The People's Budget, a review by Jeffrey Sachs, with added commentary

image is from here

Economic-political conservatives think the above idea is "terrorism"--but against who is it terrorism? Who is terrified, for real, in reality, if the richest U.S. Americans pay more taxes while remaining the richest people in the U.S. and if we stop our decades-long terroristic and mass-murderous war on Asia?

What we have here, is a failure of the president of the United States to be a moral and a political leader. Not that I have much faith in any president of the U.S. being moral--the country is founded on immorality and perpetrates it as a matter of common, normal practice. Perhaps foolishly, I'd hoped for more from this current president. What this shows is that it is a figurehead position, ruled, in reality, by wealthy Corporate-Christian white het males. That's social-economic-political supremacy of the few against the many. Where have we heard of that before?

On a much deeper level, what we have is an on-going refusal by media, government, corporations, and the public, to engage in meaningful action designed to end economic terrorism in the form of poverty, gross power- and wealth-hoarding, and virulent political dishonesty and corruption among government officials. We don't need military the wars that are currently being funded disproportionately by working (not rich) tax-payers, who are also the population from who become soldiers, for the economic benefits of doing so, if you survive, of course. Women the world over pay the price for the U.S.'s economic policies, which are intimately linked to the U.S. military's terroristic policing and destruction of the world.

Click on the article's title below to link back to the source website, at HuffingtonPost.com.

What we need is a People's Party that is led by feminist Black, Brown, and Indigenous women.

The current budget negotiations have been a dialogue among the wealthy. The big debate has focused on which programs for the poor should be axed first. There has been no discussion of raising taxes on the rich, and quite the contrary, the White House and the Republican leadership agreed to further tax cuts last December. Obama has repeatedly expressed regret at slashing community development, energy support for the poor, and other programs, but he is not fighting the trend, only regretting it. -- Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs

Economist and Director of the Earth Institute, Columbia University

The People's Budget 

Posted: 04/ 8/11 09:52 AM ET

Just when it seemed that all of Washington had lost its values and its connection with the American people, a bolt of hope has arrived. It is the People's Budget put forward by the co-chairs of the 80-member Congressional Progressive Caucus. Their plan is humane, responsible, and most of all sensible, reflecting the true values of the American people and the real needs of the floundering economy. Unlike Paul Ryan's almost absurdly vicious attack on the poor and working class, the People's Budget would close the deficit by raising taxes on the rich, taming health care costs (including a public option), and ending the military spending on wars and wasteful weapons systems.

There are now four budget positions on the table. Far to the right is Paul Ryan's plan, an artless war on the poor that would take a meat-cleaver to Medicaid (health care for the poor), food stamps, support for child care, the environment, and the rest of government other than the military, Social Security, and Medicare (that is, until 2022, when the slashing would begin on Medicare coverage as well). Ryan would keep taxes below 20 percent of GDP (specifically, 19.9 percent of GDP in 2021), at the cost of destroying entitlements programs and other civilian spending.

Then there is President Obama's budget, which is really a muddled proposal in the center-right of the political spectrum. It would keep most of the Reagan-era and Bush-era tax cuts in place. Like the Ryan proposal, Obama's tax proposals would keep total taxes at around 20 percent of GDP. The result is a major long-term squeeze on vital programs such as community development, infrastructure, and job training. Also, Obama's plan never closes the budget deficit, which remains as high as 3.1% of GDP in 2021.

In the progressive middle is the People's Budget. Like Ryan's plan, the People's Budget would cut the budget deficit to zero by 2021, but would do so in an efficient and fair way. It would close the budget deficit by raising tax rates on the rich and giant corporations, while also curbing military spending and wrestling health care costs under control, partly by introducing a public option. By raising tax revenues to 22.3 percent of GDP by 2021, the People's Budget closes the budget deficit while protecting the poor and promoting needed investments in education, health care, roads, power, energy, and the environment in order to raise America's long-term competitiveness. The People's Budget thereby achieves what Ryan and Obama do not: the combination of fairness, efficiency, and budget balance.

The fourth position is the public's position. The Republicans often say that they want Congress to respect the voice of the people. The voice of the people is crystal clear. In one opinion survey after the next, the public says that the rich and the corporations should pay more taxes. The public says that we should tamp down runaway health care costs through a public option, one that would introduce competition to drive down bloated private health insurance costs. The public says that we should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce Pentagon spending. (Just yesterday, Defense Secretary Gates let loose the predictable Pentagon canard that we should stay in Iraq if the Iraqi government asks for it. Better yet, we should respond to what the American people are asking for: to bring our troops home).

The fact is that the People's Budget is the public's position. That's why it is truly a centrist initiative, at the broad center of the U.S. political spectrum. Ryan reflects the wishes of the rich and the far right. Obama's position reflects the muddle of a White House that wavers between its true values and the demands of the wealthy campaign contributors and lobbyists that Obama courts for his re-election. Many Democrats in Congress have also gone along with the falsehood that deficit cutting means slashing spending on the poor and on civilian discretionary programs, rather than raising taxes on the rich, cutting military spending, and taking on the over-priced private health insurance industry. Only the People's Budget speaks to the broad needs and values of the American people.

The current budget negotiations have been a dialogue among the wealthy. The big debate has focused on which programs for the poor should be axed first. There has been no discussion of raising taxes on the rich, and quite the contrary, the White House and the Republican leadership agreed to further tax cuts last December. Obama has repeatedly expressed regret at slashing community development, energy support for the poor, and other programs, but he is not fighting the trend, only regretting it.

Most of Washington has stopped listening to the people. Campaigns are now so expensive that most politicians do anything to court the favor of the rich. Yet ultimately the public will prevail. Twice before in American history -- during the Gilded Age of the 1880s and in the 1920s, just before the Great Depression -- big corporate money effectively owned Washington. But in both eras great progressive leaders (including the two Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin) came along to restore the true meaning of American democracy: a government truly of the people, by the people, and for the people. With public protests against government by the rich now spreading in Wisconsin, Ohio and beyond, and with the launch of the People's Budget by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a great national movement to restore American democracy has begun.

Follow Jeffrey Sachs on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeffdsachs

Thoughts on the Realengo Girl Massacre, by Valéria Fernandes of Uma Voz Feminista

photo of Valéria Fernandes is from here

What follows was sent to me and was translated into English by Lauren Asrael. Underneath that is the original text in Portuguese. I want to thank Valéria and Lauren for their feminist activism.

Lauren provides this preface:

Last Thursday morning, a 24 year old man entered a public school in Realengo, a suburb of Rio de Janiero, Brazil. A former student, he told the staff that he was there as a guest lecturer.

He entered a classroom, pulled out his gun, and shot over twenty students, mostly girls. Wellington de Oliveira killed ten girls and one boy, and wounded thirteen girls and three boys. He shot the girls in the head and the boys in the arms and legs, telling one boy, “Don’t worry, fatty, I won’t kill you.” The media refuses to call this a misogynist crime or a hate crime and continues to use the word ‘alunos’ (male students in Portuguese) when talking about the girls and boys. The girls and boys murdered and wounded were between the ages of 11 and 13. Wellington de Oliveira shot himself. He left a suicide note about sexual chastity and purity.

This is a response to the shooting and the sexism by Brazilian blogger Valéria Fernandes of Uma Voz Feminista.


Thoughts on the Realengo Girl Massacre

Valéria Fernandes

I’m writing this with anger and resentment. The crime in the Realengo public school, eleven ‘alunas’ dead – yes, female students – because it was ten girls and just one boy, leaves me deeply saddened and bitter. We’ve made it to the First World, we now have our own version of Columbine. The number of girls murdered compared to boys (10-1) and wounded compared to boys (13-3) leaves my hair standing on end. The suicide note, full of religious cries (Christian, not Islamic, as some were hoping) of sexual chastity and purity leaves no room for doubt. This was a misogynist hate crime. It is reminiscent of the shooting at the University of Montreal in Canada and at the Amish school in the United States.

In 1989, in Montreal, a guy entered the Polytechnic School, went into an engineering classroom, pulled out a gun. He separated the women from the men and said he was fighting feminism. He shot nine of the women, six of them died. In his suicide note was a list of famous feminists he wanted to murder.

The case of the Amish school is more recent. In 2006, a guy entered an Amish school (doesn’t this just remind you of the film “Testament”?) held a class of students hostage, kept the girls at gunpoint, let the boys go. He killed five girls, and had meant to kill them all, but when he saw the police coming he shot himself.

Someone please tell me where you can find a classroom (excluding Nursing school) with ten girls to every boy. I’m a teacher, and this may true for some schools, but it was not the case in Realengo. Some are saying, “he shot more girls than boys because girls sit in the front row.” I teach teenagers, and I can tell you that both boys and girls sit in the front row.

I just do not believe he shot randomly. I don’t think anyone is at fault – this is not something you would ever imagine happening in a Brazilian school. No one can buy guns that easily unless they are involved in organized crime. I am praying that this does not become a trend. I sincerely believe this was a misogynist hate crime, and the patriarchal view that hides the number of female victims – girl victims, is deeply offensive. I can only hope that the wounded survive and do not join the numbers of the dead.

Here is the post as it appears on the blog of Valéria Fernandes from 7 April 2011. Please click on the title to link back to her blog.

Minhas Considerações sobre as Meninas Massacradas em Realengo

Estou abrindo esse post por pura especulação e indignação. Primeiro, o crime da escola em Realengo, as 11 alunas mortas, sim, no feminino, porque foram 10 meninas e 1 menino, me deixaram profundamente triste e amargurada. Agora, sim, estamos no primeiro mundo! Temos nosso Columbine... ou algo do gênero. Em segundo lugar, as proporções de 10 meninas para apenas 1 menino entre os mortos e de 13 meninas feridas para somente 3 meninos feridos, me deixaram de cabelo em pé. A carta do assassino, carregada de surtos religiosos (*cristãos, não islâmicos, como muita gente começou a inventar*) e sexuais sobre castidade e pureza, me deixou muito, muito desconfiada. Para mim, e estou fazendo essa afirmação sem nenhuma informação posterior, trata-se de um crime de ódio. Ofereço, para quem duvida, dois outros crimes semelhantes em números: o da Universidade em Montreal, no Canadá e o da Escola Amish, nos EUA.

Em 1989, Montreal, um sujeito invadiu a École Polytechnique, entrou em uma sala, rendeu todos, separou homens de mulheres e disse que estava lutando contra o feminismo. Atirou em nove moças, matou seis. Deixou uma carta de suicídio com uma lista de “feministas” que queria matar. O caso da escola Amish é mais recente. Em 2006, um sujeito invadiu uma escola Amish (*Lembram do filme A Testemunha?*), tomou uma classe como refém, liberou os meninos, ficou com as dez menininhas. Matou cinco, e não terminou o serviço, porque ao perceber a aproximação da polícia, ele se matou.

Agora, alguém me diga qual escola do Rio de Janeiro ou de qualquer lugar do Brasil que não seja curso normal, enfermagem (*e aqui pode nem ser*) ou algo semelhante que tenha uma proporção próxima de 10 meninas para cada 1 menino em sala. Eu lecionei em curso normal e a proporção chegava perto disso. Esse não era o caso da escola do Realengo. Contudo vem alguém e me diz que temos estes números, porque as meninas sentam na frente. E, sim, ninguém se mexeu. Eu dou aula para adolescentes, posso até ter mais meninas na frente, mas a proporção é quase meio a meio.

Desculpem, mas meu desconfiômetro está ligado aqui. Não acho que existam culpados. Não é algo que se espere que aconteça em uma escola brasileira, ninguém pode comprar armas de forma indiscriminada neste país salvo se estiver envolvido com o crime, e torço para que não tenhamos ninguém imitando o criminoso em outras escolas por aí. Eu realmente acredito que ocorreu um crime de ódio e o uso do masculino, o suposto universal, que esconde o número de vítimas mulheres, meninas, na verdade, é ofensivo. Torço, também, para que nenhuma das feridas morra e estou incluindo os três meninos.

Quanto ao assassino, era alguém que sofria de transtorno mental. Deveria estar internado, mas o Estado abriu mão de tratar de forma adequada os doentes mentais, para cortar custos. Claro, que tudo é disfarçado em belas teorias que dizem que é melhor o paciente estar com os seus familiares... Sei! Nem sempre isso é possível e/ou aconselhável. Eu defendo o tratamento humanizado, que hospitais psiquiátricos não pdoem ser prisões, no entanto, é preciso dar todo o apoio especializado aos parentes e ao paciente. Isso, o Estado não tem feito. Eis a minah crítica. Outra coisa, vi gente especulando que o policial executou o sujeito. Armado do jeito que ele estava (*vi a foto dele morto no jornal O Dia, com os carregadores em volta do corpo. Se abrir, está avisad@!*), se o policial o matou, fez o que deveria ter feito naquelas condições. Não lamento isto, eu lamento, sim, pelas crianças. E que me chamem de fascista se quiserem, pois assumo integralmente o que digo. Cabe agora investigar como o sujeito conseguiu as armas, tanta munição e os carregadores rápidos (speed loaders). Qual o significado do seu traje imitando a indumentária militar? E o conhecimento e o treinamento que, apesar de ser mentalmente doente, ele certamente possuía? Isso, sim, é importante!

---

O relato de uma das meninas sobreviventes (*1-2*) só reforça que o criminoso tinha um modus operandi. a cosia foi planejada e ele escolheu matar meninas. Meninas mesmo, já que ele entrou e a primeira pessoa que encontrou foi uma professora.

You're so "Radical", you probably don't think this post is about you

image is from here

If you go to the blog where I found the above image, you'll see but one way the term "radical" is misused socially, in this case by a Christian who thinks preaching about Christianity is "radical", not what it actually is as practiced by most who call themselves "Christian": anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Indigenous, racist, anti-queer, and patriarchal too. To my friends who are Christian: you are exceptions to a rule, in my experience. And when you are the rule, not the exception, I'll believe Christianity means something other than what I have experienced it meaning and doing on Earth, which is creating great genocidal and gynocidal harm to many people. But this post is not about Christianity and that religion is one I wish to discuss here. (I've discussed it enough for one lifetime.) What I wish to discuss in this post is how the term "radical" is used or misused, depending on what you believe it means.

Increasingly, across the web and off the web on the ground, there are people who call themselves "radical" in one way or another. You know who you are.

Among that population, are people who are not engaged in any anti-status quo activism of any form, in any organised way. They are, simply, calling themselves "radical". I will note immediately that I include interpersonal and individual work as potentially radical work, but that when I speak of "revolutionary" work, it includes organised resistance, with other people with a similar or collaborative or coalition-built goal of dismantling or radically transforming institutions, systems, and structures of oppression--all of that.

I live in an overtly individualistic society--when it comes to on-going organised resistance and activism determined to radically transform society into one less ecocidal, gynocidal, and genocidal. I live in a country that makes sure slaves can be "employed", that poor and working people can be laid off, get time-limited support while unemployed, while massive corporations get corporate welfare year after year after year. I suppose you know by now that for the first time ever, 1% of the U.S. population is in possession of a whopping 25% of all money made in the U.S. or by U.S.ers. And over 50% of all wealth is possessed by the top 5%. Now, given how inheritance tax, capital gains tax, and other taxes work for the rich, this means that wealth is increasingly hoarded because the U.S. government, allegedly elected by THE PEOPLE--including the poor and the working class and the middle class, because lobbyists in Washington are cozy with elected officials who don't, in any meaningful way, shape, or form, represent the poor, the working class, or the middle class.

Add to that the function of white supremacy and male supremacy in the U.S. and how crimes against poor people of color are not regarded as such--for example the incarceration of poor Black and Brown people, white white rich criminals roam the streets and rule the boardrooms. And how the poorest U.S. Americans with the greatest work burdens are women of color. And how women of color internationally do most of the world's hard labor. And how white men can travel internationally to rape and purchase human beings of color in order to repeatedly rape them, as they wish, with no consequence. And how white het men profit by producing material that depicts the rape of trafficked women and girls, and that material is protected as their speech, and is not seen as a human rights violation of the classes of people so raped and trafficked.

And how men's rape, beating, selling, and murder of women in intimate relationship to the men is not opposed by men, except by a few voices, most of them not organised to do anything at all about stopping rape, beating, selling, and murdering of women. Some of these men are fathers, some are boyfriends, some are husbands. Some are other relatives of the girls and women. In the U.S. only wealthy people can buy and sell other human beings and if you're paying attention, that means white men, generally and usually.

Along with all of that, the media will not report on any of this in any accurate, honest, truthful, or sustained way, with any radical perspective at all. This means, essentially, the mass media owned by the rich will not tell the rest of us about it as a social-economic-political problem, and as a human rights violation issue. Liberal to Conservative viewpoints dominate the airwaves which in no way threatens the people with the most power, who own the media and basically controls U.S. citizens know. It could report the truth and encourage organised activism, but it doesn't because that's not in the interests of the major corporations, the wealthiest U.S. Americans, or the shareholders of those companies.

Amidst this crisis--which is very much an on-going and rather desperate crisis for the poor and working people. Most of us in the U.S. cannot afford health coverage or care or medicines needed for the conditions like depression and anxiety and the diseases caused by diets coercively fed to us through advertising media. Just note how many times a day you see commercials for processed foods, for foods with sugar and other simple carbohydrates which create diabetes and heart disease. We are being bombarded with messages that we must eat sugar and also lose weight--and the corporate (advertising, entertainment, and "news") media owners don't call this mind-fucking the masses. We are encouraged to not take good care of ourselves as the rich get richer, as men continue to rape, beat, sell, and murder women and girls, and as the poor are tossed into prisons across the country for "crimes" that the same percent of whites and rich people will never serve time in jail for, or be charged with, or be pulled over by cops to be questioned and harassed.

Why is it, then, that feminists, anarchists, LGBTIA (I = intergender, A = asexual) activists, anti-racism activists, Indigenist activists, and environmental and anti-nuclear activists, peace and anti-war activists, and economic justice activists aren't all working together to stop these atrocities against most people, animals, the sky, the water, and the earth?

There are many plausible explanations: that dominant LGBTIA groups with media access don't really do much for anyone other than white folks, middle class and rich folks, and only those L and G and B and T folks who adhere to conservative to liberal ideas about what it even means to be Lesbian, Gay, Bi, and Trans. And some of those people, along with many heterosexuals, call themselves "sex radicals". And by "sex radical" they mean being pro-prostitution (trafficking and rape of girls and women), pro-pornography (depicting and selling images and videos of the trafficking and rape of girls and women), pro-BDSM (people who sexualise domination and submission in elaborately violent ways). There's that. And there's the virulent misogyny and racism, including pro-slavery racism, and Indigenous-exploiting racism, of "radical" environmental activists. And there's the fact that if activists are Brown, Black, Asian. Arab, and/or Indigenous, they cannot get media time on any U.S. corporate media to discuss the issues, the fear, the desperation, the troubles being faced by most U.S. Americans and by people worldwide.

We have organisations that exist to assist very marginalised populations of people, like the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and the Audre Lorde Project. But how much funding do they get from the rich? Not much.

There are various feminist groups, most of which adhere to liberal understandings of feminist activism, and actively won't support radical to revolutionary feminists or feminist campaigns, such as those to hold corporate rapists and traffickers accountable for the human and civil rights violations they commit. So there's that.

What I'm trying to get at here, is that most folks who call themselves "radical" aren't doing jack shit about C.R.A.P. And there's one more category of people misusing the word "radical" that I'll mention: people online, who blog, who call trans people bigoted, mean, and insulting names, who call women bigoted, mean, and otherwise misogynist names, who call people of color racist names, who call lesbian, gay, and bi folks homophobic names.

My question to all of you is this: How do you justify calling that behavior "radical" or "pro-revolutionary"? I'm sure many of you DO justify it, in various ways. But I just want to remind y'all that treating other human beings like shit online, on your blogs, and making fun of oppressed people, and bullying oppressed people, and harassing oppressed people, is neither "radical" or "revolutionary". Those, I'd argue, are among The Master's Tools that won't do jack shit to liberate any of us but will help ensure the collective oppressed "we" is not able to organise with one another at all, because we won't feel safe to engage with each other, because so much hate and vile commentary is being spewed by some of us against others of us.

And, bloggers, please, if you're going to call yourselves "radical", make it a point to also be organising in revolutionary, anti-status quo coalititions to stop (once and for all) CRAP from religiously dominating, raping, beating, murdering, poisoning, bombing, terrorising, and otherwise destroying the most vulnerable among us. To pick up a point made by Derrick Jensen and others, you'll note that I'm not declaring various actions against the most oppressive among us--the rich white men--to be anti-radical or anti-revolutionary. Even if those actions are considered--and they will be considered--mean, bullying, harassment, or threatening to the most powerful, poverty-promoting, war-adoring, pollution-supporting, rape-protecting, genocide-committing and otherwise violent people on Earth.

I'm asking anyone who identifies as radical who is actively and enthusiastically promoting meanness toward oppressed people, or the bullying, harassment, domination, abuse, violation, slavery, trafficking of oppressed people intepersonally, regionally, or internationally, racism, heterosexism, and misogyny, as well as genocide and ecocide, to please stop using that term in your self-description or in describing the work you are doing. And, where and whenever possible, please organise in systematic and collectivist ways with other oppressed people--who are most of us, after all--to compost C.R.A.P. before it destroys everyone and everything, taking out the most vulnerable first, or making them do the most unhealthy and humiliating work while we all collectively die.

Because just surviving and finding ways to keep people alive in systems which seek the destruction of most of us isn't enough to make one's actions radical or revolutionary in the collectivist sense, even while I do firmly believe genuine self-care by and for those of us who are oppressed is an act of radical love and ought to be practiced daily, if possible. And, speaking from experience, I know full well that's not always possible. But for those of us who have the energy and the time, let's continue working together, rather than tearing at each other's flesh, demolish each other's psyches, and crush each other's souls, metaphorically, verbally, and in so many other ways. There's nothing radical going on when we do that, if radical means engaged in collectivist, humane, liberatory action. And the Masters sure know it.

Het Men's Wrongs, and Women's and LGBT Rights: CODE RED tackles the issues

image of button is from here

What follows is a cross-post from CODE RED. For more information or to contact CODE RED, note this contact information:

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Guyana Launches Men’s Affairs Bureau to Tackle Homosexuality, Address Domestic Violence

Guyana launched its Men’s Affairs Bureau last month. To my knowledge, it is the only Caribbean country to have one. If the trend by which Caribbean Women’s Bureau quickly became Gender Bureaux in the 1990s and 2000s is any indication, more Caribbean countries may be following the lead of Guyana. Even in the absence of a men’s affairs bureau other Caribbean countries have used their Bureaux of Gender Affairs to address what they deemed to be important issues for men. For example, “in Trinidad & Tobago on March 8 2001, a female minister and former Minister of Culture and Gender Affairs, announced that the state would establish an anti-horning unit to create jobs for men so that women would not have to horn them” (Barriteau 2003).

From the media reports of the launch, attended by no less than the President himself, it appears that the Men’s Affairs Bureau is intended to address at least the three following things:

1) Domestic Violence

The establishment of this bureau was born of the recognition that in this whole effort to address violence against women, we were perhaps failing to address a necessary component, the men – who are in most cases, the abusers – thus making our efforts less than holistic.” (Minister of Human Services)

2) Prevent Male Homosexuality

“We don’t want every young male child to start thinking that that is ok; I am not going to say the word. If we don’t want them to think that, then we need to start providing a community of men where they can get together and discuss male problems in a strong masculine environment. (President of Guyana)

3) Restore Men to their rightful place

Caribbean sociology scholar Linden Lewis who has done work in the area of Men and Masculinities Studies outlined his concerns with the Men’s Affairs Bureau:

Quite apart from distancing themselves from such backward thinking, regrettably speakers at the launch of MAB seemed to embrace the idea of restoring a particular kind of gender order. One speaker talked about honouring men and giving them their place in society. These are not words of reassurance of gender collaboration. Rather the expression of such an intent is more in sync with the notion of returning men to a place of dominance. Furthermore, the remarks about some unspecified process that leads to effeminacy could only be regarded as ill informed and unhelpful. These remarks are also at odds with the expressed idea of respecting people’s sexual orientation and not persecuting them for the same.

The anti-homosexual rhetoric goes hand in hand with the need for men to be restored to their rightful place. It is the re-inscription of heteropatriarchy. The need to address domestic violence also dovetails with this agenda which seeks to preserve male dominance but rid it of it pathological excesses. What is expected to emerge is a gentler, kinder patriarchy. But a patriarchy nonetheless.

There are many issues facing Caribbean men which need to be addressed. However, it seems that Caribbean governments are unable to address men’s issues outside of a framework of re-inscribing male dominance. For example, if the intention is to ensure men’s right to a good life why is men’s violence toward each other not on the agenda? Is there anything else which claims more young Caribbean men’s lives?

The Men’s Affairs Bureau intends to foster small discussion groups of men across the country. Is it wishful thinking to expect that these groups will move beyond the ill-informed anti-woman, anti-homosexual, misogynistic rhetoric of the launch ceremony and focus on how men can and do contribute towards a more equitable and just society?

At CODE RED we have been able to foster dialogue among and between Caribbean women and men who are committed to everyone’s right to a good life. We hope that our state mechanisms for ensuring gender equality will arrive at some ability to do the same.

It is worth noting, however, that Women’s Affairs Bureaux in the Caribbean (perhaps with only the exception of Barbados) came out of the tireless hard work of women/feminist activists who insisted that the state respond to the needs of women. These bureaux have traditionally been under-staffed, under-funded, its employees grossly over-worked and underpaid, “institutionalised to fail” and construed as “illegal”. So while we hope that the MAB will prove to be a progressive institution we are not for a moment ignorant of the gender politics of its establishment!

Join CODE RED for gender justice on facebook or follow us on twitter. By redforgender, on April 10, 2011

The U.S. White Gay Media Gets It Wrong and Racist... again.

image is from here

My emotional and political ties to women in and from the Caribbean goes back close to thirty years, beginning with reading the work of Audre Lorde and Michelle Cliff and continues through to my current connection to CODE RED, a blog whose posts I'm very eager to share here. This is not the first time I've posted about CODE RED here at A.R.P., and it surely won't be the last.
 

image of book cover is from here

image of book cover is from here

What follows is re-printed here by permission, with great thanks to everyone at CODE RED. Please click on the title below to link back. And please note the other contacts here:

CODE RED for gender justice!

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Whose Caribbean?/What are we all hollering for?

As reported by the BBC:

“The United Nations General Assembly has voted to remove sexual orientation from a key resolution that calls on member countries to investigate extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions that are motivated by prejudice.”

Many Caribbean countries either voted against or abstained from the UN motion to eliminate sexual orientation from a list of protections which includes members of ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities. Some US-based LGBT sites and blogs are arguing that “the Caribbean voted to kill gays”.

As the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission argued:

“This decision in the General Assembly flies in the face of the overwhelming evidence that people are routinely killed around the world because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, and renders these killings invisible or unimportant.”

The resolution is shameful and the Caribbean’s stance is indeed cowardly, disappointing and homophobic. However, reports like the one at the link below from the Dallas Voice smack of privilege and imperialism. It represents the Caribbean as a tourist playground and threatens to boycott travel to the region. I am reminded here of Jacqui Alexander’s essay “Imperial Desire/Sexual Utopias: White Gay Capital and Transnational Tourism” which demonstrates how both homosexual and state-endorsed heterosexual tourism have been exploitative, imperialist and renativizing.

The challenge really is to conceive of a politics which is larger than ourselves and larger than any single issue. We have witnessed increasing LGBT activism in at least one Caribbean territory. As Thomas Glave’s anthology insists this is Our Caribbean. Many of the Caribbean’s marginalised and disenfranchised are loving and living in this region (regardless of the lack of political will of governments to address entrenched inequities). There is never a single story. Especially when that story is an imperialist, nativizing one.

http://www.dallasvoice.com/votes-remove-protections-gays-lesbians-transgenders-protection-execution-1053744.html

Response to the above post by another CODE RED member:

What are we all hollering for?

Sounds like Butler’s recent critique of secularism… Imperialism and racism repackaged under the guise of a ‘progressive’ outlook. In applying Butler’s writing to an examination of the ‘progressive’ posture of the US gay rights lobby, I find it intriguing that their outlook once again positions Caribbean peoples as uncivilised, primitive, backward and in need of redemption.

This is problematic. I believe that debates on homosexuality decreasingly centre on questions of morality and increasingly take on questions of national superiority, sovereignty and progress. Within this narrow framing, the struggle for the rights of gays becomes the ‘burden’ of a privileged and enlightened few.

Many parallels can be drawn between the American gay rights lobby and the British anti-slavery movement. Some planters argued that the quest for the abolition of slavery challenged the right of colonies to self-determination. Similarly, some who oppose homosexuality in the Caribbean argue that it is an European and North-American perversion that has been imposed on Caribbean societies.

Perhaps, I’m wrong… I have noticed that many who wish to appear as progressive within the Caribbean offer a merely cosmetic support to the rights of gays and lesbians in the region.

So I ask:

Should we ever take it upon ourselves to fight ‘on behalf of others’?

How do struggles for improvements in of the quality of lives become questions of national sovereignty and progress?

In all of the racket, can we in the Caribbean even recognise the voices of those that we claim to be fighting for or against anymore?

Have we lost track of what impelled us to fight in the first place?

Or will we all ultimately lose our voices or become voiceless?

It is always problematic to be debate an issue on terms that have been taken as given. There is little room to manoeuvre for those on either side of the debate. The same old answers to the same tired questions will always resurface…

Many Caribbean feminists echo Alexander’s work in calling for the removal of barriers to the attainment of full citizenship.

However, I believe that their aims and intentions, though similar on the surface, diverge sharply from those of the American gay rights lobby.

Members of social movements in the Caribbean should be vigilant about the alliances that they form. They should also interrogate the terms upon which they are asked to articulate their visions for social change. After all, if we as members of these movements advance our projects under the banner of progressiveness, then do we not (to play on Wynter’s terms) become complicit in ‘niggering’ and ‘nativising’ our own as well?

As my Dad says: When you see a group of people standing up and hollering, don’t assume that they are all shouting for the same thing…

So what are we all hollering for?

M.N.V.B.

Will The Truth-tellers Please Come Forward, and Take Control of Our Media?

(For the transcript, on the truth of corporate capitalism and the U.S. government, see the end of this post.)

I live inside a country that has, as it's most foundational value, this: don't tell the truth about who we are and what we do.

With this at the root, all manner of atrocities spring up as winding, voracious, vile vines of  lies, deceptions, delusions, forms of denial, and defensive protection of power used so abusively that when anyone else even speaks of using power similarly, they are bombed to death or otherwise destroyed.

I live in a country that is actively engaged in at least three illegal wars--the U.S. government has never been especially honest or even clear about what "war" means, hence the one U.S. men wage against women within and beyond the U.S. is never called war by this country's not-so-gentle-men.

I live on land see as possess-able by the occupiers, the criminal, thieving aliens who have declared this THEIR home and THEIR land, as if no one was at home here before the european men came here to rape, enslave, and slaughter their way to the top of new hierarchical forms of civilisation, currently called CRAP by me, but called variations on white supremacist capitalist patriarchy by many people with heart and conscience, including bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, and Marimba Ani.

When the leaders, who are criminals, call workers who come from Mexico to the U.S. to work,  "illegal", this should sound an alarm that the murderers are running the prison.

The President, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the terribly vocal and influential lobbyists for corporate powers, the attorneys working for multi-nation-invading U.S. corporations, the patriarchal racist corporatised media, work hand-in-hand, with varying levels of agreement and collusion, to tell lies and pretend that's the truth, and to declare truth-tellers liars.

So, what we have is a country that can tell us all about how "Murderous" Mexico (the whole of the country??)  is, on the cover of the New York Review of Books, but cannot, in the pages of the New York Times, tell us exactly how murderous the U.S. military is, or how murderous men are to women. Nor can ABC, NBC, CBS, and FUX-with-our-heads tell us the truth about anything at all: nuclear power plant disasters, other ecocidal atrocities committed by rich corporations, gynocidal atrocities committed by men, racist-genocidal atrocities committed by the U.S. government, and so on.

We can be led to believe that infants and children who are Palestinian and Muslim and Arab will grow up to be terrorists, but not that the U.S. government and the Israeli government are terroristic and behave with no regard for human rights law at all.

We proclaim "whites", repeatedly, to be an endangered species in the U.S., as if governing wealthy white men have not been engaged in genocidal activities here for centuries.

All in all, I think it's wise to trust nothing coming out of the mouths of anyone who has lots and lots of structural, economic, institutional political power, and to believe, far more, those who do not, such as the realities described by women worldwide, about what men do, about what the U.S. does, and about what giant corporations do.

And when you hear anyone who is heterosexual blaming gay males and lesbians for anything being wrong, or hear men blaming women, or hear whites blaming Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous people, just know that there's a strong chance that there's some massive projection going on, and protection of abusive power, including the power to lie and be believed.

*          *          *

What follows is all from *here* at Democracy Now!

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached a last-minute budget deal on Friday, narrowly averting a government shutdown. The deal would cut roughly $38 billion from a federal budget expected to exceed $3.7 trillion this year. We speak to Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. "Many of us who supported President Obama just feel that he’s abandoned the field," Sachs says. "He’s left it to the right wing, which wants nothing more than taxes cut for the rich, whereas the American public is saying very clearly, in every opinion survey, one after another, if you want to close the deficit, go after taxes for the rich, raise them, cut military spending, cut the excess profits in the insurance industry and healthcare, do things that would really make a difference—don’t punish the poor." [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached a last-minute budget deal Friday, narrowly averting a government shutdown. The deal would cut roughly $38 billion from a federal budget expected to exceed $3.7 trillion this year. Many details have yet to be worked out.
Much of the deal has not yet been made public. Known cuts include $13 billion from the Departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services. The GOP won a stand-alone vote over barring Planned Parenthood from accessing federal funds. A vote on defunding public broadcasting was dropped, as was a ban on using Environmental Protection Agency funds to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. President Obama characterized some of the cuts as, quote, "painful."

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This agreement between Democrats and Republicans, on behalf of all Americans, is on a budget that invests in our future while making the largest annual spending cut in our history. Like any worthwhile compromise, both sides had to make tough decisions and give ground on issues that were important to them. And I certainly did that. Some of the cuts we agreed to will be painful.

AMY GOODMAN: White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe announced yesterday President Obama plans to release a long-term plan on reducing the nation’s deficit Wednesday. Speaking on Meet the Press, he said President Obama will insist the nation cannot afford to continue tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

SENIOR ADVISER DAVID PLOUFFE: Now, under the Republican congressional plan, people over $250,000 get over a trillion dollars in tax relief. So this is the important thing: you’re making a choice. You’re asking seniors, the middle class to pay more. You wouldn’t be having to do that if you weren’t giving the very, very wealthiest in this country just enormous tax relief.

AMY GOODMAN: Plouffe made it clear that the House Republicans’ alternative, crafted by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, was unacceptable. He said, "Ryan’s plan] might pass the House, but it’s not going to become law."
Obama is also expected to propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress.
Well, to discuss the budget deal, we’re joined right now by leading economist Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University. He is director of the Earth Institute at Columbia and also president and co-founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit group aimed at ending extreme global poverty. He’s the author of numerous books and articles on development and economic policy.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Your understanding of what this agreement is?
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, this is a miserable step in the wrong direction. It started last December, when Obama and the Republicans agreed to cut a trillion dollars of taxes by extending the Bush tax cuts. And now, even though the details aren’t even worked out, apparently, they’re slashing into programs for the poor. So this is all going in the wrong direction, and many of us who supported President Obama just feel that he’s abandoned the field. He’s left it to the right wing, which wants nothing more than taxes cut for the rich, whereas the American public is saying very clearly, in every opinion survey, one after another, if you want to close the deficit, go after taxes for the rich, raise them, cut military spending, cut the excess profits in the insurance industry and healthcare, do things that would really make a difference—don’t punish the poor. And yet, that’s what Obama is giving up right now. It’s absurd. And when Plouffe says, "Well, it’s unacceptable that the taxes on the rich have come down," the President not only agreed to that last December, but when they announced the compromise this weekend, he referred to that historic agreement last December. So the whole thing is a bit of a mass confusion, and I find it absurd.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk about the four proposals.
JEFFREY SACHS: I say that there really are four proposals on the table right now. One is the Ryan plan; that is the extreme right: just do anything, slash anything, hit the poor, in order to get the tax rates down on the rich. It’s a fraud. But they have momentum because Obama is not resisting.
Then there was Obama’s muddle, because he put forward a budget plan last month, after all, not only for fiscal year 2012, but a decade-long framework. He agreed to keep taxes so low on the rich that, in effect, his proposals, if you look at the fine print, would squeeze the so-called civilian discretionary budget, where education, where infrastructure, energy, climate would all be squeezed to an unmanageable small level.
Then there’s a new proposal that the Congressional Progressive Caucus put forward last week. Terrific. It’s called the People’s Budget. It actually responds to what the people want, and that is, raise taxes on the rich, raise taxes on the corporations that are getting away with absolute unbelievable—unbelievably abusive loopholes, cut military spending, preserve spending for the poor, for education, for investment and so forth.
Then there’s a fourth position. That’s the American public. You notice the American public isn’t asked by Congress or the President these days, but the American public speaks clearly in opinion survey after opinion survey. It says the rich have had a free ride, the corporations have been running our country, the spending on the military is completely unjustified, and we want a public option on healthcare. All large majorities, not one of them happening. Why? Because the lobbyists are in control, both of the White House and Congress.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, you’re not just talking about in control of the White House and Congress, but what about the press? When you talk about these opinion polls that show a very progressive America, this is not reflected across the networks when you watch TV.
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, first of all, Fox News is pure propaganda. We know that. But it’s just relentless propaganda, and people respond to it. To my mind, the Tea Party is nothing but a Fox News Channel propagandistic creation. This is Roger Ailes at work. So that’s one part of it. But it gets a lot of—lot of press.
Same thing with the Wall Street Journal editorial page. That’s our leading business press, but it’s so relentlessly phony and right wing on the editorial page that you never hear anything about the middle. It’s only about tax cuts. It’s all this drum beat to cut taxes, cut taxes, cut taxes.
Then the mainstream, you know, basically, the New York Times, as far as I’m concerned, it just tries to protect its inside line to the White House. So, whatever the White House says, that’s what it reports. But it doesn’t report the fact that there’s a whole public opinion out there that needs to be covered. And I find that very, very sad.
AMY GOODMAN: But even outside of Fox, these discussions, for example, raising the issue of the military, that people recognize this as a huge drain on the budget, this is not raised, rarely in discussion.
JEFFREY SACHS: It’s true. When I am on talk shows and people talk about what to do, it’s all wringing your hands: "We have to cut entitlements, we have to cut entitlements." But the public is saying, "Can we get out of Afghanistan?" What an incredibly wrongheaded policy, wasting more than $100 billion a year, achieving nothing. But you’re right, this doesn’t get discussed.
AMY GOODMAN: And then, what about healthcare? What about these costs, and what can be done about it?
JEFFREY SACHS: Basically in healthcare, the U.S. has the most expensive system for what’s delivered of all the high-income countries. Why? Because we have this huge private sector health insurance industry. It’s hugely overmanned. Salaries are enormous. They spend a tremendous amount advertising, which doesn’t happen in other healthcare systems. Our specialists are paid way out of line with what happens in other countries. And that’s because we have a system that allows these huge costs, and then the government just pays a kind of cost-plus pricing, whereas a public option would get that under control and a system, called capitation, where basically insurance—or, health providers and public sector providers are responsible for the person and the family as a whole, not operation or procedure, one after another, that they get reimbursed for, is the much more efficient, low-cost way to do things.
All of it is to say, when the public option was taken off the table last year, despite a strong support of the public—and why did Obama take it off the table? Because the lobbyists told him to take it off the table. When that was taken off the table, we lost the chance to get healthcare costs under control. This is the problem. It’s lobbyists, morning 'til night. Whether it's lobbyists for healthcare, lobbyists for the financial sector, lobbyists for the war industry, and lobbyists for the tax cuts, they’re running Washington, both the White House and the Congress. And what the public wants—actually, the broad majority of the public—doesn’t get heard.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the People’s Budget.
JEFFREY SACHS: The People’s Budget is a proposal of the leadership of 80 members of Congress, which is called the Progressive Caucus. I was so happy—
AMY GOODMAN: The largest caucus in Congress.
JEFFREY SACHS: I was so happy to see it when I saw it for the first time last week as it was being unveiled. I said, "Thank God. Something coming from Washington that makes sense," because they, too, have been crowded out. The White House has played a game, basically. If the far right is holding the agenda, the White House says, "We’ll be one step towards the center of the far right." But that means giving concession after concession after concession. What Obama is trying to do is to look reasonable, to look a little bit more reasonable than the extreme right. But to do so, he’s just compromising, compromising on core principles.
Then, finally comes the Congressional Progressive Caucus and says, "Stop it. Let’s do what the people really want." This is the wonderful thing about America. Sometimes you feel so frustrated: "What’s going on in this country?" as if everybody’s a Tea Partier. It’s not true. The broad majority of the public has very reasonable, very mainstream and compassionate views. They say, "Don’t slash for the poor. No, let’s start making the rich pay their due." That’s what the public says, the large majority. Who’s listening? Or who’s hearing them? The media keeps them out, by and large. And the White House and the Congress are dominated by the lobbies and by the concern about raising campaign funds. After all, President Obama is trying to raise a billion dollars for his 2012 election. Where is he going to get that? On Wall Street. Are they telling him, "Raise the taxes"? Unfortunately not.
AMY GOODMAN: What about House Speaker Boehner. What role is he playing in this?
JEFFREY SACHS: Well, the Republican Party is dominated by a absolutely obsessive single idea: slash anything, cut anything, as long as the taxes for our rich patrons come down. That’s the role he’s playing.
AMY GOODMAN: You talk about the different proposals as a—the taxes as a percentage of the GDP.
JEFFREY SACHS: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Explain.
JEFFREY SACHS: Basically, right now, we’re collecting this year only 15 or 16 percent of our gross national income, or gross domestic product, as taxes. That’s not enough to pay for even the most basics of government, for Social Security, for Medicare or Medicaid, military, interest on the debt. And then you have all the rest government is needed for to help educate our children, to help keep our children safe, to have the infrastructure for productive economy, to address climate change and so forth. There’s no money for that right now.
The only way seriously to have government do what government needs to do for the American people is to raise revenues right now. Now, in a normal economic recovery, maybe our current tax system would go back up to 17 or 18 percent. Ryan’s proposal and Obama’s proposal is to stop somewhere 19 to 20 percent. But if you look at what we really need to have a normal country, we would have to be 23, 24 percent of GNP—that’s just basic arithmetic—to cover our core costs and to be able to face the needs of the American people for education, for roads that don’t collapse, for a climate that doesn’t get wrecked, for a modern energy system, for science and technology, for our competitiveness. So, this means tax—taxes on the rich and on the companies have to go up, if we’re going to have a normal country. But the Republicans are dead set against it. And until now, Obama has just compromised, compromised, compromised.
AMY GOODMAN: I know you have to go teach a class. How do you think President Obama has most failed the American people?
JEFFREY SACHS: He hasn’t led. His job in our constitutional system is to help show a way forward and help to explain, help to say why we need to go this way, not to stand in the back and then announce how historic an agreement is to slash taxes on the rich or how historic an agreement is to cut $38.5 billion that’s going to slash programs for the poor. That’s not his job. His job is to lead. That’s why we who supported him—I was one of them—expected something very, very different. Now, Wednesday, maybe he’s going to try again. We hear from Plouffe, OK, this time it’s for real. But if he comes out and does again what he’s been doing, I just think he’s lost the core, the heart, of the political movement that basically supported him to bring him to office.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeffrey Sachs, I want to thank you very much for being with us, leading economist, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, also president and co-founder of Millennium Promise Alliance.

Hilarious video for Passover: "Let My People Go!"

This is one of the most clever videos I've ever seen on YouTube. Enjoy. Happy Passover to all who celebrate the Jewish holiday.

And, I'm praying for liberation from tyrannical militarised regimes for all the people of Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and the entire region of North Africa and the Middle East, including for my Palestinian sisters and brothers.