Cellphones a ‘possible’ carcinogen

 

 

A respected international panel of scientists says cellphones are possible cancer-causing agents, putting them in the same category as the pesticide DDT, gasoline engine exhaust and coffee.

The classification was issued overnight (NZ time) in Lyon, France, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a review of dozens of published studies. The agency is an arm of the World Health Organisation and its assessment now goes to WHO and national health agencies for possible guidance on cellphone use.

Classifying agents as “possibly carcinogenic” doesn’t mean they automatically cause cancer and some experts said the ruling shouldn’t change people’s cellphone habits.

“Anything is a possible carcinogen,” said Donald Berry, a professor of biostatistics at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Centre at the University of Texas. He was not involved in the WHO cancer group’s assessment. “This is not something I worry about and it will not in any way change how I use my cellphone,” he said — speaking from his cellphone.

via Cellphones a ‘possible’ carcinogen – like coffee | Stuff.co.nz.

“No one expects the #spanishrevolution.”

“No one expects the #spanishrevolution.” That’s one of the signs in Madrid’s iconic – and occupied – Puerta del Sol Square; Monty Python revised for the age of Twitter.

“I was in Paris in May ’68 and I’m very emotional. I’m 72 years old.” That’s one of the signs in Barcelona’s iconic – and occupied – Plaza Catalunya. The barricades revised as a Gandhian sit-in.

The exhilarating northern African winds of the great 2011 Arab revolt/spring have crossed the Mediterranean and hit Iberia with a

vengeance. In an unprecedented social rebellion, the Generation Y in Spain is forcefully protesting – among other things – the stinging economic crisis; mass unemployment at a staggering 45% among less than 30-year-olds and the ossified Spanish political system that treats the citizen as a mere consumer.

This citizens’ movement is issuing petitions that get five signatures per second; it can be followed on Twitter (#spanishrevolution); streaming live from Puerta del Sol at Soltv.tv; to see its reach, click here. Reverberations are being felt all across Spain and word-wide – from Los Angeles to Sydney. A mini-French revolution started at the Bastille in Paris. Italians are planning their revolutions from Rome and Milan to Florence and Bari.

Outraged of the world, unite

They call themselves los indignados – “the outraged”. Puerta del Sol is their Tahrir Square, a self-sufficient village complete with working groups, mobile first-aid clinic, and volunteers taking care of everything from cleaning to keeping an Internet signal. The May 15 movement – or 15-M, as it’s known in Spain – was born as a demonstration by university students which spontaneously morphed into an open-ended sit-in meant to “contaminate” Spain via Facebook and Twitter and thus turn it into a crucial social bridge between Northern Africa and Europe.

They were only 40 people at the beginning. Now there are tens of thousands in over 50 Spanish cities – and counting. Soon there could be millions. Crucially, this is without the support of any political party or institution, trade union or mass media (in Spain, totally exposed to ridicule by political power). That’s extraordinary in a country not exactly known by its tradition of dissent or the power of citizen organization.

The outraged are pacifists, apolitical and altruists. This is not only about the unemployed, “no future” youth – but an inter-generational phenomenon, with a middle-class crossover. This full stop to Spanish inertia – as in the sign “the French and the Greek fight while the Spanish win on soccer” – implies a profound rejection of the enormous abyss between the political class and the population, just like in the rest of Europe (Greek and Icelandic flags are seen side-by-side with the Egyptian flag.)

The outraged want citizens to regain their voices – as in a participative democracy embodied by neighborhood associations, and in favor of the right to vote for immigrants. Practically, they want a reform of the Spanish electoral law; more popular say on public budgets; political and fiscal reform; increased taxes for higher incomes; a higher minimum wage; and more control over big banking and financial capitalism.

Early this year, students in London protested en-masse against the rise in university tuition costs. The potential for protest is huge all across Europe. In Mediterranean Europe, the lack of prospects is absolutely bleak – from Generation Y to unemployed thirty-somethings stacked with diplomas. Even though the context is markedly different – in Northern Africa the fight is against dictatorships – the Arab Spring has shown young Europeans that mobilized citizens are able to fight for more social justice.

The Spanish left has tried to co-opt the movement. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodrํguez Zapatero – badly bruised by these past Sunday elections, obviously boycotted by 15-M – said they must be listened to. The right, predictably, privileges a Hosni Mubarak approach, even asking the Ministry of Interior to go Medieval, as the former Egyptian president did. Right-wing media accuse the outraged of being communists, anti-system, urban guerrillas and having relations with the Basque separatists from ETA. The only thing missing was an al-Qaeda connection.

The outraged respond they are not anti-system; “it’s the system that it’s against us.” Their original manifesto condemned the Spanish political class as a whole, plus corporate media, as allies to financial capital; those that have caused and are benefiting from the economic crisis. The outraged J’accuse includes the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, financial risk agencies and the World Bank.

The Spanish economy is in fact being controlled by the IMF. Whether or not he was a reformer, the IMF under disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s unleashed major social devastation over Spain, Greece and Portugal. It’s not only the unemployment rate of 45% for under-30-year-olds in Spain; it’s pensions and wages reduced by 15%. The IMF is leading the way for the economies of southern Europe to, in a nutshell, regress.

It’s as if the 15-M movement had been electrified by that famous dictum by Polish Marxist theorist Rosa Luxemburg – according to which capitalism is unredeemable in its antagonism to true democracy. The record shows that’s exactly what’s happening in the industrialized North as well as in the global South.

The new 1968

So this goes way beyond a student revolt. It’s a revolt that lays bare a profound ethical crisis convulsing a whole society. And it goes way beyond the economy; this is a movement seriously inquiring over the place of human beings in turbo-capitalist society.

No wonder baby boomers – the parents of Generation Y – cannot but be reminded of the late, great German philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Compared with this breath of fresh air amid the asphyxiating social and economic landscape in Spain and great swathes of Europe, how not be reminded of Marcuse in a conference in Vancouver in 1969, talking about a worldwide student rebellion.

Marcuse then evoked how French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was asked the same question – why these rebellions everywhere? Sartre said the answer was very simple – no sophisticated reasoning necessary. Young people were rebelling because they were asphyxiated. Marcuse always maintained this was the best explanation for this rebel yell denouncing a structural crisis of capitalism.

Marcuse was an ultra-sharp analyst of the degrading of culture as a form of repression, and the necessity of a critical elite capable of smashing the totalitarian opium of consumer culture (the outraged are also performing this role).

Marcuse identified the French and the American 1968 as a total protest against specific ills, but at the same time a protest against a total system of values, a total system of objectives. Young people didn’t want to keep enduring the culture of established society; they refuted not only economic conditions and political institutions but also a rotten, global system of values.
In 1968, they were realists; they were demanding the impossible. Today, one of their signs read, “If you don’t let us dream, we won’t let you sleep.”

International Day of Action in Solidarity with the Autonomous Municpality of San Juan Copala, Oaxaca, Mexico

INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN COPALA, OAXACA, MEXICO

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD

TO THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND ORGANIZATIONS

TO THOSE IN SOLIDARITY WITH THIS JUST CAUSE

The Triqui people of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala in Oaxaca, Mexico, make a call-out for international solidarity to all the nations and peoples of the world, so that in the coming days solidarity actions are carried out as far and wide as possible, to exert pressure on the Mexican government and to shed light onto the situation that the people of Copala have endured since 2007. This situation has culminated in the events of the last days and in the Caravan of the Color of Blood, that is happening now, and whose intention is for the people of Copala, who were dispossessed and displaced because they exerted their right to autonomy, to return to their homes.

The Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala declared its autonomy January 1st, 2007, after members of the community had participated in the Oaxacan uprising of 2006, and from that day onward the Mexican government has maintained a politic of disrespect and destruction of that autonomy. The Mexican government has carried out this process through two political-paramilitary organizations which it has armed and financed; the UBISORT-PRI and the MULT-PUP.

Since 2007 in this war against the autonomy of the Triqui people of San Juan Copala there has been a death-count of more than 30 people – among them young children, women, men, elders, traditional leaders, and solidarity activists. Furthermore this war has made children orphans and women widows and survivors of sexual assault.

On April 7th, 2008 two comrades from the community radio station “The Voice that Breaks the Silence” were assassinated; their names were Teresa Bautista and Felicitas Martínez.

On November 28th, 2009 the comrades of the Peoples Front in Defense of the Land of San Salvador Atenco visited to share information on their political prisoners, but their entrance was denied by the paramilitary groups. It was on this date that the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala was put under a paramilitary siege. Consequently the water and lights began to be cut, and the school was closed, rendering the whole community without services.

After 5 months under siege national and international solidarity came through the Humanitarian Caravan of Peace. On April 27th, 2010 the caravan was ambushed just outside of Copala by the paramilitary group UBISORT, who murdered Beatriz Cariño (human rights activist) and Jyri Jaakola (Finnish internationalist). Other participants in the caravan were shot and wounded and had to spend three days in hiding in the mountains. This is how the camp of resistance and struggle began in the main plaza of Mexico City to demand justice.

Later, on May 29th, 2010, MULT-UBISORT assassinated Timoteo Ramírez Alexander, traditional leader and tireless promoter of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala, along with his wife Cleriberta Castro, leaving their six children orphaned.

On June 8th, 2010 the second Humanitarian Caravan, named after Bety Carino and Jyri Jaakola, was organized to go to the MASJC (Municipio Autonomo de San Juan Copala), with truckloads full of supporters, medical supplies, and food, but could not enter, once again, due to the paramilitary and military repression. From this moment the threats and repression intensified. The women of the community were forced to traverse the mountainside in search of food and supplies, and were often detained, beaten, tortured, raped, sexually assauled, kidnapped or killed by the paramilitaries if discovered. This is how the paramilitaries behave towards the indigenous Triqui women.

On August 11th, 2010 comrades of the MASJC initiated a protest camp in the main plaza of Oaxaca City to demand justice and punishment to the people in charge of the attack on the sisters Selena (17 years old) and Adela Ramirez Silvas (15 years old), who is now paralyzed after being shot by the paramilitaries.

On August 23rd, 2010 a caravan of widows and orphaned children had been planned but could not leave because of an ambush of its organizers by the paramilitaries. Three people were killed and two were injured with high caliber guns; their names were Rigoberto González, Antonio Cruz and Antonio Ramirez. The caravan would have arrived in Mexico City to denounce the repression and its consequences.

On September 14th, 15th and16th, 2010 the MULT-UBISORT paramilitary attacked the community with guns, leaving many families wounded and several dead. Many went towards the mountains, which began the displacement of the 700 families of the MASJC.

9 months of the protest camp have gone by in Oaxaca City and a year in Mexico City. These camps have been comprised mainly of women and children, living in the street in very difficult conditions, without bathrooms, houses, school or medical attention, and sometimes lacking food. Due to these factors the joint-decision was made by the displaced MASJC and its Communitarian Assembly to reclaim their houses and the territory of which they were displaced. To this end the Caravan of the Color of Blood was organized. The caravan departed May 23th, 2011 from Oaxaca City for Mexico City with the aim of recovering the territory on May 28th, 2011. However, the caravan, formed by the people of Copala, and accompanied by social organizations and national and international activists, has been called on by the governor of Oaxaca, Gabino Cué, who was pressured through their political work to personally arrive in Mexico City on May 27th, 2011. The people were warned that the security conditions do not exist for the return of the displaced to their community and were summoned to a meeting in Oaxaca City, where it was proposed to them that in a maximum of 10 days the necessary conditions will be fulfilled, conditions which the National Commission of Human rights previously recommended on May 24th, 2011, on the basis of recommendations by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights in Washington, D.C on October 7, 2010.

The Caravan of the Color of Blood and the MASJC, without trusting the governor, grant this term to the government, thus to be able to enter in a peaceful way and to secure the success of one of the objectives of this Caravan, that is the return of the displaced to their community. We ask the international community to be attentive to the events of the next 10 days, which are decisive, and that as far as possible to take diverse actions as a show of solidarity with the autonomous movements of the world and in particular with the autonomy of the Triqui people and the MASJC who decided to exert their right to self-determination by their own free will based on their traditions and customs.

We summon all in their respective countries to a day of mobilization and action on June 3rd, 2011, or on any and all of the next 10 days:

NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL DAY OF ACTION IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE AUTONOMOUS MUNICIPALITY OF SAN JUAN COPALA, OAXACA, MEXICO

Organize demonstrations or telephone calls at Mexican embassies and consulates in different countries, or any other action that with your creativity or possibilities you can carry out to exert pressure on the Mexican government as a show of international solidarity with the Triqui nation and in defense of its autonomy.

The demands of the Autonomous Municipality of San Juan Copala are:

THE RETURN OF THE DISPLACED TO THEIR TERRITORY.

JUSTICE AND PUNISHMENT TO THOSE RESPONSIBLE (PHYSICALLY AND INTELLECTUALLY) FOR THE MURDERS OF MORE THAN 30 COMMUNITY MEMBERS (AMONG THEM CHILDREN, WOMEN AND TRADITIONAL LEADERS).

RESPECT FOR THE SELF-DETERMINATION AND THE RIGHT TO AUTONOMY OF THE TRIQUI PEOPLE AND OF ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD.
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send news of actions to cdefensayjusticiamasjcblogspot.com and municipioautonomodesanjuancopala.wordpress.com