When President-elect Barack Obama selected Rick Warren to read the invocation at his swearing-in ceremony, American liberals wondered why human rights activists were in an uproar. As Pastor Warren's fervent bigotry came to light, though, even ill-informed liberals came to understand that maybe promoting an avowed anti-gay Christian evangelical might not be a good idea for the newly-elected president.
Now that the proteges of Warren in Uganda have passed legislation denying gays civil rights, and nearly succeeded in making homosexuality punishable by death, one has to ask why even a neoliberal like Obama would reach out to right-wing Christian hatemongers. While we wait for the answer to such questions, Political Research Associates takes a ...
On April 30, First Nations will embark on a Freedom Train from British Columbia to Toronto, where on May 9, they will bring their message to the Enbridge stockholders' meeting that the Enbridge Northern Gateway project has been banned from their territories. Enroute, the delegates will be joined by representatives from the 100 First Nations across Canada who've enacted laws banning the Enbridge pipeline and oil tankers from their lands and waters. As Yinka Dene Alliance and Coastal First Nations note, the project will not be permitted to proceed, and Enbridge stockholders need to know this.
In today's issue of The Dominion, Anna Luisa Daigneault discusses multimedia Indigenous language revitalization in British Columbia, as well as the spiritual healing of elders who survived the residential schools.
When we strip away the superficial banter blaring from media noise machines, three essential questions emerge. Who are your people? Where did they come from? What is their story? In answering these questions, Indian Country Today correspondent Hans Tammemagi takes a walk on Kangaroo Island with Walker, a descendant of the first Aborigine met by Europeans in South Australia.
Under the Reagan administration, protecting US-friendly feudalism in Central America went hand in hand with privatizing clandestine military operations. The crimes against humanity committed by foreign death squads, trained at US Army schools, primarily targeted peasants mobilized by liberation theology against brutal feudal systems that had been around since Europeans first enslaved and massacred entire indigenous societies.
Since then, as support for feudalism regained the upper hand within the Roman Catholic church, privatizing US institutions like the military, schools, and Social Security has become both a lucrative form of feudalism as well as a religious battleground. While theocracy and feudalism are core values within the Republican Party, separating the two is awkward...
When I first encountered the Wise Use Movement — corporate funded vigilantism against environmentalists — it was just after CBS 60 Minutes aired its September 20, 1992 program Clean Water, Clean Air about community activists assaulted by corporate thugs. One of those threatened with murder was my closest friend.*
Over the last twenty years, efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice to make life miserable for those who advocate sane environmental policy has escalated. In 2006, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D)-San Francisco proposed a law that would make interfering with corporations in any way a federal crime.
In the current issue of Mother Jones magazine, James Ridgeway examines FBI harassment and incarceration of environmental activists, and the Homeland Security...
Free Trade, like privatization, is systematic theft. As key components of globalization, these mechanisms target indigenous peoples' resources, state treasuries, and public assets for conversion to private equity holdings.
Chief Juana Calfunao, a leader of Mapuche in Paillalef Araucania, has suffered horrendous abuse by Chilean authorities for her role in protecting the human rights of her indigenous people. Her March 22 letter to the UN Human Rights Council details what lengths Free Trade states like Chile will go to in order to crush indigenous peoples in the way of globalization.
As a species, community is integral to our health and well-being. The disintegration of community -- especially among indigenous peoples -- due to Free Market violence, poses a significant obstacle to healing from previous traumas. As we seek means of reintegrating community, we will simultaneously be dealing with new traumas associated with ongoing Free Market violence. Unless we end this violence, we will not be able to cope with these disorders.
Anonymous, an online confederation of free speech, internet freedom, and freedom of information activists, takes on NASDAQ and the Swedish elite behind the Wikileaks smear campaign.
As Rudolph Ryser observes in his report on the UN climate protocols conference in Bangkok, the US, UK, and EU continue to play mind games over the human rights of indigenous peoples. Despite the fact that the most significant progress in the UN human rights regime -- since it was instituted as international law in 1948 -- was the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, these colonial and imperial powers are now arguing before the UN Human Rights Council that these are not human rights.
While it is no secret that Canada and the US blocked human rights for indigenous peoples for decades in order to continue plundering their territories for...
While the global anti-war protests that took place in early 2003 rejected the projection of economic power through military warfare, the European anti-austerity protests this winter rejected the projection of economic power through political warfare. The protests in North Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East this spring reject both.
Unlike the 2003 protests, which sometimes included civil disobedience, the more recent ones include acts of sabotage, as well as armed insurrection against tyrants functioning as proxies for world economic powers. Protests in Latin America against austerity imposed by international economic powerhouses like the IMF and World Bank over the last decade have incorporated massive strikes, while in North America, comparatively tame consumer...
Because of this months triple tragedy in Japan, I have been thinking of her, and of her husband...wondering if they are well....hoping that they are safe. If anyone knows, kindly let me know.
Back when I was a raw first-time (slow) Blogger, I never posted anything about her wonderful book, or about that panel. I had not even finished the book until months after the event. I have since, reread, recommended, and given several friends copies of that winning, witty, philosophical tale. This is the scant response I did write: The Elegance Of The Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
She reminds me of a young deer, appearing in a shaft of...
Educator, cultural observer and lecturer Perry Huesmann has authored Covenant as Ethical Commonwealth, published by Italian Paths of Culture Press,on the concept of covenant and the possibilities for trust in society. In this guest post, Perry discusses what went into the writing of the book and the process of publication.
The failure of the modern state to meet our needs is structural--an inherent design flaw that renders essential reform of this structure impossible. Having relegated local and regional participation in setting social policy meaningless, the plenary powers of state-centric institutions are an open invitation to tyranny. Indeed, the voluntary confederation that respected regional autonomy at the outset of the American governance experiment was abolished by a tyranny of the majority of colonies, which set the stage for a tyranny of the minority composed of the inherently wealthy and their sycophants.
As societies rooted in ancient territorial homelands, First Nations are locally and regionally oriented, and as such are ecologically conscious and economically generous....
SPOIL, the film of the Great Bear Rainforest, the Gitga’at First Nation, and the spirit bears of British Columbia, is now available for viewing free online. Enjoy forty-four minutes of magic; then do what needs to be done.
Forum for Global Exchange features unique audio/visual talks and commentary by Fourth World scholars and activists. Take some time to browse the archives for inspiring and informative discussions about essential values and relevant developments.
Ever have an idea ignite to suddenly reveal a new dimension of a character or story? It could be the light at the tunnel's end or an oncoming train. Here's how to vet sudden inspiration.
As an editor, I get queries from writers saying they were suddenly inspired on how to fix a complex character or plot problem. While we hope they're right, it's best to begin with the premise that an idea is like a spark. It may take more than one to fire things up. Two common...
As a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting fascinating scholars writing on topics and ideas unlikely to be encountered in any other medium. Their essays, full of insight on perplexing problems, enlighten and inspire readers on a fundamental humanitarian level.
For anyone concerned about our wonderful world, Fourth World Journal is like a breath of fresh air. If you haven’t yet subscribed, take a look at the current issue table of contents, or browse some back issues.
Chris Rodda examines the unconstitutional religious enterprises funded by the Department of Defense to create a Christian U.S. military. Having sunk tens of millions of dollars into evangelizing military bases, and pressuring military families to come to Jesus, the Pentagon is preparing a nuclear-armed jihad from an institution already fraught with corrupt mercenaries and derelicts who would have been screened out in earlier years due to failed intelligence tests and criminal records.
Imagine what these people would do if turned loose on civilian Americans demonstrating against the government for such grievances as union-busting, bank fraud, or heaven forbid–starting wars based on phony evidence.
As Rick Harp, editor of Media Indigena, notes, one way of neutralizing indigenous sovereignty is by undermining indigenous institutions. In the old days, that took the form of outlawing their councils, languages, economies, gatherings, and protector societies; today that takes the form of federal interventions that usurp indigenous governance all together. Laying the ideological groundwork for such bold acts of dominion, says Harp, involves sowing dissension by attacking the only institutions with the experience and ability to guard against transnational corporations and modern states intending to lay waste to indigenous territories.
Says Harp, this is already happening in Australia, and will happen in Canada, too, if Canada’s prime minister has his way.
Enbridge, the corporation hoping to build a pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to coastal British Columbia, has said they will pay First Nations one billion dollars to end their opposition to the plan. So far, First Nations in Alberta and British Columbia aren’t selling.
But bribery is only half the equation. The other side of that corporate coin is the threat of mobilizing anti-Indian animosity from non-indigenous Canadians hoping to cash in on pipeline construction jobs. In fact, while Enbridge is touting the big bribe, they are simultaneously marginalizing First Nations as a minority getting in the way of progress.
Despite growing opposition from north coast communities, the premiers of Alberta and...
Bruce Wilson examines the federally-funded missionaries teaching in Florida public schools. Established under the Clinton administration faith-based initiatives, evangelizing against unions, gays, and Native Americans continues to be subsidized by the federal government.
Ending the drug wars responsible for so much misery at the hands of US military proxies is slow going, but that hasn’t deterred the president of Bolivia from defending the right of indigenous peoples to use coca leaf. Locked into the militarized anti-narcotics mindset that continues to demonize this mild stimulant used daily by the Quechua and Aymara peoples of the Andes, the United States still opposes changing international law to recognize the indigenous peoples’ right to use this tonic and medicine in their daily lives and religious ceremonies.
Ironically, while the US allows domestic use of peyote (a psychoactive medicinal plant) by American Indians under the concept of religious freedom, it is...
I have occasionally written here about dominion theology and religious colonization as part of the indigenous experience that forms a backdrop to many of the ills and unresolved grievances we face today. But while we struggle against the backwardness and cruelties of religious fundamentalism, we must also acknowledge the role of liberation theology in shining a light on the social justification for the indigenous peoples’ movement.
For anyone who has committed their lives to social justice, the ironies that comprise the evolution of human rights for indigenous peoples are simply part of the landscape. In Chiapas, one man who became part of the indigenous landscape was Don Samuel Ruiz Garcia, the bishop of the Diocese...
Remember those cartoons where the guy (it's usually a guy) takes the car engine apart to see out how it works? Well, that approach can work for writing, too. Of course, just like that guy, you may end up with parts you don't need. But unlike that guy, you could end up better off without those parts. The key is to study the author's work and ask probing questions to get at how the writing is made.
Last summer I attended the Solstice Summer Writers Conference at Pine Manor...
Examining the conservative media backlash against Native American spirituality, Indian Country Today looks at the language of savagery and its roots in US history. Using the controversy over the Yaqui blessing offered at a ceremony in Tuscon, organized by the White House in response to the murder of a federal judge, the ICT article allows readers to discuss mainstream religious prejudice in America.
Leaving aside the political aspects of who was chosen to give the blessing and why, the fact remains that Christian demonization of native spirituality is still an unresolved grievance of America’s indigenous peoples.
As I note in my comment on ICT, conservatism has devolved since Nixon’s era to reflect the undue influence of Christian Identity...
Why did Egypt and before that Tunisia suddenly explode? One theory is that the proliferation of cell phones--as Salman Shaikh, Director, Brookings Doha Center reports in the Brookings Blog
"To glimpse the nature of what can emerge, we should understand the rapidly changing social structure of Arab societies. Those societies are more educated, urban and connected than ever before. Due to the phenomenal growth of secondary and university-level education, literacy rates among the region's youths have skyrocketed in the past 40 years. The percentage of people living in Arab cities has risen by 50% in the same period.
The number of mobile phone users and internet users has proliferated to hundreds of thousands since the technology was introduced to...
A few years ago, I spoke about the world indigenous peoples’ movement and how their spirituality and its relationship with the environment makes them particular as a group.
In 2003, Minnesota Public Radio produced an eight-part series on traditional spirituality and how it provides moral guidance, a sense of belonging, and a commitment to community among the Ojibwe. As indigenous societies worldwide struggle to heal from the impacts of religious colonization, for the Anishiinaabe, walking the Red Road has led to a renaissance of traditional medicine and healing that western medicine is at a loss to explain.
But as Ojibwe healers note, one needn’t explain the power of prayer; all that is required is a grateful attitude.
Moral cowardice is nothing new for President Obama, it defines who he is. In providing amnesty for right-wing purveyors of bigotry, Obama followed in the anti-intellectual footsteps of his philosophical mentor Ronald Reagan. Speaking on the Tucson massacre, President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and Homeland Security Director Napolitano provided religious bromides, but no hope for change.
As noted by Patrick Martin, this cover-up of the social context by the top officials in public security and law enforcement amounted to a calculated detour to avoid their constitutional duties, as well as deter public discussion about what is happening in America.
Bamababies like to think of their hero as a reincarnated FDR, but rather...
The Goldstone Report, an abridged copy of the UN report on the 2008-2009 attack on Gaza by the State of Israel, is now available in book form. Edited by Adam Horowitz, Lizzy Ratner and Phillip Weiss -- with a foreword by Desmond Tutu -- the documentation of collective punishment against Palestine also serves as a primer on war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Frederick Clarkson reminds us that when Christian Patriot friends of Sarah Palin do things like murder federal judges or attempt to assassinate members of Congress, there's a reason. Part of that is brain damage, but the catalyst for Constitution Party members and other vigilantes is demonizing by right-wing demagogues, especially Christian Reconstructionist preachers.
A while back, Paul de Armond -- helping to put the far right into perspective -- examined the logic of Christian Patriot incoherence, and took a close look at the mostly Christian anti-democratic movement in America.
Over the last century, the number of states in the world has doubled, while the number of governments has remained roughly the same. Many of these new states represent administrative units of colonial empires, that unfortunately do not correspond with original political realities. As such, the enduring aboriginal nations incorporated into empires and the states that emerged in their aftermath continue to represent the only natural political entities.
These political entities, belatedly recognized by the United Nations and most of its member states, have seen empires come and go, from precolonial Inca and Mali, to Roman, British and Soviet. Throughout these powerful exchanges, original nations like Basque, Ogoni and Cherokee have learned much about...
In what might be termed a classic neoliberal response to the peaceful quest for freedom by indigenous peoples, the government of Chile recently attacked the Rapanui parliament, clubbing women and children in the process. For Chile, which is facing the reality of indigenous autonomy in the form of resistance to neocolonial development on property belonging to indigenous nations like Mapuche and Rapanui, getting unstuck from the conquistador model is proving troublesome. Rather than face up to the moral challenge of respectful reconciliation in a forthright manner, Chile has chosen to follow the US lead in declaring any move by indigenous governments toward full autonomy or independence as terrorism. In the case of...
Glenn Morris, a scholar from the Fourth World Center for the Study of International Law and Politics, observes that the State Department report — documenting the conditional US endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — seeks to “persuade indigenous peoples that we’ve lost our international legal personality–and that is a very serious surrender.” Professor Morris goes on to say that the US statement regarding its qualified endorsement of UNDRIP amounts to domesticating an international document, and “rejects its major principles and ideals.” The consistent historical US opposition to indigenous peoples’ human rights, says Morris, reflects the current US strategy to protect its ill-gotten gains through such chicanery.
As Steven Newcomb observes, there is nothing new in Obama's "endorsement" of UNDRIP. His position is the same as Bush: federally recognized tribes in the US are not truly sovereign; they are free to develop as they wish as long as they don't oppose US policy. In other words, they are not self-determined, but rather, remain under the domination of the US government, which will continue to represent them in international fora, thus denying them their rightful voice in world affairs.
The Obama justice department continues its harassment of the anti-war movement, in particular opponents of US policy in Colombia and Palestine. Serving subpoenas on anti-war organizers and media editors critical of US–funded state terror in South America and the Middle East, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Holder escalates the Obama administration’s war on dissent initiated by FBI raids in September. Peace activists like FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and former special agent Mike German condemn Obama’s mobilization of federal agencies against free speech.
One thing corporate fascists like Hillary Clinton and theocratic ideologues like Sarah Palin agree on is authoritarianism; they just disagree on who that authority should be. But despite this petty disagreement, they both firmly support the need for government to keep its dirty secrets from the citizenry. Transparent government, particularly an empire with tendrils in almost every tyranny on the planet, is from their anti-democratic viewpoint, a recipe for disaster.
Hillary and Sarah may never become fast friends, or run on a political ticket together, but in their pathological political beliefs, they are emphatically in lock step.
Abya Yala, the indigenous communications network that met in Colombia last month, has issued a Declaration of The First Continental Summit of Indigenous Communications. The summit, called to develop plans for protecting indigenous identity and culture through strategic use of communications, focused on ways to build production capacity, including a traveling school of communication. Specifically targeting US trade agreements and economic policies that are destroying indigenous peoples, the gathering of indigenous journalists, scholars and leaders made it clear that they consider indigenous communications a key element of their resistance to Obama’s neo-liberal aggression against the Fourth World.
Calling the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples a path to respect and reconciliation, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo speaks on fighting for change.
In this post, Deputy Special Envoy Jonathan Pershing of the US State Department says that balance is the key to making progress on climate change. He also lauds transparency as essential to the effort. Progress and balance though, as determined by the carbon cartel and promoted by the United States, make a mockery of the international human rights regime. If scheming to exclude indigenous peoples while bribing and threatening states to go along with the Copenhagen Accord (itself a back room deal) is an example of transparency, then we’re in big trouble.
Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and spokesman for the indigenous peoples’ caucus at the UN climate change talks last year in Copenhagen, had his credentials revoked at the UN conference in Cancun last week for publicly describing the UN gathering as “a trade show for promoting false solutions”. Goldtooth and others were ejected by the UN for drawing media attention to the fact that a major agenda item of the international discussion in Cancun, as in Copenhagen, was to silence indigenous peoples.
As a participant in the Modern Indian Identity series of the Center of the American West at the University of Colorado, Walter Echo-Hawk of the Native American Rights Fund spoke recently about the manifest injustice in the American court system, observing that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — an instrument of international human rights law opposed by the US — is the Magna Carta of our time.
Reading yesterday's IPS report on COP 16, I am reminded of earlier conferences, where the European forces of globalization divided up other peoples' lands by international agreement. Not having transcripts from those 16th-19th century proceedings, I can only imagine the invocation of church, state and market interests that combined in setting forth those self-congratulatory plans.
Watching the privileged and powerful last week in Cancun, religious bigotry took a back seat to state and market propaganda, but the contempt for indigenous peoples and their sense of the sacred was front and center. With only the state of Bolivia dissenting from the state and market narrative, the concept of saving the planet or extending...
As heads of state and CEOs clamor for the head of Julian Assange, whistleblowers and government watchdogs wonder where freedom of expression and freedom of the press in particular are heading. While many in Washington would no doubt prefer that the US adopt media policy congruent with that of communist China, more astute observers realize the cat is already out of the bag. With authoritarians throwing up flak over Wiklileaks recent revelations of abuse of power by the US State Department and Pentagon, Real News has embarked on a webcast discussion of freedom of the press in the Internet age. You might want to tune in.
Obama’s death squads in West Papua, the Indonesian military special forces known as Kopassus, are now targeting indigenous religious leaders for assassination. In July, Barack Obama lifted the restrictions on funding the notorious death squads responsible for innumerable murders in West Papua and East Timor. Perhaps some day international jurists will no longer turn a blind eye to this violation of human rights law; what better time to bring charges against a United States president in an international court.
A while back, I wrote about Zuni Pueblo protector societies that maintain barriers against unhealthy influences on their people. More recently I came across another metaphor in the Apache Mountain Spirit People -- protectors, teachers, role models -- who, like the mountains, serve, look over, inform, and provide inspiration to those below.
Recently, I was thinking about the threats we face as a multicultural society in battling political violence, racism, and social exclusion, and how our collective understanding and institutional memory expressed and explored in gatherings and discussions propels social transformation. Which reminded me of the Zuni Pueblo protector societies that meet regularly to discuss threats to their social harmony and well-being...
Cablegate, the Wikileaksexposure of State Department conspiracies for lying and spying, does not spell the end of secret government in America, but it is a beginning. By hosting a site for whistleblowers to leak official documentation of high crimes, Julian Assange and friends have put the president and his cabinet on the defensive, and the authoritarian mindset on display. Understanding how this mindset has corroded American society and turned citizens into servile sycophants might in time undermine this institutional injustice.
One of the myths deposed by the Wikileaks US State Department embassy cable cache is the notion of diplomacy as a benign exercise above the fray of dirty dealing that takes place at the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency. With the revelation of spying on UN officials, authorized by Secretary of State Clinton, we note the continuity of malpractice notoriously conducted under the previous White House by Secretary Powell, with help from his long time associate from the Department of Defense, Richard Armitage. As Deputy Secretary of State, Armitage was responsible for outing undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in retaliation for her husband Ambassador Wilson’s refusal to go along with the...
The Intercontinental Cry video archive is a unique collection of indigenous-produced video news, analysis, and educational discussions. I make use of it often.
Chris Rodda of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation reports on the religious harassment of cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy, where fundamentalist Christian ministries like Cadets for Christ conduct unconstitutional proselytizing on campus.
This Testify Project short video reminds us that the natives of California were first murdered by militias commissioned by the State of California as an ethnic cleansing enterprise, and later sold as slaves to the white ranchers who settled on the stolen land. Something to think about during Native American Heritage month.
Nora Barrows-Friedman and Maureen Clare Murphy report on the use of grand juries by the US Department of Justice as a tool of political repression against peace activists. In what amounts to an intelligence inquisition, says Friedman and Murphy, the Obama Administration has upped the ante against domestic critics of US policy towards Israel and other anti-indigenous states.
Responding to the US record of human rights violations at home and abroad, the US envoy to the UN Human Rights Council noted that the President of the United States is a black man, as though that somehow excuses everything. But being a black man did not excuse US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he voted to overturn a federal election in order to appoint as President of the United States the son of the man who appointed him. Nor did being a black man excuse US Secretary of State Colin Powell when he knowingly committed fraud on behalf of that president by lying to the UN General Assembly about the existence of weapons...
Because wartime is a significant social and political circumstance, it is an opportunity for poets to uncover an usefulness for their writing that could provide new content for their poems. A national style or approach to poetry develops during special times and in places where liberty is challenged. Think of Whitman and the Civil War. He became the poet spokesperson of those times and that war and that America; his poetry is a more accurate history in the psychological sense.
Who is the poet of our wartime? What are the characteristics of American poetry in the 21st...
Their words are a blockade
In adamant boldness, courage and a comfortable tone we speak. Just a simple warning, a complete peace and liberty that we’ve proven through those conniving burecrats and an assurance of meaning well and poking fun. Steadfast at the byzantine machinations of our justifications, hoping Enemy doesn’t get too uppity or is compelled enough. Here is our ship, you’re a friend, one of the many decorated people of your lifestyle choice on the righteous path, as long as you keep hush.
Your hull is decaying into nothingness, as it was manufactured in times of callousness and pain. If you have chosen to cast off your Janus mask with lapping tongues and gnashing, tearing teeth, Serenity will reign. But keep your artificial carrot skin...
As Canada announces its endorsement of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the Canadian government is simultaneously working toward the privatization of Indian Reserves, a move that Native legal scholars describe as disastrous for First Nations. Noting that the endorsement of the landmark 2007 human rights instrument is mainly symbolic, the Canadian government expressly denies the application of international law in Canada--a two-faced endorsement at best.
Much like its anti-Indian partner the United States, Canada has belatedly discovered that part of fighting indigenous sovereignty is to appear sympathetic to the native societies while doing everything in its power to undermine aboriginal freedom and unity. But while the United...
Solidarity -- expressing support for liberation -- especially if those affinities are fighting US-backed regimes, is now a crime in the United States. Even solidarity in the form of support for the peaceful use of international law to further human rights is punishable by imprisonment when used against US policy. Any contribution toward the resolution of violent conflict through publishing, advocacy, or training on behalf of peoples seeking freedom from repressive regimes receiving US aid is now forbidden.
My colleague Ahni at Intercontinental Cry recently received recognition for his work in covering the plight of indigenous peoples in Kenya that led to police reforms that toned down the violence against them. As an editor and correspondent who reads IC daily, I want to take the opportunity to congratulate Ahni for his fine work, as well as warn of the dangers of investigative journalism. In the comments on the post announcing the award, I relate some precautions those of us in the field have found useful.
After losing homes and businesses, land and families, it may not seem
like much to lose libraries, but for the Palestinians it’s part of
reclaiming history. The cultural heritage embodied by the Palestinian
libraries, confiscated by the invading Zionists in 1948, constitute a
documentation of their intellectual life despite the invasions by
Romans, Turks, British and Israelis.
As an expression of their experience leading up to the Nakba, the looting of their libraries is now the subject of The Great Book Robbery,
a documentary film project by an Israeli filmmaker and Palestinian
journalist. As some of the collections were destroyed by Israeli
archivists as unsuitable material, much remains stored and catalogued,
and as such has the potential to be restored to their rightful owners.
Adrienne Pine reports on the Pentagon's Strategic Culture Initiative, a project to develop propaganda favorable to US interests in Latin America. Targeted at recent anti-imperial agreements between a majority of states in South America -- particularly at the democratic independence of Bolivia -- the new psychological warfare partnership with Florida International University enables the U.S. military to go on the offensive against self-determination south of the border. Lauding such enterprises as Peru's plan to assimilate its indigenous peoples by annihilating their cultural land base, the renewed Pentagon partnership with academia is anticipated to revitalize the hostility toward indigenous peoples promoted by the Reagan Administration.
While Indonesian military forces torture and murder West Papuans, President Obama decided to lift the military assistance ban to the country’s elite death squads. With the release of video footage of these killers in action, Survival International is asking that Obama reverse his decision to ignore these human rights abuses.
I grew up watching offbeat Saturday afternoon westerns like "Sky King" on TV. Not very original and highly formulaic, series like these featured stories a kid could snack on without spoiling her dinner. They were also instructive on plot, setting and a...
I began my morning reading about Tibetan journalists imprisoned and tortured by Chinese security agents for interviewing Tibetans about their cultural disintegration. The next news item was about the U.S. Department of Justice witch hunt against anti-war organizers, who were served subpoenas to appear before a grand jury to give coerced testimony against their friends and fellow activists. It seems that the Obama Administration has much in common with the Chinese dictatorship in how it handles criticism.
REDD is a Ponzi scheme using the threat of climate change to rip off indigenous peoples’ resources. If the UN was genuinely concerned about humankind, it would not have silenced the indigenous delegates who traveled to Copenhagen for climate change talks. Scapegoating Indonesia is a false concern, given the major opponents of human rights for indigenous nations are Canada and the United States.
In perhaps the perfect example of why excessive energy consumption is a poor plan, the EPA study of toxic chemical groundwater contamination by natural gas drilling companies might end up classified as top secret by the Department of Homeland Security. Having targeted environmental activists as terrorists for showing documentary films about the harmful practice, Homeland Security may have to arrest members of Congress for discussing the public health problem.
The Dominion has obtained documentation of NGO collusion with the Canadian government in excluding First Nations from major environmental accords. As I noted in my post on the orthodoxy of radicalism, those who view activism as a career are always willing to sell out principles they profess to protect. As predictable and controllable entities, the Big Non Government Organizations (BINGOs) -- much like corporate media -- function as another branch of the establishment. As such, attacking them requires using the strategy first developed by T.E. Lawrence.
Before November 30, 1999, most people in the world had no idea what the World Trade Organization (WTO) was or did. The anti-globalization special forces changed all that. N30, the Battle in Seattle, and the WTO became part of history.
Had there been no special forces, however, no one would have known the devious plans of this secretive United Nations agency working in tandem with transnational corporations to enslave the world. The marchers in Seattle would have had their thirty-second news spot, and disappeared from public memory.
But as the world knows, even a mainstream media blackout and subsequent cover-up by government officials were not enough to prevent N30 from being...
One week ago, the US government blocked the electronic funds transfer host for Wikileaks in retaliation for its expose on the Afghan war. Friday, with the release of The Iraq War Logs, Wikileaks now offers five new ways to donate to its investigative journalism. That ought to keep the Pentagon, State Department and White House busy.
To be arrested, incarcerated and tortured by agents of the Joint Terrorism Task Force in the United States requires no acts of violence at all. It simply requires exercising your rights under the constitution to peaceably assemble and voice your dissent to US policy. Thus demonizing peace activists, the US Department of Justice under Obama equates Quakers with Al Qaeda in terms of being enemies of the state. In the public mind, this equation is intended to justify depriving them of equal rights under the law, an unequivocal act of tyranny.
One of the ironies of the current US military expansion in Central Africa, is that while homosexuals fight for their constitutional rights in our armed forces, the armed forces of America's proxy army in Uganda may soon be legally authorized to murder homosexuals under Ugandan law. Another irony in the resource rich heart of the African continent, is that the charismatic pentecostal network behind lethal homophobia and other forms of Christian bigotry there was promoted in part by Rick Warren, the right-wing preacher President Obama propelled into international prominence by selecting him to preside at his inaugural.
As the Ugandan troops prepare to attack opponents of US aggression in the region, religion ...
Continuing to obstruct indigenous human rights as it did at climate change talks in Copenhagen, the government of Canada is trying to block recognition of indigenous intellectual property in the Convention on Biological Diversity. As UN member states attempt to craft protocols for access, benefits and sharing of traditional knowledge in protecting the forests of indigenous peoples, Canada has done everything in its power to prevent their voices from even being heard. At this rate, Canada may again eclipse the United States for the Colossal Fossil Award.
Millenium Development Goals in Mexico‘s three largely indigenous states of Guerrero, Oaxaca and Chiapas fall far short in health and education. The goals for development set by the UN, of course, are measured in values established by its member states, not by indigenous societies whose concept of worthwhile development is often at odds with neoliberal globalization. Nevertheless, in terms of health and well-being, it might help if the government of Mexico stopped attacking indigenous communities that are trying to build independent, self-sufficient, self-determinant autonomous zones. It is difficult to make headway when the army and police are murdering your leaders.
The clear message in the Five Steps to Tyranny videos is that demonization is a political tool, used by politicians to suppress dissent and subvert solidarity. Two current examples not in the series are the US Department of Justice raids last month against peace activists by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the recent passage of legislation in Uganda mandating the death penalty for homosexuals. Even the calvinist Millenium Development Goals of the UN serve as pretext for ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples. All of these examples are in synch with Christian dominionism, such as that promoted by President Obama's friend Rick Warren. Pandering to Christian bigotry is one of the fastest roads to...
Anyone who has observed politicians and developers in action knows that the quickest way to destroy community cohesion is through programs like the war on poverty. As it and other myriad schemes by governments to use the plight of the poor to enrich themselves, the cover of moral sanctity is essential to success. On the global scene, the UN Millenium Development Goals — auspiciously aimed at poverty reduction — contain the seeds of warfare, genocide, and ethnic cleansing–all in the name of charity. Lined up against indigenous self-determination and sovereignty in this battle are the World Bank, IMF, and poverty pimps like William Jefferson Clinton, Bill and Melinda Gates. Caught in the crossfire are native...
Renowned scholar Fatmagul Berktay discusses EU adhesion for Turkey, which she claims has much to offer the EU, if it can manage to surmount its prejudice as a club of Christian states.
Contrary to propaganda proffered by the State Department, terrorism is not a belief system; it is, rather, a tactic of warfare. Sometimes used offensively by states in suppressing dissent or in subduing populations, sometimes used defensively by those being suppressed or subdued, terrorism is an effective means of making one’s determination known. As a systematic tactic that employs collective fear as a lever in political conflict, terrorism can be deployed in both spectacular and spectral ways, and is usually used in conjunction with other means of psychological warfare.
Genocide and other extreme extensions of conflict between societies rely on the justifications developed to carry out this warfare, and indeed are natural extensions of commercial philosophy....
Talk to Action examines the homophobic International Transformation Network, an association of charismatic evangelicals pursuing global Christian theocracy through demonization. As a movement bent on acquiring political power through the subversion of mainstream Christian denominations -- like the Presbyterian, Anglican and Roman Catholic churches -- the prayer warriors have used receptive heads of state and legislators to demand such things as the death penalty for homosexuality. As noted by Rachel Tabachnick, a significant aspect of their power play is the conversion of native peoples worldwide through the disingenuous use of racial reconciliation rhetoric. In reality, the ITN is on nothing less than a murderous mission.
It's amazing the thoughts that come while waiting for the commuter train before dawn. To keep awake and distracted from the chill, I pulled out The Vagrant Mood, essays by Somerset Maugham, the chapter on Kant, whose goal was to "teach his students to think for themselves" and who didn't like it when "they busied themselves … to write down his every word." And then I thought about plot.
Rather than knowing all that will happen in a story from the get-go, it's more...
Recent news about the Pentagon recruiting Mexicans to join the U.S. military in exchange for green cards reminded me of a post by Juli Meanwhile five years ago, in which she so eloquently critiqued the Pentagon sponsorship of the Boy Scouts. Evidently, all that mass marketing and hot air by the top brass was for not, as the boys in brown opted for playing at home rather than fighting abroad.
As Food Not Bombs approaches its thirty year anniversary of distributing food to economic refugees and disaster victims, Stephen Lendman looks at the ongoing harassment of the organization by the FBI and local police. As providers of meals to protestors at the RNC and DNC conventions, Food Not Bombs members have been targeted by the Joint Terrorism Task Force, giving a green light to local police departments to imprison them for voicing opposition to the American empire while ladeling bowls of soup.
Internal government documents obtained by ACLU suggest high-level concern that they’re turning Americans away from militarism, instead advocating social justice, including quality education, universal health care, and good living wage/essential...
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights has again ruled against the government of Mexico for abuses committed against the indigenous peoples of the State of Guerrero. As throughout the region that includes Oaxaca and Chiapas, the military and police narrative of combating drugs is mostly a cover story for preventing indigenous organizers from successfully implementing international human rights law. For the Indians of Mexico, this is a struggle they have been fighting for five hundred years.
Replicating the neocolonial model used in Alberta, the Canadian government is undermining First Nations solidarity in northern Ontario by offering money and promising plans that will guarantee continuity of their essential ways, in exchange for ceding environmental protection for half their territory. Of course, any forthright examination of treaty making north or south of the 49th parallel, will show that over time the government comes back to demand half of the half ad infinitum, but in the current case in Ontario, the promises are already being broken before the plan can even be written. Of particular note in this official charade is the heavy handed backing, by the Pew Charitable Trust, of government approved...
As one of the inevitable consequences of the global crises generated by globalization, human migration is a growing aspect of life in the 21st century. Given the projected disruptions from climate change, widescale migration is perhaps a permanent social phenomenon. At the Fourth World Social Forum on Migration held in Quito, activist scholars will discuss such things as human mobility and refugees, as well as the intersection of displaced rural residents, indigenous peoples, and migrants worldwide. Mapping out this aspect of the likely future for humankind, they will address the core issues of diversity, coexistence, and sociocultural transformations now taxing our resourcefulness.
I remember thinking two years ago about the young peace people and older people of faith arrested for planning to demonstrate against the Republican and Democratic national conventions. Watching the celebrations of militarism taking place in their Midwest cities was bad enough, but the overt displays of consumerism -- with the logos of corporate sponsors visible everywhere -- must have been hard to stomach.
This morning I thought of the Quakers and Catholic Workers and young peace people in those Midwest cities again harassed by the Joint Terrorism Task Force. With the lists of people against US imperialism in their database, and their budgets fortified from earlier exercises against democracy, the SWAT teams last...
I was thinking the other day about the Public Good network, and tried to pinpoint what it is that energizes the individuals that comprise this milieu. In terms of intellect, the combination of experiential learning and academic studies seems to have fostered a philosophical attitude – perhaps founded on family upbringing – that finds expression in political engagement.
The unique energies of these individuals, in turn, are based on their special spirits, abilities, and powers.
In many, the spirit of a noble lineage — combined with an ability to communicate coherently — is what enables them to exercise their powers effectively. In most, it is the combination of the powers of...
The Art of the Steal is not only a superbly crafted documentary about high crimes by the rich and powerful, it is also an inside look at the ruthlessness of the philanthropy industry exemplified by the notoriously duplicitous Pew Charitable Trust. For art devotees as well as champions of the underdog, the film is an inspirational story as an expose well done. For anyone who has been trampled on by benefactor bullies like the Pew oil magnates and their money grubbing offspring, seeing this misanthropic bunch of scoundrels get their comeuppance is well worth the price of admission.
In the news last week for teaming up with Chevron and the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation in support of REDD initiatives to turn indigenous peoples’ forests into plantations, Shell is again in the news for developing lands stolen from Guarani Indians in order to produce biofuel in Brazil. I guess after facing worldwide condemnation for its complicity in genocide in the Niger Delta, Shell has made it clear how concerned they are with the human rights of tribal societies.
In his working paper on the Swedish prostitution law that criminalizes only those buying and selling prostitutes, not those being bought, Max Waltman examines such topics as the connections between pornography and prostitution, as well as the voids in the social safety net that contribute to the continuity of this form of de facto slavery. Noting that legalization in nearby Holland resulted in an increase in child sexual abuse and sexual harassment, Waltman reminds us that the inherently unequal institution is every bit as abominable as the form of slavery abolished in the Western world two centuries ago. If our laws on prostitution reflect the ambience of our society, then the traumatic harms resulting...
As California prepares to vote on the legalization of marijuana, Bolivia explores new popular uses for coca. Both demonized by US agencies profiting from police and military actions against them, these medicinal herbs have been used for thousands of years as tonics and stimulants, much like their unscathed cousins consumed at high tea. Consumed widely in Bolivian cafes, as well as in sacred indigenous ceremonies, coca in its natural state holds great export potential for beneficial use; the only obstacle is restrictions developed in response to US drug war hysteria, a policy pursued mostly for reasons other than public health.
In February 2010, Bety Carino, a Mixtec organizer from Oaxaca spoke at the Frontline Defenders conference in Dublin, Ireland about the aboriginal struggle against the free trade invaders in Mexico.
In April 2010, Carino and Finnish human rights observer Jyri Antero Jaakkola were murdered by pro-government paramilitaries who ambushed a humanitarian peace caravan bringing food and medicine to Oaxaca’s indigenous communities under siege.
The decaying totems of Haida Gwaii, documented in William Reid and Adelaide de Menil’s 1971 book Out of the Silence, were living monuments to a form of communication about the values of a civilization in decline. The 2007 formation of the United League of Indigenous Nations, as well as the Coast Salish Gathering, are testimonials to the resurgence of Haida Gwaii and related autochthonous civilizations.
As the rest of us struggle to survive the decline of our own civilizations, perhaps we will likewise find our voices and create our own forms of communication. By discussing the values we wish to protect, we might even find ways of freeing ourselves by uniting with the indigenous resurgence.
Shell Oil denounced for undermining indigenous peoples human rights in order to profit from UN climate change protocols. Shell, Chevron, and the Clinton Foundation are funding REDD initiatives aimed at converting forests to plantations, all the while continuing to displace tribal peoples from their territories.
Time — there's no substitute for it. Especially for good writing. The kicker, though, is that you don't necessarily need copious amounts of it, but you do need the right type. For writing, especially the editing phase:
·Slow down to read and ponder each word — is this really what you want to say? If not, what's the best word to describe it?
·Take time away from a piece before returning to edit it.
The Center for Young Women's Development, a San Francisco non-profit that serves previously incarcerated women, has burned an unsolicited $100,000 check from Craigslist. Unwilling to take blood money from a corporation that profits from trafficking women and children for prostitution, the organization chose to make a stand on principle rather than help whitewash criminal corruption.
While much was made of Craigslist's removal of adult services from its website recently -- a move made only after years of bad press and lawsuits by attorneys general across the US -- Craigslist only removed the ads from its US site, not in the 39 other countries in which...
Laura Miller writes at Salon about the US government's betrayal of the Navajo in order to mine, mill and dump uranium. With a lethal legacy of carcinogenic land, water and air that has yet to be resolved, Yellow Dirt is a timely and tragic tale. Intercontinental Cry features Uranium, a 1990 National Film Board of Canada documentary about the sacrifice of indigenous peoples in the pursuit of power and profit.
In his talk Indigenous Resurgence and Traditional Ways of Being, University of Victoria Professor Gerald Taiaiake Alfred examines the fundamental challenges facing indigenous peoples and their friends in confronting the nation-state and the corporations that fund it. Foundational to his vision of decolonization is the restoration of community through overcoming individual fear of confronting the colonialism within ourselves, part of which is comprehending how institutional power has patterned indigenous peoples.
In his distillation of the collective wisdom of indigenous communities, Taiaiake emphasizes that strengthening connection to a place is crucial to fortifying emerging coalitions, connections and networks devoted to universal justice. As a person who is committed to living in a ...
The San Carlos Apache make a stand for what God gave them and the largest copper mining company in the world wants to destroy. As with all sacred lands, there is no middle ground when it comes to mining; respect for the sacred means you leave it alone. Unfortunately, for Resolution Copper and other corporations, sacred is a foreign concept.
Akin to the workshop floor color-coded teams, the Democrats, Republicans, and Tea Partiers compete within the rules laid down by their owners; in the end, it doesn't matter how many teams the corporate aristocracy has, as long as they perpetuate the myth of competitive democracy. As in capitalist-sponsored activism, if you take their money, they own you.
It wasn’t until the Louisiana Purchase of 1804 that the restless giant yawned. Fattening himself off the bounty of the lands East of the Mississippi for the first few hundred years in his infancy, the baby giant’s hunger increased, especially in his slumber. Now, there was plenty of fresh new land for the ravenous giant to consume. So the man-child rolled over onto his massive back, allowed his hulking shoulder, shuddering bicep, long forearm and wrist, deliberately crushing everything beneath him, to extend a forceful hand westward and an accusatory finger. Scratching the surface of the land of the Pawnee Indians along the Platte River of Nebraska, the giant tasted it. And it was good.
A matriarchal society bound to this...
Palestine Chronicle cites a CNN report about charges of sexual abuse of Palestinian children by Israeli Defense Forces. Topping the list of violations of Geneva Conventions by the IDF is torture and other forms of violence toward the children held in custody for stone throwing, but the sexual abuse has prompted Defence of Children International to ask the UN Special Rapporteur for Torture to investigate.
A consortium of indigenous peoples and NGOs pressures the World Bank to cease funding monoculture palm oil plantations used in ethanol production. Expansion of plantation development to meet the ethanol demand, created by the U.S. Congressional mandate, has fueled both deforestation of indigenous territories and genetically modified organism mono-cropping that drives a new wave of forced evictions of tribal peoples from their traditional territories.
Pascual Pichun Collonao, a twenty-seven year old journalism student, is serving five years in a Chilean prison for burning a logging truck. Along with the seventy other Mapuche political prisoners incarcerated under Chile's anti-terrorism law, Collonao is part of the indigenous movement for Mapuche self-determination under international law. As the Special Rapporteur for the UN Human Rights Council observed, the draconian terrorism laws used against indigenous activists are a direct violation of treaties, conventions and declarations to which Chile is signatory.
Apparently, the North American timber companies carry more weight with the government of Chile when it comes to the indigenous territory of Mapuche.
In Native Nations, Shawnee law professor Robert J. Miller discusses Manifest Destiny, U.S. law and the Doctrine of Discovery with Umatilla television’s Philosopher Seed.
Kalahari Bushmen appeal Botswana High Court decision denying them use of wells after government evictions of the indigenous inhabitants from their homeland failed. Controlling access to groundwater has become a human rights issue in Botswana, where the President himself supports corporations seeking to hoard Kalahari water for such developments as tourism, swimming pools and diamond mines.
Amnesty International and the Red Cross call on the Canadian government to get in line with international law as a means of protecting indigenous women from appalling violence.
Cyrano's looks at the role of television news in perpetuating fantasies about the occupation of Iraq by US troops, in particular the propaganda surrounding the shuffle of troops and mercenaries designed to deceive gullible Americans into believing there is actually a military withdrawal.
UN rebukes Australian government for entrenched discrimination against Aborigines, including official suspension of the racial discrimination act in order to intervene in Northern Territory indigenous communities.
August 2010, Ridgefield, Conn., Top-producing editor Adele Annesi is promoted to senior editor for the global, IT analyst firm Gartner, Inc., based in Stamford, Conn. An award-winning editor with Gartner, Adele was the top-producing editor for the company's Research division in 2009, and worked as lead editor on one of the firm's most extensive special reports for international publication.
The Christian Science Monitor reports that the BP oil plume in the Gulf is 700 feet thick, 22 miles long, a mile wide, and 3,000 feet deep. So much for the disappearing oil PR out of the White House.
Eddie Stack writes from West Clare about Lughnasa, the Irish harvest festival honoring Lugh, the ancient god of arts and crafts. Unlike the Catholic adaptation, says Eddie, "Lugh was a good time god."
One of the things Phil Williams discovered in his research on transnational criminal networks is that human trafficking for prostitution is an important component of organized crime portfolios, in some instances providing the seed money for other ventures in smuggling guns and drugs. With the foundation laid by proceeds from prostitution, their ability to corrupt public institutions, banks, and society at large is given an enormous boost.
U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals rules that a quarter million acres stolen from the Oneida Nation and sold by the State of New York is a done deal, and that the Oneida are not entitled to any compensation.
In spite of the positive developments achieved, IWGIA continues to receive reports from our partners around the world, providing a frighteningly clear picture of the situation of indigenous peoples in 2010 as one of an uphill struggle for physical and cultural survival in a world dominated by environmental insecurity, development aggression and continuous criminalization of indigenous lifestyles and social protests.
In its latest report, Serious Damage: Tribal Peoples and Large Dams, Survival International examines the building boom on indigenous lands financed by the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and states like The Peoples Republic of China. Constructed for the benefit of corporations cashing in on biofuel, mining, and deforestation for export to consumer economies, the consequences of large dam construction for indigenous peoples promises further dislocation, disease, and disintegration.
Socially responsible investment companies urge US government to adopt and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Citing the relationship between sustainable economic development and human rights for indigenous peoples, the financial asset management firms noted that corporations doing business in tribal territories will follow the government’s lead.
I just watched The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, coming to PBS in October. As the Obama Administration goes after Julian Assange and WikiLeaks for revealing the official lies about the war in Afghanistan, it’s time for Americans to remember what happens when our trust is misplaced.
Oil companies line up against California’s greenhouse gas law. California legislators call for federal investigation into money-laundering to defeat the country’s first climate change legislation.
This week in Bonn, indigenous representatives discussed problems with REDD, the UN program to address climate change. As the indigenous delegates made clear, the main problem remains governance, more specifically, whose government — modern states or First Nations — will decide how to treat resources on indigenous lands.
As explained at BDS, the time is right to initiate international sanctions against Israeli banks. SWIFT action worked against South African apartheid, and according to Terry Crawford-Brown, it can work against apartheid in Israel.
The most important question you can ask yourself as a writer is "why." It breaks writer's block and helps writers answer tough questions about their. It also helps with the peer review and critique process.
As a reminder, there's a key that unlocks the power of "why," as we'll see below.
How can asking "why" help when your critique group, mentor or inner critic recommends changes, maybe extensive changes? The criticism may be accurate. You may need to change a scene or delete it, but until you address the reason you wrote...
When it comes to diabetes, indigenous communities suffer disproportionately. Some of this is due to dietary changes forced on them by industrial societies, but according to The Dominion’s John Schertow, it may have more to do with pollutants. Given the number of pollution–related health problems from industrial practices on indigenous lands, this growing health crisis could indeed become epidemic.
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The Turkish parliament has amended its anti-terror law — that now imprisons 2,000 Kurdish children for chanting independence slogans, throwing rocks, or using the peace sign at protests — to allow up to 200 to be released, while reducing sentences for the rest from 18 to 6 months
It was bound to happen; now that the Irish and other activists made their point with freedom flotillas to Gaza, American moral actors want in on the theater. While this is a legitimate political engagement, you’d think they could come up with something more creative and effective than a copycat boat trip. I mean, if they want to stop the brutalization of Palestinians by the State of Israel, they should be storming the White House and halls of Congress, or attacking arms manufacturers.
The money they’d save by not buying a boat could be donated to the Palestinian Red Crescent, or invested in a serious anti-war campaign.
As a result of institutionalizing indigenous human rights, indigenous-produced media in South America makes significant advances, while their North American cousins still languish in 20th century models imposed by markets and states.
In an example of how dominating the mediascape includes both official propaganda as well as non-governmental criticism, Electronic Intifada contrasts Human Rights Watch with Amnesty International. As essentially a public relations arm of Israel and the US, Human Rights Watch is able to deflect opposition to the policies of two of the top violators of human rights, while at the same time appearing a champion of the victims. A textbook case of psychological warfare waged in the digital age
One of the things readily apparent to me now that I am limited to slow DSL service is that some video on the Internet plays well while most are inaccessible. Something for my colleagues to keep in mind when designing studios and communications projects for global indigenous audiences.
My situation is partly financial, and partly provider infrastructure, but I know that our associates in locations lacking fiber optic wiring are limited in their capacity to communicate, even when they have free access.
Indigenous-produced media has advanced rapidly in the last few years, but investment in equipment and software that can circumvent barriers to communication is still sorely needed. If the UN Human Rights...
After six decades of our national security state, the Washington Post has discovered that our secret government is now out of control. Having witnessed these unaccountable agencies engage in defeating democracy worldwide at the behest of US corporations since Truman signed secret government into law in 1948, one has to ask, What took them so long?
A Harvard study of major media documents the complicity of outlets like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in covering up official high crimes and crimes against humanity since 2001. Compared to previous eras of US imperialism, the present coverage has dropped by as much as a factor of ten.
Examining the human rights case of a Canadian mining company in Guatemala, where government troops were used to destroy a Mayan village to clear the way for a nickel mine, we are allowed to focus on the broader reality of how deeply our societies are invested in brutality against the Fourth World. As Canadian pension plans benefit from these corporate violations of international law, we have to ask what we are willing to do to stop this inhumane system known as globalization. While churches and universities have tested the waters of disinvestment in genocide and apartheid, it's time unions and mutual funds joined the movement.
An international coalition of friends and relatives of victims of church residential schools is planning a summer tour in Europe, with major stops at the Vatican and UN. Comprised of survivors and families of children who disappeared while under church control in Australia, Ireland, Canada and the US, the coalition plans to form an international tribunal to hear the crimes of church and state, in order to seek prosecution. The coalition is seeking full disclosure, repatriation of the bodies, preventive measures, as well as reparations for the deaths that number in the tens of thousands in Canada alone.
The four modes of social organization — tribes, institutions, markets, and networks — all intentionally utilize words to communicate their unique perspectives and preferences. Words are chosen for their effect in creation stories, in mythologies, in advertising, and in propaganda.
Words themselves are invented for a purpose. They serve as tools of social organization, as weapons of war, as means of manipulation, and as medicine for the maligned.
Depending on how they are used, words can cause horrendous harm or great good. Meanings can be distorted or clarified.
Working with words can gain one respect, renown, and reward, but it can also generate resentment. Not all messages are appreciated.
The Obama Administration is the first presidency to deny the right of travel to members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. As the six nations that tutored the founders of the United States on democratic governance, the Haudenosaunee have maintained their independence, including the right to issue their own passports. Now, it seems, as Obama drags his feet on abiding by international law when it comes to indigenous nations, the Haudenosaunee may have to look to international institutions to guarantee their human rights.
Update: After a five-day standoff with the State Department, they thought they were on their way, but due to power-tripping by the US and...
The Icelandic Parliament has passed a modern media initiative to protect journalists, sources and leakers, creating a haven for Internet-based investigative journalism.
David M. Green looks at the subject of international governance through the lens of the International Criminal Court, an institution opposed by the United States.
The ICC is living testimony to the fact that the world is moving – slowly, to be sure – away from the anarchy of the classic Westphalian System, and dragging the most recalcitrant regressive reprobates (you know who we are) along with it. It’s not an easy trick, in part because there is a real legitimacy to the idea of not universalizing all, or even most, policy issues, but only those which absolutely must be located at a global level, retaining the rest for national, provincial and local polities to...
In covering the wild salmon campaign on Vancouver Island, Kim Petersen notes that while Norway adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Norwegian corporations farming salmon in British Columbia are destroying the wild runs symbiotic with the First Nations there. Although many tribes have taken the path of litigation, other indigenous bands are cynical about recognizing courts biased against them.
As wild runs decline due in part to the salmon farms, a few tribes have succumbed to farming themselves, while a growing segment of those watching their cultures and livelihoods slip away suggest that removing the fish pens is their inherent right--with or without court approval.
The Department of Homeland Security's Suspicious Activity Reporting initiative has been so successful in protecting airlines, DHS Secretary Napolitano has decided to extend it to Amtrak. Although not one criminal, let alone terrorist, has been spotted by the civilian snitching program, the millions spent on SAR has managed to nab several people of color speaking foreign languages in the New York Metro, as well as ruin the travel plans of Muslim Americans removed from airline flights for praying before takeoff. Who says racial profiling doesn't work?
In IJOC 2010, Cinzia Padovani looks at the intersections among interpersonal communication, interaction with mainstream media, and the use of Internet communications in post-earthquake L’Aquila, Italy. By examining the methods used by local residents to perforate the government media spectacle, Padovani illuminates the capacity of networks to create opportunities for public participation in rebuilding identities and community. Proposing the character of antagonism as a grounded strategy in their struggle for democracy, Padovani reveals the value of a rebellious spirit in creating a permanent democratic presidium.
In IJOC 2010's Investigating Chilling Effects, Andrew T. Kenyon examines the relationships between independence, resistance, dissent, and adversarial journalism in Malaysia, Singapore, and Australia. Noting the role the Internet plays in overcoming the chilling effect of defamation law, Kenyon looks at how political criticism, governance, corruption, and crime are treated as topics by civil society and political opposition in independent media. If, as Kenyon asserts, the Internet is responsible for facilitating offline political expression and action, then Internet control measures sought by governments worldwide are a serious threat to public freedom.
A San Francisco Bay Area research group is handling the digitization and organization of the Guatemalan National Police archives recently discovered in a building in Guatemala City. As a repository of information, including the notorious death squads that plagued the indigenous Maya over a 36-year protracted struggle against the Guatemalan oligarchy, the archive might shine a light on both the murderous methods used, as well as on the consequences of US policy in the region.
In the movie Dead Man, the wandering, poetic Native American (Gary Farmer) encountered by William Blake (Johnny Depp) responds to Blake’s question ‘Who are you?’ by answering, “I am nobody.” Removed from his indigenous culture and schooled in English literature, Nobody roams 19th century Western America through a maze of traumatized tribes and individuals negotiating a cruel and tragic era as what perhaps can best be described as a lost soul.
I thought of Blake’s double-entendre about Nobody, when discovering our family genealogy descended from Eoghan Ua Niall, allowing us to claim we are nEoghan (descended from Owen), which is pronounced ‘no one’.
In Living with the Enemy, Susie Linfield discusses what Jean Amery called "the moral necessity of undying resentment". Examining the modern obsession of truth and reconciliation, Linfield discovers the only truth is that "forgiveness and reconciliation are of far less interest to the victims than they are to the perpetrators".
The Southwest Tribal Summit, organized by the San Carlos Apache, has issued a report to the UN Human Rights Council documenting violations by the US Government. In the 125 page report, the indigenous nations at the summit took particular note of the degradation of their natural resources by corporations the federal government exempts from laws meant to protect the environment. As San Carlos Apache Chairman Nosie observed, “We need to start taking things into our own hands.”
Speaking only for myself as a novelist, I would say that the most important part of the creative life (other than writing a book and getting published, which is more of a big-picture view) is the concept of forward progress. That is, to write every day, or to work on that piece of writing in whatever way time allows (rewriting, editing, etc.), either on a larger work in progress or on something new, like a poem or flash fiction piece.
I say NO to word counts, except as a way of marking progress as I rush through a first draft. At least at this point in my career. Forward progress is key. It will give you what you need to finish a book.
Hello; I publish a small ezine called "Eat a Peach: A Poetry Journal." You can find it on the web at http://www.eatapeachpoetry.com. It's free! All the poems are printed on one page; you just scroll down. There's no index of authors you never heard of. I only publish a few poems in each issue and each issue has a theme. The Fall issue will be a humor issue.
After years of research documenting harms perpetrated against those in prostitution, Prostitution Research and Education, along with many other groups, is seeking accountability from Craigslist for facilitating online trafficking of women and children. Coalition Against Trafficking Women (CATW) and Prostitution Research and Education (PRE) are planning a protest July 8 at the Craigslist San Francisco headquarters. For more information see this announcement.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Shawn Atleo says the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is a standard of achievement to be pursued in a spirit of partnership and mutual respect. As an international human rights instrument, UNDRIP, says Atleo, sets standards that can increase the collective strength of indigenous nations throughout North America, which in turn can encourage the governments of Canada and the US to uphold their treaty obligations.
Ben Powless, secretary for the Indigenous Peoples Working Group at Cochabamba, and organizer Kimia Ghomeishi report that the participants in the World Peoples Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth are determined to return to the principles of living well — free of contamination and genetic modification — and are committed to challenging global systems that kill.
Parroting cliches can be a useful part of learning by rote, and is indeed incorporated into schooling, but what happens when through confusion cliches are misused? As we see regularly on the news, inappropriate metaphors can lead consumers to jump to wildly incorrect conclusions. These conclusions in turn lead to horrible assumptions about citizenship and public policy. Lacking a foundation in logical and critical thinking, of course, means consumers are oblivious to this dilemma, which is probably what was intended.
In his recent profile of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, The New Yorker‘s Raffi Khatchadourian lauds Assange’s exposing injustice, but suggests his efforts should be limited to fighting authoritarian regimes, not legitimate democratic states, whose secrets, says Khatchadourian, are justified by the consent of the governed. Of course, all states are authoritarian, while some are totalitarian. All of them lie, cheat, and steal without our consent—something that apparently escaped Khatchadourian.
The Pentagon and White House are going to have their hands full trying to plug leaks of war crimes evidence. After releasing video footage of US Army massacres in Iraq, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has canceled his public appearances for security reasons.
I've often remarked that indigenous connections with landscape reflect a continuity of both location and observance recorded in aboriginal memory systems. Reading Sahara: A Natural History by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle, I am struck by how little understanding we display today of the vacillations of landscape associated with long atmospheric cycles, erratic orbits, and abrupt variations in the axial tilt and wobble of our planet.
Noting the sudden change of the Sahara from vast savanna to world's largest desert a short time prior to the emergence of the Roman Empire, de Villiers and Hirtle bring to life the reality of climate changes -- over millions, thousands, and even hundreds of...
As Shamus Cooke observes, the bipartisan fiscal future fanfare is nothing less than a rapacious revival. Sponsored by the inheritors of unearned wealth, this latest roadshow is not surprisingly designed to rip off those of us who will depend on Medicare and Social Security in our senior years. For the privileged elites who hollowed out our economy and public treasury through private equity manipulations, Social Security is their final foray in re-establishing a feudal society.
As Mr. Cooke notes, the foregone conclusions of stacked studies, crony commissions and phony philanthropy are that the rich are endlessly worthy, while the rest of us are undeserving.
Bolivia believes that on an issue that affects the whole of humanity, we cannot make decisions in small unrepresentative forums, whether it is a group of 20 nations or in secret dinners behind the UN facade as we saw in Copenhagen.
--Pablo Solon, Bolivia’s chief envoy to the United Nations
Ordering the cluster bombing of a Yemeni village, says Amnesty International, was grossly irresponsible of President Obama. Charles Davis extends the criticism, noting that whatever we might think about Obama personally, by his conduct he is in fact a war criminal.
It is no secret that the United States government has been an obstacle to indigenous peoples’ direct participation in the global Climate Change treaty negotiations. A principal reason for US obstructionism has been it’s 34-year long opposition to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Center for World Indigenous Studies, National Congress of American Indians, Indian Law Resource Center and other indigenous organizations in the US and several tribal leaders have urged the Obama administration for more than a year to change it’s position and endorse UNDRIP. The Center for World Indigenous Studies position has been that the US cannot in its domestic legislation nor in its positions internationally...
Back in 2004, Stan Goff spoke about the unfamiliar reality and the invisible relations of our way of life. Author of the book Full Spectrum Disorder, Goff described new ways of knowing the system that demands endless war against all life, a knowing essential to a culture of resistance.
Amnesty International joins the Assembly of First Nations in bringing the Canadian government before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. Canada, which currently discriminates against Indian children in providing social services, claims it does not violate their human rights to receive 20% less per child than non-indigenous children.
While our attention is drawn once again to Gaza, readers might find interesting this interactive map and database on the history of the State of Israel's expropriation of land from the Palestinian people. Crow's Eye zeros in on the ethnic cleansing cartography of the West Bank.
As noted in a San Francisco Chronicle half-page ad last week, 100,000 underage girls in the US are trafficked for sex each year via Craigslist. Pimped in the Adult Services section, these enslaved children net $36 million a year for Craigslist. The Rebecca Project video about this cyberslavery helps answer some basic questions. Further information and resources are available at Prostitution Research and Education.
Johnny Moses is a unique Native American storyteller. Raised by his grandparents in a remote village on Vancouver Island, Moses is fluent in eight indigenous languages, and has been recognized as a spiritual ambassador bringing aboriginal knowledge and perspective to non-indigenous audiences.
The Killing of Major Denis Mahon by Peter Duffy is a tale of tenancy grounded in peat and potatoes, reluctant relations, church and state. An uncommon history of County Roscommon. A careful critique of colonialism in Ireland. A marvelous mystery.
In February 2001, Dr. Rudolph C. Ryser and guests spoke at the University of Washington about the history of human rights and its application to indigenous peoples.
As Tom Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environmental Network observes, leadership on protecting Mother Earth is emerging from indigenous communities and their movement associates in civil society. Opposed to this movement is the United Nations, its member states, and the transnational corporations engaged in corrupting them. What Tom has not discussed, are the transitional steps required to transform this movement into a working political system that has the capacity to translate the aspirations of its participants into the power necessary for sustainable social change.
Dispersing global political power into a democratic framework that respects Mother Earth, indigenous peoples, and humanity itself already has a common spiritual foundation; building the political infrastructure that...
Reading the headlines today, President Obama's request for a supplemental $33 billion for warmongering in Central Asia vied with the new record of 40 million Americans living on foodstamps.
When I was in college forty years ago, I did medical research to help activists stop the Washington Public Power Supply nuclear plant boondoggle. Twenty years ago, I was involved in producing research to protect environmental activists from industry-sponsored vigilantes. Today, as official thievery thrives under the Obama Administration, earlier research on the threats of nuclear contamination and energy industry corruption come in handy, but they are only useful if communicated in a way that mobilizes effective organizing and community action.
As my generation gears up to save Social Security from Obama's thieves, we will have our hands full. Understanding that what Wall Street steals from seniors will be used to fight young...
The Winnemem Wintu tribe from near Mount Shasta is seeking assistance from New Zealand in restoring their Chinook salmon run devastated by the US government.
Recent op-eds in the progressive press on tribalism and indigeneity reveal ongoing misperceptions. Perhaps this brief discussion on the role of tribalism in the world today will help.
The metaphor of a collision course could be improved on. The capitalist system has been devouring the natural order for centuries; the human and environmental disaster is not something over the horizon.
More importantly, the only alternative social system with a track record of success in achieving harmonious or holistic ends preceded capitalism by thousands of years, and is reemerging within the World Indigenous Peoples’ Movement. As evidenced by the recent conference in Bolivia, the principles, practices and laws of the natural order are not new or incomprehensible, but have been continuously articulated and pursued by indigenous societies on all continents from time immemorial to the present.
The roots of all humanity are governed by these relationships, even...
Bear in mind that I’m writing about an event I helped organize for a book I published, and I’m not claiming to be objective about either.
But I want to write about Saturday afternoon’s event for New European Fiction because it brought together the two “international literature” projects that I am currently the most excited about: Dalkey Archive & editor Aleksandar Hemon’s Best European Fiction anthology series, and the PEN World Voices Festival.
The purpose of this event, like the purpose of the Best European Fiction series, was two-fold: to call attention to the value of having an international perspective on literary art (along with the obstacles to having such a perspective) and to read and listen to extraordinary literature by...
In Cut Stones and Crossroads: A Journey in the Two Worlds of Peru, Ronald Wright encounters such literary figures as Waman Puma, an Inca philosopher from the 1600s, whose writings described the collapse of Inca society as the "world in reverse", the Conquest as a ghastly cosmic mistake--a reversal of the natural order, which had to be put right.
As a Runa who had survived the Andean apocalypse, Waman Puma chronicled the pachakuti -- Runasimi for apocalypse -- which literally means "world reversal". Puma's 1,200 page manuscript, written at the same time Shakespeare's plays debuted in London, was actually a letter to the Spanish emperor about restoring governance along...
Rudolph Ryser reports from the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, which, says Ryser, has co-opted and deflated the process of political development. By channeling indigenous peoples' energies into futile bureaucratic procedures, notes Ryser, "states like Canada and the US will continue to offer platitudes" until indigenous peoples force them to treat First Nations with the respect they deserve.
In a recent communication about the UN protocols on climate change, Indigenous leaders observed that the process promoted by UN member states is designed to marginalize and wear down tribal participants who lack the resources to attend the multitude of meetings around the globe, let alone respond constructively to the complexities constructed by states to exclude all but the professional agents of states and international NGOs. Given this situation, UN declarations on human rights and programs created to pacify Indigenous activists might rightly be considered what some would call lip service.
Remedying this injustice is unlikely to ever be an aim of the UN regime, but rather, is a moral and political task...
In his post on lawful murder, Charles Davis discusses the undue respect for the law and the eminiscence of humanity in our imperial army. With no free exercise of judgment or moral sense, he says, the children we send to fight the empire’s wars are, in essence, wooden men.
Jasmin Ramsey examines the dire situation for children's health services in Gaza due to the combined efforts of the Israeli blockade of health equipment and the US blockade of non-profit charities trying to help Palestinian health authorities deal with the ongoing traumas.
Kathleen Kirwin, attorney and peace activist, discusses the arbitrariness of police lines used to disrupt lawful, peaceful assembly for the purpose of petitioning our government. As a violation of our constitutional rights, protest zones and police lines are clearly used to intimidate and provoke protestors. Unlawful arrest of those exercising their constitutional rights is one way those in power prevent public discussion of high crimes and crimes against humanity.
The establishment of an International Climate Justice Tribunal, as part of defending Mother Earth from markets and militaries, is key to the Cochabamba agenda.
Matthew Skomarovsky reviews the 30-year history of bipartisan efforts to steal Social Security benefits from working Americans, and showcases Obama's dream team for making Reagan's dystopian vision reality.
In his forthcoming PBS special on Martin Luther King, Tavis Smiley exposes Barack Obama as not only an impostor, but as emblematic of the violent empire that King opposed body and soul.
Reviving Our Culture, Mapping Our Future, a film about a gathering of indigenous leaders from South Africa, Russia, and the Amazon, offers a road map for restitution.
I was just reading a casual exchange between some British and Portuguese bloggers, and they mentioned how every town and village in their respective countries has citizen's advice centres, where for free people can get help in dealing with government agencies, utilities providers, landlords, and other aspects of life. All done by volunteers with special expertise, this civil society institution seems to fit well with what I've been yammering about here.
They were surprised that I had to ask them what an advice center was.
Working together, or in Irish, meitheal, is something rarely seen in the US. We compete rather than cooperate. We consume rather than create. We exclude rather than include...
As the Obama Administration attacks public education, one has to ask, “What next?” Not in a rhetorical sense, but literally, “What essential sector will Goldman’s golden boy go after next?” His betrayal already has the nurses union in California pushing through single payer medical care legislation in the state assembly. With the massive layoffs of teachers, health and education looks like the nexus of opposition to Obama’s privatization plans.
Unity in struggle; we’re watching for emerging leaders.
As I stood along the Sacapulas bridge rail, I glanced up and was startled to see a fully armed military patrol in camouflage gear marching toward me,. The line grew until I could see fifty or sixty soldiers, armed with everything from machine guns to mortars. The 1960's and '70's, leading up to the worst of the recent violence, had been the first period of church idealism in Guatemala since the [16th century] Verapaz experiment. Foreign priests, many of them Spanish and North American, had evangelized among the [Mayan] Indians, founded cooperatives, and taught literacy. The civil and military authorities in Guatemala had apparently found the resulting Indian political consciousness threatening, because in the late...
In their working paper The Global Financial Crisis and the Shift to Shadow Banking, Yeva Nersisyan and L. Randall Wray argue that downsizing the financial sector is a prerequisite to saving the system. As a sector that is too complex to manage, as well as too politically powerful to regulate, the failure of the Obama Administration to downsize the publicly rescued financial sector, say the authors, means the system is doomed.
Mexican Army and police increase harassment of Zapatista communities in Chiapas. Ethnic cleansing in preparation for ecotourism and biofuel includes burning the Mayan villages.
Learning to use communications technology, while valuable, should not be overemphasized at the expense of learning the principles of organizing. While computer-based research and education has expanded our access to information, learning to evaluate information for its applicability requires greater focus. Analysis of communications in conflict, otherwise known as psychological warfare, thus serves as a prerequisite to effective engagement in netwar.
Comprehending how activism functions in this context, helps to distinguish between consciousness-raising and capacity-building. While not mutually exclusive, they are also not synonymous.
As more young people become involved in politics, they will, like us, live and learn from their mistakes. What they need to know in the digital age, is that connecting with millions through mass communication means little if...
Americans might be able to secure socialist concessions from the two capitalist political parties, but it isn't very likely. Social Security was only garnered under the threat of mass insurrection against the capitalists that caused the Great Depression. Securing universal health care, housing vouchers, and free college education is not going to happen until we elect enough socialists to Congress.
In the meantime, withdrawing support from the capitalist parties and giving our support to socialist parties and candidates will give them the voice they need to push our two-party capitalist state toward a multi-party socialist republic.
When Michel Chossudovsky wrote his seminal book The Globalisation of Poverty, the dismembering of Yugoslavia was still underway. As a project of globalization, the orchestrated monetary attack on the socialist republic, that culminated in civil war, served to illustrate the fact that globalization is not just an economic model, but a plan of war. That war, which is by definition global, is quite simply the exercise of power by the financial sector in undermining the powers of the state to the benefit of the free market.
As states cede their social obligations in favor of transfers of public wealth to private accounts, all public needs suffer, and perhaps more importantly, become dependent on private rules, no matter how criminal, stingy or punitive. This, is...
A while back, I wrote about the fabric of identity, and if insufficiently authentic, how it can unravel. In our consumer society, identity is closely associated with possession, and as millions become dispossessed, their identity crumbles. Losing one's possessions in a culture of imbeciles (a term used here to indicate political illiteracy) can make one vulnerable to recruitment by all sorts of ideologues, and this can lead to pathological behavior. And in a state where access to quality counseling often depends on a measure of possessions, the dispossessed are adrift.
We may indeed witness a return of active domestic terrorism in the form of Christian Patriot militias, but unlike the farm crisis of the 1980s and the millenarian mania of the 1990s, this...
As the Obama Administration navigates us into the new Dark Ages, it is inevitable that random adaptations will emerge. Necessity being the mother of invention, new means of survival and creativity are indeed already springing up. As of last week, a dozen states were exploring the establishment of state banks in order to protect state employee pensions and benefits from Wall Street, and several states were considering single payer health plans to guard against federal betrayal in that regard.
Admittedly, we are in for some soul-searching disruptions as millions more are laid off, foreclosed, or terminated from private health care. Yet, we aren't the first generations to encounter wide-scale government corruption and economic failure. Yes, it is systematic and global, but it isn't entirely...
From 1980-2000, the government of Peru fought a civil war against indigenous guerrilla fighters in the Andes mountains. Last year, the Peruvian government fought to a standstill with the indigenous communities over the right of indigenous peoples to determine their own future under international law. The Peruvian state now plans to expedite dam and mining projects on indigenous lands using forced relocation of indigenous communities. The civil war could resume.
Murder and theft are big business on Wall Street, and if one looks at almost any sector of financial investment, murder and theft aren't hard to find. Sometimes it's as obvious as the war and energy industries, other times it's as obscure as banking and health. The invisibility of murder and theft on a global scale is aided by media that portrays this official US policy as defense and development. Nevertheless, if one examines the situations where this policy is deployed by US troops, advisors and mercenaries, murder and theft is the only conclusion an honest person can reach.
As the Obama Administration perpetuates this policy of murder and theft on behalf of the industries it represents, the lives of indigenous peoples worldwide...
Paintings, drawings and old manuscripts
are protected from the criminals and vandals
in the museums with security cameras,
laser beams and guards.
But who will protect and defend the Artist
from the crazy politicians,
KGB or Gestapo,
criminals and stalkers,
extremists and zombies?
This is the Art Security Alarm.
Hands off the artists and writers!
Hands off our freedom!
In the wake of the colossal betrayal of Americans by the Obama Administration, Cyrano's examines the move toward state-owned banks as a means of fighting the financial cartel on Wall Street.
