Esmael Mangudadatu, vice mayor of Buluan town, was challenging Andal Ampatuan, Jr., son of the incumbent Maguindanao governor Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., in the upcoming Maguindanao gubernatorial election. On the morning of November 23rd, Mangudadatu invited over 30 journalists to cover the scheduled filing of his certificate of candidacy (COC) at the Commission on Elections provincial office in Shariff Aguak. He had been receiving threats that he would be killed and he hoped the presence of journalists would deter the attackers.
A convoy was dispatched to Shariff Aguak to file the COC, with mainly women and reporters on the assumption that they would not be attacked, but they were ambushed on the way. The ensuing massacre left 57 dead including 29 reporters. The women were raped and mutilated.
The lead suspect, Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., is a member of the Ampatuan warlord clan, who helped get President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo elected in 2004. This massacre has raised questions from Arroyo’s critics demanding to know how such a massacre could occur in broad daylight on a road that is supposed to be patrolled by soldiers and police.
The government has come under fire from the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) for an “overly cautious response” to the massacre of 57 people in Maguindanao as it attempted to reassert its authority over feuding warlords.
CHR Chair Leila de Lima found the arrest of the principal suspect, Mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr. of Datu Unsay town, came “rather slowly”—three days after the massacre—amid mounting evidence that he was the mastermind and that he participated in the slaughter and signs that the government was coddling other members of the Ampatuan clan.
The Ampatuan family, a political ally of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has clamped tight control on the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) since 2001.
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution by David F. Prindle.
Prometheus, Amherst, NY, 2009. 249 pp. $26.98, £22.50. ISBN 9781591027188.
by Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis
The reviewer is at at the Department of Biology and the Department of History, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. Science 6 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5954, pp. 800 – 801 DOI: 10.1126/science.1179955
Stephen Jay Gould and the Politics of Evolution arrives just in time. Just when it looked like the “ultra-Darwinists” were winning the “year of Darwin” with their interminable love-fests, triumphalist narratives, and self-serving revisionist histories; when we were starting to think that Darwin was the only evolutionist to have lived in the past 150 years; and when we might conclude that nearly the entire evolutionary community had drunk the Kool-Aid of antiquarian Darwinism, David Prindle’s book appears to give us pause. It reminds us of the late paleontologist, the heady days of late 20th-century evolutionary science, and all the political underpinnings of evolutionary biology that Gould was so fond of revealing. No fan of simplistic, reductionistic, ahistorical, or apolitical views of scientific knowledge, Gould offered a distinctly self-critical view of science, one that would likely challenge much of the ultra-orthodoxy passing as reflective history and science written expressly for the year of Darwin.
Unsafe abortions kill 70,000 a year, harm millions
Tue Oct 13 17:29:13 UTC 2009
By Kate Kelland
LONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) – Increased use of contraceptives has pushed global abortion rates down, but unsafe abortions kill 70,000 women each year and seriously harm or maim millions more, a global report said on Tuesday.
Despite easier access to abortion with restrictions being relaxed in many countries, the number of abortions fell from an estimated 45.5 million in 1995 to 41.6 million in 2003, the report by the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute said.
But the study found a stubbornly high number — almost 20 million — of unsafe abortions, mostly in poorer countries and often carried out by the women themselves using inappropriate drugs or herbal potions, or by untrained traditional healers.
“It is significant and tragic that while the overall rate of abortion is on the decline, unsafe abortion has not declined,” said Sharon Camp, president of the Guttmacher Institute, a think-tank which studies sexual and reproductive health.
“Legal restrictions do not stop abortion from happening, they just make the procedure dangerous. Too many women are maimed or killed each year because they lack legal abortion access,” she told a news conference in London.
Updates on the jailing of people’s laywer Lynne Stewart.
LYNNE’S BAIL REVOKED
Lynne’s bail has been revoked, and she is now being held in jail after the Second Circuit ruled on her and the government’s appeals on Tuesday, November 17, 2009.
DECEMBER 2 Court date – Pack the Court!
At 10:30am United States Courthouse; 500 Pearl St; Courtroom: 12B; New York, NY 10007-1312
Suzy Subways suggested posting the following piece (which originally appeared on Toward Freedom. (Nov. 25, 2009)
Purpose in the Struggle:
A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back
by Dana Barnett
Reviewed: Arm the Spirit: A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back, by Diana Block. Published by AK Press, 2009.
“We had gone underground in the early eighties, not a high-tide period for revolutionary activity in the US. Unlike the people who had formed the Weather Underground Organization in the sixties, we were not swept into clandestinity as a response to the Vietnam War or the militancy of the Black Panthers…As we saw it, armed struggle was still a necessary component of every revolutionary movement, and the movement within the US was no exception.”
Diana Block
“The following short analysis/explanation for the rise in economic (and other) inequality in the US is thoughtful and deserving of your attention. My personal view, for what little it is worth, is that all three of these factors (technological advances, globalization and policies designed to contain the influence of workers) have worked together to create the current situation. What to do about it is another question, but there are ways in which all can be attenuated. The author focuses mainly on the latter factor, and makes a colorable case.”
Inequality as Policy The United States Since 1979
by John Schmitt
Introduction
Since the end of the 1970s, the United States has seen a dramatic increase in economic inequality. While the United States has long been among the most unequal of the world’s rich economies, the economic and social upheaval that began in the 1970s was a striking departure from the movement toward greater equality that began in the Great Depression, continued through World War II, and was a central feature of the first 30 years of the postwar period. Despite the magnitude of the rise in inequality, the political discourse in the United States refers only obliquely to these developments. The public debate generally acknowledges neither the scale of the increase in inequality nor, except in the most superficial way, the causes of this sudden and sustained turn of events.
This short essay seeks to provide an alternative view of the postwar period in the United States, particularly of the last three decades. My argument is that the high and rising inequality in the United States is the direct result of a set of policies designed first and foremost to increase inequality. These policies, in turn, have their roots in a significant shift in political power against workers and in favor of their employers, a shift that began in the 1970s and continues through today.
For young blacks, race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens.
Blacks hit hard by economy’s punch
34.5 percent of young African American men are unemployed
By V. Dion Haynes
These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped up in his mother’s one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.
Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland. Read the rest of this entry »
This was posted 10/24/09 to the New York University Gender Studies mailing list and originally appeared on Monthly REview.Thanks to Eddy Laing for pointing it out.
Out Of Place. Silencing Voices on Queerness/Raciality
‘Out of Place: Interrogating Silences in Queerness/Raciality’ (Raw Nerve Books) came out in July 2008. The book presents an unprecedented compilation of critical articles by scholars and activists, which address the manifold ways in which questions regarding ‘race’ and racism are silenced in queer politics and theory. ‘Out of Place’ was very well received. It found a wide readership and the first edition sold out in a bit over a year. Now for the bad news: The book is no longer available. Raw Nerve Books, a small independent feminist publisher, decided not to produce a second edition.
While the book has received a lot of positive interest, it is also controversial and challenging. Indeed many new ideas that challenge prevailing ways of thinking and enacting power relations are not welcomed by everyone when they are first voiced. One chapter in particular ignited controversy, leading to a public apology by the publisher, who in the same breath declared the volume out of print.
With the current healthcare “debate” in Washington dominated by the interests of insurance companies and drug companies, and the voices of politicians who serve them, it’s been apparent for some time that whatever the legislative result, little will change in the grotesque American system. What we may not realize is that in countries which may have a more adequate system than that in the US, there are widespread moves to cut it back.
The latest issue of the Socialist Register (the 2010 volume of this annual publication) is titled Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, edited by Leo Panitch and Colin Leys. Following is an interview with Colin Leys, conducted by Greg Albo of Socialist Project, which appeared in The Bullet.
Morbid Symptoms: Current Healthcare Struggles
by Colin Leys
SP: Colin, the latest Socialist Register, Morbid Symptoms: Health Under Capitalism, is gaining great accolades from health activists and practitioners, and from sections of the Left that have not traditionally been focussed on health. How did you and Leo come to focus on this issue as important for a Register audience? And how does it fit within your personal evolution as a Left intellectual in terms of your long-standing concerns with states and development in the ‘third world,’ especially Africa, on the one hand and states and parties in the advanced capitalist world, especially Britain, on the other?
CL: Given the crucial importance of health in people’s lives it struck us that there was a major lack of critical left thinking about it – about how neoliberalism was undermining the health gains of the postwar years, about what was happening to healthcare as a field of employment, and above all how healthcare was becoming a massive new field of capital accumulation, with dire implications for population health – and for democracy – everywhere. The best contribution the Register could make, we felt, was to help develop a historical materialist analysis of health under capitalism. Read the rest of this entry »
Foreclosures mark pace of enduring U.S. housing crisis
Thu Oct 08 15:18:09 UTC 2009
By Tom Brown
MIAMI (Reuters) – Every 13 seconds in America, there is another foreclosure filing.
That’s the rhythm of a crisis that threatens to choke off hopes for a recovery in the U.S. housing market as it destroys hundreds of billions of dollars in property values a year.
There are more than 6,600 home foreclosure filings per day, according to the Center for Responsible Lending, a nonpartisan watchdog group based in Durham, North Carolina. With nearly two million already this year, the flood of foreclosures shows no sign of abating any time soon.
If anything, the country’s worst housing downturn since record-keeping began in the late 19th century may only get worse since foreclosures, which started with subprime borrowers, have now moved on to the much bigger prime loan market on the back of mounting unemployment.
In congressional testimony last month Michael Barr, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, said more than 6 million families could face foreclosure over the next three years.
RDF India: “Resist the Indian government’s war on the people! Stand by the struggling masses fighting for their land, life and livelihood!”
16 November 2009. A World to Win News Service. Following is a statement by the Revolutionary Democratic Front of India (rfindia.gmail. com).
The former U.S. President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror” on the pretext of 9/11, and attacked Iraq and then Afghanistan so that U.S. imperialism could capture oil, gas and other natural resources in these foreign countries. The prime minister of India too made an open declaration of “war against terrorism” after 26/11. P. Chidambaram [The Home Minister in charge of "Operation Green Hunt"] too recently announced the government’s decision to go on a military offensive adhering to the dictates of the U.S. This time the offensive was aimed at the people of this country, those who are among the most deprived and exploited. This is just to facilitate the handing over of the country’s natural resources to the plunder and loot of foreign corporations, even though purported aim is to re-establish the sovereign rule of the Indian state in Maoist-influenced regions.
The following presentation was given at the Rethinking Marxism conference. It is detailed and nuanced — but on hearing it delivered by Barbara Foley there was also a very sharp and even emotional impact. It lays bare the fact that Obama’s politics and purpose are the opposite of the hidden socialism he is accused of. It shows the construction of a careful political ideology and persona – familiar (in many way) with active radicals, but deeply different and systematically disdainful. And, in many places, like when the piece discusses Obama’s approach to the Suharto massacre in Indonesia, you get a sharp sense of the unrepentant imperialism that underlies his overt anticommunism.
Six months ago, I wrote this piece after traveling through high passes and forests. Now we are returning as the snow starts to fall there. The rest of our moderator team will maintain the site, as we go welcome in December with the wolves.
Some of my projects for Kasama will be on hold. For the coming week, write to the kasamasite email rather than my personal address. Send suggestions about posts, videos and any alerts about site problems. Also, we will be using Kasama Threads more to discuss this site and its progress.
Talk to you a little later — about ten days later.
By Mike Ely
We were staying in a green flat valley in the northern Rockies. A steep snow-covered ridge of mountain started to rise abruptly just a short walk from the house. At about 2 am in the morning there was a knock on the door. “Come outside. Hear this.”
We stepped out onto the wide porch, into a slight chill, and listened — looking up at that wall of mountain in black silhouette against the stars.
We waited, and there it was.
A wolf howled loud, and held its note. And then, far to the right on a different part of mountain, came a reply, mournful, searching. And then another. Over and over they howled in longing.
A wolf pack must have gotten separated during their nighttime adventures. They were seeking each other out. Howling, and moving closer to connect, in the dense woods above the valley.
The rightwing is using a secret Christian code that means “Kill the President!’ And are circulating it on bumper stickers, t-shirts, and poster at their teabagger rallies.
The vicious and barely hidden racism of this campaign, complete with the casual dehumanization of a Black figure and his family is hideous, and all the more hideous because it has a fervent mass character in some parts of the country.
[the following is drawn from a report on the Gawker, but the sightings are everywhere.]
Posters to various message boards tell stories of seeing bumper stickers with the message “Pray for Obama—Psalm 109:8″ on the highway, only to look up the verse and find,
“Let his days be few;
and let another take his office.”
“Sri Lanka solution” threatened for Maoist-led uprising in India – Excerpts from Arundhati Roy
16 November 2009. A World to Win News Service. The Indian government is preparing “Operation Green Hunt”, a counter-insurgency operation on an unprecedented scale. As many as a hundred thousand soldiers and other security forces are to be sent into the forested hills of eastern and central India to crush the rebellion of adivasi (tribal peoples) led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). This is no short-term incursion: the authorities have announced that they plan to station massive numbers of troops in the tribal areas for years to come.
Several commentators have warned of the danger that the Indian government plans to seek a “Sri Lanka solution”, modelled on the recent protracted government offensive there. Massive ground forces and air assaults were used to defeat the Tamil Tigers, and then hundreds of thousands of the region’s civilian population were imprisoned in detention camps, where most still languish. Now what may be permanent military bases are being built in the Tamil heartland. The Indian government no doubt noted the implicit U.S. approval for that operation. At the U.S ‘s behest, the IMF granted the Sri Lankan government a huge financial package almost immediately after the massacre.
Following are excerpts from an article by Indian writer and activist Arundhati Roy that appeared in the October 31 issue of the Sri Lanka Guardian (srilankaguardian. org). The full article online gives much more detail for her arguments and a more all-around representation of her views. The November 2009 issue of People’s March (peoplesmarch. googlepages. com, or bannedthought. net) has two recent statements by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and other material on this offensive.
The low, flat-topped hills of south Orissa have been home to the Dongria Kondh [one of several tribal peoples in the region] long before there was a country called India or a state called Orissa. The hills watched over the Kondh. The Kondh watched over the hills and worshipped them as living deities. Now these hills have been sold for the bauxite they contain…
Kasama received the following report from Troubadore:
Approximately 1,500 students, faculty, an supporters held a rally and marched today at UC Berkeley to protest budget cuts increasing tuition, and reduced faculty. The rally formed at Sproul early morning, the main plaza where Mario Savio stood up during the Free Speech Movement. C
ontingents of students blocked main entrances to the university calling for people not to enter. One protester was confronted by university police to attempt to break the strike line, but the line held mostly steady.
Faculty, students, and free speech movement veterans spoke in the plaza, mostly on budget cuts, although one speaker made clear there is wealth in the US, but not in the hands of students.
Another speaker spoke of the need of an internationalist outlook.
Later the protest took the form a march to Berkeley High calling for students to join in, but Berkeley High security prevented students from joining in, the protest marched on to a junior college that was occupied for a while. Protests are scheduled to resume tomorrow.
The radical lawyer Lynne Stewart has been ordered to prepare herself to surrender and enter prison — after a federal appeals panel upheld her conviction (stemming from her 2005 legal representation of an imprisoned Egyptian cleric who was on trial for terrorism.)
A persecution of a people’s lawyer, that was started by the fascist John Ashcroft, is now coming to the prison gates under the Obama administration. Lynne Stewart will be the first new revolutionary political prisoner shoved behind bars in this new Obama era — and it stands as a sharp warning of how little has changed.
A simple chilling question demands our attention and outrage: What happens if the defense lawyers themselves face prison for representing government-targeted clients?
Lynne said this ruling amounted to a threat against any lawyers planning to provide legal defense to tortured U.S. captives now housed at Guantanamo Bay. It is a warning to lawyers in such cases to act a extensions of the government apparatus, not actual defenders and potential whistle blowers.
Lynne faces the current 28 month sentence, but (even more disturbing) the ailing 70 year old Stewart may face a life term in prison, since the panel sent the case back to the trial judge to determine whether she should be given an even longer sentence. The prosecutors had sought 30 years. The following report appeared in the New York Times (Nov. 18, 2009).
Interview of Lynne Stewart by Clark Kissinger describing her initial prosecution (audio). You can hear from this discussion how almost-inconceivable it was then that the state might actually imprison her for these outrageous charges.
Conviction of Sheik’s Lawyer for Assisting Terrorism Is Upheld
A federal appeals court panel in Manhattan on Tuesday upheld the conviction of Lynne F. Stewart, the outspoken defense lawyer who was found guilty in 2005 of assisting terrorism by smuggling information from an imprisoned client to his violent followers in Egypt.
The three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit also ordered the trial judge to revoke Ms. Stewart’s bond, and said that she must begin serving her 28-month sentence.The panel also sent the case back to the trial judge, John G. Koeltl of Federal District Court, to determine whether she deserved a longer sentence in light of the seriousness of her conduct and the possibility she had lied at trial. Prosecutors had sought a term of 30 years.“I’m too old to cry, but it hurts too much not to,” Ms. Stewart said at a late-afternoon news conference where she appeared with her books and medication, saying that she still hoped to be able to go home that evening. Ms. Stewart, 70, was being treated for breast cancer at the time of her sentencing in 2006.
Green-Red wrote as introduction for this posting on the November 4 actions in Iran:
“‘Scenes of Class Struggles in Tehran and…’ was the title the Red Neda comrades had chosen for the report of this demonstration. Here is the text of the report and, i hope, many other people hope as well, that it was a good lesson and productive experience for the people, as an introductory session to the December 7 demonstration which is the real historic students’ day, that its origin goes back to the Shah’s time during a visit of Richard Nixon’s to Iran… [when] the Shah’s regime guards and soldiers fired into the crowd of students and three activist students, Shariat Razavi, Ghandchi and Bozorghnia died. Ever since then, this date is the hottest day of student movement’s legacy.
Scenes of Class Struggle in Tehran and …
Report of the November 4th Demonstrations in Iran (originally published Saturday, November 14, 2009)
Although, The Telecommunication Bureau had blocked the secure communication protocols such as VPN and HTTPS, tens or maybe hundreds of written, video and graphical reports of Nov. 4th demonstrations were sent online, even before we had a chance to establish a secure connection. Fortunately, this is an indication of the Islamic republic regime’s utter defeat in their attempts to censor the reports of the people’s struggles. The rise in numbers of reports, from one action to another, blocks the regime and the liberal analysts’ attempts to abuse and misrepresent the nature of the peoples’ struggle to the internal and international public.
