BRAZIL: Indigenous Resistance Movement Defends Traditional Beliefs

BRAZIL: Indigenous Resistance Movement Defends Traditional Beliefs

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 23 (IPS) - Twenty indigenous people have been occupying the abandoned building of the Museu do Indio in Rio de Janeiro since October, to call attention to "500 years of resistance to genocide," a view of their history that has acquired new relevance in the light of the Vatican's latest position on Christian evangelisation during the colonial era.

The walls of the museum, which is located opposite Gate 13 of the Maracaná football stadium, are entangled with the roots of centuries-old trees and the ruins of what was, 20 years ago, an imposing art deco building dating from the early 1900s.

Smoke is rising from a fire under an earthenware pot where an indigenous woman is cooking rice and beans in the middle of the main hall, and spirals upwards to the numerous cracks that let light in between the wooden beams and broken tiles of the roof.

Some of the occupants sleep in hammocks, and others in makeshift tents which are not at all like the "ocas" (straw huts) in the villages many of them have come from.

The activists, who are Baraja, Yanomami, Guaraní and Pataxó Indians, want the federal government to grant them the use of this building as an institute for the preservation and transmission of indigenous culture.

Chago win right to return home, for the third time. » Intercontinental Cry

Chago win right to return home, for the third time. » Intercontinental Cry

In 1966, the British Government leased Diego Garcia and the Chagossian Islands to the US Government, for a strategic military base. But the US government wanted a land free of people, and so in that same year until 1973, the British government secretly and systematically removed the entire population, some 2000 people off the islands. Most ended up in the slums of Mauritius, to a life of abject poverty.

In 2000 a UK court overturned the 1971 immigration order banning the people from their traditional lands, and decided that the exiles, now numbering 4,500, have a right to return to the archipelago. (read about the 2000 case)

In 2004, allegations were made that Diego Garcia, the largest island in the archipelago, was being used as a secret detention centre by the US. Shortly after, the British Government announced that the islanders no longer have a right to go home. They also stated that, at the result of a study, they determined the islands are unfit for human habitation.

Biofuels displace indigenous people

Indigenous people are being pushed off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, threatening to destroy their cultures by forcing them into big cities, the head of a U.N. panel said Monday. Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said some of the native people most at risk liv

read more | digg story

Too Sense: Rush Asks A Black Caller If He's "A Katrina Refugee"

Too Sense: Rush Asks A Black Caller If He's "A Katrina Refugee"

I've heard Rush Limbaugh say quite a few racist things in my time listening to him, but nothing quite as arrogant and blatant as his exchange with a black caller who very clearly adores him. After giving Rush a spirited greeting, Rush interrupts the called to mention that he's a "student of language" and asks the caller if he's "a Katrina Refugee."

Why?

Because he's black, and he has a southern accent.

CALLER: Black conservative dittos to you my friend. And you’re a real inspiration it’s a real honor to speak with you.

RUSH: Thank you very much for that.

CALLER: And my comment is no more nice guys in the White House. I like president Bush, I respect president Bush, I respect the entire Bush family, but--

RUSH: I have a question.

CALLER: Shoot.

RUSH: Before you finish your point here. Because I am a student of voices and dialects, accents, are you a Katrina Refugee?

CALLER: [laughter] no.

RUSH: Are you from New Orleans or Louisiana?

CALLER: No lifetime Richmond Virginia resident. No.

RUSH: Wow. Okay. Well I didn’t mean anything insulting by it.

CALLER: Well look, I’ve been told I have a southern accent--

RUSH: Well I can’t imagine why they’d say that.

CALLER: They tell me I need to get rid of the accent.

RUSH: No no, it’s who you are, don’t let them talk you out of that.

Al Jazeera English - News - Colombia Set To Free Farc Fighters

Al Jazeera English - News - Colombia Set To Free Farc Fighters

Colombia has transferred about 60 jailed fighters in the hope that freeing them will persuade members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) to release hostages they have held for years.

Alvaro Uribe, the country's president, said on Friday that he will free several hundred fighters in total under the plan.

The hostages include Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician who was snatched in 2002 while campaigning for the presidency, and three US citizens who were captured when their light aircraft crashed in the jungle during an anti-drug mission.

Ivory Coast: New Political Climate Favors Pivotal Identification Process - Worldpress.org

Ivory Coast: New Political Climate Favors Pivotal Identification Process - Worldpress.org

Logistical challenges might be all that stand in the way of issuing identity papers for millions of undocumented Ivorians—a process that lies at the heart of Ivory Coast's conflict, and one that political hostility and intransigence have rendered impossible up to now.

"The commitment of all concerned to pull out of this crisis is what makes us optimistic that the process can work this time," Ahmedou El Becaye Seck, director of the United Nations mission in Ivory Coast's electoral assistance division, told IRIN.

Ivory Coast's transitional government—formed as part of a new peace accord signed in March—is preparing to launch the identification process in the coming weeks. The process is essential to carrying out elections, which are expected by early 2008.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Don't Cross that Invisible Line

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Don't Cross that Invisible Line

BUENAVENTURA, Colombia, Jun 1 (IPS) - "We can't go from one barrio to another. Whoever does that is at risk of losing their life," a community organiser in this Pacific port city in Colombia told IPS.

Danelly Estupiñán, a member of a black community organisation, was referring to the rivalries between neighbourhoods in Buenaventura, in the western province of Valle del Cauca on Colombia's western coast, an area heavily affected by the country's nearly half-century civil war.

One of the poor barrios or neighbourhoods is dominated by the far-right paramilitary militias. The one bordering it is under the influence of Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Whoever crosses the invisible line between them runs the risk of being killed, accused of being a spy or informant for the other side.

"The incidents happen in the barrios where the paramilitaries have control. That's why everyone blames them for the violence," said Estupiñán. He added, however, that the guerrillas "also commit violations of international humanitarian law."

Ward Churchill » University of Colorado Under Fire Again: Professors and Attorneys File New Charges Against Committee Investigating Churchill

Ward Churchill » University of Colorado Under Fire Again: Professors and Attorneys File New Charges Against Committee Investigating Churchill

Five professors and two attorneys today filed new allegations of research misconduct against the University of Colorado committee which wrote the May 9, 2006 Investigative Report in the Ward Churchill case.

The professors and attorneys, a majority of whom are Indigenous, charge the Committee with misrepresenting, fabricating, or suppressing evidence in their Report, and exhibiting bias against Professor Churchill.

The five allegations filed today address the Investigative Committee’s findings regarding the smallpox epidemics of 1616 and 1837. Like many others, this group believes the “investigation” and resulting Report were a pretext intended to silence Professor Churchill and discredit the Indigenous perspectives he articulates. …

Blighted Homeland - Los Angeles Times

Blighted Homeland - Los Angeles Times

During the Cold War, uranium mines left contaminated waste scattered around the Navajo Nation. Homes built with it silently pulsed with radiation. People developed cancer. And the U.S. did little to help.

From 1944 to 1986, 3.9 million tons of uranium ore were dug and blasted from Navajo soil, nearly all of it for America's atomic arsenal. Navajos inhaled radioactive dust, drank contaminated water and built homes using rock from the mines and mills. Many of the dangers persist to this day. This four-part series examines the legacy of uranium mining on the Navajo reservation.

JAZZ FANS DECRY EXCLUSION / Few African American musicians booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

JAZZ FANS DECRY EXCLUSION / Few African American musicians booked for Berkeley festival, none on Yoshi's anniversary CD

When Yoshi's jazz club in Oakland released its much-anticipated 10-year anniversary CD last month, local jazz aficionados were outraged that no African American musicians were included.

The tension grew days later when the Bay Area's jazz community learned that the Berkeley Downtown Jazz Festival had invited only six African American musicians to perform at the five-day event in August.

Together, the two revelations upset musicians, club owners and fans, some of whom say racism is at play in the local jazz scene. Anna DeLeon, owner of Anna's Jazz Island in Berkeley, complained to organizers when she learned who was scheduled to play at her club during the festival.

"There were 17 musicians in four bands, and none were black," said DeLeon. "It is hard for me to imagine how this could happen, how they could not notice."

Word spread quickly as people voiced outrage via e-mail over a problem many said had been simmering for a long time. Jazz professionals met to plan a response. Club owners and musicians went on Doug Edwards' "Music of the World" show on KPFA-FM on May 19. A week later, Susan Muscarella, who books the jazz festival and runs Berkeley's Jazzschool, appeared on the same show to respond.

Dallasnews: Can you name these six Asians in history?

Esther Wu

May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is also time for my annual Asian-American Pop Quiz. This year the focus is Asian-American role models or heroes.

Growing up in San Antonio, my hero was Davy Crockett. In fact, I still have my Davy Crockett mug. I had very few Asian-American role models or heroes outside my immediate family. That wasn't because they didn't exist; it was that I had little opportunity to learn about them. So here's an opportunity for all of us to learn about some folks who have had a major impact on all of us.

1. Thanks to the movies, many of us know about Schindler's List. But two Asians also risked their lives to save Jewish people from the Holocaust. Who were they?

2. There has been a push to get more people of color elected to public office. But one man made history in 1956 when he was elected to Congress – long before there were organized political caucuses and coalitions. Who was he?

3. Each year, thousands of people visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Critics say the 594-foot-long granite wall containing the names of those who died in the war is a fitting tribute. But before construction began, the critics hated the design and the designer. Who was she?

4. During World War II, more than 120,000 U.S. residents of Japanese ancestry were interned in camps throughout the U.S. But one young man refused to go. He took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost. Nevertheless, many consider him a champion of Asian-American civil rights. Who was he?

5. When it comes to civil rights, most people usually think of people like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and César Chávez. But can you name the 84-year-old Japanese-American grandmother who fought alongside activist Malcolm X?

Answers:

Labels: asian

THE END OF THE HOLLYWOOD TRAIL

In the wake of HBO' s disappointing and history-deranging adaptation of Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, American Indian actors, writers, aspiring directors and producers arrive at the end of the trail for their decades-long struggle to gain a footing in Hollywood: our cause is lost in the American film and television industry.

It is now time for us to abandon our stake in the Hollywood camp, this distressed outpost, now time for us to gather on the open beach at Santa Monica and there bury in the sand our hopes for participation and inclusion, then head out of town with our heads held a high as we can hold them. We will be better off re-locating our work back to the reservations, to the tribal communities and scattered remnants of land allotments that were given to us in treaties with the United States government over a hundred years ago in the epic tragedy which Dee Brown described so vividly and thoroughly in his iconic history. And there, hopefully safe from the misbegotten creative and economic forces of the industry, we must knuckle down and produce our own films, our own television dramas, write our own accounts of our history, and present them in images that we create and that we will control. We have an audience of two million American Indians waiting.

With Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, the power brokers of the industry have demonstrated that their entertainment values and demands prevail over anything we say or do, write or create, that our history is for them to tell, to fictionalize, to distort with false love stories and character portrayals, and to trivialize all that is complex and tragic. HBO did not ask for or seek the help and guidance of any of the experienced American Indian creative professionals who might have helped steer them away from this debacle. Yes, Indian actors played the Indians, but that was all.

With breathtaking arrogance, Bury My Heart's narrative forcibly inducts American Indians into the brotherhood of savagery as a way of universalizing them and making them like all other people.
Genocide is dramatized as just as much the result of the mean-spirited and physically cruel behavior of American Indians, who were fighting for their very survival, as it was of the inhumanity of the American armies. The last shreds of Indian nobility are eliminated once and for all.

Labels: indigenism

Archaeological dig exposes racist U.S. history

Archaeological dig exposes racist U.S. history

Hidden below the modern skyscrapers lay the ruins of Philadelphia’s history—the foundation of a city, and a nation, built and maintained by the labor of enslaved Africans.
George Washington used a loophole
to keep Africans enslaved.

George Washington used a loophole
to keep Africans enslaved.
WW photos: Joe Piette

An excavation near the cracked Liberty Bell is laying bare the history of the first “White House,” where George Washington resided in the 1790s and kept nine enslaved Africans: Oney Judge, Moll, Austin, Hercules, Giles, Paris, Richmond, Christopher Sheels and Joe. It is also providing strong evidence to support the movement for reparations.

The excavation was planned to clear the site in order to lay the foundations for a memorial pavilion to the presidential house and its occupants, including the enslaved Africans. Intended to be completed in time for Philadelphia’s upcoming annual July 4 extravaganza, reaction to the dig may result in a change of plans as many people echo comments of an African-American visitor who murmured, “They should leave this. The truth is finally there to see.”

The first weekend the archaeological dig opened in mid-May, it drew over 1,000 visitors, stunning Park Service officials. A steady stream of visitors gathered on a small elevated viewing platform for the opportunity to see the building outlines and hear archaeologists explain what they were seeing. The tone was almost solemn, the discussions serious about just what role slavery played in the founding of the U.S.

The Voice of the Taino People Online: U.N. panel says indigenous people are

By LILY HINDY Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Indigenous people around the world are particularly vulnerable to the dangers of climate change, which will threaten their traditional cultures as glaciers melt, ocean temperatures increase and coral reefs disappear, panel members said at a U.N. discussion of biodiversity. The loss of biod

read more | digg story

BBC NEWS | Europe | Germany protest due ahead of G8

Up to a 100,000 demonstrators from anti-globalisation groups will march in the German city of Rostock on Saturday. They are protesting against next week's G8 summit of leading industrial nations in Heiligendamm, 25km (16 miles) away. The German authorities say there are serious concerns that far-left groups are planning violent attacks. There is al

read more | digg story

'Gay Eskimo' song lyrics stir controversy at Inuvik school

'Gay Eskimo' song lyrics stir controversy at Inuvik school

Staff at the high school in Inuvik, N.W.T., banned a student from performing a comedic song about a lonely "gay Eskimo" at a recent school fundraiser, claiming that the lyrics are culturally insensitive.

Crystal Saunders wanted to sing the song "Eskimo" with some friends at a fundraiser last week at Samuel Hearne Secondary School. Staff there turned down her request to perform the song on the basis that the word "Eskimo" might be considered offensive — a point that Saunders, who is Inuvialuit, disagrees with.

"It shouldn't be," she told CBC News. "[For] some people it would be, but those people might need to build up a little bit more humour and take it easy."

The song, which is attributed to the Canadian comedy group Corky and the Juice Pigs from its 1993 debut album, includes the lyrics: "I go out seal hunting with my best friend Tarka, but all I want to do is get into his parka. I'm the only gay Eskimo in my tribe."

The song also includes the lines: "These cold winter nights are taking their toll, I even get excited when I see the North Pole. I'm the only gay Eskimo ... I'm the only one I know."

Vice-principal Lorne Guy said Inuvialuit elders have told him using the word "Eskimo" is unacceptable, adding that the song's references to homosexuality may also have played a part in the school's decision.

Barbara Lee Condemns White House “Permanent Occupation” Policy; Cites Critical Need for Congressional Intervention | AfterDowningStreet.org

Barbara Lee Condemns White House “Permanent Occupation” Policy; Cites Critical Need for Congressional Intervention | AfterDowningStreet.org: "Congresswoman Barbara Lee, who has led the fight in Congress to prevent the establishment of permanent military bases in Iraq, released the following statement today in response to the White House announcement yesterday that it views the U.S. military presence in South Korea as the model for Iraq:

“The White House announcement that they view South Korea as the model for a permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq is further evidence of how dangerously out of touch with reality this administration is.

“On a strictly historical level, the comparison is comical. A high school student could tell you that there are virtually no similarities between the Korea and Iraq. The administration's inept attempts to come up with tortured historical analogies to try to justify a failed policy should be another reminder just how little creditability they have on the issue."

Brough hits back at 'Hitler's Germany' comments. 01/06/2007. ABC News Online

Brough hits back at 'Hitler's Germany' comments. 01/06/2007. ABC News Online

Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough has lashed out at an Aboriginal academic for likening the Howard Government's Indigenous policy to Hitler's Germany.

Mick Dodson made the comments in the wake of a Productivity Commission report, showing there is still a massive gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in health, education and employment.

He says the Government must back away from its policy of assimilation.

Mr Brough says Professor Dodson missed the boat.

"It's really not worth commenting about what Mick says, he is part of the past," he said.

"He ought to go and listen to the people on the ground.

"If you are an Australian citizen you should be able to use every mainstream service, feel that it is culturally appropriate and sensitive and it meets your needs - that's not happening."

US Navy strikes al-Qaeda suspect in Somalia | | The Australian

THE US military launched a strike against a suspected al Qaeda target in northern Somalia on Friday, CNN reported. A US Navy destroyer targeted the suspect from off the coast of the African nation, the cable news network said, citing unidentified sources.

read more | digg story

globeandmail.com: Aboriginal academics breathing new life into Canada's ivory tower

globeandmail.com: Aboriginal academics breathing new life into Canada's ivory tower

SASKATOON — So far removed from the stereotype . . . this month, Kristina Duffee, two weeks past her 30th birthday, will pack her social-worker husband and two children into the family's van and drive from Saskatoon to Prince Edward Island, where she recently bought a seaside farmhouse for a summer home.

Ms. Duffee is a master's student at the University of Saskatchewan and a member of the English River First Nation north of Prince Albert. She exudes the confidence, determination and charge-ahead enthusiasm of a woman who lets nothing get in her way.

Pregnant at 18, she never for an instant considered motherhood a barrier to entering university. Pregnant again on graduating with a bachelor's degree, she first worked as an academic adviser at Saskatoon's First Nations University. Then she went to grad school to explore the cultural identity of her tiny, remote Dene community and how it has been altered by outside influences – treaties, the Catholic Church, contact with mainstream economic and social influences.

Always at the back of her mind has been the whispered question: What could she do for her community with her education?

AFP.com | Agence France-Presse, a global news agency

BEIJING (AFP) - Chinese Vice Premier Huang Ju, who rose through the ranks in Shanghai to become number six in the ruling Communist Party hierarchy, died early Saturday at the age of 68, state media reported.

read more | digg story

Shooting blamed on police, governments

Shooting blamed on police, governments

FOREST, Ont. -- After years of examining the 1995 death of native protester Dudley George at an Ontario provincial park, commissioner Sidney Linden laid blame on Thursday for the fatal shooting on the police and governments.

And as Ontario's aboriginal affairs minister offered apologies, the commissioner in charge of the Ipperwash Inquiry said: "The most urgent priority is for the federal government to return" the land to local native bands "immediately."

In Ottawa, federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice pledged to fulfill Linden's recommendation. "We'll do something immediately," he told reporters following question period on Thursday.

"I've made it very clear we intend to transfer the land back to the First Nation. It has to be done in an orderly way, though, where it is safe," Prentice said, citing environmental and other concerns that need to be resolved.

Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) officer Ken Deane shot George on Sept. 6, 1995, two days after protesters occupied Ipperwash provincial park.

"There is no doubt that OPP acting Sgt. Deane shot and killed Mr. George and nothing in the inquiry challenges or undermines this conviction," Linden said Thursday. "However, acting Sgt. Dean should not have been in a position to shoot Mr. George in the first place."

informationliberation - Bilderberg Club - the Mother of all Secret Societies

informationliberation - Bilderberg Club - the Mother of all Secret Societies

In 1954, the most powerful men in the world met for the first time under the auspices of the Dutch royal crown and the Rockefeller family in the luxurious Hotel Bilderberg of the small Dutch town of Oosterbeek. For an entire weekend, they debated the future of the world. When it was over, they decided to meet once every year to exchange ideas and analyze international affairs. They named themselves the Bilderberg Club. Since then, they have gathered yearly in a luxurious hotel somewhere in the world to decide the future of humanity. Among the select members of this club are Bill Clinton, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Toni Blair and many other heads of government, businessmen, politicians, bankers and journalists from all over the world.

Nevertheless, in the more than fifty years of their meetings, the press has never been allowed to attend, no statements have ever been released on the attendees’ conclusions, nor has any agenda for a Bilderberg meeting been made public. Leaders of the Bilderberg Club argue that this discretion is necessary to allow participants in the debates to speak freely without being on record or reported publicly. Otherwise, Bilderbergers claim, they would be forced to speak in the language of a press release. Doubtlessly, this discretion allows the Bilderberg Club to deliberate more freely, but that does not respond to the fundamental question: What do the world’s most powerful people talk about in these meetings?

Great Falls Tribune - www.greatfallstribune.com - Great Falls, MT

Great Falls Tribune - www.greatfallstribune.com - Great Falls, MT

A Browning family is upset they can't properly bury the body of a family member, held since last July as evidence for a homicide trial, because it may be sent to Pennsylvania for further pathological examinations.

Michael Max Miller is awaiting trial on a deliberate homicide charge for allegedly killing LaMarr Windham, 45, whose body was found near Rainbow Dam in July. No cause of death has been released.

MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - US Attorney Resigns

MWC News - A Site Without Borders - - US Attorney Resigns

Tim Griffin, formerly right hand man to Karl Rove, resigned Thursday as US Attorney for Arkansas hours after BBC Television ‘Newsnight’ reported that Congressman John Conyers requested the network’s evidence on Griffin’s involvement in ‘caging voters.’ Greg Palast, reporting for BBC Newsnight, obtained a series of confidential emails from the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. In these emails, Griffin, then the GOP Deputy Communications Director, transmitted so-called ‘caging lists’ of voters to state party leaders.

Experts have concluded the caging lists were designed for a mass challenge of voters’ right to cast ballots. The caging lists were heavily weighted with minority voters including homeless individuals, students and soldiers sent overseas.

Conyers, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee investigating the firing of US Attorneys, met Thursday evening in New York with Palast. After reviewing key documents, Conyers stated that, despite Griffin’s resignation, “We’re not through with him by any means.”

Conyers indicated to the BBC that he thought it unlikely that Griffin could carry out this massive ‘caging’ operation without the knowledge of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Rove.

Griffin has not responded to requests by BBC to explain this 'caging' operation. However, in emails subpoenaed by Conyers' committee, Griffin complains to Monica Goodling, an assistant to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, about the BBC reporter's reproduction of caging lists in Palast's book, "Armed Madhouse."

In the email dated February 5 of this year, Griffin stated that the purpose of 'caging' was to identify "fraudulent" voters. This contradicts one explanation of the Bush campaign to BBC that the lists were of potential donors and not in any way created to challenge voters.

Newsvine - Israeli Troops Kill 2 Palestinian Teens

Newsvine - Israeli Troops Kill 2 Palestinian Teens: "Israeli troops shot and killed two 13-year-old Palestinians near the Gaza-Israel border fence Friday, saying they were crawling toward the barrier in a 'suspicious manner.' The boys had told their families they were going to the beach.

Also Friday, an Islamic Jihad militant was killed in an Israeli missile strike while riding his motorcycle in southern Gaza, Palestinian security officials said. Earlier in the day, Islamic Jihad said it fired two rockets toward Israel. No one claimed responsibility for two more rocket launches, and no one was hurt

The rockets and Israeli retaliatory strikes began in mid-May, wrecking a five-month cease-fire on the Gaza-Israel border. The violence will be on the agenda when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert meet next week."

Newsvine - Pakistan Bans Demonstrations in Capital

Newsvine - Pakistan Bans Demonstrations in Capital

A Russian journalist said Friday that law enforcement officials searched his apartment and carted off computers that contained draft chapters of two books he was writing about President Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Pribylovsky said he was told the seizures were part of an investigation into the unsolved slaying of a former senior official of the main successor agency to the KGB.

But Pribylovsky, who runs a Web site critical of the Kremlin, said he suspects officials were really interested in finding out what he planned to publish about Putin.

"I believe that they wanted to read what I was writing," he told The Associated Press.

The Moscow prosecutor's office declined to comment.

Pribylovsky said he had previously written about the killing of Col.-Gen. Anatoly Trofimov, a former deputy head of the Federal Security Service shot in 2005 by a masked gunman outside his Moscow home. The author said that he agreed to remove some materials relating to the case from his Web site three months ago at the request of officials.

The working titles for the books are "Putin's Comrades," and "Oper

Newsvine - Police Seize Drafts of Books on Putin

Newsvine - Police Seize Drafts of Books on Putin

A Russian journalist said Friday that law enforcement officials searched his apartment and carted off computers that contained draft chapters of two books he was writing about President Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Pribylovsky said he was told the seizures were part of an investigation into the unsolved slaying of a former senior official of the main successor agency to the KGB.

But Pribylovsky, who runs a Web site critical of the Kremlin, said he suspects officials were really interested in finding out what he planned to publish about Putin.

"I believe that they wanted to read what I was writing," he told The Associated Press.

The Moscow prosecutor's office declined to comment.

Pribylovsky said he had previously written about the killing of Col.-Gen. Anatoly Trofimov, a former deputy head of the Federal Security Service shot in 2005 by a masked gunman outside his Moscow home. The author said that he agreed to remove some materials relating to the case from his Web site three months ago at the request of officials.

The working titles for the books are "Putin's Comrades," and "Oper

Fire Witch Rising: Defeated by Iraqi Resistance, The US Negotiates Ceasefire With "Terrorists"

Fire Witch Rising: Defeated by Iraqi Resistance, The US Negotiates Ceasefire With "Terrorists"

Malcom Lagauche
May 31, 2007

An incredible bit of news came forth on May 31, yet few media outlets have mentioned it: U.S. commanders in Iraq have been given permission to engage in cease-fire talks with local groups.

According to an Associated Press article (U.S. Commanders Talking About Cease-Fires, Other Agreements to Stop Iraqi Violence) written by Pauline Jekinek and published on May 31, 2007:

"U.S. military commanders are talking with Iraqi militants about cease-fires and other arrangements to stop the violence, the No. 2 American commander said Thursday …

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno said commanders at all levels are being empowered to reach out for talks with militants, tribes, religious leaders and others in the country that has been gripped by violence on a range of fronts including insurgents, sectarian rivals and common criminals …

Pudgy Indian: The Wind That Shakes the Barley

Pudgy Indian: The Wind That Shakes the Barley

"The Wind That Shakes the Barley" is a MUST SEE FILM about the freedom movement of the Irish in the 1920's. It is an INTENSE film, but I don't give a fuck! You GOTTA SEE IT!

For anyone interested in true freedom, not this American Privilege passed off as freedom, you gotta see this film.

It is about the British oppression of the Irish folks, and the Irish folks that fight back. Reminiscent of Israel/Palestine, U.S./Iraq, and so many more. These folks fight the empire because when you are under the rule of empire, not unlike here in America, you are NOT FREE!

You have in this film Irish Revolutionaries who want to be out from under the rule of empire, Irish sell-outs who just want the Brits our and are willing to be like the Brits just so the Brits will leave their nation but still be under the rule of the Brits, you have the British oppressors, you have the ELITE (pieces of empirical shit) who want life to go on as usual to preserve their privilege and of course use BRUTE FORCE to keep that shit going, and you have all the life and drama that unfolds within all of that.

The Try-Works » Blog Archive » Speaking Of Mimi Wesson

The Try-Works » Blog Archive » Speaking Of Mimi Wesson

New charges have been filed against the Standing Committee on Research Misconduct for their inane report on the Good Professor.

Read the press release.

Read the new allegations.

My favorite bit comes from the allegations.

1. The Committee misrepresented and suppressed evidence concerning smallpox among the Wampanoags in New England, 1614-1618.

Professor Churchill was charged with research misconduct stating, “There’s some pretty strong circumstantial evidence that [Captain John] Smith introduced smallpox among the Wampanoags as a means of clearing the way for the invaders” (p.33).

The Committee concludes that Professor Churchill “fabricated his account, because no evidence – not even circumstantial evidence – supports his claim” (p.38). It claims to have done “further research to see if other sources buttress Professor Churchill’s claims” (p.35) and asserts that there is “nothing that points specifically to smallpox. Professor Churchill does not provide even ‘circumstantial evidence’ to support his claim that the disease was smallpox or tell his readers by what logic he reached this conclusion.” (p.37, emphasis added).

There are, in fact, numerous readily accessible sources which describe the disease as smallpox, thus refuting the conclusions of the Committee. To quote only a few examples:

“For example, the first smallpox epidemic, in 1616, sharply reduced populations of Indians along the northeast Atlantic Coast.” John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) p.503.

“Importation of smallpox also decimated the native peoples of North America, facilitating the European colonization of the continent. In 1616-1619, a smallpox epidemic cut down almost nine-tenths of the Indian population in the Massachusetts Bay area. . . .” Jonathan B. Tucker, Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox (New York: Atlantic Monthly, 2001) p.11.

“New England Indians, from Massachusetts to Maine, suffered a smallpox from 1616-1619.” Sana Loue, Gender, Ethnicity, and Health Research (New York: Kluwer Academic, 1999) p.136.

In addition, numerous timelines of early American history list a 1616 smallpox epidemic in the northeast as a seminal event. See, e.g., John W. Wright, ed., The New York Times Almanac 2007: The Almanac of Record, (New York: Penguin, 2006) p.78; Larissa Juliet Taylor, ed., Great Events from History: The 17 th Century (Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, 2005) (Table of Contents, “1617ff., Smallpox Kills Native American Populations”); David Lea, et al., A Political Chronology of the Americas (London: Europa, 2001), p.225.

Dozens of other examples can be found by a simple Google or Amazon.com engine search.

More Palestinian workers hide in Israel - 06/01/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

More Palestinian workers hide in Israel - 06/01/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

PETAH TIKVA, Israel --
Two Palestinian men crawl through an opening not much larger than a shoe box and descend a shaky ladder, into a space filled with the rank smell of urine and cigarette smoke.

This underground, unfinished mall near the junction of two Tel Aviv highways is home for dozens of Palestinian laborers who can't get scarce work permits. It's where they disappear each night, living out of sight of Israeli authorities to fill jobs offered by Israeli businesses.

"When you want to work, you are not afraid of anything," said 23-year-old Abdul Jalil Hamad, who lights a candle on a concrete wall to shed light on his bed, a mattress that he found in the garbage.

To avoid discovery by police, Hamad and his friends send only those with the best Hebrew and cleanest clothes to buy food at a minimarket on a back street. When the police catch him, he returns home to the West Bank with empty pockets, to face 14 family members who rely on his pay.

An international aid boycott of the Palestinian government - imposed after the Islamic militants of Hamas rose to power in last year's election - has exacerbated poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where about a third of the able-bodied population is out of work.

The result is that across Israel at least 10,000 illegal Palestinian laborers sleep every night in shacks made from leftover building materials, or in open orchards, or in unused structures like the mall. Meals often consist of bread, humus and cheese.

Some stay in buildings with running water and electricity, so they can cook and bathe in warm water. But most lack such luxuries.

Meshal: We'll halt rockets if IDF ends assassinations - Haaretz - Israel Ne

A senior Palestinian official said late on Friday that Khaled Meshal, the head of Hamas' political bureau, told Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Khalifa Al-Thani that Hamas would be willing to halt rocket firing on Israel, if Israel would stop its targeted killings on Hamas militants. The Palestinian source told Israel Radio that Meshal spo

read more | digg story

Torturers in Camouflage: The U.S. Military, Ethical Hellhole / Pierre Tristam [Candide's Notebooks]

Torturers in Camouflage: The U.S. Military, Ethical Hellhole / Pierre Tristam [Candide's Notebooks]

News of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal had just broken. President Bush was in the Rose Garden, holding a joint news conference with the King of Jordan. “I told His Majesty as plainly as I could,” Bush said, “that the wrongdoers will be brought to justice, and that the actions of those folks in Iraq do not represent the values of the United States of America.” But of course they did. The Abu Ghraib torturers weren’t just a few bad apples. They were United States soldiers doing what they thought was right under the perverted rationales of their perverted training. They were a few of the tens of thousands of American soldiers who have abused, and continue to abuse and torture Iraqis—not because some liberal media outlet did a “study” or extrapolated some numbers from some third-class source. No. This is by the Pentagon’s own accounting.

In November 2006 the Pentagon concluded a survey of about 1,800 soldiers’ mental health and ethics in Iraq and Afghanistan. The results, and the survey itself, which you can read entire here, were released in early May. You didn’t read much about it because the results were pretty grim. The results drill 50-caliber bullet holes in the myth of the American soldier as an ethical fighting machine, as an individual out to protect Iraqis, as an individual who’d never commit such acts as the torturing of prisoners at Abu Ghraib—which, it should be said again and again, was barely the tip, not of an iceberg, but of an entire sea of icebergs stretching across Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and wherever else the American gulag has spread its chains.

The Consumerist: Sudan Threatens To Cut Off The World's Supply Of Coca-Cola

Sudan is not happy about Bush's new economic sanctions. In fact, their ambassador held a weird news conference that Dana Milbank of the Washington Post described as bearing "no relation to reality," in which the ambassador threatened to personally cut off the supply of gum arabic, an important ingredient in soft drinks. John Ukec Lueth Ukec, Sudan's Ambassador, said:

"The United States is the only country saying that what is happening in Darfur is a genocide," Ukec shouted, gesticulating wildly and perspiring from his bald crown. "I think this is a pretext."
...
"I want you to know that the gum arabic which runs all the soft drinks all over the world, including the United States, mainly 80 percent is imported from my country," the ambassador said after raising a bottle of Coca-Cola.

A reporter asked if Sudan was threatening to "stop the export of gum arabic and bring down the Western world."

"I can stop that gum arabic and all of us will have lost this," [Ukec] warned anew, beckoning to the Coke bottle. "But I don't want to go that way."

Labels: africa, genocide

Hey, Dr. Laura! Why So Selective With Scriptural Law Enforcement?

I suppose Dr. Laura would not suffer a witch to live, either, but this response to her selective law enforcement is enough of a butt-kicking for one day.

read more | digg story

Voice of Indian: Eunuchs adopt female babies to prevent foeticide

I might be hurting many a patriotic sentiments when I say that, we have no rights whatsoever to eel proud at the development that India has made in the 60 years post independence, because the situation of female foeticide is still no better. Till date a girl child is considered as a liability for the family and till date she has to bear the brunt of being born as a female child.

Saying this, I am no way neglecting the efforts that have been made to make situation better for girls, but still there’s a long way to go.

If we have certain parents who didn’t think even once about their own innocence daughter before taking her life, then we also have the representatives of a section of a society which has borne a lot of discrimination before fighting and winning their own sytaus…we are talking about the Eunuchs. With a view to bear the torch to preventing female foeticide, eunuchs in Madhya Pradesh have come forward to adopt female babies of indigent parents.

Poonam John, is one such daring an eunuch from Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh, who has appealed to the poverty stricken parents to hand over their girl childs to them, rather than exposing then to foeticide. She has already adopted six-month-old Roshani, and four and a half years old Sonu.

‘Their life is saved and I have got the opportunity to enjoy motherhood which would have not been possible otherwise,’ said the happy mother Poonam after adopting the babies. Joining hands with her is Suraiya Nayak, from Bhopal who has recently adopted a baby girl and has promised to keep the away from singing or dancing like eunuchs to earn a livelihood and to educate her rather.

Or those who feel that there’s still some traits of humanity left over inside, should take inspiration from Poonam and let their own daughter live…for this is the least that they can do to eradicate this social evil from the Indan society.

Labels: india

Gather.com: Thoughts on Globalization and Indigenous Peoples of the United States

Indigenous peoples of the United States have existed on their lands since time immemorial. Their cultures are inextricably tied to the land; their religions depend upon it. Globalization in the form of European expansion and imperialism began the erosion of traditional Native American culture and religion in the United States almost 500 years ago. In the 20th and 21st centuries, Neo-liberal approaches in government policy and the forces of a global market-economy have compromised the abilities of indigenous peoples to use public lands for their religious practices.

Contemporary globalization continues to wear away at indigenous culture in America through changes in technology, the economy, politics, and culture. Though the forces of globalization have improved the living conditions, health, and utility of countless Americans, these same forces have stripped indigenous Americans of their lands, destroyed their subsistence economies, and created an American government more concerned about its place in the world economy then with the task of protecting the cultures and religions of its people. At the heart of this contemporary globalization is a global Neo-liberal market economy.

While advances in technology have increased the speed and reduced the cost of transportation and communication, market economies enjoy an improved mobility of capital and commodities as modern states yield power to mobilize resources and labor for production. In an ever-competitive global economy in which America strives to maintain her position as a key player, government policy becomes influenced by capital’s mobility and the threat of lost investment.

Unfortunately, the yearning for a secure foothold in the global economy has led to government polices that fail to accommodate religions and cultures that lie out of mainstream society. For indigenous American’s, the repercussion of globalization has been the increased consumption of native lands and natural resources via technology and capitalism, and the lack of policy protecting their native lands via the influence of capital on government policy.

Labels: indigenism

Norrell: United Nations calls for second Indigenous Border Summit

NEW YORK -- The Indigenous Border Summit of the Americas, held in San Xavier on Tohono O'odham land in Arizona, was so successful that the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is calling for a second Border Summit.

The Border Summit is having far-reaching global impacts.

"As the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues VI came to an end, I am glad to inform you that it too recommended the call for another International Border Summit," said Tony Gonzales, field representative for the International Indian Treaty Council and among the moderators of the Border Summit in San Xavier.

"Migration and development, border deaths and conflict, border crossing and ID use and displacement of whole communities apparently is coming under scrutiny. It is emerging as a hot topic in the halls of the United Nations and gathering movement; and the global search for solutions."

In New York, the Permanent Forum priorities were the protection of intellectual and traditional property rights, safeguarding genetic integrity, climate change and border issues.

The Border Summit of the Americas, organized by Mike Flores, Tohono O'odham, with support from the International Indian Treaty Council, in 2006, issued a proclamation of Indigenous border rights. The proclamation called for an end to the militarization of borders and a halt to the harassment of Indigenous Peoples crossing borders. The declaration opposed the construction of a U.S. and Mexico border wall that would dissect O'odham communities and violate an O'odham ceremonial route.

The summit gathered testimony from those who are living in the border region, including victims of the military and border agents and those struggling to uphold human rights. The summit brought together in solidarity Mohawk from the north with Indigenous from the southern border.

Gonzales said the Border Summit received endorsement from the United Nations at the preparatory session in April, then again in May from the Forum.

"The preparatory meeting held in mid-April 2007 in Minneapolis in the presence of Willie Little Child, UN Permanent Forum member, endorsed the Border Summit including the San Xavier District Declaration, and recommended in their report the support of another such effort to the UN Permanent Forum."

A site has not yet been selected for the second Border Summit.

The United Nations said that Indigenous leaders wrapped up the annual session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues with a series of recommendations calling on Member States to take steps to protect their rights to lands, territories and natural resources.

Participants urged countries to adopt measures to halt "land alienation" in Indigenous territories – such as by imposing a moratorium on the sale and registration of land in areas that are occupied by Indigenous Peoples, according to the U.N. news release.

Labels: indigenism

Norrell: Chippewa responds to North Dakota editorial

By Andy Laverdure, Turtle Mountain Chippewa tribal member

Your most recent article decrying the banishment action taken by the Turtle Mountain Tribe against Rob Port is off mark. You state that the action “did more to discredit the tribal council than it did to discredit Port." How so?

You misconstrue the intent of the banishment action. If you actually lived on the reservation and witnessed or experienced the hurt and harm caused not only to the tribe itself, but to tribal residents (Indian and non-Indian), you would realize that the banishment action was necessary and appropriate. The action primarily served to bring the issue to the forefront and to spotlight the tribe’s disgust at the insult.

The banishment action does not restrict Rob Port’s free speech in any way whatsoever. Can you tell me how this is possible? Rob still has his blog site. He still works with Steve Cates and the Dakota Beacon. He still apparently and appallingly has the ears of the North Dakota Newspaper Association.

In your article, Mr. Bender, you state “a real opportunity to educate and refute any misconception is being squandered” and that tribal membership should “use this opportunity to tell this story from the perspective of the tribe." You let me know where the story can be told, who should tell the story, and how it should be told.

If the tribe didn’t take drastic measure, do you even think anyone in your news world would be showing any interest? Most North Dakota newspapers have always shown distaste for Indian issues. Selected news is usually negative, except for positive input from individuals like Dorreen Yellow Bird at the Grand Forks Herald.

There have been many occasions where tribal people have tried to tell their story, but no one would listen. Who makes the decisions in the state relative to what is newsworthy? Not tribal members, that’s for sure.

It may come as a surprise to you, but the US Constitution applies only sporadically to Indian tribes. Tribes have their own laws and have every right to apply those laws as they see fit. In this case, the Turtle Mountain Tribe saw fit to banish Rob Port for the terror he caused to the tribe and the tribe’s membership. The article and the ensuing battle that occurred in the sayanythingblog site caused a great deal of consternation and emotional harm to tribal membership. The harm cannot be adequately described, but it was great. No one seems to care about that aspect of this story; after all, those negatively affected are only a bunch of Indians. As I asked before, and will continue to ask, where is the outrage about the article from the non-tribal voices in our state? The article brought shame onto the whole state, not only Indian Reservations.

Thank you,
Andy Laverdure

Labels: indigenism

Intercontinental Cry: Another Brazilian Leader Murdered in Land Conflict

Year after year, as the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe and others indigenous to Brazil work to reclaim their lands, they are one by one assassinated. It is sad that those responsible do not understand that for every one person, there is also one leader. Or perhaps they do?

From brazzilmag.com - The Brazilian Pataxó Indian Hã-Hã-Hãe Aurino Pereira dos Santos, 40, married and without children, was shot and killed on May 19, 2007 in the region of Taquari, municipality of Pau Brasil, state of Bahia. His body was found near the Letícia farm, owned by Durval Santana, inside an indigenous area claimed by the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe as theirs.

Aurino dos Santos was an active participant in the struggle of the Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe people for recovering their territory. In the region where he was killed, he was one of the leaders of one of the most recent reoccupation actions, which was carried out in the region of Braço da Dúvida and Taquari.

The Pataxó Hã-Hã-Hãe community attended the vigil and burial of Aurino, on May 22, in the Caramuru village in Pau Brasil.

During the ceremonies, chief Ilza Rodrigues said that indigenous leaders would hold a meeting to evaluate the situation and make decisions and proposals in relation to the case. She stressed how concerned she is with the lack of measures on the part of authorities in relation to this additional crime. She also said that she doesn’t want this murder to be another unsolved crime case, without the guilty ones being punished, as so often happens.

Labels: activism

Censored: Blackfoot Confederacy moves to implement its own passport

As early as Jan. 1, 2008, U.S. citizens may be required to present a passport or other documentation to get to and from Mexico, and more importantly for residents of Blackfeet Country, Canada. The $100 fee per person, said Blackfeet Tribal Councilman Rodney "Fish" Gervais, is a particular hardship for the tribal membership, and one the U.S. based Southern Piegan band of the Blackfeet is working to change, along with their northern relatives.

Representatives of the Blood and Siksika, two of the three Canadian bands, joined with their Southern Piegan relatives Friday, May 25, to finalize plans to create a passport designed for use by members of the Blackfoot Confederacy."I kept going to the Tribal Council about border crossing and the need for a common passport," said Gervais Friday from the Glacier Peaks Casino where the delegates came for lunch.

"Now that I'm on the Council, it was one of the first things I did, and now we're in the final process. Tuesday [May 29] is the final signing."Gervais said he'd met with U.S. Immigration officials already, and the American side of the deal seems to be possible because of their willingness to recognize arrangements made in the Jay Treaty of 1794. In that treaty, both governments of the United States and Canada agreed to allow free travel for Native peoples across the international border although both governments have been criticized for their failures to live up to the treaty. Gervais said the Canadians have yet to agree to honor the passport."It's been years in the making," Gervais said.

"We're taking the initiative; now comes the accepting part. The idea is a border crossing of our own like the Mohawk have. The Confederacy is behind it, and it strengthens the confederacy." The Akwesasne Mohawk found themselves similarly divided between the United States and Canada and eventually gained a border crossing specifically for members of their tribe.

Gervais displayed a model passport - a plastic coated card with the member's name and photo, along with a place for signatures of the chiefs of each of the four bands. An American and Canadian flag grace each corner of the card.

"Since 9/11 it's become much more strict at the border, and it's a hardship for the cultural and religious ties of indigenous peoples," Gervais concluded.

Labels: indigenist

IPS: Trujillo's Victims Seek Justice, Nearly Five Decades On

SANTO DOMINGO, May 31 (IPS) - Forty-six years after the death of Dominican dictator Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, human rights groups and victims' families are seeking justice for the murders, torture, kidnappings and illegal arrests committed against thousands of people during his 1930-1961 regime.

A lawsuit was filed Wednesday against a group of former agents of the regime by more than 20 litigants.

"The Dominican justice system still has a historic debt to the descendants of the victims and the victims themselves, who because of acts of courage and dedication saw their lives cruelly affected, and even gave up their lives in some cases," says the document.

The plaintiffs are seeking 30 years of public service for each of the accused, as well as 50 million dollars in reparations for "material and moral damages."

The accused are former Colonel Luis José León Estévez, César Rodríguez Villeta, Cándido Torres and José Ángel Rodríguez Villeta, members of the Military Intelligence Service that waged terror during the regime of Trujillo, who was born in 1891 and murdered in 1961.

"What we want is for justice to be done," said Eduardo Díaz, president of the Fundación 30 de Mayo, which filed the lawsuit with Attorney-General Radhamés Jiménez Peña.

Labels: colonialism, domincan republic

Black News.com: Do Blacks Kill Whites Because They're White?

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, BlackNews.com Columnist A beleaguered Knoxville, Tennessee police chief Sterling Owen, IV was emphatic in his stern remarks at a press conference in mid-May. There was absolutely no evidence Owen said that the murders of Channon Christian and Chris Newsom were racially motivated. The chief had to be forceful and direct in his admonition about the torture killing of the young white couple this past January. As the trial of five young blacks charged with the couple’s murder approaches, several white supremacist groups have threatened to stage a noisy protest in Knoxville against what they call the double standard in the case.

They scream that the national press routinely clamps a wall of silence on black on white murder cases because it fears inflaming racial tensions, and is scared stiff that it will be called racist for talking up black on white crimes. Yet when whites assault or murder blacks the press and civil rights leaders supposedly leap over each other to blare it out as headline news.

This is a false, self-serving, and cheap ploy to knock the press and civil rights leaders. However, the gruesome murders of Christian and Newsom does cast a troubling glare on an aspect of violent crime in America crime that isn’t much talked about beyond the rants of white extremists. And that’s that whites are far more likely to be the victims and blacks their assailants in interracial crimes than the other way around. Those crimes are seldom if ever labeled hate crimes. In the past five years according to FBI figures, on average there were about 1 million and a half to 2 million racial crossover crimes in the country.

Labels: african american males, racism, white power, white privilege

The Native Blog: Indian Tribes Hiding Behind Sovereignty

The Native Blog exposed this some time back and here it is again...

The California Indian Tribes asked the citizens of California to support their effort at getting gambling on the reservations. The tribes said that they would use the funds to help their people.

INSTEAD, many tribes are eliminating Indians from their membership. This process is called DISENROLLMENT. Diverse people such as Indian Activist Dennis Banks and Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich have spoken out about this.

The PECHANGA BAND OF LUISENO MISSION INDIANS of Temecula, CA is one of the tribes who has disenrolled 400 members of their tribe, thereby increasing their per capita payments. Per capita is the term for payments that tribes make to their people based on income from Casinos. When you have fewer people, the per capita will increase for those remaining.

The video link below is to a report from the local KNBC station that shows that Pechanga lied about one family’s heritage, and disregarded the tribe’s own hired expert, who says that the ancestor Paulina Hunter was INDEED Pechanga.

WITHOUT A TRIBE

This action of disenrollment, violating civil rights of its members, has hurt the elders and children of the tribe, causing them to lose health care and education assistance AS WELL as the per capita that rightfully is theirs.

The tribes claim sovereignty in these matters, but they have opened the door to loss of this sovereign immunity by giving away some of that sovereignty to get gambling in. There is almost NO oversight to their gaming operations.

There needs to be sunlight on this issue. Please check out two websites:

http://www.pechanga.info AND http://blog.myspace.com/paulinahunterofpechanga

Right now, the California Senate has approved amended compacts for tribes like Pechanga. Until they restore membership to those disenrolled AND allow those who belong to the tribe into the membership, they should NOT be rewarded with additional slot machines. They already are making $400,000 per year, while true Pechanga citizens were kicked to the curb.

The Native Blog:

The Native Blog exposed this some time back and here it is again...

The California Indian Tribes asked the citizens of California to support their effort at getting gambling on the reservations. The tribes said that they would use the funds to help their people.

INSTEAD, many tribes are eliminating Indians from their membership. This process is called DISENROLLMENT. Diverse people such as Indian Activist Dennis Banks and Democratic Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich have spoken out about this.

The PECHANGA BAND OF LUISENO MISSION INDIANS of Temecula, CA is one of the tribes who has disenrolled 400 members of their tribe, thereby increasing their per capita payments. Per capita is the term for payments that tribes make to their people based on income from Casinos. When you have fewer people, the per capita will increase for those remaining.

The video link below is to a report from the local KNBC station that shows that Pechanga lied about one family’s heritage, and disregarded the tribe’s own hired expert, who says that the ancestor Paulina Hunter was INDEED Pechanga.

WITHOUT A TRIBE

This action of disenrollment, violating civil rights of its members, has hurt the elders and children of the tribe, causing them to lose health care and education assistance AS WELL as the per capita that rightfully is theirs.

The tribes claim sovereignty in these matters, but they have opened the door to loss of this sovereign immunity by giving away some of that sovereignty to get gambling in. There is almost NO oversight to their gaming operations.

There needs to be sunlight on this issue. Please check out two websites:

http://www.pechanga.info AND http://blog.myspace.com/paulinahunterofpechanga

Right now, the California Senate has approved amended compacts for tribes like Pechanga. Until they restore membership to those disenrolled AND allow those who belong to the tribe into the membership, they should NOT be rewarded with additional slot machines. They already are making $400,000 per year, while true Pechanga citizens were kicked to the curb.

Labels: indigenism

IPS: No Freedom of Worship for Muslims Says Court

KUALA LUMPUR, May 31 (IPS) - The stunning decision by Malaysia's highest secular court this week that freedom of worship, a constitutional guarantee, does not apply to Malay Muslims is a major blow to freedom and constitutional democracy, lawyers and human rights activists say.

The Federal Court also reaffirmed that the civil court had no jurisdiction over any Islamic matters, even when non-Muslims are involved.

Wednesday's verdict does not end the Muslim, non-Muslim divide, but may cause it to worsen as the tussle for primacy between inherited secular guarantees and a resurgent Islam demanding pre-eminence for Shariah laws continues, said observers.

Non-Muslim leaders -- both political and religious -- reacted with shock and disbelief after the apex court ruled in a majority 2-1 decision that a Muslim cannot rely on Article 11 that guarantees freedom of worship to leave Islam but must go to a Shariah court to get a certificate to turn apostate.

Ironically, Shariah law does not permit Muslims to become apostate but instead prescribes punishment with fines, forced rehabilitation or jail term.

"Muslims going to Shariah court would incriminate themselves, invite prosecution," said Justice Richard Malajum, the dissenting judge, in the verdict who held that Article 11 applies to all citizens alike without discrimination.

ABC: Gap widens between Indigenous, non-Indigenous Australians: report

A new report has found Indigenous Australians are 13 times more likely to go to jail than non-Indigenous people, and that gap is widening.

The Productivity Commission's Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report has found there is still a massive gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in various lifestyle indicators, including health, education and employment.

The report states that Indigenous students are only half as likely to continue through to grade 12.

While the gap in work force participation has narrowed over the past 10 years, the unemployment rate for Indigenous Australians is still three times higher.

In health, Aboriginal people are 10 times more likely to have kidney disease and report higher rates of arthritis, heart disease and asthma.

Aboriginal people are massively over-represented in the criminal justice system, both as victims and offenders.

They are 13 times more likely to be jailed, with imprisonment rates soaring by 32 per cent over the past six years.

Indigenous children are four times more likely to be in danger of being abused or neglected than non-Indigenous children, with alcohol abuse and overcrowding big factors in that figure.

Indigenous Australians also face a greater threat of domestic violence.

Opposition Indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says more must be done to stop the cycle of Indigenous Australians ending up in prison.

"That starts in childhood, to make sure that children are healthy and they're participating in school and staying on at school so that they can get a job, rather than turn to crime," she said.

"I think it would also be helped by improved measures to have more Indigenous police.

"[The figures] most of all show that we're in danger of letting down the next generation of children, Aboriginal children, who are being born today.

"We really do have to take urgent action to make sure that that doesn't happen."

Labels: aboriginals

Bush makes U.S. unsafe:

A Georgia man with extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (TB) “is now in an Atlanta Denver hospital under federally enforced isolation” after recently taking two transatlantic flights, which might have exposed other passengers to the disease.

Though the man ignored requests by public health officials not to travel, the New York Times reports that “the episode also raised questions about how rapidly health officials could respond to a similar emergency with other deadly infectious diseases.”

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has been instrumental in dealing with this recent TB case. President Bush has repeatedly lauded their work in public health. From 2001:

I believe — firmly believe that because of the good folks who work in this building and other buildings throughout Atlanta, Georgia, and throughout the country for CDC, that we’ve saved a lot of lives in America. … I’m going to talk about public health officials as part of being the new heroes of America. And that’s why I’ve come by today, to thank them.

Yet despite his rhetoric, Bush has repeatedly proposed slashing the CDC’s budget:

– 2002: Proposed a $174 million cut.

– 2003: Proposed a $1 billion cut, with no new funding for preventive health divisions working on TB.

– 2004: Proposed an increase of “less than 1 per cent.”

– 2005: Proposed a $263 million cut, while simultaneously proposing a $270 million increase in abstinence education.

– 2006: Proposed a $500 million cut which would have slashed grants to state and local health departments like the Fulton County Health and Wellness Department involved in this week’s TB-scare.

– 2007: Proposed a $179 million cut, in addition to unspecified plans for more CDC “savings.”

– 2008: Proposed a $37 million cut, including “massive funding cuts in proven health protection programs.”

In a report submitted to the House Appropriations Committee earlier this year, CDC Director Julie Gerberding warned that a TB outbreak could result from the administration’s proposed cuts. She noted that “emerging plagues such as drug-resistant tuberculosis represent ‘urgent threats that have become more prominent in the dawn of the 21st century.’”

Additionally, Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, points out that the full scale of the “erosion of [CDC’s] traditional disease control activities has been ‘masked’ by infusions of cash earmarked for spending on bioterrorism and pandemic activities.”

But even Bush’s myopic focus on terrorism does not appear to have paid off. The Department of Homeland Security has been unable to explain how the TB-infected man was able to simply drive into the United States on his return trip from Canada when “all border crossings had been given his name and told to hold him if he appeared.”

– Jordan Grossman

Labels: americans, bush, poor, rich

Blog and the Bullet: “O Canada! Our Home and Racist Land!”

Does it really take a white rocket scientist to see what Indigenous kids across this continent have no trouble grasping? Does colonial privilege really make people that stupid?

This is a song celebrating the establishment of Canada (”with glowing hearts we see you rise”), and its military defense (”we stand on guard for thee”). What exactly do you think the establishment of Canada meant, every step of the way? Dispossession, rape, exile, and death for Indigenous people is what it meant. That’s why one of the main groups against whom military defense was necessary were the land’s first inhabitants.

And you can add to this the special sexist allegiance owed to it by young men; “true patriot love in all thy sons command” - just some masculine quid pro quo for getting to rape Indigenous women and children would be my guess.

Labels: racism

Dan Wallace Pissing off an NBC anchorman

The NBC Anchorman in NYC Pat Dawson shows his true colors. He gets savagely vulgar with a 9/11 truth
activist (Dan Wallace) who lost his father, a fireman on 9/11. This is a short clip from a November 2006 truth rally in NYC at Ground Zero. Unfortunately, on January 29, 2007, Dan Wallace was found dead in his bed.

Labels: journalism

DU Depleted Uranium is a ZIONIST weapon of mass destruction

Zakheim, a dual nationality Israeli-American and a rabid Zionist, had co-authored "Rebuilding America's Defenses", a position paper by the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 2000, which called for a new "Pearl Harbor" type of incident which would provide a pretext for US military moves to boost its global hegemony. The other signatories on the document included neocons I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and William Kristol. Rabbi Zakheim's career included various posts at the Department of Defense (DoD), foreign policy advisor to George W Bush, and also in the private sector on defense and consultancy.

In the years running up to 9/11, he was corporate vice president of System Planning Corporation (SPC) and chief executive officer of SPC International Corporation. SPC is a manufacturer of highly sophisticated military specification technology such as its "Flight Termination System". FTS includes SPC's Command Transmitter System. It enables remote operators to control up to eight planes simultaneously, from a single position either on the ground or airborne (or, say, in WTC Building 7). The technology provides the capability to take remote control of aircraft already in flight.

Zionists had tricked the Bush Administration into carrying out a relatively small scale false-flag terrorist operation. An unmanned, remote-controlled plane would be crashed into a section of the Pentagon that was under renovation; hence, casualties would range from zero to very low. The remote control technology for the Pentagon incident would be provided by Raytheon. Since it was necessary to claim that "Arabs" had hijacked a passenger plane and the US government had not signed up to deliberately murder dozens of their own civilians as part of Operation Pentagate, the claimed flight that the "suicide pilots" had taken over would be one that ran fairly regularly, but was unscheduled on the particular day of the operation. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) flight records could be falsified after the fact - unless, of course, the planners were to slip up, as they did...

The "dead passengers" were to be individuals linked to government (e.g. Barbara Olson), and the defense contractor Raytheon, who would be paid to fake their own deaths and provided with sanctuary in Israel. As confirmation of the official version of events, it would be claimed that the "passengers" had made cell phone calls to report a hijacking by men of "Arabic" appearance.

(Never mind the fact that such cell phone calls were impossible with 2001 technology at cruising height and speed; the fact that it takes at least an hour and 30 kg of coke to cremate a cadaver had not stopped the indoctrination of millions of people with a physically impossible ludicrous conspiracy theory about a secret German plot to gas and cremate 11 million "undesirables".) If required, fictitious names could be concocted. In order to save on names, it would be claimed that the passenger count just happened to be unusually low that day, say, around one-third of capacity.

American Airlines Flight 77 from Washington Dulles to Los Angeles was scheduled on most days, but was not scheduled (and did not fly) on September 11, 2001. The date had been chosen from the US "911" emergency number. Hence, the official Bush-Cheney story would claim this as the plane which hit the Pentagon. The Bush Administration would then have a pretext for invading Islamic oil-rich nations and looting their oil wealth, and for granting itself with authoritarian powers by introducing legislation such as the Patriot Act. More to the point, Rumsfeld and Cheney - along with other corrupt leaders who had been bribed or blackmailed into the scam - would have a pretext for doing the Zionist Mafia's bidding of supplying the servicemen of the US, UK, Australia, Italy, Spain, etc, as Israel's proxy army to fight its enemy neighbours.

I.e., the offering up of national armed forces as a supply of private mercenaries, or cannon fodder, or uranium-ingesting leukemia and cancer cases waiting to happen. These sacrifices were primarily for the personal profit of the avaricious Zionist Mafia, along with the corrupt Mafia-appointed government leaders who lapped up the few scraps and morsels tossed their way by their Zionist handlers

Labels: israel, zionism

China Daily: Why the US isn't leaving Iraq any time soon

Four years after the initial large-scale military campaigns ceased, the war in Iraq continues. The war is much longer than expected by the United States, carries a hefty price tag, brings about complicated and serious consequences, and makes it very hard for the US to decide whether to press on or pull out.

Since the invasion of Iraq, the US has burned some $500 billion in military spending, with more than 3,300 US soldiers killed in action. As many as 100,000 Iraqis have perished so far. Worldwide anti-war sentiment has swelled at the expense of America's international image.

Some of the countries that have sent troops to fight the war alongside the Americans or take part in peacekeeping missions are now looking for a way out.

The new Iraqi government has accomplished almost nothing in terms of public security and social stability. Ethnic conflicts and religious confrontations rage on; the economy remains in a coma; the country sees no ray of hope from underneath a mountain of debt. Iraq is now in fact a country without a central authority and totally broke.

As for the US, the war in Iraq has gobbled up domestic resources as soaring military spending and compensation for the war dead and injured threaten to top $2 trillion. The awful truth about "two Americas" (one poor, one rich) as revealed by hurricane Katrina two years ago remains unchanged. And, according to some estimates, the federal Social Security pension fund that all Americans are concerned about could be sucked dry in the next 10 years.

To US President George W. Bush, pulling out of Iraq means conceding defeat. But it remains unclear if pushing ahead, including the "Surge" plan unveiled not long ago, will turn things around. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the presence of foreign forces in Iraq is widely seen as the cause of the mess in Iraq today.

The war in Iraq is eroding the psychological superiority of the US as the sole superpower in the world. It is finding that military might is not a cure-all.

Labels: china, iraq

CBC: Ottawa offers $125M to end Caledonia dispute: report

The federal government has made a $125-million offer to settle four aboriginal land claims in an attempt to end a 15-month occupation of a building site in southern Ontario, say reports.

Six Nations demonstrators and police have clashed repeatedly at the Caledonia occupation site.Six Nations demonstrators and police have clashed repeatedly at the Caledonia occupation site.
(CBC)

Federal negotiator Ron Doering made the offer to Six Nations officials on Wednesday night, the Toronto Star reported on Thursday.

The $125 million is to settle four land disputes:

* The former Moulton Township in Haldimand County.
* The flooding of lands in Dunnville to accommodate building the Welland Feeder Canal in 1829.
* The former Burtch correctional facility in Brant County.
* The investment of Six Nations money into the Grand River Navigation Co., in the 1830s.

The final settlement is conditional on Six Nations demonstrators moving off the site of a former housing development in Caledonia, said the newspaper.

Six Nations demonstrators have camped out at the Douglas Creek Estates since February 2006. Ontario bought the land from the developer last year for $16 million.

However, a Six Nations negotiator dismissed the offer on Wednesday night, saying aboriginals want land instead of cash, said the report.

Labels: first nations, indigenism

Israel's Secret Nuclear Programme

Mordechai Vanunu, Israel's nuclear whistleblower, was jailed in 1986 for publishing photographs of Israel's nuclear bomb factory at Dimona. ... all » Olenka Frenkiel reveals the extent of Israel's nuclear gagging. The Sunday Times Revelations hit the press in October 1986. Vanunu has spent 17 years in jail, a11 of which were in a minute solitary confinement cell - and he has just had his appeal for parole denied. He will stay in jail until 2004, when his term is expected to end.

Sunday Times journalist Peter Hounam heard rumours in 1986 that an Israeli whistleblower was offering proof of what the world had long suspected. His revelations confirmed that Israel was building advanced nuclear weapons. After the Sunday Times published this scoop, Vanunu was kidnapped in London by Mossad agents and illegally smuggled back to Israel. He was tried in secret and convicted of treason and spying.

Labels: genocide, israeli defense forces

Argus: S.D. court system is biased

My heart goes out to people who have lost family members because of drinking and driving. I will guarantee you that if the person is Native American, he or she will go to jail.

Native people have to rely on court-appointed attorneys, so they all get sent to jail. Look at the population in jails - mostly Natives. I read it all the time. If an Indian name comes up, the person usually gets jail time or prison time. If it's a white name, the person usually gets probation or the charges go down.

If a family member is killed by a drunk driver, hope the person behind the wheel is Native American because the court system in South Dakota will throw the book at him. People, regardless of their skin color, need to be put in jail if they are drinking and driving.

My experience with the judicial system in South Dakota is it runs on the good-old-boy system if you're white and everyone knows what family you come from. If you think I'm full of it, take a look at the statistics of jails and prisons. It's like we're still in the 1800s.

I hope and pray for the people in this state that the court system will come out of this mentality. I have faith, so I haven't totally given up on the Caucasian people of South Dakota.

Labels: native americans, racism

Newsvine: Opposing the architects of the occupation - Haaretz - Israel News

About 200 British and Israeli architects and academics, including people of international renown, have signed a manifesto initiated by the British organization Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, which calls on Israeli architects and planners to put an end to being "partners in social, political and economic oppression" in the occupied territories, "which violates the professional ethics acceptable to all."

The manifesto points to three representative projects currently promoted by the planning authorities: the master plan for the E1 region between the settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, which will prevent Palestinian territorial contiguity; construction in Silwan in East Jerusalem, which involves the demolition of dozens of homes; and a plan to build a luxury neighborhood on the remains of the former Palestinian village of Lifta.

The organization considers participation in these projects, construction in the occupied territories and any planning in Israel that involves discrimination and repression, to be a blatant violation of international conventions, which require professional and ethical responsibility for the social and environmental consequences of planning and construction work. The organization has sent letters on the subject to the International Architects Association and to the Israel Association of United Architects. It has also turned to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski and to Minister of Construction and Housing Meir Sheetrit on the matter.

Labels: genocide, israel

NZ Herald.co.nz: Scientists tap into ancient knowledge for signs the Big Dry will break

As the worst drought for more than a century grinds on, ancient Aboriginal knowledge is being tapped in an attempt to better understand Australia's capricious climate.

Where meteorologists base their prognostications on satellites and synoptic charts, generations of Aborigines observed the flight of birds and the flowering of wattle bushes.

Aboriginal understanding of the continent's climate is being harnessed by the Bureau of Meteorology's Indigenous Weather Knowledge project, as Australians pray for rain.

More than two centuries after the start of British colonisation, there is belated recognition that 40,000 years of Aboriginal lore can contribute to the science of understanding the weather. "A month ago when the black cockatoos were flocking and the wattles were flowering, we saw that as signs of rain," said project participant Jeremy Clark, chief executive of the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Grampian mountains of Victoria.

"Sure enough, we've just had two weeks of rain. Short-term, things like that enable us to forecast the weather."

Labels: aboriginals, knowledge

Perth: Stolen Wages taskforce a win for WA Aboriginals

May 31, 2007 - The WA Government has announced that it will establish a taskforce to investigate wages and Commonwealth benefits stolen from Aboriginal people. In some cases, up to 75 per cent of their income was held in Government managed trust funds but never repaid. Brian Wyatt from the Goldfields Land and Sea Council says the compensation owed to Indigenous workers in the Goldfields alone could be up to $150 million...
The announcement coincided with the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum that changed the Commonwealth Constitution to allow the Commonwealth Parliament to make special laws regarding indigenous people and enable indigenous people to be included in the national census.

The term 'stolen wages' refers to entitlements and other moneys that should have been paid to indigenous workers but were not. Regulations allowed the Government of the day to hold in trust up to 75 per cent of an indigenous person's wages. There is evidence that some of the workers did not receive their full entitlements.

Greens Senator Rachel Siewert welcomed the announcement having pushed hard for the state to act on the findings of a Senate inquiry: "The West Australian economy was built on the back of the unpaid and under-paid labour of our Aboriginal people," Senator Siewert said. "They were systematically excluded from the benefits of the wealth they created."

"The Senate inquiry found ample evidence of monies being withheld, monies diverted in WA to missions and station coffers, and widespread rorting of trust funds by trustees," said Senator Siewert.

But there is concerned by the announced timeframe as many of the people affected are now elderly and another year of delay will see more of them passing away before justice is achieved.

Brian Wyatt from the Goldfields Land and Sea Council says justice must be done for the people who suffered. "Indications are that the annual indigenous payroll for Goldfields pastoral properties in the 1960s was in the order of $9 million, said Mr Wyatt.

"There were curfews in towns, you know. You had to be out of town by six o'clock, you had to live on designated areas outside of towns and, on top of that, you worked for next to nothing, particularly in the pastoral industry. So it was very, very demeaning I would have thought," he said. "At one mission, in return for a ten shilling a week government accommodation subsidy, Aboriginal people were provided bush shelters and tents with no toilet facilities, and were expected to hunt their own food."

Indigenous Affairs Minister Michelle Roberts said the task force would investigate and make recommendations to try and correct some of the injustices of the past. Mrs Roberts said many of the people affected were likely to have died and a broad repayment scheme, potentially encompassing the families of deceased workers.

Labels: aboriginals, australia, human rights

LA Times: A prosecutor apparently targeted for firing had supported Native American voters' rights.

WASHINGTON — For more than 15 years, clean-cut, square-jawed Tom Heffelfinger was the embodiment of a tough Republican prosecutor. Named U.S. attorney for Minnesota in 1991, he won a series of high-profile white-collar crime and gun and explosives cases. By the time Heffelfinger resigned last year, his office had collected a string of awards and commendations from the Justice Department.

So it came as a surprise — and something of a mystery — when he turned up on a list of U.S. attorneys who had been targeted for firing.

Part of the reason, government documents and other evidence suggest, is that he tried to protect voting rights for Native Americans.

At a time when GOP activists wanted U.S. attorneys to concentrate on pursuing voter fraud cases, Heffelfinger's office was expressing deep concern about the effect of a state directive that could have the effect of discouraging Indians in Minnesota from casting ballots.

Citing requirements in a new state election law, Republican Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer directed that tribal ID cards could not be used for voter identification by Native Americans living off reservations. Heffelfinger and his staff feared that the ruling could result in discrimination against Indian voters. Many do not have driver's licenses or forms of identification other than the tribes' photo IDs.

Kiffmeyer said she was only following the law.

The issue was politically sensitive because the Indian vote can be pivotal in close elections in Minnesota. The Minneapolis-St. Paul area has one of the largest urban Native American populations in the United States. Its members turn out in relatively large numbers and are predominantly Democratic.

Labels: bias, lawsuit, racism, U.S.

CBC: George family braces for Ipperwash inquiry report

The family of slain aboriginal protester Dudley George may finally get some answers Thursday when an inquiry into the 1995 shooting death releases its final report.

George, 38, was killed by a police sniper's bullet as Ontario Provincial Police moved in on the occupation by unarmed protesters at Ipperwash Provincial Park on the shores of Lake Huron.

Sam George said he was nervous, but looking forward to hearing the inquiry's findings on his brother's death.

"We’ve worked hard over the last 12 years to try to get to this point where we’re at today," he told CBC News Thursday morning. "It’s been a hard road and we wouldn’t wish this type of journey on anyone."

While he's waiting to see who, if anyone, the inquiry blames, George said he also hopes the inquiry lays out a new roadmap for how to settle the more than 1,100 outstanding land claims across Canada.

Labels: canada, first nations, police brutality

Iraqslogger: Forced Labor Building Baghdad Embassy?

Rumors of labor trafficking and abuse have plagued the Baghdad embassy building project since its inception, but a subsequent State Department Inspector General investigation reported finding nothing untoward. Now an IraqSlogger exclusive reveals previously unreported instances of abuse and forced labor, making clear that the allegations against the contractor managing the embassy project remain unresolved.

In the months following September 2005, complaints began coming in to the US State Department that all was not well with its most ambitious project ever: a sprawling new embassy project on the banks of the ancient Tigris River. The largest, most heavily-fortified embassy in the world with over 20 buildings, it spans 104 acres-- comparable in size to the Vatican.

Soon after the State Department awarded $592-million building contract to First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad, beginning work to build the gargantuan complex within two years time. But sources involved in the embassy project tell Slogger that during First Kuwaiti’s rush to the finish the project by this summer on schedule, American managers and specialists involved with the project began protesting about the living and working conditions of lower-paid workers sequestered and largely unseen behind security walls bordering the embassy project inside the US-controlled Green Zone.

Labels: business, iraq, slavery

Farrakhan on Al-Jazeera: Impeach Bush Regime for High Crimes

FinalCall.com Video - During an interview on Al Jazeera TV, Minister Farrakhan called for the impeachment of the entire Bush Administration for 'high crimes". For the complete video, go: http://www.finalcall.com/

Labels: Farrakhan, final call, nation of islam

NDN News.com: Aboriginal National Sovereignty

I wanted to add some resources for you all to review regarding this issue. Below are three websites for the Tribal Disenrollment issue and also links to the Public law 280 rule & ICRA. Hope it gives you all a perspective and background about this ongoing issue, which I call "Today's Genocide"! I also wrote a article a couple years ago titled as such, which you can review under the Tribal Disenrollment section of my website www.NDNnews.com.

The bottom line here folks is this issue amount to pure and simple greed, people need to unite and help put a stop to this once and for all. "The blood quantum policy is undoubtedly a self imposed recipe for extinction. If tribes were to maintain the required blood quantum of their members from generation to generation, they would have to intra-marry (marry within the tribe) in an ever decreasing pool of people with the "appropriate" blood quantum level, giving rise to genetic diseases that would surely finish us anyway. So here is a very clever catch-22 imposed by the federal government with the sure outcome of our extermination."

Please take a moment to look at the websites listed below!

Regards,
Tamra
------------------------------------

Pechanga Band of Luiseno Mission Indians
http://blog.myspace.com/paulinahunterofpechanga
The Mixed-Blood Uinta's of Utah

Public Law 280
Public Law 280 Q & A
Indian Civil Rights Act

The Never-Ending Fight to Defend Sovereignty
4 Comments | Posted May 28, 2007 | 10:12 AM (EST)

With the surge in Indian gaming in states like California, a state where Public Law 280 gives the state government jurisdiction over law enforcement and the courts, the issues are far different than say in South Dakota, where the state government has no jurisdiction.
When Public Law 280 was first pushed upon the different states by the federal government it was intended to open the doors for state jurisdiction on Indian reservations. The tribes of South Dakota, the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota, have always been strong advocates of their own sovereign status. They had been at war with the state government for too many years to not understand that state jurisdiction in their courts and in law enforcement would automatically bring about severe inequity.

The former president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, Robert Burnette (now deceased), fought the idea of Public Law 280 tooth and nail. He pushed the reality that if the state assumed jurisdiction over the tribal courts, jails and law enforcement, the costs to the state would be prohibitive. With nine Indian reservations in the state and upwards of 70,000 Indians, the transition alone would have cost the state millions and implementing and sustaining the process would have cost millions more.

South Dakota is a very conservative state and when faced with the prospects of having to shell out millions in order to implement the conditions of Public Law 280, they balked and decided that this prospective entanglement best be left in the hands of the federal government. Mr. Burnett's efforts paid off and South Dakota did not adopt the law. That was not the case in states like California. There was no visible Indian opposition to the suggested law and it passed the state legislature without a problem.

The tribes in California are numerous but very small and they have a small land base. They were among the poorest of tribes in America getting little financial support from the state government until the advent of casino gambling. Situated in a state with a large population, the success of their casinos was almost preordained. But problems started to develop when the different tribal governments began to disenroll tribal members. According to Robert Edwards, a former vice chairman of the Enterprise Rancheria, there are now about 3,000 members of California tribes that have been disenrolled since Indian gaming became their main source of income. Edwards himself was disenrolled in 2003 along with 70 other members of his tribe.

Edwards said that in too many cases the Bureau of Indian Affairs dodges the bullet in dealing with the problem of tribes disenfranchising members by saying it's a membership issue they cannot deal with because of tribal sovereignty. "That excuse simply doesn't fly anymore as many tribal governments are violating the civil rights and human rights of their members while showing a total disregard for their tribal laws," he said.

Are the tribes disregarding tribal law or state law? As sovereign nations they have every right to enact and implement their own laws and tribal laws may not always follow the dictates of state law because oftentimes they are constructed around culture, spirituality and traditions that far outdate state law. One Native American legal scholar requesting anonymity said, "Now apparently California is going to use the disenrollment issue to expand their encroachment on the sovereignty of California tribes. And as they say, 'As California goes, so goes the nation.'" She continued, "This is very dangerous, but what can large, land-based treaty tribes do when smaller tribes in P.L. 280 states start us down this path? And if we ever find ourselves in a strong financial position, will we begin to face some of the same issues?"

The larger treaty tribes fought for generations to take control over their own future. They fought hard to take back the right to name their own tribal members out of the hands of the BIA. They knew the history of their own membership and considered themselves imminently more qualified to choose their own members. After many years of protest and action, they finally assumed that right.

The sad case of the Cherokee Nation is now unfolding and once more the BIA has stepped in to interfere with the sovereign rights of the Cherokee people to select their own membership. If the so-called Freedmen of African American descent wins this case it would set a bad precedent for all of Indian country. One does not have to agree with the decision made by the registered voters of the Cherokee Nation to make the decision to remove the Freedmen from their rolls, but it is the legal right of this sovereign nation to make that decision. Too many Indians have fought and died to earn that right.

When the Indian Civil Rights Act was first introduced many tribal leaders fought its implementation vigorously because it infringed upon some of their cultural, spiritual and traditional rights. Many saw the Act as a danger to their sovereign rights and although it has not, to date, lived up to those early fears, the possibilities are still there and what is happening in California and Oklahoma presents a clear and present danger to the inherent sovereignty of the Indian nations.

(Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, was the founder and publisher of Indian Country Today. He was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard in the Class of 1991. His latest book "Children Left Behind, the Dark Legacy of the Indian Missions," is now available at: order@clearlightbooks.com. The book just won the Bronze Star from the Independent Publishers Awards)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-giago/the-neverending-fight-to_b_49616.html

In peace & solidarity,
Tamra
www.NDNnews.com
www.protectsacredsites.org
"Providing news and information about Native American Issues & Causes"
"Helping to make a difference for our people in Indian Country, one day at a time. What will you do today to help make a difference?"

"Our sacred lands are all that remain keeping us connected to our place on Mother Earth, to our spirituality, our heritage and our lands; what’s left of them. If they take it all away, what will remain except a vague memory of a past so forgotten?"

This is not spam. You are receiving this email because you have signed up for our newsletters and updates thru NDN News. If you wish to be removed from this list, please reply to this email and put remove from list on the subject line. You will receive a auto responder as your confirmation. Thank you and we hope you enjoy our newsletters and updates.

Labels: indigenism

THE FOURTH WORLD WAR: The New Nazis : When Al Qaeda And The Taliban Merge Their Fighting Tactics And Media Strategies

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been so thoroughly hyping the role of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and its allegedly expanding co-operation with the Taliban in Afghanistan, they sound like they are praying for such a Coalition Of Terror so as to have an enemy worthy of the full force of the United States.

While the Taliban has proven to be a resilient and extremely tough enemy in Afghanistan, and Al Qaeda is expanding its operational scope and using Iraq as a training ground for a new generation of international terrorists, neither enemy has lived up to the ultra-hype of the NeoCons as 'The New Nazis'. But they soon may. Which will make it far easier for Bush Co. to sell 'The Long War' back home. Perhaps. Americans are sick, literally, to death of war, and while the new Nazis may emerge, it's debatable whether or not Americans will rally behind their president, even if Al Qaeda managed to carry off what Dick Cheney claims they want to do : explode a nuclear device in a major American city.

From Afghanistan comes news that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are not only sharing war-fighting tactics, but all important PR strategies, for fighting the war in the media :

The Taliban, the fanatical Islamist movement that seized power in the 1990s as an ethnic-based jihad in southern Afghanistan, has in recent months merged its propaganda and field operations with those of al Qaeda, which flourishes across the border in Pakistan, say senior Afghan officials and the group´s former leaders.

The transformation of the Taliban provides a study in how a local, once xenophobic and home-grown Islamist insurgency has re-emerged as a force for al Qaeda´s global interests, say Afghan security officials.

Labels: taliban, terrorism

globeandmail.com: Tim Hortons serves up some controversy

CALGARY -- A boycott is brewing at Canada's iconic coffee and doughnuts chain after a sign that declared "No Drunken Indians Allowed" was taped to a drive-through window at a Tim Hortons outlet in Southern Alberta.

The company, which says the poster was an ill-conceived joke placed by a teenage staff member at a Lethbridge location last week, is fielding complaints from aboriginal people, who are now calling for a ban on the popular eateries.

"Please do not purchase from these stores," noted an e-mail that is circulating among members of native communities. "It might not make a big impact on their profits, but at least it will let them know that these [types] of discriminatory acts will not be tolerated."

The e-mail urges people to call the company's head office to complain about the "offensive" sign, which a number of people already have, and to forward the e-mail to as many other aboriginals as possible. It has also made its way - several times over - to corporate headquarters in Oakville, Ont.

Labels: first nations, racism

Beacon Journal: Stewart's plan riles American I

She wants to trademark village name that's also name of long-ago chief
Associated Press

KATONAH, N.Y. - Martha Stewart's attempt to trademark ``Katonah'' -- a move that has already riled some of her village neighbors -- has now upset some American Indians because the name originally belonged to a 17th-century chief.

Two members of the Ramapough Lenape Indian Nation, which claims Chief Katonah as its own, have joined the anti-trademark battle being waged by the Katonah Village Improvement Society.

And other American Indian leaders on Tuesday said that Stewart's trademark application was offensive.

``If I wanted to trademark `Martha Stewart' and put out a line of tea towels, she would have me in court very quickly,'' said Suzan Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, a national advocacy group. ``She'd be saying, `You can't use my name, that's valuable, that belongs to me.' ''

Clint Halftown, the federally recognized representative for the Cayuga Nation, said: ``If it's being done for profit, then of course it's offensive. Of all the names in the world and all the words, why can't she pick something out that's not offensive?''

Labels: offensive, racism

Censored: Oglala Commemoration 2007

Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
http://lpdctexas.blogspot.com/

Oglala Commemoration 2007

Updates An Army of One:

" We must each be an army of one on the endless struggle between the goodness we are capable of and the evil that threatens us all from without as well as from within. Yes, we can be an army of one. One good man or one good woman can change the world, can push back the evil, and their work can be a beacon for millions, for billions. Are you that man or woman? If so, may the Great Spirit bless you. If not, why not? We must each of us be that person.

That will transform the world overnight. That would be a miracle, yes, but a miracle within our power, our healing power. To heal will require real effort, and a change of heart, from all of us. To heal means that we will begin to look upon one another with respect and tolerance instead of prejudice, distrust, and hatred. We will have to teach our children ----as well as ourselves----to love the diversity of humanity. To heal we will have to make a conscious effort to live as the Creator intended, as sisters and others, all of one human family, caretakers of this fragile, perishable, and sacred Earth.

To heal we will have come to the realization that we are all under a life sentence together...... and there's no chance for parole.We can do it - yes you and I and all of us together. Now is the time.Now is the only possible time.

"LET THE GREAT HEALING BEGIN"

"Leonard Peltier From Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance
Edited by : Harvey Arden
Please click here for a copy of Army of One flyer:
http://www.leonardpeltier.net/downloads/leonardword.pdf

Labels: american indian movement, indigenism, leonard peltier

BBC NEWS | South Asia | India alarm over HIV in new areas

Newsvine: India health officials are alarmed by the growing numbers of pregnant women infected with HIV/Aids in the key states of Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Bihar.

The northern states are among India's most backward, with huge populations but poor literacy and health services.

Officials say workers who migrate to cities in search of work bring the infection back to the states with them.

They say unless the state governments get serious about tackling the disease, there could be an Aids epidemic.

According to UN estimates, India has the highest number of HIV infections with 5.7 million people carrying the virus.

Concerned

The head of India's government-run National Aids Control Organisation (Naco), Sujatha Rao, told the BBC that urgent measures were needed in UP and Bihar to "stem the epidemic".

Labels: hiv, india

desert-rock-blog.com: Racism

Dear All, below is an email I received from the Navajo president's public relation's officer, George Hardeen. While he made some valid points, I have to take exception to his racist characterization: "good little Indian." Please, help me get the word out to people. I think they have a right to know about this ugly remark. -JR

JR,

At first glance, your point of view espouses the "good
little Indian" political philosophy, one of
convenience at best and insecurity at worst, rather
than anything having to do with standing for one's
beliefs with the courage of one's convictions.

Looking deeper than the surface, what does it say that
the Bush Administration won't meet with the Navajo
president because he supported the Democratic
presidential candidate, as did half the country and
the vast majority of Navajos? And what of that
Administration's actions toward all tribes? And how
this Administration actually acquired the White House?

Rather than fault tribes and President Shirley right
off the bat, consider the reasons they supported a
Democrat, and bring attention to the Bush
Administration's short record in support of tribes. Do
you actually think President Shirley announced his
support of Sen. Kerry without putting thought into it?

As a Republican, Peter MacDonald seems to have been
unsuccessful in persuading other Republicans,
particularly those from Arizona, not to pass the
Relocation Act, which had far more dire consequences
than merely not getting a meeting with Bush. In that
regard, your statement would not seem to have wider
applicability. A little research would likely yield
more examples.

Perhaps tribes and Navajo should do the opposite of
what you suggest here, and unite in support of one
candidate.

Maybe you should "toy" with this idea a little more.

Best to you and your Mom and Dad,

George

Labels: apples, native american

Newsvine: BBC NEWS | Americas | Firm sued over secret CIA flights

A US civil liberties group is suing a subsidiary of Boeing for allegedly helping the CIA fly suspects to secret overseas jails where they were abused.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed the lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan on behalf of three men allegedly abducted by the CIA.

The Bush administration acknowledges its policy of "extraordinary rendition" but denies any suspect is tortured.

Jeppesen has said it cannot confirm whether or not the CIA is a customer.

A spokesman for the Colorado-based firm told the BBC News website: "We have thousands of customers who fly tens of thousands of flights every day and with each one of them they have a reasonable expectation that their operations will be kept confidential."

A report approved by a European Parliament committee earlier this year said more than 1,000 covert CIA flights had crossed European airspace or stopped at European airports in the four years after the 9/11 attacks.

Labels: boeing, cia, lawsuit

Newsvine: ABC News Uncovers 'Operation Northwoods' - acts of terrorism to force americans to support war

Indecent: In the early 1960s, America’s top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

Labels: cia, Government, media

ABC: Fed Govt rejects criticism of Aboriginal policy

The Indigenous Affairs Minister has dismissed criticism of the Federal Government from a prominent Aboriginal leader.

In a speech in Adelaide last night, the former head of ATSIC, Lowitja O'Donoghue, said that nothing had been done to fix problems in Aboriginal communities.

She accused the Prime Minister of taking lessons from the former MP Pauline Hanson and using guilt as a distraction from a formal apology.

But the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Mal Brough, says the Government is making a practical difference by investing millions of dollars in Aboriginal communities.

"Lowitja just doesn't wish to accept the facts that we are trying to make practical differences and help Indigenous people in remote communities to make a better life for themselves," he said.

"It's pretty clear that Lowitja has a particular attitude towards the Prime Minister.

"It's been long-held and unfortunately she allows that to really reflect on the comments that she makes rather than having an objective."

Labels: australia, indigenism

Eurasia.net: Mongolia deals with Russia

Moscow is eager to reassert its influence in Mongolia, which during the Communist era was often portrayed at the "16th" Soviet republic. Mongolian leaders, however, appear intent on keeping their economic options open.

As has been Russia’s pattern since leader Vladimir Putin moved into the Kremlin, trade is acting as the spearhead of Russia’s geopolitical thrust into Mongolia. Several high-profile Russian delegations have visited the Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar in recent weeks, all of them devoted to stimulating trade, mainly in the mining sector.

On April 13, for example, Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russia’s Nuclear Power Agency, Rosatom, held talks with Mongolian President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, Prime Minister Miegombo Enkhbold and Finance, Trade and Industry Minister Nadmidyn Bayartsaikhan. Kiriyenko and Bayartsaikhan signed a tentative agreement on bilateral cooperation to mine uranium deposits in Mongolia. Both sides set up a joint working group which is due to announce its report by July 2007.

During a May 13-17 visit, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov explored other mining deals, in particular the development of Mongolian coal deposits. Following talks on May 15, President Enkhbayar announced that his administration would welcome Russian investment and cooperation in developing the country’s coal reserves, including the Tavan Tolgoi mines in southern Mongolia. He also said that Russia’s Polymetal was still interested in Mongolia’s Asgat silver deposits located near the Russian border in Bayan Olgii. At the same time, the Mongolian leader offered no concrete commitments, and stressed that any Russian cooperation would have to take place "within the framework of Mongolia’s laws."

Mironov was not the only Russian official visiting Mongolia in May. On May 17-20, a delegation of the Russian State Duma, headed by Viktor Voitenko, chairman of Russia-Mongolia parliament group, traveled to Ulaanbaatar to discuss economic ties, border trade and visa issues. Russian deputies lamented that the Russian language was disappearing from Mongolian schools, while their Mongolian counterparts complained about red tape in terms of access to the Russian market for Mongolian exports.

Russian officials have long had their eye on the Tavan Tolgoi coal field. Russia’s Severstal, leading steel and mining concern, is leading the charge to extract Tavan Tolgoi deposits. To encourage Mongolian officials to go along with Severstal’s plans, company representatives have argued that developing Tavan Tolgoi coal reserves could raise Mongolia’s GDP by 25 percent. The coal field has estimated reserves of up to 6 billion tons. Late last year, Severstal forged a consortium with other Russian entities with the aim of speeding the development of Tavan Tolgoi. No specific development deals have been announced to date, however, even after Enkhbayar’s visit to Russia in December.

Labels: russia

IPS: Religious Right Gets More Than Its 15 Minutes

WASHINGTON, May 30 (IPS) - Conservative religious figures are mentioned in the major U.S. news media as many as 2.8 times as often as progressive religious figures, says a new study released Tuesday in Washington.

The report, "Left Behind: The Skewed Representation of Religion in Major News Media", analysed the number of times conservative and progressive religious leaders were quoted, mentioned and interviewed in newspaper and television media outlets.

Conservative religious leaders were found to be interviewed, on average, 2.8 times more often than progressives, 3.8 times more often on the television news networks, and 2.7 times as often in the major newspapers.

"The overwhelming presence in the news media of conservative religious voices leads to the false implication that to be religious is to be conservative, and worse, that to be progressive is to lack faith or even to be against faith," said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Centre of Reform Judaism. "People of faith have long been, and will continue to be, active leaders on progressive causes for justice. Our faith compels it."

Labels: bias, media

Shame the Devil: Danny Glover and Venezuela

Culture is dynamic and should never be static. For a culture to become static defies the meaning of the word culture, which is to 'help grow', as in to "cultivate". Culture plays such a large role in the shaping of one's character not to mention how one perceives the world. Everything that is internalized within an individual is usually through some cultural perspective. The anthropologic definition for a culture is " an environment designed to perpetuate information through space and time". Which in layman's terms means simply for a people to retain a knowledge of self by passing it one through furture generations.

One problem for us, as Gods and Earths, is the struggle to maintain of culture in the face of the dominant culture in society. This causes many of us to have to find some kind of compromise in order to manifest our way of life. Especially as society changes, our society will change. It is inevitable. The issue is in what ways will we change? And in what was will we remain the same? What is truly applicable for future generations? What was truly 'timely' and for a specific 'age'? These are some powerful questions that we must ask ourselves. I have had many opinions from people and I appreciate them. However, none of them are realistic to me. Most often times someone will share with me their perspective of the culture within the intense fervor of not wanting to let go on certain things. While others are so bent on change that they disregard history and tradition. We are so locked into the mindframe of dialectic opposites we can not even fathom a middle ground.

Labels: Venezuela

Taino Nation: RECLAMATION OF CULPEPPER ISLAND BY LOKONO-ARAWAK & KARIFUNA-CARIB

On this the 12th day of March 2006, we the descendants of the first peoples who discovered and inhabited all of the islands of what is now known as the ‘Caribbean’,

Do hereby declare to the world that rumors of our extinction are greatly exaggerated and we are in fact still very much alive and among you – the inhabitants of our islands who came after we were robbed of our birthright in the name of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’.

Second, we collectively condemn the fact that the Karifuna-Carib inhabitants of the islands now known as St. Vincent and Trinidad – still have no territory to call their own after five centuries of being discriminated against and marginalized in their own lands!

We call on the Governments of St. Vincent and Trinidad to shed the cloak of neo-colonialism and recognize a part of the occupied lands they inherited from the European invaders – as Karifuna-Carib Territories.

Third, we collectively condemn the fact that although the Karifuna-Carib nation of the island now known as Dominica is approximately 5% of that countries total population – they are forced to accept a grossly inadequate five square mile territory and the illegal presence of a foreign (non-Karifuna-Carib) police presence on their officially recognised territory – in violation of International Indigenous Rights Laws.

We call on the Government of Dominica to do what is right, just and fair – and increase the ‘Carib Territory’ to atleast 15 square miles, for this would be commensurate with the percentage of the Karifuna-Caribs within the total population of this country; and remove the Police presence from ON the ‘Carib’ Territory – to OFF the ‘Carib’ Territory on government lands.

Fourth, we the descendants of Princess Marian – daughter of the last Hereditary Lokono-Arawak Chief Amorotahe Haubariria (Flying Harpy Eagle) of the Eagle Clan Lokono-Arawaks resident on this island now known as Barbados, and the Karifuna-Carib ambassadors from the island now known as Dominica – do hereby jointly re-claim from the Government of Barbados - the small uninhabited island outcrop known to locals as Culpepper Island.

Damon Gerard Corrie,
Lokono-Arawak Nation

Jacob Che Frederick,
Karifuna-Carib Nation

Labels: indigenism, taino

The Unapologetic Mexican: The Mysterious Case of The Ungrateful Natives

SPEAKING OF CONNECTING THE DOTS, The Glennstitution digs in under the skin. It's about time we began using such awareness in the larger spheres of political commentary. About time we all began calling things what they really are.

In general, human beings do not appreciate it when foreign armies invade their nation, shatter its infrastructure, drop bombs throughout the country, kill tens of thousands of civilians, unleash anarchy and chaos, and then proceed to occupy the country with a force of 150,000 foreign soldiers. And that is true even if a genuine monster like Saddam Hussein is removed from power and killed in the process.

No matter how well-intentioned the invaders might think they are -- indeed, no matter how well-intentioned the invaders actually might be -- that behavior is going to engender anger and resentment among the invaded populace, not to mention the rest of the world, and that resentment is going to increase as the brutality and duration (and ineptitude) of the occupation increases.

—Glenn Greenwald, After everything we did for them

Labels: indigenism

ABC: Native title granted to Ngarla people of East Pilbara

The Federal Court is handing down a native title determination today to the Ngarla people for over 10,000 square kilometres of land and water in the East Pilbara.

Justice Annabelle Bennett and the Deputy Premier, Eric Ripper, are at De Grey Station, east of Port Hedland, where the determination is being handed down.

The decision gives the Ngarla people non-exclusive rights to camp, hunt and fish as well as the right to be consulted about mining and pastoral developments.

It is the second native title claim decided in the Pilbara.

Mr Ripper says the consent determination is the result of more than 11 years of negotiation.

"The mining and the pastoral interests have agreed on the determination so there's been good will all around although there have been issues that have had to be resolved in the negotiation."

Labels: aboriginals, australia

Native Unity: Bush Makes Power Grab - Tribal Governments Included

Opinion - posted May 24, 2007 – the Chattanoogan.com
President Bush, without so much as issuing a press statement, on May 9 signed a directive that granted near dictatorial powers to the office of the president in the event of a national emergency declared by the president.

The "National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive," with the dual designation of NSPD-51, as a National Security Presidential Directive, and HSPD-20, as a Homeland Security Presidential Directive, establishes under the office of president a new National Continuity Coordinator.

That job, as the document describes, is to make plans for "National Essential Functions" of all federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal governments, as well as private sector organizations to continue functioning under the president's directives in the event of a national emergency.

The directive loosely defines "catastrophic emergency" as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions."

When the President determines a catastrophic emergency has occurred, the President can take over all government functions and direct all private sector activities to ensure we will emerge from the emergency with an "enduring constitutional government."

Labels: bush, indigenism

Newspaper Rock: Giat: Sioux betrayed themselves

HBO feels 'Wounded'

The final chapter of the American Indians' doomed struggle to cling to their homeland gets a starkly realistic treatment in HBO's 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.'
"My primary objective was to fully dimensionalize these people," Giat says. "Sitting Bull was vain. He was desperate to hold onto the esteem of his people and win the esteem of the whites. But I think in depicting his desperation and the measures he took in acting on it, it makes it all the more sad and tragic, and I think we identify with him all the more for it."

"People have an iconic view of Sitting Bull," says Yves Simoneau, the film's director, "but that image is restrictive. The way August played him, noble but far from perfect, made him the character the test audiences identified with the most—by a long way." Schellenberg played Sitting Bull in TNT's "Crazy Horse" (1995), but he is much more forceful here.

The key theme in the film that underscores the conflictedness of the Sioux at this cataclysmic moment in their history is that of self-betrayal. Two of Sitting Bull's warriors became tribal policemen at the Standing Rock Agency. One of them unintentionally tramples on his people's pride by killing a buffalo in a corral. The other, who shoots Sitting Bull, was the bitter father of the slain baby.
Comment: See Hanay Geiogamah's response to this article. Also see my response to the same issues.

Labels: media, native americans, racism

Los Indios: Bananeras rise up !

For the Original men and women who struggle to provide us with food just to barely feed themselves. YA BASTA! As Indigenous men, women and children rise up to relcaim their humanity against the slavery imposed by the multi-national corporations, the evil offspring of colonialization. Many of us that that were reared in the states, even in the midst of the poorest of environments, still can not imagine life for our people in the "third world". So we never generate interest in the lifes and well-beings of those people and block them out of our consciousness. We are taught and instructed to be concerned for nothing except the "wonderful life" here in the wilderness of North America. Like horses with blinders on.

It makes me of my father and the letters we would send from Boriken and the times he would tell me of nothing to eat except for bananas...and the numbers of children here who grow up preferring a 25 cent bag of swedish fish over a banana. What our people have went through for us to have the audacity to 'not' want to eat healthier. Of course this 'preference' having been rooted in miseducation. Miseducation not withstanding, there are many of our people who assume a strident position of maintaining and perpetuating ignorance. It's the relationship between the two realities that's the jewel. Alla y Aca. Like 'blood diamonds' that people and especially 'rappers' continue to flaunt despite the controversy that surrounding the topic after the film "Blood Diamonds" was released.

Plantation workers look for justice in the North
by T. Christian Miller
May 29, 2007

After years of toil in Central American fields where they say pesticide use made them sterile, they're suing Dow, Dole and other firms in L.A.

Chinandega, Nicaragua -- THE people crammed into the stifling basketball gym. They filled the court, lined the walls and tumbled beyond the doors onto the sun- blistered streets.

They had gathered to hear a promise of justice.

Labels: indigenism

How much worse can it get for the victims of Hurricane Katrina?

BATON ROUGE, La. - Louisiana wants thousands of state and local government workers to send back $10 million in unemployment pay they received while still collecting regular pay after Hurricane Katrina.

A state audit found lax control by the state
Department of Labor was the main reason the 5,439 ineligible workers were able to collect up to $258 a week, Legislative Auditor Steve Theriot said.

Administrative workers with the City of New Orleans received the most money with 2,233 wrongfully collecting $4.3 million. There were 1,638 state workers, many with the state Department of Health and Hospitals, who got $2.7 million.

The money was a small portion of the overall $560 million the department pay out in unemployment benefits to public and private workers in the four months after Katrina.

With residents spread nationwide and difficult to contact, state labor officials suspended the requirement for unemployment applicants to contact the department weekly to verify they are looking for jobs and to report any earnings, said assistant Labor Secretary Marianne Sullivan.

She said the agency suspended the call-in rule for 12 weeks based on meetings with officials from the governor's office, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, the state AFL-CIO and the Council for a Better Louisiana.

The department has gotten back $3.3 million of improper payments so far, mostly from unused benefit debit cards. It seems unlikely the state will get all the money.

Labels: katrina

MWC News: War Is a Government Program

Sheldon Richman - June 1 is the 227th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Clausewitz, the influential Prussian military theorist and historian. Clausewitz is best known for writing in his book, On War, "War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means."

These words come to mind whenever I hear conservative enthusiasts for the Iraq occupation complain about political interference with military operations. They don't understand the most basic fact of war: it is a government program. So why aren't people who claim to be suspicious of other government programs suspicious of war? I can see only two reasons, neither of them flattering: power lust or nationalistic zeal.

Many of us grow up believing that government reflects the will of the people. But skeptics know better. Government has assumed more and more control over private life not because the people demanded it, but because power-seekers and privilege-seekers sought outlets for their ambitions. They then propagandized the public until a sufficient number of people came to believe government control was good for them. ("Public" education has been remarkably effective in this regard.)

The story is similar with war. Politicians start wars for political reasons. They may seek to control resources or a foreign population. Or they may want to secure existing interests that could be at risk without war. The military is a means to political ends.

Labels: war

The Liberal Journal: The War On Venezuela

If you turned to FOX News today, even if only in passing, chances are you heard about President Hugo Chavez's decision to shut down RCTV (Radio Caracas Television). If you bothered to keep watching, the right-wingers talked about how undemocratic Chavez's actions are.

Why does the Right care so much about civil liberties in country's with leaders they are told to hate? Freedoms in Saudi Arabia? A non-issue. Habeas corpus in the United States? What, am I terrorist-loving traitor?

Of course, on its face, the decision appears to stifle freedom of speech and expression. But the Chavez-despising Right is ignorant to, and willfully so, the possibility of RCTV being a CIA tool.

Here's what Alexander Cockburn of CounterPunch wrote three weeks ago:

RCTV has been denied a license renewal by the legitimate Venezuelan Government because it plotted with the CIA backed by the U.S. Government to illegally overthrow President Hugo Chavez in April of 2002.

Chávez is the best thing that has happened to Venezuela's poor in a very long time. His government has actually delivered on some of its promises, with improved literacy rates and more students getting school meals. Public spending has quadrupled on education and tripled on healthcare, and infant mortality has declined. The government is promoting one of the most ambitious land-reform programs seen in Latin America in decades.

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here's José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia's military apparatus. This time he's holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela's Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don't recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity.

Media manipulation is an essential part of the script, and here, right on cue, comes Bill Clinton's erstwhile pollster, Stan Greenberg, still a leading Democratic Party strategist. Greenberg is under contract to RCTV, one of the right-wing media companies leading the Venezuelan opposition and recall effort. It's a pollster's dream job. Not only does he have enormous resources against an old-fashioned, politically unsophisticated poor people's movement, but his firm has something comrades back home can only fantasize about: control over the Venezuelan media. Imagine if the right wing controlled almost the entire media during Clinton's impeachment.

Labels: Venezuela

Newsvine: Christians = Irresponsible Parents?

By: J Rodarte: I’m writing this article in hopes of bringing parents, who may have never thought of religion as being dangerous to their children’s future, into realizing the horrible effects it has on our children. On that note I want to begin talking about segregation. Why do we separate our children? Would we stop a child from talking with a neighbor child because his or her parents are republican?

Would you prevent a child from playing baseball with yours because they don’t share the same ethnic background? Why do we allow this separation with religion? Why do we stand for it? It’s ridiculous to see segregation encouraged in our country.

Unfortunately, religious Indoctrination encourages a form of widely accepted bigotry towards one another. This becomes obvious when walking through a metropolitan area and witnessing one child not allowed to play with another because of their parent’s faith; it’s heartbreaking. This scene, painted too often in America, is because of a forever unprovable belief.

Labels: newsvine, religion

NowPublic: A Serving of Justice, Anyone?

UK - Warren Blackwell of Northamptonshire (UK) spent 3 years in prison for sexual assault, a crime he did not commit.

The woman who was the supposed victim has a history of accusing innocent men,
the BBC also state (video) that there was no forensic evidence and that no one had touched her - she had inflicted her injuries herself.

Mr. Blackwell who has a family, has lost 3 years of his life. Three years
away from his family, incarcerated in an prison, his freedom gone, reputation
brought into question, money spent in his defence, and time spent with true
criminals. It's thought that his compensation for this injustice will be
around £100,000. Fair enough, though I'm sure he would much rather have
the 3 years back. In an imperfect world where monetary compensation rules
I suppose £30,000 pounds for each year lost is ok.

What is not at all ok is the fact that he will be charged (as a
deduction from his compensation) nearly £7,000 for monies he saved whilst in
prison. Saved how? Because according to the Ministry of Justice
(using term loosely), he did not have to pay for things such as a mortgage or
rent whilst incarcerated. No, no he didn't. I'm sure he was more
than happy to save all of this money and holiday in such luxurious
surroundings. There would be quite a long list of things you don't have
to pay for if you're in prison I would imagine.

So possibly he's getting of very lightly here with just the £7,000 "bill"? Gosh!
Just think of all he saved on utilities like gas & electric! I'd
better not give the MOJ any ideas, eh?

Labels: prisons, uk

Chron.com: Medical Exprimentation on Human Beigns Brought Back

WASHINGTON — The federal government is undertaking the most ambitious set of studies ever mounted under a controversial arrangement that allows researchers to conduct some kinds of medical experiments without first getting the patients' permission.

The $50 million, five-year project, which will involve more than 20,000 patients in 11 sites in the United States and Canada, is designed to improve treatment after car accidents, shootings, cardiac arrest and other emergencies.

The three studies, organizers say, offer an unprecedented opportunity to find better ways to resuscitate people whose hearts suddenly stop, to stabilize patients who go into shock and to minimize damage from head injuries. Because such patients are usually unconscious at a time when every minute counts, it is often impossible to get consent from them or their families, the organizers say.

The project has been endorsed by many trauma experts and some bioethicists, but others question it. The harshest critics say the research violates fundamental ethical principles.

The organizers said the studies are going forward only after an exhaustive scientific and ethical review by the National Institutes of Health, which authorized the funding in 2004, and the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the first phase about a year ago and the second phase six months ago.

Labels: health care, medical, nazi

China: Students Abuse Instructor on Video

A video of two students abusing a 70-year-old teacher has created an Internet controversy in China and brought the morals of the nation's youths into question, state press said Tuesday.

The video, shot by a student at a Beijing school a week ago, shows a boy sporting an earring approach his teacher and slam the man's hat down over his face before returning to his seat, the Beijing News reported.

Later another boy threw a plastic bottle at the teacher as students in the classroom burst out laughing, it said.

The five-minute video was later posted on a blog and picked up by numerous websites, drawing angry outbursts from web surfers shocked at the audacity of the Chinese youths.

Some even went to the school to reprimand the students and express support for the professor, the paper said.

The professor, Sun Xingmao, who teaches history, politics and geography at the vocational school, did not want to discuss the incident, saying the students had already apologised and been excused, it said.

Labels: china

Couple Died as They Lived...In Love Together Till The End...

HomoMojo: Old gay couples may be the best thing in the world. And we mean that. Last week we celebrated Barbara Francisco and Pauline Putnam, the elderly lesbian couple who offed themselves and died in one another’s arms. Today brings us another sweet senior sapphic twosome: Thea Clara Spyer and Edith Schlain Windsor.

Michael Petrelis - who finally admits that he’s addicted to gay wedding announcements - has dubbed the ladies’ nuptials to be “the most emotionally moving and terrific human story of all the gay and lesbian NYT wedding announcements ever to hit the pages of the Gray Lady.” And he may be right.

Consider this snippet from their lesbianic love story:

[Psychiatric] Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor met in 1965 in New York at Portofino, a restaurant in the West Village.

“Everyone lived in the closet,” Ms. Windsor said of lesbian life in New York in the 1960s. “The only place to go was bars, and they were rough.”

Adjourning to a friend’s apartment that night, Dr. Spyer and Ms. Windsor danced until the impromptu party ended, finally “dancing with our coats on, and other people standing at the door, annoyed, waiting for us,” Ms. Windsor recalled, adding, “She was smarter than hell, beautiful — and sexy.”

Dr. Spyer recalled of Ms. Windsor that night, “We danced so much and so intensely that she danced a hole through her stockings.”

The women met again a few years later at a Memorial Day party in the Hamptons. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Spyer - whose multiple schlorosis has claimed her use of her arms and legs - remarks on her 40-year relationship with Windsor: “It was a feeling of complete delight in being with her. I had a real sense of ‘I’ve landed in my life.’” Bless…

Labels: people

Editor of Pacific Free Press attacked for Anti-Zionist pennings

C. L. Cook: The news is out: I'm a hate-filled, anti-semitic, racist. That according to a typically one-sided assessment of the case of Hate Crimes charges emanating one Harry Abrams, and his colleagues at the British Columbia branch of the B'nai Brith written up in "Canada's national newspaper," The Globe and Mail.

I wrote about the case in these pages last week, and though Sid Tafler, the author of the Globe item, and self-confessed Israel supporter, didn't bother to call me, he did cite a couple of my articles. So, I'll check my inclination to criminal bias, and reproduce his piece as it appears in today's G$M below, but before doing so will let you know, as Sid doesn't make it clear: The society in question does not accept the charge of racism, and will contest it with the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

by SID TAFLER

Special to The Globe and Mail
May 24, 2007

VICTORIA — The B.C. representative for the League for Human Rights of B'nai Brith Canada has filed a human-rights complaint alleging a Victoria-based website and its editors, manager and directors "contrive to promote ongoing hatred affecting persons identifiable as Jews and/or as citizens of Israel."

Eighteen articles allegedly containing anti-Semitic material have been removed by publisher Alan Rycroft from Peace, Earth and Justice News pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and after the receipt of a letter from the commission detailing a complaint from B'nai Brith's Harry Abrams.

"There are a number of calumnies that need to be exposed," Mr. Abrams, a Victoria businessman, said in an interview. "The idea that Israel has no right to exist or that Israel is an apartheid state," he cited as examples.

Mr. Rycroft said Mr. Abrams has quoted some of the articles out of context and that they are critical of the policies of the Israeli government and do not express hatred toward Jews.

A letter from the Canadian Human Rights Commission to Mr. Rycroft signed by Richard Tardif, deputy secretary-general, says the commission is required to address any complaint that alleges a violation of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

Many of the articles on the website, http://www.pej.org, discuss the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and the war in Lebanon last summer. Some question Israel's right to exist or compare Israeli policy with Nazi persecution of Jews. One article, entitled We Should Nuke Israel, is an apparent spoof of a column in The Toronto Sun proposing a tactical strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Anita Bromberg, director of the legal department of B'nai Brith Canada, which has joined Mr. Abrams in the complaint, said the articles "are virulently anti-Israel to the point that they meet the criteria of crossing the line of legitimate criticism of the state straight into anti-Semitism."

Mr. Rycroft said removing the articles in question "is the respectful thing to do, until the issue is concluded."

"We removed all 18 articles ... named in the complaint within 24 hours as a courtesy to Harry Abrams and to show our goodwill. The 18 articles remain in our database and can be reactivated to public view at any time."

PEJ News, operated since 1996, provides articles and online discussions of peace, environment and justice issues written by its own writers and others. It is operated by the non-profit Prometheus Institute of Victoria and claims a global monthly per-page readership of 500,000 people.

Mr. Abrams says other Canadian-based websites are being examined for possible complaints before the commission.

"We have to show that Canadian law extends to the Internet as well as the conventional printed word," he said.

Mr. Abrams is encouraged by the removal of the articles pending the outcome of his complaint. "I see that as a gesture of good faith. I am open to the idea of a mediated settlement."

The letter to Mr. Rycroft from the human rights commission said a settlement may be approved "if the parties reach an agreement during the course of an investigation."

Reaching a settlement is one option the commission tries in the early stages after a complaint is lodged, said Nathalie Dagenais, director of investigations for the commission.

Other options open to the commission include dismissing the complaint or referring the case to a human-rights tribunal for a hearing.

Labels: free speech, judeophobia

ABC: Indigenous leaders' 'support needed' for NT statehood

The head of the Northern Territory's statehood steering committee says the Territory will only become a state if Indigenous leaders get on board.

The comments come after the Federal Government's report on statehood asked for more local consultation on a number of issues including uranium and land rights.

The committee's executive officer, Michael Tatham, says the Federal Government could hand over land rights power to the Territory now.

"The land councils have said quite clearly they're not ready for that," he said.

"I think that the Territory Government is listening to that and has said 'well, the Territory Government doesn't really want it until the councils want it to come here'."

The committee also says the Federal Government should start working on conditions it will except for the Northern Territory to become a state.

Mr Tatham says movement should come from both levels of government.
Print-friendy versionPrint Send to a friendEmail

Labels: aboriginal, indigenist

The Free Slave: Hypocrisy as a Way of Life

Another way to look at the issue of semantics and how words are the building blocks and/or, shackles of our people…

Excerpt from Yurugu

Hypocrisy As A Way of Life

By Marimba Ani

“Within the nature of European culture there exists a statement of value or of “moral” behavior that has no meaning for the members of that culture. I call this the “rhetorical ethic;” it is of great importance for the understanding of the dynamics of the culture. The concepts of traditional European anthropology are inadequate to explain the phenomenon to which I am referring here, as it has no counterpart in the types of cultures to which anthropologists have generally directed their attention in the past. But with the concept of asili, which facilitates an ideological approach to the study of culture, the rhetorical ethic becomes visible; even compelling. It fits the logic of the European asili, assisting the culture in the achievement and maintenance of power. Without this interpretation certain manifestations within the verbal iconography of the culture appear to be inconsistent with its underlying ideological thrust. And that simply would not make sense. Let us see how the mechanism of the rhetorical ethic works.

The related distinction used traditionally in anthropology is stated in terms of “ideal culture” and “actual behavior” and is said to be characteristic of all cultures, thereby helping to confuse the issue of the uniqueness and problematical nature of European culture. The conventional distinction is illustrated in the following manner by the authors of a recently published anthropology textbook.

For example, an idealized belief, long cherished in America, is that all doctors are selfless, friendly people who chose medicine as their profession because they felt themselves “called” to serve humanity, and who have little interest in either the money or the prestige of their position. Of course, many physicians do not measure up to this ideal. Nevertheless, the continued success of television programs that portray the average American M.D. as a paragon of virtue indicates how deeply rooted in our collective psyche the ideal of the noble physician is.

This is a common misconception that has led to a mistaken view and superficial understanding of the nature of European (Euro- American) society. To refer to the images offered above as “ideal” is a misuse or at least a misleading use of the term “ideal.” The projection and success of the image of the committed, altruistic doctor do not indicate that it is a “deeply rooted” ideal in the American psyche.

It is rather an indication of the fact that this is how Americans want to appear to others, most often to non-European peoples-their “objects.” In this case it is the way that the doctor wants to appear to his patients, or ”objects,” because this appearance works to his advantage. On the other hand, an image that projects him as a potential exploiter can lead to the possibility of malpractice suits and to the institutionalization of socialized medicine-neither of which is lucrative for him.

Read on...

Labels: racism

ABC: Tas Aboriginal Centre seeks return of museum skulls

The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre says aboriginal skulls discovered in Vienna's Museum of Natural History could be returned to Australia by the end of the year.

The Museum has given early indications it is willing to discuss the return of six aboriginal skulls to Australia.

It also says a skull from Tasmania was uncovered nearly a decade ago but authorities did not follow up on the case despite early discussions and a letter.

The Aboriginal Centre's Legal Director Michael Mansell disagrees and says new management at the museum has led to a change of heart.

"There's a new group of people running the museum and we're hoping that by the end of this year they might agree to handing over the remains not also to Tasmanian indigenies, but also to the Northern Territory," Mr Mansell said.

Labels: aboriginals, human rights

NowPublic: Nepal in Crisis

Mohan Nepali, Kathmandu: Countering the Valley strike called by the Nepal Republican Educational Forum on 27 May, four motorbiking mercenaries with naked swords in their hands were seen at Kupondole, searching for YCL activists. A similar type of gang with naked swords was seen at Baneshwor on the same day.They were shouting, :”Where is the YCL?” These days, it has become a well-formatted event that seems to be directed against the Maoist youth wing YCL. The YCL is the youth wing of the Maoists in Nepal.

They have been seizing dozens of tons of red sandalwood and tax-evaded electronic goods and handing them over the Police. Smugglers of Nepal, extremely frightened that their smuggling network might be destroyed by the Maoist youth wing, have influenced even the prime minister and other cabinet members regarding such activities of the YCL.

Consequently, Nepal’s Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has warned that Nepal’s Constituent Assembly election might not be held due to YCL activities. Sane thinkers have been extremely dismayed at this saying of the prime minister. How could actions against smugglers ever be a barrier to the peace process? This is something suspicious regarding Nepal’s prime minister.

Thousands of schools remain closed for several days across Nepal due to the non-implementation of the commitments signed among the teachers, educational entrepreneurs and the government two months ago. The commitments also include the salary provision for private school teachers equivalent to the standard at government schools.

So far Nepal’s teachers affiliated to private schools get a varying range of remuneration from NRs.1500 (US$20) to NRs.14,000 (US$200) per month. This shows anarchy in Nepali educational system. The varying range of remuneration shows the varying range of quality in the education Nepali children get. But the government of Nepal has not addressed this serious issue to this day. Instead of seriously dealing with the hot educational issue, the Minister of Education indirectly characterized teachers as terrorists.

The minister belongs to the Emalay party that had joined the King's cabinet before the king was able to organize a military-aided state coup on 1 February 2005.

Labels: nepal

Gwynne Dyer: US master of blame-shifting

Herald.nz.co - The fighting that began in northern Lebanon last Sunday may drag the country back into a civil war, or it may not. It may be the result of a Syrian plot, or it may not. As a rule, if you claim to understand what is going on in Lebanon, you simply reveal the depths of your ignorance. And yet people do claim to understand it.

White House spokesperson Tony Snow does. "We believe those behind the attack have two clear goals: to disrupt Lebanon's security and to distract international attention from the efforts to establish a special tribunal for Lebanon. We will not tolerate attempts by Syria, terrorist groups or any others to delay or derail Lebanon's efforts to solidify its sovereignty or to seek justice in the Hariri case."

In other words, it's a Syrian plot.

The timing of the clashes is certainly suspicious. The Syrian Government is deeply unhappy about the creation of a United Nations tribunal to investigate the assassination two years ago of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq al-Hariri, because it assumes (quite rightly) that the tribunal will blame Damascus.

So maybe it told its proxies to start a little war in northern Lebanon to remind the Lebanese that they are playing with fire. But that's just one possibility.

Fatah al-Islam, the group that carried out a bank raid in Tripoli last weekend and then got involved in a fire-fight with the Lebanese Army, is one of dozens of little bands of Islamist revolutionaries that have proliferated across the Arab world in recent years, taking al Qaeda as their model.

Labels: lebanon, middle east

IPS: The Geopolitics of Post-Soviet Activism

GLASGOW, May 29 (IPS) - Representatives of civic groups from the post-Soviet region admit that their organisations are sometimes more closely following the democratisation line set by donors than the aspirations of their societies.

"Most people are more concerned about socio-economic issues and less about democratisation, and if you want to speak for people you have to be representative of them," Paata Papava, from the Centre for Training and Consultancy in Georgia, told IPS.

Activists from the former Soviet republics found themselves in an uncomfortable position at the CIVICUS World Assembly, a global civil society gathering held in this Scottish city May 23-27, where the focus was on greater grassroots accountability amongst non-governmental organisations.

The problem would not necessarily have political implications if it weren't for the fact that civic groups are often seen as taking sides in what is increasingly recognised as a relentless geopolitical struggle.

The demise of socialism in Europe saw Party-promoted activity replaced by an incipient civil society, but its presence became controversial after it was seen as leading popular revolts against vote rigging, in 2003 in Georgia and in 2004 in Ukraine, which swept staunchly pro-Western governments to power.

Claiming that NGOs rely heavily on funds from Western countries and philanthropists, Russia and its neighbour Belarus have accused groups from its former allies of serving Western goals under the guise of democratisation.

"You cannot attribute all of it to foreign foundations; it would be giving them too much credit," Russian-born Olga Alexeeva, head of the Charities Aid Foundation Global Trustees, told IPS.

Labels: russia

FAIR: Coup Co-Conspirators as Free-Speech Martyrs...

Distorting the Venezuelan media story - The story is framed in U.S. news media as a simple matter of censorship: Prominent Venezuelan TV station RCTV is being silenced by the authoritarian government of President Hugo Chávez, who is punishing the station for its political criticism of his government.

According to CNN reporter T.J. Holmes (5/21/07), the issues are easy to understand: RCTV "is going to be shut down, is going to get off the air, because of President Hugo Chávez, not a big fan of it." Dubbing RCTV "a voice of free speech," Holmes explained, "Chavez, in a move that's angered a lot of free-speech groups, is refusing now to renew the license of this television station that has been critical of his government."

Though straighter, a news story by the Associated Press (5/20/07) still maintained the theme that the license denial was based simply on political differences, with reporter Elizabeth Munoz describing RCTV as "a network that has been critical of Chávez."

In a May 14 column, Washington Post deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehl called the action an attempt to silence opponents and more "proof" that Chávez is a "dictator." Wrote Diehl, "Chávez has made clear that his problem with [RCTV owner Marcel] Granier and RCTV is political."

In keeping with the media script that has bad guy Chávez brutishly silencing good guys in the democratic opposition, all these articles skimmed lightly over RCTV's history, the Venezuelan government's explanation for the license denial and the process that led to it.

RCTV and other commercial TV stations were key players in the April 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chávez's democratically elected government. During the short-lived insurrection, coup leaders took to commercial TV airwaves to thank the networks. "I must thank Venevisión and RCTV," one grateful leader remarked in an appearance captured in the Irish film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. The film documents the networks’ participation in the short-lived coup, in which stations put themselves to service as bulletin boards for the coup—hosting coup leaders, silencing government voices and rallying the opposition to a march on the Presidential Palace that was part of the coup plotters strategy.

On April 11, 2002, the day of the coup, when military and civilian opposition leaders held press conferences calling for Chávez's ouster, RCTV hosted top coup plotter Carlos Ortega, who rallied demonstrators to the march on the presidential palace. On the same day, after the anti-democratic overthrow appeared to have succeeded, another coup leader, Vice-Admiral Victor Ramírez Pérez, told a Venevisión reporter (4/11/02): "We had a deadly weapon: the media. And now that I have the opportunity, let me congratulate you."

Labels: Venezuela

Black Leadership: Unable or Willing to Address Black Mass Incarceration

Black Agenda Report: America’s undeclared but universal policies of racially selective policing, prosecution and mass incarceration of its Black citizens have imposed unprecedented strains on the social and economic viability of Black families and communities – of the entire African American polity. This malevolent social policy demands a political response from Black leadership, just as Jim Crow and lynching did in our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ day. Why is the current crop of Black leaders unable to rise to the crisis of this generation – the fact of racially selective mass incarceration? And if they did, what would such a response look like?

The dismal stats are familiar to us all. America leads the world in numbers of prisons and prisoners, and African Americans, though only one eighth of its population, make up nearly half the locked down. One out of three black men in their twenties are out on bail, probation, court supervision, community service or parole - or behind bars. And the fastest growing demographic of the incarcerated, aside from immigration prisoners, are black women.

America's malevolent social policy of racially selective mass incarceration is so ubiquitous, so thoroughly part of its statutes, courts, its law enforcement apparatus and traditions that it's hard to believe it was enacted in a single generation, since the ending, about 1970 of the black Freedom Movement. But as late as the 1960s whites, not blacks, were the majority of the nation's prisoners. Since 1970 the U.S. prison population has multiplied about sevenfold, with neither a causative or accompanying increase in crime, and without a public perception that we are somehow seven times safer.

The present level of mass incarceration and its deleterious effects for decades to come upon the black work force, on economic and health outcomes, on culture and family formation are facts of African American life that seem to demand a political response, a concerted and long-term effort to change these awful public policies, much like that called forth by lynching and legal segregation. But what passes for today's African American leadership is simply not up to the challenge.

It doesn't take a social scientist, let alone a rocket scientist to spot some key differences between black leadership fifty and sixty years ago and the current crop of supposed African American leaders.

Labels: prisons, racism

Intercontinental Cry: Aboriginals: “We should therefore join others in their struggle for rights.”

Taiwan: After participating in the United Nations Permanent Forum, a delegation of 6 people from Taiwan came to feel that it’s time for the indigenous of Taiwan to do more to protect their rights.

From the Taipei Times: “Although we’re a minority, Aboriginals in Taiwan and in Japan are actually better off than indigenous peoples in many other countries,” Kao Ching-yi (???) said. “We should therefore join others in their struggle for rights.”

In related news, people from the Tao Tribe recently held a gathering on Orchid Island (just off the coast of Taiwan) to teach some of their culture to a largely ethnic Chinese population.

From Reuters: “We want people to know what ocean culture is, that it’s not just a fantasy,” Shyaman Vengayan, organiser of the event, said. Orchid aborigines live now much as they have since Taiwan assumed control of the island 61 years ago. But like many minority tribes across the globe, their way of life is being threatened by an influx of outside influences and departure of youth for the big cities of nearby Taiwan…

Indigenous activists are also working to get Taiwan’s 13 recognised tribes, totalling about 400,000 people, to work together so they can lobby for their rights as a single tribe.

Activists say visits to the Philippines to study that nation’s inter-tribal activism as their own tribes drift apart could help Taiwanese aborigines – some of whom are actually ethnically related to Philippine tribes – to better challenge developments threatening their way of life.

Labels: aboriginals, indigenism, taiwan

Al Jazeera: Israel kills two Hamas fighters

Israeli forces have killed two Hamas fighters in the southern Gaza strip and have arrested a senior Fatah official in the north of the occupied West Bank in continuing raids.

Tuesday's violence came before an expected meeting between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, next week.

The Israeli prime minister's office said on Tuesday the two leaders would meet to discuss security issues.

The exact date and place have not been set, the office said.

The two Hamas fighters were killed during clashes with Israeli forces in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, on Tuesday.

Security sources said Abdelkarim Shaath and Mohammad Muammar of Hamas' armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, were shot at close range after being detained by the soldiers.

The Israeli soldiers also wounded a wife of a Hamas's paramilitary force official and arrested two of his brothers.

Labels: palestine

Intercontinental Cry: Australia: Genocide it is

At a recent function marking the 40th anniversary of the referendum “that handed indigenous Australians the right to be counted in the Census,” John Howard was accused of genocide…. and he didn’t disagree…

From the Australian - Mr Howard told the gathering of about 400 people, which included original referendum campaigners, the way to true reconciliation was through shared responsibility and so-called practical reconciliation. But the crowd disagreed.

At the end of Mr Howard’s speech a middle-age indigenous woman stood and shouted at Mr Howard. “We have been genocided (sic) by your Government and your court,” the unidentified woman said.

The crowd erupted in loud applause. Mr Howard offered no response. (source)

In other news, Mal Brough continues working to realize this ‘Australian Dream’:

From the ABC - Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough says too many Aboriginal children have only a basic understanding of English, reducing their chances of getting jobs and contributing to health and social problems in Aboriginal communities. Mr Brough says the Government is considering quarantining welfare payments to ensure Aboriginal children go to school. (source)

Labels: australia, genocide

Black Agenda Report: Letter to Black America on Palestinian Rights

Twenty-two African American notables have issued on open letter demanding that Blacks break the silence "on the injustices faced by the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation." This "40 year travesty ofPalestineCornellWest justice" - the post-1967 seizure of control over Arab lands in Palestine - has continued "in open defiance of international law and overwhelming international condemnation." African Americans have historically defended the rights of the Palestinian people, and must do so again, despite the pro-Israel lobby's massive efforts to shut down legitimate discussion.
----------------------------------------------

To Black America:

It is time for our people to once again demand that the silence be broken on thePalestineWoundedChild injustices faced by the Palestinian people resulting from the Israeli occupation.

On June 10th, the national coalition known as the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (endtheoccupation.org) will be spearheading a march and rally to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the beginning of the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

We, the signatories of this appeal, ask that Black America again take a leading role in this effort as well as the broader work to bring attention to this 40 year travesty of justice.

United Nations resolutions have called for the Israeli withdrawal, yet the Israeli government, with the backing of the USA, has ignored them. The Israeli government has appropriated Palestinian land in open defiance of international law and overwhelming international condemnation.

"People are scared in the US, to say 'wrong is wrong,' because the pro-Israeli lobby is powerful - very powerful."

Within the USA anyone who speaks in favor of Palestinian rights and justice is immediately condemned as being allegedly anti-Israel (and frequently allegedly anti-Semitic), shutting down legitimate discussion. A case in point can be seen in the current furor surrounding former President Jimmy Carter who was criticized for his assertion in his best-selling book, Palest

Technorati Post Summaries

Biofuels displace indigenous people

The Voice of the Taino People Online: U.N. panel says indigenous people are

BBC NEWS | Europe | Germany protest due ahead of G8

US Navy strikes al-Qaeda suspect in Somalia | | The Australian

AFP.com | Agence France-Presse, a global news agency

Meshal: We'll halt rockets if IDF ends assassinations - Haaretz - Israel Ne

Hey, Dr. Laura! Why So Selective With Scriptural Law Enforcement?

Dan Wallace Pissing off an NBC anchorman

DU Depleted Uranium is a ZIONIST weapon of mass destruction

Israel's Secret Nuclear Programme

Eurasia.net: Mongolia deals with Russia

China: Students Abuse Instructor on Video