Banned Books in Arizona: Tucson Students Walk Out, Speak Out
On Martin Luther King Day in Tucson 2012, Tucson students spoke out on the seizure of books from their classrooms and the decision to forbid Mexican American Studies. The public school district, Tucson Unified School District, voted in Jan 2012 to forbid the studies after Arizona threatened to extract millions of dollars. Rethinking Columbus was one of seven books moved to a depository by the schools. There are 50 books on the reading list.
[Thanks to CENSORED NEWS for bringing the news of this resistance. -- Frontlines ed.]
———————————————————–
Students Step Up Tucson Walkouts
Protest School District Folly and Mexican American Studies Banishment
Pouring into the downtown Tucson area from Pueblo, Cholla and Tucson high schools, among other institutions, the students brought their march to the offices of floundering Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) administrators. In recent days, administrators and board members have issued a series of conflicting and inaccurate statements and carried out the extreme actions of confiscating books in front of children. Last week, a recently hired assistant superintendent from Texas made a troubing call for the deeply rooted Tucson students–many of whom trace their ancestors to the town founders– to “go to Mexico” to study their history.
Pentagon report: Sexual assault in the military up dramatically
[In a time when the US military continues to face shortages due to ongoing foreign wars, "interventions," and occupations, the War Department (aka "Defense Department" for cosmetic reasons) has moved to expand their recruiting of women and gays. While abuse--sexual abuse--has been a long-standing fact of life in colonial and imperial armies, this new Pentagon report of greatly EXPANDED rapes of military troops could not come at a worse time for military recruiters, and for morale and operating unity, among US troops. So, War Secretary Leon Panetta has made the expected, and routine, vow to reduce sexual assaults within the military with a series of new initiatives. -- Frontlines ed.]
————————————————————————————-
By Anna Mulrine | Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2012
T
here has been a startling and consistent increase in violent sex crimes within the US Army since 2006, according to a newPentagon report released Thursday.
It comes one day after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta vowed to reduce the number of sexual assaults within the military, calling the numbers “unacceptable.” He announced that the Pentagon was preparing a series of new initiatives in an effort to try to curb the assaults.
While the measures that Mr. Panetta announced this week were widely welcomed, some democratic lawmakers pointed out that many of the newly-announced initiatives were already slated to go into effect with a law passed by Congress late last year. Others warned that the announced steps did not go far enough to combat the fast-growing problem.
The rate of violent sexual crime has increased 64 percent since 2006 according to the US Army report, which noted that “rape, sexual assault, and forcible sodomy were the most frequent violent sex crimes committed in 2011.”
While women comprise 14 percent of the Army ranks, they account for 95 percent of all sex crime victims.
The study warns that reports of crimes such as forcible sodomy may increase among males in the coming year with the repeal of the law that barred openly gay troops from serving in the military. “Now victims may be more likely to report sexual offenses in the absence of the former Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy,” since troops no longer have to fear being removed from the military if it is discovered that they are gay. Read more »
Capitalism’s Real Gravediggers
Beware the ‘Gush-Up Gospel’ Behind India’s Billionaires
Antilla Mansion on Altamount Road in Mumbai
Is it a house or a home? A temple to the new India, or a warehouse for its ghosts? Ever since Antilla arrived on Altamount Road in Mumbai, exuding mystery and quiet menace, things have not been the same. “Here we are,” the friend who took me there said, “pay your respects to our new ruler.”
Antilla belongs to India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. I’d read about this, the most expensive dwelling ever built, the 27 floors, three helipads, nine lifts, hanging gardens, ballrooms, weather rooms, gymnasiums, six floors of parking, and the 600 servants. Nothing had prepared me for the vertical lawn – a soaring wall of grass attached to a vast metal grid. The grass was dry in patches, bits had fallen off in neat rectangles. Clearly, “trickle down” had not worked.
But “gush-up” has. That’s why in a nation of 1.2bn, India’s 100 richest people own assets equivalent to a quarter of gross domestic product.
The word on the street (and in The New York Times) is, or at least was, that the Ambanis were not living in Antilla. Perhaps they are there now, but people still whisper about ghosts and bad luck, vastu and feng shui. I think it’s all Marx’s fault. Capitalism, he said, “ … has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, it is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells”.
In India, the 300m of us who belong to the new, post-“reforms” middle class – the market – live side by side with the ghosts of 250,000 debt-ridden farmers who have killed themselves, and of the 800m who have been impoverished and dispossessed to make way for us. And who survive on less than 50 cents a day.
Mr Ambani is personally worth more than $20bn. He has a controlling majority stake in Reliance Industries Limited (RIL), a company with a market capitalisation of Rs2.41tn ($47bn) and an array of global business interests. RIL has a 95 per cent stake in Infotel, which a few weeks ago bought a major share in a media group that runs television news and entertainment channels. Infotel owns the only national 4G broadband licence. He also has a cricket team.
RIL is one of a handful of corporations, some family-owned, some not, that run India. Some of the others are Tata, Jindal, Vedanta, Mittal, Infosys, Essar and the other Reliance (ADAG), owned by Mukesh’s brother Anil. Their race for growth has spilt across Europe, central Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Tatas, for example, run more than 100 companies in 80 countries. They are one of India’s largest private-sector power companies.
Since the cross-ownership of businesses is not restricted by the “gush-up gospel” rules, the more you have, the more you can have. Meanwhile, scandal after scandal has exposed, in painful detail, how corporations buy politicians, judges, bureaucrats and media houses, hollowing out democracy, retaining only its rituals. Huge reserves of bauxite, iron ore, oil and natural gas worth trillions of dollars were sold to corporations for a pittance, defying even the twisted logic of the free market. Cartels of corrupt politicians and corporations have colluded to underestimate the quantity of reserves, and the actual market value of public assets, leading to the siphoning off of billions of dollars of public money. Then there’s the land grab – the forced displacement of communities, of millions of people whose lands are being appropriated by the state and handed to private enterprise. (The concept of inviolability of private property rarely applies to the property of the poor.) Mass revolts have broken out, many of them armed. The government has indicated that it will deploy the army to quell them. Read more »
New York: Police training the troops to viciously attack and deny the humanity of Muslims
Training film uses invented charges, such as this picture falsely depecting a "desired" White House under Islamic flag, to inflame police against Muslims
In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims
By MICHAEL POWELL, New York Times
Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.
“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”
This is the feature-length film titled “The Third Jihad,” paid for by a nonprofit group, which was shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.
In January 2011, when news broke that the department had used the film in training, a top police official denied it, then said it had been mistakenly screened “a couple of times” for a few officers.
A year later, police documents obtained under the state’s Freedom of Information Law reveal a different reality: “The Third Jihad,” which includes an interview with Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was shown, according to internal police reports, “on a continuous loop” for between three months and one year of training.
During that time, at least 1,489 police officers, from lieutenants to detectives to patrol officers, saw the film.
News that police trainers showed this film so extensively comes as the department wrestles with its relationship with the city’s large Muslim community. The Police Department offers no apology for aggressively spying on Muslim groups and says it has ferreted out terror plots. Read more »
US demands that Kenya submit to ICC
[The USA, which has refused to join the International Criminal Court or otherwise submit to international judicial accountability, nevertheless demands that other countries submit to the authority of the ICC. And the ICC has this year been making arrangements for the US military (i.e., AFRICOM) to enforce ICC subpoenas and warrants for the arrest of Africans. This article expresses this arrogant and imperialist double standard. We post this article only because it is revealing of international power relations and the political relativity of judicial standards. -- Frontlines ed.]
——————————————————-
Kenya: U.S. Urges Country to Cooperate Fully With ICC
by Kevin J Kelley
23 January 2012
The Obama administration has called for “accountability on the 2007-2008 post-election violence” following the confirmation of charges of four Kenyans by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged the Kenyan government, the people of Kenya and the four cited individuals to continue to cooperate fully with the ICC proceedings.
Ms Nuland said such cooperation would be consistent with the spirit of Kenya’s new constitution, which, she noted, “embraces transparency, accountability and integrity.”
The spokeswoman added in a statement issued in Washington on Monday that the United States stands ready to help Kenya implement the reform process as the nation looks ahead to its first elections under the new constitution.
“We make no judgment as to the guilt of innocence of those who are the subject of today’s confirmation decisions,” Ms Nuland declared. “Under the ICC process,” she noted, “individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty.”
Nigerian: Demands to end state repression of independence movement
Nigeria: MASSOB Gives Army 48 Hours to Release Detained Members
Beatrice Onuchukwu
24 January 2012
Awka — The Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) yesterday gave the Army a 48-hour ultimatum to release the corpses of three of its members allegedly killed on Sunday by soldiers from the Onitsha Military Cantonment, and 46 of its members arrested by the soldiers. Comrade Uchenna Madu, the MASSOB Director of Information at a news conference in Onitsha yesterday stated that the Army has provoked MASSOB by illegal killings and detention.
“If the issue is not addressed, the Army and the Nigerian state will see the violent side of MASSOB,” he said.
Madu lamented that the non-violent posture of MASSOB has been mistaken for weakness and cowardice by security operatives, “who now derive joy in the killing and intimidation of unarmed MASSOB members”. Read more »
