Thursday, April 24, 2008

Our American Empire



Anyone who has read my blog posts probably has a good idea of my fears of American Empire--not that our country is in danger of developing one, but that it is already here. America has long been an empire, though one in ultimate denial. As historian Thomas Bender in his work Nation Among Nations details, America likes to think of itself as a country that never colonised--as if all those lands acquired in the bloody westward march to the Pacific Coast were empty of inhabitants. Since then we have seen multiple wars of aggression, the overthrow of democratic governments to further our interests and invasion after invasion. Today that Empire is as bloated as ever, a militaristic and neoliberal machine that believes in its inherent right--or destiny--to lead and dominate.

The video above is a graphic novel version of legendary historian's Howard Zinn's A People's History of American Empire. Peep it. An accompanying article is below by Zinn from TomDispatch.

Music on page can be paused by clicking on the Imeem box in the lower right.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Zimbabwe -Breaking the Silence from Across the Black Atlantic




Zimbabwe. I’ve neglected to speak on the situation in the Southern African country, despite the recent events that have taken place since the elections held back in late March. The situation is Zimbabwe a convoluted one. Here in the West, many in the black activist community have taken a strong stance, so much so that an opposing opinion is tantamount to some form of Pan African “race treason.” Far be it from me to care about being accused of such a thing. However as emotions tend to run high on the topic, I thought I’d give it a few weeks before I said anything. So this is my Zimbabwe commentary. However it is not so much about the elections that have recently taken place, the unheard of refusal to release results after almost a month, the recent run-off polls, or the bizarre cache of Chinese weapons (destined for Mugabe's government) that black union members refused to unload from a ship. Rather, this is about how we in the black western world view and talk about Zimbabwe—or better perhaps, how some attempt to stop us from doing so openly and honestly.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Food Riots- How We Starve the World, And Why They're Not Taking It Anymore



Protestors in Mexico bang empty pots to protest soaring food prices- part of a larger global crisis that has struck much of the developing world.

Food Riots. They sound like something out of a medieval history book describing the dark side of feudalism, or perhaps more aptly a story set in some dystopian apocalyptic future. But these events are in the here and now. In Haiti food riots have claimed dozens of lives, as people unable to afford basic nutrition needs were forced to make cakes of mud to fill their stomachs. Food riots broke out in Egypt for several days after food prices soared. Similar events shook cities in Mexico, Morocco, Cameroon, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, Uzbekistan and elsewhere. And though underreported, these events have been ongoing for well over a year. The UN is now warning that food riots could spread and cause global instability. "The reality is that people are dying already in the riots," said Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Though the media has at least stopped to pick up on the story (in-between the horse race), there has been little actually done to explain the causes of the current crises. Perhaps it's because, like so much in our increasingly connected world, food riots in far flung developing countries turn out to have just about everything to do with financial institutions and a global economy run by rich nations like ourselves--who have been watching a steady increase in our own food prices. As Bill Quigley at Counterpunch reports in the following reposted article, we're starving the world and they've just about had enough.

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Friday, April 18, 2008

Obama Dusts Dem Haters Off



Oh the Inanity! - so read the headlines at TPM muckraker, as they sat through the torturous debacle of a debate hosted by ABC and moderated by anchors George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson. Editor & Publisher called ABC's presidential debate "perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years.

An annoyed--but rather calm--Obama by Thursday turned the tables on his moderators, by taking a little cue from Jay-Z. And in less than 48hrs, it's become an online favorite.

Peep the video above, and read the rest below. As always, the Imeem box in the lower right column of the blog can be paused.

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Saturday, April 12, 2008

How the Media Keeps Us *Dumb*



Though for the sake of time and brevity I no longer do the weekly "media watch," it's still good to keep in mind how our corporate mainstream media keeps the public woefully uninformed. As Glen Greenwald over at Salon.com notes:

In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to "domestic military operations" within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits.


So if that's the case, with such important topics to pursue, why is it the major corp news media found more time to talk about the sexual indiscretions of a former US president and question the patriotism and bowling skills of a current presidential candidate?

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Randi Rhodes Kisses Air America G'Bye




So it finally happened. Air America host Randi Rhodes has quit the liberal radio station. This bombshell happened a week after Rhodes was suspended for calling Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro "f*cking whores" during a stand up comedy routine in San Francisco. Air America Media released a statement Thursday saying Rhodes informed them Wednesday night that she was severing ties with the network and going over to their key competitor--Nova M Radio. My thoughts...


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Thursday, April 3, 2008

The Global Gag Rule- A Matter of Life and Death




The Global Gag Rule (or the Mexico City Policy as it is best known) which restricts the use of funds on abortion and other related aspects of reproductive medicine, is having a detrimental effect on the health of women--specifically poor women of color--around the world. Chances are high that ending the GGR will hinge on who is in the White House. And for many women in developing countries, that choice will be a matter of life and death.

"Women in Nigeria are dying and are maimed daily and needlessly from lack of access to reproductive health care and the all-too-often resulting unsafe abortions. U.S. policy – the Global Gag Rule – is directly at odds with efforts to address these threats to maternal health.


In Kenya, where abortion is illegal with the exception of rape and where the life of
the mother is at risk, unsafe abortion accounts for 30% of maternal deaths, and at least half of the hospitalizations in public gynecology wards. Because of this Kenyan doctors often take a very "liberal" approach to the interpretation of Kenya's restrictive abortion policy, with the knowledge that if they do not, women will be forced to conduct unsafe abortions that place their lives at higher risk. While local Kenyan women's groups have been pushing for greater reproductive rights, the GGR undermines their efforts at every turn. A January 2008 article in Ms. Magazine notes that this forces many such groups and physicians to make hard choices:

Women's-rights groups in Kenya have been pushing for a new national law on reproductive rights, as well as supporting a continental protocol on the rights of African women and a patients' bill of rights. But they're not helped in their efforts to improve reproductive health care by the global gag rule, which has forced a number of clinics to turn down U.S. funds rather than stop discussing abortion. Three clinics of the Family Planning Association of Kenya (an affiliate of the International Planned Parenthood Federation) and two clinics of Marie Stopes International (the U.K.-based reproductive-health NGO) have been closed for loss of funds, according to a 2004 report from the Center for Reproductive Health Research and Policy in San Francisco.


As a 2006 article on Uganda from Off Our Backs points out, "Bush foreign policy, as seen in the Global Gag Rule, contributes to the silence that surrounds abortion.... The policy was meant to reduce the number of abortions; instead, women who need these services are dying from complications due to unsafe abortions."

Tied into women's reproductive rights, the GGR has also had a detrimental effect on varied aspects of sex education, so vital in fighting the global AIDS epidemic:

The global gag rule has also led to a pullback in overseas delivery of contraceptives, according to recent testimony by Rep. Nita M.Lowey (D-N.Y.) before the House Foreign Affairs Committee: "U.S. shipments of contraceptives have ceased to 20 developing nations in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. In some areas, the largest distribution centers for contraceptives have experienced decreased access for over 50 percent of the women they serve."


This decrease in funding for essentials such as contraceptives is already threatening to reverse positive results in high HIV-infected areas such as Uganda, where the impressive gains made in encouraging safe-education is now being replaced by "abstinence-only" programs--which is supported by the GGR's broad premise. This has often put conservative US policies in line with the policies of conservatives in Uganda, both tragically out of touch with what global and local physicians see as the pressing medical needs of the people.

University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty member John Ferrick, who organizes an annual Uganda Study Abroad trip, has noticed first hand how GGR has dismantled that country's effective fight against HIV spread and infection.

...in past years there were many condom advertisements and billboards. This was in accordance with Uganda's ABC program to fight HIV/AIDS: Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms. Their ABC program helped to make them a model for dealing with HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. During my trip this year, however, I saw only one condom billboard. There was, however, an abundance of abstinence billboards, sponsored by the First Lady of Uganda, JanetMuseveni. The switch from condoms to abstinence is not only because of the beliefs of President Museveni and his wife but also because of Washington, D.C


Local MD Fred Wabwire-Mangen, MD and professor at the Ugandan Institute of Public Health, agrees: "Washington will fund anything for abstinence," he says.

In early March 2008, Population Action International (PAI) and the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) conducted a joint policy research trip to Zambia, to study the effects of the GGR and the conservative US foreign aid policy on women's health. Their findings paint a dire picture:

By all appearances, reproductive health seems to have vanished from Zambia both conceptually and as a health service. At the policy level, there is no official framework forSRHR. At the program level, sexual and reproductive health (SRH) services are thin and fall far short of demand. Rates of maternal death, unplanned pregnancy and unsafe abortion -- especially among young women -- are persistently high. Contraceptivestockouts have become more frequent and community-based SRH outreach throughout rural Zambia is non-existent, thanks to the Global Gag Rule. While the U.S. is one of a handful of donors providing FP/RH assistance and donated contraceptives to Zambia (about $6 million in FY07, compared with $216 million in PEPFAR funding), this small amount of U.S. assistance is hamstrung by Global Gag Rule restrictions....


As recent as 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to modify the GGR so that organizations that were ineligible for U.S. assistance under the restrictive policy could at least receive contraceptives. The Senate supported this provision and, additionally, passed a provision to overturn the entire policy. But faced with a Bush Administration veto of all the funding for foreign assistance programs, and lacking the numbers to override it, this language never made it into the final bill, and the Mexico City Policy remains intact. This month the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bill to increase funding for the fight against HIV/AIDS thru PEPFAR (President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). At question is whether the final bill will reflect a substantial challenge to GGR, or maintain the status quo.

So what can be done?

For one, GET INVOLVED. There are numerous groups (listed below) who have been fighting to repeal the Global Gag Rule through lobbying and education.

Second, VOTE. There is a justifiable tendency to become cynical with politics, and especially in this overlong primary season, to become disenchanted. But the GGR was put into effect by people voted into office, on the Congressional and Executive level, and it is the only way to see it repealed. It's your money that's being used. You can decide on whether you want to have it spent further on such things as a 100 year occupation of Iraq, or whether it can possibly be used to save lives at home and abroad.

And third, VOTE SMART. Disillusion with the loss of a preferred primary candidate may lead some to sit out an election or--in what can only be called absurdity--vote for a candidate opposed to their political leanings. Before anyone walks into a booth to push a button or pull a lever out "sour grapes," remember that real lives are at risk. Find out where your candidate, and even your lesser preferred candidate, stands on this issue, before voting for someone who stands for an opposing principle.

It might just be another insignifcant vote for you, one that may not yield *all* that you were hoping for. But for many women across the globe, it's a matter of life and death.

See also:

Articles:

How the Mexico City Policy Perpetuates the High Rate of Unsafe Abortion in Nigeria- Dr.Ejike Oji

Reproductive Rights Without Borders

Are U.S. Policies Killing Women?

What Zambia Teaches Us About International AIDS Policy

Uganda and the "Global Gag Rule"- Off Our Backs

Organizations:

Free Choice Saves Lives 2008 Presidential Candidate Campaign

Access Denied: US Restrictions on International Family Planning

International Women's Health Coalition

Center for Reproductive Rights

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