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Woman Gang-Raped by 7 Halliburton Employees "Signed Away" Her Right to Sue? How Justice Has Become the Privilege of Corporations | Gender | AlterNet


By Laura Flanders, The Guardian
Posted on June 29, 2011

Worried about the influence of money in American politics, the huge cash payouts that the US supreme court waved through by its Citizens United decision – the decision that lifted most limits on election campaign spending? Corporations are having their way with American elections just as they've already had their way with our media.

But at least we have the courts, right?

Wrong. The third branch of government's in trouble, too. In fact, access to justice – like access to elected office, let alone a pundit's perch – is becoming a perk just for the rich and powerful.

Take the young woman now testifying in court in Texas. Jamie Leigh Jones claims she was drugged and gang-raped while working for military contractor KBR in Iraq (at the time, a division of Halliburton). Jones, now 26, was on her fourth day in post in Baghdad in 2005 when she says she was assaulted by seven contractors and held captive, under armed guard by two KBR police, in a shipping container.

When the criminal courts failed to act, her lawyers filed a civil suit, only to be met with Halliburton's response that all her claims were to be decided in arbitration – because she'd signed away her rights to bring the company to court when she signed her employment contract. As Leigh testified before Congress, in October 2009, "I had signed away my right to a jury trial at the age of 20 and without the advice of counsel." It was a matter of sign or resign. "I had no idea that the clause was part of the contract, what the clause actually meant," testified Jones.

You've probably done the very same thing without even knowing it. When it comes to consumer claims, mandatory arbitration is the new normal. According to research by Public Citizen and others, corporations are inserting "forced arbitration" clauses into the fine print of contracts for work, for cell phone service, for credit cards, even nursing home contracts, requiring clients to give up their right to sue if they are harmed. Arbitration is a no-judge, no-jury, no-appeal world, where arbitrators are (often by contract) selected by the company and all decisions are private – and final.

Deadly small print is not only for subprime mortgage-seekers – and neither are the costly repercussions. When corporations evade the bills for harm, no matter how huge (for medical malpractice, say, or pension fund collapse), the liability is passed on to individuals, and then to taxpayers. A new documentary, Hot Coffee, premiering 27 June, on HBO, lays out the whole picture – and it's devastating.

First-time filmmaker Susan Saladoff starts where for many Americans, the term "tort reform" first appeared. Stella Liebeck, an 81-year-old woman, sued McDonald's over coffee that was "too hot" – and became the "welfare queen" of tort reform. Pilloried in corporate-funded PR and in the media after a jury imposed an initial $2.7m in punitive damages, lobbyists used Liebeck's case to deride "frivolous" lawsuits and bludgeon congressional and state legislators into passing laws that set maximum "caps" on damages. (Politicians all the way up to President George W Bush needed no bludgeoning: "frivolous suits" became a campaign trail hit.)

But look at the pictures Saladoff shows in Hot Coffee and you'll see Liebeck's legs seared by savage, third-degree burns, which covered over 16% of her body. As any reporter could have discovered at the time, McDonalds' protocols kept its coffee at 82-87ºC (180-190ºF). Over 700 people had been burned by it. Ten years of suits and claims had forced no change. Liebeck's suit was anything but "frivolous".

Likewise, Jones's suit. Or the big-business funded effort to unseat justices opposed to "tort reform" – also profiled in Hot Coffee. It's taken Jones nearly six years and a hearing in the US Senate to force her employer, Halliburton into open court, at last, in Houston this week. Jones tells Saladoff she's driven by concern for other young women in her position – in no position, that is, thanks to mandatory arbitration, to know the truth about past claims and what they may be getting into when they sign an employment contract.

Saladoff, a plaintiff's attorney for 25 years, is driven, too – by a belief in the seventh amendment right to a jury trial. "Tort" is a complicated word for a simple thing – "harm," she explains. The courts are supposed to be the branch of government where citizens and corporations have an equal shot. The US supreme court in Dukes v Walmart recently rejected 1.6 million workers' attempt to bring a class action case – making it a whole lot harder for Americans to band together to hold corporations accountable. Go it alone and the deck is stacked, thanks to decades of effort by corporations and the politicians they pay for.

They don't pay fair wages; they don't pay their fare share of taxes. They evade liability. What gives? Says Saladoff: "When corporations harm, there should be some way to hold them accountable."




Laura Flanders is the host of GRITtv, Mon-Thursday on Free Speech TV (Dish Network chn. 9315) and streaming at GRITtv.org.

© 2011 The Guardian All rights reserved.

Fighting the Culture Wars With Hate, Violence and Even Bullets: Meet the Most Extreme of the Radical Christians | Tea Party and the Right | AlterNet

By Alex Henderson, AlterNet
Posted on June 27, 2011

If there is one name some residents of Amarillo, Texas wish they could forget, it’s Repent Amarillo. Based in that North Texas city, Repent Amarillo is a militant Christian fundamentalist group whose antics have ranged from staging a mock execution of Santa Claus by firing squad to posting a “spiritual warfare” map on its Web site that cited a Buddhist temple, an Islamic center, gay bars, strip clubs and sex shops as places of demonic activity.

Repent Amarillo is also infamous for mercilessly harassing a local swingers club called Route 66. Throughout 2009, members of Repent Amarillo made a point of showing up at Route 66’s events, where they would typically wear military fatigues, shout at Route 66 members through bullhorns and write down the license plate numbers of people attending the events. After finding out who the swingers were, Repent Amarillo’s members would find out where they worked and try to get them fired from their jobs (according to Route 66 coordinator Mac Mead, at least two members of the club lost their jobs because of Repent Amarillo).

None of that has kept Repent Amarillo founder David H. Grisham from dabbling in local politics; earlier this year, he ran for mayor of Amarillo and lost to former city commissioner Paul Harpole.

But Repent Amarillo is hardly alone when it comes to promoting a decidedly radical and militant brand of Christianity. From the Army of God to the Hutaree Militia to Gary North and his Christian reconstructionists, radical Christianity is alive and well in the United States—and Christianists aren’t shy about turning up the heat when it comes to fighting the "culture war." Some radical Christianists have employed bully tactics and hate-mongering rhetoric without resorting to actual violence (Repent Amarillo, the Rev. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church), while others have committed acts of terrorism and said the culture war will have to be won with bombs and bullets.

When religion is discussed, it is important to make a distinction between radical and non-radical practitioners. Radical Christianity is not representative of Christianity any more than al-Qaeda is representative of Islam. The average Lutheran or Episcopalian minister is no more a threat to public safety than the average member of Islam’s Sufi sect, who are arguably the Hare Krishnas of Islam. Not all Christians are Christianists; not all Muslims are Islamists. But an abundance of disturbing events bear out the fact that radical Christianity, like radical Islam, is quite capable of violence—and contrary to what Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter would have us believe, the examples are numerous.

Active since the early 1980s, the Army of God is a loose network of radical anti-abortionists with a long history of promoting terrorism and premeditated murder in the name of Christianity. The Army of God has published an anti-abortion training manual that offers instructions on bomb-making, arson and other ways to attack clinics.

The group’s Web site praises a long list of Christian terrorists who have been convicted of violent crimes, including Paul Jennings Hill (who was executed by lethal injection in 2003 for the murders of abortion provider John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett), Scott Roeder (who was convicted of first-degree murder for the 2009 shooting of George Tiller, a Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions), Michael Frederick Griffin (who was sentenced to life in prison for the 1993 murder of Dr. David Gunn, an ob/gyn based in Pensacola, Florida), James Charles Kopp (who shot and killed Barnett Slepian, a physician who performed abortions, in 1998), Matthew Lee Derosia (who, in 2009, rammed his SUV into the front entrance of a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Paul and told police that Jesus ordered him to carry out that attack) and John C. Salvi (who attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others).

The Web site describes Tiller’s murder as “justifiable homicide” and describes Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as women who got exactly what they deserved; Salvi, who died in prison in 1996 and may have committed suicide, is hailed as a hero for killing them. The Army of God exalts Hill, Rudolph, Roeder, Griffin, Derosia and Salvi as martyrs for Christianity in much the same way al-Qaeda consider Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers martyrs for Islam.

The Army of God has also been a vocal supporter of Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph’s crimes include bombing an abortion clinic in Sandy Springs, a suburb of Atlanta, in 1997; bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997; and bombing an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998. The Birmingham bombing caused the death of Robert Sanderson, a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard, and resulted in serious injuries for nurse Emily Lyons, who lost an eye. Rudolph is best known, however, for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics; that blast killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others.


Another Christian terrorist who has been associated with the Army of God is Shelley Shannon, who shot Tiller in 1993 but didn’t kill him; in addition to being convicted of attempted murder for her attack on Tiller, Shannon was involved in a series of arson attacks on abortion clinics in different states. One person who considered Shannon a good friend was fellow Army of God terrorist Scott Roeder, who visited her frequently in prison and finished what she started when he murdered Tiller in 2009. The Army of God Web site calls Shannon “a warrior soldier in the Army of God.”

In 2010, a North Carolina-based Christianist named Justin Carl Moose was arrested by the FBI for plotting to help blow up an abortion clinic; Moose, the FBI said, considers himself an Army of God member and an organizer of a terrorist cell for that group. According to the FBI, Moose described himself as a Christian equivalent of Osama bin Laden on his Facebook page but openly advocated violence against Muslims; he also praised Timothy McVeigh (mastermind of the Oklahoma City terrorist bombing of 1995, which killed 168 people and injured 450 others).

The FBI said that Moose wrote on his Facebook page: “If a mosque is built on Ground Zero, it will be removed Oklahoma City style. Tim’s not the only man out there that knows how to do it....I have learned a lot from the Muslim terrorists and have no problem using their tactics.” Moose, according to the FBI, met with an FBI informant and offered advice on how to make TATP, the explosive used in the London subway bombings of 2005. Earlier this year, Moose was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

The Army of God’s Web site has, in the past, been managed by the Rev. Donald Spitz, who is so extreme that even the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue disowned him for promoting violence. The Virginia-based Spitz has publicly argued that killing abortion doctors is justifiable homicide, and Spitz has published the writings of Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph, Shelley Shannon and other Christian terrorists on the Army of God’s Web site. Spitz, who considered himself Hill’s “spiritual adviser” during the final months of Hill’s life, heads his own Christianist group, Pro-Life Virginia, and has said that Muslims “should not be allowed to live in the United States.”

In the U.S., the far-right militia movement has often been secular in nature; Timothy McVeigh, for example, was raised Catholic but described himself as an agnostic. But occasionally, the militia movement and radical Christianity have overlapped. A perfect example is the Hutaree Militia, a Michigan-based group with extreme Christianist views. In 2010, nine members of Hutaree were arrested for an alleged plot to assassinate police officers using firearms and explosives; allegedly, Hutaree saw that plot as part of a battle with forces of the "Antichrist."


Christian reconstructionism is one of the most disturbing schools of radical Christianist ideology. Founded by the late Calvinist theologian Rousas John Rushdoony (who died in 2001), the Christian reconstructionist movement believes in abolishing any separation of church and state and establishing a government that adheres to a rigid approach to Mosaic Old Testament law; adultery, homosexuality and blasphemy would be punishable by death under a Christian reconstructionist government.

Even on the Christian Right, Rushdoony (who was a defender of slavery and considered democracy incompatible with Christianity) is controversial. The type of government Christian reconstructionists long for would, in many respects, mirror the Taliban of radical Islam. Rushdoony’s teachings have a following that includes his son, the Rev. Mark Rushdoony (who now heads the Chalcedon Foundation, the organization his father founded) and Gary North (who was R.J. Rushdoony’s son-in-law and now heads his own Christian reconstructionist organization, the Institute for Christian Economics). According to David Holthouse (formerly of the Southern Poverty Law Center and now with Media Matters), Mark Rushdoony “now leads a small army of true believers whose fundamentalism is so hardcore they make garden-variety right-wing evangelicals seem like Unitarians at a Peter, Paul and Mary sing-along.”

North has written that under a Christian reconstructionist government, stoning should be the method of execution for gay men, adulterers and women who have had abortions. North has said that stoning (which is still practiced by radical Islamists in Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and other countries) is preferable to other methods of execution because it is more economical; he has also said that a stoning can be a community event for Christian families.

Of course, not everyone on the Christian Right is guilty of committing or promoting violence. But even without actual violence, Christianists often resort to bully tactics and violent rhetoric. After the January 8, 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona that killed six people and left Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords seriously wounded, Fred Phelps praised the shooter and said that he was doing God’s work. Phelps, who ran for political office several times as a Democrat in the 1990s, said, “Congresswoman Giffords, an avid supporter of sin and baby killing, was shot for that mischief…Westboro Baptist Church prays for more shooters...and more dead.”



Journalist Chris Hedges has often said that actual violence is preceded by the "language of violence,” and the language of violence is quite common among Christianists. In 2007, when Hindu minister Rajan Zed was asked to deliver an opening prayer for the Senate, Christianist groups like the American Family Association, Operation Rescue/Operation Save America and Faith2Action angrily protested and made it clear that they had no use for Hinduism. And Repent Amarillo isn't shy about trying to bully its victims into accepting the group's extremist view of Christianity. Certainly, the language and rhetoric of violence is a part of “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” a video game that deals with holy war in the name of Christianity and is part of the Rev. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ apocalypse-obsessed Left Behind series. Author Frank Schaeffer, who used to be part of the Christian Right but has since renounced it, has said that the Left Behind novels and games “represents everything that is most deranged about religion.”

But despite all the extremist views, hate-mongering and terrorist violence associated with Christianists, radical Christianity typically gets a pass from Republican politicians and the Republican talk radio hosts who support them. When, in 2009, Janet Napolitano warned of the threat of violence coming from the far right (including anti-abortion extremists), she was called anti-Christian by many people on the Christian Right. But when Rep. Peter King of New York called for Congressional hearings on radical Islamic activity in the U.S., he was applauded by neocons and many of his fellow Republicans.

Far-right talk show hosts have spent a considerable amount of time talking about radical Islam, but they seldom, if ever, have anything to say about radical Christianity. They have no problem with a group like Repent Amarillo, which hasn't actually resorted to physical violence even though it has employed an abundance of violent, militaristic imagery. It’s safe to say that if an Islamist group held a mock execution of Santa Claus and harassed people at work, it wouldn’t be taken lightly in GOP circles. And if an Islamist group released a video game as twisted as “Left Behind: Eternal Forces,” it wouldn’t get a pass from Republican talk radio.

One person who has been outspoken about the Republican/far-right double standard when it comes to radical Christianity vs. radical Islam is Rob Boston, senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and author of three books on the Christian Right. “From where I’m sitting, the main organizations that are trying to impose religion on other people in this country are fundamentalist Christian in nature,” Boston said:

“I can’t remember the last time, for example, that a Muslim group tried to get Islamic doctrine posted in a courthouse or attempted to ban same-sex marriage by pointing to passages in the Koran, or tried to force Islamic prayers in the public schools. But fundamentalist Christian groups do these things all the time. So if anybody is trying to impose religion on Americans, it’s not Muslims; it’s extreme fundamentalist Christian groups.”

Boston added that just as it is wrong for atheists to make broad generalizations about people of faith, it is equally wrong to automatically associate terrorism and extremism with Islam:

“Christian groups will complain if they are painted with too broad a brush—and rightly so. Christianity in America is diverse. There are Christian groups that are theologically very moderate, and there are Christian groups that are very, very conservative. Not everyone who is a Christian in America is a fundamentalist or an evangelical. We always have to remember that there is a lot of diversity out there. Yet, the same conservative Christian groups that complain about being caricatured will do the same thing to Islam; they portray the one billion Muslims in the world as if they are exactly the same. But anybody who has spent any time talking to Muslims quickly learns that there is just as much diversity in that community as there is in the Christian community about how holy books are to be interpreted and how society is to be ordered.”

Boston continued:

“I just find the whole thing ironic because if you look at the agenda of the Islamic extremists, their agenda is anti-women’s rights and anti-gay rights, and it’s about religion controlling the government. Well, what other movement do you know of that believes in those things? The Christian Right. Culturally, those movements are very similar. And there’s a reason for that. It’s not religion that’s the problem; it’s fundamentalism that’s the problem. I always remind people of that when I’m giving speeches. Sometimes, I run across people who think that religion in general is bad and that religion is why we have all these problems. And I tell them, well, religion can persuade people to do a lot of good things in the world. It’s not religion that’s the problem—it’s fundamentalism."

Some people have described Timothy McVeigh as the ultimate Christian terrorist. This is inaccurate, because while McVeigh was raised Catholic, he appeared to be motivated by extreme anti-government/militia beliefs rather than religious motives. But there is no doubt that McVeigh was responsible for the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil prior to 9/11.

American Muslim activist Haroon Moghul, who serves as executive director of the Maydan Institute and frequently lectures on Islam, said he sees a major disparity between the way radical Christianity and radical Islam are covered by the right-wing media. “I think the biggest difference in the way Islam and Christianity are covered by the right is that when it comes to Islam, the assumption has been that Islam is inherently violent or inherently political and that Islam has to prove otherwise,” the New York City-based Moghul said.

“When it comes to radical forms of Christianity or more extreme forms of Christianity, it’s always seen as an aberration by the right. But any sort of Muslim behavior that is violent or extreme or intolerant is assumed to be inherent to Islam. So the burden of proof is on a Muslim community or a Muslim individual to prove otherwise. If Osama bin Laden said something, it was assumed that it was inherent to Islam. If it’s Hutaree or something like that, it’s assumed that it is just a lone wolf or a fringe group—and it’s disconnected from the rest of what’s happening in America. Hutaree isn’t assumed to be the product of something bigger than themselves.”

Moghul views the Christianity good/Islam bad narrative of the far right as symptomatic of the soundbite culture that exists in America. “There really isn’t room for a lot of different opinions in our political discourse in the United States,” Moghul said. “Whether the two-party system makes that better or worse, I don’t really know. But you generally see that nuance disappears in our political discourse.”

Another voice of sanity on the subject of Islam and Christianity is journalist Leonard Pitts, Jr., author of Becoming Dad: Black Men and the Journey to Fatherhood and a syndicated columnist for the Miami Herald. In his columns, Pitts has had a lot to say about the way some people on the far right will try to paint Islam in general as a violent religion (as opposed to making a distinction between radical and non-radical Islam). And they get away with that double standard, according to Pitts, because it is easier to attack what is a minority religion in the U.S.

“Christianity is a known element in the United States, whereas Islam is a foreign faith,” Pitts explained. He continued:

“Most people of faith in the United States are Christian. Most Americans know a lot of Christians but don’t know any Muslims. So it’s easy to look at the craziest, most dangerous Muslims and assume that they are representative of Islam as a whole. Christians in the United States will look at the Army of God and say, ‘That has no relation to any Christianity I have ever known. That has absolutely nothing to do with any Christianity I have ever known,’ but moderate Muslims will say the same thing about Muslims who commit acts of violence.”

In one of his columns, Pitts pointed to four scriptural quotes that could be construed as violent—one from the Qu’ran, three from the Bible. His point was that cherry-picking parts of the Qu’ran in order to prove that Islam is an inherently violent or dangerous religion is as intellectually dishonest as cherry-picking parts of the Bible in order to depict Christianity as inherently violent.

The far right, according to Pitts, often neglects to mention the fact that Muslims themselves have been the victims of Muslim extremists, including the Muslims killed on 9/11. “People forget that a lot of Muslims died that day,” Pitts said. “You’re not going to attack Lower Manhattan that way and not kill Muslim people.” He added: “I don't fear Muslims, I don’t fear Christians. But I fear Muslim and Christian extremists. I fear extremists period.”

If stoning proponent Gary North is mentioned at all in the Republican media, he is painted as a harmless eccentric and not part of a radical Christianist movement. But if someone in a mosque in Detroit or Oakland promoted stoning, talk-radio Republicans would be screaming about it for days.

The bottom line is that extremism in the name of religion is cause for concern regardless of whether the extremists identify themselves as Christian or Muslim. Those who claim that Christian extremism is any less dangerous than Islamic extremism are being disingenuous.

“When people embrace any kind of extreme ideology, whether it’s religious or secular, and can tolerate no dissent,” Boston said, “we’re in for trouble."


Alex Henderson's work has appeared in the L.A. Weekly, Billboard, Spin, and other publications.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151436/

As proponents for reproductive justice, we advocate for access to the resources people need to thrive and to decide whether, when, and how to have and parent children with dignity, free from discrimination, coercion, or violence. What happens, however, when we don’t agree with the decisions other people are making?

Maria Hvistendah discusses the large gender imbalance occurring in certain parts of the world due to sex-selective abortion in her new book, “Unnatural Selection.” In places such as China and India, cultures with a strong son preference, many couples are partaking in sex selection abortion to terminate pregnancies when they find out the fetus is female. This practice skews the gender ratio so that by 2020, there will be about 45 million more men than women in the world. This gender imbalance significantly impacts culture and society, not only because it sends a clear message that women are less valuable to society than men, but because it fuels other practices like the selling of women from rural areas for marriage and even sex trafficking.

Jonathan Last’s Wall Street Journal article, “War Against Girls,” suggests that we can do one of two things to combat this problem – restrict abortion or live with the consequences. Not surprisingly, many anti-abortion groups embrace this idea. Are women “abusing” their right to have an abortion? Or is society forcing women into the practice of sex-selective abortion? This is a complex issue that goes beyond “abortion rights,” and is a result of cultural pressures, continued sex discrimination, and societal policies that need to be addressed.

Government programs like China’s “One Child” policy, coupled with the strong tradition of son preference linked with status, undoubtedly plays a role in this behavior. More importantly, at the core of the problem lies sexism and gender inequality. Gender discrimination shapes the life experience of millions of women and girls around the world. Along with cultural expectations about gender roles, women may not want daughters because they understand how difficult it is to be a woman. China has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, particularly among women. Coercion and violence are also factors to consider in some communities, as women who are not pregnant with sons may be coerced into using sex selective abortion or subjected to domestic and intimate partner violence. Banning abortion is not the simple answer to this complex problem. Prohibiting abortion will not stop women from aborting female fetuses. Instead, infanticide rates may rise and it will result in pushing the procedure underground, which will significantly affect access, health and safety of the procedure.

As more right wing anti-abortion groups are using sex selective practices to fuel legislation to restrict abortion in the U.S., reproductive justice activists must develop a coherent way to address this issue. Skewed gender ratios pose a significant detriment to society. However, reducing the desire for sex selection requires structural and societal change, not a ban on abortions.

Christine Poquiz
LSRJ Legal Intern
3L, UC Davis School of Law

I had an amazing time at SlutWalk in San Diego - delighted to see a diverse group of protestors and speakers (and signs) and to make some new friends! I just uploaded 92 photos to my Facebook account but will post a few here as well. I tried to ask permission beforehand but if I accidentally snuck you in a photo and you'd like out, please contact me and I'll remove it right away!

Alice Walker: Why I'm Joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza | World | AlterNet


Alice Walker: Why I'm Joining the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza
By Alice Walker, The Guardian
Posted on June 26, 2011

Why am I going on the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza? I ask myself this, even though the answer is: what else would I do? I am in my 67th year, having lived already a long and fruitful life, one with which I am content. It seems to me that during this period of eldering it is good to reap the harvest of one's understanding of what is important, and to share this, especially with the young. How are they to learn, otherwise?

Our boat, The Audacity of Hope, will be carrying letters to the people of Gaza. Letters expressing solidarity and love. That is all its cargo will consist of. If the Israeli military attacks us, it will be as if they attacked the mailman. This should go down hilariously in the annals of history. But if they insist on attacking us, wounding us, even murdering us, as they did some of the activists in the last flotilla, Freedom Flotilla I, what is to be done?

There is a scene in the movie Gandhi that is very moving to me: it is when the unarmed Indian protesters line up to confront the armed forces of the British Empire. The soldiers beat them unmercifully, but the Indians, their broken and dead lifted tenderly out of the fray, keep coming.

Alongside this image of brave followers of Gandhi there is, for me, an awareness of paying off a debt to the Jewish civil rights activists who faced death to come to the side of black people in the American south in our time of need. I am especially indebted to Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who heard our calls for help – our government then as now glacially slow in providing protection to non-violent protesters – and came to stand with us.

They got as far as the truncheons and bullets of a few "good ol' boys'" of Neshoba County, Mississippi and were beaten and shot to death along with James Chaney, a young black man of formidable courage who died with them. So, even though our boat will be called The Audacity of Hope, it will fly the Goodman, Chaney, Schwerner flag in my own heart.

And what of the children of Palestine, who were ignored in our president's latest speech on Israel and Palestine, and whose impoverished, terrorised, segregated existence was mocked by the standing ovations recently given in the US Congress to the prime minister of Israel?

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. One child must never be set above another, even in casual conversation, not to mention in speeches that circle the globe.

As adults, we must affirm, constantly, that the Arab child, the Muslim child, the Palestinian child, the African child, the Jewish child, the Christian child, the American child, the Chinese child, the Israeli child, the Native American child, etc, is equal to all others on the planet. We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

I once asked my best friend and husband during the era of segregation, who was as staunch a defender of black people's human rights as anyone I'd ever met: how did you find your way to us, to black people, who so needed you? What force shaped your response to the great injustice facing people of colour of that time?

I thought he might say it was the speeches, the marches, the example of Martin Luther King Jr, or of others in the movement who exhibited impactful courage and grace. But no. Thinking back, he recounted an episode from his childhood that had led him, inevitably, to our struggle.

He was a little boy on his way home from yeshiva, the Jewish school he attended after regular school let out. His mother, a bookkeeper, was still at work; he was alone. He was frequently harassed by older boys from regular school, and one day two of these boys snatched his yarmulke (skull cap), and, taunting him, ran off with it, eventually throwing it over a fence.

Two black boys appeared, saw his tears, assessed the situation, and took off after the boys who had taken his yarmulke. Chasing the boys down and catching them, they made them climb the fence, retrieve and dust off the yarmulke, and place it respectfully back on his head.

It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put – without delay, and with tenderness – back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.

That is why I sail.

The Chicken Chronicles: A Memoir by Alice Walker is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson. A longer version of this article appears on Alice Walker's blog: alicewalkersgarden.com/blog

After the excitement of the Arab Spring, has the Palestine issue slipped out of view, asks Emine Saner
Just over a year ago, in the middle of the night, Israeli commandos boarded a Turkish ship in international waters just off the coast of Israel, opened fire and killed nine activists. The Mavi Marmara was one of six ships in the Freedom Flotilla, which was attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza, and the actions of Israel's military brought widespread international condemnation.

This time, as Freedom Flotilla II sets sail over the next week, with 10 ships carrying many of the same activists who travelled last year, including Swedish writer Henning Mankell, American human rights campaigner Hedy Epstein, and writer and academic Alice Walker, the Israeli government's response will be closely watched.

This week Ron Prosor, Israel's ambassador to the UN, wrote a letter saying: "Israel calls on the international community to do everything in their ability in order to prevent the flotilla and warn citizens … of the risks of participating in this type of provocation." The purpose of the flotilla, he said, is "to provoke and aid a radical political agenda". He later added: "We are very determined to defend ourselves and to assert our right to a naval blockade on Gaza."

"The threats of violence won't deter us," says Huwaida Arraf, one of the flotilla organisers. "Nobody is going in to this lightly, but we feel it has to be done. Israel has to realise its violence against us is not going to stop our growing civilian effort to challenge its illegal policies. The size of this flotilla, the number of people involved in organising it, even after Israel killed nine of our colleagues last year, is testament to that."

She says half a million people applied for the few hundred places: depending on how many of the 10 boats are seaworthy in time, there should be around 400 people on the flotilla.

The campaign began in August 2008, when 44 activists on two small fishing boats set off from Cyprus and managed to reach Gaza. Later that year, the Free Gaza Movement, as it became known, organised several other voyages, usually sending single boats containing small but symbolic supplies such as medicine and toys, and volunteers, including doctors, lawyers and politicians. Amid allegations of violence and hostility from Israel's naval forces at sea, the activists decided they would need to send a flotilla, and after months of fundraising and negotiating with NGOs from other countries, particularly Turkey, several ships met in the Mediterranean sea in May last year with the intention of reaching Gaza.

"We didn't make it to Gaza and we lost a lot of colleagues," says Arraf, "but one of the things that was achieved was that people realised what Israel's policies meant, and the violence Israel was using to maintain them. We think our action will put pressure on Israel to end its blockade on Gaza, and we hope the respective governments of all the people participating will take action and do what they should be doing, instead of having their nationals putting their lives at risk like this."

There is a danger, says Chris Doyle, director of the council for Arab-British understanding, of the Palestinian issue being overlooked – in the west at least – as focus shifts to countries going through the extraordinary changes in the Arab spring. "There is a danger that people forget how important this issue is, and that it is boiling. It is still an unresolved issue. At a time when international politicians – Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy and others – are concentrating so much on other areas of the region, the issue of Palestine has not gone away."

"Everyone has been so amazed and shocked at the beauty of the Arab revolutions, seeing these incredibly brave and wonderful citizens, that it quite naturally seizes the attention, but at the heart of the Arab revolutions is Palestine," says Karma Nabulsi, an academic and expert on the Middle East. "I would say it hasn't been properly covered in the west, but Palestine is central to what people – the Arab media, the people who are participating in the Arab revolutions – talk about all the time."

So where does Palestine fit into the Arab spring? Doyle says: "A Palestinian spring is more than possible. Many senior people within Fatah and the Palestinian authorities have been saying this is the way to go because the negotiations are not seen as credible, and they will have to adopt different tactics. I think that, on the one hand, those tactics could be against the Israeli occupation, but also it represents a threat to the Palestinian authority itself, both to Fatah and Hamas."

The flotilla "gives people heart and encouragement, that the struggle for freedom has friends and supporters", says Nabulsi. "What the flotilla did last year, these plucky little boats, was bring the entire world to look at what [the Israeli government] were doing. Not just because of the brutality of the response of the military, but it shows how simple gestures get to the heart of the issue – breaking through the silence and the siege, and all the things that seem so big and impossible to do. They did it and they're going to do it again, and that's what is so remarkably brave."

Previewing the BET Awards: Where Are the Lady Rappers?

BY Julianne Escobedo Shepherd
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011

A glance at Justin Bieber’s stacked trophy shelf will tell you music awards shows generally reward sales over all other criteria. When they deviate from this rubric, there’s a price to pay, as when the enormously talented jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding nabbed last year’s “Best New Artist” Grammy from the Biebz and his fans hijacked her Wikipedia page in anger and retaliation. Smaller musicians are rarely rewarded if even recognized, and with the exception of shows geared towards niche audiences — MTVu’s Woody Awards, for instance — the shows generally serve to reinforce the machinations of the corporate music industry, so the masterminds can pat themselves on the back.

Which is partly why the nominees for next week’s BET Awards 2011 caused such an outrage — the “Best Female Hip-Hop Artist” category, in particular. Headed up by last year’s winner Nicki Minaj — a clear shoo-in — the rap chops (and broad appeal) of the nominees dropped precipitously thereafter. Atlanta diva Diamond, the former Crime Mob rapper who’s shined on a series of mixtapes since that group split, was a respectable runner-up. But the last two nominees seemed to dip into absurdity. There was Lola Monroe, who rap fans knew first as video girl and frequent King magazine model Angel Lola Luv, but who has made efforts to shed the “eye candy” trope and refashion herself as a rapper with a high-pitched, mafia moll flow. And then there was Cymphonique, a 14-year-old singer with a Nickelodeon contract and the honor of being Master P’s youngest show-biz progeny. To many rap fans, the line-up looked like a joke. Upon the announcement, Twitter lit up with “#Fail” hashtags. Blogger The Hip-Hop Diva suggested that “Every female hip hop artist should submit every video they ever release to BET.” And XXL summed it up succinctly with a headline bearing the unprintable acronym “FOH.”

The line-up was thin, but there was also a noticeable snub: longtime Miami rapper Trina, who’d not only released the independent chart-topping album Amazin, but had been featured in several videos in heavy BET rotation — including Lola Monroe’s “Overtime,” on which the veteran handily bested the newcomer. Trina took to Twitter to protest her exclusion — as did Nicki Minaj and Diamond — which resulted in a long, soul-searching phone conversation with BET head Stephen Hill in which he explained that she’d submitted her video outside of the qualifying dates, blah blah blah. And yet, barring Trina, maybe there really were no other viable contenders for the Best Female Hip-Hop Artist category — for one, it takes big budgets and industry clockwork to place a video in BET rotation, and what labels are pulling that kind of weight for lady rappers today?

Mini-controversies go down practically every minute on the rap internet, beef and battles inherent to the genre, so this one blew over within a matter of weeks. But it illustrated a deeper problem within the music industry. BET felt like it had to stretch for nominees because there is a constant dearth of space for female rappers. Since the heyday of strong, powerful, positive and feminist MCs piqued in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s — with Queen Latifah, Salt n Pepa, MC Lyte and YoYo at the helm — at any given time there have only been three or so female rappers topping the industry.

Missy Elliott and Lauryn Hill remain the gold standards, and Lil Kim, Foxy Brown and Eve had their day. But before Nicki Minaj stomped and snarled her way into mass consciousness, arguably the last female rapper to gain as much industry respect and recognition as her male counterparts was Remy Ma — who’s been incarcerated since 2008 after shooting her best friend in a Manhattan parking lot.

“Since ‘97 it’s really just been Kim, Foxy and Missy, and then a rotating feature of crazy ladies,” says Judnick Mayard, rap and R&B columnist at Fader’s Suite903. “But they were never included or even paid attention to unless they could at least stand a bit on the level of those top three. If you’re a female rapper, you have to prove yourself on so many levels and be so many different things.”

This is not to say there is a paucity of female rappers, nor do any of them have to fit in a sexed-up Kim/Foxy mold — though some do. The Georgia rapper Lady became a web meme in February for her song and video “Yankin,” which described in detail her particular anatomical talents. A personal favorite, Atlanta’s Rasheeda, flips explicit sex rhymes into calls for female liberation — it’s not exaggeration to say every other track she cuts includes a line advocating cunnilingus.

But in the wilds of the internet, there’s infinitely more space for varied personalities and styles. There’s been a small flurry over Kreayshawn, an off-kilter, diminuitive white girl from Oakland, who parlayed her infectious summer hit “Gucci Gucci” into a million-dollar contract with Columbia Records. (The race issues — and the Ke$ha vibes — around that deal are a whole other column entirely.) The slow but steady rise of Kid Sister and Amanda Blank — not to mention the acceptance of MIA, more of a chatter than a rapper, into mainstream hip-hop — has ensured those with less conventional styles have a place. Chipper Florida teen Dominique Young Unique raps like confetti over electro beats, UK grime divas like Lady Leshurr are gaining wider acceptance in America, and more traditional hip-hop modes live on in Brooklyn through inveterate spitter Jean Grae and rising star Nitty Scott. Another favorite of mine, Azealia Banks, barely 20, has transformed her biting, Harlem-cut style into multiple flavors, spanning double-dutch battles and pounding, ravey rap anthems complete with diva vocals.

Meanwhile, Cymphonique’s newest song is undeniably, 100% R&B (BET Awards have a whole separate category for that). It’s also quite good, the type of hip hop-informed love jam that dominated the mid-’90s and made Keyshia Cole’s first album a classic. (Cole, in another dramatic turn, was also snubbed.)

I’ve just barely touched on the lady rappers I’m into (for a daily dose of old and new, femalerappers.tumblr.com is a good source). So why does it seem like the music industry has no room for more than two or three at a time? Partly, it seems, it won’t let them be great. Meaning: industry executives seem to bet on the idea that men won’t want to listen to talented female rappers, and they’re given less opportunities in general. In some cases, they might be right — even with a history of skilled lady rappers, hip-hop still sometimes seems like a man’s game, with a glass ceiling just as impenetrable as the corporate one. Trina, who’s completing her sixth album this year, is the only female rapper outside of Missy Elliott to release so many albums. Longevity in hip-hop is tough to attain, but even so, that fact seems insane. Surely my friends and I aren’t the only rap fans dying to see a multiplicity of voices in one of our favorite genres, dying for an alternative to the dense hypermasculinity that rules it. Nicki Minaj has been a godsend and possibly a lifesaver, but how much more interesting would things be if she had formidable opponents? (Sorry, 2011 Lil Kim doesn’t count.)

Like so many lady CEOs before her, Azealia Banks’ solution is to come at the game like a man. “It’s kinda like, if you punch a dude in the face, don’t expect him not to hit you back just because you are a girl,” she says. “If you’re gonna fight a man, be prepared to fight a man, right? Sounds crazy, but it’s the same deal. I definitely think the novelty of being a female rapper has worn off completely, so you’re not getting any points for being cute anymore. As a hip-hop artist who just so happens to be female, I definitely have to step my shit up and keep stepping my shit up. Not only because of male pressure, but just because of musical pressure. I want my music to be able to stand up against everyone’s music, not just other rappers.”

It’s a reasonable response — and certainly the right attitude for an artist who’s trying to win on every level. Still, to me it doesn’t seem like the problem is that female rappers can’t go toe to toe with their male counterparts — it’s a matter of who’s willing to listen in an industry where gender bias is still entrenched at every level.

So I’ll watch the BET Awards this Sunday, psyched to see Lil Wayne and Jill Scott, Mary J. Blige and Rick Ross. But when no female rappers perform — not even Dear Old Nicki — I’ll be stewing and salty on the couch, wondering when, or if, we’ll stop being seen as second string.

Does SlutWalk Speak to Women of Color? | | AlterNet
Does SlutWalk Speak to Women of Color?

By Andrea Plaid, AlterNet
Posted on June 22, 2011

You could have colored me unsupportive of SlutWalk.

Even though I have jokingly called myself a slut (as in “I’m a handbag slut”), as an African American woman I was rather uncomfortable with the protest’s racial dynamics, at least how it was shaping up in the US and Canada. I felt the word “slut” didn’t speak to me; I found the word “ho” more damaging. Of course, I also thought this word broke down in the black/white binary. in my experience, if a black woman was in a mostly white or all-white setting, the word “slut” as a perjorative would be used. In mostly black or all-black settings, the words “ho” and “fass” (meaning sexually “fast”) would be flung to sexually shame us.

What didn’t help my ambivalence regarding SlutWalk was, when watching some white organizers and speakers talk about the problems of race in organizing the protests, it was the usual “well, ‘slut’ is universal,” or they'd point to the speaker roster or the people in the audience (though the photos show, again, white women). It came off as another word-reclamation project that seemed to recenter white cisgender women’s sexual agency and bodies. (Sort of the way “feminist issues” tends to reincarnate a little too often as “white (cis) women’s issues.”) And, increasingly in the discussions, there is a disturbing new attribute of the “relatable rape victim” as a woman who is “young and sexy” or at least “precocious and body-conscious.”

Simultaneously, I wasn’t feeling how SlutWalk became some litmus test around women of color and being down with the "WoC agenda" of addressing the meld of racism and sexism as linked with issues around class, gender identity and body images and capacities, reproductive rights, sexual identification and sexuality, immigration, the criminal/penal system, education, healthcare, and other issues. (Yes, I mean the WoC agenda facetiously because there’s really no such thing. Women of color aren’t a monolith, and as people are wont to do, will disagree on the best ways to achieve social justice.)

Even when participants like Morgane Richardson, Harsha Walia and Creatrix Tiara have spoken their truths on why they joined the protests in their respective countries, quite a bit of rhetoric coming from some online WoC communities and bloggers is that “women of color” don’t see the use of the march because “it doesn’t speak” to “us” categorically.

But see, the thing is quite a few women of color are called sluts. Three recent examples of this, in consideration of what the word means:

1) Slut, meaning a “servant girl,” has her modern-day descendents in the women to do domestic work, be it in a home or in a hotel—like the woman who cleaned former IMF leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s room. She may or may not have been a young woman, may or may not have been body-conscious or thought herself as sexy. What I do believe she was conscious of was that doing her job didn’t involve this man allegedly sexually violating her. Strauss-Kahn probably thought the hotel worker he violated was powerless. He thought wrong, as his arrest and subsequent resignation has proven, thanks to the worker going to her union and people supporting her in getting her story in the media.

2) Slut, meaning “a sloppy, dirty, untidy woman,” which is essentially what Massachusetts Representative Ryan Fattman said regarding undocumented women. He said they deserved to live in fear because that’s what they get for living in the US without having their paperwork in order when they arrived. (Considering that the implicit ethnicity in talking about immigrant women are those from Latin America, another stereotype in play is the “spicy Latina” who’s always ready for sex, which tends to render them “unrapeable” because Latinas are naturally "asking for it.") Regardless of age and whether or not immigrant women are sexually self-confident about their bodies, what they are aware of is they are people living and contributing to this country and they are not a readily available group of women people are free to rape with impunity because the women lack paperwork. Their taxes put clothes on the cops’ and Rep. Fattman’s back and food in their bodies, Undocumented or not, that fact alone means the police and the lawmakers are beholden to these women—including responding to their reporting of sexual violence.

3) Slut, meaning a bitch, which tends to get flung at the woman who stands up for herself, like Rihanna did in her video “Man Down.” We can argue and otherwise carry on about her offing her assailant in the video. But, as a woman who survived rape, I completely understand why her character did what she did. That vengeance fantasy goes through many a victim’s and survivor’s mind because our lives are shattered and quite a few of us don’t feel anyone will bring the perpetrator to justice. We’ve seen how the criminal-justice system will let off male perpetrators, including those who had a duty to protect the citizenry from sexual violence. If the System can do that…then, yes, I can empathize with a victim going the way of the gun or needing to spit on their violators’ graves.

Actually, I have to thank Rihanna for changing my mind about SlutWalk. Not her, per se, but a comment about her video that was posted on Racialicious. The commenter said a friend of hers said Rihanna would have made a stronger point about rape if she would have worn “regular clothes.” I questioned what the commenter said, since Rihanna is wearing "regular clothes" in the video, considering the video’s location and her activities -- strolling in her neighborhood and interacting with her neighbors as well as going to the dance club. I further pointed out that this statement skated too closely to the “she was asking for it because of her clothes” justification. After the reader said that she and her friend were sexual-assault survivors and admonished me not to “attack each other,” she admitted that clothes have nothing to do with sexual assault.


The comment infuriated me…and enlightened me. I was so upset that the commenter couldn’t see the contradiction of saying clothes are a non-issue regarding sexual violence yet wanted to defend her friend making Rihanna’s clothes an issue regarding the rape in the video. That’s when I hopped on the side of the SlutWalk: I couldn’t bear another day of hearing of shaming people, especially women of color, over the “correct” way to dress or speak or needing to be a certain demographic or agree with a certain perceived agenda in order to have our fury over sexual violence be heard. In fact, I volunteered to speak at SlutWalk NYC in August.

So, yes, color my woman-of-color self supporting this cause.


Andrea Plaid is sexual correspondent for Racialicious.com and a writer based in Brooklyn.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/151390/

Texas May Approve A Confederate Flag License Plate:

According to website Think Progress:

"Texas May Approve A Confederate Flag License Plate | Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) may soon get the chance to advertise his love of secession on his car. The Lonestar State is considering a specialty license plate that would feature the Confederate flag. The Texas Sons of Confederate Veterans (whose own logo incorporates the flag) designed the plate to “remember Texans who died fighting in the Civil War.” The president of the state’s NAACP chapter, however, said that the flag on license plates “would be humiliating and demeaning.” A state board has yet to approve the plate and will reconsider approval in a few months."

I would think that the right wing would understand why as an AMERICAN from THE UNITED STATES that I find it highly unpatriotic and quite anti-American to even consider such an idea. The Confederacy was built upon the notion that America was not great enough and thus deserved to be seceded from because the idea that slavery is immoral and thus should not be legal, did not suit their fatal capitalistic ways. However, in their never ending attempts to keep Black people de facto (and de jure) inferior to whites, they will embrace anti-Americanism. Losers.

The filmmaker's description not mine:



"Black power. Abortion. Terrorism. "Prophetic fiction". Three years in the making, "Gates of Hell" is a documentary from the year 2016 that chronicles the crimes of a band of domestic terrorists known as the Zulu 9. Finnish filmmaker Ani Juva travels to the United States to better understand the mysterious black power assassins, the bizarre eugenics conspiracy theory that drove them to commit extreme acts of violence and how America's political landscape was transformed forever. Blending real history and real public figures with a fictitious (yet plausible) future, it is safe to say that you have never seen a film like 'Gates of Hell'."

Judge for yourself.

And just some food for thought; The film's producer, Molotov Mitchell, was a vocal supporter of Uganda's anti-gay bill that legislated the death penalty for those deemed homosexual.