CALL THEM OUT IS OUR NEW ALBUM. LPs WILL BE HERE EVENTUALLY, BUT IN THE MEANTIME WE HAVE CDs. 25 SONGS IN 41 MINUTES. GET IT PLEASE.
The US Army is investigating the death of a 21-year-old combat engineer at the base in Fort Hood, Texas.
Private Ana Basalduaruiz was found dead on Monday after having served in her division for 15 months. She told her mother last month that she had been sexually assaulted by a someone with higher rank and her family had told her they could pick her up from the base, the family told ABC News.
Noticias Telemundo reported that in addition to being harassed by a higher-ranking soldier, she had told her mother, Alejandra Ruiz Zarco, that she had also been harassed by others while serving.
Her mother, who lives in Michoacán in Mexico, said her daughter told her that “everyone wants me to sleep with them” but that they were repulsive individuals.
The mother told Telemundo that her daughter had told her “that she wanted to see me, that she wanted to hug me, and she wanted me to hug her a lot, like when she was little”.
The death is being investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Division as well as the chain of command, Fort Hood told the outlet.
Fort Hood said in a short press release on Wednesday that no foul play “is evident”.
The news of the death of Pvt Basalduaruiz comes after the murder of Army Specialist Vanessa Guillén at Fort Hood following allegations that she had been sexually assaulted by a fellow soldier, who died by suicide as he was being chased by police. Spc Guillén was 20 years old when she was killed on 22 April 2020.
A report released almost a year after her death confirmed that she had been sexually harassed.
An autopsy for Pvt Basalduaruiz will take place on Thursday, her aunt, Itzi Ortega, told ABC.
The commander of the 91st Engineer Battalion Lt Col Patrick Sullivan said in a statement that “we are deeply saddened by the loss of Pvt. Ana Basalduaruiz, and we extend our sympathies to her father, mother, and her sister”.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with them during this difficult time. She was an exceptional teammate that will truly be missed,” he added.
The Department of Defense said in its military sexual assault and harassment report for the 2021 fiscal year that 29 per cent of women in the military and seven per cent of men had experienced sexual harassment. The last report was published in 2018, when 24 per cent of women reported being the target of sexual harassment.
The aunt told ABC that Pvt Basalduaruiz joined the military in 2020 but that her training had been delayed by the pandemic until August of last year.
The sister of Spc Guillén, Mayra Guillén, shared her reaction to the news of the death of Pvt Basalduaruiz on Twitter.
“I’m aware of the death of Ana Basaldua in Ft Hood, TX. May she Rest In Peace. She was only 21 years old ... I will be speaking to the family soon, I find it very sensitive to speak on something I’m not fully aware off yet and this is also very triggering for me ... I need to gather my thoughts and then I’ll be able to share them,” she said.
The parents of Pvt Basalduaruiz compared her death to that of Spc Guillén, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
The commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, Col Christopher Dempsey, said in a statement that “a loss of any one of our soldiers is a tragedy and it is no different in the death of Private Ana Basalduaruiz. Our hearts and thoughts go out to the family, friends and colleagues of Ana”.
“We have remained in constant contact with both parents of Private Basalduaruiz, and will continue to keep them updated,” he added, according to the Express-News.
Sexual assault has been a major problem in the military for decades.
Five Army outposts had 500 or more victims of sexual assault and rape in 2014, according to a report issued by the Rand Corp think tank. The estimated number at Fort Hood was 885, the report said.
The Pentagon has said that 6,236 reports of sexual assault and harassment were filed in 2019 – an increase of three per cent compared to the year before.
Figures from the Defense Department show that 13,382 servicewomen – 6.2 per cent of the force – were subjected to sexual assault in 2018, an increase from 9,834 in 2014.
Only a few hundred convictions are handed down every year.
Former California Democratic Representative Jackie Speier said in 2021 that “you cannot have 20,000 sexual assault cases a year, have 7,000 people report, and then end up having a handful – 250 – that get convicted”.
“You can’t tell me that those 7,000 that report, that 99 per cent of them are lying,” she added.
The Independent has reached out to the Army for comment
The horror portrayed in a recent New York Times exposé of migrant child labor shows how relevant what Karl Marx wrote 156 years ago is now.
Marx’s monumental work, “Capital,” was a tremendous theoretical contribution, describing in meticulous detail how the capitalist system of exploitation operates. One class of toilers, the working class, produces “surplus value” — profit — for an elite class of idlers, the capitalist class.
Marx’s “Capital” does more than break down, in a scientific manner, the workings of capitalism; his work is a powerful and passionate indictment of the class that enriches itself. “The Working Day,” Chapter 10 of Volume I — published in 1867 — exposes the workplace horrors of 19th century England, as documented by the government’s own factory inspectors.
Children eight years old, and sometimes even younger, worked long hours in dangerous conditions in workplaces such as potteries, bakeries, silk mills and steel and iron works. Reports described nine- and 10-year-old children working shifts of 12 or more hours, often at night, in steel rolling mills.
“In its unseeing, unrestrainable passion, its werewolf hunger for surplus labor, capital usurps not only the moral, but even the mere physical, maximum bounds of the working day. It usurps the time needed for growth, development and healthy maintenance of the body,” Marx wrote. He decried “the coining of children’s blood into capital.”
In the 21st century, 19th century conditions
Sadly, things are not so different in 2023. This was made vividly clear in a Feb. 25 New York Times article, “Alone and exploited, migrant children work brutal jobs across the U.S.”
The title alone speaks volumes. Of the hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors who have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border seeking a better life, many have “ended up working in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.”
Others — teenagers and even younger children — package cereals and granola bars, operate milking machines, clean hotel rooms, work in roofing and make auto parts for Ford and General Motors.
Many work at night and try to attend school during the day, but they fall asleep in class or end up dropping out. These exploited children suffer frequent, sometimes fatal, injuries. They are working to help their families in their home countries and pay off large debts to “sponsors,” who helped them come into the U.S.
“In many parts of the country, middle and high school teachers in English-language learner programs say it is now common for nearly all their students to rush off to long shifts after their classes end,” according to the Times report.
Huge Fortune 500 corporations display the same “werewolf hunger” for profits that Marx observed in 19th century Europe. This continues to drive the exploitation of workers, including children, not only inside the U.S. but around the world.
No child should have to suffer such a high level of abuse and be “alone and exploited.”
Organized labor has a responsibility to confront this brutal example of racism and xenophobia head on. Unions that represent workers at companies that illegally profit from child labor need to make this a collective bargaining issue — such as at the auto companies, whose contracts with the United Auto Workers expire this year. Teachers’ unions need to speak up for the migrant children their members teach.
Class struggle in the 1930s won the Fair Labor Standards Act that, among other things, limited child labor. It will take a global, classwide movement to stop “the coining of children’s blood into capital.”
Another world is possible — and necessary.
The DOJ released a 90-page report on its investigation of the Louisville Metro Police Department.
Among the DOJ's findings, there were two incidents of "unlawful" releases of a police dog.
One officer released a dog on a 14-year-old Black teen who was spotted lying on the ground.
A Louisville Metro Police officer unleashed his police dog on a 14-year-old Black boy who was spotted lying on the ground, leading to severe injuries and hospitalization, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Department of Justice.
The findings are part of the DOJ's broader two-year investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department and the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government that was launched after Breonna Taylor was killed during a raid by seven officers in March 2020.
The police dog incident occurred during a search for a home invasion suspect, according to the DOJ, which reviewed a video of the encounter. The date of the incident and the name of the officer were not disclosed.
"The officer was leading his dog to search for a person suspected of a home invasion. After searching for several minutes, the officer saw the teenager lying on the ground, face down in the grass," the Justice Department wrote in its report. "Immediately after noticing the teen, the officer deployed his dog off-leash — without giving any warning — and ordered the dog to bite the teen at least seven times."
During the encounter, the teen remained prone and pleaded, "OK! OkK Help! Get the dog, please!" the report stated, as officers continued to stand over him and shout orders for about 30 seconds "while the dog gnawed on his arm."
"At one point, an officer shouted, 'Stop fighting my dog!' despite video showing the teen lying still with one arm behind his back and the other arm in the dog's mouth," according to the report.
The teen suffered severe injuries on his arm and back and was admitted to a children's hospital.
The Justice Department's larger report concluded that the police department and government agency exhibited a pattern of misconduct, excessive use of force, and discrimination.
"The Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government (Louisville Metro) and the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law," the report stated.
The report included another police dog incident during which the DOJ said officers found a white man "lying face up, on his back, in his boxers, with his hands up." The man tried to comply with the officers' orders while the dog continued to bite his foot for nearly a minute.
"In both incidents, officers should not have ordered their dogs to bite the people involved. Both were trying to comply with orders and were not resisting," the DOJ wrote. "Because these bites went on for far longer than was necessary, and given the way that officers spoke to these individuals, we have serious concerns that these uses of force were punitive, reflecting a dangerous lack of self-control by the officers and subjecting these individuals to excruciating uses of force far beyond lawful limits."
A spokesperson for the Louisville Metro Police Department did not address specific questions about the incident involving the 14-year-old boy.
In a statement to Insider, spokesperson Angela Ingram said that the department had "just received the DOJ report" and a thorough review will be conducted by command staff.
"Now that the DOJ has concluded their investigation and presented their findings, we will continue our efforts in improving public safety in Louisville and making LMPD the premier police department in the country," the department said in a news release.
International Women’s Day 2023
Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution!
Over the last several years, literally millions of women across the planet have been rising up in spectacular eruptions of rebellion. Women have clogged streets, marched in big cities and small villages and seized the public square, demonstrating their outrage at all the ways women everywhere are degraded, abused and treated as lesser beings because they were born female in a world of male domination.
The longing of women to be free of oppressive traditions that weigh so heavily, wasting lives, breaking bodies and suffocating spirits has burst out from underneath this weight in red hot fury and the even more surprising feelings of joy.
In Latin America, masses of women marched on presidential palaces protesting the epidemic of femicide. A song was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, crying out for the women who have been disappeared—trafficked or killed with the words: “Let the state and the skies tremble, Let the judges and judicial officers tremble, Today we take away our calm, They planted fear in us, we grew wings.”
Mexico City: Demonstrators against gender violence covered the National Palace in fake blood with the message: "Femicide State," in Spanish, February 14, 2020. Photo: AP
In London, a year after an especially brutal rape, police attacked the women who came out to demonstrate, telling them they should have stayed home and carry rape alarms when going out. When these pigs were exposed for passing around pictures and messages about beating and raping, women demonstrators returned to the Charing Cross police station to throw thousands of rape alarms at the police.
In Poland, women paraded into Catholic cathedrals disrupting church services and plastering the doors with hangers as a symbol and reminder that when abortion is illegal, women die. Their actions were an expression of the widespread outrage that the Church had used its authority to support the fascist Law and Justice ruling political party in exchange for their revoking the right to abortion, which had been legal, available and increasingly liberalized since the 1930s.
Women dressed as handmaids protesting in a cathedral in Lodz, Poland in October 2020.
Last winter into the spring in this country, Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights (RU4AR) called for a mass movement to prevent the U.S. Supreme Court from overturning Roe v. Wade, which established the constitutional right to abortion established in 1973. RU4AR spread the Latin American green wave to North America, raising the righteous demands: “Abortion on Demand and Without Apology” and “Forced Motherhood Is Female Enslavement.” Tens of thousands responded, mainly youth, taking to the streets across the country. RU4AR went up against the refusal of the Democratic Party and the official women's movement who instead were making plans for after the right to abortion was taken away.
Protests fighting for abortion rights.
Since September, an uprising has spread throughout Iran in response to the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Jina Amini, beaten to death by the regime’s morality police for the crime of not correctly wearing her hijab (a compulsory head covering). The people of Iran, casting away their fear, filled the streets and flaunted the Islamic Republic's Sharia (religious fundamentalist) laws. Young women bravely walked the streets with their hair hanging freely, took part in joyous public dancing, cut their hair and burned their hijabs in public acts of defiance. Women and men have braved brutality, imprisonment and now the public execution of protesters. If this continues, or ebbs only to burst out again, there is no denying the power and significance of the women of Iran rising and calling for an end to the Islamic regime. The regime has lost legitimacy among millions.
Iranian women without hijabs dance around a bonfire in Bandar Abbas, Hormozgan province, September 22, 2022. Photo: via twitter @Shayan86
The oppression of women has been woven through thousands of years of patriarchal traditions deeply entrenched and carried forward in all societies that have been ruled by exploiting classes. But a scientific truth is also this... We are living in an extraordinary time in human history when it is possible to finally move beyond all this—beyond the denial of women's full humanity.
This is a time of rapid economic changes, of imperialist globalization with the large-scale employment of women that has undermined the traditional family and gender roles built into the functioning of the capitalist system. Women's place is no longer literally at home when over 50 percent of women worldwide now work outside of it. These changes have given women limited but real independence and exposure to the wider world, opening a sense of possibility. The traditional family and traditional gender roles have been key stabilizing and cohering factors in all oppressive and exploitive societies. Around the world we have seen a vicious backlash and revenge from the governments, institutions and all those who feel threatened by women becoming even more independent. Sexual assault, rape, violence, and hostility towards women are escalating. The fascist Republicans are moving forcefully in their march towards theocracy to outlaw abortion, birth control, and LGBTQ rights, with even divorce in their sights. This has been accompanied by escalating violence against women and differently gendered people.
This clash taking place across the planet over whether women and society are going to be dragged back or moved forward is acutely posed. Bob Avakian, looking at these trends in their beginning stages, wrote nearly 40 years ago:
It is not conceivable that all this will find any resolution other than in the most radical terms… The question to be determined is: will it be a radical reactionary or radical revolutionary resolution—will it mean the reinforcing of those chains of enslavement or the shattering of the most decisive links in those chains and opening up the possibility of realizing the complete elimination of all forms of such enslavement.
In his seminal work for this time in this country, Something Terrible, Or Something Truly Emancipating: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And the Revolution That Is Urgently Needed, Bob Avakian has expanded these acutely posed stakes to incorporate the whole direction of American society, with the ruling class and the country as a whole irreconcilably divided. There is no going back to some idyllic past that never existed in a country founded on slavery, genocide, and patriarchy. The fabric of and the normal way this country has been ruled, and the way of life that people have become accustomed to, is increasing being ripped apart. And the degradation and oppression and ability of women to be full human beings is a harbinger and central factor in whether the chains of oppression will become tightened like a noose, or shattered and cast off.
A year ago in the U.S., women had the constitutional right to abortion. Today they don’t. Losing the right to abortion is a big tear in the social fabric of this country. There will be more. This, a terrible, monstrously oppressive future, is the direction that things are headed. Unless… unless… a movement for an actual revolution is built and organized, aiming for a radically new, far better society that will open the potential for the liberation of women and the emancipation of all humanity.
Deep questions increasingly confront millions: Why is this happening? Does it have to be this way? Is there another way the world could be? This is where International Women’s Day 2023 comes in as one key part in preparing for revolution. This is a moment to put before all that there is a way out of the madness. There is leadership for this in Bob Avakian. There is organization in the Revolution Club. There is guidance every week on our website revcom.us and in our weekly YouTube show: The RNL—Revolution, Nothing Less!—Show.
This International Women's Day—if you've ever wondered if something better is possible—make it your mission to learn about and be a part of this revolution. Join us in putting this liberating Revolution on the Map. Unleash the Fury of Women as a Mighty Force for Revolution.
Here is how you can be part of putting THIS revolution on the Map this International Women's Day 2023.
People threw bricks, rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails, police said.
Felony state domestic terrorism charges have been filed against 23 protesters arrested in Atlanta on Sunday after allegedly hurling bricks, rocks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails at police officers near the site of a planned public safety training facility, police said.
After attending a music festival near the site of the soon-to-be Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a group of people changed into black clothing and entered the construction area at around 5:30 p.m. ET. The "agitators" approached officers there and launched a "coordinated attack," according to the Atlanta Police Department.
Twenty-three of the 35 protesters arrested Sunday were charged overnight with felony domestic terrorism, a charge Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum said reflects the "very violent" nature of the attack.
"This wasn't about a public training center, this was about anarchy and this was about an attempt to destabilize," Schierbaum said at a news conference Sunday night. "When you throw commercial grade fireworks, when you throw Molotov cocktails, large rocks, a number of items at officers, your only intent is to harm."
Police officials noted that 21 of the suspects charged with domestic terrorism were from out of state, some from as far away as Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New York. Two protesters charged are from other countries, one France and another from Canada, according to police.
The suspects range in age from 18 to 49.
"The violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers," Atlanta police said in a statement.
Several pieces of construction equipment at the site, including tractors, were destroyed by fire and vandalism, according to police.
The officers "exercised restraint" and held their position until authorities from multiple law enforcement agencies responded and "used non-lethal enforcement" to detain at least 35 people, according to police.
No officers were injured during the incident, though police noted that "the illegal actions of the agitators could have resulted in bodily harm." Some of those arrested sustained minor injuries.
Police continue to investigate the incident. Both the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the FBI are also conducting a probe.
The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, known by its opponents as "Cop City," has been at the center of escalating demonstrations and confrontations since its proposal in 2021. The city-approved facility is being built on 85 acres of a 400-acre, city-owned property in unincorporated DeKalb County that is within the larger South River Forest, or "Weelaunee" as it's called by the land's indigenous people.
The city has said the training center "will support high-quality, community-oriented training for police, fire and E-911 personnel," while the remaining 315 acres of the property will be preserved "as restored and improved green space for ecological protection and the public’s enjoyment as part of the larger South River Forest initiative."
Those protesting the planned facility have said they lament the increasing militarization of law enforcement as well as the development of the forest.
More demonstrations are expected to take place in the coming days. While calling for "peaceful" protests, the Atlanta Police Department said its officers, "in collaboration with law enforcement partners, have a multi-layered strategy that includes reaction and arrest."
Sunday's clashes came as the GBI investigates multiple law enforcement officers in the Jan. 18 fatal shooting of an environmental activist during a raid on protesters camped out in the forest. Several large protests have occurred in downtown Atlanta over the death of 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, prompting Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to declare a state of emergency on Jan. 26.
Officers involved in the shooting claimed Teran fired the first shoot, hitting a state trooper in the abdomen and prompting them to return fire. Teran's family said a private autopsy found he was shot 13 times
Following the fatal shooting of Teran, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a bulletin warning of growing concerns of escalating violence apparently connected to opposition to the development of a new Atlanta public safety complex. The bulletin, obtained by ABC News, said that since the shooting, suspected domestic violent extremists "have cited the incident as justification for violence.
