Hundreds Of Indigenous Women And Girls Were Murdered In Canada

By Farooque Chowdhury, Countercurrents.org

30 October, 2012

Hundreds of indigenous women and girls were murdered in Canada . To many, it’s a baffling fact.

Recently, there were proposals in the UK parliament to expand the use of secret court hearings in civil cases.

In Greece , migrants and asylum seekers are being hounded by police and right-wing extremists.

These are only a few bitter, and unbelievable to a section in broader society, facts related to human rights in the advanced capitalist world. These facts are difficult to swallow to the section that trusts moral standing of state.

Hard facts related to human rights in these advanced capitalist democratic countries accompany human rights situation in Iraq and Pakistan , countries in the fringe of the world system, but part of the system. In one of these countries, democracy, considering it as a simple commodity, has been exported/imported or is being constructed.

A dirty picture overwhelms human perception. It’s a picture of asserting power, imposing authority, calculus of competition, internal power game, failure to resolve conflicting demands, subjugation, and silencing souls dissenting.

Philippines: Revolutionary forces making gains in Mindanao

A victorious decade of People’s War in Mindanao

Jorge Madlos (Ka Oris), Spokesperson, NDF-Mindanao

December 26, 2012Together with all revolutionaries and the the people of Mindanao and the entire nation, the NDFP-Mindanao wishes to express its warmest congratulations and highest tribute to the Communist Party of the Philippines (MLM) on the 44th anniversary of its re-establishment. Through the Party’s leadership, the National Democratic Revolution has advanced to its current phase despite the relentless counterrevolutionary attacks of US imperialism and the local ruling class. We also proudly salute all our revolutionary martyrs who have heroically offered their lives for the revolution.

Update on Tracking Police Murders: Every 36 Hours a Black Person is Murdered by the Law Enforcement

This episode of  Critical Insight we were joined by Kali Akuno of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement to discuss their 2012 report detailing the fact that every 36 hours (at least) a Black person is extra-judiciously executed by “Law Enforcement” within the United States. Please watch this episode to to hear Mr. Akuno discuss the more recent developments regarding this report, how the corporate media has tried to marginalize it, and what you can do to help make a positive impact. Your support is needed.

Sources:  Critical Insight, Navigating the Storm

India tea workers burn boss to death in Assam state

27 December 2012By Subir Bhaumik, BBC News,  Calcutta

[Half of India’s tea output comes from Assam’s 800-odd tea estates]

Hundreds of tea plantation workers have set alight their boss’s bungalow in north-east India, burning to death the owner and his wife, officials say.

Angry workers surrounded the bungalow at Kunapathar in Assam state late on Wednesday, following a two-week long dispute with the management.

Police said the incident happened after the management asked some workers to leave their accommodation.

More than half of India’s tea output comes from 800 tea estates in Assam.

Local official SS Meenakshi Sundaram said some 700 tea garden workers surrounded the manager’s bungalow on Wednesday evening and set it on fire. Two vehicles belonging to the manager were also torched.

Six charged with murder in India gang rape after woman dies

by Ashok Sharma, Associated Press, 29 December, 2012

NEW DELHI — Indian police have charged six men with murder, adding to accusations that they beat and gang raped a woman on a New Delhi bus two weeks ago in a case that shocked the country.

The murder charges were laid Saturday, hours after the woman died in a Singapore hospital, where she had been flown for treatment.

New Delhi police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said the six face the death penalty if convicted, in a case that has triggered protests across India for greater protection for women from sexual violence, and raised questions about lax attitudes by police toward sexual crimes.

The tragedy has forced India to confront the reality that sexually assaulted women are often blamed for the crime, forcing them to keep quiet and discouraging them from reporting it to authorities for fear of exposing their families to ridicule. Police often refuse to accept complaints from those who are courageous enough to report the rapes, and the rare prosecutions that reach courts drag on for years.

Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy

New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent

Naomi Wolf, guardian.co.uk, Saturday 29 December 2012

[Police used teargas to drive back protesters following an attempt by the Occupy supporters to shut down the city of Oakland. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP]

It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.

The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, in a groundbreaking scoop that should once more shame major US media outlets (why are nonprofits now some of the only entities in America left breaking major civil liberties news?), filed this request. The document – reproduced here in an easily searchable format – shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.

Rape As Weapon of Domination: The Clout of Caste And Class in India

By Ershad Abubacker,  Countercurrents.org, 27 December, 2012

More often than not, Arundhati Roy speaks unwelcome truths, truths that essentially do not go down well with the elite class. And hence she always gets dubbed as outspoken and is being criticized for that. She was recently in the headlines for speaking out against Indian rape culture in the back drop the gang rape at New Delhi and the mass protests that drew attention all over.

She recently noted that India lives simultaneously in several centuries. While nearly 10 Indian industrialists make it to the first 50 in the Forbes World Richest Men List, the capital of India is dubbed as ‘The Rape Capital’ and is a combination of incredibly crowded, ill-smelling slums; wide modern roads and elegant villas; the extremely poor and wretched; the fabulously wealthy and super-indulgent, and yet unable to protect its women traveling in buses. Speaking to Channel 4 on the recent gang rape of a 23-year old women in a running bus in Delhi, she asks critical questions on how and why and could this case be an exceptional crime demanding widespread protests; something which was uncommon in many prior instances of violence against women mete out by the Upper Class, Police and Armed Forces.

There is no doubt, the cruelty of the gang rape in a running bus at New Delhi is brutal and the culprits should be given maximum punishment in a model way. Our thoughts and prayers must be there with the girl who had her whole life tormented within a night’s bus journey.

Having said that, the present case does not stand vindictively different from the many of the rape cases registered earlier in Delhi . So what makes it a flare point for youngsters to protest at India Gate daring to defy the water cannons of Delhi police?

Julian Assange: expect more exposure of government crimes from WikiLeaks

Founder of whistleblowing website marks six months’ confinement in Ecuadorean embassy with bullish speech

Conal Urquhart, guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012

Julian Assange has said that WikiLeaks is preparing to publish 1m new secret government documents as he marked six months of refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London with a speech from its balcony on Thursday.

The WikiLeaks founder has remained in the embassy to avoid arrest and extradition to Sweden on suspicion of sexual offences. There is a permanent police guard and Assange will be arrested if he leaves the premises.

About 80 supporters gathered on Thursday night to hear Assange speak. They carried candles and held placards reading, “Don’t shoot the messenger” and “Don’t trust Sweden”. Some sang Christmas carols as they waited for Assange to speak from the first floor balcony, a short distance from Harrods department store. There were 60 additional police officers on duty.

Assange emerged with a raised fist and greeted the crowd: “What a sight for sore eyes. People ask what gives me hope. The answer is right here.”

He was momentarily disturbed when a journalist from Channel 4 shouted questions at him with a loudhailer, but he recovered and delivered a 15-minute speech which was high in rhetoric and low in novelty.

“Six months ago I entered this building. It has become my home, my office and my refuge. Thanks to the principled stance of the Ecuadorean government and the support of its people, I am safe in this embassy and safe to speak from this embassy,” he said.

Assange said that as long as the US government sought to persecute him and the Australian government refused to support him, he had no choice but to remain in the Ecuadorean embassy.

When did “the land of the free” become a “police state”?

[The capitalist rulers of the USA have long claimed the country to be the fountain of democracy, brotherhood and freedom.  But along the way, the victims of the US’ rampant and violent growth have wondered “what in the world are they talking about?”

• When the colonists and later the pilgrims arrived, their force hurled against the indigenous was certainly repressive.
• When African people were kidnapped and brutally enslaved, and their exploitation enforced by the lash and the gun, this was not brotherhood at work.
• When the US developed police forces to round up fugitive Africans, this was a police state.
• When half of Mexico was seized, and turned into half of the USA instead, and the people were turned into illegal aliens, they were subjected to a police state.
• When workers rose up to loosen the chains of their exploitation, and were shot down or jailed or executed, this was certainly a police state at work.
• When Chinese were criminalized and banned, was this the brotherhood so proclaimed?
• When Mexican-American citizens were rounded up, and blamed for the Great Depression of the 30’s, and hundreds of thousands were deported, this expulsion was characteristic of a police state action.
• When Jim Crow enforced white supremacist rule with noose and whip and gun, with official badges worn or with the embrace or encouragement of officialdom, this was the police state at work.
• When Japanese-Americans were rounded up and imprisoned, for the crime of being Japanese, this was surely a police state action.
• When reformers and radicals and communists were banned from culture and schools and work, and many were jailed, was this an expression of the “land of the free?”
• When people rose for civil rights and Black liberation, countless were beaten, jailed, and killed.  Many remain imprisoned today.  The face of a police state was seen by millions.
• When the largest mass imprisonment program in the world as been expanded, largely against black and brown people, this speaks eloquently to the nature of US society.
• And today, surveillance of Arabs and Muslims, black and brown youth, anti-war, environmental, women’s rights, and other political activists and opponents, and now electronic, social networking and drone surveillance continues to expand this repressive police state into every aspect of public and private life.

Some argue that one brutal or oppressive tool, or another, began this process.  Some of the earlier forms did not bother some people so much.  And some have been part of a privileged elite or so-called “middle class” which has enjoyed many of the “democratic” fruits obtained from an exploitative and oppressive system.  When do you think “the police state” truly has begun?  — Frontlines ed.]

—————————————————

The coming drone attack on America

Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised

Naomi Wolf, guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 December 2012

[By 2020, it is estimated that as many as 30,000 drones will be in use in US domestic airspace. Photograph: US navy/Reuters]

People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.

In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, “a huge push by […] the defense sector” to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won’t necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.

The Rape Poem

By Marge Piercy

This poem first appeared in “Red War Sticks”
Feminist Alliance Against Rape Newsletter April/May 1975

---

There is no difference between being raped
And being pushed down a flight of cement steps

Except that the wounds also bleed inside.

There is no difference between being raped
And being run over by a truck
Except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it.

There is no difference between being raped
And being bitten by a rattlesnake
Except that people ask if your skirt was short
And why you were out alone anyhow.

There is no difference between being raped
And going headfirst through a windshield
Except that afterwards you are afraid
Not of cars
But half the human race.

The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother.
He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn.
Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male
Like a maggot in garbage.

Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing
All of the time on a woman’s hunched back.
Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pinewoods,
Never to climb a trail across a bald
Without that aluminum in the mouth
When I see a man climbing toward me.

Never to open the door to a knock
Without that razor just grazing the throat.
The fear of the dark side of hedges,
The back seat of the car, the empty house
Rattling keys like a snakes warning.
The fear of the smiling man
In whose pocket is a knife
Waiting to glide its shark’s length between my ribs.
In whose fist is locked hatred.

—————————————————————

Source: The All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA)

http://aipwa-aipwa.blogspot.in/2012/12/the-rape-poem.html?spref=fb

 

Pakistan: a Tribute to Dave Brubeck

Sachal Studios’ Take Five Official Video

Apr 4, 2011
Recorded at Sachal Studios, Lahore, Pakistan – the premiere of Take Five’s Official Video!

India: New Delhi police fire water cannon at rape protest

[In the capital of India, which the government has claimed is “the world’s largest democracy,” a brutal rape of a young woman has brought thousands of outraged protestors into the streets.  Rape is a common terror that women face in Delhi and throughout India.  What brought these massive protests to the streets, this time?  As the following articles point out, “Police figures show that, in Delhi, a rape is reported on average every 18 hours and some form of sexual attack every 14 hours….Indian novelist Arundhati Roy said rape is seen as a ‘matter of feudal entitlement’ in many parts of the country, and the reason this case had come to light is because the woman victim belongs to the affluent middle class“…..She said attitudes towards women need to change in India, because a change in the law only will protect middle class women, but ‘the violence against other women who are not entitled will continue’.” — Frontlines ed.]

[Tear gas and water cannon were used against protesters marching on the presidential palace]

Indian police have used tear gas and water cannons to keep back thousands of protesters marching in Delhi over the gang rape of a young woman.

Violence broke out as the protesters, mainly college students, tried to break through police barricades to march on the presidential palace.

There has been outrage in India over the attack on a bus last Sunday that has left the 23-year-old woman in a critical condition in hospital.

Six people have been arrested.

The government has tried to halt the rising anger over the attack by announcing a series of measures intended to make Delhi safer for women.

They include more police night patrols, checks on bus drivers and their assistants and the banning of buses with tinted windows or curtains.

But the protesters say the government’s pledge to seek life sentences for the attackers is not enough – many are calling for the death penalty.

Some carried placards reading “Hang the Rapists” and “Save women. Save India” as they marched on Saturday.

Rejecting Doomsday Prophecies, Indigenous March in Spirit of Defiance and Resurgence

Zapatista March: The Deafening Silence of Resurgence

Written by Tim Russo, Photos by Tim Russo   —  http://upsidedownworld.org

Saturday, 22 December 2012

Only the resonating echo of rain pattering down on the cobblestone streets of Chiapas’ colonial cities sounded as tourists from around the globe awaiting the end of the world in the center of the Mayan Civilization were surprised by the silent marches of more than 40,000 masked Mayan Zapatistas who descended on their apocalyptic misinterpretations of the Mayan 13 Ba´ktun. A faint sound of a baby’s cry would occasionally emerge from a bundle beneath a plastic tarp on the back of a masked Zapatista in the endless lines of Mayan rebels who quietly held formation in the rain. They marched four file booted and bare-footed into the same cities they surprised on a cold new year’s eve night 19 years ago, shouting their first YA BASTA!Yesterday’s weapon, differing from the 1994 armed indigenous uprising, was the Zapatista silence, their moral authority, the echo of a unified and deafening silence that shouted YA BASTA! once again. A silence that in their massive presence in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Ocosingo, Altamirano, Las Margaritas and Palenque shouted without a word that the a new Mayan era has begun and the Zapatistas are present. A silence that was meant to remind Mexico’s recently inaugurated President Enrique Peña Nieto and his PRI party that the root causes of the Zapatista struggle are as prevalent today as they were 19 years ago: lack of health care, education, housing, land, food, indigenous rights, women’s rights, gay rights, dignity, and justice. A silence that reminded the returning PRI that there is a Mexico profundo, a Mexico jodido, a Mexico con hambre, and a Mexico dispuesto a luchar and in struggle. The Zapatistas and the EZLN need not say a word today, their actions and silence said enough. Aqui estamos! As early as 4 a.m. the Mayan indigenous, Tzeltales, Tzotziles, Tojolobales, Choles, Zoques, and Mames began their mobilizations from their five cultural centers of resistance, known as Caracoles, emerging from the Lacandon jungle, the Chiapas Canyon lands, and the rain soaked highlands. They quietly moved along the mountainous, fog-bearing roads towards the same cities (plus Palenque) that they descended upon when these ill-equipped ragtag rebels launched their armed uprising on January 1st 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went in to effect.

Israel’s Culture of Aggressive Removal of Palestinians and Elimination of Palestine

Genocidal Israelis now quite willing to see Palestinians put out of the way, says US historian

Wherever the Israelis and their Zionist cohorts are leading us, it is not into the light, it is to someplace very, very dark.

December 3, 2012

by Lawrence Davidson

“The Israelis have taught their children the imperial point of view, augmented it with biased media reporting, labelled the inevitable resistance offered by the Palestinians as anti-Semitism and took it as proof of the need to suppress and control this population of ‘Others’. From the Zionist standpoint, this entire process has worked remarkably well. Today all but a handful of Israeli Jews dislike and fear the people they conquered and displaced. They wish they would go away. And, when their resistance gets just a bit too much to bear, they are now quite willing to see them put out of the way.” —Lawrence Davidson

Lawrence Davidson, professor of history at West Chester University in Pennsylvania, traces the origins of the “genocidal yearnings’ of Israelis towards the Palestinians from a 19th century milieu of nationalism and imperialism forward to the contemporary ancestors of that dreadful heritage. “If it wasn’t for the fact that the outside world was watching, there can be little doubt that the famed Israeli armed forces would have been tempted to do all that these ministers, clerics and citizens wished.”

The following posts includes added subheadings and text highlighting. To read Davidson’s original paper, click on the linked title below.

The genocidal yearnings of Israelis by Lawrence Davidson, To The Point Analysis, November 28, 2012

In 19th century, Europe cultural and racial incubators of ethnic groups emerge as model of imperial power

By the middle of the 19th century the multi-ethnic empire was on its way out as the dominant political paradigm in Europe. Replacing it was the nation-state, a political form which allowed the concentration of ethnic groups within their own political borders.

This in turn formed cultural and “racial” incubators for us (superior) vs. them (inferior) nationalism that would underpin most of the West’s future wars. Many of these nation states were also imperial powers expanding across the globe and, of course, their state-based chauvinistic outlook went with them.

Zionism born in this milieu; leaders convinced they could only be safe if they had a nation-state of their own

Zionism was born in this milieu of nationalism and imperialism, both of which left an indelible mark on the character and ambitions of the Israeli state. The conviction of Theodor Herzl, modern Zionism’s founding father, was that the centuries of anti-Semitism were proof positive that Europe’s Jews could not be assimilated into mainstream Western society. They could be safe only if they possessed a nation-state of their own. This conviction also reflected the European imperial sentiments of the day. The founders of modern Zionism were both Jews and Europeans, and as such had acquired the West’s cultural sense of superiority in relation to non-Europeans.

Palestinian Prisoners Support Office Raided by Israeli Forces

Addameer Offices Raided by Israeli Occupying Forces This Morning

http://www.addameer.org/etemplate.php?id=549

The Israeli Occupation Forces raided three non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Ramallah at 3 am this morning, including Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association. Five computers and a camera were stolen from Addameer, as well as a number of legal files, pictures and posters of prisoners and detainees on hunger strike. Ironically, this attack coincides with the 64^th anniversary of the ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Addameer believes that this brutal assault is part of the constant targeting of the association’s staff and mission to defend Palestinian political prisoners. Since 2002, Addameer has been subjected to raids and attacks and arrest campaigns of staff members in past years. Most recently, Addameer’s researcher, Ayman Nasser, was detained on 15 October 2012 and is charged for supporting Palestinian prisoners and detainees and calling for their freedom. Similarly, in midst of the prisoners’ hunger strike between 17 September and 13 October 2011,  the IOF issued an arbitrary order that bans Addameer’s chairperson Abdullatif Ghaith from entering the West Bank, a ban that is still in effect.