August 4, 2008 - Some News, Views, and Info

Fighting For Union Rights and Clean Air: Truck drivers and community groups unite in Oakland, California to demand better working conditions and environmental protection (Socialist Worker) July 24, 2008

Sexual Assault In Military: A congresswoman said Thursday that her "jaw dropped" when military doctors told her that four in 10 women at a veterans hospital reported being sexually assaulted while in the military. A government report indicates that the numbers could be even higher. (CNN) July 31, 2008

Sexual Assault in the Military: A DoD Cover-Up? Sexual violence against both female and male military personnel must stop. (ZNet) August 4, 2008

River Diversion Plans For Whose Benefit in Thailand? Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s plans to divert water from rivers in neighbouring Laos to help feed agricultural production faces stiff opposition from those who argue the projects could threaten the environment and local people’s lives. (Inter Press Service) August 4, 2008

Stinging Tentacles Offer Hint of Oceans' Decline: The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, like tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows. (International Herald Tribune) August 2, 2008

Why For Profit Water Companies Are Behind A Bottled Water Backlash: In the UK, private water delivery companies see bottled water as a direct competitor for their product, tap water. The next time we hear of a new tap water campaign coming out of the UK, let's cheer for the profile the issue is getting, but we need to be wary that such a campaign is driven by a for profit water services company whose aim is to promote its brand of privatized water. (Alternet) July 31, 2008

The Fists Still Hold Power: The image lasted for only as long as it took to play the national anthem -- yet it still resonates four decades later. Black American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos, winners of the gold and bronze medals, respectively, in the 200-meter race bow their heads and raise their black-gloved fists to protest racism during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. (Los Angeles Times) August 3, 2008

Dave Zirin on Why Jonah Goldberg Fears the Fist: Jonah Goldberg’s regular column in the LA Times is usually an awkward grab bag of right wing talking points backed by knowledge of history that would shame a poodle, although a poodle would never be so pompous. Goldberg stepped on to Zirin's beat this past week with a column about the 1968 Olympic protesters, Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Goldberg's piece was such a cheap, dishonest scribble, Zirin feel compelled to respond. (Dissident Voice) August 2, 2008

Schwarzenegger Imposes Minimum Wage On California State Workers & Cuts 22,000 Jobs (Workers Independent News) August 1, 2008

May 19, 2008 - Some News, Views, and Info

Plans For New Coal Plants Under Fire In UK: Protesters are to launch one of the hardest-hitting environmental campaigns for more than a decade over plans to build a new generation of coal-fired power stations in the UK. (London Observer) May 18, 2008

I Give Up, Says Brazilian Minister Who Fought To Save The Rainforest: In a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ms Silva said that her efforts to protect the rainforest acknowledged as the "lungs of the planet" were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies. (The Independent UK) May 15, 2008

The Emergence of Real Trade Unionism in Wal-Mart Stores in China (China Labor News Translations) May 4, 2008

Comments on the Strike Movement in Egypt (International Socialist Review) May-June 2008

Women - The Guardians of Potato Biodiversity in Peru (Inter Press Service) May 16, 2008

Iraq Veterans Describe Atrocities to US Lawmakers (OneWorld.net) May 17, 2008

Santa Ana, California Labor Rally: HEY, ARNOLD! NO BUDGET CUTS! (Los Angeles Indymedia) May 15, 2008

May 13, 2008 - News, Views, & Info

Perceived as “Dykes, Whores, Bitches”: 1 in 3 US Military Women Experience Sexual Abuse (The WIP) May 7, 2008

Bolivia: Fraud, Violence and Mass Resistance Marks Right-Wing Push (Bolivia Rising) May 11, 2008

Food Crisis (Part One): The Greatest Demonstration of the Historical Failure of the Capitalist Model (Socialist Voice) April 28, 2008

FOOD CRISIS (Part Two): Capitalism, Agribusiness, and the Food Sovereignty Alternative (Socialist Voice) May 11, 2008

Exposing 'Juan Crow' in the state of Georgia: the matrix of laws, social customs, economic institutions and symbolic systems enabling the physical and psychic isolation needed to control and exploit undocumented immigrants. (The Nation) May 8, 2008

Antiwar Marine's Mother Elaine Brower Reports From March's Winter Soldier
(Against the Current) May/June 2008

A Report on Winter Soldier 2008 (Against the Current) May/June 2008

Amazon's Future in Delicate Balance. 75% of Deforestation in Amazon is to Create Cattle Pasture (BBC News) May 12, 2008

LA’s Homeless Women Still Struggling

Uprising Radio, March 28, 2008

GUEST: Deborah Burton, Fabiola Sandoval, Community Organizers with the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition
Since 2001, the Downtown Women’s Action Coalition has organized annual community-based research projects aimed at assessing the needs of homeless and low-income women in downtown LA. “Growing Needs and Shrinking Opportunities,” is the latest annual report surveying nearly 200 women. The DWAC has found through its research, dire housing problems, domestic and sexual assault, and failing health statistics for women living in the Skid Row/Central City East community in 2007. Of those surveyed, 62% had been homeless for at least one year while over half reported physical health problems last year. A clear majority of women reported a need for community resources. But because of the lack of such resources, nearly 40% of women reported being solicited for sexual favors in exchange for housing, protection and money.

Continue listening to 'LA’s Homeless Women Still Struggling'. . .

Women Close Down L.A. Street in March 8th Commemoration

Los Angeles Indymedia, March 11, 2008

Saturday morning, March 8th, saw police barricades going up at and traffic diverted from Olympic & Broadway Streets as hundreds of women marched in the first International Women's Day mass action in Los Angeles since 1994. Scores of students from the University of Southern California, Cal State Long Beach, Long Beach Community College, University of California Los Angeles, East Los Angeles College, Cal State Los Angeles and from the Fremont, Jordan, Belmont high schools and El Sereno Middle School joined the march against the war. "We're here to let people know that we are with women all around the world who think that the war is unjust and a waste of our government's money," said USC Social Work student Kathryn Cronin.
Led by the Mariposa Alliance/GABNet, the historic gathering created a buzz in the world of the U.S. women's movement, which had tended to take March 8th for granted. Ma-Al/GABNet called for the return of International Women's Day to its historic and political context, and to use 8th March as a statement against US-led imperialist wars, notably in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Philippines.
'This was such a large call for us,' said Dr. Annalisa Enrile, GABNet National Chair and lead convener of the Mariposa Alliance. 'For nearly two decades, we were mobilizing on strictly Philippine or Philippine-American issues. It was a kind of stepping out for us, I suppose. To receive such an enthusiastic response from the students, the Latina community, the anti-war community and the women's community was edifying. It was even more awe-inspiring to see women joined by their children and families on this march.'

Continue reading 'Women Close Down L.A. Street in March 8th Commemoration'. . .

In Defense of Rachel Carson

By Sarah Grey, International Socialist Review, November-December 2007

Rachel Carson, a zoologist, naturalist, ecologist, and journalist who died in 1964, is often credited with founding the modern U.S. environmental movement. Her groundbreaking book, Silent Spring, combined hard scientific evidence with the voices of ordinary American workers and housewives to make a case against the then-ubiquitous use of the pesticide DDT, as well as several other poisons. The book created a furor, as the public began to question the chemical industry, which responded with a well-funded smear campaign against Carson and her book. Carson testified before Congress, and her voice helped to radicalize millions of people who were beginning to ask questions about pesticides and their effect on the environment. Though Carson died of breast cancer only two years after Silent Spring’s publication, her influence is widely acknowledged as having sparked the movement that led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
But today, few outside the environmentalist movement, or even inside it, are familiar with Rachel Carson’s radical legacy (Marxist ecologist John Bellamy Foster being a notable exception). Liberal feminists often hold her up as a role model for young girls, but without examining the politics of her work. And as the hundredth anniversary of Carson’s birth falls this year, polluting industries and their right-wing apologists have revived their smear campaign, and are now making a cottage industry out of “debunking” Carson and her work. Indeed, more than forty years after her death, the right wing is still afraid of Rachel Carson. Today, pesticide production, use, and abuse is on the rise, particularly in the developing world, and corporations buy scientists and create front groups to assure us that global warming is a myth. In the current era of global environmental crisis, Carson’s work is more relevant today than it has ever been before, and her legacy should be a key part of every left-wing environmental analysis.

Continue reading 'In Defense of Rachel Carson'. . .

Ringing Testimonies: Women of the World Speak Out

From the Vault, January 4, 2008

Pacifica Radio Archives’ Haunani Singer welcomes guesthost journalist Joanne Griffith (BBC’s Up All Night) to celebrate an international group of educators, authors and activists dedicated to healing our planet before we destroy it completely. Featuring the voices of: scientist and ecologist Rachel Carson, whose singular book Silent Spring launched environmental awareness worldwide; renowned physician and famed anti-nuclear advocate Dr. Helen Caldicott; physicist Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy; author/activist Arundhati Roy, winner of the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things; and Wangari Maathai, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for founding the Green Belt Movement. Drawn from the Pacifica Radio Archives’ prestigious collection of historic recordings, From the Vault proudly presents Ringing Testimonies: Women of the World Speak Out.

Go listen to 'Ringing Testimonies: Women of the World Speak Out'. . .

Hearing on Alleged Halliburton/KBR Gang Rape Cover Up

Ms. Magazine Feminist Wire, December 20, 2007

Alleged rape victim Jamie Leigh Jones testified before the House Subcommittee on Crime, Terror, and Homeland Security on Wednesday. Jones filed a lawsuit against her former employers, Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR in May, stating that she was drugged and gang-raped by a group of her co-workers in the KBR camp in the Green Zone in Iraq in 2005.
In her testimony, Jones stated that her experience while working for contractors in Iraq was not an isolated incident, reports the Associated Press. Representative Ted Poe, R-TX, who was contacted for help by Jones’s father while she was held in Iraq by her co-workers after the attack, also testified that several women have now come forward with allegations of sexual harassment and assault while employed by Halliburton’s former subsidiary, KBR.
As of yet, no charges have been brought against Jones’s alleged attackers. According to ABC News, legal experts say they might never even have to stand trial: A loophole in US law effectively leaves contractors working in Iraq out of the jurisdiction of US courts.

Continue reading 'Hearing on Alleged Halliburton/KBR Gang Rape Cover Up'. . .

Texas Woman Accuses U.S. Gov't, Halliburton/KBR Of Gang Rape Cover-Up

By Windsor Genova, All Headline News, December 11, 2007

A former employee of the energy and construction firm Halliburton/KBR has accused the U.S. government and her employer of covering up her rape by co-workers in Iraq, where the American company is doing projects for Washington.
The gang rape of Texan Jamie Leigh Jones, 22, happened two years ago but apparently the Justice Department has not filed corresponding charges and no federal agency is investigating the case.
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According to ABC News, Jones claimed in the lawsuit she was drugged before being raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, a heavily guarded diplomatic/government area of closed-off streets in central Baghdad where U.S. occupation authorities live and work. She alleged that KBR later detained her inside a shipping container for a day without food nor water with armed security guards preventing her from leaving.
A sympathetic guard lent her a phone enabling her to call her dad, who sought help from Poe for her rescue and return to the U.S.

Read all of 'Texas Woman Accuses U.S. Gov't, Halliburton/KBR Of Gang Rape Cover-Up'. . .

Saudi Arabia: Majorities Support Women's Rights

By Magali Rheault, Gallup, December 21, 2007

The "Qatif girl" has put the spotlight on the Saudi justice system. Last year, several men abducted and raped a young woman and her male friend in Saudi Arabia. While the court sentenced the rapists to prison, it also ruled that the 19-year-old woman (and her male companion) would receive 90 lashes. The woman was in the company of a man not related to her in the absence of her legal male guardian (khulwa), which is illegal in Saudi Arabia. After her lawyer appealed the ruling, the court increased her sentence to 200 lashes and added a six-month prison term. Earlier this week, Saudi King Abdullah pardoned the woman.
The plight of the "Qatif girl" has drawn much international attention and public outcry, but it has also oversimplified the debate over women's rights in Saudi Arabia by focusing on a dramatic case of government action. Findings from a recent Gallup Poll conducted in Saudi Arabia show that majorities of respondents support freedoms for women. Although Saudi men are less likely than Saudi women to agree that certain rights should be guaranteed to women, it is important to note that majorities of men do support such freedoms.

Continue reading 'Saudi Arabia: Majorities Support Women's Rights'. . .

Violence Against Women

By Ian Sinclair, ZNet, October 30, 2007

Feminism is finished. Kaput. Outdated. Irrelevant. Didn’t you get the memo?
But wait a minute. What about the estimated 30,000 women who are sacked, made redundant, or leave their jobs every year because of pregnancy discrimination? Or the 4,000 women that are estimated to be trafficked in to the UK annually to feed the growing sex industry? And let’s not forget the increasing number of women being imprisoned, women’s gross under representation in parliament, the judiciary and the higher echelons of business and the fact women still continue to do the majority of domestic labour.
However, while all these facts are pertinent to the continuing subjection of women, perhaps the most shocking issue facing women today is the level of violence that is directed against them, something Amnesty International have been highlighting since 2005 with their ongoing Stop Violence Against Women campaign.
The cold statistics are sobering.

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Mexico's Prophets of Climate Change: Women Forest Defenders

By Kent Paterson, IRC Americas Program, September 13, 2007

Celsa Valdovinos knew there was a serious problem when only about an inch of water trickled from the irrigation hose. In the mountains of southern Guerrero state where Valdovinos and her husband Felipe Arreaga lived during the 1990s, the small farmers were becoming increasingly alarmed about water supplies. "This was in January and by the next year it was gone," Valdovinos recalls. As the rainfall diminished so did the prospects of the mountain residents. Animals died, crops withered, and the social fabric unraveled.
Valdovinos and her neighbors connected the environmental changes they were witnessing to deforestation. More and more forest cover was disappearing every year as farmers burned hillsides for corn patches and pastures, drug growers torched forest cover to plant their illicit crops, and contractors felled trees for a Boise Cascade Corporation mill that operated on the Pacific Coast at the time.
Long before climate change became a trendy cause, the Campesino Environmentalist Organization of the Sierra of Petatlan and Coyuca de Catatlan (OCESP), emerged as a grassroots group dedicated to saving Guerrero's forests. Soon, however, the movement faced repression from loggers and the Mexican army.

Continue reading 'Mexico's Prophets of Climate Change: Women Forest Defenders'. . .

Sao Paulo Gay Pride Tops 3-Million

365 Gay, June 11, 2007

Millions of people packed the streets of Sao Paulo for what organizers said was the world's largest gay pride parade, dancing and waving rainbow flags in a carnival-like atmosphere to condemn homophobia, racism and sexism.
At least 3 million people filled the canyonlike Paulista Avenue, organizers said, surpassing last year's count of 2.5 million. The larger count was confirmed by a police spokesman who is not authorized to be quoted by name under department rules.

Continue reading 'Sao Paulo Gay Pride Tops 3-Million'. . .

The Truth About Giuliani

By Jennifer Roesch, Socialist Worker, May 11, 2007

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Giuliani’s popularity is the result of the September 11 attacks in New York. That year, Time magazine declared him its “Person of the Year,” and he became known as “America’s mayor.” He projected an image of a tough but compassionate leader who would unite New Yorkers and “heal the wounds” of a traumatized city.
Another aspect of Giuliani’s appeal is his carefully nurtured image as a moderate on social issues--especially gay rights and a woman’s right to choose abortion--an aberration in a Republican Party where the Religious Right seems to call the shots. This image has been aided by a compliant media that paints Giuliani as able to reach across partisan lines to provide leadership in times of crisis.
The reality could not be more different--and Giuliani’s reign as mayor of New York proves it.

Read all of 'The Truth About Giuliani'. . .

Hip-Hop's Socially Conscious Side

By Jeff Chang and Dave Zirin, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2007

Much of the criticism of commercial rap music — that it's homophobic and sexist and celebrates violence — is well-founded. But most of the carping we've heard against hip-hop in the wake of the Don Imus affair is more scapegoating than serious.

Who is being challenged here? It's not the media oligarchs, which twist an art form into an orgy of materialism, violence and misogyny by spending millions to sign a few artists willing to spout cartoon violence on command. Rather, it's a small number of black artists — Snoop Dogg, Ludacris and 50 Cent, to name some — who are paid large amounts to perpetuate some of America's oldest racial and sexual stereotypes.

But none of the critics who accuse hip-hop of single-handedly coarsening the culture think to speak with members of the hip-hop generation, who are supposedly both targets and victims of the rap culture. They might be surprised at what this generation is saying.

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The Private War of Women Soldiers

Many female soldiers say they are sexually assaulted by their male comrades and can't trust the military to protect them. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis," says one woman. "It was for the guys on my own side."
By Helen Benedict, Salon, March 7, 2007

As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush's unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can't help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don't mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear.

I mean from their own comrades -- the men.

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

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