sophie Arie; here is an interview with Sofia Montenegro, and here is a good article about Ortega from Common Dreams. This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Feminism, War on Women, Women's Bodies, Feminist Politics, Women's Birthing Rights, Male Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. ________________________________ Check out the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta - Fire up a more powerful email and get things done faster. -- compadre, if i injected my flesh with silicone did hundreds of situps a day wore lacey push up bras got surgery to correct my Asian single-eyelid wore subtle lipstick, concealer, & gloss made my gaze bruised with shadow & mascara wore dainty stilleto heels & flippy skirts got some hips would you buy me then? hermano, does market follow demand, or demand follow market? i want to be the white girls of your wet dreams with million-dollar prosthetic bodies, $40,000 makeovers, features imprinted on your cock by billion-dollar industries I am beautiful in my mind until you choose them instead slap my ugliness to my face and you tell me you don't understand this kind of competition! i didn't write the rules of this game you don't recognize you just follow the market, the ads, the art, the enterprize... shaping the sadness of my sickness Sisters, come together & incite refugees of false dreams to unite. inciteboston.blogspot.com From postmaster at fountainhead-tanz-theatre.de Fri Dec 15 21:57:24 2006 From: postmaster at fountainhead-tanz-theatre.de (Fountainhead Tanz Theatre/Black International Cinema/The Collegium - Forum & Television Program Berlin/Cultural Zephyr e.V.) Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 04:57:24 +0000 (GMT) Subject: [m2c] Fountainhead e-Letter, December 2006, Berlin/Germany Message-ID: <16403948.1166245044554.JavaMail.root@p15190981.pureserver.info> FOUNTAINHEAD? TANZ THEATRE e ? LETTER, Berlin/Germany December 2006 http://members.aol.com/bicdance www.fountainhead-tanz-theatre.de www.black-international-cinema.com Please send replies to / Bitte senden Sie Antworten an bicdance at aol.com __________________________________________________________________ FOUNTAINHEAD? TANZ THEATRE BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA THE COLLEGIUM - FORUM & TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN CULTURAL ZEPHYR e.V. MISSION STATEMENT We are an international, intercultural community of persons engaged in achieving increasing understanding and cooperation between individuals and groups in support of democratic procedures and the elimination of violence, religious, ethnic and gender persecution, youth exploitation, homophobia and racial hatred through the process of art, education, culture and dialogue. Wir sind eine internationale, interkulturelle Gemeinschaft von Menschen mit dem Engagement f?r ein besseres Verst?ndnis und wachsende Kooperation zwischen Individuen und Gruppen, mit Unterst?tzung des demokratischen Prozesses und der Beseitigung von Gewalt, Verfolgung aufgrund religi?ser, ethnischer und geschlechtlicher Zugeh?rigkeit, Kindes- und Jugendmissbrauch, Homosexuellen-Feindlichkeit und von Rassenhass, durch die Mittel der Kunst, der Bildung, der Kultur und des Dialogs. Nous sommes une communaut? internationale et interculturelle de personnes engag?es ? promouvoir la compr?hension et la coop?ration croissantes entre les individus et les groupes, ? l?appui des outils d?mocratiques et ? travers l??limination de la violence, de la pers?cution religieuse, ethnique et sexuelle, de l?exploitation de la jeunesse, de l?homophobie et de la haine raciale par le processus de l?art, de l??ducation, de la culture et du dialogue. __________________________________________________________________ Table of Contents/Inhalt __________________________________________________________________ 1. XXII. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA BERLIN 2007 ENTRY FORM INFORMATION http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC07/bic07_frameset.htm __________________________________________________________________ 2. PART LII Grownupism! 1 Day, When I Grow Up! Erwachsensein! Eines Tages, Wenn Ich Erwachsen Werde! __________________________________________________________________ 3. THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE DECEMBER 17, 2006 9-10 pm / 21-22 Uhr Offener Kanal Berlin __________________________________________________________________ 4. MusiKal TheaTre TIME KonsTrucTion ?ON AIRE? Multimedia Presentation: Film, Music and Performance presented by THE COLLEGIUM ? Forum & Television Program Berlin (Magdeburg, Wolfsburg) January 21, 2007 __________________________________________________________________ 5. XXI. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA 2006 FESTIVAL IMPRESSIONS, ST. LOUIS / NEW YORK CITY / BERLIN http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC06/HTML/bic06_frameset.htm _________________________________________________________________ 1. Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre The Collegium ? Forum & Television Program Berlin in association with Cultural Zephyr e.V. present XXII. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA BERLIN 2007 ENTRY FORM INFORMATION: http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC07/bic07_frameset.htm _________________________________________________________________ 2. PART LII Grownupism! 1 Day, When I Grow Up! So, as usual, I wuz sittin? an? stinkin? ?bout how I?m gonna m?nage my life an? all that big stuff I have to face almos? ev?ry day, called skool. A dungeon skool an? dragon teechers! When I stink ?bout how tuff it is for us kidz ev?ry day ? I jes stink there aughta be sum kinda law for us kidz protection! Now, even my mama has joined in on the teeching stuff! My moms a piano teecher an? she plays the kinda musik that starts out with a bang, slows down, speeds up an? keeps goin? on an? on in that kinda up-down direction or a whole lotta directions at once! I think they call it klassical!? Man, I don?t know why it has that name, when it gives peeple the jumps an? puts you to sleep! Anywho, now I gotta start playin? piano! Naturally no drums, but piano! How am I gonna keep this stuff from my pardnurs? I?ll be reel embarrassed if they find out, ?cause I?ll never hear the end of it! Not only do I have to lern to play the darn thing, but my mom?s tol? me, I gotta practice too! Man, whatta waste atime! I kin put on CD?s an? play sum piano music an? save me an? my mom a lotta time an? stress! Besides, who sed I wanna play piano? I don?t r?member bein? asked ?bout this stuff, I think I wuz jes pressed into it an? that?s not fair! Kidz oughta be able to have a sey in their lifes an? not only dragon teechers an? perents bein? boss-boxes! What kinda demokcrazy is that? Plus, I gotta lern wut all that scriblin? on the music paper sez, I gotta find it on the piano an? then I gotta play it! Man, getta CD an? ev?rybodies happy, ?specially me! I luv my mom a lot, but sumtimes her ideas need a lotta werk! An? she shuld do the practicin? werk, not me! I gotta werk on gittin? outta this sum kinda way, ?cause it?s cuttin? into my play time! Plus, I still gotta do homewerk! I gittin? tired, so I?m gonna sleep on this nite mare an? figure how to save myself! An? my mom! G?nite. I luv you, G?nite. Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre Copyright, December 2006 PART LII Erwachsensein! Eines Tages, wenn ich erwachsen werde! Also, wie ?blich war ich am Sitz?n und Stink?n dar?ba, wie ich mein Leben auf die Reihe bekomm' und diese ganzen gro?en Sachen, denen ich fast jeden Tag ins Auge blick'n muss, genannt Schule. 'Ne Kerkerschule mit Drachenlehrern! Wenn ich dran denk, wie hart das f?r uns Kinder jeden Tag is' ? mein ich nur, da sollte es irgendsowas wie'n Gesetz geb'n zum Schutz f?r uns Kinder! Jetz' macht sogar meine Mama mit bei diesem Unterrichtszeugs! Meine Mama is' Klavierlehrerin und sie spielt diese Art von Musik, die mit 'nem Knall anf?ngt, langsamer wird, wieder schneller wird und so weitergeht in dieser Art Hoch-und-Runter-Richtung oder 'ner Menge Richtungen gleichzeitig! Ich glaub, sie nenn' das Klassisch!? Mann, ich wei? nich', warum das so hei?t, wenn das die Leute aufschreckt und dich zum Einschlafen bringt! Jedenfalls, jetz' soll ich anfang'n, Klavier zu spiel'n! Naturlich kein Schlagzeug, sondern Klavier! Wie soll ich das vor mein' Kumpels geheim halt'n? Das w?r mir echt peinlich, wenn sie das 'rausbekomm', weil das 'ne endlose Blamage w?r! Ich muss nich' nur lern', wie man dieses bl?de Ding spielt, meine Mama hat mir gesagt, dass ich auch noch ?ben soll! Mann, was f?r 'ne Zeitvaschwendung! Ich kann CDs aufleg'n und 'n bi?chen Klaviermusik spiel'n und mir und meiner Mama 'ne Menge Zeit und Stress erspar'n! Nebenbei, wer sagt, dass ich Klavier spiel'n will? Ich kann mich nich' dran erinnern, dass man mich gefragt hat, ich glaub, das wurde mir einfach aufgedr?ckt, und das is' nich' fair! Kinder sollt'n inner Lage sein, ?ba ihr Leben mitzubestimm', und nich nur Drachenlehrer und Eltern den Boss markier'n! Was f?r 'ne var?ckte Demokratie is' das denn? Au?erdem muss ich noch lern', was dies ganze Gekritzel in den Musikheften bedeutet, muss es auf 'em Klavier find'n und dann soll ich das spiel'n! Mann, spiel 'ne CD und jeder is' gl?cklich, besonders ich! Ich hab meine Mama sehr lieb, aber machma' muss sie an ihr'n Ideen arbeit'n! Und sie sollte die ?bungsarbeit mach'n, nich' ich! Ich muss aus dieser Sache irgendwie rauskomm', weil mir das was von meiner Spielzeit wegnimmt! Au?erdem, ich muss auch noch Hausaufgaben mach'n! Ich werd m?de, also werd ich dr?ba schlaf'n, ?ba diesen Alptraum, und ?baleg'n, wie ich mich da rausrett'n kann! Und meine Mama! 'Nacht Hab euch lieb 'Nacht Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre Copyright, Dezember 2006 _________________________________________________________________ 3. THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE DECEMBER 17, 2006 9-10 pm / 21-22 Uhr Offener Kanal Berlin CHRISTMAS PRESENTATION ARTS CALENDAR John F. Kennedy Friendship Center in association with Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre presents Dance In December 2006, Director: Prof. Gayle McKinney Griffith Special Guest Artist: Khadija Tarjan McKinney Griffith, Ballett: Lustige Witwe: "Lippen schweigen", choreography courtesy: Ballettstudio Marlen Musical Interlude: Solome Gebreyes, vocals; Rowan Smy, guitar; Prof. Donald Muldrow Griffith, vocals STATE OF AFFAIRS Interview with Rowan Smy and Bobby StaRRR _________________________________________________________________ 4. MusiKal TheaTre TIME KonsTrucTion ?ON AIRE? Multimedia Presentation: Film, Music and Performance Multimedia Pr?sentation: Film, Musik und Performance presented by THE COLLEGIUM ? Forum & Television Program Berlin (Magdeburg, Wolfsburg) January 21, 2007 Location: Offener Kanal Berlin, Voltastr. 5, 13355 Berlin/Wedding Time: 9-10 pm, Live Concept, Production & Direction: Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre, http://members.aol.com/bicdance, www.fountainhead-tanz-theatre.de, www.black-international-cinema.com Co-Conspirators: Bobby StaRRR/Music, UK/Berlin, www.myspace.com/bobbystarrr Rowan Smy, Australia/Berlin, merseasmy at yahoo.com Kevin Hunter, USA/Netherlands, www.myspace.com/kevinhunterguitar Composition ?Spoken Words? Lyrics ?Grownupism! 1 Day, When I Grow Up!?: Donald Muldrow Griffith / Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre Lyrics ?Klock-Time?: Donald Muldrow Griffith, Donald Muldrow Griffith II, Khadija Tarjan McKinney Griffith (Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre) Spoken Word Artists: Donald Muldrow Griffith, Angela Kramer, Marion Kramer (Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre) Translation English/German: Angela Kramer Editing: Gayle McKinney Griffith, Khadija Tarjan McKinney Griffith, Angela Kramer, Marion Kramer (Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre) Music: Bobby StaRRR, Rowan Smy, Donald Muldrow Griffith _________________________________________________________________ THE COLLEGIUM FORUM & TELEVISION PROGRAM Berlin/ Magdeburg/Wolfsburg and other cosmopolitan cities und andere kosmopolitische St?dte produced & directed by/produziert und geleitet von Fountainhead? Tanz Theatre/Black International Cinema/ Cultural Zephyr e.V. BERLIN Every Sunday jeden Sonntag 9.00 - 10.00 pm 21.00 - 22.00 Uhr Offener Kanal Berlin Voltastr. 5 13355 Berlin-Wedding presenting / pr?sentiert wird Cinema / Discussion / Arts Calendar Filme / Diskussion / Kunstkalender for program information, please contact: Programminformationen bitte unter: 0049 (0)30-782 16 21 0049 (0)30-75 46 09 46 __________________________________________________________________ THE COLLEGIUM MAGDEBURG First Thursday in every month Jeden ersten Donnerstag im Monat 6.00 - 7.00 pm 18.00 - 19.00 Uhr THE COLLEGIUM WOLFSBURG TV 38 Wednesday, December 27, 2006 6.00 - 7.00 pm 18.00 - 19.00 Uhr __________________________________________________________________ THE COLLEGIUM TELEVISION PROGRAM BERLIN LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE - LIVE THE COLLEGIUM 2007: JANUARY 21 FEBRUARY 18 MARCH 18 at 9.00 p.m. / 21.00 Uhr __________________________________________________________________ 4. XXI. BLACK INTERNATIONAL CINEMA 2006 FESTIVAL IMPRESSIONS, ST. LOUIS / NEW YORK CITY / BERLIN http://www.black-international-cinema.com/BIC06/HTML/bic06_frameset.htm __________________________________________________________________ Mottoes: "I may not make it if I try, but I damn sure won?t if I don?t..." Oscar Brown Jr. "Mankind will either find a way or make one." C.P. Snow ?Whatever you do..., be cool!" Joseph Louis Turner ?Yes, I can...!? Sammy Davis Jr. ?Fountainhead?, December 2006 http://www.freeletters.net/fl/newsletter.jsp?key=1501521 +++ +++ +++ Create your own newsletter with many great features! http://www.freeletters.net +++ +++ +++ null From hachew at gmail.com Sat Dec 16 22:31:39 2006 From: hachew at gmail.com (Huibin Amelia Chew) Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:31:39 -0500 Subject: [m2c] Action Alert: BBC to air rape reality show Message-ID: ---------------- The BBC once known as a respected and objective organisation has sunk to a new low in its battle for ratings. A programme entitled 'The Verdict' is due to be screened in February, 2007 wherein twelve supposed celebrities will be asked to deliberate in a fictionalised rape trial. Full details can be obtained via: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1970725,00.html Among the celebrities is one Stan Collymore former male footballer who was villifed in media after physically assaulting his then-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson in a bar in 1998. In 2004 Collymore was caught 'dogging' a practice wherein predominantly men visit parks and other open areas after dark in order to voyeuristically watch female and male strangers engage in various sexual activities. Men raping women is never a trivial subject but the BBC obviously believes such a programme is acceptable and since part of the storyline focuses on two young women extracting money from a tabloid newspaper after selling their story this will doubtless reinforce the widely held media and public perception that women rape survivors are not only man-haters who routinely make false allegations against innocent and respectable men, but also are 'dirty conniving money-grabbing -' I have no doubt that other international media outlets will seize their chance of making similar programmes all in the name of so-called free enterprise. Complaints can be made to the BBC at http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint_step1.shtml or by writing to Anthony Salz, Acting BBC Chair, BBC Complaints, PO Box 1922, Glasgow, G1 3WT. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -- compadre, if i injected my flesh with silicone did hundreds of situps a day wore lacey push up bras got surgery to correct my Asian single-eyelid wore subtle lipstick, concealer, & gloss made my gaze bruised with shadow & mascara wore dainty stilleto heels & flippy skirts got some hips would you buy me then? hermano, does market follow demand, or demand follow market? i want to be the white girls of your wet dreams with million-dollar prosthetic bodies, $40,000 makeovers, features imprinted on your cock by billion-dollar industries I am beautiful in my mind until you choose them instead slap my ugliness to my face and you tell me you don't understand this kind of competition! i didn't write the rules of this game you don't recognize you just follow the market, the ads, the art, the enterprize... shaping the sadness of my sickness Sisters, come together & incite refugees of false dreams to unite. inciteboston.blogspot.com From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 18 14:43:32 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:43:32 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Immigration: Our Modern Slaves Message-ID: <1224582730.20061218134332@shaw.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1974424,00.html A modern-day slavery is flourishing in Britain, and we just avert our eyes We are dehumanising half a million irregular migrants - an army of cheap labour on which our lifestyles depend Madeleine Bunting Monday December 18, 2006 The Guardian Nehad has the hunched look of a man who has lived with fear for years. It was to escape fear that he fled Iraq for Europe in 2003, hoping to start a new life beyond the reach of the torture and prisons of Saddam Hussein's regime in northern Iraq. But after four years of failed asylum applications in the UK, he is still living in fear. He's too nervous to tell his story inside the cafe where we meet for fear of eavesdroppers, so we sit outside. He flinches as a policewoman passes. He says he never answers a knock on his front door at home in Birmingham; friends know to call first to tell him they are coming. He knows - as the Home Office officials remind him on his monthly required visits to sign in - that he could be deported at any time and sent back to Iraq. He could be snatched from the streets or from his bed in the middle of the night. But, as he is well aware, there is nothing unusual about his plight - he is just one individual out of an army of irregular migrants, which the Home Office estimates at more than half a million strong. They precariously exist in a kind of bureaucracy-made limbo in this country. Deportation is not the only fear he lives with. He needs urgent kidney treatment, but an operation would require several months' convalescence. If he can't work, who will pay his rent or food? He knows his kidney malfunction is slowly getting worse. "I came here to survive, not to die slowly." He rubs tears from his cheeks. He works in a kitchen - and he apologises for it. He knows that he's not allowed to work but explains that after his asylum appeal was refused two years ago and he was ejected from the hostel and his vouchers were stopped, he had no alternative. He got himself false papers and his employer doesn't press him for his national insurance number. The arrangement suits them both. Nehad gets ?182 net for a 40-hour week, and the employer gets cheap hard labour with no sick or holiday pay. Nehad will be working through Christmas. Nehad counts himself as one of the lucky ones. He knows someone who bought an old car for ?50 just to sleep in it. Nehad rents for ?100 a week, which leaves enough to pay the bills, and feed and clothe himself. He sometimes helps out other irregulars who are worse off. "There is another, terrible life underground in this country. The government calls us illegals, but how can a human being be illegal? We are here, and we are human beings. People ask me what my hope for the future is; I don't have a right to hope, but what I would like is to hold my head up high and tell people, this is who I am." That's what had driven Nehad to run the risk of talking to me. He needed recognition - it was the denial of dignity that had eaten into his soul, the way a whole society had decided to avert its eyes from his plight. The sheer indifference to the zombie category of "illegal" human beings our asylum bureaucracy has created. Some irregulars have been here for years, and many will be here for years to come. They might live in your street or be sitting on the bus or train next to you and you won't know because budget clothing shops ensure that poverty and desperation is now well hidden. The current rate of deportations is 20,000 a year. The public accounts committee has acknowledged it would take 18 years to deport all irregular migrants. That means Nehad could die of kidney disease long before his deportation order comes up, or, to put it another way, Nehad and those like him will have washed up many more of the dishes you eat off in restaurants. And then there's the cost: ?11,000 per deportation. Deporting half a million people will push the bill towards ?4.7bn, according to the Institute of Public Policy Research. No one is planning to stump up that kind of money, so this is make-believe policy land: it's never going to happen. Yet no politician is prepared to admit that, given the fevered anxieties about immigration in this country. These half a million have become a political no-go area: everyone has a vested interest in pretending they don't exist. They've provided labour for Britain's booming economy, filling the increasing personal-service job sectors of domestic work, cleaning, catering, food processing and hospitality. In this zombie category of irregulars, you are vulnerable to every thug, every kind of criminality - and yet you can never turn to the police. You get turned away from doctor's surgeries. Your employer can deduct money from your wages, increase your hours, withhold pay and you can do nothing or he will make threatening requests for a national insurance number. Likewise, your landlord can up the rent and ignore complaints about repairs. No one has wanted to broach the debate. Refugee organisations are too busy fighting for a fair asylum system, and trade unions, while aware of how employers can exploit irregular migrants and how that has a knock-on effect on other low-paid workers, have held back from an unpopular issue. Into this gap has stepped the Citizens Organising Foundation - representing community and faith groups in London and Birmingham - with plans to launch a campaign, Strangers into Citizens, in the new year, which will aim to open up a space to discuss this subject sensibly. It's the COF that is hunting out the rare characters like Nehad who have the courage to speak out, and have learned good enough English to tell a story that booming Britain doesn't want to hear. There is an obvious policy option. Spain and Germany have both recently introduced regularisation schemes for long-term irregular migrants. It pays big dividends in terms of increased tax receipts as migrants start to pay tax - a billion euros in Spain in the first year and rising - which might tempt Gordon Brown. There are other advantages; any plan to successfully restrict the flow of new migrants depends on regularising irregulars. Regularisation would squeeze out those spaces in the economy that so quickly absorb and attract new migrants. But to date, advocacy of any regularisation scheme in the UK has been regarded as political suicide. The sheer extent of this institutionalised dehumanisation makes a mockery of any pretensions to decency. While politicians fret and pontificate about policies on social cohesion and integration, this is the real question at the heart of those issues: the army of cheap labour on which our comfortable lifestyles depend. Next year marks the second centenary of the abolition of slavery in the British empire. What makes the Strangers into Citizens campaign so challenging is that it is forcing us to acknowledge that its modern-day version is flourishing. People like Nehad may have some freedom of movement, but in reality, every detail of their daily lives is sharply circumscribed by fear. He bitterly knows that though he is 34, he has no chance of marriage, children, a home, a decent job, or a life worth living. He is just waiting - without any hope that the wait will end. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From tchimurenga at yahoo.com Mon Dec 18 21:47:38 2006 From: tchimurenga at yahoo.com (thandisizwe chimurenga) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 20:47:38 -0800 (PST) Subject: [m2c] Fwd: [AfricansForCuba] SYRACUSE, NY: Women and Hip-Hop in the Americas Message-ID: <20061219044738.18431.qmail@web33112.mail.mud.yahoo.com> From: John Burdick [mailto:jsburdic at maxwell.syr.edu] Sent: Friday, December 15, 2006 8:03 PM To: Walter Lippmann Subject: Re: women and hip hop in the americas ----- "Women and Hip Hop in the Americas: Perspectives from the United States, Cuba, and Brazil" Wednesday, April 4th, 2007 Syracuse University, Grant Auditorium 4-6 pm The goal of this panel is to engage how hip hop acts as a social force to articulate and to change relations of gender/race in the US, Cuba, and Brazil. Long dominated by men and male perspectives, women have entered hip hop in growing numbers in the past decade, and articulated perspectives that are reshaping the genre and the world it affects. By taking a hemispheric perspective, this panel seeks to explore important similarities and differences in gender/race across national boundaries. Panel Participants: Cristina Borges is a rising presence in Brazil's rap/R&B scene. Involved in the scene for the past seventeen years, Tina has led two women's rap groups (Negritude Posse and A-Tal), has recorded two CDs as a solo artist, and has recorded with many of Brazil's major rap groups, including Racionais MCs, Apocalipse 16, and Dexter. She recently received the much coveted Hutuz Award for the best new Brazilian female rap artist. Sujatha Fernandes is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City University of New York. She is the author of Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, October 2006). She is the author of several dozen scholarly articles. She is currently working on two new books. One is based on her field research in Venezuela, and is entitled In the Spirit of Negro Primero: Urban Social Movements in Ch?vez's Venezuela. The other is a memoir, Close to the Edge: Reflections on Race, Politics, and Global Hip Hop. Gwendolyn Pough is Associate Professor of Women's Studies, Writing, and Rhetoric at Syracuse University. She is the author of Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture and the Public Sphere, Northeastern University Press, June 2004; I'm Gonna Make You Love Me, Genesis Press, March 2006 (novel, writing as Gwyneth Bolton); If Only You Knew, Kimani Press/Harlequin Books, July 2006, (novel, writing as Gwyneth Bolton), and numerous articles, including "Rhetoric That Should Have Moved the People: Rethinking the Black Panther Party," African-American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives, eds. Ronald Jackson and Elaine Richardson. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP. 2004. 59-72. Panel convenor: John Burdick is professor of anthropology at Syracuse University. He is the author of several books on Brazil, including Blessed Anastacia: Women, Race and Popular Christianity in Brazil (Routledge 1998). He is currently working on a book on the racial politics of evangelical Protestantism (including gospel music) in Brazil. . __,_._,___ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/html Size: 7055 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/margins-to-centre/attachments/20061218/ec864414/attachment.txt From hachew at gmail.com Fri Dec 22 17:54:22 2006 From: hachew at gmail.com (Huibin Amelia Chew) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 19:54:22 -0500 Subject: [m2c] Boston: The Year Women Got Beat Up In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: in the Boston Phoenix. there is a real rise in violence against women right now -- which I suspect is connected to the politics & economics of US empire today. militarism, budget cuts which put women in dire straights, lack of grassroots feminist organizing all contribute. but the mainstream either completely ignores this, or reduces gendered violence to "missing white women syndrome." the part of the article that really kills me goes: "Advocates of women's issues contacted by the Phoenix are hard-pressed to explain why the recent parade of stories about victimized women failed to register as such." what planet are they on? violence against us is portrayed as: 1) genderless -- especially when on a mass scale (e.g. Amish school shootings were Amish). is this surprising when grassroots feminist organizing is dead? 2) non-existent -- especially when on the super-mass scale! (nothing on TV about Iraqi women; or the huge assaults on poor women, undocumented women) 3) when femininity is noticed at all, it's usually in the context of "missing white women syndrome": some kind of imperialist, anti-feminist spin, used to advance an agenda of controlling individual women's behavior and blaming a racial Other -- while ignoring systemic male-perpetrated violence, systemic violence against poor women and women of color. women's bodies are simply used to mobilize support for paranoid police protection and war; so stranger rape, but not relationship abuse, is fit to cover. what happens to our bodies is selectively deformed into a national security issue, not a women's issue. the below article does make mention of Dominique Samuels and other murdered women of color... it doesn't talk much about solutions though, and is heavy on law enforcement as central. INCITE wrote a piece on these issues at http://inciteboston.blogspot.com/2006/09/brutal-murder-of-dominique-samuels.html we've got a lot of work to do. progressive men can start by not tolerating each other's abusive behavior towards women. and not just checking themselves on obvious violence and sexual assault, but (really) looking at how internalized sexism causes them to dismiss women, ignore sexism in their organizing, or fail to allow these issues to shape their work. women, our job is to draw attention to these problems, support each other collectively in struggling on them, and find solutions. -Amee -- http://www.thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=30161&page=1 The year women got beat up Over the past 12 months you have been bombarded with stories of brutalized women. Chances are, you didn't notice. By DAVID S. BERNSTEIN You don't have to play Grand Theft Auto to be blind to violence against women. The local TV-news and print media feature so many dead women, they barely register as much more than cartoons. The Herald alone put pictures of 20 individual female victims of violence on its covers this year. And one of every five of the paper's covers mentioned a story of violence against women. All year long, stories of victimized women and girls were routinely plucked from the swarm of local and national news items that face editors each day and given front-page, talk-radio, top-of-the-hour treatment. The next one grabbed our attention as soon as we lost interest in the last: Rachel Entwistle gave way to Imette St. Guillen, who was followed by Jill Carroll and then Dominique Samuels. If we weren't guessing whether John Mark Karr killed JonBenet Ramsey, we were debating whether Philadelphia Phillies star Brett Myers should pitch the day after allegedly beating his wife outside a hotel in downtown Boston. Even long-dead victims were back in the headlines: Christa Worthington, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Aislin Silva. Yet while most of us became caught up in the salacious details of each new story, we failed to see them as part of a greater trend. It's odd, given how quick we are to discern patterns and similarities in even the most distantly related news events. Even worse, say those who make it their business to track and tend to violence against women, these recent storylines were often disproportionately cast as TV drama, with the victim struck down by some psycho stranger in terrifying isolation, when more often than not, domestic violence was involved. This distorted way of looking at violence against women ? when we recognize it at all ? was crystallized in the controversial ads run by Republican gubernatorial candidate Kerry Healey, which made Benjamin LaGuer, convicted of rape 22 years ago, a household name. Not long after, we even learned of a rape victim within our governor-elect's close family. Jane Doe Inc., which tracks homicides directly attributable to domestic violence in Massachusetts, has identified 31 such deaths this year ? 50 percent more than the average of the previous three years. And at least 34 women have been murdered in the state under all circumstances, according to Phoenix research, the highest total in several years. Although violence in Boston and across Massachusetts has been a topic of constant public discussion, it has gone unnoticed that rapes in the city have climbed 15 percent this year, and a stunning 61 percent since September 1, compared with the same dates in 2005. In Allston-Brighton, rapes are up 136 percent. Meanwhile, as the Phoenix reported in October, the arrest rate for rapes in Massachusetts dropped by nearly half during the past three years. Yet most of us missed this bigger picture as we eagerly consumed the details of each new victimization ? what online sexual shenanigans Neil Entwistle was up to, or where in the Ella J. Baker House the ex-con staffer allegedly raped a teenage girl. This ever-widening gap between perception and reality has real consequences, say many in the field: it has made it harder to get public acceptance and support for programs and initiatives that law-enforcement officials and women's advocates believe would help solve the growing problem. And even as these advocates advance their understanding of the problem ? which they see as being largely rooted in domestic tensions ? they find themselves understood, and heeded, less and less. If anything, says Mary Lauby, executive director of Jane Doe Inc., "the attention and focus on keeping these practices and services and responses not just fully funded, but fully embraced, is moving backwards." Resisting the obvious Advocates of women's issues contacted by the Phoenix are hard-pressed to explain why the recent parade of stories about victimized women failed to register as such. After all, it's fairly obvious that most of these stories became big news in the first place largely because the victims are women. That's why Jill Carroll's abduction stood out among the dozens of reporters kidnapped in Iraq; why Christa Worthington's murder still fascinates four years later; why the Dorchester murder of Nhaun Nguyen made the front pages, unlike the stories of so many young men shot down in the city. And yet, we look for other storylines. For example, on October 2, a gunman took a group of girls hostage, killing five of them and injuring five more. You might not remember the incident by that description; the words "Amish school," however, probably ring a bell. Not only was that massacre transparently gender-driven, it came just a week after a remarkably similar event in Colorado, in which a gunman abducted and sexually assaulted six girls, killing one. Another school-based shooting, in Essex, Vermont, a month earlier, targeted women, leaving two dead. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert later wrote, this obvious targeting would have dominated coverage, had it been based on race or religion ? and the incidents would have been labeled, properly, as hate crimes. Instead, the coverage and discussion focused exclusively on the school-shooting and Amish angles. That was a wake-up call to women's advocates, says Lauby. "We were stunned, and then livid, waiting for somebody to talk about violence against girls and women," after the Pennsylvania shooting, she says. And just then, Kerry Healey unleashed Benjamin LaGuer. LaGuer became a central figure in the political campaign when Healey charged Deval Patrick with siding with criminals over victims, because at one time he had supported parole and re-examination of the evidence for LaGuer. Healey launched a television ad showing a woman in a dark parking garage, apparently being stalked, while the voiceover reminded viewers that Patrick described LaGuer as "eloquent" and "thoughtful." The ad then asked: "Have you ever heard a woman compliment a rapist? Deval Patrick should be ashamed, not governor." This stranger-danger stereotype is far from the norm. Yet it seems that violence against women gets our attention only if we think of it as random. We quickly lose interest if a case turns out to be ? as most of them are ? an act of domestic violence committed by someone known to the victim. This was one finding in an academic study on media coverage of domestic violence, published this year in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. And it could be seen locally in 2006. Dominique Samuels, whose badly burned corpse was discovered in Franklin Park this spring, dominated headlines until police arrested an acquaintance of hers, and alleged that the attack began as a sexual assault at the end of a night of socializing. With this explanation, coverage of the story immediately disappeared. Annalicia Perry was likewise big news when she was shot on the anniversary of her brother's murder, while visiting the spot in the South End where he died. Later, when police determined that an angry ex-boyfriend of Perry's was behind her death, interest in the story waned. The alleged shooter was arraigned last week, with no media coverage. Meanwhile, two other women murdered in Boston this year, who were immediately tagged as victims of domestic violence (the husbands were quickly arrested), never reached the front pages in the first place. By comparison, the story of Imette St. Guillen, a Dorchester native killed in Manhattan, made headlines ? and affected policy ? long after the alleged perpetrator was caught. In that case, the suspect was a nightclub bouncer, charged with abducting St. Guillen before killing her. Not only did reporters continue to delve into his story, but advocates recently introduced legislation in Massachusetts seeking to protect women from ex-con bouncers. And when Kerry Healey wanted to scare Massachusetts residents, she chose to grab their attention with a fictionalized re-enactment of a random, unknown attacker, even though she knows perfectly well such imagery is at overwhelming odds with reality. The fiction that women are often savaged and killed in bizarre, unique circumstances is more gripping. That's why it's so prevalent on prime-time television, which is increasingly dominated by crime shows featuring a wildly disproportionate number of female victims. For instance, brief plot summaries for the 24 episodes of top-rated CSI: Crime Scene Investigation that aired this year reveal at least 15 women killed, few by domestic violence, according to a Phoenix review ? and that's just one of three series in the CSI franchise. Similar rates can be found on the three Law & Orders, Cold Case, Without A Trace, and many more, not to mention true-crime shows like those hosted by Nancy Grace and Rita Cosby. But by losing ourselves in that unreality, we may be losing sight of the truth sitting right before our eyes. Many activists believe that's one reason it remains so difficult to recognize domestic violence when it is happening to someone we know, or even to ourselves. Women's-rights activists were appalled by Healey's ads, and not just for perpetuating the false perception of stranger-danger. The ads also contradicted what they have been trying so hard to get people to understand ? that because the attacker is very often someone the victim knows and trusts, she often feels conflicted about him, and might find it hard to take steps that could lead to his arrest and prosecution. According to the Healey ad, no such conflicted women exist ? and if they do, they should presumably be "ashamed." What's really going on? The rhetoric surrounding Benjamin LaGuer obscured the ongoing work of serious people who address the unvarnished reality of female violence. The state legislature's joint committee on public safety held hearings and issued a report on domestic violence in the state. Jane Doe Inc. published its first domestic-violence homicide report. Quincy District Court released a study last December, a first of its kind in the country, shedding new light on re-offending by domestic batterers over time. The state opened its first multi-service Family Justice Center, on Comm Ave in Boston, to help women victims. The Suffolk County District Attorney's Office, along with the Boston Police Department, began treating underage prostitutes as victims to be saved rather than criminals to be punished. The Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners program was expanded throughout the state. And a series of programs in Newburyport to help battered women find assistance have been so successful, some officials would like to duplicate them across Massachusetts. Taken together, it's an impressive effort, but it's been largely ignored. The public-safety committee released its report 12 days after Dominique Samuels's body was found, but only one member of the press showed up ? from a weekly paper in one town that was spotlighted in the report ? says State Senator Jarrett Barrios. Neither the Globe nor the Herald even mentioned it. And so there has been no groundswell to enact its recommendations. There is a significant disconnect between perception and reality in public policy, too. Congress authorized a huge increase in funding for the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) when it passed a five-year reauthorization of VAWA, which George Bush signed early this year. But that funding was left out of the federal budget for the new fiscal year. Likewise, despite Kerry Healey's talk, Mitt Romney recently cut victims' services, along with other "emergency" 9C programs. Healey, Romney, and the legislature made great headlines with their efforts to list more sex offenders on the Internet, extend sexual-dangerousness definitions to people caught urinating in alleys, and provide witness protection to gangbangers. Yet they have done little or nothing to implement intensive parole oversight, reform restraining-order procedures, or implement uniform dangerousness-assessment procedures. And sadly, the state has failed to use its resources to counter misperceptions with real understanding, which could help women who are victimized, say advocates who believe that prevention depends in large part on the awareness and caring of the general public. As an example, they point to the May 20 murder of Carla Souza and her 11-year-old son, allegedly beaten to death with a hammer in their Framingham home by Souza's husband, Jeremias Bins. Bins and Souza were both born in Brazil; domestic-abuse experts went on a local Brazilian radio program and talked about the societal norms that can lead to abuse in that culture and keep it from coming to light. Brazilian women in the area responded, calling the station seeking help. That response could have led to a general call for more education and outreach services in minority communities. But reality, as usual, was not interesting enough to spread. When the Herald featured that murder on its cover, the headline blared, in typical TV-drama fashion: DID TOO MUCH RELIGION MAKE HIM KILL? -- compadre, if i injected my flesh with silicone did hundreds of situps a day wore lacey push up bras got surgery to correct my Asian single-eyelid wore subtle lipstick, concealer, & gloss made my gaze bruised with shadow & mascara wore dainty stilleto heels & flippy skirts got some hips would you buy me then? hermano, does market follow demand, or demand follow market? i want to be the white girls of your wet dreams with million-dollar prosthetic bodies, $40,000 makeovers, features imprinted on your cock by billion-dollar industries I am beautiful in my mind until you choose them instead slap my ugliness to my face and you tell me you don't understand this kind of competition! i didn't write the rules of this game you don't recognize you just follow the market, the ads, the art, the enterprize... shaping the sadness of my sickness Sisters, come together & incite refugees of false dreams to unite. inciteboston.blogspot.com From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 23 04:02:39 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 03:02:39 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Remembering a massacre, and demanding women's equality Message-ID: <1381573099.20061223030239@shaw.ca> http://www.sevenoaksmag.com/features/montrealmassacre.html Remembering a massacre, and demanding women's equality December 1, 2006 Gina Whitfield Who knew that the Fox Network, home of Bill O?Reilly, the man who has been known to accuse the United Nations and the country of France of being terrorist organizations, would pass up the opportunity to sell retired football star O.J. Simpson?s ?hypothetical? account of the killing of his ex-wife and her friend. ?If I did it, here?s how,? was the Juice?s working title, a crass attempt to squeeze more money out of his infamy. Now well into the 21st century, men are still ?doing it,? as in killing or abusing women. How they get away with it, I would argue, has something to do with the continuing structural inequality and sexism prevalent in society. It has now been 17 years since the Montreal Massacre, December 6, 1989, when Marc Lepine entered an engineering class at L?Ecole Polytechnique, separated the women from the men, and then murdered 14 women with a semi-automatic rifle. Lepine, in addition to killing the young engineering students, had a ?hit list? of an additional nineteen women he identified as feminists, including the first female firefighter in Quebec, the first female police captain, a president of a trade union, a sports radio host, the immigration minister at the time, as well as a transition house worker. The massacre, rather than being just a random attack by a madman, was an expression of attitudes toward women that are still latent today and seek to hold women back. Lepine?s own mother spoke publicly this year about her son?s actions for the first time. She recalled the violence she experienced at the hands of her son?s father, and how Lepine blamed her for the violence that was inflicted upon her and for leaving her batterer. Fortunately, my generation of young women has not lived through an attack as singularly traumatic as this one, but we know that rates of violence against women in this country have remained essentially the same. In the last few months, taking only the sensational cases (most violence against women is never reported), we have seen the murder of 5 girls at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania, where a gunman again let the male students go. Closer to home, there have also been the recent high profile murders of Manjit Panghali and Navrett Kaur Waraich. The often misleading, and implicitly racist discourses heard in the media need to be questioned, as evidence shows that male violence is present across all ethnic groups. The Pickton case, indeed, should serve as a constant reminder of the seriousness of violence against women. There are, furthermore, still over 60 women missing from the downtown eastside and over 500 missing aboriginal women across Canada. On the political level, especially with the current federal government, we can see the need not just to remember the dead, but to fight for equality for the living as well. Harper?s Conservative government is brazenly attacking Canadian women?s fight for equality. In fact, the mandate for Status of Women has been drastically changed, with the word ?equality? being taken out and replaced with ?participation?. Harper and his tightly controlled cabinet minister Bev Oda are brazenly maintaining that fighting for women?s equality is no longer necessary in this era. Funding to Status of Women will also be cut by forty percent by April 2007, with the terms and conditions once used by equality seeking women?s groups changed to prevent funding going to groups for lobbying, advocacy and research. Of course, nationally, most feminist groups are working on issues of women?s poverty, violence, and health, and will no longer receive Status of Women money to fight for women?s equality. These new changes to the terms and conditions of funding will not only force the closure of feminist organizations across Canada, but will also allow private corporations to apply for funding, as long as they claim to be committed to women?s ?participation? in society. Meanwhile, it is expected that the cuts and changes in language will likely mean a shut down of the British Columbia/Yukon office of Status of Women. Although women make up slightly more than half of the voters in Canada, sadly women are far from equally represented in parliament. Not to mention that when women do gain access to these very male dominated spaces, they are openly called dogs in the House of Commons and bitches on talk radio, by the likes of Peter MacKay and Norman Spector ? seemingly without repercussions. With the specter of male violence still hanging over us in Canada, women across the country are fighting back. On December 10th, International Human Rights Day, a new campaign will be launched to save Status of Women Canada. And on December 6th, the anniversary of the Montreal massacre, women?s groups across the country will be holding rallies to remember and to demand equality in our generation. -The Vancouver December 6th memorial rally gets underway at 6:30p.m, outside the Vancouver Public Library Central Branch, 350 West Georgia. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 23 04:06:51 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 03:06:51 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Women Asylum-Seekers in UK: "Everything in my life has crumbled" Message-ID: <1344913876.20061223030651@shaw.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,,1965066,00.html 'Everything in my life has crumbled' A new study says that women asylum seekers who claim to have been raped in their own countries are rarely believed in British courts. Laura Smith reports Wednesday December 6, 2006 Guardian When Amanda stepped off a boat in Southampton, earlier this year, she had, she says, just escaped a police cell in West Africa where she had been raped, sexually assaulted and tortured by guards and fellow prisoners. Suffering from severe abdominal pain and the trauma of leaving her two young children behind, she believed she had reached safe ground. But days after her arrival in Britain, she was taken to a detention centre and locked up for a month, during which time her asylum claim was rejected. With no legal representation at her appeal, Amanda was forced to relive her ordeal before a judge she found hostile, and who accused her of lying about the rape. The appeal was turned down. Campaigners say such experiences are far from unusual. Although it is estimated that at least 50% of women seeking asylum in the UK have experienced rape or sexual violence in their countries of origin, a report published yesterday found that in two thirds of cases rape claims were dismissed as fabrications. Misjudging Rape was commissioned by the Black Women's Rape Action Project and Women Against Rape to draw attention to the behaviour of immigration judges who serve on the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (AIT), which decides appeals against rulings made by the Home Office. As the Home Office refuses around 80% of claims following initial asylum interviews, the two London-based groups argue that fair AIT hearings are essential. The report examined 65 rulings by these immigration judges and found that rape claims were believed in only 35% of cases. The level of disbelief was often justified by the view that the woman had failed to mention the rape in the initial stages of the claim and must therefore be making it up. Cases where allegations were disbelieved included a 15-year-old girl who said she was raped by Ugandan government agents in front of her father (an opposition politician). Having reached 18 and had her asylum claim rejected, she faces repatriation. Then there is the Ethiopian Muslim woman whose description of rape was rejected on the basis that she had not complained to family members (this was described as making "no sense at all"). Only a third of women in the cases examined had access to an independent report by a doctor, psychiatrist or specialist organisation to corroborate their rape claims at the hearing. Where adjournments were requested for the preparation of such reports, immigration judges refused in more than 70% of cases. "In our experience, most judges are dismissing women and destroying their credibility," says Cristel Amiss, of the Black Women's Rape Action Project. "All the evidence confirms our fears that women and girls are being used as a soft target to bring down the asylum figures." Amanda, who is in her 30s, finds it hard to talk about what happened after she was arrested for allowing anti-government meetings to take place in the business she ran in her home country. Her hands shake and she cries as she speaks. "The guys in the cell pushed me. One said I have to pay "charges". One of the guys forcibly had sex with me. One asked me to suck his manhood. I did it because I had no choice. When the shift changed, the guards were insulting me. The officer came in and grabbed me by the hair and took me to the toilet. He had sex with me. The other ones were laughing." Amanda escaped with the help of a guard and a local pastor, who arranged her passage from the station to the nearest fishing port, from where she made her way to Southampton several months ago. She was taken to Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre. "We entered a van with a cage inside and I remember reaching a place with a high gate ... I was thinking I would meet people who would help me but there was nobody to say what was happening. I thought, maybe they are going to behead me. " At Yarl's Wood Amanda was promised access to a lawyer, but says she met one only five minutes before her initial Home Office interview, giving no time to relate her experiences before the interview began. Her claim was rejected. She fared no better at the appeal hearing before the AIT a month later. A lawyer had been appointed by Legal Aid but failed to appear and Amanda says she was left to tell the court her story without legal advice. Amanda says the immigration judge refused requests both from her and from Home Office officials to adjourn the case, allegedly saying the hearing could go ahead without her solicitor. He then described her supporting documents as forgeries and dismissed her account of rape, even after she showed him where the guard had ripped out her hair. In his ruling the judge described rape as a terrible crime, but said it was also terrible to make false allegations because genuine complaints were more likely to be disbelieved. Amiss says this judge has used exactly the same argument in several other rulings. Louise Hooper, a barrister who regularly represents women at AIT hearings, says she has "worked in other areas of law but I've never seen a court so partisan in nature. Not all judges are bad but there is a cohort who do not believe anything that anyone claiming asylum ever says. Frankly, they appear to see it as their role to keep people out." It is widely accepted that women face an uphill struggle to prove their refugee status under the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, which states that a person may be recognised as a refugee, "owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion". This is partly because women's political activity often takes a different form to men's - hiding people, for example, or, like Amanda, cooking for political meetings - which is harder to prove than membership of a party. It is also because they are targeted in different ways, the most obvious method being rape, a common weapon of war and political oppression, which, unlike torture, is not explicitly recognised by the convention. To correct this imbalance, the UN has urged countries to adopt guidelines to ensure women's asylum claims are dealt with equitably. To its credit, the Immigration Appellate Authority, the forerunner to today's AIT, published such guidelines for adjudicators (now immigration judges) in 2000 to ensure that procedures "do not prejudice women asylum seekers". But the new report alleges that immigration judges routinely flout these guidelines, dismissing women's political activity as "low level" and arguing, as a result, that rape cannot be considered as persecution under the convention. Women's failure to report rape during the early stages of their applications combined with a lack of corroborating medical evidence is often used to discredit claims, revealing little understanding of the trauma and shame particular to rape. "Despite all the gender guidelines ... judges often start from the position that a woman is lying," says Anver Jeevanjee, a former member of the AIT who retired in 2004. "They demand a much higher degree of proof from women. The idea that they wouldn't tell their husbands or family members about a rape, for example, is regarded as absolutely implausible." Jeevanjee claims that during his 20-year career with the tribunal, he frequently heard racial slurs being used by judges in private, and the attitude that there are already "too many immigrants" in Britain was common. A spokesman for the AIT told this newspaper that the asylum gender guidelines, produced by its predecessor, are "not binding". Now living in north London, Amanda has a new lawyer and has launched a fresh appeal. With her refugee status not yet confirmed she is unable to work and relies entirely on the kindness of friends and campaigners. Asked what it is like to be locked up and disbelieved in the country she came to for sanctuary, she becomes visibly distressed. "Let's say a tiger is chasing you and you are running away, thinking you are going towards shelter and safety," she says. "Then the person in the shelter pushes you out again. That's what it is like. They say I only came here to better myself. But a year ago I had my business, I had my estate, I was making plans. Everything in my life has crumbled. Where is my life now?" Guardian Unlimited ? Guardian News and Media Limited 2006 -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 23 04:13:49 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 03:13:49 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Abduction of Women on the Rise In-Reply-To: <457E213C.8090203@dahrjamailiraq.com> References: <457E213C.8090203@dahrjamailiraq.com> Message-ID: <1274550078.20061223031349@shaw.ca> ** Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches ** ** Visit the Dahr Jamail website http://dahrjamailiraq.com ** ** Website by http://jeffpflueger.com ** Abduction of Women on the Rise *Inter Press Service* Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily *BAGHDAD, Dec. 11 (IPS) - Women face increased risk of abduction by militias and criminal gangs as lawlessness takes over the country.* Nobody is safe. Taysseer Al-Mashadani, the Sunni woman minister from the al-Tawafuq political party was abducted by members of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army militia July 1 this year. After being held for nearly three months, she was only released after much pressure was applied from both the U.S. and Iraqi governments. Thousands of other women have not been so lucky. Many have been executed, assaulted, or released only after their families paid considerable ransom money. Few women like to talk about what they have to go through. "I was taken by Americans for three days recently," Um Ahmed told IPS in Baghdad. "They told me they would rape me if I didn't tell them where my husband was, but I really didn't know." She said that she was turned over to the Iraqi National Guard "who were even worse than the Americans." Her husband eventually surrendered to the U.S. military, but she continued to be held "to apply pressure on him to confess things he never did," she said. "They told him they would rape me right in front of him if he did not confess he was a terrorist. They forced me to watch them beat him hard until he told them what they wanted to hear." The Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq has estimated from anecdotal evidence that over 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in the period from the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 until spring 2006. But numbers are not always reliable here. Thousands of cases of abduction of women are never reported for fear of public disgrace. According to a study published by the Washington-based Brookings Institute Dec. 4, between 30 to 40 Iraqis were being kidnapped every day as of March this year. "The numbers on this table may be lower than the actual number of kidnappings as the Iraqi Police suggest wide underreporting," the study noted. These estimated numbers have drastically increased from a reported rate of two kidnappings a day in Baghdad in January 2004, and are up from the 10 a day reported in the capital city in December 2004 according to this study. Untold numbers of women, believed by many to be in the thousands, have been abducted for money, and others have been abducted for sectarian reasons. "My family had to pay 30,000 dollars to have me released," a 25year-old woman told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity. Several abducted women have later been found dead, sometimes beheaded. Others are never seen again. Fifty-two-year-old Um Wasseem from Baghdad was abducted by U.S. forces and held at the Baghdad airport detention camp, her family said. She was eventually released after political pressure from family and friends who had some political muscle. "I wish she had not been released," her 20-year-old son told IPS. "Militias then abducted her, and we found her body torn to pieces in March this year." Many Iraqi academics and aid workers say most of those being kidnapped now are women. "Women in Iraq used go to work, participate in social activities and even take part in politics," sociologist Shatha al-Dulaimy told IPS in Baghdad. "Iraqi women studied and worked side by side with men, and they formed at least 35 percent of the national working power in various fields of work until the U.S. occupation came. The occupation has brought nothing but suffering, death or kidnapping to women here now." The U.S. administration promised Iraqi women a better life with new opportunities, but the reality after three-and-a-half years of occupation is far different. Iraqi women were promised 25 percent of the seats in parliament. As it turned, out, the Iraqi National Assembly has 85 women in a total of 275 members following elections held Dec. 15, 2005. But that has not translated into more rights for women across Iraq. "We are just a part of the d?cor arranged by Americans who wanted to convince the world of the 'tremendous' change in Iraq," a female member of the Iraqi parliament told IPS on condition of anonymity. "Our (women's) voice is never heard inside or outside parliament." Female members of the new Iraqi Parliament take little part in major political decisions or when it comes to forming committees. Many female members were elected for religious or tribal reasons, she said. The MP expressed concern over a rise in "religious extremism" because people are being "led by clerics who spent their lives learning how to make women obey their orders and present them with the best services at home." Such extremism has been a large factor in the rising number of women being kidnapped, she said. "What women's rights," said 38-year-old schoolteacher Assmaa Fadhil. "Those who talk about it are ignorant people who want women to be slaves and concubines rather than partners in life. They are using old traditions to crush women and keep them away from any real participation in society." Fadhil says lack of respect for women's rights has increased the threat of women getting abducted simply as they step out of their homes. "Most of us now stay at home unless we absolutely must go out for food," Fadhil said. "Because we know so many women who have been kidnapped, it is only a matter of time for us if we continue traveling around the city." Denial of rights for women in the name of Islam is not what Islam is all about, Sheikh Ahmed of the Sunni religious group, the Association of Muslim Scholars, told IPS. "Muslim women are granted full rights of work and social participation. It is tradition that limits women's activity nowadays, rather than religion." Most Iraqi women are fearful about their future as long as the country is led by Islamists. _______________________________________________ (c)2006 Dahr Jamail. From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 23 04:19:49 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 03:19:49 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Why So Many Black Women Are Behind Bars Message-ID: <747090964.20061223031949@shaw.ca> Why So Many Black Women Are Behind Bars By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet Posted on December 5, 2006, Printed on December 23, 2006 http://www.alternet.org/story/45149/ Some years ago I briefly worked as a social worker. Occasionally I would visit clients in jail to determine their eligibility for continued benefits. They were all men -- with one exception. She was a young black woman serving time for theft. She had two small children. She entered the visiting room handcuffed to another woman and dressed in drab prison garb. We talked through a reinforced glass window. The guards stared hard and barked out gruff commands to the women. The idea of a woman in prison then was a novelty. It isn't anymore. According to a recent Justice Department report on America's jail population, women make up about 10 percent of the America's inmates. There are now more women than ever serving time, and black women make up a disproportionate number of those women. They are twice more likely than Hispanic, and over three times more likely than white women, to be jailed. In fact, black women have almost single-handedly expanded the women's prison-industrial complex. From 1930 to 1950 five women's prisons were built nationally. During the 1980s and 1990s dozens more prisons were built, and a growing number of them are maximum-security women's prisons. But the prison-building splurge hasn't kept pace with the swelling number of women prisoners. Women's prisons are understaffed, overcrowded, lack recreation facilities, serve poor quality food, suffer chronic shortages of family planning counselors and services, and gynecological specialists, drug treatment and child care facilities, and transportation funds for family visits. Female prisoners face the added peril of rape, and insensitive treatment during pregnancy. A United Nations report in 1997 found that more than two dozen states permitted pregnant women to be shackled while being transported to hospitals for treatment. A report by the National Corrections Information Center revealed that the U.S. is one of only a handful of countries that allow men to guard women, often unsupervised. Author Donna Ann-Smith Marshall, who served several years at Central California Women's Facility, California's top maximum security prison, in her new book, Time on the Inside, tells in shocking and graphic detail the callous, often brutal treatment many women are subjected to in women's maximum security jails. Unfortunately, the tepid public debate over the consequence of locking up so many women is riddled with misconceptions. One is that women commit violent crimes for the same reasons that men do. They don't. Women are less likely than men to assault or murder strangers while committing crimes. Two-thirds of the women jailed assaulted or killed relatives or intimates. Their victims were often spouses, lovers, or boyfriends. In many cases they committed violence defending themselves against sexual or physical abuse. Women's groups and even the more enlightened governors have recognized that women that kill abusive husbands or lovers have acted out of fear and have loosened parole standards. The governors have granted some women earlier release from their sentences. More women, and especially black women, are behind bars as much because of hard punishment than their actual crimes. One out of three crimes committed by women are drug related. Many state and federal sentencing laws mandate minimum sentences for all drug offenders. This virtually eliminates the option of referring non-violent first time offenders to increasingly scarce, financially strapped drug treatment, counseling and education programs. Stiffer punishment for crack cocaine use also has landed more black women in prison, and for longer sentences than white women (and men). Then there's the feminization of poverty and racial stereotyping. More than one out of three black women jailed did not complete high school, were unemployed, or had incomes below the poverty level at the time of their arrest. More than half of them were single parents. While black men are typed as violent, drug dealing "gangstas," black women are typed as sexually loose, conniving, untrustworthy, welfare queens. Many of the mostly middle-class judges and jurors believe that black women offenders are menaces to society too. The quantum leap in black women behind bars has had devastating impact on families and the quality of life in many poor black communities. Thousands of children of incarcerated women are raised by grandparents, or warehoused in foster homes and institutions. The children are frequently denied visits because the mothers are deemed unfit. This prevents mothers from developing parenting and nurturing skills and deeply disrupts the parent-child bond. Many children of imprisoned women drift into delinquency, gangs and drug use. This perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty, crime and violence. There are many cases where parents and even grandparents are jailed. There is little sign that this will change. The public and policy makers are deeply rapped in the damaging cycle of myths, misconceptions and crime fear hysteria about crime-on-the-loose women. They are loath to ramp up funds and programs for job and skills training, drug treatment, education, childcare and health, and parenting skills. Yet, this is still the best way to keep more women from winding up behind bars. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a political analyst and social issues commentator, and the author of the forthcoming book The Emerging Black GOP Majority (Middle Passage Press, September 2006), a hard-hitting look at Bush and The GOP's court of black voters. ? 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/45149/ -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 23 04:30:44 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 03:30:44 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Female Banana Packers Gain Grounding in Rights Message-ID: <1167344109.20061223033044@shaw.ca> http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2970 Female Banana Packers Gain Grounding in Rights Run Date: 11/23/06 By Linda C. Wisniewski WeNews correspondent Female banana packers in Central America work long hours for the lowest pay in the industry. But inside the unionized sector of the work force, women since 1985 have slowly been gaining ground and are now sharing a gender-justice curriculum. (WOMENSENEWS)--They work from 6:30 a.m. until 7 at night, their hands burning inside rubber gloves, helping to pack bananas destined for the United States and Europe, the two major export markets. Some are as young as 14; almost all are under 40. During the phases of the growing season when there is no fruit to pack, many struggle to get by in the informal economy of domestic work and street vending. Most work in plants run by U.S. firms Chiquita Brands International, Dole Food Company and the Del Monte Corporation, which together control two-thirds of the world market in bananas. These are the self-described "bananeras," or banana women, of Latin America. They number about 100,000, roughly one-quarter of the total banana-harvesting and packing work force in banana-exporting countries. Many female packers are single mothers who have not finished primary school, says Ana Victoria Naranjo of ASEPROLA, the Association for Labor Services and Promotion, a group of college-educated allies throughout Central America with headquarters in San Jose, Costa Rica, that provides technical and analytical support to some female packers, an estimated 35 percent of whom are illiterate. Most female packers work in the non-union plants that dominate the industry, where workers can earn between $1 per day in Nicaragua to $10 per day in Colombia, according to Banana Link, a nonprofit in Norfolk, England, that campaigns for a fair and sustainable banana trade. Non-union male packers earn three to four times more than their female counterparts, and in the field non-union male workers make twice what female field workers make, according to the Banana Link Web site. But for those in the unionized work force of roughly 35,000--where wages can be around double those for non-unionized workers and benefits in the form of housing, electricity, medical care and education can equal or exceed the value of wages--a women's movement has been underway since 1985. Special Gender Training Session And for the past couple of years--since 2004--that movement has been invigorated by a special women's rights training session that has been spreading from women on one plantation and facility to another. Called the Women, Labor and Leadership Training Curriculum, the training was created by Stitch, Women Organizing for Social Justice, a workers' organization based in Washington, D.C., and Guatemala City, Guatemala. Founded in 1997 by U.S. female union leaders to help counterparts in the textile factories of Central America, Stitch later broadened its reach to women in the banana unions. The training was devised by 12 Central American female activists to encourage women to take leadership roles in the union and to press for adequate maternity leave, prenatal care and freedom from sexual harassment in all contract negotiations, says Stitch Executive Director Beth Myers. Stitch staff members have used the curriculum to train members of the Union of Izabal Banana Workers on a Del Monte subsidiary's plantation in Izabal, Guatemala, who have in turn trained over 200 colleagues. Honduran women at the Federation of Latin American Banana Unions and the Federation of Honduran Banana and Agricultural Unions also use the curriculum in regional trainings throughout their country. Discussions and Role-Playing The curriculum gets around illiteracy problems by depending mainly on discussion and role-playing, says Honduran labor organizer Iris Munguia. "We do workshops on gender issues with groups of both men and women to raise awareness," Munguia says, speaking through a translator and via e-mail from Honduras this summer. Robert Perillo of the U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project told Women's eNews from his office in Guatemala that while living costs in producer countries are lower than in banana-export markets, "wages do not approach what is needed to cover basic expenses for a family." In Ecuador, for instance, he estimated that a family's basic expenses would run around $205 a month for food and $374 for all necessary goods and services. Executive compensation in the industry is on a different order of magnitude. Fernando Aguirre, CEO of Cincinnati-based Chiquita, for instance, received over $2.6 million in total compensation in 2005 and Richard G. Wolford, CEO of Del Monte, based in Westlake Village, Calif., has a current salary of $1.07 million. Challenging Job Separation In addition to influencing the gender element of negotiations, Stitch aims to nurture women's self-esteem by showing them the financial value of their contribution to the household. The curriculum also challenges the assumption that women working outside the home will also carry the load of domestic work and the gender-based separation of jobs in the banana plantation. In the packing plant, men and women do many of the same jobs: picking off dead flowers, cutting huge clumps into smaller bunches and washing the fruit. But only men move boxes into shipping containers and only women do the lowest-paying jobs, such as sticking on brand-name labels. "We talk a lot about assigned gender roles and how that impacts women's ability to earn a living," says Myers, "about women's unpaid work at home and how gender as created by society plays into that." So far, organizers say it is difficult to quantify the effects of the curriculum and progress has been incremental. After taking the training session, one female organizer tried to add a provision into a labor contract to provide a nurse to conduct breast examinations for workers. After initially overcoming the objections of some male union leaders, the provision was later struck down. But organizers of the Union of Workers of the Tela Railroad Company, based in La Lima, Honduras, have had better luck in the wake of their training sessions. They established a women's committee and have formed subcommittees on approximately 25 Honduras plantations where they had union contracts. Linda C. Wisniewski is a freelance writer in Bucks County, Pa. She wrote this story in memory of her mother, Lucille S. Ciulik, who was a member of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors at womensenews.org. For more information: STITCH: Women Organizing for Worker Justice: http://www.stitchonline.org/ Banana Link: http://www.bananalink.org.uk/ US/Labor Education in the Americas Project: http://www.usleap.org/ -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 24 03:43:37 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 02:43:37 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Women's Rights Another Victim of the Iraq Catastrophe Message-ID: <371420699.20061224024337@shaw.ca> http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1222-27.htm Published on Friday, December 22, 2006 by the Baltimore Sun (Maryland) Women's Rights Another Victim of the Iraq Catastrophe by Kavita N.Ramdas The Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq recently issued a frightening report documenting the growing practice of public executions of women by Shiite militias. One of the report's more grisly accounts was a story of a young woman dragged by a wire wound around her neck to a close-by soccer field and hung from the goal post. They pierced her body with bullets. Her brother came running, trying to defend his sister. He was also shot and killed. Sunni extremists are no better: Organization of Women's Freedom members estimate that at least 30 women are executed monthly for honor-related reasons. Almost four years into the Iraq war, Iraqi women are worse off than they were under the Baathist regime in a country where, for decades, the freedoms and rights enjoyed by Iraqi women were the envy of women in most other countries of the Middle East. Before the U.S. invasion, Iraqi women were highly educated. Their strong and independent women's movement had successfully forced the government to pass the groundbreaking 1959 Family Law Act, which ensured equal rights in matters of personal law. Iraqi women could inherit land and property; they had equal rights to divorce and custody of their children; they were protected from domestic violence within marriage. In other words, they had achieved real gains in the struggle for equality. Iraqi women, like all Iraqis, certainly suffered from the political repression and lack of freedom, but the secular - albeit brutal - Baathist regime did not impose tribal and religious fundamentalist laws that are now in effect and are contributing to women being kidnapped, raped and executed. The invasion of Iraq, however, changed the status of Iraqi women for the worse. The United States elevated a new group of leaders, most of whom were allied with ultraconservative Shiite clerics. Among the Sunni minority, the quick disappearance of their once-dominant political power led to a resurgence of religious identity. Consequently, the Kurds, celebrated for their history of resistance to the Iraqi dictator, were able to reclaim traditions such as honor killings, putting thousands of women at risk. Iraqi sectarian conflict has exacerbated violence against women. My organization, the Global Fund for Women, and the humanitarian community have long known that the presence of military troops in a region of conflict increases prostitution, violence against women and the potential for human trafficking. Although many believed that interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq would result in greater freedoms for women, international women's rights organizations, including the Global Fund for Women, were highly skeptical of the Bush administration's claims from the start. U.S. representatives in Iraq failed to listen to the voices of independent and secular Iraqi women leaders like Yanar Mohammed, co-founder of the Organization of Women's Freedom in Iraq, during the process of drafting the constitution. As a result, the Iraqi constitution elevated Islamic law over constitutional rights for matters pertaining to personal and family matters. For the first time in more than 50 years, Iraqi women's right to be treated as equal citizens has been overturned. This disgrace has happened on the watch of the United States. In many ways, it is no less shameful than the human rights abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib. If left unchallenged, it has the potential to affect many thousands more innocent lives. Because the United States has failed to protect Iraqi women, United Nations Secretary General-designate Ban Ki Moon should step in and make this cause a priority of his new tenure. The women of Iraq deserve nothing less. Kavita N. Ramdas is president and chief executive officer of the Global Fund for Women. Her e-mail is gfw at globalfundforwomen.org. Copyright ? 2006, The Baltimore Sun ------------------ http://electroniciraq.net/news/2693.shtml Woman in Iraq Endure Sharp Decline in Freedom Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily, Electronic Iraq, 5 December 2006 Woman in Iraq Endure Sharp Decline in Freedom By Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily BAGHDAD (IPS) - Once one of the best countries for women's rights in the Middle East, Iraq has now become a place where women fear for their lives in an increasingly fundamentalist environment. Prior to the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, Iraqi women enjoyed rights under the Personal Status Law since Jul. 14, 1958, the day Iraqis overthrew the British-installed monarchy. Under this law they were able to settle civil suits in courts, unfettered by religious influences. Iraqi women had many of the rights enjoyed by women in western countries. The end of monarchy brought a regime in which women began to work as professors, doctors and other professionals. They took government and ministerial positions and enjoyed growing rights even through the dictatorial reign of Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party. "Our rights had been hard to obtain in a country with a tradition of firm male control," Dr. Iman Robeii, professor of psychology from Fallujah told IPS in Baghdad. Iraqi women have traditionally done all the housework, and assisted children with school work, she said. On top of that about 30 percent of women had been engaged in social activities. "But a tragic collapse took place after the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the so-called Islamists seized power to place new obstacles in the way of women's march towards improvement," she said. A significant event was the Dec. 29, 2003 decision by the U.S.-installed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) to pass a bill which almost cancelled the Personal Status Law, 45 years after it had been passed. Under Resolution 137 Iraqi women would rely on religious institutions for personal matters such as marriage and divorce, as opposed to recourse to civilian courts that they could access before the invasion. Women across Iraq saw the IGC move as one of the first hazardous steps towards implementation of a fundamentalist Islamic law. The bill did not pass, but the slide into Sharia (Islamic law) had already taken root through much of Shia-dominated southern Iraq and also some Sunni-dominated areas of central Iraq. Resolution 137 was defeated in March 2004. A new Iraqi constitution has been introduced, but the adoption of the constitution has not helped protect women's rights. Yanar Mohammed, one of Iraq's staunchest women's rights advocates, believes the constitution neither protects women nor ensures their basic rights. She blames the United States for abdicating its responsibility to help develop a pluralistic democracy in Iraq. "The U.S. occupation has decided to let go of women's rights," Mohammed told reporters. "Political Islamic groups have taken southern Iraq, are fully in power there, and are using the financial support of Iran to recruit troops and allies. The financial and political support from Iran is why the Iraqis in the south accept this, not because the Iraqi people want Islamic law." Mohammed believes the drafting of the Iraqi constitution was "not for the interest of the Iraqi people" and instead was based on concessions to ethnic and sectarian groups. "The Kurds want Kirkuk (an oil-rich city they consider the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan), and the Shias want the Islamic Republic of Iraq, just like Iran's," she said. "The genie is out of the bottle in terms of political Islam (by Shias) and the resistance (by Sunnis). America will tolerate any conclusion so they can leave, even if it means destroying women's rights and civil liberties.They have left us a regime like the Taliban." A woman judge told IPS that she and her female colleagues could not go to work any more because the current system does not allow for a female judge. Iraqi NGO activists have also criticised the new constitution for depriving women of leadership posts in the country. "The constitution mentions some rights for women, but those in power laugh when they are asked to put it to practice," she said. Like the woman judge, she too did not want to be named. The key element in the Iraqi constitution that is dangerous for women's rights is Article 2 which states "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation." Subheading A under Article 2 states that "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam." Under Article 2 the interpretation of women's rights is left to religious leaders, and it provides for implementation of Sharia law which can turn the clock back on women's rights in Iraq. The social environment in Iraq has become acutely difficult for women already. Many women now fear leaving their homes. "I try to avoid leaving my home, and when I do, I always cover my face," Suthir Ayad told IPS at her house in Baghdad. "Several of my friends have been threatened or beaten by these Shia militias who insist we stay home and never show our faces." In southern Iraq, the situation seems even worse. "My cousin in Basra was beaten savagely by some of the Mehdi Army (the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr) because she tried to attend university," said a woman who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Now she never leaves her home unless fully covered, and then only to shop for food." All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2006). -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 24 03:47:48 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 02:47:48 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Iraqi women prisoners face appalling conditions Message-ID: <1804242.20061224024748@shaw.ca> http://sumoud.tao.ca/?q=node/view/822 Iraqi women prisoners face appalling conditions Kole | 12/16/2006 - 13:20? Sumoud Newsfeed, Women Prisoners Female prisoners are often held without charge, sometimes raped, tortured in post-2003 Iraq. BAGHDAD - Conflicting opinions exist within the Iraqi government on how female prisoners are treated. According to the Iraqi Minister of Women?s Affairs and local NGOs, female prisoners in Iraq are held in appalling conditions, often without charge, and are sometimes raped and tortured. ?We don?t know the exact number of female prisoners but there are many being held in different prisons - even though the [other ministries in the] government and US forces deny it. They are afraid of a counterattack from the country?s conservative society,? Faten Abdul Rahman Mahmoud, Minister of Women?s Affairs, said. Sarah Abdel Yassin, spokeswoman for the Baghdad-based Organisation for Women's Freedom (OWF), said she agreed with the minister and had met many women who had been tortured in Iraqi jails. ?The Ministry of Interior, [Ministry of] Defence and US forces are denying that there are female prisoners in Iraq but we have enough proof that they are there and that they suffer daily humiliation,? said Yassin. However, other government ministries either deny the existence of women in Iraq?s jails altogether or say that there are very few and that they are held in humane conditions in special prisons. ?It is true that sometimes women are taken for some questioning in our departments, to help us, but they are always released after the inquiry and never held in prisons,? Muhammad Fareed, information officer at the Ministry of Interior, said. ?However, women charged in criminal cases, which are very few, are held in special prisons with all their human rights guaranteed,? he added. Emily Greene, a spokeswoman for the US military in Iraq, told IRIN that they had no information about women being held in Iraqi prisons. The ones that had been held for investigation by them had all been released months ago and no torture had occurred, she said. ?Detainees in multi-national forces? custody are treated humanely and in accordance with international standards and the principles of the Fourth Geneva Convention,? said Greene. Women?s affairs minister Faten rejected these and the interior ministry?s assertions and said she was urging the judiciary to carry out an extensive investigation into the conditions in which women are being held in Iraq?s jails. She added that the problem is countrywide though most women in prison were arrested during raids in the Anbar and Baghdad governorates on suspicion of assisting insurgents. Terrifying experience in jail Samira Abdallah, 38, was released from an Iraqi prison a month ago after being held for four months. As she was hooded when she was brought to the prison and hooded when she was released, she has no idea where the prison was. After a terrifying experience in jail, she fears for the other women who are still there. ?We were around 20 women, most of them from Fallujah or Ramadi like me, in one cell. I was praying all the time and thank God I wasn?t raped, but the guards hit me many times, trying to get information about insurgents in Anbar,? Samira said. ?I am a woman who never goes out from my home. My life was to cook and clean for my husband and children and they were accusing me of being a terrorist,? she said, as tears rolled down her cheeks. When she was released without charge, she found out that her husband had been killed by the Iraqi army and she said that her eldest daughter had been raped by a soldier. ?Hania [Samira?s 16-year-old daughter] was so ashamed of what happened that she committed suicide. Now, after being held without any proper investigation or reason, I only have my seven-year-old son and no husband and daughter,? she said. Yassin from OWF said she has spoken to many women who turned to her organisation for help after torment in Iraqi prisons. ?There were different stories but all of these women were sad and humiliated. Cases of beatings and rape were the most common,? she said. Hadija Zeidan, 36, was one such woman who sought out the OWF. She said she and other women were tortured while in prison. ?Every day I was taken for interrogation by soldiers. Sometimes they were Iraqis and sometimes Americans. Some of them tried to sexually abuse me but God protected me because each time they tried someone superior to them came and forced them to take me back to the cell,? Zeidan said. "But I was tortured. The most common thing they did was to beat me with their belts all over my body and hit me in my face. They knew I had nothing to do with the insurgency but they were just angry with me because I come from Anbar [a Sunni-dominated area where insurgency is believed to be stronger than anywhere else in Iraq]. I still have pain in my abdomen caused by the kicks to it with their boots,? she said. Zeidan went to the OWF because she could not find her family in Baghdad when she was released two months ago, as sectarian violence had driven them from their home. ?My life is totally destroyed,? Zeidan said. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 24 04:10:43 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:10:43 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Palestinian Women Pay Health Toll at Checkpoints Message-ID: <833684895.20061224031043@shaw.ca> http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2958/context/cover/ Run Date: 11/12/06 By Brenda Gazzar WeNews correspondent In the past six years, at least four pregnant women and 34 newborns have died after mothers were delayed at Israeli military checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza. Volunteers and aid groups are working to ease access restrictions. SHEIKH SA'AD, West Bank (WOMENSENEWS)--At the entrance of this small village near Jerusalem, Palestinian grandmother Khadijeh Musa Alaan was told at an Israeli checkpoint that she could not leave to visit her daughter in a nearby village. Two Israeli volunteers, Laura Sznajder and Tamar Bilu, politely tried to persuade an Israeli army official to let the 59-year-old woman pass on that hot August afternoon. He refused. Alaan, a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, did not have a temporary permit from the district commander's office, he said. She was also turned back at the checkpoint in July while trying to visit a doctor for treatment of her diabetes, she says. Alaan is just one of many women whose health and safety have been placed in jeopardy as a result of Israel's nearly 40-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip and increasingly restrictive security measures. "Health is one of the most basic needs of a human being," says Sznajder, who as part of the Israeli women's organization Machsom Watch monitors military checkpoints in the West Bank for potential human rights abuses and violations. (Machsom means "checkpoint" in Hebrew.) "The minute that you hurt mobility, you hurt health. They go together." Palestinian women have for decades faced a multitude of health risks shared by the overall population, including restricted access for patients and medical professionals due to the occupation, the deteriorating economic situation, traditional cultural beliefs, and lack of adequate services and facilities. Since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in September 2000, those hardships have been aggravated. Between Sept. 28, 2000, and Aug. 20, 2006, for instance, 10 percent of women in the West Bank and Gaza who needed to give birth in medical centers or hospitals were delayed by Israeli forces from two to four hours, according to the Palestinian Health Information Center, an agency of the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Sixty-eight women gave birth at checkpoints during this period, considered a factor in the deaths of 34 newborns and four mothers. 'Constantly Anxious' Pregnancies "Palestinian women live in frustration of not being assured that they can reach a maternity facility on time," said Rita Giacaman, professor of public health at the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University in the West Bank. "That means they are constantly anxious during their pregnancy." An already weak economy has been worsened by sanctions by the United States, Israel and the European Union that followed the election of the militant Hamas government earlier this year. In the Gaza Strip, recent Israeli military actions and a tight siege on goods have resulted in shortages of food, water and medicine that increase the prospects of malnutrition and disease for the more than 1.4 million Palestinians who live there. About 65 percent of the population in the Palestinian territories lives under the poverty line and about 30 percent of the population is unemployed, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Jerusalem. On Wednesday, 18 civilians in Gaza were killed in a shelling that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said was caused by "technical failure." In response, Hamas threatened to resume suicide bombings for the first time since striking a partial cease-fire with Israel in 2005. Military checkpoints and the new dividing wall known as the "Security Fence," located partly within the West Bank and partly along the border between the West Bank and Israel proper, are meant to deter such attacks, but pose travel problems for Palestinians. "Militarily, it works," said Capt. Noa Meir, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, who spoke with Women's eNews before the most recent shelling in Gaza. "The number of suicide attacks has gone down. To a large part it's due to the security fence and checkpoints. And the fact that terrorists have been stopped at checkpoints shows that they try to get through them." Humanitarian Groups Step In On a humanitarian level, however, several Palestinian and Israeli organizations consider the defensive barriers a humanitarian problem to be alleviated. In 2004 the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, the largest Palestinian nongovernmental health organization with at least 350 employees that works throughout the West Bank and Gaza, established the Mythaloon Maternity Home near Jenin in the Northern West Bank. The facility is intended to reduce the number of women who deliver babies at checkpoints or on roads and to provide services to expectant mothers, such as birthing counseling, home visits and health instruction for the mother and her family. The relief society is trying to raise enough funds to open two more maternity homes in the West Bank areas of Ramallah and Hebron. About 60 to 70 deliveries take place at the Mythaloon clinic each month and the need for similar facilities, particularly for communities separated from health services by the security barrier, is great, says Dr. Khadijeh Jarrar, women's health program director. The Palestinian Medical Relief Society also offers affordable clinical services for women in 26 primary health care clinics throughout the West Bank and Gaza, including breast exams, pap smears and family planning services. Since 1984, the organization has trained close to 300 women--mainly in villages--to serve as community health workers. The women go through a two-year program of nursing and public health. Another organization is the Tel Aviv-based Physicians for Human Rights-Israel. Founded by Israeli and Palestinian doctors, it advocates on behalf of patients and medical personnel in the West Bank and Gaza who are refused passage into Israel on security grounds. The organization succeeds in attaining permits for Palestinians in about 98 percent of the cases it advocates for, said Maskit Bendel, director of the Occupied Territories Project for the group in Tel Aviv, which submits about 1,000 appeals for patients denied entry each year. Palestinians "don't know they can appeal. Nobody tells them," Bendel said. Waging a Court Campaign Physicians for Human Rights-Israel is also waging a campaign in the Israel Supreme Court to allow Palestinian ambulances from the West Bank to enter Jerusalem, something that has been forbidden since 2002. Today, Palestinians in the West Bank who need emergency care in Jerusalem must take a Palestinian ambulance to a checkpoint, then be transferred by stretcher to an Israeli ambulance and pay for the expense themselves, Bendel said. Machsom Watch, which has approximately 400 members and opposes both the Israeli occupation and West Bank military checkpoints, has Israeli women monitoring checkpoints, documenting any violations and intervening to prevent violations, whether it is unwarranted detentions, the prevention of passage of citizens or violence. In extreme incidents, the organization files complaints to the Army. Many Palestinians haven't been able to leave their towns or villages for years and permits are often given arbitrarily, says Adi Dagan, spokesperson for Machsom Watch. The organization's goal is to inform the Israeli public and the world "and tell them the story of what is going on there so eventually one day, this will stop," Dagan said. "We don't believe in a nice occupation or an enlightened occupation." Jarrar of the Palestinian Medical Relief Society agreed, saying that her women's program is merely trying to help Palestinian women survive a crisis. "We are trying our best to help our women bear their life, not to live a quality life," said Jarrar from her office in Ramallah. "It is impossible. There is no quality in occupation." Brenda Gazzar is a freelance journalist based in Jerusalem. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 24 04:18:57 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:18:57 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Caught Between culture And weakness: The Ipswich victims Message-ID: <1953737.20061224031857@shaw.ca> http://www.countercurrents.org/gen-gundimeda191206.htm Caught Between culture And weakness: The Ipswich victims By Sambaiah Gundimeda 19 December, 2006 Countercurrents.org ?For all of you non-prostitutes out there talking about us women who have sold sex, you have to realise that the damage to us is massive. Financial help, a few encouraging words, won't do it. Sticking us in 'tolerance zones' won't do it. Maybe ongoing psychological care, over a period of many years ? - An ex-sex worker from San Francisco, US[1] The serial murder in Ipswich, United Kingdom, of five women in less than two weeks is one of the gravest brutalities that one comes across in the recent past of the country. As one follows the TV and Newspapers about the malicious killings, one?s heart could not help but get wrenched. ?Women such as those murdered exist in every town and city in any country, though for the most part we prefer not to see them. They are killed far more often than is reported and suffer repeated violence but are noticed only when they die in numbers.?[2] But in a first world country such as Britain what causing women to enter into sex trade. This essay argues it is the existing social culture in combination with human weaknesses what pushes a father?s ?little girl? and a mother?s ?lovely child? into the ?dark business?. Culture One always admires certain socio-cultural notions of the British, such as treating individuals with respect and dignity, respect for individual?s privacy and respect for others? culture and language. We rarely come across a normal British person ridiculing others because they speak different language or speak English with a ?funny? accent or wear different clothes.[3] Probably this is one of the reasons why the UK is one of the best multicultural countries in the world. Undoubtedly all these notions are emanates from the ideology of individualism, which is fiercely safeguarded by the British. But problems like murders in Ipswich would reveal the excess of such ideology and practices. For instance, of the five murdered women, only two of their parents (and friends) were aware of their daughters? ?business?. Obviously no daughter would want to disclose her profession to her parents and no parents would want to know the business of their daughters, especially if that business happens to be selling their flesh. What surprises, however, is the personal relationship between the daughters and parents. The parents of these women did not have information about their daughters? whereabouts. It was said that one of the parents has last seen her daughter some eight years ago. What I am trying to say here is that the notions of individuality and respect for individual?s privacy are all fine. But in the name of such respect one is risking of loosing one?s own kith and kin and thereby finding little meaning in the very purpose of living, this is more so with aged parents. If the children, on the one hand, are driven away from their parents, thanks to notions of individuality, which often results in strained relationship between the parents and children,[4] the prevailing city culture and emerging ?star culture?, on the other hand, are equally responsible in driving the individuals into the world of vice. The culture of a city has many facets and this is not the place for discussing all of them. Instead what I shall do is to bring-in those aspects that were emphasised by the sex-workers[5] in their justification of the trade. In the event of serial murder the police advised the women on business to stay away from the streets of the red light area. Responding to such advice the women said that they did not have choice as (a) they need money and (b) it?s Christmas time. Although the latter aspect is also tied with the former one, i.e., money, the justification of the trade on account of ?Christmas? is tremendous. For, whether one lives in UK or India, everyone needs money. One cannot grapple with the problem of prostitution simply from the point of money. There is something ensnares to this ?need of money?. Perhaps one could appreciate this need from an appreciation of emerging ?star culture?, all over the world. As modern technology helps us to connect every nook and corner of the world, the present generation, especially the youth are in an extremely advantageous position to know everything about the ?other? ? people, countries and cultures. They are also, again, extremely informed about the overnight millionaires. As the knowledge about ?others? grow our desires are also equally expanding. People began to compare themselves with others, especially with the people who fly around the world, live in luxurious estates, drive BMWs and the ones who wine and dine in five-star hotels.[6] In a way we are witness to the emerging star culture and everyone wants to be part of it. Of course, there is nothing wrong in having such thoughts and desires. In fact, these thoughts not merely widen our mental horizons but also help us to learn from others and improve our own lives. But the problem occurs when people want what they want in a split of second, without working for it. In other words, unlike the past generations, the present generation is not interested in hardworking, but in hard money or what they call in America ?a quick buck?. One cannot realise goods or achieve things as fast as one imagines in one?s mind. There is always a gap between ones? desires and fulfilment. This void is what is driving the youth into the world of quick businesses and ready to do anything, which includes trading with one?s flesh.[7] Of course, one cannot deny the connection between the prostitution and the psychological damages, in the form of sexual abuse, experienced by the sex workers in their childhood, and the kind of relationships they enter as young girls. First, on the latter aspect: When a girl meets a boy, it is not a simple relationship between a boy and a girl, although it appears to be. They are entering into hitherto unknown worlds, cultures and relationships, which have been part of the partner?s life. The rise or fall of a person in the new environment depends upon the character of the new world. In the sense, if the girl?s partner is a good person and world of his interactions are uncorrupted she is bound to be influenced positively by the new environment. On the contrary, if the new world is impaired and malicious, unless the girl is quick at grappling with the true character of the new environment and move out of it, she is bound to be dragged into it and finally submerged into it. Interviews with the sex workers confirm that they were initially pushed into the trade by their (so-called) boy friends who pimped them and introduced them to drugs. And once introduced they somehow, rather sadly, came to believe that in the world of prostitution there exists only a gate of ?entrance,? but not a gate of ?exit?. This poses a fundamental challenge to the very power of human thinking and what we are worth. For, we would not have developed thus far had we not explored avenues of ?way out?. Of course, one should recognise that our capacity to think, imagine and act is actually connected to the environment in which we are part of. For, human beings need recognition, encouragement and assurance that they are capable and worth of something which acts as motivational factors in their thinking and acting. The responsibility of encouraging an individual lies with the larger society[8] in general; the immediate responsibility, however, rests with the family. This belief among sex workers, actually takes us to an earlier point that I was trying to emphasise - individualistic attitudes and family ties. If the family ties are strong and parents are ready to help them, not in terms of money, but at least in terms of psychological assurance, these women might not come to the conclusion that their world has closed behind them. It is no secret that many girl children are physically abused by their relatives. The whole problem is not so much about the physical bruises of this abuse, (as time heals them), but so much about the mental damages that abuse leaves behind. When a child turns into a young girl her mental disfigurement, caused by sexual exploitation, metamorphosis into hatred, both self-hatred and hatred against the people, who abused her. Of course, sometimes this might even result in hatred against the entire opposite gender. This state of mind produces two kinds of women: (a) mentally stronger women with a burning anger against their abuser, and (b) women with weak mind-set. On the former, the life of Phoolan Devi serves as a case-in-point. She violently thrashed and stabbed her ex-husband, in front of the whole village, as an act of retaliation for abusing her when she was still young.[9] On the latter, the cases of more than two thirds of the sex workers are revealing stories. Their inability to act against their abuser leaves them in a perpetual state of self-hatred and thereby in a perpetual state of suffering, which is, obviously, self-imposed (but the result of an external agency). And here lies the problem. Their powerlessness to disentangle themselves from suffering deprives them of any self-confidence and self-respect.[10] The self-flagellating behaviour of many sex workers and their willing subjection to pain inflicted upon them by the ghastly sexual behaviour of their customers is, thus, the result of lack of self-respect for themselves, which is rooted in self-hatred.[11] Christmas Before understanding the sex-workers? justification of their trade in the name of Christmas, I would like to point out two general social principles: First, individuals? actions and reactions, in any given society, are both influenced by and in response to other individuals? actions and reactions. Secondly, it is normal behaviour/tendency or social instinct of human beings to be part of the group and thereby its culture, within a given society, rather than left out. From this understanding let?s look at the justification. In today?s world the process of commodification of everything, including a religious festival like Christmas is complete. The original idea of Christmas, i.e., celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ, is, more or less, replaced by the idea of shopping. Although the tendency of shopping is high in any given month in a year, this is higher in the month of December. People spend huge amounts of money buying everything that they could possibly imagine.[12] It is this prevailing culture of shopping what drags people into its web, irrespective of their ability or inability to shop. People are forced, by culture, to earn more in order to shop more. Of course, this is not a bad notion. For, it gives an opportunity to explore avenues and thereby improve the quality of life. However, this notion put pressure on everyone and everybody cannot put-up with it. People?s ability to shop invariably depends upon their economic conditions. People with economically rich backgrounds and good earnings can afford to shop, while people with lesser economic capacities are confined to window shopping. The latter?s inability to shop sometimes forces them to explore morally and legally unacceptable avenues so as to meet the social demands and expectations.[13] Thus, the sex workers? justification of their trade on account of Christmas should be understood from the point of this prevailing social culture of spending and its pressures. In other words, the women simply would not have become sex workers, had they have enough to afford a comfortable life.[14] Perhaps one should mention the problem of poverty among the sex workers as well. Most of the sex workers are victims of poverty, both as children and as young girls. Lack of decent education, a consequence of poverty, poorly equips them to earn a decent life. They endure a mental suffocation on account of the restrictions imposed by their material conditions. They find it difficult to overcome the consequences of poverty and come to conclude that they simply do not have avenues to improve their material conditions.[15] In terms of economic exchange value they do not have products (capacities), which could be exchanged for money. In such a situation they view their bodies as having some earning value that can be exchanged for the real money.[16] Weaknesses Human weaknesses are many and everyone is vulnerable to one or the other weaknesses. As long as they are able to control these weaknesses they would not be drifting into the worlds of vice. But they enter the dark worlds when they lose control over their facilities. In the case of many sex workers, they began to take drugs simply because it is difficult to bear the mental agony that their bodies are, like a product, being used and abused by strangers. After a certain point, however, they do the trade because they need money to buy drugs. In a way it is a vicious circle and many of the sex workers are simply victims. The Ipswich victims are, yet again, fallen into this trap. It was revealed that some of them, including two of the murdered women, spend not less than ?200 to ?500 per day on drugs. Conclusion The above observations suggest that the five murdered women are victims of existing social culture and their own weaknesses. The demands of social life forced them to enter the business, while their weaknesses further pushed them into the depths of the trench. Such social culture and human weaknesses are not merely confined to UK but it is a common experience all over the world. Although the state could be brought-in to ameliorate the economic conditions of the women (or sex workers), the responsibility largely lies with the society, since it is connected with its culture. However, it is not too much to urge: 1. That sex workers before entering into the world of vice were somebody?s little daughters and some others? lovely children. We should, once for all, establish the fact that they are not sexual objects but human beings. We should develop a more realistic and humane attitude towards them. 2. Parents should take proper care of their grown up daughters and help them in all possible ways so as their daughters do not waft into the world of vice. Even if some of them do, parents should do everything in their capacity to bring them back to an ordinary and decent life. 3. While entering the trade young girls and women consider the devastating effect it will have on their family and friends. Emotionally it is simply difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that their ?own child? or ?good friend? has become an object of appalling sexual pleasures. Sambaiah Gundimeda (sam.gundimeda at soas.ac.uk) is a research student in the Department of Politics and International Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. * I dedicate this essay in memory of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholas, the five murdered women in Ipswich, UK. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/6183491.stm [2] Ben Macintyre. ?Out of darkest Suffolk, enlightenment?, in The Times, London, 15 Dec., 2006. [3] Setting aside the suitability and unsuitability of weather conditions, the way we clothe ourselves not merely reflects our individual tastes and personality but also, importantly, mirrors the specific cultural backgrounds and ideology(ies) that are embedded in that culture. See, Bourdieu, Peirre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Mass: Harvard University Press. Somehow I began to think that clothing by the non-British people in UK, despite unsuitability to the British weather, was not so much because they wanted to show (-off) their cultural background or feel comfortable in those clothes, but so much because they miss their culture amidst thousand different cultures. In a way they ?lose? themselves and suffer a sense of alienation. One way of overcoming such alienation and to regain the ?lost person? is projecting one?s distinct identity, and clothes are one of the best available means for such projection. [4] Here I am not arguing that family relations are failing because of the individuals? attitudes, which are rooted in the ideology of ?individualism?, although my argument appears precisely that. On the contrary, I am only trying to show one of its many facets. [5] Despite social and academic activism by the feminists, certain words and phrases such as ?prostitute? and ?vice girl? are very much current in the British media. A BBC correspondent while interviewing a parent of one of the victims used the word ?prostitute?. The parent was angry, trembling and shouted at the correspondent to not to use such words against his ?little girl?. It had such a devastating effect on him that he began to stutter for sometime. One can understand the parents? anger and agony as the word sends nails into their hearts. One should recognise the fact that before entering the sex trade and referred as ?prostitutes? or ?vice girls? they were referred to by their own names. They are all ordinary women from an ordinary town, plying a grimly ordinary trade. [6] I am not saying that comparison with others is a new phenomenon that emerged along with the developments in technology. In fact, comparison among human beings is as old as times. I am simply saying that with technology, our horizons of comparisons have expanded and thereby our desires. [7] According to the UK government reports there are as many as 80 thousand women in the sex trade. See, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6172273.stm This figure does not include thousands of young girls that either or are brought from the countries of third world and East Europe. And of course, there is always the presence of sex workers from the other West European counties. [8] For a brilliant analysis on the social forms of recognition and non-recognition, see, Honneth, Axel. 1995. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, Cambridge: Polity press. [9] Phoolan Devi was born in North India. She was given in marriage at the tender age of 11 to a man three times her age. Her marriage broke down in the same year. By the time she was around 20 years old, she was subjected to numerous sexual assaults. See, Sen, Mala. 1991. India?s Bandit Queen: The story of Phoolan Devi. New York: Harper Collins; Devi, Phoolan. 1996. I, Phoolan Devi: The Autobiography of India?s Bandit Queen. London: Little, Brown; also see, Leela, Fernandes. 1999. ?Reading ?India?s Bandit Queen?: A Trans/national Feminist Perspective on the Discrepancies of Representation?, in Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 25, no. 1, pp: 123-152. [10] From an Indian context, talking about the connection between prostitution and a lack of self-respect, Ambedkar?s opinion may be helpful. In 1935 at a Bombay Presidency Depressed Classes conference in nearby Yeola, Ambedkar proposed a resolution for religious conversion and declared, ?I was born a Hindu and have suffered the consequences of Untouchability. I will not die a Hindu.? Following this declaration there was a heightened activism among the Dalits, all over India. The sex workers from Kamathipura in Bombay, who were mostly from Dalit community, also responded to this declaration. In 16 June, 1936 they held a meeting at Damodar Hall and invited Ambedkar. Although Ambedkar went there to address the gathering on the issue of conversion, instead he proclaimed that their profession was a shame to the Dalit community and they must leave it. As Gail Omvedt points out, the meeting aroused one of the earliest debates on prostitution. Most of the caste Hindu social reformers criticised Ambedkar ?for ignoring the severe economic constraints that drove women to this profession.? Ambedkar, however, stood firm on his stand from the point of self-respect. Although we do not know Ambedkar?s mind on prostitution, except in Kamathipura conference, it was clear, especially when he was talking in terms of ?self-respect, that he was connecting the psychological damages suffered by the Dalits on account of caste behaviour of the Hindus with the mental agonies suffered by the sex workers, on account of physical exploitation by men. On Kamathipura meeting, see, Omvedt, Gail. 2004. Ambedkar: Towards an Enlightened India. New Delhi: Penguin Books, pp: 63-64. [11]Although Rousseau was not directly talking about self abasing behaviour, but his ideas on ?inequality and inauthentic lives? would throw some light to comprehend the individual?s self-abasing behaviour. See, J.J. Rousseau. 1984. Discourse on Inequality. Penguin. [12] Thanks mainly to the cheap labour from the developing countries. [13] I am not, by any means, suggesting that only poor people undertake legally and morally unacceptable means to earn money. In fact it is open secret that lots of underworld businesses are run by elite circles. Poor people become part of these businesses simply because of economic compulsions. Note that the former is motivated by his insatiable hunger for riches, while the latter is compelled by acute poverty. [14] One of the sex workers explained eloquently how she turned to prostitution because she needed money to raise her children, and didn?t want to work long hours in a supermarket never seeing them. See, The Times, London, Wednesday, 13 December 2006. [15] For a brilliant analysis of the consequences of poverty in modern capitalist societies, see, Lewis, Oscar. 1965. La Vida: a Puerto Rican family in the culture of poverty, San Juan and New York. London: Secker & Warburg. [16] This is not to suggest that all the women who undertake sex trade are compelled by poverty. In many elite circle the trade is an honourable profession. Without any disrespect, the services to the elites, in any society, are rendered not by ordinary and uneducated street sex workers but by the girls from rich background. For, they can only understand, thanks to their socialization, the ?subtle? behaviour of their class. We see the ?class? aspect in the sex business. The ?business? in the elite circle is professional and honourable, while the same, if undertaken by the women from the underclass, is prostitution. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 24 04:27:02 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:27:02 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Men being men is a bad deal: Guys should evolve beyond masculinity Message-ID: <455915299.20061224032702@shaw.ca> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/10/08/ING0FLHO7M1.DTL Men being men is a bad deal Guys should evolve beyond masculinity Robert Jensen Sunday, October 8, 2006 It's hard to be a man; hard to live up to the demands that come with the dominant conception of masculinity, of the tough guy. So, guys, I have an idea -- maybe it's time we stop trying. Maybe this masculinity thing is a bad deal, not just for women, but for us. We need to get rid of the whole idea of masculinity. It's time to abandon the claim that there are certain psychological or social traits that inherently come with being biologically male. If we can get past that, we have a chance to create a better world for men and women. That dominant conception of masculinity in U.S. culture is easily summarized: Men are assumed to be naturally competitive and aggressive, and being a real man is therefore marked by the struggle for control, conquest and domination. A man looks at the world, sees what he wants and takes it. Men who don't measure up are wimps, sissies, girls. The worst insult one man can hurl at another -- whether it's boys on the playground or CEOs in the boardroom -- is the accusation that a man is like a woman. Although the culture acknowledges that men can in some situations have traits traditionally associated with women (caring, compassion, tenderness), in the end it is men's strength-expressed-as-toughness that defines us and must trump any female-like softness. Those aspects of masculinity must prevail for a man to be a "real man." That's not to suggest, of course, that every man adopts that view of masculinity. But it is endorsed in key institutions and activities -- most notably in business, the military and athletics -- and is reinforced through the mass media. It is particularly expressed in the way men -- straight and gay alike -- talk about sexuality and act sexually. And our culture's male heroes reflect those characteristics: They most often are men who take charge rather than seek consensus, seize power rather than look for ways to share it, and are willing to be violent to achieve their goals. That view of masculinity is dangerous for women. It leads men to seek to control "their" women and define their own pleasure in that control, which leads to epidemic levels of rape and battery. But this view of masculinity is toxic for men as well. If masculinity is defined as conquest, it means that men will always struggle with each other for dominance. In a system premised on hierarchy and power, there can be only one king of the hill. Every other man must in some way be subordinated to the king, and the king has to always be nervous about who is coming up that hill to get him. A friend who once worked on Wall Street -- one of the pre-eminent sites of masculine competition -- described coming to work as like walking into a knife fight when all the good spots along the wall were taken. Masculinity like this is life lived as endless competition and threat. No one man created this system, and perhaps none of us, if given a choice, would choose it. But we live our lives in that system, and it deforms men, narrowing our emotional range and depth. It keeps us from the rich connections with others -- not just with women and children, but other men -- that make life meaningful but require vulnerability. This doesn't mean that the negative consequences of this toxic masculinity are equally dangerous for men and women. As feminists have long pointed out, there's a big difference between women dealing with the possibility of being raped, beaten and killed by the men in their lives, and men not being able to cry. But we can see that the short-term material gains that men get are not adequate compensation for what we men give up in the long haul -- which is to surrender part of our humanity to the project of dominance. Of course there are obvious physical differences between men and women -- average body size, hormones, reproductive organs. There may be other differences rooted in our biology that we don't understand. Yet it's also true that men and women are more similar than we are different, and that given the pernicious effects of centuries of patriarchy and its relentless devaluing of things female, we should be skeptical of the perceived differences. What we know is simple: In any human population, there is wide individual variation. While there's no doubt that a large part of our behavior is rooted in our DNA, there's also no doubt that our genetic endowment is highly influenced by culture. Beyond that, it's difficult to say much with any certainty. It's true that only women can bear children and breast-feed. That fact likely has some bearing on aspects of men's and women's personalities. But we don't know much about what the effect is, and given the limits of our tools to understand human behavior, it's possible we may never know much. At the moment, the culture seems obsessed with gender differences, in the context of a recurring intellectual fad (called "evolutionary psychology" this time around, and "sociobiology" in a previous incarnation) that wants to explain all complex behaviors as simple evolutionary adaptations -- if a pattern of human behavior exists, it must be because it's adaptive in some ways. In the long run, that's true by definition. But in the short-term it's hardly a convincing argument to say, "Look at how men and women behave so differently; it must be because men and women are fundamentally different" when a political system has been creating differences between men and women. From there, the argument that we need to scrap masculinity is fairly simple. To illustrate it, remember back to right after 9/11. A number of commentators argued that criticisms of masculinity should be rethought. Cannot we now see -- recognizing that male firefighters raced into burning buildings, risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to save others -- that masculinity can encompass a kind of strength that is rooted in caring and sacrifice? Of course men often exhibit such strength, just as do women. So, the obvious question arises: What makes these distinctly masculine characteristics? Are they not simply human characteristics? We identify masculine tendencies toward competition, domination and violence because we see patterns of differential behavior; men are more prone to such behavior in our culture. We can go on to observe and analyze the ways in which men are socialized to behave in those ways, toward the goal of changing those destructive behaviors. That analysis is different from saying that admirable human qualities present in both men and women are somehow primarily the domain of one gender. To assign them to a gender is misguided and demeaning to the gender that is then assumed to not possess them to the same degree. Once we start saying "strength and courage are masculine traits," it leads to the conclusion that woman are not as strong or courageous. Of course, if we are going to jettison masculinity, we have to scrap femininity along with it. We have to stop trying to define what men and women are going to be in the world based on extrapolations from physical sex differences. That doesn't mean we ignore those differences when they matter, but we have to stop assuming they matter everywhere. I don't think the planet can long survive if the current conception of masculinity endures. We face political and ecological challenges that can't be met with this old model of what it means to be a man. At the more intimate level, the stakes are just as high. For those of us who are biologically male, we have a simple choice: We men can settle for being men, or we can strive to be human beings. Robert Jensen is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas. His most recent book was "Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas From the Margins to the Mainstream (2001)." This piece appeared on Alternet.com. Contact us at insight at sfchronicle.com. Page F - 3 -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 00:39:47 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:39:47 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Bush developing illegal bioterror weapons for offensive use Message-ID: <1691867184.20061224233947@shaw.ca> http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20061219-105215-2671r http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/122006R.shtml slightly longer version at radio havana cuba; http://www.radiohc.cu/ingles/noticias/diciembre06/dic23/mundoEUterror.htm Bush developing illegal bioterror weapons for offensive use, book says Sherwood Ross Middle East Times December 19, 2006 WASHINGTON -- In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is illegally developing offensive germ warfare capabilities on an unprecedented scale. In fact, it is spending more on such weapons (in inflation-adjusted dollars) than the $2 billion spent on the "Manhattan Project" that made the atomic bomb in World War II. So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon "is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare" pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted without "public knowledge and review" in 2002. The Pentagon's Chemical and Biological Defense Program was revised in 2003 to implement those directives, endorsing "first-use" strike of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) in war, says Boyle, who teaches at the University of Illinois, Champaign. Terming the action "the proverbial smoking gun," Boyle said the mission of the controversial CBW program "has been altered to permit development of offensive capability in chemical and biological weapons!" The same directives, Boyle writes in his book Biowarfare and Terrorism, "unconstitutionally usurp and nullify the right and the power of the United States Congress to declare war in gross and blatant violation of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 of the United States Constitution." For fiscal years 2001-04, the Federal government funded $14.5 billion "for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone," a "truly staggering" sum, Boyle wrote. Another $5.6 billion was voted for "the deceptively-named 'Project BioShield,'" under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox, and other bioterror agents, Boyle wrote. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, "one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare." The Washington Post reported December 12 both houses of Congress this month passed legislation "considered by many to be an effort to salvage the two-year-old Project BioShield, which has been marked by delays and operational problems." When President Bush signs it, the law will allocate $1 billion more over three years for new research "to pump more money into the private sector sooner." "The enormous amounts of money" purportedly dedicated to "civilian defense" that is now "dramatically and increasingly" being spent, Boyle writes, "betrays this administration's effort to be able to embark on offensive campaigns using biowarfare." Boyle said Federal spending has co-opted and diverted the US biotech industry to biowarfare, pouring huge sums into university and private sector laboratories. According to Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright, over 300 scientific institutions and 12,000 individuals today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare and terrorism. At the same time, Ebright found, the number of grants by the National Institute of Health to research infectious diseases with biowarfare potential has shot up from 33 in the 1995 to 2000 period to 497. Academic biowarfare participation involving the abuse of DNA genetic engineering since the late 1980s has become "patently obvious," Boyle said. "American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agendas, researchers, institutes, and laboratories to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the Pentagon and the CIA." He continued, "These despicable death-scientists were arming the Pentagon with the component units necessary to produce a massive array of DNA genetically engineered biological weapons." In a forward to Boyle's book, Jonathan King, a professor of molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote "the growing bioterror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population" and "threatens international relations among nations." King said that while such programs "are always called defensive," in fact, "with biological weapons, defensive, and offensive programs overlap almost completely." The US is "in breach" of the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and US domestic criminal law, Boyle writes. In February 2003, for example, the US granted itself a patent on an illegal long-range biological weapons grenade. Boyle said other countries grasp the military implications of US germ warfare actions and will respond in kind. "The world will soon witness a de facto biological arms race among the major biotech states under the guise of 'defense,' and despite the requirements of the Biological Warfare Convention." "The massive proliferation of biowarfare technology, facilities, as well as trained scientists and technicians all over the United States courtesy of the neocon Bush Jr. administration will render a catastrophic biowarfare or bioterrorist incident or accident a statistical certainty," Boyle warned. Sherwood Ross is a Virginia-based freelance writer on political and military issues -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 00:38:51 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2006 23:38:51 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Land of the free: US Has the Most Prisoners in the World Message-ID: <533872730.20061224233851@shaw.ca> also see movement to abolish prisons website; Critical Resistance at http://www.criticalresistance.org/ http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1209-01.htm Published on Saturday, December 9, 2006 by Reuters US Has the Most Prisoners in the World by James Vicini WASHINGTON - Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts. Maricopa County female inmates march for chain gang duty in Phoenix, Arizona in this file photo. Tough sentencing laws, record numbers of drug offenders and high crime rates have contributed to the United States having the largest prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to criminal justice experts. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton A U.S. Justice Department report released on November 30 showed that a record 7 million people -- or one in every 32 American adults -- were behind bars, on probation or on parole at the end of last year. Of the total, 2.2 million were in prison or jail. According to the International Centre for Prison Studies at King's College in London, more people are behind bars in the United States than in any other country. China ranks second with 1.5 million prisoners, followed by Russia with 870,000. The U.S. incarceration rate of 737 per 100,000 people in the highest, followed by 611 in Russia and 547 for St. Kitts and Nevis. In contrast, the incarceration rates in many Western industrial nations range around 100 per 100,000 people. Groups advocating reform of U.S. sentencing laws seized on the latest U.S. prison population figures showing admissions of inmates have been rising even faster than the numbers of prisoners who have been released. "The United States has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's incarcerated population. We rank first in the world in locking up our fellow citizens," said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance, which supports alternatives in the war on drugs. "We now imprison more people for drug law violations than all of western Europe, with a much larger population, incarcerates for all offences." Ryan King, a policy analyst at The Sentencing Project, a group advocating sentencing reform, said the United States has a more punitive criminal justice system than other countries. MORE PEOPLE TO PRISON "We send more people to prison, for more different offences, for longer periods of time than anybody else," he said. Drug offenders account for about 2 million of the 7 million in prison, on probation or parole, King said, adding that other countries often stress treatment instead of incarceration. Commenting on what the prison figures show about U.S. society, King said various social programs, including those dealing with education, poverty, urban development, health care and child care, have failed. "There are a number of social programs we have failed to deliver. There are systemic failures going on," he said. "A lot of these people then end up in the criminal justice system." Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in California, said the high prison numbers represented a proper response to the crime problem in the United States. Locking up more criminals has contributed to lower crime rates, he said. "The hand-wringing over the incarceration rate is missing the mark," he said. Scheidegger said the high prison population reflected cultural differences, with the United States having far higher crimes rates than European nations or Japan. "We have more crime. More crime gets you more prisoners." Julie Stewart, president of the group Families Against Mandatory Minimums, cited the Justice Department report and said drug offenders are clogging the U.S. justice system. "Why are so many people in prison? Blame mandatory sentencing laws and the record number of nonviolent drug offenders subject to them," she said. Copyright ? Reuters 2006 -------------- http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/11/incarceration_nation.php Incarceration Nation Marc Mauer December 11, 2006 Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project and the author of Race to Incarcerate and co-editor of Invisible Punishment (both from The New Press). Two remarkable developments in Washington in the past week highlight the extent to which the United States has become the land of mass incarceration. First, the Supreme Court denied the appeal of Weldon Angelos for a first-time drug offense. Angelos was a 24-year-old Utah music producer with no prior convictions when he was convicted of three sales of marijuana in 2004. During these sales he possessed a gun, though there were no allegations that he ever used or threatened to use it. Under federal mandatory sentencing laws, the judge was required to sentence Angelos to five years on the first offense and 25 years each for the two subsequent offenses, for a total of 55 years in prison. In imposing sentence, Judge Paul Cassell, a leading conservative jurist, decried the sentencing policy as "unjust, cruel, and even irrational." The Angelos decision came on the heels of a Bureau of Justice Statistics report finding that there are now a record 2.2 million Americans incarcerated in the nation's prisons and jails. These figures represent the continuation of a "race to incarcerate" that has been raging since 1972. With a 500 percent increase in the number of people in prison since then, the United States has now become the world leader in its rate of incarceration, locking up its citizens at 5-8 times the rate of other industrialized nations. The strict punishment meted out in the Angelos case and thousands of others explain much of the rapid increase in the prison population. The composition of the prison population reflects the socioeconomic inequalities in society. Sixty percent of the prison population is African American and Latino, and if current trends continue, one of every three black males and one of every six Latino males born today can expect to go to prison at some point in his lifetime. The overall rates for women are lower, but the racial and ethnic disparities are similar and the growth rate of women's incarceration is nearly double that of men over the past two decades. While the United States has a higher rate of violent crime than comparable nations, the substantial prison buildup since 1980 has resulted from changes in policy, not changes in crime. The "get tough" movement, which embraced initiatives designed to send more people to prison and to keep them for longer periods of time, contributed to massive prison construction and a corrections budget now totaling $60 billion annually. These policy changes included mandatory sentences that restrict judicial discretion while imposing "one size fits all" penalties, "three strikes and you're out" laws that allow life terms upon a third felony conviction, and the "war on drugs." Drug policies have been responsible for a disproportionate share of the rise in the inmate population, with the 40,000 drug offenders in prison or jail in 1980 increasing to a half million today. A substantial body of research has documented that these laws have had virtually no effect on the drug trade, as measured by price or availability of drugs. Most of the drug offenders in prison are not the "kingpins" of the drug trade. Indeed, the low-level sellers who are incarcerated are rapidly replaced on the streets by others seeking economic gain. While crime rates have been declining nationally for a decade, research to date demonstrates that expanded incarceration has, at best, been responsible for only a quarter of this decline. Other factors that played a key role include a strong economy in the 1990s that provided employment opportunities for low-skill workers, a marked decline in crack cocaine use and its associated violence by the early 1990s, and strategic community policing. New York City, which experienced a two-thirds reduction in homicides from 1990 to 2002, did so despite a one-third decline in its jail population during that period. And conversely, while Idaho led the nation with an astonishing 174 percent rise in its prison population, it nevertheless experienced a 14 percent rise in crime. With a new Democratic Congress in place, there is hope that long-festering criminal justice policy inequities can finally be addressed. Long-time reform champions Reps. John Conyers, D-Mich., and Bobby Scott, D-Va., are poised to take over the chairmanships of the House Judiciary Committee and its Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security subcommittee, respectively. But we should be cautious in our expectations given the Democratic Party's record of complicity in endorsing "get tough" measures. Bill Clinton's 1994 crime bill, for example, was loaded with harsh sentencing provisions and $8 billion in new prison construction. Progressives would be wise to continue to build bipartisan support for criminal justice reform measures. In recent years this has led to alliances with conservative Senators Sam Brownback and Jeff Sessions who sponsored bills for prisoner reentry and crack cocaine sentencing reform respectively. As we look to the new Congress, high on any reform agenda should be the following: * Crack cocaine sentencing reform--During the last 20 years, the federal sentencing laws for crack cocaine offenses have subjected thousands of low-level defendants to mandatory five- and 10-year prison terms, while exacerbating the racial dynamics of incarceration. More than 80 percent of the persons charged with these offenses are African Americans, who receive much stiffer terms than those meted out to powder cocaine defendants. * Mandatory sentencing reform--Congressional mandates to impose harsh sentences with no judicial input have created unfair and overly harsh penalties, and have been decried by the American Bar Association and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, among many others. * Racial impact statements--Just as fiscal impact statements aid lawmakers in assessing the financial implications of sentencing policies, the preparation of racial impact assessments could provide similar benefits to policymakers. Had such assessments existed in 1986, we could have had a debate on the racial dynamics of the crack cocaine laws prior to their enactment, not 20 years later. * Felon disenfranchisement reform--Five million Americans could not participate in the November election due to a current or previous felony conviction. Laws that govern these practices are enacted by the states, but Congress has the authority to require uniform voting rules in federal elections. Legislation proposed by John Conyers in the House would require states to permit voting by any non-incarcerated person in federal elections, even if barred from participating in state elections. Three decades of prison expansion have led to rates of imprisonment that are shameful for a democratic nation. Both public safety and community health would be better served through investments in policies that promote job creation, high school graduation and substance abuse treatment. It's time to reverse the race to incarcerate. [Marc Mauer is the executive director of The Sentencing Project and the author of Race to Incarcerate and co-editor of Invisible Punishment (both from The New Press).] -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 04:31:57 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:31:57 -0800 Subject: [m2c] UNICEF Report Warns of Sex Tourism in Kenya Message-ID: <1226436524.20061225033157@shaw.ca> UNICEF article; http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/kenya_37817.html http://www.radiohc.cu/ingles/noticias/diciembre06/dic23/mundounicerf.htm UNICEF Reports Warns of Sex Tourism in Kenya Nairobi, December 23 (RHC)-- Up to 30 percent of girls in some Kenyan resorts are involved in the sex industry, according to a newly released United Nations report. The UN Children's Fund, UNICEF, which examined tourist resorts along Kenya's coast, found that 15,000 girls aged 12 to 18 were engaged in casual sex for money. Another 2,000 to 3,000 girls and boys were involved in full-time prostitution, according to the study -- carried out jointly with the Kenyan government. The report noted that European men represented half of all their clients. UNICEF says that at least 15,000 young girls are said to live in the resort areas districts of Mombasa, Kilifi, Malindi and Kwale. The UN agency notes that poverty is the reason, pointed out that many familieis see the sex industry as the only way of putting food on the table. A spokesman for UNICEF said that what is going on in Kenya is "unacceptable" -- adding the it is past time for zero tolerance, "especially of sexual violence against children." The new study shows that Italian, German and Swiss nationals are the most common clients of child sex workers among tourists in Kenya -- at 18%, 14% and 12% respectively. Kenyan men are the largest single group of clients, comprising 38% of the total. A "staggering" 75% of people involved in tourism thought it was acceptable for girls to exchange sex for cash, and 60 percent said the same for boys, according to the UNICEF study. "Child sex workers are often compelled to deliver sexual services to Kenyans -- beach boys, bar staff, waiters, and others -- in order to access tourists. During the low tourist season, the local market for child sex workers keeps the system going. ------------------ http://allafrica.com/stories/200612200046.html Shocking Figures On Child Sex Trade The Nation (Nairobi) December 20, 2006 By Mugumo Munene And Jeff Otieno Nairobi Child prostitution at the Coast has hit alarming levels, a new UN report reveals. The shocking study says 15,000 girls under 18 are being sexually exploited for cash. And more than 5,000 of the child prostitutes do not protect themselves against killer diseases such as Aids. About 3,000 of them are engaged full-time in prostitution, having dropped out of school and given up on any other means of earning a living. The study was carried out along the coastline that stretches from Malindi in the north to Ukunda in the south. It targeted beaches and holiday resorts. It was carried out at Malindi, Watamu, Mtwapa, Bombolulu, Mombasa, Diani, Ukunda and Shanzu beaches. Vice President Moody Awori, who launched the report jointly with Unicef Kenya representative Heimo Laakkonen in Nairobi, described the revelations as "terrifying" and "hard to believe." Mr Awori said: "It is a shocking reality to talk about sexual exploitation of children in our country, a vice that continues to grow to horrific magnitude particularly around the coastal region." He appealed to the society to join the war against sexual exploitation of children by condemning and discouraging the practice. Worst perpetrators Kenyans, Italians, Germans and Swiss nationals are among the worst perpetrators of sexual exploitation of children in the region, says the report by Unicef which also reveals that at least 2,400 girls out of this number are subjected to anal sex. The survey was a joint effort between Unicef and the Government and highlights sexual exploitation children in the Coastal districts of Malindi, Mombasa, Kilifi and Kwale by both tourists and local residents. Of the men who engage in sex-for-cash with children, 38 per cent are Kenyans while Italians comprise 18 per cent, Germans 14 per cent, Swiss 12 per cent while the rest is shared out between tourists from other parts of the world. The police and representatives of the tourism sector immediately pledged to fight the practice through education campaigns, arrests and prosecutions. Hotels will be required to adhere to tough new rules to guard against child sex, including prohibiting under age girls into their premises. The Sexual Offences Act will be enforced more strictly to boost police operations in curbing the vice, Police Spokesman Gideon Kibunjah said, adding that the Tourist Police Unit would help in the fight. b The Mombasa and Coast Tourist Association and Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers said the Code of Conduct for the industry would be enforced more strictly and more operators made to commit themselves to adhere to the rules. Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers Coast branch chairman Mohammed Hersi said boarding and lodging and guest houses should be made to sign the code before being licensed. Driven by poverty and pushed by the easy cash offered to primary school age children by pleasure seekers, the vice is on the increase, attracting girls from as far as Western Kenya. "Child sex tourism is highly lucrative and drives the informal and the commercial sex trade. The disparity between a family's capacity to make money compared to what can be earned from sex work, feeds the domestic culture which encourages children to seek out tourists," the new report says. The researchers found out that children who are 16 years and below earn up to Sh2,000 a session, while those who are between 16 and 18 years earn between Sh2,000 and Sh5,000. Casual labour This compares poorly to the daily rate for casual labour which is between Sh80 and Sh120 for a child and about Sh400 for an adult. According to the report, which was carried out between October and November last year, the beneficiaries of the trade range from fortune tellers, taxi drivers, villa owners, hoteliers and restaurant owners, business people and beach operators. Also listed as beneficiaries are the police, who are accused of collecting bribes from the prostitutes in order to "look the other way." The end of the year is the high season for the trade given the high number of local and foreign tourists who flock coastal resorts for Christmas and New Year festivities. The report says: "Boys and girls from poor families around the tourist areas are sent out to find much-needed food and cash. They bring it and parents do not ask where it came from or how it was obtained. Children whose families live upcountry send an average of Sh2,000 a month to their families. The Government is accused of ignoring child prostitution since pursuing suspects would make the coastal resorts unattractive for tourism. The study shows that about 75 per cent of people in the affected areas approve or tolerate prostitution, because they believe that sex tourism brings in money and wealth. "It reflects a fundamental breakdown and corruption of families and communities, and a failure of the authorities to provide protection to children and to prosecute those responsible for promoting and profiting from child sex work". Tourists that exploit children are at the centre of a ring of corruption that involves many from the local community. Child sex workers are often compelled to deliver sexual services to Kenyans - beach boys, bar staff, waiters, and others - in order to access tourists," says the report. "During the low tourist season, it is the local tourists who keep the child prostitution market going," the report adds. Mr Awori urged the police, hotel owners and the tourism industry players to expose those perpetrating the vice. He blamed societal immorality and a degeneration of the social fabric together with factors such as unemployment, poverty and Aids pandemic for the rise of the vice. He castigated adults who took advantage of children particularly those in vulnerable circumstances to sexually exploit them, and reminded them that it was a criminal offence under the country's law. "We are reminding everyone that children have a need and a right to be children: even if a girl has matured physically by age 13, she is still immature intellectually and emotionally, until she is 18 years old," Mr Awori said. The VP called on hotels, lodgings and bars to sign and implement the tourism industry code of conduct, which binds them to the protection of children from sexual exploitation. Mr Awori noted that though tourism plays an important economic role in the country, there was need for it to be operated responsibly. He added that most of the children were forced into prostitution due to lack of support and protection in their homes. The VP said the Government was working with Unicef to come up with effective communication strategies to sensitise the communities against the dangers of child prostitution. Mr Laakkonen said that all stakeholders should be educated on the dangers, risks, and penalties of sexually abusing children. Legal action He called for legal action to be taken against anyone exploiting children, but warned against the danger of criminalising the child victims who he observed are victims of circumstances. Tourists and Kenyans who abuse children must be arrested, brought to trial and punished, Mr Laakkonen said. Child prostitution, the study said, had affected enrolment in schools as the youngsters found any easy means of earning income without rigours of education. ------------------- http://allafrica.com/stories/200612200972.html Outrage Over Sex Tourism Report The East African Standard (Nairobi) December 20, 2006 By Standard Team Nairobi Women Parliamentarians and hoteliers reacted angrily to revelations of sexual exploitation of children and pledged to step up the fight against the vice. Kenya Women Parliamentary Association asked the Government to close all villas at the Coast, which are used by sexual pests to exploit children. In a statement read by MPs Ms Cecily Mbarire and Prof Christine Mango, Kewopa also wants hoteliers to check the ages and identities of all young girls accompanying adults to their rooms. "Hoteliers should ensure under-age girls do not check in and lodge with tourists by demanding to see their identity cards," Mango said during a press conference at Parliament Buildings. The founder of Kenya Anti-Rape Organisation, Mrs Fatma Anyanzwa, told the Government to stop feigning shock at the vice as though sex tourism targetting minors was new. Hotels to renew campaigns child sex tourism Anyanzwa blamed the rise of sex tourism on the Government's reluctance to act early when she and other whistle blowers raised the alarm 10 years ago. "The Government does not have to wait until Unicef files a report on sex tourism. They didn't listen hen we raised the matter 10 years ago," she said. The Kenya Association of Hotelkeepers and Caterers, said 117 hotels, which previously signed a code of conduct to fight child sex tourism, would renew campaigns in the wake of the damning report. KAHC National chairlady, Ms Lucy Karume, said since those engaging in sex with underage children were known to use guest and private houses, the tourist police unit officers should intensify surveillance around the premises. But the spotlight was sharply turned on the Government for dithering to take action over immorality involving children along the beaches even after the vice was first highlighted by whistle-blowers 10 years ago. Promoting responsible tourism According to Karume, the 117 institutions grouped under KAHC had signed a pact with Pub, Entertainment and Restaurant Owners Association of Kenya to ensure children do not patronise nightclubs. "We are not ready to compromise the lives of children in the name of tourism. We should all promote responsible tourism," Karume said. She said since the signing of the code of conduct two years ago, industry stakeholders had united to sensitise staff on preventing sex pests from exploiting young children. Nyali Beach Hotel General Manager, Mr James Mwangi, said major hotels have effectively stopped sex tourism, but tourist police and other security operators need to work with the public to flash out culprits in private and guest houses. "The tourist police should also intensify patrols on the beaches," he said. Bamburi Beach Hotel General Manager Mr Charles Ibua said his hotel began the anti-child sex tourism 10 years ago. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 04:32:21 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:32:21 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Strong showing by women in Iran vote Message-ID: <1503313029.20061225033221@shaw.ca> http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2006/December/middleeast_December288.xml§ion=middleeast&col Strong showing by women in Iran vote (AFP) 17 December 2006 TEHERAN - Iranian women have recorded a strong showing in municipal elections, leaving men trailing in their wake in several major cities, media reported on Sunday. A 25-year-old student, Fatemeh Houshmand, close to reformists, won the highest number of votes in Friday?s local elections for the southern city of Shiraz. In the central city of Arak another female reformist, Fariba Abagheri, who leads the youth section of the main reformist party the Participation Front, won the most votes. Women were also the top candidates elected in the cities of Ardebil, Zanjan and Hamedan. Around 7,000 women were candidates in the election out of a total 235,000 hopefuls. Women are increasingly active in politics and also now outnumber men at Iran?s universities. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 04:39:13 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:39:13 -0800 Subject: [m2c] RAWA statement on Afghanistan: The Bloodiest Field for Slaughtering Human Rights Message-ID: <1554873622.20061225033913@shaw.ca> http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=49&ItemID=11619 Afghanistan The Bloodiest Field for Slaughtering Human Rights by RAWA; December 12, 2006 Five years ago, America and their allies attacked Afghanistan in the name of bringing "Human Rights", "Democracy", and "Freedom" to our war-torn country. The Taliban regime fell and Hamid Karzai's puppet regime, which included the well-known Northern Alliance criminals or as UN envoy Mahmoud Mestri said, "the bandit gangs", took over in the name of a fake democracy. However, today, the deceitful policies of Mr. Karzai and his Western guardians have brought Afghanistan to a very critical situation where disaster is a ticking time bomb that can explode any minute. Treason and mockery have efficiently been used in the name of "democracy" and "freedom" in the past five years. The human rights situation in Afghanistan is a product of the painful deception of the warlord led government. Northern Alliance criminals, backed by the US have their own local and barbaric governments. Just the increasing number of women who commit suicide by burning themselves is the best example of a human rights violation in Afghanistan. According to UNICEF, 65% of 50000 widows in Kabul think that committing suicide is the only option they have. Northern Alliance crooks raped an 11 year old girl, Sanuber, and traded her for a dog. In Badakhshan, a young woman was gang-raped by 13 Jehadis in front of her children, and one of the rapists urinated in the mouth of her children who were continuously crying. In Paghman, a suburb of Kabul, a criminal leader Rasol Sayyaf, who was the mentor and godfather of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, plunders our peoples' territory and tortures his opposition in his private prison. Despite many protest rallies by the unfortunate people of Paghman in front of the Parliament House, no one hears their painful voice. Instead the so-called police forces headed by infamous criminal warlords like Zahir Aghbar and Amanullah Guzar, attacked the protesters and killed 2 of them. These are all just some examples of thousands of crimes that are being carried out by the fundamentalists of the Northern Alliance. These evil men have high positions in the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of the US-imposed government with some unprincipled intellectuals dancing to their tune. The establishment of state-run institutions such as the Independent Human Rights Commission and the Ministry of Women's Affairs are just for show - to throw dust into the eyes of our people and the world community and to conceal the human rights catastrophe. Although these symbolic institutions spend a lot of money, they have never addressed the core issues regarding human rights in Afghanistan, which are the atrocities carried out by the Northern Alliance criminals. For instance, a woman named Zofanoon Natiq, the head of Women's Affairs Ministry branch in Badakhshan Province, in an interview with Pajhwak News Agency, entirely denied the gang-rape saying that "no such incident had been occurred in Badakhshan." Meanwhile the Police chief in the same province contradicted her and said a warlord from the fundamentalist Jamiat-e-Islami party, named Mujtaba committed the crime. Another woman, Fahima Kakar, the head of Women's Ministry branch in Kunduz, didn't want to displeasure warlords. She simply said, "I think it is not proper to behead a lady, in my view and in Islam it is not good to kill someone" regarding the crime in which a woman was beheaded and killed while her hands were tied behind her back. All the women in official posts are selected from such "showpiece women" who compromise with the fundamentalists and keep silent in the face of their crimes. The disgraceful defeat and embarrassing situation in the War in Iraq has left no option for the US, except to illustrate Afghanistan as a success, regardless of whether it results in pain and suffering for the Afghan people. The disagreement among NATO members and some member sates against the will of the US has made the situation harder for the White House. Therefore, America tries to keep a fragile temporary stability in Afghanistan in order to promote a sense of accomplishment by producing a "democratic" Afghanistan all around the world - a "B52 democracy" at the expense of treason against the majority of the Afghan people. There are now treacherous games to try to finalize the power of Gulbuddin's Islamic Party and the Taliban through the plans for Tribal Jirgas. Tribal Jirgas are no less deceptive than the Loya Jirgas and Afghan Parliament to our bereaved people. First the US divided the Taliban criminals into "moderate" and "non-moderate" factions. In the first stage Taliban criminal leaders such as Mullah Rocketi, Arsela Rahmani, Mullah Khaksar, Wakil Ahmad Motawakil, and Qalamaddin etc. were stamped as "moderate Taliban" and allowed to make their ways into the Parliament. Now, two criminal gang leaders, Gulbuddin and Mullah Omer, have been invited to join the government. In this case, it only remains for Al- Qaida to be invited to join the rotten Afghan Government. Although the Gulbuddin Party and Taliban have many representatives in government branches and the Parliament, the compromise with these criminal and blood stained leaders illustrates that America never wants peace and stability in Afghanistan. The US government sacrificed our people for its political and economical interests by establishing a government full of traitors, criminals and drug-lords. It does not matter who rules in Kabul, the US wants just a puppet regime. An American military presence in Afghanistan has no benefit for our people. In addition, thousands of civilians lost their lives because of radioactive and cluster bombs, and "friendly fire". This fact is obviously a disgrace for those who strongly defend the American military presence in Afghanistan. Since the Northern Alliance criminals were installed into power, RAWA has been saying that it is impossible to bring peace, human rights, and stability with a gang of criminals in power. Today even the western media points out the Jehadi warlords as a main problem in destabilizing Afghanistan which proves RAWA's analysis. However, the fundamentalist Karzai government, in order to cover up its own irresponsibility, corruption, and weaknesses, names Pakistan's interference and support of the Taliban as the single main issue in Afghanistan and pretends that if this interference is stopped Afghanistan will become a heaven on the earth! Karzai's government raised a hue and cry about the Pakistani statement on the need for a "coalition government" but everyone knows that a coalition government with criminals such as Taliban, Jehadis, Gullbudin and others is already in place. Murderers such as Sayyaf, Rabbani, Qanooni, Fahim, Mujadadi, Massoud, Dostom, Mahaqiq, Khalili, Ismail, and others who were Pakistan and Iran's loyal agents and servants are trying to deceive our people by acting as if they are anti-Pakistan. However, they can never dissolve the shameful marks of being agents of Pakistan and others. Moreover, Pakistan and Iran also should first of all apologize to our oppressed people for their treacherous role in empowering and supporting brutal Afghan fundamentalist bands. Although it is obvious that the Taliban are supported by some Pakistani sources, just as Iran supports its own spies like Khalili, Mohaqiq, Kazimi, Bahwi, Ismael Khan and others, the core issue in Afghanistan is not Pakistani interference inside Afghanistan. The biggest factor in destabilizing Afghanistan is inside Afghanistan. As long as the main issue inside has not been solved, the external issues matter little. The biggest factor that strengthens the Taliban is the hatred and disgust that our people have against the Jehadi mafia in the system. When people have no security, when they see lawlessness and the embezzlement by criminals of millions of dollars from international aid agencies, they are indifferent about the rise of the Taliban. Haji Nek Mohammad who had lost his beloved family in a NATO's air strike in Kandahar said, "I prefer to join the Taliban forces because the Taliban have so far killed only 2 people in my village while the collation forces killed 63 people in a single day." Our people know that there is no difference between the Taliban and Jehadi warlords. They both are fundamentalist medieval forces that were created by foreigners and they will join forces against our people at any moment. The NA hooligan leader Rabbani confirmed this fact when, in a recent interview said that he will not fight against the Taliban. Amusingly, there are some right-wing and leftist groups outside Afghanistan who look to the Taliban as an "anti-imperialist" force and defend them. They satirize themselves by such funny remarks and prove that they are completely ignorant of the barbaric nature of the Taliban. If they ever experienced a day of humiliation under the Taliban rule, they would never make such hurtful jokes against our people. The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) strongly supports the anti-war movement which grows day by day all around the world and becomes a strong force against the US and her Allies' war-mongering policies. Despite being on the top of the fundamentalists' black list, we would like to assure our people that RAWA, as before, will never give up its struggle against Jehadi, Talibi, Khalqi, and Parchami murderers and will carry on its uncompromising fight with full determination to break the mask of the fundamentalists' demagogy. We would like to declare to all freedom-loving, anti-invaders, and anti-fundamentalist individuals and groups that as long as we don't form a united movement against the fundamentalists and their foreign masters, we will not be in a position to break the chain of oppression and tyranny. We announced on the first day of the US invasion that there is not one example in history where a foreign force brings freedom to another nation. Only the people of Afghanistan themselves can gain these values. Fourteen years have passed since the gloomy day of April 28th, 1992. But our nation is being caught tighter day by day around the ankles of those who caused the pain, mourning and destruction in our land. Traitors, country-betrayers, and dark minds are in control of our nation's fate and our country has sunk into a calamity. Mr. Karzai and his foreign guardians, who have invested in fundamentalists for many years, today have given key posts in the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government, to the most infamous and bloody elements of the Northern Alliance and other savage bands. With the passage of time, the ring of these traitors is increasing. The evil men who caused the April 1992 tragedy, instead of being sued, have so much authority in the country that through the parliament they shamelessly announce this infelicitous day as a public holiday. In this manner they ridicule the people, the majority of whom, according to a survey of national and international human rights defending organizations, want the prosecution and punishment of these national traitors. Without the end of the fundamentalists' rule, the observance of human rights is just a dream! Hold the struggle flag of freedom, democracy, and social justice! With people against fundamentalism; or with fundamentalists against people; there is no third option! Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) December 10, 2006 -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Mon Dec 25 04:48:23 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 03:48:23 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Santa's immigration status questioned Message-ID: <1604481283.20061225034823@shaw.ca> http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=internetNews&storyID=2006-12-20T175945Z_01_N20397260_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-SANTA.xml Santa's immigration status questioned Wed Dec 20, 2006 1:00 PM ET By Jon Hurdle PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Santa isn't welcome in Hazleton because he's an illegal immigrant just like all the others the Pennsylvania town is trying to get rid of -- or so someone would have you believe. A new Web site, http://www.nosantaforhazleton.com, says the town intends to keep Santa out this Christmas because he represents the illegal immigration the town council believes increases crime and burdens local services. But the site is a hoax, created by someone in a bid to satirize a local law passed in July that has attracted national attention by imposing penalties on businesses and landlords to deter them from hiring or renting rooms to illegal immigrants. Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta, who instigated the Illegal Immigration Relief Act Ordinance, said neither he nor the City of Hazleton are involved with the Web site and that while he's not taking it seriously, it may be illegal because it invites online donations. The town has referred it to police. The site pretends to quote Barletta as saying, "Santa is a dangerous idea whose reign must be put to an end." A "press release" on the site says a coalition of elected officials and concerned citizens have come together to act against "the nation's most prominent undocumented worker." Hazleton's immigration act has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge pending a lawsuit against the town brought by immigrant supporters, including the American Civil Liberties Union. It is expected to be heard in early 2007. Hazleton is a former coal-mining town of 31,000 people in the eastern part of the state. Barletta said he has no idea who created the site, adding: "Whoever did that will certainly be getting coal for Christmas." ? Reuters 2006. ------------- http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/local/states/pennsylvania/counties/bucks_county/16303316.htm Posted on Sat, Dec. 23, 2006 Unwelcome: That jolly old foreignerA mystery Web site spoofs Hazleton's law on immigrants by banning Santa Claus from the town. Associated Press A satirical new Web site pokes fun at Hazleton Mayor Lou Barletta by claiming he has banned Santa Claus, "the nation's most prominent undocumented worker," from the city. Playing off the mayor's recent crackdown on illegal immigrants, the elaborate NoSantaForHazleton.com claims that Barletta has launched a campaign against the jolly old elf, who is "not an American, nor is he legally recognized for residency or occupational purposes in this country." Appearing unlawfully for too long to remember, the site says facetiously, Santa Claus employs "hundreds to thousands of elves in what are clearly described as sweatshop or slave labor-type conditions." That undercuts the American workforce in favor of unfair foreign competition or informal domestic laborers, the site contends. The site also features a "Hazleton Can Do Better Than Santa" contest, soliciting alternatives to Santa Claus; a video public-service announcement; an e-mail form for children to contact Santa and warn him to stay away, and advice to parents about the dangers posed by the immigrant Santa. Barletta attracted national attention this year when he pushed through a tough, first-of-its-kind law targeting illegal immigrants, who, the mayor says, have committed crimes and drained tax dollars in the northeastern Pennsylvania city of 31,000. The law, which a judge has blocked pending the adjudication of a legal challenge, penalizes landlords who rent to illegal immigrants and employers who give them jobs. Barletta wasn't amused when he learned about the Web site this week, referring it to state police because it solicits online credit card donations. "Santa Claus is welcome in Hazleton as he's welcome everywhere," Barletta told Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes show. "Whoever created the Web site obviously has too much time on their hands." The Web site was registered in October to an Emeryville, Calif., group calling itself No Santa for Hazleton. In an e-mail exchange with The Inquirer, the operators of the site would not reveal their true identities, and a promised interview did not materialize. On the site, the telephone number promising more information belongs to Hazleton City Hall. "This Christmas, a grassroots coalition of concerned citizens and elected officials have come together to conduct a public awareness campaign against the nation's most prominent undocumented worker: Santa Claus," the site says. "The group intends to keep Santa out of Hazleton this Christmas, as he represents everything the town has rallied around Mayor Barletta to oppose." Barletta predicts the creators of the site will get coal in their stockings this Christmas. "I'm sure Santa Claus isn't very happy with it," he said. To visit the satirical Web site about Hazleton's immigration policy, go to http://go.philly.com/nosanta -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Dec 27 03:17:13 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:17:13 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Israel's Rosa Parks: Go to the Back of the Bus, or Get Beaten Message-ID: <6010221216.20061227021713@shaw.ca> http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3007 Bus Beating Puts Orthodox Women on Online Alert Run Date: 12/22/06 By Ruth A. Seligman WeNews correspondent An e-mail listserv for activist Orthodox women caught on early to the story of a woman who was attacked on a Jerusalem bus for disobeying custom and not moving to the back of the bus. Subscribers compare the woman to Rosa Parks. (WOMENSENEWS)--"She could be our Rosa Parks," wrote one subscriber. "It's understandable that we would compare her to the courageous Rosa Parks . . . however . . . at no time did any passenger aboard that historic bus lay a hand on her," wrote another subscriber to the Women's Tefillah, or "Prayer" Network, an e-mail listserv. The "she" in these e-mails is Miriam Shear, a woman who says she was beaten last month by a man who demanded she move to the back of a bus in Jerusalem and who became irate upon her refusal to do so. The bus, operated by the National Egged bus company, was not a sex-segregated "mehadrin" bus. But since it travels through ultra-Orthodox communities where men and women sit separately, women customarily sit in the back while men sit in front. Shear has given accounts to reporters of getting into a heated verbal exchange, then a spitting exchange, and then being kicked and punched and even kicked in her face while she was lying on the floor of the bus trying to readjust her head covering. She says three men joined the first in ganging up on her. In recent weeks the international Women's Tefillah Network--WTN--has been abuzz with the story, which first appeared on a variety of blogs and listservs, WTN included, before making the pages of Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper on Dec. 15. WTN subscribers have been asking each other what they can do to support Shear, while also exchanging scholarly discussion of ancient Jewish texts concerning the historic and cultural implications of this incident. Passing Along Stories In one posting a subscriber passed along a story told by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in England, about his own experience as a young yeshiva student in the mid-1970s. Entering a room to pray with his peers Sacks' group was joined by a woman. Not knowing whether they should ask her to leave, or leave themselves, their rabbi referred to a teaching derived from the story of Tamar, a heroine of old whose actions earned her a heroic place in the Bible: "It is better that a person throw himself into a fiery furnace than shame his neighbor in public," the rabbi said. The bus driver has disputed Shear's account but an unrelated witness, Yehoshua Meyer, another passenger who said he tried to help but was blocked by another man, has backed her up. The Israeli police and the National Egged bus company are investigating Shear's case. It may also be included in a petition by the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal advocacy arm of the local Reform movement, to Israel's High Court of Justice over the legality of sex-segregated buses, according to Ha'aretz. Shear has received support from numerous women's rights and human rights advocacy groups in Israel and abroad. The potent response of WTN subscribers--who have been preoccupied with the story and responses to it as the news spreads in the media in Israel and around the world--highlights the pull of this online discussion group to its subscribers. The New York-based Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, the most prominent international organization addressing women's issues in traditional Jewish life, carries a link to WTN, describing it as open to both men and women and arising from the evolving nature of women's religious observance. Forum for Jewish Women For the past 10 years the listserv has supplied an up-to-the-minute forum for breakthroughs in interpretations of Jewish practice and advice drawn from Jewish law about forming women's prayer groups, incorporating women into such life-cycle events as baby namings, observances of bat mitzvah or marriage ceremonies, and even mourning rituals. Members are religiously observant--or Orthodox--Jewish feminists of all ages, and some male supporters, from around the world. Few of those who participate in the network have ever met face to face, but they regularly share advice, support and thoughts about the goal that brings them together: enhancing women's participation in Jewish ritual and communal life. "To realize that we are using this modern medium to address issues that originated in ancient times is profound," said Gael Hammer, a leader among Orthodox feminists in her native Australia who hosted the first women's tefillah group in her home in Sydney in 1989 and has been "on the list" for about 10 years. "The Women's Tefillah Network has given women in Australia the opportunity to stay up-to-the-minute--except for the time-zone difference--with the discussion and progress being made on the part of Jewish Orthodox feminism in centers like New York and Jerusalem, and to contribute from our perspective," said Hammer. The roots of the listserv are in the 1960s and '70s, when some women in higher institutes of Jewish learning, with the support of a few male scholars and rabbinic supporters, began arguing that women could read from the Torah in prayer services held separately from men in synagogues and homes. While Orthodox Jewish women have prayed together privately in their homes for centuries, and in religious Jewish girls' schools over the last 200 years and more, traditional Judaism has long restricted women's right to read from or even hold the Torah, the ultimate vessel of Jewish law. Praying With the Torah By the early 1980s women in New York, Israel and scattered college campuses were holding prayer services that integrated the Torah. "Thirty years ago women's tefillah was something revolutionary," Rivka Haut, a founder of WTN and an owner of the subscriber list, said with emotion. "Today my grandchildren take it for granted that they will carry the Torah and read from its scroll." Haut and her late husband, Rabbi Yitzchak Haut, were among those ostracized by many in their own religious neighborhood, despite being celebrated by Orthodox feminists internationally. The idea for the Women's Tefillah Network first came up at a meeting in Haut's home in Brooklyn, but then members began communicating exclusively by e-mail about 10 years ago. Members sometimes band together as activists concerned about issues such as the plight of agunot, women who are unable to remarry when a husband refuses to grant her a divorce document that he alone can provide. In response to Shear's bus attack some subscribers have reported similar, if less extreme, incidents of similar abuse they have experienced on buses moving through some Orthodox areas. And some have begun suggesting ways of responding. In Australia, Gael Hammer logged in to recommend that women carry toothpaste to spread on the seat they are being asked to vacate. Another subscriber countered that this would only penalize the bus cleaning crew. A subscriber in Massachusetts suggested women's patrols of the bus line, "morning, noon, and night, sitting in front and refusing to move . . . and passing out fliers of the story. Men can do this too. Why not e-mail everyone in your address book, and schedule a meeting? Why not do it now?" Ruth Seligman is a reporter and author living in New York who is anthologized in the forthcoming "Bread and Fire: Jewish Women Find God in the Everyday." Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors at womensenews.org. For more information: Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance: http://www.JOFA.org Drisha Institute for Jewish Education: http://www.drisha.org/ Ha'aretz "Woman beaten on Jerusalem bus for refusing to move to rear seat": http://haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=801449andcontrassID=19 Note: Women's eNews is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites and the contents of Web pages we link to may change without notice. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Dec 27 03:31:28 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:31:28 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Men: prostitution's driving force Message-ID: <1619718197.20061227023128@shaw.ca> http://www.guardian.co.uk/gender/story/0,,1973956,00.html Men: prostitution's driving force The Ipswich murders highlight the fact that while faceless clients have triple-lock protection the women they are using have none Mary Riddell Sunday December 17, 2006 The Observer Two portraits of Gemma Adams are taped to the lamppost where she used to stand, next to the BMW showroom. Half a dozen bouquets mark her pitch. 'Thinking of you all,' one message card reads. 'You didn't deserve this, no matter what you all done.' It is signed 'An Ipswich family.' A few miles away, roses flutter from the bridge over the brook where Tania Nicol's naked body was found. Chickens wander in the road and the nearby cottages are pink-washed. This was a tranquil place until the week when Ipswich and its outlying villages became a murder theme park. Mobile police stations are dotted through the town, where officers hand out rape alarms and safety leaflets. Beneath the sparkling Christmas tree in the main square, a market stall offers children's parkas for ?14.99. That is also the going rate of a bag of heroin. It is the fee for cheap sex. And now it is the price of murder. You can get yourself killed in Ipswich for trying to earn as little as ?15, the cost of a bargain anorak or a human life. Five women have paid that tariff. As the hunt for their killer narrows, his victims have become as familiar as sisters or friends. The short existences of Gemma, Tania, Anneli, Paula and Annette have been meticulously chronicled. Their faces, their photo albums, their private letters and, now, Anneli's unborn child have become public property. These 'working girls', in the upbeat police jargon, existed on the margins. In death, they are centre stage; recipients of the shame, sorrow, guilt, pity and outrage of a society that broods, belatedly, on their betrayal. What should we call them now that they are gone? Would they care? Death is still death, whether it says 'prostitute' or 'sex worker' on your tombstone. Public focus on these lives, though heartfelt, also reflects a voyeuristic fascination. Britain's first mythic serial killer, Jack the Ripper, has long since been superseded both in his cull - five known victims - and in his power to enthral. Pyschopathology blurs uneasily with romanticism. As the novelist Joyce Carol Oates has pointed out, TS Eliot once went to a fancy dress party as Dr Crippen: The New York Times described the urbane Ted Bundy, who may have slaughtered up to 100 young women, 'fascinating'. Thrillers and television series such as Wire in the Blood have reclassified mass murder as mass entertainment: A PD James novel is cited as a possible blueprint for the 'Suffolk strangler', and posters for the latest Hannibal Lecter book invites readers to wonder: 'What Makes a Monster?' Here to tell us are the profilers thrown up by the serial killer industry. In their various views, the Ipswich perpetrator is a local man or a visitor, a seasoned killer or a petty burglar. One criminologist, David Wilson, prefers to look at victims. His new book will profile the five groups targeted by serial killers: The elderly, gay men, babies and infants, young people and prostitutes. In other words, the vulnerable, people who fire public imagination only when tragedy propels them into the spotlight. In the blitz of detail about the Ipswich women, men are curiously spectral figures. If the mind of the murderer is unknowable, then the clientele that filters into Ipswich's red light triangle is hardly less mysterious. My taxi driver says he recently dropped off a sailor whose grain ship was docked at the town port. A prostitute talks of 'refugees' hoping for ?5 sex. The police are vague when asked how helpful the 'punters' have been to their inquiry. No doubt these invisible men are the usual mix: council workers, chicken packers, insurance brokers - the lost, the lonely and the pillars of society with a covert taste for violence. Five women have had their lives extinguished and their pasts stripped bare, in every detail but one. Who are the men whose quest for cheap and loveless sex ordained the pattern of their existences and so contributed, however tangentially, to their brutal end? Drugs are held up as the proxy killer, perhaps because grieving families find heroin addiction more understandable than prostitution. But, though addiction drove them to the streets, these women died because they were prostitutes at the mercy of a killer abetted by cruel laws. Zero tolerance does not work. Asbos and fines make women more vulnerable, and the lack of drug rehabilitation ushers them down a one-way street in which they lose their children, their hope, and, sometimes, their lives. That makes, at the very least, a case for heroin on NHS prescription, for many more drug treatment programmes and for the sort of toleration zone that worked well in Edinburgh until the nimbys and property developers forced its end. The government must overcome its cowardice and dust off reform plans. Few doubt that the law pushes women into a dangerous twilight, but their safety also depends on knowing who else inhabits that shadowland. If you believe modern folklore, and listen to what many prostitutes say, the average man who pays for sex is a harmless soul, with Santa-like beneficence and Gladstonian good manners. Prostitution is always called 'the oldest profession', as if antiquity conferred some gilt-edged institutional status and made its practitioners into a charmed breed pitched somewhere between Venetian courtesans and Doll Tearsheet. The reality, in the cold and prurient light of the Ipswich street, looks very different. Almost every prostitute to tell her story has complained of humiliation and attacks. I talked to Toni, a career sex worker who takes no drugs and who chose this trade to spend more time with her kids. Even she has been a victim. When Toni called the police (not in Ipswich) to say she had been raped, the officer laughed and said it was part of her job. This weekend, she will mourn her friend, who vanished while working the streets. Ten years or so have passed, and this woman remains missing, presumed murdered. Sixty prostitutes have been butchered since then and only 16 murderers convicted. Two thirds of sex workers complain of vicious men. Yet Toni, like many prostitutes, speaks kindly of her clientele. Most are normal men, she says. And, besides, they are 'her bread and butter'. Even so, it seems to me that these faceless clients have triple-lock protection, while the women they use have none. Men are shielded by the paradox that any attempt to crack down on them means greater risks for women hustled into cars without a chance to check who's driving. Their character, however dubious, is protected by the women who rely on them for bread or heroin. And they are sheltered by liberals who hesitate to condemn prostitution for fear of sounding moralistic or judgmental. So, when a killer strikes, there is little mention of the imbalance of a trade in which women are betrayed in life and in an uncharted death. In Ipswich, the meek and the violent who might provide vital clues have melted away, like the pimps and drug-dealers, back into a British society that fails not just sex workers, but all its poor and vulnerable. There must be better exit routes to help women who want to get off drugs and out of an industry that should be legalised, as the English Collective of Prostitutes wishes, for the realistic reason that lack of stigma is the best guarantor of women's safety. But that does not mean that prostitution should ever be seen as accountancy in high heels. Nor should faceless clients be deemed ordinary blokes. The demand side of prostitution is, at best, exploitative, creepy and degrading. At worst, it is the torture of the helpless and the dying. As five women go to their graves, we should not hesitate to say so. mary.riddell at observer.co.uk -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Dec 27 03:45:24 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 02:45:24 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Iraq: Widows Become the Silent Tragedy Message-ID: <475922086.20061227024524@shaw.ca> http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=35751 Widows Become the Silent Tragedy Dahr Jamail and Ali Al-Fadhily BAGHDAD, Dec. 7 (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of widows are becoming the silent tragedy of a country sliding deeper into chaos by the day. Widows are the flip side of violence that has meant more than a million men dead, detained or disabled, Iraqi NGOs estimate. These men's wives or mothers now carry the burden of running the families. "The total figure of men who have been killed, disabled or detained for long periods of time adds up to more than one and a half million," Khalid Hameed, chief of the Iraqi al-Raya human rights organisation told IPS. "The average number of Iraqi family members is seven, so about ten million Iraqis are facing the worst living circumstances." In these circumstances, he said, women have had to "search for ways to survive and support their families at a time when not much help comes from the international community." Most international NGOs left the country by last year apparently on the advice of governments of their countries pointing to growing violence and dangers to NGO members. "International NGOs were conducting support projects for Iraqi women before they suddenly quit and left the country in a rush in October 2005," Faris Daghistani, who was project manager at the Baghdad mission for the Italian humanitarian aid organisation in Iraq INTERSOS told IPS. "There was a wide focus on working women and how to support them by training and providing them with necessary tools to raise income on their own," he said. "It is a pity that most of our productive projects have stopped, and we had to leave women to face their fate on their own." The violence since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 is not the first to have taken its toll. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed, taken prisoner or disabled during the 1980-1988 war between Iran and Iraq. "We have never lived our lives as human beings should live," 42-year-old Dr Shatha Ahmed told IPS at her home in Baghdad. "The Iraq-Iran war took our fathers, and now the Bush war is taking our husbands and sons." Women now face a long struggle surviving and bringing up families on their own, she said. "We could not even dream of developing our own skills." Dr. Shatha's husband, also a doctor, was killed by Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army in September this year when he was leaving the Ministry of Health offices in Baghdad. She now has to support her family, and her husband's parents as well. Some help is on offer to widows through groups such as the Iraqi Red Crescent, the Islamic Party, the Muslim Scholars Association and non-governmental organisations. But this support is not well organised, and is insufficient to help the growing number of widows. The Social Affairs Office of the government has started paying the equivalent of about 100 dollars monthly to widows. But this payment cannot support whole families, given particularly the shooting inflation. And the payment is not easy to get. "I had to pay a lot of money as bribes to government officials in order to get the monthly support payment, and that is not enough to support my big family," 47-year-old widow Haja Saadiya Hussein from Baghdad told IPS. "Americans killed my husband last year near a checkpoint, and now I have to work as a servant in government officials' houses to earn a living for my six children. I have stopped them going to school, to cut my expenses." Some widows have attempted to remarry in order to find support. Some second husbands, who are usually older, offer to take care of their new sons for religious reasons. "There can be no compensation for losing a husband," a spokesperson from the Iraqi Red Crescent's social support department told IPS. "The world is responsible for these women who lost their spouses in the name of the international community." (END/2006) -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Wed Dec 27 04:20:17 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 03:20:17 -0800 Subject: [m2c] What She Wore Message-ID: <635240314.20061227032017@shaw.ca> http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec06/Marshall11.htm What She Wore by Lucinda Marshall December 11, 2006 Writing about fashion is not my style. Recently however, I felt moved to write a critique of Marie Claire?s November issue which took on the unique task of looking at the impact of militarism on women?s lives from the point of view of fashion (lost an arm and a leg but can still wear two-inch heels . . .). I had devoutly hoped that would be the end of my career in fashion commentary, but those hopes were dashed by two recent articles about noteworthy women. The first is an in-depth look at women to watch for in the House and Senate by Allison Stevens of Women?s ENews. Refreshingly, the article contains not one itsy bitsy bit of information about what these powerful women wear or what they look like. In a no nonsense, just the facts and nothing but the facts approach, Stevens delineates the roles of women like Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey, co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and Lois Capps, a possible co-chair for both the Democratic Women?s Working Group and the Congressional Caucus of Women?s Issues. We also learn that Rep. Louise Slaughter and Sen. Diane Feinstein will chair the House and Senate Rules committees, and what the implications of these posts are for issues such as the right to obtain an abortion. Stevens does a fine job of demonstrating that in fact you can talk about the importance of women?s lives without trivializing them by assuming you must mention their hairstyle or what they are wearing. Not so the December issue of Esquire, which contains an article that takes a lengthy look at ?five exceptional American women.? who have done significant work that has received little attention. But hold the applause. This after all is a magazine with a long history of preferring to present women in a scantily clad light. So it is not surprising that the author of The Women of America, John H. Richardson, is scrupulous in making sure that his readers really get the picture. The very first sentence of the article reads, ?Naomi Halas is wearing a clingy green blouse with tight black pants and two-inch black pumps, looking as if she stepped off the set of a Pedro Almodovar movie.? This in what way relates to the fact that she invented nanoshells? And then there is Doris Voitier, the school superintendent in St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, who has done extraordinary work getting her schools back in business since Katrina, no thanks to FEMA. Richardson makes sure that we know that she is ?a round woman in a lime-colored suit.? How very illuminating. But on to Rose Ann DeMoro, a California nurse who led the fight to lower nurse:patient ratios in California hospitals. Aren?t you dying to know what she looks like? No problem, we get a description right in the first paragraph -- ?A woman in black pants and a yellow sweater ? When it comes to Patricia Mulroy, the general manager of the Las Vegas Valley Water District, we get the description before we even know her name, ?a stylish older woman with short hair and discreet gold jewelry. That would be Patricia Mulroy.? Richardson repeats the clothes first, name second structure with the last woman featured in the article, ?a young woman in white slacks and a jean jacket? named Stephanie Herseth. Only then do we find out that she is a member of the United States Congress. Not once does Richardson refer to her as Congresswoman Herseth, she?s just a young woman wearing white slacks and a denim jacket. While the media occasionally offers us a description of how men of power appear, it is much more prevalent in the descriptions of women. If you doubt this, consider that within a week of the election, it was common knowledge that Nancy Pelosi digs Armani, but quick -- who is Harry Reid?s favorite designer? Who knows and who cares. It is unfortunate when the media continues, with all its damaging and misogynist implications, to insist by inclusion that what women wear or how they look is related to their capability. As Allison Stevens demonstrates, it is in fact possible to write about women and what they have accomplished without trivializing their empowerment by asserting such spurious connection. This is the standard to which journalism should be held in regard to gender. Lucinda Marshall is a feminist artist, writer and activist. She is the Founder of the Feminist Peace Network. 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. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Dec 28 04:58:15 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 03:58:15 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis (Part 1) Message-ID: <1607609290.20061228035815@shaw.ca> Chapter 12 from "Women, Race & Class" published 1981, vintage books. by Angela Davis. Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights When nineteenth-century feminists raised the demand for "voluntary motherhood," the campaign for birth control was born. Its proponents were called radicals and they were subjected to the same mockery as had befallen the initial advocates of woman suffrage. "Voluntary motherhood" was considered audacious, outrageous and outlandish by those who insisted that wives had no right to refuse to satisfy their husbands' sexual urges. Eventually, of course, the right to birth control, like women's right to vote, would be more or less taken for granted by U.S. public opinion. Yet in 1970, a full century later, the call for legal and easily accessible abortions was no less controversial than the issue of "voluntary motherhood" which had originally launched the birth control movement in the United States. Birth control ? individual choice, safe contraceptive methods, as well as abortions when necessary ? is a fundamental prerequisite for the emancipation of women. Since the right of birth control is obviously advantageous to women of all classes and races, it would appear that even vastly dissimilar women's groups would have attempted to unite around this issue. In reality, however, the birth control movement has seldom succeeded in uniting women of different social backgrounds, and rarely have the movement's leaders popularized the genuine concerns of working-class women. Moreover, arguments advanced by birth control advocates have sometimes been based on blatantly racist premises. The progressive potential of birth control remains indisputable. But in actuality, the historical record of this movement leaves much to be desired in the realm of challenges to racism and class exploitation. The most important victory of the contemporary birth control movement was won during the early 1970s when abortions were at last declared legal. Having emerged during the infancy of the new Women's Liberation movement, the struggle to legalize abortions incorporated all the enthusiasm and the militancy of the young movement. By January, 1973, the abortion rights campaign had reached a triumphant culmination. In *Roe v. Wade* (410 U.S.) and *Doe v. Bolton* (410 U.S.), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a woman's right to personal privacy implied her right to decide whether or not to have an abortion. The ranks of the abortion rights campaign did not include substantial numbers of women of color. Given the racial composition of the larger Women's Liberation movement, this was not at all surprising. When questions were raised about the absence of racially oppressed women in both the larger movement and in the abortion rights campaign, two explanations were commonly proposed in the discussions and literature of the period: women of color were overburdened by their people's fight against racism; and/or they had not yet become conscious of the centrality of sexism. But the real meaning of the almost lily-white complexion of the abortion rights campaign was not to be found in an ostensibly myopic or underdeveloped consciousness among women of color. The truth lay buried in the ideological underpinnings of the birth control movement itself. The failure of the abortion rights campaign to conduct a historical self-evaluation led to a dangerously superficial appraisal of Black people's suspicious attitudes toward birth control in general. Granted, when some Black people unhesitatingly equated birth control with genocide, it did appear to be an exaggerated ? even paranoiac ? reaction. Yet white abortion rights activists missed a profound message, for underlying these cries of genocide were important clues about the history of the birth control movement. This movement, for example, had been known to advocate involuntary sterilization ? a racist form of mass "birth control." If ever women would enjoy the right to plan their pregnancies, legal and easily accessible birth control measures and abortions would have to be complemented by an end to sterilization abuse. As for the abortion rights campaign itself, how could women of color fail to grasp its urgency? They were far more familiar than their white sisters with the murderously clumsy scalpels of inept abortionists seeking profit in illegality. In New York, for instance, during the several years preceding the decriminalization of abortions in that state, some 8o percent of the deaths caused by illegal abortions involved Black and Puerto Rican women.' Immediately afterward, women of color received close to half of all the legal abortions. If the abortion rights campaign of the early 1970s needed to be reminded that women of color wanted desperately to escape the back-room quack abortionists, they should have also realized that these same women were not about to express pro-abortion sentiments. They were in favor of *abortion rights*, which did not mean that they were proponents of abortion. When Black and Latina women resort to abortions in such large numbers, the stories they tell are not so much about their desire to be free of their pregnancy, but rather about the miserable social conditions which dissuade them from bringing new lives into the world. Black women have been aborting themselves since the earliest days of slavery. Many slave women refused to bring children into a world of interminable forced labor, where chains and floggings and sexual abuse for women were the everyday conditions of life. A doctor practicing in Georgia around the middle of the last century noticed that abortions and miscarriages were far more common among his slave patients than among the white women he treated. According to the physician, either Black women worked too hard or "... as the planters believe, the blacks are possessed of a secret by which they destroy the fetus at an early stage of gestation ... All country practitioners are aware of the frequent complaints of planters (about the) ... unnatural tendency in the African female to destroy her offspring."2 Expressing shock that "... whole families of women fail to have any children,"3 this doctor never considered how "unnatural" it was to raise children under the slave system. The previously mentioned episode of Margaret Garner, a fugitive slave who killed her own daughter and attempted suicide herself when she was captured by slavecatchers, is a case in point. "She rejoiced that the girl was dead ? 'now she would never know what a woman suffers as a slave' ? and pleaded to be tried for murder. 'I will go singing to the gallows rather than be returned to slavery!'"4 Why were self-imposed abortions and reluctant acts of infanticide such common occurrences during slavery? Not because Black women had discovered solutions to their predicament, but rather because they were desperate. Abortions and infanticides were acts of desperation, motivated not by the biological birth process but by the oppressive conditions of slavery. Most of these women, no doubt, would have expressed their deepest resentment had someone hailed their abortions as a stepping stone toward freedom. During the early abortion rights campaign it was too frequently assumed that legal abortions provided a viable alternative to the myriad problems posed by poverty. As if having fewer children could create more jobs, higher wages, better schools, etc., etc. This assumption reflected the tendency to blur the distinction between *abortion rights* and the general advocacy of *abortions*. The campaign often failed to provide a voice for women who wanted the *right* to legal abortions while deploring the social conditions that prohibited them from bearing more children. The renewed offensive against abortion rights that erupted during the latter half of the 1970s has made it absolutely necessary to focus more sharply on the needs of poor and racially oppressed women. By 1977 the passage of the Hyde Amendment in Congress had mandated the withdrawal of federal funding for abortions, causing many state legislatures to follow suit. Black, Puerto Rican, Chicana and Native American Indian women, together with their impoverished white sisters, were thus effectively divested of the right to legal abortions. Since surgical sterilizations, funded by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, remained free on demand, more and more poor women have been forced to opt for permanent infertility. What is urgently required is a broad campaign to defend the reproductive rights of all women ? and especially those women whose economic circumstances often compel them to relinquish the right to reproduction itself. Women's desire to control their reproductive system is probably as old as human history itself. As early as 1844 the "United States Practical Receipt Book" contained, among its many recipes for food, household chemicals and medicines, "receipts" for "birth preventive lotions." To make "Hannay's Preventive Lotion," for example, "[t]ake pearlash, 1 part; water, 6 parts. Mix and filter. Keep it in closed bottles, and use it, with or without soap, immediately after connexion."5 For "Abernethy's Preventive Lotion," "[t]ake bichloride of mercury, 25 parts; milk of almonds, 400 parts; alcohol, 100 parts; rosewater, 1000 parts. Immerse the glands in a little of the mixture.... Infallible, if used in proper time."6 While women have probably always dreamed of infallible methods of birth control, it was not until the issue of women's rights in general became the focus of an organized movement that reproductive rights could emerge as a legitimate demand. In an essay entitled "Marriage," written during the 1850s, Sarah Grimke argued for a "... right on the part of woman to decide when she shall become a mother, how often and under what circumstances."7 Alluding to one physician's humorous observation, Grimke agreed that if wives and husbands alternatively gave birth to their children, "... no family would ever have more than three, the husband bearing one and the wife two."8 But, as she insists, "... the *right* to decide this matter has been almost wholly denied to woman."9 Sarah Grimke advocated women's right to sexual abstinence. Around the same time the well-known "emancipated marriage" of Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell took place. These abolitionists and women's rights activists were married in a ceremony that protested women's traditional relinquishment of their rights to their persons, names and property. In agreeing that as husband, he had no right to the "custody of the wife's person,"10 Henry Blackwell promised that he would not attempt to impose the dictates of his sexual desires upon his wife. The notion that women could refuse to submit to their husbands' sexual demands eventually became the central idea of the call for "voluntary motherhood." By the 1870s, when the woman suffrage movement had reached its peak, feminists were publicly advocating voluntary motherhood. In a speech delivered in 1873, Victoria Woodhull claimed that "(t)he wife who submits to sexual intercourse against her wishes or desires, virtually commits suicide; while the husband who compels it, commits murder, and ought just as much to be punished for it, as though he strangled her to death for refusing him."11 Woodhull, of course, was quite notorious as a proponent of "free love." Her defense of a woman's right to abstain from sexual intercourse within marriage as a means of controlling her pregnancies was associated with Woodhull's overall attack on the institution of marriage. It was not a coincidence that women's consciousness of their reproductive rights was born within the organized movement for women's political equality. Indeed, if women remained forever burdened by incessant childbirths and frequent miscarriages, they would hardly be able to exercise the political rights they might win. Moreover, women's new dreams of pursuing careers and other paths of self-development outside marriage and motherhood could only be realized if they could limit and plan their pregnancies. In this sense, the slogan "voluntary motherhood" contained a new and genuinely progressive vision of womanhood. At the same time, however, this vision was rigidly bound to the lifestyle enjoyed by the middle classes and the bourgeoisie. The aspirations underlying the demand for "voluntary motherhood" did not reflect the conditions of working-class women, engaged as they were in a far more fundamental fight for economic survival. Since this first call for birth control was associated with goals which could only be achieved by women possessing material wealth, vast numbers of poor and working-class women would find it rather difficult to identify with the embryonic birth control movement. Toward the end of the nineteenth century the white birth rate in the United States suffered a significant decline. Since no contraceptive innovations had been publicly introduced, the drop in the birth rate implied that women were substantially curtailing their sexual activity. By 1890 the typical native-born white woman was bearing no more than four children.12 Since U.S. society was becoming increasingly urban, this new birth pattern should not have been a surprise. While farm life demanded large families, they became dysfunctional within the context of city life. Yet this phenomenon was publicly interpreted in a racist and anti-working-class fashion by the ideologues of rising monopoly capitalism. Since native-born white women were bearing fewer children, the specter of "race suicide" was raised in official circles. In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt concluded his Lincoln Day Dinner speech with the proclamation that "race purity must be maintained."3 By 1906 he blatantly equated the falling birth rate among native-born whites with the impending threat of "race suicide." In his State of the Union message that year Roosevelt admonished the well-born white women who engaged in "willful sterility ? the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race suicide."4 These comments were made during a period of accelerating racist ideology and of great waves of race riots and lynchings on the domestic scene. Moreover, President Roosevelt himself was attempting to muster support for the U.S. seizure of the Philippines, the country's most recent imperialist venture. How did the birth control movement respond to Roosevelt's accusation that their cause was promoting race suicide? The President's propagandistic ploy was a failure, according to a leading historian of the birth control movement, for, ironically, it led to greater support for its advocates. Yet, as Linda Gordon maintains, this controversy "... also brought to the forefront those issues that most separated feminists from the working class and the poor."5 "This happened in two ways. First, the feminists were increasingly emphasizing birth control as a route to careers and higher education ? goals out of reach of the poor with or without birth control. In the context of the whole feminist movement, the race-suicide episode was an additional factor identifying feminism almost exclusively with the aspirations of the more privileged women of the society. Second, the pro-birth control feminists began to popularize the idea that poor people had a moral obligation to restrict the size of their families, because large families create a drain on the taxes and charity expenditures of the wealthy and because poor children were less likely to be 'superior.'"l6 The acceptance of the race-suicide thesis, to a greater or lesser extent, by women such as Julia Ward Howe and Ida Husted Harper reflected the suffrage movement's capitulation to the racist posture of Southern women. If the suffragists acquiesced to arguments invoking the extension of the ballot to women as the saving grace of white supremacy, then birth control advocates either acquiesced to or supported the new arguments invoking birth control as a means of preventing the proliferation of the "lower classes" and as an antidote to race suicide. Race suicide could be prevented by the introduction of birth control among Black people, immigrants and the poor in general. In this way, the prosperous whites of solid Yankee stock could maintain their superior numbers within the population. Thus class-bias and racism crept into the birth control movement when it was still in its infancy. More and more, it was assumed within birth control circles that poor women, Black and immigrant alike, had a "moral obligation to restrict the size of their families."17 What was demanded as a "right" for the privileged came to be interpreted as a "duty" for the poor. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Dec 28 05:00:17 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:00:17 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis (Part 2) Message-ID: <1593588173.20061228040017@shaw.ca> Chapter 12 from "Women, Race & Class" published 1981, vintage books. by Angela Davis. Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights (Continued ... Part 2) When Margaret Sanger embarked upon her lifelong crusade for birth control ? a term she coined and popularized ? it appeared as though the racist and anti-working-class overtones of the previous period might possibly be overcome. For Margaret Higgens Sanger came from a working-class background herself and was well acquainted with the devastating pressures of poverty. When her mother died, at the age of forty-eight, she had borne no less than eleven children. Sanger's later memories of her own family's troubles would confirm her belief that working-class women had a special need for the right to plan and space their pregnancies autonomously. Her affiliation, as an adult, with the Socialist movement was a further cause for hope that the birth control campaign would move in a more progressive direction. When Margaret Sanger joined the Socialist party in 1912, she assumed the responsibility of recruiting women from New York's working women's clubs into the party.18 "The Call" ? the party's paper ? carried her articles on the women's page. She wrote a series entitled "What Every Mother Should Know," another called "What Every Girl Should Know," and she did on-the-spot coverage of strikes involving women. Sanger's familiarity with New York's working-class districts was a result of her numerous visits as a trained nurse to the poor sections of the city. During these visits, she points out in her autobiography, she met countless numbers of women who desperately desired knowledge about birth control. According to Sanger's autobiographical reflections, one of the many visits she made as a nurse to New York's Lower East Side convinced her to undertake a personal crusade for birth control. Answering one of her routine calls, she discovered that twentyeight-year-old Sadie Sachs had attempted to abort herself. Once the crisis had passed, the young woman asked the attending physician to give her advice on birth prevention. As Sanger relates the story, the doctor recommended that she "... tell (her husband) Jake to sleep on the roof."19 "I glanced quickly to Mrs. Sachs. Even through my sudden tears I could see stamped on her face an expression of absolute despair. We simply looked at each other, saying no word until the door had closed behind the doctor. Then she lifted her thin, blue-veined hands and clasped them beseechingly. 'He can't understand. He's only a man. But you do, don't you? Please tell me the secret, and I'll never breathe it to a soul. Please!'"20 Three months later Sadie Sachs died from another self-induced abortion. That night, Margaret Sanger says, she vowed to devote all her energy toward the acquisition and dissemination of contraceptive measures. "I went to bed, knowing that no matter what it might cost, I was finished with palliatives and superficial cures; I resolved to seek out the root of evil, to do something to change the destiny of mothers whose miseries were as vast as the sky."21 During the first phase of Sanger's birth control crusade, she maintained her affiliation with the Socialist party a nd the campaign itself was closely associated with the rising militancy of the working class. Her staunch supporters included Eugene Debs, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Emma Goldman, who respectively represented the Socialist party, the International Workers of the World and the anarchist movement. Margaret Sanger, in turn, expressed the anti-capitalist commitment of her own movement within the pages of its journal, "Woman Rebel", which was "dedicated to the interests of working women."22 Personally, she continued to march on picket lines with striking workers and publicly condemned the outrageous assaults on striking workers. In 1914, for example, when the National Guard massacred scores of Chicano miners in Ludlow, Colorado, Sanger joined the labor movement in exposing John D. Rockefeller's role in this attack.23 Unfortunately, the alliance between the birth control campaign and the radical labor movement did not enjoy a long life. While Socialists and other working-class activists continued to support the demand for birth control, it did not occupy a central place in their overall strategy. And Sanger herself began to underestimate the centrality of capitalist exploitation in her analysis of poverty, arguing that too many children caused workers to fall into their miserable predicament. Moreover, "... women were inadvertently perpetuating the exploitation of the working class," she believed, "by continually flooding the labor market with new workers."24 Ironically, Sanger may have been encouraged to adopt this position by the neo-Malthusian ideas embraced in some socialist circles. Such outstanding figures of the European socialist movement as Anatole France and Rosa Luxemburg had proposed a "birth strike" to prevent the continued flow of labor into the capitalist market.25 When Margaret Sanger severed her ties with the Socialist party for the purpose of building an independent birth control campaign, she and her followers became more susceptible than ever before to the anti-Black and anti-immigrant propaganda of the times. Like their predecessors, who had been deceived by the "race suicide" propaganda, the advocates of birth control began to embrace the prevailing racist ideology. The fatal influence of the eugenics movement would soon destroy the progressive potential of the birth control campaign. During the first decades of the twentieth century the rising popularity of the eugenics movement was hardly a fortuitous development. Eugenic ideas were perfectly suited to the ideological needs of the young monopoly capitalists. Imperialist incursions in Latin America and in the Pacific needed to be justified, as did the intensified exploitation of Black workers in the South and immigrant workers in the North and West. The pseudoscientific racial theories associated with the eugenics campaign furnished dramatic apologies for the conduct of the young monopolies. As a result, this movement won the unhesitating support of such leading capitalists as the Carnegies, the Harrimans and the Kelloggs.26 By 1919 the eugenic influence on the birth control movement was unmistakably clear. In an article published by Margaret Sanger in the American Birth Control League's journal, she defined "the chief issue of birth control" as "more children from the fit, less from the unfit."27 Around this time the ABCL heartily welcomed the author of "The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy" into its inner sanctum.28 Lothrop Stoddard, Harvard professor and theoretician of the eugenics movement, was offered a seat on the board of directors. In the pages of the ABCL's journal, articles by Guy Irving Birch, director of the American Eugenics Society, began to appear. Birch advocated birth control as a weapon to "... prevent the American people from being replaced by alien or Negro stock, whether it be by immigration or by overly high birth rates among others in this country."29 By 1932 the Eugenics Society could boast that at least twenty-six states had passed compulsory sterilization laws and that thousands of "unfit" persons had already been surgically prevented from reproducing.30 Margaret Sanger offered her public approval of this development. "Morons, mental defectives, epileptics, illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes and dope fiends" ought to be surgically sterilized, she argued in a radio talk.31 She did not wish to be so intransigent as to leave them with no choice in the matter; if they wished, she said, they should be able to choose a lifelong segregated existence in labor camps. Within the American Birth Control League, the call for birth control among Black people acquired the same racist edge as the call for compulsory sterilization. In 1939 its successor, the Birth Control Federation of America, planned a "Negro Project." In the Federation's words, "(t)he mass of Negroes, particularly in the South, still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least fit, and least able to rear children properly."32 Calling for the recruitment of Black ministers to lead local birth control committees, the Federation's proposal suggested that Black people should be rendered as vulnerable as possible to their birth control propaganda. "We do not want word to get out," wrote Margaret Sanger in a letter to a colleague, "... that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members."33 This episode in the birth control movement confirmed the ideological victory of the racism associated with eugenic ideas. It had been robbed of its progressive potential, advocating for people of color not the individual right to *birth control*, but rather the racist strategy of *population control*. The birth control campaign would be called upon to serve in an essential capacity in the execution of the U.S. government's imperialist and racist population policy. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Dec 28 05:00:28 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 04:00:28 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights by Angela Davis (Part 3) Message-ID: <1581430957.20061228040028@shaw.ca> Chapter 12 from "Women, Race & Class" published 1981, vintage books. by Angela Davis. Racism, Birth Control and Reproductive Rights (Continued ... Part 3) The abortion rights activists of the early 1970s should have examined the history of their movement. Had they done so, they might have understood why so many of their Black sisters adopted a posture of suspicion toward their cause. They might have understood how important it was to undo the racist deeds of their predecessors, who had advocated birth control as well as compulsory sterilization as a means of eliminating the "unfit" sectors of the population. Consequently, the young white feminists might have been more receptive to the suggestion that their campaign for abortion rights include a vigorous condemnation of sterilization abuse, which had become more widespread than ever. It was not until the media decided that the casual sterilization of two Black girls in Montgomery, Alabama, was a scandal worth reporting that the Pandora's box of sterilization abuse was finally flung open. But by the time the case of the Relf sisters broke, it was practically too late to influence the politics of the abortion rights movement. It was the summer of 1973 and the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortions had already been announced in January. Nevertheless, the urgent need for mass opposition to sterilization abuse became tragically clear. The facts surrounding, the Relf sisters' story were horrifyingly simple. Minnie Lee, who was twelve years old, and Mary Alice, who was fourteen, had beer unsuspectingly carted into an operating room, where surgeons irrevocably robbed them of their capacity to bear children.34 The surgery had been ordered by the HEW-funded Montgomery Community Action Committee after it was discovered that Depo-Provera, a drug previously administered to the girls as a birth prevention measure, caused cancer in test animals.35 After the Southern Poverty Law Center filed suit on behalf of the Relf sisters, the girls' mother revealed that she had unknowingly "consented" to the operation, having been deceived by the social workers who handled her daughters' case. They had asked Mrs. Relf, who was unable to read, to put her "X" on a document, the contents of which were not described to her. She assumed, she said, that it authorized the continued Depo-Provera injections. As she subsequently learned, she had authorized the surgical sterilization of her daughters.36 In the aftermath of the publicity exposing the Relf sisters' case similar episodes were brought to light. In Montgomery alone eleven girls, also in their teens, had been similarly sterilized. HEW-funded birth control clinics in other states, as it turned out had also subjected young girls to sterilization abuse. Moreover individual women came forth with equally outrageous stories. Nial Ruth Cox, for example, filed suit against the state of North Carolina. At the age of eighteen ? eight years before the suit ? officials had threatened to discontinue her family's welfare payments if she refused to submit to surgical sterilization.37 Before she assented to the operation, she was assured that her infertility would be temporary.38 Nial Ruth Cox's lawsuit was aimed at a state which had diligently practiced the theory of eugenics. Under the auspicies of the Eugenics Commission of North Carolina, so it was learned, 7,686 sterilizations had been carried out since 1933. Although the operations were justified as measures to prevent the reproduction of "mentally deficient persons," about 5,000 of the sterilized persons had been Black.39 According to Brenda Feigen Fasteau, the ACLU attorney representing Nial Ruth Cox, North Carolina's recent record was not much better. "As far as I can determine, the statistics reveal that since 1964, approximately 65% of the women sterilized in North Carolina were Black and approximately 35% were white."40 As the flurry of publicity exposing sterilization abuse revealed, the neighboring state of South Carolina had been the site of further atrocities. Eighteen women from Aiken, South Carolina, charged that they had been sterilized by a Dr. Clovis Pierce during the early 1970s. The sole obstetrician in that small town, Pierce had consistently sterilized Medicaid recipients with two or more children. According to a nurse in his office, Dr. Pierce insisted that pregnant welfare women "will have to submit (sic!) to voluntary sterilization" if they wanted him to deliver their babies.41 While he was "... tired of people running around and having babies and paying for them with my taxes,"42 Dr. Pierce received some $60,000 in taxpayers' money for the sterilizations he performed. During his trial he was supported by the South Carolina Medical Association, whose members declared that doctors "... have a moral and legal right to insist on sterilization permission before accepting a patient, if it is done on the initial visit."43 Revelations of sterilization abuse during that time exposed the complicity of the federal government. At first the Department of Health, Education and Welfare claimed that approximately 16,000 women and 8,000 men had been sterilized in 1972 under the auspices of federal programs.44 Later, however, these figures underwent a drastic revision. Carl Shultz, director of HEW's Population Affairs Office, estimated that between 100,000 and 200,000 sterilizations had actually been funded that year by the federal government.45 During Hitler's Germany, incidentally, 250,000 sterilizations were carried out under the Nazis' Hereditary Health Law.46 Is it possible that the record of the Nazis, throughout the years of their reign, may have been almost equaled by U.S. government-funded sterilizations in the space of a single year? Given the historical genocide inflicted on the native population of the United States, one would assume that Native American Indians would be exempted from the government's sterilization campaign. But according to Dr. Connie Uri's testimony in a Senate committee hearing, by 1976 some 24 percent of all Indian women of childbearing age had been sterilized.47 "Our blood lines are being stopped," the Choctaw physician told the Senate committee, "Our unborn will not be born ... This is genocidal to our people."48 According to Dr. Uri, the Indian Health Services Hospital in Claremore, Oklahoma, had been sterilizing one out of every four women giving birth in that federal facility.49 Native American Indians are special targets of government propaganda on sterilization. In one of the HEW pamphlets aimed at Indian people, there is a sketch of a family with *ten children* and *one horse* and another sketch of a family with *one child* and *ten horses*. The drawings are supposed to imply that more children mean more poverty and fewer children mean wealth. As if the ten horses owned by the one-child family had been magically conjured up by birth control and sterilization surgery. The domestic population policy of the U.S. government has an undeniably racist edge. Native American, Chicana, Puerto Rican and Black women continue to be sterilized in disproportionate numbers. According to a National Fertility Study conducted in 1970 by Princeton University's Office of Population Control, 20 percent of all married Black women have been permanently sterilized.50 Approximately the same percentage of Chicana women had been rendered surgically infertile." Moreover, 43 percent of the women sterilized through federally subsidized programs were Black.52 The astonishing number of Puerto Rican women who have been sterilized reflects a special government policy that can be traced back to 1939. In that year President Roosevelt's Interdepartmental Committee on Puerto Rico issued a statement attributing the island's economic problems to the phenomenon of overpopulation.53 This committee proposed that efforts be undertaken to reduce the birth rate to no more than the level of the death rate.54 Soon afterward an experimental sterilization campaign was undertaken in Puerto Rico. Although the Catholic Church initially opposed this experiment and forced the cessation of the program in 1946, it was converted during the early 1950s to the teachings and practice of population control.55 In this period over 150 birth control clinics were opened, resulting in a 20 percent decline in population growth by the mid-1960s.56 By the 1970s over 35 percent of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been surgically sterilized.57 According to Bonnie Mass, a serious critic of the U.S. government's population policy, "... if purely mathematical projections are to be taken seriously, if the present rate of sterilization of 19,000 monthly were to continue, then the island's population of workers and peasants could be extinguished within the next 10 or 20 years . . . (establishing) for the first time in world history a systematic use of population control capable of eliminating an entire generation of people."58 During the 1970s the devastating implications of the Puerto Rican experiment began to emerge with unmistakable clarity. In Puerto Rico the presence of corporations in the highly automated metallurgical and pharmaceutical industries had exacerbated the problem of unemployment. The prospect of an ever-larger army of unemployed workers was one of the main incentives for the mass sterilization program. Inside the United States today, enormous numbers of people of color ? and especially racially oppressed youth ? have become part of a pool of permanently unemployed workers. It is hardly coincidental, considering the Puerto Rican example, that the increasing incidence of sterilization has kept pace with the high rates of unemployment. As growing numbers of white people suffer the brutal consequences of unemployment, they can also expect to become targets of the official sterilization propaganda. The prevalence of sterilization abuse during the latter 1970s may be greater than ever before. Although the Department of Health, Education and Welfare issued guidelines in 1974, which were ostensibly designed to prevent involuntary sterilizations, the situation has nonetheless deteriorated. When the American Civil Liberties Union's Reproductive Freedom Project conducted a survey of teaching hospitals in 1975, they discovered that 40 percent of those institutions were not even aware of the regulations issued by HEW.59 Only 30 percent of the hospitals examined by the ACLU were even attempting to comply with the guidelines.60 The 1977 Hyde Amendment has added yet another dimension to coercive sterilization practices. As a result of this law passed by Congress, federal funds for abortions were eliminated in all cases but those involving rape and the risk of death or severe illness. According to Sandra Salazar of the California Department of Public Health, the first victim of the Hyde Amendment was a twenty-seven-year-old Chicana woman from Texas. She died as a result of an illegal abortion in Mexico shortly after Texas discontinued government-funded abortions. There have been many more victims ? women for whom sterilization has become the only alternative to the abortions, which are currently beyond their reach. Sterilizations continue to be federally funded and free, to poor women, on demand. Over the last decade the struggle against sterilization abuse has been waged primarily by Puerto Rican, Black, Chicana and Native American women. Their cause has not yet been embraced by the women's movement as a whole. Within organizations representing the interests of middle-class white women, there has been a certain reluctance to support the demands of the campaign against sterilization abuse, for these women are often denied their individual rights to be sterilized when they desire to take this step. While women of color are urged, at every turn, to become permanently infertile, white women enjoying prosperous economic conditions are urged, by the same forces, to reproduce themselves. They therefore sometimes consider the "waiting period" and other details of the demand for "informed consent" to sterilization as further inconveniences for women like themselves. Yet whatever the inconveniences for white middle-class women, a fundamental reproductive right of racially oppressed and poor women is at stake. Sterilization abuse must be ended. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Thu Dec 28 15:38:54 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 14:38:54 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Insecurity and poverty in Iraq put pregnant women in danger Message-ID: <124772207.20061228143854@shaw.ca> http://electroniciraq.net/news/2761.shtml Insecurity and poverty in Iraq put pregnant women in danger Report, IRIN, 26 December 2006 BAGHDAD - For years Salah Hussein, 26, had dreamed of having a child, but he never imagined that his wish would be marred by the death of his wife in childbirth. Hussein's wife, Fadiya, died of complications during a delivery which, doctors said, were caused by malnutrition and the stress of living in a war-torn country. "We are a poor family and I couldn't afford to buy her good food. This was not my fault but the fault of this destroyed country in which the conditions of the health sector are worsening day by day," said Hussein who works as a barber in the capital, Baghdad. Dozens of pregnant women with life-threatening conditions are being admitted to Iraq's hospitals every month. Dr. Mayada Youssif, a gynaecologist at Baghdad's Kadhimiyah hospital, believes that pregnant women are falling ill due to the insecurity and poverty that Iraqis have to live with as a result of the conflict. Many women give birth in environments where no-one is equipped to recognise an impending emergency. In some cases travelling to hospitals is the last resort because of insecurity, curfews, road blockages and fear of acts of violence. "Insecurity has forced women to stay at home during their whole period of pregnancy, and they look for a doctor only when they are feeling really ill or feel, near to delivery time, that conditions have become too dangerous," Youssif said. The UN children's agency UNICEF has said that Iraq's maternal mortality rates have increased dramatically over the last 15 years. In 1989, 117 Iraqi mothers out of 100,000 died during pregnancy or childbirth. That ratio has now increased by 65 per cent. According to Claire Hajaj, Communications Officer at UNICEF Iraq Support Centre in Amman (ISCA), the mortality rate in Iraq far outstrips that of its neighbours. "Many women give birth in environments where no-one is equipped to recognise an impending emergency. In some cases travelling to hospitals is the last resort because of insecurity, curfews, road blockages and fear of acts of violence," she said. "In some areas, skilled specialists and medical supplies to provide emergency obstetric care are not available," she added. Now Hussein's son, Mohammed, is being taken care of by his grandmother who is looking for a surrogate mother to breast-feed him. "We don't have money to buy powdered milk so we have to depend on the good heart of some mothers who have survived this terrible situation," Hussein said. According to Iraq's Health Ministry, the country's hospitals lack essential equipment for antenatal care and medicines for pregnant women, such as iron and folic acid. "The under investment in the health sector has seriously affected the health of women and children," Ahmed Yehya, a press officer at the Ministry of Health told IRIN. He added that women have unique needs when it came to health, nutrition and support from the community, particularly during pregnancy and child delivery. According to UNICEF, three needs are paramount for the mother and her baby: good nutrition, access to antenatal care (including education about safe birth practices) and access to emergency obstetric care in case of problems. "It is important to recognise that while unexpected emergencies can arise at any time during pregnancy and delivery, women are far less likely to experience complications if they are properly nourished," Hajaj said. To ensure a mother's access to good nutrition, UNICEF has supported a national programme to fortify wheat flour with iron and folic acid. This initiative helps prevent anaemia, the main cause of maternal death. Nahid Towfik, a 29-year-old who is eight months pregnant, is at risk of losing her life and that of her baby due to malnutrition. "The doctor has just told me that I have to do a caesarean operation now because my life is in danger. If I don't do it now I might die and lose my baby too," an anaemic Towfik said from her bed at one of Baghdad's hospitals. This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Fri Dec 29 15:27:07 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:27:07 -0800 Subject: [m2c] =?iso-8859-15?q?CALL_TO_ACTION=3A_January_11th=2C_2007_Internati?= =?iso-8859-15?q?onal_Day_of_Action_to_Shut_Down_Guant=E1namo?= Message-ID: <137701271.20061229142707@shaw.ca> http://www.witnesstorture.org/ CALL TO ACTION: International Day of Action to Shut Down Guant?namo "There is little question of how history will respond to Guant?namo it will be looked back on with condescension and bemusement. How could we be so foolish, misguided, cruel? How we will respond is a legal question and a political question. But it is most of all a moral question. Will we respond with courage or cowardice? This is our choice." - Joseph Margulies, a lawyer challenging the indefinite detention of the prisoners at Guant?namo On January 11th, 2002, twenty hooded and shackled men shuffled off a plane from Afghanistan, arriving at the U.S. prison at Guant?namo. In an attempt to sidestep the Geneva Convention protections for prisoners of war, the Bush administration created a new category of ?enemy combatant? for these men captured in the ?war on terror.? Since that time, more than one thousand men and boys have been imprisoned at Guant?namo. Accounts of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment have been condemned by the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and other reputable bodies. The prisoners have resorted to hunger strikes as a way of protesting their treatment. Many have attempted suicide; three men killed themselves on June 10th 2006. Desperation, fear and frustration mark their confinement. Five years later, not a single prisoner has been charged, tried or convicted of any crime. Many have been released because no evidence has been found against them, but more than 430 men remain in indefinite detention without hope of release. The United States has abandoned law and justice. January 11th, 2007 marks five years of unjust imprisonment, isolation, beatings, interrogation and abuse for these men. We must say: no more. We must say: no longer. For our nation of laws, for our democracy, for our humanity and theirs, we demand small but essential steps to help return our nation to the best of our own traditions. We call on the United States government to: ? Repeal the Military Commissions Act and restore Habeas Corpus. ? Charge and try or release all detainees. ? Withhold funds for the proposed $125 million construction of new military courts at Guant?namo. ? Clearly and unequivocally forbid torture and all other forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, by the military, the CIA, prison guards, civilian contractors, or anyone else. ? Pay reparations to current and former detainees and their families for violations of their human rights. ? Shut down Guant?namo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and all other U.S. prisons overseas, including secret CIA detention facilities. We mark January 11, 2007 as a day of national shame. But we can also mark it as a day of citizen action. How? By acting on behalf of our fellow human beings in Guant?namo, their bereaved families and all victims of the ?war on terrorism.? We declare January 11, 2007 an International Day of Action to Shut Down Guant?namo. In Washington, DC we will march from the Supreme Court to the U.S. Federal Court. At the Supreme Court, Guant?namo Lawyers and others will address the press. Individuals will then proceed to Federal Court, taking on the names and identities of the men in Guant?namo and submitting Habeas petitions on their behalf. With our action and our bodies, we will forge the path that the Center for Constitutional Rights and other legal advocates demand on behalf of their clients. Outside the Federal Court on Constitution Avenue, people will read testimonies and names of prisoners, perform street theater and hand out information. There will be solidarity demonstrations from Amsterdam to Boise, Idaho and a National Call-In Day to Congress. We invite you to come to Washington and participate, either as an individual or as part of an affinity group. If travel is not an option, join or plan an action in your own community. Around the country, groups are planning vigils and actions at courthouses, federal building and public squares. In other countries, the focus will be on U.S. Embassies and military facilities. For a full list of both National and International actions, visit www.witnesstorture.org If you plan on coming to DC, we encourage you to form affinity groups and be in touch with organizers ahead of time for details on the scenario. Contact Matt Daloisio (Daloisio at earthlink.net) or Frida Berrigan (Frida.Berrigan at gmail.com). -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 30 03:48:09 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:48:09 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Can men be the allies of feminism? Message-ID: <41468197.20061230024809@shaw.ca> http://www.hindu.com/mag/2004/08/29/stories/2004082900120100.htm Sunday, Aug 29, 2004 Can men be the allies of feminism? Yes they can, argues NIGHAT GANDHI, because feminism is a philosophy and a movement for ending all forms of oppression, including that which is gender-based. In fact, gender-sensitive men should very much feel a part of this movement, she says. Feminism, in the South Asian context, is partly "an awareness of women's oppression in society". THIS article aims to clear the misconception that feminism is an anti-marriage, anti-family, and anti-men movement imported from the West. Men can also be feminists, because feminism is a philosophy and a movement for ending all forms of oppression, including gender-based oppression. It is not against family and marriage, as much as it is about transforming these institutions to weed out their inherent injustices. Men are not excluded from feminism; in fact, gender-sensitive men should very much feel a part of the feminist movement. K. Bhasin and N.S. Khan have defined feminism in the South Asian context as "an awareness of women's oppression and exploitation in society, at work and within the family, and conscious action by women and men to change this situation". Therefore, a feminist is anyone who embraces this philosophy and espouses a commitment to end gender-based oppression. I would extend this definition to include other interlocking sources of oppression, such as class, caste, ethnicity and religions. These affect men too, but not to the same degree as women. Gender does not just denote the female gender. Men are also gendered beings, and are affected in negative ways through the social construction of masculinity. Not all men are naturally hypermasculine, aggressive, competitive, and emotionally distant. Men should be bothered about ending women's oppression because it might also be a way of ushering in an alternative masculinity, and for blurring gender boundaries. Male and female genders don't need to be diametrically opposed. In a harmonious world, the dissolution of binary genders used to describe men and women may give way to a pluralistic, many-gendered world, where many shades of masculinities and femininities thrive and are accepted. Sounds unnatural, anarchistic? Look at it as a re-definition of what we consider biologically determined or natural. Accepting the world as multi-gendered may make it more stable, peaceful and prosperous than insisting on a rigidly bi-gendered world. It may free men and women from performing their constricted gendered roles that are dualistic, rigidly defined, and ultimately destructive. Feminism challenges the binary construction of gender. It promotes freedom from constraints imposed on men and women by their gendered roles. It is social conditioning, not the biology of being male or female that burdens men as the sole providers of women, and conditions women to be dependent on men. Mere recognition of injustice is not enough to end it. Recognition must be accompanied by action. Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed defines solidarity with the oppressed as an act of love. Speaking to those who have historically been in the role of oppressors, he writes: "Rationalising (their) guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them in a position of dependence, will not do. The oppressor is in solidarity with the oppressed when he stops regarding the oppressed as an abstract category and sees them as persons who have been unjustly dealt with ? when he stops making pious, sentimental and individualistic gestures, and risks an act of love." Acts of love are not passive; they are passionate commitments to change. It is not enough for men to say that they are not personally involved in the oppression of women. This is passivity. Each time a woman is not allowed to reach her full personhood, each time a woman is abused in any way simply because she is a woman ? beaten, burnt alive, raped, maimed, or denied her right to be born ? and well-meaning men turn the other way, they participate in the ongoing oppression of women. For silence is a form of participation. Neglect is participation. And so is indifference. Neither silence, nor indifference, nor neglect are acts of love. The impact on South Asia Silence, neglect, and indifference are indicative of the desire for the status quo to remain unchanged. When men side-line women's oppression as a non-issue, or as a women's issue to be dealt with by women, they are advocating that such oppression should continue, because risking their own involvement in the ending of women's subordination might threaten their present privileged positions. The Mahbub ul Haq Human Development in South Asia (2000) report warns that "Human development, if not engendered, is fatally endangered." What this means is that unless correcting gender inequality is considered an urgent priority, South Asia will continue to be one of the most impoverished, malnourished, illiterate, and gender-insensitive regions of the world. The unchanged subordinate status of women may derail the advancement of South Asian nations. Men as allies What could pro-feminist men do as allies to enhance women's achievement of equity? As allies of the oppressed, pro-feminist men need to become (actively) politically involved. Feminists believe that politically significant change begins in the home. Let's take a fresh look at the gendered division of labour in the home. Housework is work that is unacknowledged as work, since most of it is unpaid work done by women. A pro-feminist man can't expect women to be entirely responsible for housework and childcare. Housework is work that has to be done to keep the family functioning. It is not just women's work. Active solidarity means pro-feminist men participate fully in sharing housework. And promote the idea of doing housework as an ideal among other men. Passive sympathising would be to feel sorry for his overworked partner, or at best, to suggest that she hire a maidservant. Frances Kendall provides a to-do list for allies of the oppressed in an article titled: "How to be an Ally if you are a person with privilege." She outlines simple ways in which allies can self-assess their own privileges and the impact on the lives of those who are denied privileges. An ally questions how his life would have been different if he were not male? How do his male privileges shield him from injustices? How has a lack of the same privileges withheld opportunities for advancement from women? How can he align himself with women's causes? This means breaking his silent allegiance with other men. Kendall insists that it is important to break these pacts of solidarity with one's own group in order to be "most useful to the person or group with whom you are aligning yourself." Pro-feminist male allies may have to speak up in a situation in which women are being overrun by other men, even when they don't stand to benefit directly from such outspokenness; it may mean interrupting a joke that insensitively stereotypes women. Lastly, a male pro-feminist ally knows that he is not doing women a favour. He is clear that he is an ally in the interests of building a more egalitarian world. Let me end with a quote from writer, activist and feminist, Bell Hooks: "When women and men understand that working to eradicate patriarchal domination is a struggle rooted in the longing to make a world where everyone can live fully and freely, then we know our work to be a gesture of love. Let us draw upon that love to heighten our awareness, deepen our compassion, intensify our courage, and strengthen our commitment." It is such committed love that male allies must offer to express solidarity with feminism. Nighat Gandhi is a feminist activist and a writer. E-mail her at nighatm2002 at yahoo.com -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 30 03:48:48 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 02:48:48 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Canada: Action to Boycott Chapters and Indigo Bookstores for Supporting Israeli Apartheid Message-ID: <316298898.20061230024848@shaw.ca> http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6315.shtml Activism News Canada: Action to Boycott Chapters and Indigo Bookstores Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, The Electronic Intifada, 27 December 2006 On Saturday 23 December a picket was organized by activists in Toronto and Montreal to officially launch a boycott campaign against Chapters and Indigo Bookstores. The campaign demands an end to the financial support offered by the majority owners of Chapters and Indigo to Heseg - the Foundation for Lone Soldiers. This is a program of financial support for former 'lone soldiers' in the Israeli military. The Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid, came out to the downtown core of Toronto, and held a mass leafleting and information picket to launch this campaign. More than 80 activists held Palestinian flags and placards calling for a boycott of Chapters and Indigo, 3500 leaflets were distributed, organizers also engaged passersby, many of whom changed their minds about shopping at Chapters and Indigo. To Download/Listen to an Audio Report on the Toronto Picket click HERE. Produced by Mostafa Henaway of CKUT 90.3 FM in Montreal, & CKLN 88.1FM in Toronto For more information about the campaign and to get involved please visit CAIA online or email at endapartheid[at]riseup.net What is the Foundation for Lone Soldiers? Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz, majority owners of Chapters and Indigo bookstores, founded an organisation called Heseg the Foundation for Lone Soldiers. At its peak, it will distribute up to $3M per year to provide scholarships and other support to former 'Lone Soldiers' in the Israeli military. 'Lone Soldiers' are individuals who have no family in Israel but decide to join the Israeli military. As Israeli soldiers, they participate in a military that operates checkpoints that restrict Palestinian freedom of movement, enforces the occupation of Palestinian land, and has a documented history of human rights violations. Many members of the Heseg Board of Directors are high-ranking Israeli military personnel. Board member Lt. Colonel Mike Hartmen joined the IDF as a lone soldier and is now "head of the marksmanship and sharpshooters section of the IDF." Board member Major General (Res.) Doron Almog was Commander of the IDF's Southern Command from 2000-2003. In 2005, a warrant was issued in the UK for his arrest on suspicion of war crimes. Moshe Ronen, Co-Chair of the Canada-Israel Committee, also sits on Heseg's Board of Directors. Heather Reisman and Gerry Schwartz own or control over 68 percent of the shares in Indigo Books and Music Inc. which owns and operates bookstores under the names Indigo, Chapters, World's Biggest Bookstore, SmithBooks, Coles, The Book Company or Indigospirit. Reisman is chair and CEO of Indigo Books and Music Inc. According to HESEG HESEG website, "Canadian couple Gerry Schwartz and Heather Reisman established HESEG to express gratitude and provide support to the thousands of Former Lone Soldiers who serve annually in the Israel Defense Forces". Demand that the controlling owners of Chapters and Indigo publicly announce that they will cut all financial ties to Heseg the Foundation for Lone Soldiers. This campaign is part of an international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against the apartheid state of Israel. What you should do. Download an information leaflet [English and French versions available] from CAIA's website to distribute outside your local Chapters or Indigo store. Tell friends and relatives not to shop at Chapters/Indigo. Encourage them to support independent book retailers! Write/fax/phone a protest to the board of Indigo/Chapters demanding a public renunciation of Reisman and Schwartz's financial support of the Heseg Foundation for Lone Soldiers. Indigo Board of Directors, 500-468 King St W Toronto ON, MSV 1L8 Tel: 416 364 4499; Fax: 416 364 0355 Get in touch and join the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid at endapartheid[at]riseup.net -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sat Dec 30 04:43:27 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2006 03:43:27 -0800 Subject: [m2c] The Weaponized Phallus (and Five Easy-to-Remember Steps) Message-ID: <08461086.20061230034327@shaw.ca> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stan-goff/the-weaponized-phallus-a_b_34616.html By Stan Goff November 21, 2006 The Weaponized Phallus (and Five Easy-to-Remember Steps) Here is a thought exercise. Think of all the euphemisms used to describe the distinctly male external appendage, or eroticized acts from the male point of view, that call to mind conquest, war, or violence. Examples: I'd like to hit that ("hit" as act of aggression, "that" as objectification). He shot his load (gun metaphor). I knocked the bottom out of that pussy (penis as an instrument to wreck a "thing," woman reduced to an instrumental body part). Bob added her to his list of conquests (self-explanatory). He made her ("he" is the subject, she is the object to be taken). Porn advertising uses very warlike metaphors, if anyone is interested in what the market says about what men find popular in the arena of sex-commodified. Now flip the exercise. Think of all the euphemisms to describe war and aggression that are sexualized. Examples: We're going to pop it to the enemy. Our forces will penetrate here. He made that guy his bitch. Abu Ghraib. Anyone who thinks for a moment can come up with her own list. Or just listen to other people, television, the radio... These figures of speech are so common that we have the tendency to overlook, and even repeat them, never stopping to think how these figures of speech devalue women, or how they construct male sexuality as conquest and violence. Anyone who has not seen the Media Education Foundation film Wrestling with Manhood is hereby strongly encouraged to see it, and to use it as a collective teaching tool about how masculinity is constructed as violence, and how immensely popular is its misogynistic core. It shows the frothing audiences as theatrical wrestling events cheer at macho posturing, which included the feminization of enemies, at the brutality of the "fights," but with the most disturbingly enthusiasm, at the staged and real abuse of women during these intensely popular public "entertainment" events. Here is the problem I am having with the weaponized phallus, a problem of a more limited scale than men's deeply enculturated hatred of all things female, especially the female body (which they see as a thing to be conquered, defiled, humiliated... taken). It's that fact that so-called "progressive" men (people really should look up the sordid history of that modifier), those who claim to stand for justice and against domination and exploitation, engage in the self-same, woman-hating, weaponized-phallus trash-talk as right-wing men. And here is a small step I am proposing to left-wing men. Stop that. Stop it right now, and never do it again. Here is a short list, with explanation, that I'd like you to stop: (1) Stop using gendered language thoughtlessly. There is a politics to language, and it is not just being "PC." That term was invented by right-wingers to fight back against things like women's studies, African American studies, and other non-white, non-male, non-imperial challenges to a racist, Eurocentric, and patriarchal canon. When you use male nouns and pronouns to describe human, you are reinforcing the idea and practice that makes male the norm. Calling the species homo sapien "Man" is a problem. Calling land and ships and other things "she" and "her," that men are seen to control, is a problem... because it assigns the controlling role to males. Saying that "it is colder than a witch's tit" is a sexist turn of phrase. Using the term "balls" to describe courage, and making courage a male characteristic, is a problem. Calling people who lack courage or strength "pussies" is a devaluation, as well as objectification, of women. (2) Stop saying things that are homophobic, and stop tolerating homophobia. Homophobia, as Suzanne Pharr once pointed out, is a weapon of patriarchy. When you make jokes about prison rape, that is homophobic, as well as buying into a notion of rape as legitimate tool for social control, and masculinity constructed as sexual revenge. The ideological basis for men's control over women is what Adrienne Rich called "compulsory heterosexuality." Policing people based on the masculine-feminine binary is policing a binary of domination and subjugation. (3) Stop saying clueless shit about sex that makes sex an unmitigated good (in reaction to the theocratic right's squeamishness about sex). It might sound liberated if you are still trying to shock you aging parents, but it erases women's experience of sex as often obligatory, manipulative, humiliating, and even frightening -- one of the practices in a system where they are on the wrong end of social power. A recent article by Joe Garifoli in the San Francisco Chronicle, called "Anti-war couple conceive new way to generate peace," is a perfect example. Living on their houseboat off the Marin County coast, anti-war activists Donna Sheehan and her partner, Paul Reffel, concocted a way for the world to communally create a lot of peaceful vibes. They want everyone to have an orgasm on the same day. They go on to say, "If you're experiencing pleasure, you're not engaging in aggressive, destructive behavior." Really? Does that mean, asks my friend De, that the rape of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim, in which three men apparently had their peacemaking orgasms, contributed to world peace? Don't say dumb shit like this. It betrays your own cocooned privilege, and not just become some Haitian peasant woman might be more worried about the food that's not in her belly than her daily orgasm, but because sex has been experienced as violence by millions of women... imposed by men who took physical pleasure from their violence. (4) Stop reinforcing the devaluation of women by measuring them by some media-concocted version of what they are supposed to look like. This is a tough one, because we het-men (and even gay men) have been trained very early and very thoroughly to cast the pornographic gaze on women first... judging her "fuckability" (think about that term before we inquire about anything else). This is a form of oppression, and until we make an intentional effort to stop that, everything we say about relieving oppression is hypocrisy. If we say we are for justice, and we say we are against oppression, and we judge women this way, we are frauds... and we deserve to have no one listen to us, ever. (5) Stop thinking it is okay to attack the "enemy's women" based on their gender. When you make a sexual remark to put down Anne Coulter or Condi Rice, or crack on them about their appearance, you are attacking them based on their status as women... which implicitly attacks all women. That shit is not cool. It doesn't make you a more effective progressive (or whatever). It makes you an oh-too-typical male misogynist. You are still engaging in sexualized revenge. This just scratches the surface, but I don't want to overwhelm anyone. If you want to add one more step, start calling others out when they do this stuff, too. Time to de-weaponize the phallus; let it revert to the humble pollination device it was designed to be. You'd be surprised at the implications. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 31 05:05:49 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 04:05:49 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Children in New Delhi victims of rapist killers Message-ID: <1771228464.20061231040549@shaw.ca> http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5577F921-41EB-46B9-AFC8-9162C3FB9260.htm UPDATED ON: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2006 14:49 MECCA TIME, 11:49 GMT Delhi unearths more skeletons Relatives of missing children watch as more skeletons are recovered from a ditch [AFP] Two suspected serial killers arrested near New Delhi may have murdered at least 15 children, based on skeletal remains found, the Indian police have said. "Fifteen skulls have been recovered," police official R K S Rathore said on Saturday. "But the search is still going on." The murders, which came to light on Friday in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi and a hub for global software giants, were front-page news in Indian newspapers. As many as 40 children have disappeared in the area over the past two years, media reports said. Paedophile Rathore told reporters that a domestic helper charged with rape, murder and concealment appeared to be a "mentally ill" man who confessed to police he had lured and killed six children with sweets and toys. "He says he kidnapped the children for sex," Rathore said. The servant's businessman employer ,who sells earth-moving equipment, was also later arrested in connection with the discovery. The employer was also charged with rape, murder and concealment, Rathore said. News reports said the victims, the children of labourers living in shanty clusters near the house where the arrested men lived, had been sexually abused. Ten of the 15 victims so far discovered had been identified by their parents, the police official said. The victims were aged between six and 12. As news of the discovery of the children's remains spread, hundreds of relatives gathered outside the building, some waving photographs of their missing sons and daughters. -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/ From sandinista at shaw.ca Sun Dec 31 05:30:32 2006 From: sandinista at shaw.ca (usman x) Date: Sun, 31 Dec 2006 04:30:32 -0800 Subject: [m2c] Manila bows to US over rapist's custody Message-ID: <462398924.20061231043032@shaw.ca> http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F8A6E51E-98B3-48CB-9F5C-EDBDB5FE042B.htm UPDATED ON: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 30, 2006 12:03 MECCA TIME, 9:03 GMT Philippines hands over US rapist Protesters shouted anti-US slogans outisde the US embassy in Manila after the transfer [AFP] The Philippines has yielded to pressure from Washington over custody of a US marine who raped a Filipina, transferring him to the American embassy in Manila. Officials and the US embassy spokesman said Lance-Corporal Daniel Smith was taken from a jail in the capital late on Friday. The 21-one-year-old was sent to a jail in Manila by a local court on Decemeber 4, a move that has strained relations with Washington. Washington said last week that it was cancelling military exercises with the Philippines next year because of the issue. Matthew Lussenhop, a US embassy spokesman, told GMA 7 television: "Lance-Corporal Smith is now in US military custody and he will remain so until the completion of the judicial proceedings." He said it was too early to speculate on the prospects of holding military exercises next year, given Smith's transfer. Under the terms of a visiting forces agreement, the marine should remain in US custody during the appeal. Military ties Manila is reliant on US military aid and advice to help fight Muslim insurgents and has up to 300 advisers working with local troops to help them capture activists in the south. The yearly exercises are the centrepiece of a close security alliance and usually involve up to 5,000 US soldiers and about 3,000 Filipino troops over a two-week period. Smith, who took part in the exercises last year, was found guilty of raping a 23-year-old management accounting graduate in a van in a former US navy base while on shore leave. Three other US marines were acquitted of rape this month. Opposed transfer Lawyer Evalyn Ursua, counsel of the rape victim, expressed surprise at the transfer. Ursua told dzRH radio that the victim's legal team planned to file charges against those behind the transfer, and an impeachment suit against Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippine president, who she said was the only official who could authorise the transfer. Ursa said: "This is tantamount to rape of the law and of the Philippine constitution. "They spirited Smith in the dead of night, commando-style. The guard was not asleep, the guard helped in the escape, and this had the blessings of the president." The rape victim also criticised the government for the transfer. Using the name Nicole, she told local radio: "This government cannot protect its own citizens. At least the US government can protect its own criminals." About 50 members of women's groups burnt a US flag in front of the American embassy in Manila on Saturday in protest. ------------------------ http://www.gabnet.org/campaigns/statements/2006/gab06162006.html from GABRIELA Philippines NEWS RELEASE 16 June 2006 Reference: Joms Salvador, GABRIELA-Youth National Chairperson (09193158444) GABRIELA Public Information Department (3712302) Militant women express support for Nicole GABRIELA upholds political implications of the Subic rape case For the militant women of GABRIELA, the Subic rape case has always been and will always be a political issue. "The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), no matter how they paint it, will remain a glaring testimony of US military aggression and intervention leading to the rape of our nation and our women, endlessly challenging Philippine sovereignty," Joms Salvador, GABRIELA-Youth National Chairperson said in reaction to statements that the Subic rape incident is not a political issue, during the group's picket-protest today in front of the Makati Regional Trial Court in time for the Subic rape hearing. For one, Salvador cited the statement of Fr. James Reuter that GABRIELA has monitored, claiming that `feminist organizations' have turned the case into a political issue. "The good father should ask himself why these unwanted, foreign soldiers were in Philippine territory in the first place. If he should know, they were here because the Philippine government sanctioned the US troops' presence and intervention in our political affairs through the VFA." GABRIELA stands by its statement that the Subic rape case is without a doubt a political issue. The political repercussions of the case are very evident. "If this is not a political issue, then why is the US government using the VFA to protect its soldiers? Even the Philippine government is making statements in favor of the rapists. And why are the rape suspects not behind bars while the trial is ongoing? If not for the VFA, the soldiers would be in jail right now." Salvador pointed out that GMA has really learned to cuddle erring military, Filipinos and US troops alike. "Thus, justice remains elusive under the GMA regime. The US soldier-rapists will never be behind bars while the case is being tried in the Philippine court. GMA will never dare to challenge US government's interests while her legitimacy as president is being questioned, her popularity the lowest in history--again, for her self-serving interests." Nonetheless, Salvador reiterated GABRIELA's demand to jail the rapists. Salvador also called attention to the fact that many Filipino women are supporting Nicole in her struggle for justice. "Many Filipinos have already realized the political connections and consequences of the case. Obviously, the statement that the Subic rape case is not a political issue only hopes to douse the fire that has enraged Filipinos, who continue to express sympathy and support to Nicole and her family." Salvador assured Nicole that GABRIELA would not let her endure this trial alone. She vowed that more and more militant women are building up support for her and her family. "The growing mass movement demanding justice for Nicole and justice for the Philippine sovereignty proves that the Filipino people will not rest until justice is served," Salvador concluded. ### --------------------- http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/12/29/18342061.php Press Release December 29, 2006 AJLPP-USA Condemns Puppet Philippine Government Order to Return Convicted Rapist Smith to the custody of US embassy Los Angeles ? The Alliance for A just and Lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP) -USA condemn in the strongest term the puppet Philippine government order that transferred convicted American serviceman Lance Corporal Daniel Smith to the custody of the US embassy . AJLPP coordinator Mario Santos said: ?Arroyo?s action proved that the Philippine government?s brazen puppetry ( papet na makapal ang mukha)and lackyism (pagpapakatuta) knows no bounds. She (GMA) does not only order the killing of Filipinos but also allows the rape of Filipinas and the violation of its own laws and its constitution. Arroyo should stop imploring ?law and order? because she cannot even follow the laws of her country. Much more, she should renounce her citizenship and be an ugly American that she is.? AJLPP confirmed the news through Gabnet-USA and by Manila news sources and by the announcement of US Embassy that confirmed that Smith was moved out of the Makati City Jail to the embassy at about 11 p.m. AJLPP strongly agree with private prosecutor lawyer for Subic rape victim Nicole, that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was responsible for the order and could be impeached for allowing this ?violation of our sovereignty? and ?clear foreign intervention.? Atty. Evalyn Ursua said: ? I am sure without her order, this transfer will not be possible," she said. AJLPP also agree that criminal cases should be filed against Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romula, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez and all those responsible for Smith?s transfer. Asked what was the basis for Smith?s release despite his conviction, Lussenhop mockingly and simply said: ?By the order of the Philippine government.? It is worthwhile mentioning that Arroyo gave the order at the same day on December 30 that she made a promise not to run for president on Rizal Day in Baguio City. It is but an irony that she decided to free Smith to the custody of the Americans like ordering Dr. Jose Rizal to be shot again on the same day! What a willing puppet, what a shameless lackey! AJLPP-USA -- "Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten." Cree Prophecy http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/margins-to-centre www.electronicintifada.net http://noii-van.resist.ca/