"Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan’s decision to shut down the commission investigating the deaths of the 10 people killed during March 2008 clashes between police and protesters has prompted families of the deceased to fear that those responsible for the deaths will escape punishment."
"Though now over 20 years old, Lino Brocka’s Orapronobis (1988) becomes more relevant than ever. A film about paramilitary groups in the Philippines who abduct, kill and torture suspected “rebels” while the government turns a blind eye (or more likely, clandestinely supports and funds these operations), it’s Brocka’s most articulate and scathing political expression. And a damn good film. It’s still banned from public screening in the Philippines, though some people have mistakenly tried to convince me otherwise. Presently, the Philippine government has refused to acknowledge responsibility for Melissa Roxas’ ordeal, even arrogantly claiming that her abduction and torture was “stage-managed” (whatever the fuck that means) before even launching a formal investigation and despite overwhelming evidence that only the military could have launched such an operation."
"According to the human rights group Karapatan, more than 200 Filipino activists have been kidnapped and never heard from since 2001, the year President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power. Others have turned up dead or showing signs of torture."
"The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment."
One of the colleges at my graduate school seems to be in some hot water. Racism within the Graduate Theological Union is pretty much an everyday occurrence.
"The American Baptist Seminary of the West (ABSW), located in Berkeley, has a rich history in theology dating as far back as its founding in 1871. However, lately, the institution is receiving attention in the community due to charges of racism that are being raised by students.
Students are charging that ABSW, one of nine charter institutions of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, has been driving out highly qualified and well-respected racial-ethnic professors. Further, students say that when they asked to meet with the administration to discuss their concerns, their requests were denied."
"In recognition of the Forth of July, I’m posting the following poem by the great revolutionary African American poet, Langston Hughes, “Let America Be America Again”."
"Honduras, one of the poorest nations in the region, has long been divided along the same class lines that characterize most of Latin America. The elite have historically had a tight grip on the political scene, but Zelaya vowed to empower the poor, raising salaries and supporting single mothers. "He is the only person generating change in this country," says Angel Castro, a hospital administrator in Tegucigalpa."
Over at The Excerpt MillI post an excerpt from an article about Slavoj Žižek’s thinking on capitalism and liberal republican style democracy:
[Slavoj] Žižek believes that, today, any genuine and legitimate anticapitalist stance must be complemented by an attack on liberal democracy, on the grounds that holding on to the latter functions as a blackmail against the implementations of radical political projects.
"The financial crisis has erased a considerable amount of household wealth in many advanced economies. The precipitous fall in asset prices—across equity, bond, and housing markets—has eroded the value of financial and housing assets and the net worth of households, according to IMF research."
Posted on Wednesday, July 1, 2009 by Jack Stephens
The latest post on my blog The Excerpt Mill is about the labor center KMU, in the Philippines:
By “genuine,” we mean that the KMU is run by its members. The members are given all information and decide the policies which run the organization. By “militant,” we mean that the KMU will never betray the interests of the working class, even at the risk of our own lives. The KMU believes workers become aware of their own human dignity through collective mass action. By “nationalist,” we beleive the wealth of the Philippines belongs to the Filipino people and that national sovereignty must never be compromised.
"Zelaya has been irritating the country's ruling class for some time with his support for Chavez and the 'Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas', and his calls for drug legalisation, but the attempt to maybe, pending a possible future referendum, democratise the system a little was a step too far. The Miami Herald, naturally enough, vocalised the propaganda of the would-be putschists a couple of days ago, namely their speculation that the aim might secretly be to try to remove the cap on presidential re-elections and thus have some sort of elected dictatorship just like that Chavez monster."
"Such an initiative has never taken place in the Central American nation, which has a very limited constitution that allows minimal participation by the people of Honduras in their political processes. The current constitution, written in 1982 during the height of the Reagan Administration's dirty war in Central America, was designed to ensure those in power, both economic and political, would retain it with little interference from the people."
"Founded in 1972, the Chinese Progressive Association educates, organizes and empowers the low income and working class immigrant Chinese community in San Francisco to build collective power with other oppressed communities to demand better living and working conditions and justice for all people."
Melissa Roxas was kidnapped, detained, and tortured by the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
"The Office of the Solicitor General told the Court of Appeals that the abduction and torture of Melissa Roxas are nothing but mere fabrications to embarrass the government. Her recent press conference in Los Angeles, it says, was part of the plot. The victim’s lawyers and supporters, however, say the government is just trying to evade responsibility."
"We also cannot afford to lose interest when the current struggle is past its peak or moves to a new, less videogenic stage. Iranian workers, for instance, have been facing considerable repression when they have unionized for some time, but it has been largely ignored except in the international union movement. We in the US ought to be calling attention to all forms of repression that are taking place in Iran and all the political and social demands the movement is raising."
"A demonstrator confront a tank of the anti-democratic coup soldiers in Honduras. Why are those demonstrators not heroic? Can you imagine if this tank were Iranian or Syrian or Cuban? And notice that in the New York Times, the pro-democracy demonstrators become mere supporters of the ousted president."
A pro-democracy protestor sings the national anthem outside the presidential palace (Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters).
So the Supreme Court of Honduras rules that a non-binding poll to see if the citizens of Honduras want to change the constitution is illegal but then the same court stated that a military coup that ousted a democratically elected leader is “legal.” Interesting.
The coup plotters did not need anything else from the OAS. They didn’t give a damn about the presence of a large number of international observers who traveled to that country to vouchsafe a popular referendum and to whom Zelaya spoke until late in the night. Before dawn today they deployed 200 professional and well-trained soldiers to attack the president’s residence. Roughly pushing aside the Honor Guard squadron, they then kidnapped Zelaya, who was sleeping at that point, took him to the air base, forcibly bundled him aboard an airplane, and transported him to an air base in Costa Rica.
The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the C.I.A. may have had a hand in the president’s removal.
The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military.
Supporters of democracy and those of President Zelaya have been protesting the move by the military, while the new government has militarized the city, set up a curfew, and is breaking up protests, all in the name of “democracy.”
On Sunday, political and social organizations formed the Popular Resistance Front, which called on the public to go on a general strike of citizens, and trade unions, peasant organizations, and student groups will be participating, beginning this Monday.
"As the debate over health care reform unfolds, a centrist group of seven Senate Finance Committee members headed by the panel's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), is emerging as a decisive force in shaping legislation intended to garner bipartisan support. According to Politico, this "coalition of the willing" does not endorse the "public option" for health insurance that President Obama supports and which pharmaceutical companies, doctors' groups and insurers oppose."
"The Stonewall rebellion, which took place on June 28th, 1969, was the opening salvo of a radicalization of the gay liberation movement. The New York City police, in an attempt to shut down the mafia-controlled Stonewall Inn, entered the bar, expelled all of the patrons and began dismantling the furniture. Unlike other, all too common police raids, this night, people did not slink off into the night, but got increasingly agitated until a riot broke out, White, black, and Puerto Rican, gay, lesbian, and transgender, all fought back against the police over three nights of fighting throughout New York’s Greenwich Village. The symbolic meaning of the riots, an attack on both the NYPD and the mafia that controlled the gay bar scene in New York, cannot be understated. Within a matter of weeks, radical gay liberation organizations sprang up in New York and around the country."
"The dilemma faced by commentators of all kinds, not just bloggers, on the Iranian protests can be summarised by a single, annoying portmanteau word: instapunditry. The pressure to take a view prematurely in such a situation can only produce a series of stock responses, either based on CNN filtered news, or speculation from various samizdat-style websites, or material provided by the Iranian media itself."
Forty-eight days have passed since the suppression and arrests of the workers’ gathering on International Labour Day – May Day. During this time important events have taken place and have caused widespread and amazing changes in the social movement of the country. Here we publish a message and a list of demands of the Free Trade Union of Iranian Workers.
"Rafsanjani (the wealthiest and most corrupt man in Iran) represents refrom, and Moussavi (who led one of the most repressive eras in the Iranian revolutionary era and who sponsored Hizbullah in its most horrific phases) represents democracy."
"An airstrike believed to have been carried out by a United States drone killed at least 60 people at a funeral in South Waziristan on Tuesday, residents of the area and local news reports said."
"When folks ask why are women of color in coalition with one another. Why are woc, from various backgrounds, model immigrant meets indigenous, meets slave descendent meets immigrant slave, in coalition. The answer is simple: We believe that those of us under the heavy umbrella of being a person who is racialized have ‘common differences’.
While as a descendent of slaves and indigenous persons I can understand what it means to be taught a history that is not my history. To be taught a cartography that is not my map. I still see that those who are more recent immigrants, those who identify more strongly with mestiza than I, those who speak in alterations of the standard American English. Have something to teach me."
"It needs to be emphasized that Ahmadinejad’s economic policies are to the right of the IMF: cutting subsidies in a radical way, more privatization than any other post-79 government (by selling the country to the Revolutionary Guards) and an inflation and unemployment rate which have brought the low-income sections of the society to their knees. It is in this regard that Musavi’s politics needs to be understood in contradistinction from both Ahmadinejad and also the other reformist candidate, i.e. Karroubi."
"In the U.S., discussion of Palestinian politicians and political movements often relies on a spectrum running from "extreme" to "moderate." The latter sounds appealing; the former clearly applies to those who must be — must they not? — beyond the pale. But hardly anyone relying on such terms pauses to ask what they mean. According to whose standard are these manifestly subjective labels assigned?"
