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pI have little patience for Žižek. To some he might be a critical provocateur, but he is really more of a philosophy-themed stand-up comic (who...

pBy Alex Kane - May 7, 2013/p pA student who was arrested and beaten for falling asleep at school is now suing an Alabama city, its police department and some school employees for civil rights violation, battery and negligent supervision and hiring...[A]fter the diabetic student fell asleep while in a room reserved for “in school suspensions,” a school police officer slammed her face into a cabinet and then arrested her./p pa href=http://mostlywater.org/diabetic_high_school_girl_beaten_cop_and_arrested_falling_asleep_class target=_blankread more/a/p

More than 50 students, faculty and staff at The Cooper Union in New York have begun a sit-in inside the office of the school’s president, Jamshed Bharucha. Democracy Now!'s Martyna Starosta filmed students reading an open letter to Bharucha condemning his decision to end the school's longstanding tradition of free tuition for all undergraduates. Shortly after this video was filmed, school officials removed Starosta from the office.

VICTORIA SOBEL: The action began as a sit-in in Jamshed Bharucha’s office this morning at 11:00 a.m. The plan was to intercept the president and read this statement to him. Right now we have more than half of the signatures of the School of Art for students, so that is a majority of the students voicing no confidence in Jamshed Bharucha. So, for us, it began as a sit-in. And his absence has marked it as an occupation. He is no longer welcome in this office space. It is one that’s been reclaimed by the students, for the students, for this school. It’s not about tuition. It’s about repealing tuition. It’s about reclaiming administrative spaces and re-examining the roles of administration within a school context.

DEVONN FRANCIS: This is a nonviolent direct action. You are not being held in this room. You are free to exit when you please. Jamshed Bharucha, we are here today to deliver you a statement of no confidence from the School of Art. We no longer recognize your presidency at Cooper as legitimate. And in so doing, we commit to reclaim this office in the interim until a suitable administrative alternative is secured.

SEBASTIAN QUIJADA LINK: We, the students of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, can no longer uphold or endorse the direction our college has taken under the leadership of Jamshed Bharucha, with the support of the current board of trustees. As a student—as the students, we are indebted and steadfastly committed to fulfilling the historic mission of Cooper Union as an institution committed to providing students with an exceptional educational experience without the burden of tuition, regardless of need. Central to this mission is the imperative to continue challenging the institutional and societal norms regarding education, accessibility, class mobility, pedagogy and organizational structures. The Union of Art, Architecture and Engineering has empowered a historically diverse student body that for over 150 years has served to shape engaged and creative citizens in and beyond New York City.

As stewards of The Cooper Union, we are viscerally interconnected to Cooper’s mission of championing free education to all. We know more intimately than any consulting firm that the integrity of academic and creative excellence achieved by The Cooper Union is intrinsic to the college providing its students full-tuition, merit-based scholarships. Jamshed Bharucha has continually relied on a campaign of marginalizing students, faculty and alumni voices, and has neglected to genuinely engage alternative models and financial solutions brought forth by the community. We see now that Jamshed Bharucha and the board of trustees have committed themselves to maximizing Cooper’s expansion, both locally and globally, at the expense of its core values. We know this to be a grave misstep. The college has illegitimately been made to adopt the policy of tuition as a result of a top-down administrative structure that, from inception, relied on disregarding the voices and contributions of students, faculties and the community at large in vital decision-making processes. A persistent lack of transparency in decision making and a failure to adequately articulate a viable future for Cooper Union without tuition has compounded the fundamental issue of the college’s governance. The result is administrative insistence that tuition is a foregone conclusion.

In reality, if relieved from this oppressive administration, we stand to reclaim all that Peter Cooper intended for this college and more. As citizens of New York City, we must stand united in the face of mounting adversity as it plagues all of our institutions of learning, private and public. We recognize that this instance of crisis at Cooper Union is also a precious opportunity to radically redefine the thresholds of success and failure in our own terms, necessarily separate from corporate business models of growth and profitability. We see the need for a more explicitly robust system of shared governance, invoking greater faculty, student and community involvement in decision-making processes, a reaffirmed commitment to student diversity by abolishing the imposed tuition, and more respectful college engagement both locally and globally.

As President Jamshed Bharucha has squandered two years of precious time in which the community needed, more than anything, a decisive leader with devout commitment to the mission and vision of Cooper Union, with this vote we express our abhorrence and disapproval of the policies and actions of Jamshed Bharucha’s administration. We strongly affirm that we have no confidence in Jamshed Bharucha.

We call upon the faculties of art, architecture, engineering and humanities at The Cooper Union to take the time to uphold the sanctity of this institution by putting forward respective votes of no confidence. We invite and implore our fellow student bodies from architecture and engineering schools to reflect on the mutually exclusive and divergent efforts of the community and those of the administration. By voting no confidence today, we set a future precedent and expectation of deliverable excellence from individuals bestowed with administrative titles. It is time to raise the bar. We extend our invitation to voice no confidence in Jamshed Bharucha to alumni and to the general public. It is time to enact new, more cooperative methods of organizing our colleges and universities. Let this demonstration of no confidence mark your commitment to any number of new viable beginnings for Cooper, and also mark the crucial intolerance of stagnant growth, expansion and capitalist models, which threaten to plague our college. Join us in taking a stand against Jamshed Bharucha’s maladministration of Cooper Union. Let us continue to be an institution that leads by example. Join us in keeping Cooper Union free to all.

Cooper Union is one of the last private schools to offer free tuition. The school says students will now be charged on a sliding scale, with tuition as high as $20,000 for those deemed able to afford it. School officials claim those unable to afford tuition still will not have to pay.

Related Links:
VIDEO: Voices from the Cooper Union Occupation in New York City (Democracy Now!)

Board of Trustees Statement on the Future Plans of Cooper Union

Cooper Union Student Action to Save Our School

New York Times:'College Ends Free Tuition, and an Era'

pBy Greg Macdougall - May 7, 2013/p pMental health awareness is gradually gaining ground, and so are radical alternatives to mainstream approaches. Community-based initiatives by and for the so-called crazies amongst us tend to be kept under the radar in Canada, challenging discrimination, providing peer support and advocating for a diversity of perspectives on mental health, its treatment and justice./p pa href=http://mostlywater.org/call_us_crazy_1 target=_blankread more/a/p

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Part one of this interview aired on the May 8th, 2013 program

Watch part two of our conversation with the celebrated Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, author of the new book, Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Galeano’s classic book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent, made headlines when Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez gave President Obama a copy at the Summit of the Americas in 2009. Since its publication in 1971, Open Veins has sold over a million copies worldwide despite being banned by the military governments in Chile, Argentina and his native country of Uruguay. While in exile after the Uruguayan military junta seized power in a 1973 coup, Galeano began work on his classic trilogy, Memory of Fire, which rewrites five centuries of North and South American history.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh, and our guest is Eduardo Galeano, the great Latin American writer. His latest book is Children of the Days: A Calendar of Human History. Eduardo, you were just telling us a story about being—

EDUARDO GALEANO: Chávez

AMY GOODMAN: —an election observer in Venezuela—

EDUARDO GALEANO: I was talking about Chávez, yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —in the referendum for Hugo Chávez.

EDUARDO GALEANO: And I was a delegate of 200 independent observers and working with the former president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, and Gaviria in representation of the Organization of American States, OEA—we three, working together during some days and nights. And in that transit across people in—who was going to vote for or against Chávez retaining power, in this road I heard something which I will never forget, explanation of everything else. It was a man in a very poor neighborhood in Caracas, and I asked him, "I know this, the vote is secret. But tell me, just personally, will you vote yes or no to Chávez?" "I’ll vote—I shall vote yes, of course. I shall vote yes." "And how? Why? Why?" "Oh, obviously, it’s clear enough: Now I am no more invisible."

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And that’s his legacy?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Mm-hmm.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: For people in Venezuela. Do you think people in the region, as well?

EDUARDO GALEANO: People in region?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: In Latin America, as well, not just in Venezuela?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Ah, no, not just in Venezuela. Now they are becoming—this is the good part, the best part of the present situation in diverse Latin American countries, in which the invisibles are becoming visibles.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s President Chávez’s legacy. What about President Obama?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Oh, for me, it was great news when I knew that he won the elections the first time, because in this country, I remember that 1942, when the United States entered in the Second World War, the Pentagon forbade, prohibir, forbade the transfusion of black blood. In order to avoid that, by injection, will be done, but it was prohibited in the beds. And so, the president of the Red Cross in the States was a very important scientist. He was black. And he said, "I won’t obey this order of the Pentagon, because it’s a stupid order, for the simple fact that black blood does not exist. All bloods are red."

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Eduardo Galeano, you initially wanted to be a soccer player—

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: —and not a writer.

EDUARDO GALEANO: No.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Can you talk about the significance of soccer in Latin America and the connection between soccer and politics, or sport and politics?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes. Yes, I wanted to be a soccer player, and I became the best of the best, the number one, better than Maradona, better than Pelé, and even better than Messi—but only at night, nighttime, during my dreams. When I wake up, I realized that I have wooden legs and that I’m doomed to be a writer. It’s my only possibility in life, to earn my life honestly, is writing, but not playing football, soccer.

I remember a sports journalists in the States. I met him in Montevideo some years ago, 20 years ago. And I asked him about what is called soccer here. And he said, "Oh, no, no. Yeah, soccer, football in the United States, is the sport of the future, and it will always be." But he was wrong, because this very good journalist ignored that half of the U.S. population was you, women. And now the United States have the best teams, one of the two or three best team of female football in the world. And this is part of the reality also—or not. You are two to one; you are the majority in this table.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask you about your health and about how it has evolved and changed your worldview? I mean, you have struggled with cancer. You had—

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes, twice, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —a cancer operation the last time you were here.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: A lung cancer. And you’re dealing now.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: How is it—how are you coping?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Well, I’m crossing this difficult period, and I realize that I have discovered new remedies that have awful side effects but are curing me. I mean, my tumor is reducing more and more, thanks to these new remedies, which are also sometimes—I feel some of the side effects are brutal. I asked my doctor, "Well, these remedies, [inaudible] by the Pentagon?" "No, no, not at all. But you just accept these side effects because you are going to go on living, and otherwise, you may be dead." "Oh, no," I told the doctor. "No, dead, no. Death is so boring. No, please, I’ll try with the remedy."

NERMEEN SHAIKH: You’ve often quoted Pablo Picasso saying that "art is a lie that tells the truth."

EDUARDO GALEANO: It’s true.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So what do you see as the significance of art and of your writing, in particular, its relationship to the truth and to politics?

EDUARDO GALEANO: And to politics and to everything else. For instance, what is a good writer, from my point of view? That was able to make the past become present telling a history of two centuries ago or three centuries or four or I don’t know how much, and the reader may feel it’s happening right here and now. The past turn to be present in the magic words of a good writer. That’s a lie, in the sense that what he or she is telling didn’t—is not happening now, but thanks to these art prodigies, their magic powers, it does occur in today.

I remember that—you know, I didn’t receive a formal education. I was educated in the Montevideo cafe, in the cafes of Montevideo. There, I received my first lessons in the art of telling stories, storytelling. I was very, very young and sat at one table, neighbor of other table of people, old people, or more or less old, and they were telling stories, and I was hearing, because they were very good storytellers, anonymous. And one of them was telling a story about a battlefield at the beginning of the 20th century in Uruguay in a war period in the countryside. He was walking among the killed soldiers of both sides. They were distinguished by a ribbon on the front: the white and the red. And suddenly he found an angel. That was what he said: "I found an angel, with the arms open, laid in the grass." And a bullet had entered into his head, crossing the white ribbon. But he could read in the—in the white ribbon was a stain, mancha, stain of blood all along it. But something was written there: "For my country, for my countryside." No, patria? How is it, patria, in English? Country?

AMY GOODMAN: Country, for my country.

EDUARDO GALEANO: "For my country, and for her." And the bullet had entered in the word "her." And so, I felt I was looking at that man who had died 50 years ago or 60 years ago. So this was a lie, but a lie telling the truth. This was art, an art done by an anonymous person and with no pretensions of being, you know, selected, elected by the finger of God.

AMY GOODMAN: Eduardo—

EDUARDO GALEANO: There are some writers who feel they are elected by God. I am not. I am elected by the devil, this is clear.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about the power of silence, as you talk about words. You were born in Uruguay. You left at the time of the coup. You were imprisoned briefly?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Sí, briefly.

AMY GOODMAN: Why did they imprison you briefly?

EDUARDO GALEANO: I never know, never knew. Everybody was imprisoned, even if you feel or you were, you know, practically free. But it—and it was an entire country in prison. And Uruguay was at that time world champion of torture. Everybody was tortured. I wasn’t. I was lucky enough to avoid it. And torture was quite efficient, not in the sense that it’s told by some friends of torture. No, not in this sense. It’s not—never—it’s almost never useful to get information. And the purpose of torture is not getting information. It’s spreading fear. And in this sense, torture was really efficient in Uruguay. It was an entire country sick, enfermo —

AMY GOODMAN: Sick.

EDUARDO GALEANO: —of fear. I remember I received in exile in Barcelona some letters, anonymous letters with no indications of address, of names or nothing, no, of course. And one of the letters said, "It’s terrible, learn to lie. But, you know, we had no choice. We’re obliged to lie, day and night lying. And it’s horrible. But worse than learning to lie is teaching to lie. And I have three children."

AMY GOODMAN: Three children?

EDUARDO GALEANO: That was what the letter said. "Worse than learning to lie was teaching to lie. And I have three children."

AMY GOODMAN: On the issue of silence, you went from Uruguay to Argentina. And there, the torture, the repression was intense.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes, yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You were editor of a magazine, and you answered the censorship with silence. Explain.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Yes. Yes, finally, I fled away from Argentina also, because—I couldn’t stay in Uruguay, because I don’t like to be in jail, and I didn’t stay in Argentina. I could not, because I didn’t want to lay in a cemetery, because, as I told you before, death is very boring.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: You’ve said that a lot of your work—I mean, it’s obvious from even what you’ve read—a lot of your work is about reclaiming different histories, not only in Latin America, but also in Latin America, to overcome what you’ve called the problem of amnesia. Could you elaborate on what you mean by that?

EDUARDO GALEANO: Amnesia?

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Yes.

EDUARDO GALEANO: Well, we have a memory cut in pieces. And I write trying to recover our real memory, the memory of humankind, what I call the human rainbow, which is much more colorful and beautiful than the other one, the other rainbow. But the human rainbow had been mutilated by machismo, racism, militarism and a lot of other isms, who have been terribly killing our greatness, our possible greatness, our possible beauty.

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pBy Thomas Gaist - 8 May 2013/p pUS officials continued to press for war against Syria yesterday, dismissing United Nations investigator Carla del Ponte’s statement that Western-backed opposition forces, not the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad, had used chemical weapons./p pa href=http://mostlywater.org/us_shrugs_syrian_opposition%E2%80%99s_chemical_weapons_use_presses_war target=_blankread more/a/p

p ...

pBy Assata Shakur - May 08, 2013/p pMy name is Assata Shakur...Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984...I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one./p pa href=http://mostlywater.org/open_letter_assata_shakur target=_blankread more/a/p

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Democracy Now! 2013-05-08 Wednesday

• Headlines for May 08, 2013
• Pentagon Study Finds 26,000 Military Sexual Assaults Last Year, Over 70 Sex Crimes Per Day
• Eduardo Galeano, Chronicler of Latin America's "Open Veins," on His New Book "Children of the Days"

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div class=field field-type-filefield field-field-photo div class=field-items div class=field-item odd div class=filefield-fileimg class=filefield-icon field-icon-image-jpeg alt=image/jpeg icon src=http://libcom.org/sites/libcom.org/modules/contrib/filefield/icons/image-x-generic.png /a href=http://libcom.org/files/images/blog/Friedman.jpg type=image/jpeg; length=78568Friedman.jpg/a/div /div /div /div div class=field field-type-text field-field-introduction div class=field-items div class=field-item odd p A sex worker's response to columnist Mia Freedman's blog in which implied that she does not respect the right of women with mental illness to become sex workers. /p /div /div /div p A few weeks ago both a href=http://belledejour-uk.blogspot.com.au/p/bio.htmlDr Brooke Magnanti/a and a href=http://www.mamamia.com.au/about-mia/?repeat=w3tcMia Freedman/a appeared on an all women panel on Q and A. Quite a few topics were discussed, one being sex work. /p div class=field field-type-text field-field-key-quote div class=field-items div class=field-item odd If I have the right to work and the right to have sex, what is wrong with me having sex as my work? /div /div /div pa href=http://libcom.org/blog/response-views-mia-freedman-sex-work-07052013 target=_blankread more/a/p

pIsrael and America are longstanding imperial partners. They spurn international laws. They do so repeatedly. They ignore their own./p pa href=http://mostlywater.org/profile_lawless_aggression target=_blankread more/a/p