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and you really have to pay attention to the ones with their
god talk...and how they are xtian talk
then watch the meanness, the hate, the anger,
the lack
of humility, compassion, etc
well not to worry
they ain't really xtians
they just wannabees
dontcha just love
how some "xtians" got to testify with words and all kinds of GOD talk
and notice how they talk AT you....
and if you disagree with them...
they JUDGE and CONDEMN you...
can you say Pharisee and Sadduccee?
until it's clear they're hypocrites...
then see how loving they are
then see how FORGIVING they are
then see how full of CRAP they are...
and to those I say
you're not a xtian....I've met REAL xtians
and they got something good in 'em
that's worth sharing...they don't talk it
they just do it
just like there's good folks in other ways....
but these holier than thou xtians...they just ain't....
and you know why they get nasty...
what might be called EVIL
because when they alone
they know it's true
and they ain't really xtians....
so to them, I say...don't get mad, get GLAD
just take the time and really go find you
Jesus....and do it for real this time
and don't stop until you do....
no need to come back and apologize later
just come back a genuine caring selfless human...
as in Not Selfish...having compassion...having humility...
that's plenty...
then you're part of the solution in the human equation of life
until then they just part of the problem.....
wha me?
it don't matter...am comfortable in my own skin
and hoping they come around....
cuz it'll do the world some good.....
Islam....whoooooowheeeeee
tough nut to crack
when the way a body is walking, is steeped in
convert or kill...
No difference in that, than when the Xtians came over here
and killed the locals...
but at least it was a perversion of Xtianity doing that
with Islam....it's in their rulebook
so....just can't trust someone that has that...
like trying to trust a nazi in my book...just can't..
Just wondering when they gonna get a new prophet
who says...we gotta change and this IS THE WORD
and the WORD IS....
Killing those who cannot agree is wrong
demanding Conversion is wrong
Mohammed was FUCKED UP!
and How about we tear down that Mosque in Jerusalem
and let the Jews rebuild their temple
and a reminder to those who have not
figgered it out yet
or those who simply forgot
I'm saving this for posterity here
for someone that showed their ass today
I posted it on a board where the mod is someone I actually
used to pay attention to when they had something to say
so to that goofball out there-
maybe someday they'll learn they don't need to do that
here it is:
well I answered with a logical answer to your posts
and then you sent me this via pm and then blocked me
so you completely lost my respect there
In addition, I dealt with the situation befitting what was proper
since you did the hit and run with the PM blocking
we're done.
save it for the next one who might give you their time
because your question was not germaine to what was important to me
regarding Trump
it does not get a serious response from me.
it's one thing to have a discussion and Actually discuss facts
that are relevant
instead you chose to simply toss irrelevant accusations about Trump
call him ScumBag, etc all I did was *shrug* at that
that had nothing to do with what he's accomplished.
and irrelevant minor things
Nothing about what's important TODAY
yesterday, or even a year ago...
Our country is being divided...imo, not by Trump during these
riots
but by so called "protestors"....destroying innocent lives
and property completely unrelated to the issue
That isn't protesting
and there's a lot of people from multiple perspectives
"protesting" verbally in a destructive form
what good does it do? None.
Martin Luther King PROTESTED and did it in a way
that changed things, that made a difference that is
admired still today, I remember his moments on TV
I remember when he was murdered, when Bobby Kennedy
was gunned down, and I even remember JFK's funeral
and little John standing at the memorial
Something I seem to recall about BullNBear
was decent conversations/discussions and a reasonable level of respect
I might be remembering it wrong, but I doubt it
I don't remember wild ranting
I recall a willingness to agree to disagree...
That meant I could learn from him
and likewise he could learn from me
we could learn from each other
there was at least a reasonable attitude of civility
I've been working to return Simply Politics to discussion
civil discussion
including humor.....
I am who I am and that is all
like some
I have seen a lot in my life, more than most
and less than some
If you want respect, you must first give it
not come in with a chip on your shoulder
and then run here with Boozhoo...
There's a reason I didn't bother with this board
when I got back....way too much lacking in open mindedness
I perused it and left.
with only so much time left above ground
how I spend it has some importance to me
There's so much wrong done in the name of the right and of the left
neither creates any right
When your anger has stripped life from part of this world
and you actually feel the loss
then is when you learn not only your value
but the value of others
When you've seen innocent men, women, and children butchered
and blown into pieces, or a 10 yr old girl with her arm blown
off carrying her dead baby brother with part of his face missing
stepping in shock over her mother's now unrecognizable body
until you've seen the horrors created by men and worked to
actually do something about it....I don't believe you have the
right to disrespect me because your rights end where mine begin
Until you've actually been part of stopping that horror...
no matter who you are...you don't have the right to disrespect me.
People who have been part of the solution....they don't disrespect
they're too busy being part of the solution...and being grateful
to others walking the same path
I've seen the results of wrong actions conducted under Democrats
and Republicans
I've been there to do something about it
Put my life on the line and MADE a difference
made CHANGE....and somehow managed to survive
and be a part of the solution and not the problem
so no matter what your color or creed or religion or politics
I would encourage anyone no matter if they agree with my
perspectives or disagree
to actually do things that make this world a better place
without destroying it in the process.
No need to ban me
I'm leaving unasked...my choice, my decision....
and no hard feelings or disparaging thoughts for anyone...
Bull, I appreciate the opportunity to post if it stays
wish you all well here
and just so you know
NO I am NOT a Xtian.
Like Popeye
I yam what I yam
I just love how so many
Xtians are what they are as a matter of convenience
when it comes to genuine caring and empathy
how they really only care about themselves.....
now there are genuine ones out there...real xtians
and this is how you'll know them
they have a genuine humility and compassion
that comes from a place within them that they
know is more than just themselves.....
they have hope and faith in a good way...unselfish
the fakes...well they're judgmental...for a start
quick to point fingers
quick to blame
defensive in a hostile way
unforgiving
a lot of them believe in the name it and claim it
hey god- gimme gimme
when the going gets tough...they can get downright mean
a lack of faith is pretty obvious
am a bit weary of them wannabe xtians
they wear thin the patience of the world
waiting for them to get real
At a Truck stop off Illinois Tollway 5 and 59
N towards Rockford, was on a road trip. Well my son and I
stopped in for breakfast. Waitress was a bit of a snotty grump.
they had a counter and booths, I was in a booth off the counter.
Drivers section...I sit in it because I earned the right to and
be around people I have something in common with and enjoy the
conversation and even contribute if I'm of the mind.
Well there was this old guy at the counter and someone had bought
him a cup of coffee, so he was telling the nearby drivers how he
was making his way to go see his son. The other drivers were kind
to him, gave him a smoke to go with his coffee. He was a road
urchin, but down on his luck and doing no harm with a pleasant
demeanor. He was drinking a cup the guy next to him had bought
for him.
Finally waitress brought me some coffee. I saw the ol' boy glance
at the meals brought to his neighbors, the truckdrivers...his belt
was definitely cinched tight, like not a meal in a week tight.
There was something good and kind about that ol' guy. The
drivers next to him were quite taken with him.
So I asked the waitress could she please take my order now...
she grumped...motioned for her to lean closer so I could speak
soft....
Asked her to bring that old boy the biggest plate of biscuits
and gravy they could muster and put it on my tab and say it was
from the cook, he had made a mistake, and would the old
gentleman care to have it.....don't let on it was me bought it.
She teared up and said she'd get right on it. Well she brought
out a platter filled with fresh biscuits and fresh sausage gravy
and asked if anyone wanted it and held it out to the ol' boy
and everyone else close by (except us) had their breakfast.
He said well if it's going to waste, he'd take care of it. Then she
brought our breakfast, said she was sorry for being a grumpus,
and that was the nicest thing she'd seen in a while. I thanked
her for helping me out. My coffee cup couldn't go down even 1/2
way after that. Guys next to him, said Hey! how about that!
Well he cleaned that whole dang plate that had been overflowing
with biscuits and gravy....finished a fresh donated smoke,
swallered a last cup of coffee. We were about finished with our
breakfast so I left enough with the ticket to cover it and a
nice tip for Grumpus who weren't grumpy no more.
Waitress saw what I left her, had more tears in her eyes..
she said thank you ever so sweet as we left....
The old guy headed out the door towards the interstate...
we went out behind him, buckled up and took a look to see
where he was headed... there was some tall grass about a foot
high and the wind was blowing it flat....you could see for a mile
and I turned my head and looked back to the waitress
who was waving bye inside the window....
turned to look and he was gone....no where in sight...
hair went up on the back of my neck...
I drove around looking to see where he could've went to.......
nowhere to be seen.....like he just vanished...
we drove up and around the cloverleaf looking everywhere....
nowhere to be seen...and it weren't like he moved very fast
he was just gone....
draw your own conclusions. heard it said sometimes we might
entertain an angel...it certainly gave me pause that morning.
From a friend:
One of the 'fail compilation' vids showed a clip of a young girl dancing and bumping into the a/c unit and it falls out of the wall.. I did that in a Soviet-style new-rundown hotel in Cuba, and it turned out a bit more funny than that..
This was only 2-3 years after that CIA asshole Carilla and his 'Little Havana' crew in Miami had set off bombs in hotel lobbies in Havana and machine-gunned resort beaches from speedboats from Florida trying to kill the tourist trade and killing a few European and Canadian tourists instead.. Every hotel had an army detachment discretely on the roof or set up in one corner of the garage, and there were anti-aircraft missile batteries all over the place becuase the Cuban-Americans would fly over in their private Cessna's and drop flares to set fire to buildings and crops.. The Cubans put up with that for years until they finally reacted and blew one of those bastards right out of the sky in 1996.. Then it stopped.. Only mentioning this to explain why folks were on edge when this happened..
So here's my story...
My flight out of Havana had been cancelled due to hurricane and I'd been going hotel to hotel trying to find a room for the night.. I knew that hotel - a shabby looking concrete pillar finally demolished in 2001 - was a dump back then but it was past 2am and I'd been on the road driving from the other end of the island all day.. Tired and sweaty I got into the room and turned the a/c dial to the 'on' position.., and the whole damn machine just fell away my fingertips and disappeared into the darkness silently except for a 'snap' as the plug yanked out out the wall beneath the hole and went with it.. I was on the top 10th floor.. So I stuck my head in the hole to see where it went..
It was one of the old-style models that weighs about 100lbs.. It dropped into a central courtyard with all the hotel room windows open to it.., and a bar with a dozen tables on the ground floor.. Took about 2.2 seconds until impact, and was it ever a cool impact.. Sounded like a 250lb bomb.. Bar was empty so it didn't hit anybody but it instantly and completely obliterated a table and some chairs, disintegrated empty glasses, ashtrays and flower arrangements, and made a sizeable crater when it embedded itself a foot into the floor..
There was one casualty - It scared the crap out of the white-haired late-night bartender who was sort of sleeping.. poor bastard was a retired veteran of the war in Angola and had suffered heavy PTSD.. I was told they took him away strapped down in an ambulance and he needed a month medical leave after that..
It also woke all the guests because it was 3AM.. And almost all of the guests were off tour buses full of Russian retirees, including a lot of war vets.. They must've thought it was Stalingrad or Afghanistan all over again because they all ended up running down the emergency stairs clutching their passports and wallets, trampling each other and screaming in Russian.. The porter told me the next day that some of them stood in the street in their underwear for over an hour, scared to go back in.. I didn't see or hear that post-explosion stampede because I just got another room and went to sleep.. Lucky it didn't set off a panic firing of the anti-aircraft batteries..
So ever since I check an a/c mounting before I touch the damn things.. They're dangerous!..
'From Ireland with love': Irish return centuries-old favour, help Indigenous Americans hit by coronavirus
Amber Milne
LONDON
Reuters
Published May 6, 2020
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-from-ireland-with-love-irish-return-centuries-old-favour-help/
More than $2.6-million has been raised to buy food, water and masks for Navajo and Hopi families hit by the new coronavirus, with Irish people flocking to donate in return for famine aid that Indigenous Americans gave their ancestors centuries ago.
The solidarity between the two communities dates back to 1847, when the Choctaw Nation donated $170, the equivalent of thousands of dollars today, to help starving Irish people hit by the Great Famine, one of the worst famines in history. "We have lost so many of our sacred Navajo elders and youth to COVID-19. It is truly devastating. And a dark time in history for our Nation," Vanessa Tulley, one of the organizers of the GoFundMe online fundraising page, said on the website.
"We are so grateful Š Acts of kindness from indigenous ancestors passed being reciprocated nearly 200 years later through blood memory and interconnectedness. Thank you, IRELAND for showing solidarity and being here for us."
Like African-Americans and Hispanics, Indigenous Americans are suffering disproportionately from the virus, which has exposed stark inequalities in U.S. health care, housing and services.
With high rates of diabetes, heart disease and obesity, which increase the risk of coronavirus complications, COVID-19 fatalities among the Navajos are twice the national per capita rate, Navajo Department of Health data shows.
The fundraisers said the Navajo and Hopi reservations were "food deserts" with 16 grocery stores serving more than 180,000 people, forcing residents to drive hundreds of miles to cities for supplies, increasing their risk of infection.
One in two Navajo residents were unemployed and one in three without running water, they added, making it difficult to wash their hands to ward off the virus.
"Returning the favour to our brothers and sisters across the pond during your time of need," wrote one GoFundMe donor Hollie Ellis, who gave $15.
"Thank you for helping my ancestors during the famine."
Many other donors simply wrote "from Ireland with love."
The Indigenous Americans' gift to the Irish in 1847 was inspired by their own suffering, when they were forced off their lands to make way for white settlers in the 1830s. Some 4,000 people died on the long trek west to the reservations.
Land O’Lake Butter Removes Indian Maiden From Packaging After Nearly One Century
Contributor
April 16, 2020 10:46 AM ET
After nearly a century, Land O’Lakes is quietly removing the Indian maiden from its butter packaging, multiple sources reported.
To celebrate the company’s 100th anniversary next year, Mia the Indian maiden was removed from the packaging in a redesign intended to focus on celebrating farmers, Minnesota Reformer reported Wednesday.
“We need packaging that reflects the foundation and heart of our company culture — and nothing does that better than our farmer-owners whose milk is used to produce Land O’Lakes’ dairy products,” the company said in a statement in February.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/16/land-o-lakes-removes-indian-maiden-packaging-butter/
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/06/05/alabama-teen-denied-diploma-fined-
1000-for-wearing-feather-at-graduation/?intcmp=obinsite
A Native American student did not receive her high school diploma and
faces a $1,000 fine because she wore a feather during her graduation.
WPMI reports 17-year-old Chelsey Ramer decided to wear the eagle feather
during her May 23 graduation at an Alabama high school to honor her
heritage. Ramer is a member of the Poarch Creek Band of Indians.
Although the school prohibits graduates from wearing "extraneous items"
during the ceremony, Ramer says she asked the headmaster if she could wear
the feather anyway. She was denied, and was told she had to sign a dress
code contract to walk at graduation.
Ramer did not sign it, and wore the feather in her graduation ceremony
anyway. She was denied her diploma, and now must pay a $1,000 fine to the
school to receive it and her transcripts, WPMI reports.
Ramer says she feels it was worth it to wear the feather, but is angry
over the school's actions.
"I don't think it's fair at all. I feel like its discrimination," Ramer
told WPMI.
-- Barack Obama, reelected by the dumbest voters in the history of the United States of America. Eric Holder, racist black murdering United States Attorney General, still has his job. Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact to improper vetting of Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama, a confirmed felon using SSAN 042-68-4425, belonging to a dead man. Obama ignored the brutal killing of an American diplomat in Benghazi, then relieved American military officers who attempted to prevent said murder in order to cover up his own ineptness. Obama continues his goal of disarming America while ObamaCare increases insurance premiums 200% and leaves millions without health care. Obama helped bankrupt Illinois. Democrat run Chicago closes 54 public schools.
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1142, August 26, 2012
1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from
Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua
Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to
weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Mexico: Police Shoot Up US Embassy Car, Wound Two
A group of Mexican federal police agents attacked a US embassy car at
around 8 am on Aug. 24 in the state of Morales just of south of Mexico
City, near the Mexico City-Cuernavaca highway. The police agents shot
a number of times at the car, lightly wounding two US officials who
were traveling with a member of the Mexican Navy to a nearby Navy
training installation. The embassy car had diplomatic license plates,
while the federal police were reportedly traveling in four unmarked
vehicles.
Mexican authorities detained 12 federal police agents the evening of
Aug. 24 in connection with the shooting and began an investigation.
The federal Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is reportedly focusing on
“confusion” on the part of the agents, who claimed they had been in
the area to investigate a kidnapping by a criminal group that operates
in Huitzilac and Cuernavaca municipalities in Morelos. The US embassy
described the attack as an “ambush.”
Mexican media identified the wounded US officials as Jess Hood Garner
and Stan Dove Boss, said to be shooting instructors from the US Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA). They were apparently on their way to
the installation to train Navy personnel. The US government strongly
promotes the militarized “drug war” that President Félix Calderón
Hinojosa declared shortly after taking office in December 2006, and
the US supplies the Mexican military and police with training and
equipment under the $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative, an aid program
that was launched in 2008. Since the beginning of 2007 Mexico has
suffered some 50,000 drug-related deaths. (La Jornada (Mexico)
8/26/12)
On Aug. 25 the left-leaning Mexican daily La Jornada noted that US
agents have been involved in Mexican anti-drug operations, and
sometimes in operations Mexican agencies don’t know about [see Update
#1103]. The newspaper charged that by interfering in drug operations
the US has encouraged lack of coordination and even rivalry between
different Mexican security forces, especially through US officials’
“marked favoritism for the Navy.” “[T]he strategy for combating drugs
that the United States has imposed on various nations south of its
border…has turned out to be detrimental for bilateral relations
[between Mexico and the US]—now plunged into a mutual loss of
confidence—and for national sovereignty, and has represented, at the
end of the day, a risk for the security of US officials themselves in
our country.” (LJ 8/25/12)
*2. Honduras: Aguán Campesinos Arrested in Supreme Court Protests
Some 45 campesinos from the Lower Aguán Valley in northern Honduras
were arrested during protests on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22 demanding that
the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) issue rulings in favor of campesino
struggles for land. The protests were sponsored by a number of
organizations—including the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán
(MUCA) and the Authentic Claimant Movement of Aguán Campesinos
(MARCA)—that have led land occupations and other demonstrations since
2009 in an effort to obtain farmland that they say big landowners
acquired illegally during the 1990s [see Update #1137].
Tensions started to mount on Aug. 20 when a group of campesinos
arrived at the CSJ building in Tegucigalpa expecting to meet with
judges. But according to MUCA members, CSJ president Jorge Rivera
Avilés decided not to receive their representatives and in fact had
already made an agreement with representatives of two major
landowners, Miguel Facussé and René Morales. The protesters also
reported being attacked by the police at the building that day.
On Aug. 21 a group of about 80 campesinos escalated their protest by
taking over the CSJ building’s five main doors; they also set up
barricades on the street in front of the court, blocking traffic.
(According to the Brazilian news service Adital, a total of 350
protesters, including children and older people, were participating in
the demonstration.) After the campesinos had kept employees and others
from entering or leaving the building for about three hours, agents
from the Preventive Police arrived and asked the protesters to end the
blockade. The campesinos refused. A squadron of Cobras, the notorious
anti-riot police, then appeared and carried out a surprise attack,
using tear gas and nightsticks.
A total of 27 or 28 protesters were arrested, including two women, a
minor, and three people who had to be taken to a hospital for
emergency treatment. Some of the protesters sought refuge in the
headquarters of the militant Union of Workers of the Brewery Industry
and the Like (STIBYS), but police agents used tear gas on them as well
On Aug. 22 a campesino group in the Aguán Valley--at first mostly
women carrying machetes and clubs--responded to the arrests in
Tegucigalpa by blocking the highway that connects Saba and La Ceiba
with rocks and two trucks to demand the release of the 27 detained
protesters. Police and military units broke up the blockade, arresting
18 protesters; several injuries were reported.
The Aguán campesinos’ eight demands on the CSJ included the suspension
of criminal cases against campesinos detained for protesting and the
removal of judges that the protesters said had favored the big
landowners over campesinos in their decisions; the protesters were
referring especially to a case in July in which the Ceiba and
Francisco Morazán Appeals Court overturned a June decision by a lower
court awarding 2,000 hectares of land to MARCA members. The campesinos
were also asking the CSJ to declare unconstitutional a government move
to ban firearms in Colón department, which includes the Aguán region.
The measure discriminates in favor of the landowners, according to
Rafael Alegría, a national campesino leader. The security guards hired
by the big landowners and the business owners can go around with
whatever arms they want, he told reporters, but ranchers, shopkeepers
and campesinos can’t.
More than 70 people have been killed in the Aguán region over the past
three years, most of them campesinos. (Vos el Soberano (Honduras)
8/21/12; La Prensa (Tegucigalpa) 8/21/12, 8/22/12; Adital (Brazil)
8/22/12; Agencia Venezolana de Noticias 8/23/12)
On Aug. 22 the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous
Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) issued a statement condemning the
“brutal aggression” against campesino protesters on Aug. 21. The
statement also cited death threats made against Donny Reyes, the
coordinator of the LGBT Rainbow Coalition, and against members of the
Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice (MADJ), a group that fights
against corruption and for the defense of natural resources. The
statement suggested writing letters to CSJ President Jorge Rivera
Avilés (presidencia@poderjudicial.gob.hn) and Justice and Human Rights
Minister Ana Pineda (info@sjdh.gob). (Copinh statement 8/22/12)
*3. Colombia: GM and Hunger Strikers Agree to Mediation
A group of former employees of GM Colmotores, the Colombian subsidiary
of the Detroit-based General Motors Company (GM), announced on the
morning of Aug. 24 that they had agreed to enter into mediation to
resolve a dispute with the company. As part of the agreement, they
were ending a liquids-only hunger strike that 12 workers started on
Aug. 1 to pressure Colmotores to reinstate them and compensate them
for injuries. They said that until the dispute was settled, they would
continue an encampment in front of the US embassy in Bogotá which they
have maintained for more than a year [see Update #1141].
According to the former employees’ organization, the Association of
Injured Workers and Ex-Workers of Colmotores (Asotrecol), some 200 of
the company’s workers have disabilities caused by injuries on the job,
repetitive stress injuries or work-related illnesses. Asotrecol says
the company simply fires injured workers instead of compensating them
and moving them to jobs they can handle. Colomotores management has
repeatedly denied Asotrecol’s claims, but apparently it decided to
accept mediation rather than face the negative publicity being
generated in the US by the three-week hunger strike and by photographs
of seven fasters who sewed their lips shut. The workers’ supporters in
the US include the nonprofit organization Witness for Peace and the
main US labor confederation, the AFL-CIO.
The US Labor Department issued a statement on Aug. 24 welcoming the
accord and highlighting its own role, along with the US embassy in
Bogotá and the US Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, in
brokering the deal. The statement failed to mention that the US
government itself is a party to the dispute, since it is General
Motors’ largest shareholder as a result of a major bailout in 2009.
“To us it seems unjust and a double standard,” Asotrecol president
Jorge Parra told reporters, “for the government of [US president
Barack] Obama to demand respect for labor rights in Colombia and the
same time allow the abuses that have happened to us.” (AFP 8/24/12 via
Univision; AFL-CIO Now blog 8/24/12; US Labor Department press release
8/24/12)
*4. Colombia: Paramilitaries Issue Death Threats in Barrancabermeja
A reconstituted paramilitary group, “Los Rastrojos Urban Commandos,”
made a series of death threats the week of Aug. 13 against members of
four human rights organizations and one union in Barrancabermeja in
the northern Colombian department of Santander. The first threats came
in a manila envelope found on Aug. 14 at the home of human rights
activist Himad Choser. The envelope contained a 9 mm bullet and a
pamphlet by “Los Rastrojos” declaring Choser an enemy because he had
been “denouncing and attacking our economic structure, based on drug
trafficking in the region.” The pamphlet described Choser as “at the
service of the FARC,” the rebel Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia. The pamphlet also named four organizations and the National
Union of Food Industry Workers (SINALTRAINAL) as collaborators with
Choser.
On Aug. 18 another "Los Rastrojos" pamphlet was left in the office of
the People in Action Organization, a group that defends LGBT rights.
In this pamphlet the paramilitaries declared a “death sentence against
Mr. Ovidio [Nieto], of the organization that defends the gays”;
against “the guerrilla William Mendoza,” the local SINALTRAINAL
president; and against Choser, “so that this defender of fags won’t
agitate the city.” “We’re going to be blunt,” the pamphlet continued.
“We won’t give more warnings.”
Local human rights organizations called on the authorities “to fulfill
their role as guarantor[s] of the life and tranquility of the
residents of our city,” and they asked the international community to
monitor and publicize the threats and to demand that the national
government take action against criminal groups. (Communiqué 8/20/12
posted on SINALTRAINAL website) [Earlier in the month Colombian
unionists called for international solidarity for SINALTRAINAL
president Mendoza, who says the government is trying to have him
sentenced to prison, where he fears he will be killed; see Update
#1141.]
"Los Rastrojos" is one of several criminal groups that carry on the
work of rightwing paramilitary groups which ostensibly demobilized
during the middle 2000s [see Updates #1086, 1087, World War 4 Report
5/8/12]. On Aug. 18 the Colombian radio station Caracol reported that
a leading paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (AUC), acquired weapons from criminal groups in the US in
2004 and 2005, at the same time that the group claimed to be
demobilizing. Basing its report on documents from the US Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA), Caracol said the AUC acquired 200 M16
rifles, 100 fragmentation grenades, 150 rocket-propelled grenades and
50,000 .22 cartridges from Miami in just one year.
The last section of the AUC to demobilize, the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc,
officially gave up its arms on Aug. 16, 2006. Some of its former
members then formed “Los Urabeños,” which the Medellín-based news
service Colombia Reports describes as “one of the most powerful drug
trafficking organizations in Colombia and in control of the drug
routes in what used to be the heartland of the AUC.” (Colombia Reports
8/19/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras,
Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, Dominican Republic, US/immigration
Proven model predicts higher food prices if speculation is not reined
in (Latin America)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7773
Marketing Consent: A Journey into the Public Relations Underside of
Canada's Mining Sector in Latin America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/international-archives-60/3829-marketing-consent-a-journey-into-the-public-relations-underside-of-canadas-mining-sector-in-latin-america
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel: 'There is No Political Will to Respect Native
Peoples' in Argentina
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/argentina-archives-32/3832-adolfo-perez-esquivel-qthere-is-no-political-will-to-respect-native-peoplesq-in-argentina
Chile urged to ensure justice for victims of enforced disappearances
http://ww4report.com/node/11422
Hydropower Dam to Flood Sacred Amazon Indigenous Site in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3825-hydropower-dam-to-flood-sacred-amazon-indigenous-site-in-brazil
Brazil: court blocks mega-hydro to protect Pantanal
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11435
Brazil: high court orders release of rancher convicted in Dorothy Stang slaying
http://www.ww4report.com/node/1143
Bolivia: Aymara communities occupy Oruro mine
http://ww4report.com/node/11420
Peru: Newmont Mining to abandon Conga project?
http://ww4report.com/node/11419
To the Colombian Military: “Don’t be afraid of peace!”
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7794
The Colombian Paradox: Capital Mobility, Land, and Power
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/colombian-paradox-capital-mobility-land-and-power
Colombia: Despite Repression, the Minga in Huila Continues for the
Liberation of Mother Earth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3830-colombia-despite-repression-the-minga-in-huila-continues-for-the-liberation-of-mother-earth
Colombian GM Workers on Hunger Strike Until Death Sew Their Mouths Shut
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=8720
US Carter Center: Venezuelan Electoral System one of the Most
Automated in the World
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/7177
U.S.-Funded War in El Salvador Casts Shadow over Romney/Ryan Campaign
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3827-us-funded-war-in-el-salvador-casts-shadow-over-romneyryan-campaign
Broken Anvil: Victims Fight for Justice After DEA Operation Leaves
Four Dead in Honduras
https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#label/wnu1142/1394c720240c7ea2
Lost and Found (Honduras)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7779
Guatemala: The Spoils of an Undeclared War
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3823-guatemala-the-spoils-of-an-undeclared-war
Guatemala: ex-National Police chief gets 70 years for "disappearance"
http://www.ww4report.com/node/11436
Mining, Repression and the Rhetoric of Democracy and the Rule of Law
in Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3824-mining-repression-and-the-rhetoric-of-democracy-and-the-rule-of-law-in-guatemala
Mexico: victory for campesino struggle against La Parota dam
http://ww4report.com/node/11421
Mexican Farmers Battle Canadian Mining Company for Control of Their Land
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3822-mexican-farmers-battle-canadian-mining-company-for-control-of-their-land
Miners in Coahuila Died for Seven Dollars a Day (Mexico)
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/7831
Stop, Frisk and Demolish in Ciudad Juarez (Mexico)
http://www.salem-news.com/articles/august212012/ciudad-stops-kp.php
The Caravan for Peace Begins a Long Ride Across the USA
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/21/caravan-peace-begins-long-ride-across-usa
Caravan of Peace, Cities of Death
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2012/08/caravan-of-peace-cities-of-death.html
On Haiti, Jared Diamond Hasn't Done His Homework
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/20/haiti-jared-diamond-hasnt-done-his-homework
A Twenty-First Century Border: The Ever-expanding U.S. Boundary
(Dominican Republic, US/immigration)
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/8/22/twenty-first-century-border-ever-expanding-us-boundary
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
This Update is archived, with links, at:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2012/08/wnu-1142-mexican-police-shoot-up-us.html
California Homeowners Bill of Rights
This link is for the Homeowners Bill of Rights (AB-278) that was just signed off on by Governor Brown and goes into effect on January 1, 2013. This is for California. It ammends the state statutes. It includes the legislatures statement of intent and adds quite a bit of langauge. It repeals 2924 of the Civil Code, as amended by Section 2 of Chapter 180 of the Statutes of 2010. Section 2924.9 is added to the Civl Code.
While it doesn't take effect until 2013 it can be used to show "intent" of the legislature and such in current lawsuits. It really needs to be studied before applying as there is a lot added, ammended and "clarified" - not all of which is good.
http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201120120AB278
Water thieves
we're realizing in this drought year why range wars were fought over water
and then we even have water thieves destroying property just to water lawns
I figure they're nothing more than communists
and we KNOW what they deserve.....
Obamacare- pah- Simple solution
We give Egypt $1.3 billion dollars every year
Out of that, remove $300 million and give $1 million in Health Savings Accounts to every single American
Problem solved.
They can ALL afford to buy Health Insurance or just pay their doctor bills
and just fill 'er back up- Top 'em off every single year
and tell Egypt to go piss up a rope
Then take the $1 Billion that's left and put it into a special buffer account for those higher cost situations
in brazil, one tribe may be be awarded over 83million dollars for damage to their lands.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18528035
Prosecutor Marco Antonio Delfino de Almeida argues that the Guyraroka community must be compensated for moral and material damages.
"I hope this suit will help governments to reconsider their actions," he said.
The Guyrarokas are part of the Guarani people in western Brazil.
According to the Public Prosecution Office in Brazil, the tribe began to be expelled from its ancestral lands, near the Paraguay border, in 1927.
The authorities demarcated their lands only in 2009.
Mr Delfino, a prosecutor for Mato Grosso do Sul state, said that the allowing them access to their land was not enough after so many years.
"When they go back, most of the land will have been cleared of its forests. The soil will be exhausted by decades of intensive agriculture."
He told Agencia Brasil, the Brazilian government official news agency, that "the Indians will need the financial resources they lack to make their land productive and their environment sustainable again."
The law suit against the Brazilian Federal Government and Funai - the national indigenous agency - was filed in April but only made public now.
Mr Delfino wants the compensation money to be used in policies that benefit Guarani communities in Mato Grosso do Sul.
The Guarani are Brazil's largest indigenous minority, with around 46,000 members living in seven states.
Many others live in neighbouring Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina.
Last week, a biofuels company set up in Brazil by Shell - Raizen - signed an agreement last week with the Brazilian authorities giving up plans to buy sugar cane sourced from indigenous lands, including those of the Guyrarokas.
The move was announced after months of pressure by the Brazilian government.
Headline:
Debate Fumes Over ‘Agent Orange Corn’ as Dow Awaits Federal Approval
of the Genetically Engineered Seed
Critics of a new genetically modified corn created by Dow AgroScience,
a division of The Dow Chemical Company, are voicing fears that the
crop could pose serious threats to human health and the environment,
reported CBSNews.com.
The corn called “Enlist,” though widely known as “Agent Orange Corn,”
awaits federal approval. It was genetically engineered to be resistant
to the chemical 2,4-D, an ingredient being carpet-bombed over American
crops to kill “super weeds,” which have become resistant to
traditional herbicides. The powerful chemical is linked to the
infamous “Agent Orange” sprayed by the U.S. military during the
Vietnam War. The pesticide was originally created to destroy crops and
forests that concealed enemy troops and supply lines. But the chemical
concoction was even more powerful than its intention, killing or
maiming roughly 400,000 people and causing birth defects in
approximately 500,000 children, estimates the Vietnam government,
reported The Globe and Mail.
And despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s rejection in April
of environmentalists’ petition to pull 2,4-D from the market, and
Dow’s insistence that the herbicide is safe to use, the International
Agency for Research on Cancer has classified 2,4-D as a class 2B
carcinogen—considered possibly carcinogenic to humans. In May, the
group Vietnam Veterans of America wrote President Barack Obama,
imploring the United States Food & Drug Administration (USDA) to
examine how increased use of 2,4-D might harm people’s health.
Health advocates’ concerns are rising that greater amounts of 2,4-D
could be used due to Dow’s recent invention, leading to even more use
of toxic chemicals. Until now, 2,4-D could only be doused on crops
very early or late in the growing season. Otherwise, it kills the
crops along with the weeds. But Enlist allows the herbicide to be
sprayed year-round.
“Many studies show that 2,4-D exposure is associated with various
forms of cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, nerve damage, hormone disruption
and birth defects,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food &
Water Watch, in a statement. “USDA must take these significant risks
seriously and reject approval of this crop.” .... (cont)
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2012/06/18/debate-fumes-over-agent-orange-corn-as-dow-awaits-federal-approval-of-the-genetically-engineered-seed-118274
Mayan Elders speak out about the 2012 Prophecy
Mar 2011 by Janhvi Johorey
“Anthropologists visit the temple sites and read the inscriptions and make up stories about the Maya, but they do not read the signs correctly. It’s just their imagination. Other people write about prophecy in the name of the Maya. They say that the world will end in December 2012. The Mayan elders are angry with this. The world will not end. It will be transformed.”- Carlos Barrios
Carlos Barrios, Mayan elder and Ajq’ij (is a ceremonial priest and spiritual guide) of the Eagle Clan who initiated an investigation into the different Mayan calendars circulating studied with many teachers and interviewed nearly 600 traditional Mayan elders to widen his scope of knowledge.
Carlos found out quickly there were several conflicting interpretations of Mayan hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, Sacred Books of ‘Chilam Balam’ and various ancient text. According to the Mayans, we are currently in the era of the transition that is taking place between the World of the Fourth Sun and the World of the Fifth Sun.
The indigenous have the calendars and know how to accurately interpret it — not others. The Mayan Calendars comprehension of time, seasons, and cycles has proven itself to be vast and sophisticated. The Maya understand 17 different calendars such as the Tzolk’in or Cholq’ij, some of them charting time accurately over a span of more than ten million years.
Mayan Day-keepers view the Dec. 21, 2012 date as a rebirth, the start of the World of the Fifth Sun. It will be the start of a new era resulting from and signified by the solar meridian crossing the galactic equator and the Earth aligning itself with the center of the galaxy.
At sunrise on December 21, 2012 for the first time in 26,000 years the Sun rises to conjunct the intersection of the Milky Way and the plane of the ecliptic. This cosmic cross is considered to be an embodiment of the Sacred Tree, The Tree of Life, a tree remembered in all the world’s spiritual traditions.The date specified in the calendar Winter Solstice in the year 2012 does not mark the end of the world.Many who have written about the Mayan calendar sensationalize this date, but they do not know. The ones who possess the knowledge are the indigenous elders who are entrusted with keeping the traditions.A Mayan elder who lived in an isolated, solitary cave for years came recently to a Mayan ceremony in Guatemala to speak about the human beings as a race facing the challenge of overcoming the dark side and letting the light emerge , so that in the World of the Fifth Sun, there is unity in mankind and polarity has been overcome so much so that the dark side is no longer supreme.
In his words ,“Right now each person and group is going his or her own way. The elder of the mountains said there is hope if the people of the light can come together and unite in some way. We live in a world of polarity — day and night, man and woman, positive and negative. Light and darkness need each other. They are a balance.”
“Just now the dark side is very strong, and very clear about what they want. They have their vision and their priorities clearly held, and also their hierarchy. They are working in many ways so that we will be unable to connect with the spiral Fifth World in 2012.”
“On the light side everyone thinks they are the most important, that their own understandings, or their group’s understandings, are the key. There’s a diversity of cultures and opinions, so there is competition, diffusion, and no single focus.”
Mayan Elder Carlos Barrios has further elaborated that ” We live in a world of energy. An important task at this time is to learn how to see or sense the energy of everyone and everything –people, plants, animals. This has become increasingly important as we draw close to the World of the Fifth Sun, for it is associated with the element ‘ether’–the realm where energy lives and weaves. Go to the sacred places of the Earth to pray for peace , and have respect for the Earth which gives us our food, clothing and shelter. We need to reactivate the energy of the sacred places. This is our work.”
He said the elders have opened the doors so that other races can come to the Mayan world to revive and maintain the tradition. “The Maya have long appreciated and respected that there are other colors, other races, and other spiritual systems. They know that the destiny of the Mayan world is related to the destiny of the whole world.”
“The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It’s not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It’s encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way.”
The ancient Mayans were masters of time, keepers of good calendars. And now we have one of their timekeepers' workrooms to prove it.
Archaeologists in Guatemala report the discovery of a small building whose walls display a stunningly preserved mural of a brightly adorned Mayan king and calendars that destroy any notion that the Mayans predicted the end of the world in 2012.
These deep-time calendars can be used to count thousands of years into the past and future, countering pop-culture and New Age ideas that Mayan calendars ended on Dec. 21, 2012, (or Dec. 23, depending on who's counting), thereby predicting the end of the world.
The newly found calendars, which track the motion of the moon, Venus and Mars, provide an unprecedented glimpse into how these storied sky-gazers — who dominated Central America for nearly 1,000 years — kept such accurate track of months, seasons and years.
"What they're trying to do is understand the large cycles of cosmic time," said William Saturno, the Boston University archaeologist who led the expedition. "This is the space they're doing it in. It's like looking into da Vinci's workshop."
Before the new find, the best-preserved Mayan calendars were inscribed in bark-paged books called codices, the most famous being the Dresden Codex. But those pages hail from several hundred years later than the newly found calendars.
Saturno said researchers have long assumed the Mayans had worked out the cycles of the moons and planets much earlier, but no evidence of such work had been found.
But in 2010, an undergraduate student working with Saturno, Max Chamberlain, stumbled onto the house as the team began excavations at a Mayan city, Xultun, which, despite being known since 1915, had never been professionally excavated.
A quick excavation at the house revealed the back wall of the building, replete with a mural of a Mayan king, in bright blue, adorned with feathers and jewelry.
Saturno's team brushed off the wall and, "Ta-da!" he said. "A Technicolor, fantastically preserved mural. I don't know how it survived." Saturno emailed contacts at the National Geographic Society, which agreed to pay for a full excavation of the building.
The mural is the oldest known preserved Mayan painting.
Next to the king, a scribe holds a writing instrument.
Three mysterious figures wearing black also march across the wall. One is named "older brother obsidian."
Once the team uncovered several columns of red and black dots and dashes — the Mayans' numbering system — the meaning of these figures was almost immediately evident to David Stuart, one of the world's foremost experts in Mayan hieroglyphics. It was a lunar table, showing a 4,784-day cycle of the moon's phases.
The table is broken into 27 columns, each representing six lunar months. Each column is topped by the face of one of three moon gods: a jaguar, a skull or a woman. These three repeat. So by consulting the table, a priest could tell which moon god would preside over a particular date.
Want to know whether the king's birthday falls under a jaguar moon 10 years hence? A hundred? A thousand? Check the table.
On another wall sits a smaller set of four columns of figures. This second table was filled with huge numbers relating to how long it takes Mars and Venus to cross the sky and come back again.
This calendar spans some 7,000 years, heading much further into the future than the supposed 2012 doomsday date.
"Like a lot of ancient cultures, they were able with naked-eye astronomy to calculate the paths of the planets," Stuart said.
Heather McKillop, a Mayan expert at Louisiana State University who was not involved in the research, called the Xultun murals "stunning new evidence of the ancient origins of Maya astronomical record keeping, best known from later documents."
Tulane University's Marc Zender, another Mayan expert not involved in the work, said that "it's about as exciting as discovering lost manuscripts of a famous mathematician like Archimedes. It's an amazing privileged glimpse over their shoulders."
With the virtually unexplored city of Xultun containing hundreds of buildings stretching across at least 16 square miles of jungle, Saturno guesses that plenty of other surprises await excavation.
"It might take another two decades," he said.
He expects the world to still exist then. The Mayan calendar does start a new "long cycle," this year, but he equated that with the odometer on a car rolling over from 99,999 miles to zero: "You go, 'Yea,' but the car just doesn't disappear."
The discovery is detailed
Missing link found? Scientists unveil fossil of 47 million-year-old primate, Darwinius masillae
BY SAMANTHA STRONG AND RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Feast your eyes on what a group of scientists call the Holy Grail of human evolution.
A team of researchers Tuesday unveiled an almost perfectly intact fossil of a 47 million-year-old primate they say represents the long-sought missing link between humans and apes.
Officially known as Darwinius masillae, the fossil of the lemur-like creature dubbed Ida shows it had opposable thumbs like humans and fingernails instead of claws.
Scientists say the cat-sized animal's hind legs offer evidence of evolutionary changes that led to primates standing upright - a breakthrough that could finally confirm Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-05-19/news/17922526_1_human-evolution-missing-link-jorn-hurum
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1128, May 6, 2012
1. Latin America: May 1 Demonstrations Focus on Minimum Wage
2. Mexico: Unions Hold “Last May Day of the PAN Era”
3. Haiti: Sweatshops Raise Wages on May 1--for One Day
4. Nicaragua: Last of the FSLN’s Founders Dies
5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,
Mexico, Haiti, Immigration
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from
Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua
Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. It is archived at
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com. For a subscription, write to
weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/WeeklyNewsUpdat.
*1. Latin America: May 1 Demonstrations Focus on Minimum Wage
Many of the traditional celebrations of International Workers Day on
May 1 this year had the minimum wage as a central theme—in some cases
because governments marked the occasion by increasing wages, in other
cases because the governments refused to do so.
Between 40,000 and 100,000 Chileans marched in Santiago on May 1 in a
demonstration organized by the Unified Workers Confederation (CUT) and
bringing together unionists and protesters from the student movement
[see Update #1127]. CUT president Arturo Martínez called for “a real
minimum wage, which this year should reach 250,000 pesos” a month
(about $520). According to Labor Minister Evelyn Matthei this “isn’t
possible”; she claimed it would cause an increase in unemployment. As
frequently happens in Chile, violence broke out at the end of the
peaceful protest: some 200 hooded youths threw rocks at police agents,
journalists and other demonstrators. Six agents from the carabineros
militarized police were reportedly injured and some 20 people were
arrested.
In Sao Paulo, Brazil’s industrial center, unionists marched for a
40-hour week and for lower rates of interest on loans; labor leaders
claimed a victory in center-left president Dilma Rousseff’s call the
day before for banks to make credit more accessible. The Força
Sindical labor confederation claimed that one million people
participated in the day’s events. In Sao Luís in the northeastern
state of Maranhao, unionists protested the murder of journalist Décio
Sa, the fourth reporter to be killed in Brazil this year. (EFE 5/1/12
via Diario Libre (Dominican Republic); La Jornada (Mexico) 5/2/12 from
AFP, DPA, PL, Xinhua, Notimex, correspondent)
In Bolivia President Evo Morales marked May 1 by renationalizing the
country’s main electric grid, which was privatized in 1997. Morales
promised to work out a compensation arrangement within 180 days with
the current owner, Empresa Transportadora de Electricidad, a
subsidiary of the Spanish company Red Eléctrica de España, S.A. The
Spanish government was clearly upset by the takeover, which followed
just two weeks after the Argentine government announced its plan to
renationalize the oil company YPF SA from Spain’s Repsol [see Update
#1126]. Morales’ move “is sending a negative message that generates
distrust,” Spanish ambassador Ramon Santos told reporters. Ironically,
the power grid was already partially nationalized—to the Spanish
government, which owns 20% of Red Eléctrica de España.
Morales has used May Day for similar announcements in the past: he
started the process of nationalizing the oil and gas sector on May 1
in 2006, and in 2008 he chose May 1 to announce that the privatization
of the main phone company, Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones
(Entel), had been completed. (AP 5/1/12 via El Paso (Texas) Times;
Adital (Brazil) 5/2/12)
Peruvian president Ollanta Humala and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez
both announced raises in the monthly minimum wage on May 1—from 675
soles ($253.70) to 750 soles ($281.90) in Peru and from 1,548.22
bolívares ($360) to 2,047 bolívares ($476) in Venezuela. Chávez’s
government also reduced the work week from 44 hours to 40 hours, while
Humala promised to fight against child labor and the disparity in
wages between men and women.
In Colombia, Tarsicio Mora, president of the Unitary Workers Central
(CUT), charged that six unionists have been murdered so far this year
and that the number has reached 3,000 for the past 15 years, making
“Colombia the most dangerous country for carrying out union
activities.” Some 64 people were arrested in Bogotá for carrying
objects that the authorities said might be used to disrupt the
official ceremony, at which President Juan Manuel Santos signed a
decree regulating teletrabajo (work outside the office via
telecommunications) and expressed sorrow that the killing of unionists
was continuing. (EFE 5/1/12 via Diario Libre; LJ 5/2/12 from AFP, DPA,
PL, Xinhua, Notimex, correspondent)
Hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers marched in Havana on May 1,
along with a total of 1,700 unionists from 117 other countries, but
the demonstration was unusually short, just one hour. The ceremony
included an announcement by Salvador Valdés, head of the Cuban
Workers’ Confederation (CTC), that there will be no increase in wages
until the country has managed to eliminate subsidies and reduce public
sector employment. Until now the trend has been to link wages to
productivity. In 2010 the government reported a a 4.2% increase in
productivity and a 4.4% increase in the median wage; in 2011, the
increase in productivity was 2.8% and the wage increase was 2.7%.
The austerity measure is in line with a radical economic restructuring
plan, announced in September 2010, to eliminate 500,000 jobs in state
enterprises while building up the private sector [see Update #1057].
The CTC said that 140,000 public sector jobs were eliminated in 2011,
somewhat short of the goal of 170,000 layoffs for the year. According
to the Labor and Social Security Minister, as of February the country
had 371,200 micro-enterprises; the government hopes they will absorb
the laid-off state employees. (LJ 5/2/12 from correspondent)
*2. Mexico: Unions Hold “Last May Day of the PAN Era”
Left-leaning independent unions dominated celebrations of
International Workers Day in Mexico on May 1, while some centrist
labor federations decided not to hold marches, reportedly because of
concern over security. Tens of thousands of unionists, campesinos and
other activists participated in the independent unions’ annual march
to Mexico City’s main plaza, the Zócalo; the left-leaning daily La
Jornada reported that more unions and more unionists took part than in
previous years.
The demonstration was largely a repudiation of what participants
called the “PRI-AN”: the centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party
(PRI), which controlled the national government and most state
governments from 1929 to 2000, and the center-right National Action
Party (PAN), which has held the presidency since 2000. Speakers called
for a “punishment vote” against both parties in the presidential and
national elections on July 1 and referred to this year’s demonstration
as “the last Labor Day march of the PANista era.” Martín Esparza,
secretary general of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) [see
Update #1097], called for unionists to back center-left presidential
candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, “the only one who has made
commitments to the working class.” Esparza denounced the National
Electoral Institute, which controls the electoral process, and called
for workers to prevent electoral fraud by forming a “parallel IFE.”
López Obrador lost to current president Felipe Calderón Hinojosa in
2006 by very narrow margin in the official tally. (La Jornada 5/2/12;
EFE 5/1/12 via Diario Libre (Dominican Republic))
The end of the PAN’s control of the presidency this year seems
inevitable. According to a poll by the GEA-ISA group published in the
daily Milenio, PRI presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto leads
with 47.3% of the preferences of voters who have made up their minds.
PAN candidate Josefina Vázquez Mota trailed with 27.3%, followed
closely by López Obrador, running for a coalition that includes the
center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), with 24%. About
25.6% of voters remain undecided, according to the survey, based on
face-to-face polling of 1,152 Mexicans from May 3 to May 5. (Milenio
5/5/12)
The “PANista era” may already be over on the labor front. During the
past six years two successive PAN administrations have tried to remove
Napoleón Gómez Urrutia from his post as the general secretary of the
National Union of Mine and Metal Workers and the Like of the Mexican
Republic (SNTMMSRM) see Update #1106]. In 2006 the government of
then-president Vicente Fox Quesada (2000-2006) charged Gómez Urrutia
in a $55 million corruption case involving union funds, and in 2008
Calderón’s administration overturned his reelection as SNTMMSRM
general secretary. Gómez Urrutia has been living in exile in Vancouver
since 2006.
But the fight against the union leader collapsed this spring. On Apr.
24 Mexicans learned that Judge Manuel Bárcena Villanueva in Mexico
City had quashed the warrant for Gómez Urrutia’s arrest, and on May 2
a panel of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) upheld a
lower court ruling that the government exceeded its authority in
nullifying the union’s elections. Gómez Urrutia will return to Mexico
shortly, according to his lawyer. (Milenio 4/24/12; LJ 5/3/12, 5/4/12)
*3. Haiti: Sweatshops Raise Wages on May 1--for One Day
About 100 Haitian unionists and activists observed International
Workers Day on May 1 with a march in Port-au-Prince to demand better
wages and conditions for the country’s assembly workers, who mainly
produce apparel for sale in North America. Groups organizing the march
included the Textile and Garment Workers Union (SOTA), the leftist
workers’ organization Batay Ouvriye (“Workers’ Struggle”), the Women’s
Network of the Bureau of International Lawyers (BAI) and the
Mobilization Collective for Compensation for Cholera Victims
(Komodevik). SOTA and Batay Ouvriye have been working since the fall
to organize assembly plant workers in the capital [see Update #1108].
The march started at the National Industrial Parks Company (Sonapi), a
“free trade zone” (FTZ) for assembly plants near the airport in the
north of Port-au-Prince; the protesters then proceeded to the
Parliament downtown; the day’s slogan was “Work yes, slavery no.”
Despite the small size of the demonstration, plant managers took
measures to keep assembly workers from joining the march. The managers
threatened the workers with firing if they left the plants, and paid
them 500 gourdes (about $11.80) for staying on the job during the day.
[In August 2009 thousands of Sonapi workers walked off the job to join
marches for a daily minimum wage of 200 gourdes (about $2.95); see
Update #1001.]
Guy Numa, a member of the Popular Democratic Movement (MODEP), which
helped organize the march, noted that in 2009 the factory owners said
they couldn’t afford an increased minimum wage. “These bosses, who did
everything they could to block the vote on the 200 gourde minimum wage
[back then], are proving on this May Day that they can pay as much as
500 gourdes,” he said. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 4/30/12, 5/2/12)
On May 3 Commerce and Industry Minister Wilson Laleau was working to
interest Chinese, Dominican and US investors in a massive FTZ being
built in the Northeast department, the Caracol Industrial Park (PIC)
[see Update #1112]. The authorities say the plants at the new park
will eventually create 65,000 jobs.
At a press conference that day Laleau admitted that there were
problems with the project, which is being promoted by the US
government and international agencies, but added that “the positive
impacts should largely compensate for the negative impacts.” He was
asked about plans for housing, since exaggerated promises of assembly
plant jobs in the 1970s and 1980s had led job seekers to move into the
Cité Soleil commune near the factories in the north of Port-au-Prince;
the result was a huge, overcrowded neighborhood with substandard
housing and virtually no public services. Laleau answered that the
housing situation was being studied and the results would be released
in June. “[I]t is out of the question that what happened around the
Port-au-Prince industrial park should be reproduced at Caracol,” he
promised. (AlterPresse 5/4/12)
*4. Nicaragua: Last of the FSLN’s Founders Dies
Nicaraguan revolutionary Tomás Borge Martínez died in a Managua
military hospital on Apr. 30 at age 81 from pneumonia and other health
problems. He was the last surviving member of the small group,
including Carlos Fonseca Amador, that founded the leftist Sandinista
National Liberation Front (FSLN) in 1961. At the time of his death he
was serving as Nicaragua’s ambassador to Peru.
Born to a poor family in Matagalpa, Borge left university studies in
the 1950s to fight against the Somoza family dictatorship. He was
imprisoned in the 1970s but was freed as a result of the FSLN’s
dramatic seizure of the National Palace in August 1978. After the
triumph of the revolution in 1979, Borge served as interior minister,
controlling various police agencies and the prison system. During
those years he was accused of numerous human rights violations.
Indigenous Miskitos charged that he engineered a policy of
displacement and murders against rebels on the Atlantic Coast; others
accused him of ordering the killing of 37 imprisoned opponents in
Granada, a charge which Borge always denied. He was also accused of
enriching himself from government funds after the FSLN was voted out
of office in 1990.
“They only remember the errors we committed, like establishing press
censorship, which at this point I think was an error,” he said in an
interview that he gave many years later to the conservative daily La
Prensa, which the FSLN government closed down temporarily in the
1980s. Nobody remembered the improvements he made in prison
conditions, Borge said, adding that the policies he implemented as
interior minister were collectively decided on by the FSLN’s
nine-member National Directorate.
When the FSLN began to split in the 1990s, Borge sided with the
faction headed by current Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega Saavedra,
while many of his friends joined opposition factions and eventually
left the party. Nicaraguan poet Gioconda Belli, who quit the FSLN, is
widely quoted as saying that Borge “ended up as a tragicomic figure”
during this period. But after his death Belli wrote: “What remains of
Tomás for me is affection… I am sure that Tomás loved the idea of the
Revolution as much as any of us who lived to make it and to see it
triumph. Who of us who lived in that time can say that we managed to
live and be the ideal person that we dreamed of?” (AP 5/1/12 via La
Prensa (Nicaragua); El Nuevo Diario (Nicaragua) 5/1/12, 5/3/12)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Chile,
Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala,
Mexico, Haiti, Immigration
South American Fiber Optic Ring
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3609-south-american-fiber-optic-ring
The Washington Post’s Flimsy Critique of Argentina
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/5/2/washington-posts-flimsy-denunciation-argentina
The Right to Memory in Chile: An Interview with Erika Hennings,
President of Londres 38
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3618-the-right-to-memory-in-chile-an-interview-with-erika-hennings-president-of-londres-38
Chilean Supreme Court Red Lights Goldcorp Mine
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3607-chilean-supreme-court-red-lights-goldcorp-mine
Amazon Indians’ Fishing Ritual Brought to Halt in Brazil
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3610-amazon-indians-fishing-ritual-brought-to-halt
Scientist Calls Peru Conga Mining Project an ‘Environmental Disaster:’
Interview with Reinhard Seifert
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3608-scientist-calls-peru-conga-mining-project-an-environmental-disaster-interview-with-reinhard-seifert
Venezuela's Inflation Falls for 5 Months in a Row
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6970
El Salvador: Court Deliberates on Constitutionality of Military Appointments
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3612-el-salvador-court-deliberates-on-constitutionality-of-military-appointments
Drug Plane "Forced" to Land!? (Honduras)
http://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2012/05/drug-plane-forced-to-land.html
Guatemala: Decriminalization? Don't Believe the Hype
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/3606-guatemala-decriminalization-dont-believe-the-hype
Iron Fist Cracks Down on Guatemala
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3613-iron-fist-cracks-down-on-guatemala
Mexico approves law to aid victims of narco violence
http://ww4report.com/node/11057
"Black Friday" in Nuevo Laredo: 23 dead
http://ww4report.com/node/11061
Mexico: Calderón Government Monitoring Movement for Peace with Justice
and Dignity Leaders
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3611-mexico-calderon-government-monitoring-movement-for-peace-with-justice-and-dignity-leaders-
Haiti’s Hotel Boom: Progress or Trickledown Economics?
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/5/4/haiti%E2%80%99s-hotel-boom-progress-or-trickledown-economics
A Dangerously Slippery Slope: Drones and the Dream of Remote Control
in the Borderlands
http://nacla.org/blog/2012/5/3/dangerously-slippery-slope-drones-and-dream-remote-control-borderlands
May Day heralds revived movement —but wingnuts (or provocateurs?) mar
some marches (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Cuba, US)
http://ww4report.com/node/11051
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
This Update is archived, with links, at:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2012/05/wnu-1128-latin-american-may-1-demos.html
I'm just sitting here remembering one of the kinder catholic "schools" I was put in
not one nun laid a hand on me there, well, except for one
and she just grabbed my fist from behind as I drew it back
as I was on the floor beating the shit out of a racist asshole
who popped his mouth off with racist comments at me one time too many
and would take cheap shots...typical bully
so
we were both in the library and the other students left
which he didn't know.....I turned the corner and looked at him KNOWING we were alone
well actually I stayed back when they said leave to see what he was doing
and the dumbshit in the back of the library wasn't paying attention
so figuring he'd run his mouth.... and he did
and it was only the two of us in there
.........just him and me......
then he looked around...realized it was just us
he ran to try for the door
I threw him against the shelves so hard
they went down like dominoes
I stopped kinda surprised at how easy those shelves went down
and stood there kinda in awe watching them go down
he was bigger than me
but ran like a rabbit over the shelves and I caught him at the door
and then proceeded to beat the living shit out of him
we got turned around somehow during the tackle
so on the floor we were still part way facing into the library at the doorway
then he would cover up his face and I held my fist drawn back
and would pop him when he opened up thinking I had stopped
then near the end -with him a sobbing bloody mess
I felt someone try to grab my hand
I got two more pops on him...I didn't look back, I stayed to the task at hand
and on the third one I couldn't come forward with my fist
I looked back and this huge 200+ lb nun had a death grip on my wrist
so I just stopped.....all calm
so the head nun got there in the next 5-10 seconds along with a few others
since the big gal had yelled for help at the top of her lungs
and they asked me what happened
I calmly said, I think he just learned to keep his mouth shut
so the head nun asked him what happened
and the dumbshit opened his mouth all blubbering and bleeding
and I knocked the living shit out of him and put him flat on his back on the floor
I figured what the hell
I wasn't going to get into any worse trouble
they all grabbed me and the head nun said NOW ARE YOU DONE?!
I said yep and stood there calm
so she asked him again.....
and the dumbshit opened his mouth all blubbering AGAIN!?!?!?! ....WTF???
(the idiot just wasn't learning the lesson obviously)
and I stepped in fast and knocked the living shit out of him again
they jumped on me again and the dumbshit just jumped up off the floor
and took off and ran out the doors and left the school
and so I got shipped out of there that day
but hey, they were more liberal in their attitudes at least
and didn't believe in corporal punishment like the previous places
but unfortunately for the dumbshit
I DID believe in corporal punishment
I bet never again in his life did he say a disparaging thing to another Native American from ANY tribe
................
©
.
Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal
that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lowerclass
individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were
more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class
individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals
were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies
(study 3), take valued goods fromothers (study 4), lie in a negotiation
(study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6),
and endorse unethical behavior at work (study 7) than were lowerclass
individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that
upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in
part, by their more favorable attitudes toward greed.
more .. http://redaccion.nexos.com.mx/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/1118373109.full_.pdf
once in a while you run across a good story
I liked this one:
There once was a man named George Thomas, pastor in a small New England town. One Easter Sunday morning he came to the Church carrying a rusty, bent, old bird cage, and set it by the pulpit. Eyebrows were raised and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak. . . .
"I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me swinging this bird cage.
On the bottom of the cage were three little wild birds, shivering with cold and fright.
I stopped the lad and asked, "What do you have there, son?"
"Just some old birds," came the reply.
"What are you going to do with them?" I asked.
"Take 'em home and have fun with 'em," he answered. "I'm gonna tease 'em and pull out their feathers to make 'em fight.
I'm gonna have a real good time."
"But you'll get tired of those birds sooner or later. What will you do then?"
"Oh, I got some cats," said the little boy. "They like birds. I'll take 'em to them."
The pastor was silent for a moment. "How much do you want for those birds, son?"
"Huh?? !!! Why, you don't want them birds, mister. They're just plain old field birds. They don't sing. They ain't even pretty!"
"How much?" the pastor asked again.
The boy sized up the pastor as if he were crazy and said, "$10?"
The pastor reached in his pocket and took out a ten dollar bill. He placed it in the boy's hand. In a flash, the boy was gone. The pastor picked up the cage and gently carried it to the end of the alley where there was a tree and a grassy spot. Setting the cage down, he opened the door, and by softly tapping the bars persuaded the birds out, setting them free. Well, that explained the empty bird cage on the pulpit, and then the pastor began to tell this story:
One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting. "Yes, sir, I just caught a world full of people down there. Set me a trap, used bait I knew they couldn't resist. Got 'em all!"
"What are you going to do with them?" Jesus asked.
Satan replied, "Oh, I'm gonna have fun! I'm gonna teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I'm gonna teach them how to invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I'm really gonna have fun!"
"And what will you do when you are done with them?" Jesus asked.
"Oh, I'll kill 'em," Satan glared proudly.
"How much do you want for them?" Jesus asked.
"Oh, you don't want those people. They ain't no good. Why, you'll take them and they'll just hate you. They'll spit on you, curse you and kill you. You don't want those people!!"
"How much? He asked again.
Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, "All your blood, tears and your life."
Jesus said, "DONE!" Then He paid the price.
The pastor picked up the cage and walked from the pulpit.
I was going through a few magazines the other day down at the local Mosque. I was really enjoying myself.
Then the rifle jammed.
Loggers 'burned Amazon tribe girl alive'
Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon's last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.
By Raf Sanchez
8:39PM GMT 10 Jan 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/9005835/Loggers-burned-Amazon-tribe-girl-alive.html
The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe, who live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.
Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão .
"She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death," he said.
Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group which said it had seen footage of her charred remains.
A spokesman for the Brazil's Indian Affairs Department said the government was urgently investigating the claims.
Huge iron ore deposits and valuable timber have encouraged mining and logging companies to enter the forests of Maranhão despite laws designed to protect the few remaining uncontacted tribes, often leading to violent clashes.
Around 450 tribes people have were murdered in Brazil between 2003 and 2010, according to figures from CIMI.
Survival International, a charity for tribal groups, warned that a third of the Awá's land had already been destroyed and that their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle was being threatened as animals fled in the face of the approaching logging companies.
A BODY OF KNOWLEDGE
============================================================
GENERATIONS Archives (17 items - 9 hrs)
Our School/The First Lesson - TLAKAELEL (7:45)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Our_School_The_First_Lesson_Tlakaelel.mp3
At The Crossroads: Indian Control of Indian Education (HORIZONS-NPR 1980) (28:55)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenMedia/At_the_Crossroads_NDN_Control_of_NDN_Education_Horizons_NPR.mp3
Sustaining Our Communities: Natural Resource Management (SOP-SMITHSONIAN 1992) (27:01)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenMedia/Spirits_Of_The_Present_Sustaining_Our_Communities_Native_Traditional_Resources.mp3
We Can't Live Here: Uranium Mining at Dalton Pass, Produced for NPR Horizons series 1981 (29:12)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/We_Cant_Live_Here_Horizons_NPR.mp3
Lipam Apache Women Interview (1:08:09)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/GENERATIONS_LIPAN_APACHE_WOMEN.mp3
Mavi Chante Peyim: Haition Documentary, (56:11) Produced by Generations - Native American Radio 1982
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Mavi_Chante_Peyim_Haitian_Documentary.mp3
Boriquen: Interview w/ Luz Guerra on Puerto Rico (1981) (29:35)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Boriquen_Interview_with_Luz_Guerra.mp3
Puerto Rican Nationalist Interview 1981 (25:27)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Puerto_Rican_Nationalists_Interview.mp3
A Columbus Story...They Are Not Gods! (4:12)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/A_Columbus_Story_They_Are_Not_Gods.mp3
America: This Is Our Message (KPFA-FM Berkeley 1978) (1:01:53)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/America_This_Is_Our_Message.mp3
Phillip Deere: Roundhouse - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:01)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Phillip_Deere_Round_House_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: Phillip Deere: Roundhouse - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/ROUNDHOUSE.doc
Dalton Pass - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:23)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Dalton_Pass_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Anthropology Resource Center - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:11)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Anthropology_Resource_Center_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Indian Law Resource Center - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:37)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Indian_Law_Resource_Center_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: Indian Law Resource Center - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/INDIAN_LAW_RESOURCE_CENTER.doc
Snake River Singers - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module (13:59)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenMedia/Snake_River_Singers_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Transcript: Snake River Singers - Generations 1/4 hr. Radio module
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenMedia/SNAKERIVERSINGERS.doc
Three Fountains: Latin American Song - - Generations Radio Music Feature (27:06)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Three_Fountains_Radio_Program.mp3
Oldies on Indian Voices, KGNU-AM/FM, Boulder, Co (1:00:23)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Oldies_on_NDN_Voices_Aircheck.mp3
============================================================
Goin' On: Young Indian Producers - Qtr. Hr. Modules (5 items - 2 1/2 hrs)
Randy Calkins: Eskimo Indian Olympics - Generations/GO:YIP 1/4 hr. Radio module (13:54)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Randy_Calkins_World_Eskimo_Indian_Olympics_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Chief Wilma Mankiller: Indian Pride - Generations/GO:YIP 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:39)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Chief_Wilma_Mankiller_Indian_Pride_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Joanne Shenandoah - Generations/GO:YIP 1/4 hr. Radio module (14:54)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Joanne_Shenandoah_A_Generations_Qtr_Hr_Module.mp3
Goin' On: Young Indian Producers Highlights program (53:47)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/Goin_On_Young_Indian_Producers_Highlights.mp3
John Mohawk: Transformation, Indian Voices, KGNU Boulder (25:54)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/GenArchives/John_Mohawk_Transformation_IV_Program.mp3
============================================================
WINTERCAMP
WinterCamp Chronicles: NDN Voices of Our Times - First Edition Mix (57:00)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Indian_Voices_12-04-2011.mp3
WinterCamp Chronicles: First Edition (5 hrs)
PHILLIP DEERE, MUSKOGEE CREEK ELDER, (1929-1985) THE LONGEST WALK speech, March 20, 1981 Boulder, CO pt1 (20:02)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Phillip_Deere_The_Longest_Walk_Speech_FE_Pt1.mp3
PHILLIP DEERE, MUSKOGEE CREEK ELDER, (1929-1985) THE LONGEST WALK speech, March 20, 1981 Boulder, CO pt2 (22:37)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Phillip_Deere_The_Longest_Walk_Speech_FE_Pt2.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: PHILLIP DEERE, MUSKOGEE CREEK ELDER, (1929-1985) THE LONGEST WALK speech
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/PHILLIP_DEERE.doc
OREN LYONS Onondoga Chief, Six Nations Iroquois, THE FUTURE OF INDIAN NATIONS speech, Feb. 3, 1989, Boulder, CO pt1 (34:49)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Oren_Lyons_FUTURE_OF_INDIAN_NATIONS_speech_FE_pt1.mp3
OREN LYONS Onondoga Chief, Six Nations Iroquois, THE FUTURE OF INDIAN NATIONS speech, Feb. 3, 1989, Boulder, CO pt2 (38:40)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Oren_Lyons_FUTURE_OF_INDIAN_NATIONS_speech_FE_pt2.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: OREN LYONS Onondoga Chief, Six Nations Iroquois, THE FUTURE OF INDIAN NATIONS speech
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/OREN_LYONS.doc
CHIEF WILMA MANKILLER, Cherokee Nation, TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY speech, March 21, 1989 Boulder, CO pt1 (30:11)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Chief_Wilma_Mankiller_TRIBAL_SOVEREIGNTY_speech_FE_pt1.mp3
CHIEF WILMA MANKILLER, Cherokee Nation, TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY speech, March 21, 1989 Boulder, CO pt2 (26:08)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Chief_Wilma_Mankiller_TRIBAL_SOVEREIGNTY_speech_FE_pt2.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: CHIEF WILMA MANKILLER, Cherokee Nation, TRIBAL SOVEREIGNTY speech
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/WILMA_MANKILLER.doc
JOHN MOHAWK, Seneca, Six Nations Iroquois, (1945–2006) PERSPECTIVE OF MOTHER EARTH speech, April 18, 1990 Boulder, CO pt1 (27:32)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/John_Mohawk_PERSPECTIVE_OF_MOTHER_EARTH_speech_FE_pt1.mp3
JOHN MOHAWK, Seneca, Six Nations Iroquois, (1945–2006) PERSPECTIVE OF MOTHER EARTH speech, April 18, 1990 Boulder, CO pt2 (25:12)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/John_Mohawk_PERSPECTIVE_OF_MOTHER_EARTH_speech_FE_pt2.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: JOHN MOHAWK, Seneca, Six Nations Iroquois, (1945–2006) PERSPECTIVE OF MOTHER EARTH speech
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/JOHN_MOHAWK.doc
WinterCamp Chronicles: Second Edition (5 hrs)
Rolling Thunder Interview, ealy 1980s, Boulder, Co. part 1 (45:07)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Rolling_Thunder_Interview_Early_1980s_Boulder_Co_by_Two_Elk_Pt1.mp3
Rolling Thunder Interview, ealy 1980s, Boulder, Co. part 2 (44:17)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Rolling_Thunder_Interview_Early_1980s_Boulder_Co_by_Two_Elk_Pt2.mp3
Dennis Belindo, Kiowa-Navajo Elder, Indian Territory interview part 1 (46:14)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Dennis_Belindo_Interview_Feb_1988_NYC_by_Two_Elk_Pt1.mp3
Dennis Belindo, Kiowa-Navajo Elder, Indian Territory interview part 1 (40:20)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Dennis_Belindo_Interview_Feb_1988_NYC_by_Two_Elk_Pt2.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: Dennis Belindo, Kiowa-Navajo Elder, Indian Territory interview
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Indian_Territory.doc
Phillip Deere, Muskogee Creek Elder, Interview, Mar. 1981 Boudlder, Co. (39:31)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Phillip_Deere_Interview_Mar_1981_Boulder_CO_by_Two_Elk.mp3
Prof. Jack D Forbes, 4th bertrand Russell tribunal, Rotterdam 1980 part 1 (43:48)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Jack_Forbes_4th_Russell_Tribunal_1980_pt1.mp3
Prof. Jack D Forbes, 4th bertrand Russell tribunal, Rotterdam 1980 part 2 (29:44)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Jack_Forbes_4th_Russell_Tribunal_1980_pt2.mp3
WinterCamp Chronicles: Third Edition (4 hrs)
Grandfather David Monyongye, Hopi Elder, UN conference, Geneva, Switzerland Sept. 1977 (1:09:09)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Grandfather_David_Geneva_Sept_1977_UN.mp3
INIPI, Archie Fire, AIM Spiritual leader, Boulder, Co. 1982 (43:31)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/INIPI_with_Archie_Fire_Boulder_CO_1982.mp3
Thomas Banyaca, Hopi Elder, 1981 (44:19)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Thomas_Banayaca_1981.mp3
Thomas Banyaca, Hopi Elder, 1987 (18:03)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Thomas_Banayaca_1987.mp3
Grandfather Wallace Black Elk, Lakota Elder: the Sacred Pipe (27:59)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Wallace_Black_Elk_Sacred_Pipe.mp3
Grandfather Wallace Black Elk, Lakota Elder: Energy Resources (31:06)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Wallace_Black_Elk_Energy_Resources.mp3
WinterCamp Chronicles: Fourth Edition (2.5 hrs)
TLAKAELEL Interview, 1980 Broomfield, Co. part 1 (45:22)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Tlakaelel_Interview_1980_Broomfield_Co_by_Two_Elk_Pt1.mp3
TLAKAELEL Interview, 1980 Broomfield, Co. part 2 (40:44)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Tlakaelel_Interview_1980_Broomfield_Co_by_Two_Elk_Pt2.mp3
Armstrong Wiggins, Misquito, Interview 1980 Wash. DC (16:32)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Armstrong_Wiggins_Misquito_Interview_1980_Wash_DC_by_Two_Elk.mp3
Brooklyn Rivera, YATAMA, Interview 1980 Wash. DC (45:10)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/WinterCamp/Brooklyn_Rivera_Yatama_Interview_Wash_DC_1980_by_Two_Elk.mp3
============================================================
AIMTapes Project (16 items - 8 hrs)
Voices of Wounded Knee Tiyospaye 2003, Short Report (6:41)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Voices_Of_Wounded_Knee_Tiyospaye_03_Short_Report.mp3
Independent Native News (Native Voice Communications) Wounded Knee 2003 report (4:59)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Idependent_Native_News_NVC_Wounded_Knee_03_report.mp3
John Trudell: Interview On Communism & Native People (23:45)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/John_Trudell_Interview_1980_Broomfield_Co_by_Two_Elk.mp3
We Are Not Your Enemy: John Trudell speech at Black Hills Alliance gathering (17:41)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/We_Are_Not_Your_Enemy_by_John_Trudell.mp3
Vernon Bellecourt, AIM Interview 1982, Denver, Co. part 1 (28:44)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Vernon_Bellecourt_AIM_Interview_1982_Denver_Co_by_Two_Elk_PT1.mp3
Vernon Bellecourt, AIM Interview 1982, Denver, Co. part 2 (30:40)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Vernon_Bellecourt_AIM_Interview_1982_Denver_Co_by_Two_Elk_PT2.mp3
Vernon Bellecourt, AIM Interview 1982, Denver, Co. part 3 (30:38)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Vernon_Bellecourt_AIM_Interview_1982_Denver_Co_by_Two_Elk_PT3.mp3
Vernon Bellecourt, AIM Interview 1982, Denver, Co. part 4 (28:57)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Vernon_Bellecourt_AIM_Interview_1982_Denver_Co_by_Two_Elk_PT4.mp3
WOJB Morning Fire program, Vernon Bellecourt on two Elk in NFIC (1:15:47)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/WOJB_23Sept00_MorningFire.mp3
Me & My Shadow program, KPFA Pacifica (59:49)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Me_and_My_Shadow.mp3
J Peterson (SpecOps SrNCO) Interview on PHEONIX Program & COINTELPRO (46:48)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/J_Peterson_SpecOps_SrNCO_Interview_by_Two_Elk.mp3
Revolutionary Activities Within the United States - American Indian Movement 1976
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Doug_Durham_RAWUSAIM_1976.doc
Red Indians - American Indian Movement 1975
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/197509AmericanIndianMovement.pdf
Anna Mae: Heart Of The Movement WOJB-FM (57:49)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Anna_Mae_Heart_Of_The_Movement.mp3
Joe & John Trimbach Interview, June 2007, Denver, Co. (28:57)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Trimbach_Interview_Half_Hr_Program_June_07_Denver_CO.mp3
Indian Voices Radio Program (aircheck) 8-28-2011 (53:07)
http://www.twoelkenterprise.com/AIMTapes/Indian_Voices_8-28-11.mp3
"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When
many people suffer from a delusion, it is called Religion."
Robert M. Pirsig
interesting
http://www.niijiiradio.com/?page_id=18
An Open Letter from Winona LaDuke
Boozhoo (Hello),My name is Winona LaDuke. I am the Executive Director
of the White Earth Land Recovery Project the Parent Organization of
Niijii Broadcasting and Niijii Radio. Niijii in Ojibwe means friend.
Over the past decade, the White Earth Land Recovery Project (WELRP)
has approached the idea of creating an independent media platform for
the White Earth Reservation and surrounding region to allow for
community-based programming that provides valuable information and
education to its friends and listeners. By creating avenues for
healthy and civil discourse, Niijii Radio will build community
dialogue, knowledge, and understanding. Coverage will include issues
such as local and national news, community events, community sports,
language, and history. Content will be driven by listeners; from their
own voice and through their own reflection. Please donate to this very
important initiative by becoming a friend and member of Niijii
Radio.Miigwetch (Thank You),
Winona LaDuke, WELRP Executive DirectorSupport Niijii RadioWe have an
amazing opportunity here at White Earth. In 2008, White Earth Land
Recovery Project was notified by the Federal Communications Commission
that Niijii Broadcasting had been awarded two construction licenses
for community based radio stations. In October 2010, Niijii Radio was
awarded a PTFP grant of $466,389. Niijii Radio still needs to match
this grant by raising $155,464 through private and in-kind donations.
Donations will cover the additional equipment to start broadcasting
and operational support.
Vision
Niijii Radio is committed to providing Independent News for an
Independent Nation that promotes social, environmental, and economic
justice.Niijii Radio will represent a voice for those who are under-
represented in media production and content, and to illuminate and
analyze local and global issues that impact ecosystems, communities,
and individuals. Niijii Radio aims to create culturally appropriate
news and media content for the
community that will create, excite, and make change happen for a
sustainable and equitable society.Niijii Radio will create a Radio
Station for the People and by the People that EchoesGoals
Niijii Radio and Broadcasting Services hopes to create and maintain a
local outlet for news and media with the production capability for web-
based news and information featuring local events, history, and
language from the White Earth Reservation to enhance and broaden the
connection to community creating vital discourse and
discussions.Everyone behind this project has the primary goal of
promoting healthy vibrant tribal and rural communities. We cannot do
this alone; building healthy communities takes friends and
neighbors.Niijii Radio wants to report on the health and beauty of our
community and how we are making our future- minobimaatiziiwin Niijii
Radio is asking for you to support this very important
initiative. SUPPORT NIIJII RADIO TODAY!
Timeline
We are on the air, please join us at 89.9 fm or www.niijiiradio.com .
We have in the house deejays who are rocking the house with
everything from traditional hand drum and flute music to Native hip
hop, with some rock and roll mixed in. We’re enjoying ourselves, and
invite you to listen. And, we’ve got some weekly shows- Abitose
( Wednesday) 2 pm live talk show on Native issues, and Native America
Calling will be on the air soon.
A surveyor doing work for us on our ranch called today
telling me about his work out there yesterday
His biggest talking point while discussing business
was to tell me how a golden eagle was perched on my boat out there
and the other bald eagles he saw while out there
said he loved working when he didn't see a single other person all day
told him
that's why we love it there......
and that's another thing
I don't abandon friends due to the flavor of the day or because we disagree on something, especially politics or religion, or because they've pissed someone else off or made a gaff
friends are friends........period.
mine aren't as many as others, but they're real and you can count on them and they can count on me even when things are tough
that's what makes them a friend....
their word means something as mine does when given....
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1107, November 27, 2011
1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El
Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from
Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua
Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription,
write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Mexico: Pentagon Privatizes Controversial “War on Drugs”
A little-known office of the US Defense Department is now taking bids
from private security firms on a $3 billion contract for US-funded
anti-narcotics operations in Mexico, Colombia, Afghanistan, Pakistan
and other countries. According to a report in Wired News, the
Pentagon’s Counter Narco-Terrorism Program Office (CNTPO) announced a
“mega-contract” on Nov. 9 for as much as $950 million for “operations,
logistics and minor construction,” up to $975 million for training
foreign forces, $875 million for “Information” tasks, and $240 million
for “program and program support.” The cash will start flowing next
August, and the contractors may be able to extend the jobs for three
more years.
The Mexican daily La Jornada reports that the work involving Mexican
operations includes training for armed forces drivers; training for
pilots, mechanics and crews on UH-60, Schweizer 333 or OH-58
helicopters in the Public Security Secretariat; training for up to 48
people to command and pilot Bell 206 helicopters; and the development
of night vision materials and training programs for helicopter pilots
and crews.
The CNTPO started in 1995, but its importance has grown as the Defense
Department increasingly turns sensitive jobs over to private
contractors. Nick Schwellenbach, director of investigations for the US
nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, told Wired that the office
is now “essentially planning on outsourcing a global counternarcotics
and counterterrorism program over the next several years, and it’s
willing to spend billions to do so.” “This stuff isn’t delivering
paper clips or even fuel or bullets,” Schellenbach said. “This is
something you really want to keep a tight lid on.”
The CNTPO gained some notoriety in 2009 when it unsuccessfully tried
to award a contract worth about $1 billion to the Blackwater military
services corporation. Blackwater employees have been accused of theft
and human rights violations, notably in Iraq and Afghanistan; the
company has since changed its name to Xe Services LLC. (Wired News
11/22/11; LJ 11/23/11 from correspondent)
Much of the Mexican population is disillusioned with the country’s
“war on drugs,” five years after President Felipe Calderón Hinojosa
began involving the military in anti-narcotics operations at the start
of his term [see Update #1103]. On Nov. 25 Mexican human rights
attorney Netzaí Sandoval filed a complaint with the International
Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague charging Calderón, members of his
cabinet and members of a drug cartel based in the northern state of
Sinaloa with 470 documented cases of murder, torture, forced
displacement and military recruitment of minors. These took place in a
“generalized context of systematic violence which has brought Mexico
to a humanitarian crisis, with more than 50,000 people killed, 230,000
displaced and 10,000 disappeared,” Sandoval told Netherlands Radio
Worldwide.
Among the crimes attributed to the government in the complaint are
sexual violations by Mexican soldiers, the “enslavement” of
undocumented immigrants by officials in collaboration with criminal
groups, the killing of civilians at military checkpoints, forced
disappearances, extrajudicial executions and the use of torture to
obtain confessions. The complaint says the Sinaloa Cartel and its
head, Joaquín Guzmán (“El Chapo”), have created armies that are guilty
of executions, amputations and decapitations, attacks on civilian
targets and the military recruitment of minors.
The complaint, which was signed by 23,000 Mexicans, is unlikely to
develop into an actual criminal case. But John Ackerman, a legal
expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), told La
Jornada that the complaint could lead ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno
Ocampo to put Mexico under formal observation, as has happened with
Colombia. “If we accomplish this first step, it would be a gain,” he
said. (LJ 11/26/11)
*2. Latin America: Students Hold First Continental March for Education
Tens of thousands of students marched in more than a dozen Latin
American cities on Nov. 24 in the Latin American March for Education,
a coordinated regional demonstration to support free and high-quality
public education. The mobilization was planned by Chilean and
Colombian students earlier in the month [see Update #1105], but by
Nov. 24 it had spread to include actions in Argentina, Brazil, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay
and Venezuela. Participants stressed that students had similar demands
throughout the region and were also united in their support for the
movement in Chile.
The Nov. 24 march was the 42nd day of mass mobilization for Chilean
students, who began protesting last spring against the privatization
of the educational system under the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet (1973-1990). Confrontations between students and the
carabineros militarized police broke out in parts of Santiago early on
Nov. 24 as youths tried to march without permits in the capital’s
downtown area. The local government authorized a march in the evening
that drew as many as 40,000 participants, according to some estimates,
but the police attacked the marchers with tear gas and water cannons
when the permit expired at 8 pm. A total of 58 youths were arrested in
the day’s demonstrations; another 30 youths were arrested when the
police ended a student occupation at the Darío Salas high school.
Tens of thousands joined the Nov. 24 protests in Colombia’s main
cities. Despite a light rain, students marched from at least seven
meeting points in Bogotá, monitored by some 2,500 police agents. There
were isolated incidents, resulting in 11 arrests. Colombian students
had suspended their own month-old strike on Nov. 17 after the
government withdrew a proposal for changes to the educational system
[see Update #1106], but they marched on Nov. 24 “in solidarity with
the student movement in Chile and in all of Latin America,” according
to university student Laura Jaramillo. She added that the protest
would also remind President Juan Manuel Santos that Colombia’s
students remain mobilized. (Inter Press Service 11/25/11; La Jornada
(Mexico) 11/25/11 from correspondent, 11/25/11 from PL, AFP, DPA,
Notimex)
Some 5,000 Honduran students marched through the streets of
Tegucigalpa in a protest led by former president José Manuel (“Mel”)
Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009) and backed by the National Popular
Resistance Front (FNRP), a grassroots coalition that formed after a
June 2009 military coup removed Zelaya from office. The Honduran march
focused on violence against students, in particular the Oct. 22 murder
of two university students, Alejandro Rafael Vargas Castellanos and
Carlos David Pineda Rodríguez, apparently by a group of police agents
with criminal connections [see Update #1104]. Vargas Castellanos’
mother is Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the Autonomous University
of Honduras (UNAH), and she led the UNAH contingent at the march. In
the spring of 2010 Julieta Castellanos was the target of a hunger
strike by FNRP supporters because of layoffs of teachers at the
university [see Update #1033], but now she has become a prominent
figure in the movement to purge the police of corrupt agents. (AFP
11/24/11 via La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa))
*3. Latin America: Groups Protest Continued Violence Against Women
Women’s organizations throughout Latin America used the United
Nation’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence against
Women, Nov. 25, to highlight continued abuse of women in the region
and the failure of governments to take steps to reduce it.
In Chile the women’s rights center Corporación Humanas marked Nov. 25
by publicizing the results of a nationwide poll of women about their
perception of their situation. Some 67% of those questioned said they
thought the Chilean government had failed to take measures to prevent
violence against women. About 54% believed that the violence had
increased, 34% said it had stayed the same, and just 8% felt it had
decreased. Some 73% said violence against women in couples was a
problem that affects all women, because it is an extreme expression of
machismo. So far this year there have been 38 femicides (misogynistic
murders) in Chile. (Adital (Brazil) 11/25/11)
Hundreds of Salvadoran women marched in San Salvador to denounce the
582 femicides that that have occurred in the country in 2011 and to
demand respect for women’s human rights and greater resources for
groups working to defend women.
In Honduras more than 200 women marched through the center of
Tegucigalpa and in front of the National Congress to demand justice
and an end to impunity for those who rape or murder women or commit
other violent acts against them. According to Grissel Amaya, the
Public Ministry’s special prosecutor for crimes against women, more
than 1,500 women were murdered in Honduras from 2008 to 2011. The
Public Ministry received more than 20,000 reports of domestic violence
during the period and more than 11,000 reports of sexual violence,
Amaya told reporters on Nov. 25.
Thousands attended a demonstration in Guatemala City to demand an end
to machista violence, which has resulted in the deaths of more than
650 women this year. Participants included university students,
indigenous women, professionals and activists. (EFE 11/26/11 via La
Opinión (Los Angeles))
In Mexico the Chamber of Deputies of the National Congress marked Nov.
25 with the publication of a book, Feminicidio en México;
aproximación, tendencias y cambios 1985-2009, dealing with femicides
over a 24-year period. The authors found that there had been 34,176
murders of women during the period and that the rate of these murders
had increased by 68%. A total of 17.2% of the victims were under the
age of 18.
One of the authors, María de la Paz López, noted in an interview that
there had been a jump in murders of women from 2007 to 2009, after
Mexico began militarizing the fight against narco-trafficking. She
said the available data couldn’t establish a relation between the
murders and the “drug war,” but she indicated that the recent climate
of violence in Mexico provided an environment that could encourage
violence against women. Like other Mexican specialists in the subject,
the book’s authors stressed the importance of creating legislation
that treats femicide as a separate criminal category [see Update
#1084]. (Milenio (Mexico) 11/26/11; La Jornada (Mexico) 11/26/11)
In Haiti the feminist organization Haitian Women’s Solidarity (SOFA)
was planning to send a caravan to Lascahobas, in the Central Plateau
near the Dominican border, on Nov. 25 to “increase awareness on the
part of the local authorities” about violence against women. SOFA
spokesperson Olga Benoit said this was part of a long-term campaign to
end the practice of accepting attacks on women as normal and
downplaying their importance; eventually the group hopes to set up a
center for victims of violence in the town. A total of 24,369 cases of
violence against women were reported in Haiti from 2002 and 2011,
according to figures released on Nov. 25 by the National Dialogue
Against Violent Acts Committed Against Women. (AlterPresse (Haiti)
11/25/11, 11/26/11)
*4. Links to alternative sources on: South America, Argentina, Brazil,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Central America, Panama, El
Salvador, Honduras, Belize, Mexico
South America: Coming Together to Preserve the La Plata Basin
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3317-south-america-coming-together-to-preserve-the-la-plata-basin
Argentina Inundated with E-Waste
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3320--argentina-inundated-with-e-waste-
Brazil: Guarani Leader Slain by Masked Gunmen
http://ww4report.com/node/10581
Chevron Takes “Full Responsibility” for Brazil Oil Spill
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/21/chevron-takes-full-responsibility-for-brazil-oil-spill/
Peru: supposedly non-existent "uncontacted" tribesmen kill intruder
http://ww4report.com/node/10590
Peru: indefinite occupation declared to halt mine in Cajamarca
http://ww4report.com/node/10595
Ecuador: indigenous leader sentenced to prison for "defamation"
http://ww4report.com/node/10593
FARC executes prisoners in rescue attempt: Bogotá
http://ww4report.com/node/10587
Chávez repatriates Venezuelan gold from European banks
http://ww4report.com/node/10589
Interview with Gioconda Mota: The Fight for Abortion in Venezuela
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6650
Free Markets and the Food Crisis in Central America
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5726
France Approves Manuel Noriega’s Extradition to Panama
http://latindispatch.com/2011/11/24/france-approves-manuel-noriegas-extradition-to-panama/
Thanksgiving Rally of the 99% Encachimbado and Indignado in El Salvador
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3324-thanksgiving-rally-of-the-99-encachimbado-and-indignado-in-el-sa
Ex-general Replaces Leftist Leader in El Salvador’s Security Cabinet
as Washington Reasserts Influence in Central America
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/el-salvador-archives-74/3325-ex-general-replaces-leftist-leader-in-el-salvadors-security-cabinet-as-washington-reasserts-influence-in-central-america
Honduran Coup General Seeks Presidency
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3318-honduran-coup-general-seeks-presidency
Belize Government Defies Supreme Court Ruling; Grants Oil Company
Permit to Maya Lands
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3321-belize-government-defies-supreme-court-ruling-grants-oil-company-permit-to-maya-lands
Belize: government grants oil company permit to Maya lands
http://ww4report.com/node/10588
Mexico: Calderón to The Hague?
http://ww4report.com/node/10594
AMLO’s Moment (Mexico)
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/11/22/amlo%E2%80%99s-moment
Mexican Indigenous Community Boycotts Elections
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/mexico-archives-79/3314-mexican-indigenous-community-boycotts-elections-
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
This Update is archived at:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/11/wnu-1107-pentagon-privatizing-mexicos.html
$%")/"&"/"( Xtians!!!
So I work a good deal on a used stock trailer in Amarillo, TX
and I get there and these people have ALL kinds of Xtian stuff up in their place of business.....and they do a good job and get me out with my trailer in good time after I pay for it
and of course they had to make a deal out of how Xtian they were....
They promised to send me the title after the check cleared which happened two days later on the 9th of Nov
Well it's Nov 28th and they haven't even sent me the title....
they're whining about how I didn't pay enough for the trailer.....
hadn't even mailed it yet.....
being pissants trying to put me out
stinking lousy greedy rotten no good lying scum!!!!
well when I complain to their state's AG....and they lose their license or get fined....they'll blame me for that as well
for those interested:
http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/board.aspx?board_id=22794
The U.S. Constitution Test
Questions are followed with Answers:
1. What are the colors of our flag?
2. How many stars are there on our flag?
3. What color are the stars on our flag?
4. What do the stars on the flag mean?
5. How many stripes are there on the flag?
6. What color are the stripes?
7. What do the stripes on the flag mean?
8. How many states are there in the Union?
9. Why do we celebrate the Fourth of July?
10. What is the date of Independence day?
11. Independence from whom?
12. What country did we fight during the Revolutionary War?
13. Who was the first President?
14. Who is president today?
15. Who is vice president today?
16. Who elects the president of the United States?
17. Who becomes our president if the president should die?
18. For how long do we elect the president?
19. What is the Constitution?
20. Can the Constitution be changed?
21. What do we call a change to the Constitution?
22. How many changes or amendments are there to the Constitution?
23. How many branches are there in our government?
24. What are the three branches of our government?
25. What is the legislative branch of our government?
26. Who makes federal laws?
27. What is Congress?
28. What are the duties of Congress?
29. Who elects Congress?
30. How many senators are there in Congress?
31. Can you name the senators from your state?
32. For how long do we elect each senator?
33. How many voting members are in the House of Representatives? 34. For how long do we elect the representatives?
35. What is the Executive branch of our government?
36. What is the Judiciary branch of our government?
37. What are the duties of the Supreme Court?
38. What is the supreme law of the United States?
39. What is the Bill of Rights?
40. What is the capital of your state?
41. Who is the governor of your state?
42. Who becomes president if both the president and the vice president die?
43. Who is chief justice of the Supreme Court?
44. Can you name the 13 original states?
45. Who said, "Give me liberty or give me death"?
46. Which countries were our allies during World War II?
47. What is the 49th state added to our Union?
48. How many full terms can a president serve?
49. Who was Martin Luther King Jr.?
50. Who is the head of your local government?
51. According to the Constitution, a person must meet certain requirements in order to be eligible to become president. Name one.
52. Why are there 100 senators in the U.S. Senate?
53. Who nominates judges of the Supreme Court?
54. How many Supreme Court justices are there?
55. Why did the Pilgrims come to America?
56. What is the head executive of a state government called?
57. What is the head executive of a city government called?
58. What holiday was celebrated for the first time by the American colonists?
59. Who was the main writer of the Declaration of Independence?
60. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
61. What is the basic belief of the Declaration of Independence?
62. What is our national anthem?
63. Who wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner?"
64. Where does freedom of speech come from?
65. What is the minimum voting age?
66. Who signs bills into law? 67. What is the highest court in the United States?
68. Who was president during the Civil War?
69. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
70. What special group advises the president?
71. Which president is called the "Father of Our Country"?
72. What is the 50th state of the Union?
73. Who helped the Pilgrims in America?
74. What is the name of the ship that brought the Pilgrims to America?
75. What were the 13 original states of the United States called?
76. Name three rights or freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
77. Who has the power to declare war?
78. Name one amendment that guarantees or addresses voting rights.
79. Which president freed the slaves?
80. In what year was the Constitution written?
81. What are the first 10 amendments to the Constitution called?
82. Name one purpose of the United Nations.
83. Where does Congress meet?
84. Whose rights are guaranteed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
85. What is the introduction to the Constitution called?
86. Name one benefit of being a citizen of the United States.
87. What is the most important right granted to U.S. citizens?
88. What is the United States Capitol?
89. What is the White House?
90. Where is the White House located?
91. What is the president's official home?
92. Name one right guaranteed by the First amendment.
93. Who is the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Army and Navy?
94. Which president was the first commander in chief of the U.S. Army and Navy?
95. In what month do we vote for president?
96. In what month is the new president inaugurated?
97. How many times may a senator be re-elected?
98. How many times may a congressman be re-elected?
99. What are the two major political parties in the United States today?
100. How many states are there?
ANSWERS
1) Red, white and blue.
2) 50.
3) White.
4) One for each state in the Union.
5) 13.
6) Red and white.
7) They represent the 13 original states.
8) 50.
9) Independence Day.
10) July 4.
11) England.
12) England.
13) George Washington.
14) William Jefferson Clinton.
15) Al Gore.
16) The Electoral College.
17) vice president.
18) Four years.
19) The supreme law of the land.
20) Yes.
21) Amendments.
22) 27.
23) Three.
24) Legislative, Executive and Judicial.
25) Congress.
26) Congress.
27) The Senate and the House of Representatives.
28) To make laws.
29) The people.
30) 100.
31) (Variable).
32) Six years.
33) 435.
34) Two years.
35. The president, Cabinet and departments under the Cabinet members.
36) The Supreme Court.
37) To interpret laws.
38) The Constitution.
39) The first 10 amendments to the Constitution.
40) (Variable).
41) (Variable).
42) Speaker of the House of Representatives.
43) William Rehnquist.
44) Conn., N.H., N.Y., N.J., Mass., Pa., Del., Va., N.C., S.C., Ga., R.I. and Md.
45) Patrick Henry.
46) Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, China, France.
47) Alaska.
48) 2.
49) A civil rights leader.
50) (Variable).
51) Must be a natural-born U.S. citizen; must be at least 35 years old by the time he/she will serve; must have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years.
52) Two from each state.
53) The president.
54) Nine.
55) For religious freedom.
56) governor.
57) mayor.
58) Thanksgiving.
59) Thomas Jefferson.
60) July 4, 1776.
61) That all men are created equal.
62) "The Star-Spangled Banner."
63) Francis Scott Key.
64) The Bill of Rights.
65) 18.
66) The president.
67) The Supreme Court.
68) Abraham Lincoln.
69) Freed many slaves.
70) The Cabinet.
71) George Washington.
72) Hawaii.
73) The American Indians.
74) The Mayflower.
75) Colonies.
76)
1. The right of freedom of speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly and requesting change of government.
2. The right to bear arms.
3. The government may not quarter, or house, soldiers in private homes during peacetime without the owners's consent.
4. The government may not search or take a person's property without a warrant.
5. A person may not be tried twice by the same jurisdiction for the same crime and cannot be forced to testify against him/herself.
6. A person charged with a crime still has many rights, including the right to have a trial and be represented by a lawyer.
7. The right to jury trial by his/her peers in most cases.
8. Protects people against excessive or unreasonable fines or cruel and unusual punishment.
9. The people have rights other than those mentioned in the Constitution.
77) The Congress.
78) 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th.
79) Abraham Lincoln.
80) 1787.
81) The Bill of Rights.
82) For countries to discuss world problems; to provide economic aid to countries; occasionally take action.
83) In the Capitol in Washington D.C.
84) Everyone (citizens and non-citizens living in the United States).
85) The Preamble.
86) Vote for the candidate of your choice; travel with a U.S. passport; serve on a jury; apply for federal employment opportunities, etc.
87) The right to vote.
88. The place where Congress meets.
89) The president's official residence.
90) Washington, D.C. (1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW).
91) The White House.
92) Freedom of: speech, press, religion, peaceable assembly, and requesting changes in the government.
93) The president.
94) George Washington.
95) November.
96) January.
97. There is no limit.
98) There is no limit.
99) Democratic and Republican.
100) 50.
http://refreshingnews9.blogspot.com/2011/11/us-constitution-test.html
just thinking out loud here
remember yrs ago in school there was always at least one teacher in high school wanting to make you feel good and build your confidence to participate that would tell you there's no such thing as a bad or stupid question....
and then say so ask it when they saw a puzzled look on your face....
and oh yeah I had a few of those...one was a nice looking teacher with a great rack
and she always dressed nice and she had a great set of legs
that went clean up and made a great ass out of themselves
and of course since I was usually pretty quiet and sat in the back
and was always checking her out and especially when she sat at her desk or bent over
she said her bit and happened to look down my way and notice a puzzled look on my face?
she said: do you have a question? Go ahead and ask!
I said so there's no such thing as a stupid question?
the entire class turns and looks at me, a friend is shaking his head NO and mouthing the words: Don't do it!
she said: Absolutely Not!
I said ok...here goes.....
and so I asked....are you wearing panties or are you free down there since I noticed you aren't wearing a bra?
the class howled.....the guys roared and the gals giggled and blushed
well....and later I told the principle what she said about no such thing as a bad or stupid question
he said....well she's WRONG, THAT WAS a bad question to ask....
It was a STUPID question since he knew I KNEW better than to ask it
he said don't do that again, now get out of here!
I said okie doke! no problem!
which reminds me that sometimes there's some that post questions asking for explanations to things that are just plain obvious to anyone with at least an IQ of 60
to me it seems like they're looking to annoy or embarrass or just plain harass another poster
like being asked to explain an obvious joke......
if you have to explain it.....then what's the point?
you can see where I'm going here.....
so to those who have those bad and or stupid questions....
WHICH they KNOW better than to ask
I have a solution
My dad would tell me think before I spoke
well I tried that....and he was still displeased
so then when he saw one coming
he'd say
STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE, NOW BITE DOWN ON IT
and then he'd stick his hand under my chin just threatening to pop up with it
of course then one day I sought his advice and asked him what he thought about anal sex with a woman if she was having her time of the month
well he was a bit flustered and gob stopped for a couple seconds
and replied:
STICK OUT YOUR TONGUE and NOW BITE DOWN ON IT
well I quit asking him such deep philosophical inquiries after that
and stuck to things like how deep did he want that gravel in that French drain or how deep should I set up the blade on a saw or did he want the 16 lb sledge or the 1/2" impact etc
and it got me to thinking
for those of you who always seem to be asking questions that go unanswered
try this:
before asking a question, bite down hard on your little finger on the nail and the center point of the finger tip
Now, grab it firmly with your other hand and quickly pull on that finger......
now you know how to think before you type
and for the rest of us when a question is given that is purely a annoyance
we just tell the questioning poster:
bite your little finger and pull!
there, problem solved.....
now moving on to that whole world peace issue........
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15176711
BBC World News
19 October 2011 Last updated at 23:20 ET
Indians oppose 'recycled' sewage for Arizona skiing
By Daniel Nasaw BBC News Magazine, Washington
A ski area in the US state of Arizona hopes to become the latest in a small number of resorts using "recycled" sewer water to make snow. But the Hopi Indian tribe aims to stop what they describe as the desecration of their sacred mountain.
The San Francisco Peaks tower over the baking Arizona desert. Stands of white barked aspens, spruce and ponderosa pines dot the high tundra landscape, and the mountain is the highest in the state.
The US Forest Service, which manages the land, recommends it for hikers seeking solitude in the wilderness. The mountain is a holy entity for the Hopi and other Indian tribes who lived in the area centuries before Europeans arrived.
On the mountain's western face lies the Arizona Snowbowl ski resort, a narrow 777-acre block of land poking 10,000ft (3,048m) into the wilderness area, which surrounds it on three sides.
People have been skiing there since 1938. But Arizona is one of the driest states in the US, and a recent run of dry winters has left the operators scrambling to find water to make artificial snow to keep skiers - and their dollars - on the slopes.
The resort's owners, who manage the resort under an agreement with the US government, are embroiled in a row with the Hopi Indian tribe, which has filed a lawsuit to stop Snowbowl's plan to pump highly treated wastewater from the nearby city of Flagstaff up the ski runs to make artificial snow.
The Hopi say spraying treated wastewater on the mountain - even just within the boundaries of the ski resort - would irreparably sully it and threaten their ability to carry out their religious rites among the peaks. And they say it would defile the pristine wilderness for all those who want to enjoy it without skies on.
"The Hopi people believe it is up to moisture from the sky to bring in water," says LeRoy Shingoitewa, Hopi tribal chairman and a former school principal.
"We believe that whatever comes off the mountain is pure. When you take something that is not pure and defile it, it becomes a dirty object. Would you use something in your ceremony that is not clean?"
'Less financial uncertainty'
The Hopi and other Indian groups in the area have been battling the ski resort for decades, but the recent row began in 2002, when the ski area asked the Forest Service for permission to add a new ski lift and carve new ski trails and to buy up to 1.5m US gallons (5.7m litres) of treated sewage a day Flagstaff during ski season for snow making.
"Snow making is the only viable method to ensure consistent and reliable operating season each year with more stable visitor use and less financial uncertainty," Ed Borowsky, one of the owners of the Snowbowl, wrote in a sworn affidavit in federal court.
The operators also found that recycled sewage was the only available water source in the dry desert region.
"No matter how deep you dig, it is impossible to predict whether you will get a dry hole, a slow trickle, or whether you will truly strike water," Mr Borowsky wrote.
Snowbowl officials did not respond to interview requests, and Flagstaff declined to make officials available.
The Forest Service and later the federal courts dismissed the Indian tribes' opposition and allowed the Snowbowl expansion to begin. But this summer, the Hopi tried a new legal tactic. In a state court, they claim Snowbowl's contract to buy Flagstaff's treated wastewater violates state environmental law and ask it be voided.
In the US and across the world, recycled sewage has for decades been used in a variety of applications in which it does not come into sustained contact with humans.
Conserving water
The stringency of treatment the wastewater undergoes depends on its ultimate use.
It can be filtered several times, zapped with ultraviolet lights, injected with chlorine and allowed to settle for long periods. It is used in golf course and park irrigation, car washes, firefighting, industrial applications, irrigation of some crops, and in toilets in commercial buildings. Except in the city of Windhoek, Namibia in Africa, it is not drunk, people familiar with the industry say. Nor is it used in swimming pools.
Recycled water advocates describe it as a process that is ultimately beneficial to the environment, because it conserves a precious natural resource like recycling newspapers saves trees.
"If one uses recycled water, you're taking pressure off of the [drinkable] water supply," says Wade Miller, executive director of the WateReuse Association, a US non-profit advocacy and lobbying organisation.
"If you're using water more than once, you're reducing your water footprint and you're reducing your energy footprint."
It is unclear how many of the more than 480 ski areas in the US use recycled wastewater in snow making operations, though the number is miniscule.
Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania uses diluted recycled wastewater to augment the collected surface water it uses to make snow, says Chris Marso, the executive director of operations.
"It's been treated, it's filtered," he says. "It's probably better than the pond water."
Bear Creek Mountain Resort, also in Pennsylvania, hopes to begin using recycled wastewater to make ski snow this season, in a nine to one ratio with untreated fresh water, says Mark Schroetel, the resort's general manager.
"It's a resource that we have at our disposal to use," Mr Schroetel says. "Water is at a premium. Any water we can get a hold of is added security for us."
And at least two ski resorts in Australia - a continent devastated by prolonged drought - make snow from recycled wastewater.
The recycled water taken from Flagstaff won't smell and it won't be cloudy, supporters say, but a previous US Geological Survey study has found trace amounts of some common pharmaceutical chemicals, caffeine, cleaning products, sunscreen agents and other household and industrial chemicals.
Water reuse advocates say the amounts are so miniscule as to be harmless in casual exposure.
But the Hopi fear spraying the water on the San Francisco peaks will do lasting damage to the ecosystem there, and they are unconvinced by the science.
The tribe, in its capacity as a taxpayer and property owner in the city of Flagstaff, has sued the city to stop it from selling the water to the Snowbowl. It says that use of the water would violate state environmental laws, though the regulations expressly allow use in snow making for skiing.
"What does clean mean?" asks Mr Shingoitewa. "The more we looked at it, the more we were told by our people, you've got to protect that sacred mountain."
2000 years ago we were all tribal.
Then came the missionaries with their ******* bible.
1492 began the termination
The holocaust of our Indian nations
Yeah, with Christian love and a moral authority
They killed our medicine men and stole our country
I never claimed this **** was poetry
It's just the ******* lies of Christianity
You will pray to the lord and get down on your knees
Here's a cross for your back and the coughing disease
Though you helped us survive we will laugh while you bleed
Then deny what we did, write our own history
We will kidnap your children and cut off their hair
Silence their language and outlaw their prayers
Beat them blind until they believe
In the blood of Jesus Christ our king
Christians murdered Indians
Columbus murdered children and now we have a holiday
Still you want to deny your history
Look to the sky for your god to justify
As you commit cultural genocide
Christians came and the natives they did hang
13 at a time for Jesus and his gang
We are the ones you had to dehumanize
So your murder and greed could be justified
The belly of the church is full
With the blood of all those heathen fools
Who would not receive the gift of Christ?
So we burned them as a sacrifice
To our baby killing god above
To our mother church and all her love
We will steal their gods and subjugate
Those who don't believe we'll ahnilate
"The Spaniards made bets as to who would slit a man in two or cut of
his head with one blow. They tore babies from their mother's breast by
their feet and dashed their head against the rocks. They hanged Indians
by thirteen in honor and reverence for their redeemer and their twelve
apostles. They put wood underneath and with fire burned the Indians
alive."
Christians murdered Indians
We believe in the earth, the sky and dreams
The universe and the creator who gave us these
The sacred gift of life and human beings
That makes you perpetrate the hate to ahnilate
So here I am the savage civilized
Voice of the dead and my ancestor's cries
And like the ghosts of this land you can't erase
I see blood on the hands of the master race.
500 years of manifest destiny
500 years of resistance to the enemy
You have faith in the rivers, the mountains, the trees
We've a murdering god to replace all of these
With the blood of forgiveness you too can be free
Or the wrath of Jehovah you're sure to receive
We will baptize you with the blood of the lamb
With the sword and the gospel we will conquer your land
You will join our church and be glad to be saved
Or we'll slaughter your children and your women we'll rape.
Christians murdered Indians
I see blood on the hands of the master race.
Source(s):
Corporate Avenger Lyrics
it's most definitely a VEXing waste of taxpayer dollars
the only questions are
are you paid by the hour, the amount of posts per each char, or are you on salary
too bad you broke the peace......
now you get outed if you don't knock it off.
and not by me.........
The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills
By Alexis Madrigal
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/print/2011/09/the-dark-side-of-the-placebo-effect-when-intense-belief-kills/245065/
While people of all cultures experience sleep paralysis in similar ways, the specific form and intensity it takes varies from one group to the next
They died in their sleep one by one, thousands of miles from home. Their median age was 33. All but one -- 116 of the 117 -- were healthy men. Immigrants from southeast Asia, you could count the time most had spent on American soil in just months. At the peak of the deaths in the early 1980s, the death rate from this mysterious problem among the Hmong ethnic group was equivalent to the top five natural causes of death for other American men in their age group.
Something was killing Hmong men in their sleep, and no one could figure out what it was. There was no obvious cause of death. None of them had been sick, physically. The men weren't clustered all that tightly, geographically speaking. They were united by dislocation from Laos and a shared culture, but little else. Even House would have been stumped.
Doctors gave the problem a name, the kind that reeks of defeat, a dragon label on the edge of the known medical world: Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome. SUNDS. It didn't do much in terms of diagnosis or treatment, but it was easier to track the periodic conferences dedicated to understanding the problem.
Twenty-five years later, Shelley Adler's new book pieces together what happened, drawing on interviews with the Hmong population and analyzing the extant scientific literature. Sleep Paralysis: Night-mares, Nocebos, and the Mind Body Connection is a mind-bending exploration of how what you believe interacts with how your body works. Adler, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, comes to a stunning conclusion: In a sense, the Hmong were killed by their beliefs in the spirit world, even if the mechanism of their deaths was likely an obscure genetic cardiac arrhythmia that is prevalent in southeast Asia.
By 1986, the Hmong deaths had slowed, but remained a striking epidemiological fact. Adler was a graduate student at UCLA studying traditional belief narratives at the time. She'd been researching what she called "nocturnal pressing spirit attacks," or what scientific literature called sleep paralysis. Fascinatingly, sleep paralysis is known to just about all cultures, and it is almost always associated with nocturnal evil. In Indonesia, it's called digeunton ("pressed on"). In China, it's bei gui ya ("held by a ghost"). The Hungarians know it as boszorkany-nyomas, "witches' pressure." In Newfoundland, the spirit that comes is called the Old Hag, and the experience of sleep paralysis, ag rog, "hag ridden." The Dutch name comes closest to what English speakers know. They call the presence nachtmerrie, the night-mare. The "mare" in question comes from the German mahr or Old Norse mara, which denoted a generally female supernatural being who in Adler's words, "lay on people's chests, suffocating them." The etymology of mare isn't clear, but the term is a fruit of the Indo-European language tree, likely from moros (death), mer (drive out), or mar (to pound, bruise, crush).
Results like these seem improbable, or anti-reason, or something. But Adler's book is an attack on the "Oh, come on!" form of argument.
Across cultures, night-mare visits play out in very similar ways. Victims experience the strange feeling of being "awake." While they have a realistic perception of their environment, they can't move. Worse, they feel an "overwhelming fear and dread" accompanied by chest pressure and difficulty breathing. Scientists have a pretty good grasp of how all of this happens. The paralysis, the feeling of pressure on the chest, all that is explained quite nicely within the scientific models of sleep. During sleep paralysis, a person experiences an "out of sequence" REM state. In REM sleep, we dream and our minds shut off the physical control of the body; we're supposed to be temporarily paralyzed. But we are not supposed to be conscious in REM sleep. Yet that is precisely what happens during sleep paralysis: it is a mix of brain states that are normally held separate.
And then there is the weird stuff, the Old Hag part, the night-mare. People who have an experience of sleep paralysis tend to feel some horrible, evil being is near them. "I just knew this presence was there. An ominous presence ... not only could I not see it, but I couldn't defend myself, I couldn't do anything," one victim told Adler. This feeling is consistent across cultures, even if it goes by different names and presents through the culture one knows.
I experienced sleep paralysis twice in college. I can vouch for the sheer terror that attends the experience. I saw -- no, felt -- an evil presence to my left. I can't tell you what was evil about it or how I knew it was so nasty. But I did. As the experience progressed, it came closer. It didn't feel like my life was at risk. That was, in fact, too small. It felt like the presence was after something else, probably what you'd call my soul or my being, even though intellectually I'm a straight materialist. I woke up more scared than I've ever been in my life. Overwhelming fear. Overwhelming dread. Overwhelming fear and dread. When I read about sleep paralysis, I immediately identified that presence (which remained just to the left of my visual field) as the Old Hag.
But there is a one big difference between sleep paralysis, which impacts a substantial percentage of the global population at least once, and what the Hmong immigrants experienced in the 1980s. The Old Hag was terrifying but harmless; whatever happened in the night to the Hmong killed them.
Adler studied the Hmong and their relationship to what they call tsog tsuam for years and years. That research forms the core of her book. Adler went out into the field. She collected dozens of experiences of sleep paralysis among the Hmong both from her own interviews and other researchers. One 49-year old Adler interviewed provided this typical experience:
I remember a few months after I first came here -- I was asleep. I turned out the light and everything, but I kind of think ... and then -- all of a sudden, I felt that -- I cannot move. I just feel it, but I don't see anything, but I -- then I tried to move my hand, but I cannot move my hand. I keep trying, but I cannot move myself. I know it is tsog tsuam. I am so scared. I can hardly breathe. I think, "Who will help? What if I die?"
She brought her background in exploring traditional belief systems to bear on attacks like the one above. She found that the nighttime attacks were part of a matrix of beliefs held by both animist and Christian Hmong. A powerful folklore had built up around tsog tsuam that included both causes and cures for the attacks.
"When the Hmong don't worship properly, do not perform the religious ritual properly or forget to sacrifice or whatever, then the ancestor spirits or the village spirits do not want to guard them," one man explained to Adler. "That's why the evil spirit is able to come and get them." And for a lot of reasons, the Hmong in the late 1970s and early 1980s were not able to worship properly.
The ethnic group fought a guerrilla war against the government of Laos with U.S. backing during the Vietnam War. When the Laotian communists won, many Hmong struck out for America to avoid reprisals. The U.S. government decided to scatter the Hmong randomly across the U.S. to 53 different cities, breaking up the immigration patterns we generally see. In short order, the Hmong organized and made a "secondary migration" to California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The immigrants ran into all kinds of problems making their way in the States. Highland Laos, where farming and hunting were the norm, was not Minneapolis-St. Paul or Fresno. Unemployment was obscenely high and the sense of community that many had enjoyed in the old country was gone.
Some Hmong felt that they had not properly honored the memories of their ancestors, which was a known risk factor among the Hmong for being visited by the tsog tsuam. Once the night-mare visitations began, a shaman was often needed to set things right. And in the scattered communities of Hmong across the country, they might not have access to the right person. Without access to traditional rituals, shamans, and geographies, the Hmong were unable to provide themselves psychic protection from the spirits of their sleep.
Adler makes the provocative claim that the Laotian immigrants were in some sense killed by their powerful cultural beliefs.
Drawing on all this evidence, Adler makes the provocative claim that the Laotian immigrants of the 1980s were in some sense killed by their powerful cultural belief in night spirits. It was not a simple process.
"It is my contention that in the context of severe and ongoing stress related to cultural disruption and national resettlement (exacerbated by intense feelings of powerlessness about existence in the United States), and from the perspective of a belief system in which evil spirits have the power to kill men who do not fulfill their religious obligations," Adler writes, "the solitary Hmong man confronted by the numinous terror of the night-mare (and aware of its murderous intent) can die of SUNDS."
Her argument amounts to a stirring and chilling case for the power of the nocebo, the flipside to the placebo effect. While placebo studies have grown in importance, the nocebo effect has not been studied well in scientific literature, in part because of the ethical issues involved in deliberately doing something that might harm people. Limited studies suggest that it is real and it is powerful. For example, doctors have found that patients made to feel anxious need larger amounts of opiates after surgery than other people. They've found that pretending to expose people who say they are sensitive to electromagnetic radiation to cell phone signals can give them debilitating headaches. Even patients' level of side effects from arthritis medication seem determined by those patients' beliefs about those medicines. Logically speaking, if the evidence shows the upside of belief, why wouldn't we believe in the downside, too? And why wouldn't we believe that the intensity of the downside would vary with the intensity of the belief, even if those beliefs were about something unscientific, like spirits or astrology?
If you're still unsure that the nocebo effect could actually lead to premature death, Adler cites one stunning example of the effect from China. A team of researchers found that Chinese Americans die younger than expected "if they have a combination of disease and birth year which Chinese astrology and medicine considers ill-fated." That is to say, if they were born in a year that was astrologically linked to poor lung health, they would die an average of five years earlier from lung-related disease than someone born in some other year with the same disease. Similar effects were not found in the white populations around them. And how much sooner you died depended on the people's "strength of commitment to traditional Chinese culture."
Think about that for a minute. If you were born under a bad sign, you died five years younger from the same diseases as people born under good signs. But only if you believed in Chinese astrology.
Results like these seem improbable, or anti-reason, or something. But Adler's book is an attack on the "Oh, come on!" form of argument. She uses her understanding of both science and traditional belief structures to argue for what she calls "local biology."
"Since meaning has biological consequences, and meanings vary across cultures, biology can operate differently in different contexts," she writes. "In other words, biology is 'local' -- the 'same' biological processes in different places have different 'effects' on people."
The truth is that we don't understand the relationship between belief and biology quite as well as we'd like to think. That's one reason sleep paralysis is so useful as a probe for the boundary of mind and body. The night-mare is "a link between our biological and cultural selves." While people of all cultures experience sleep paralysis in similar ways, the specific form and intensity it takes varies by culture, soaking up whatever local spirits or monsters happen to be lurking nearby.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/09/the-dark-side-of-the-placebo-effect-when-intense-belief-kills/245065/
Copyright © 2011 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
(Reuters) - The nation's second-largest Indian tribe said on
> Tuesday that it would not be dictated to by the U.S. government
> over its move to banish 2,800 African Americans from its
> citizenship rolls.
>
> "The Cherokee Nation will not be governed by the BIA," Joe
> Crittenden, the tribe's acting principal chief, said in a
> statement responding to the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.
>
> Crittenden, who leads the tribe until a new principal chief is
> elected, went on to complain about unnamed congressmen meddling
> in the tribe's self-governance.
>
> The reaction follows a letter the tribe received on Monday from
> BIA Assistant Secretary Larry Echo Hawk, who warned that the
> results of the September 24 Cherokee election for principal
> chief will not be recognized by the U.S. government if the
> ousted members, known to some as "Cherokee Freedmen," are not
> allowed to vote.
>
> The dispute stems from the fact that some wealthy Cherokee owned
> black slaves who worked on their plantations in the South. By
> the 1830s, most of the tribe was forced to relocate to present-
> day Oklahoma, and many took their slaves with them. The so-
> called Freedmen are descendants of those slaves.
>
> After the Civil War, in which the Cherokee fought for the South,
> a treaty was signed in 1866 guaranteeing tribal citizenship for
> the freed slaves.
>
> The U.S. government said that the 1866 treaty between the
> Cherokee tribe and the U.S. government guaranteed that the
> slaves were tribal citizens, whether or not they had a Cherokee
> blood relation.
>
> The African Americans lost their citizenship last month when the
> Cherokee Supreme Court voted to support the right of tribal
> members to change the tribe's constitution on citizenship
> matters.
>
> The change meant that Cherokee Freedmen who could not prove they
> have a Cherokee blood relation were no longer citizens, making
> them ineligible to vote in tribal elections or receive benefits.
>
> Besides pressure from the BIA to accept the 1866 Treaty as the
> law of the land, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
> Development is withholding a $33 million disbursement to the
> tribe over the Freedmen controversy.
>
> Attorneys in a federal lawsuit in Washington are asking a judge
> to restore voting rights for the ousted Cherokee Freedmen in
> time for the September 24 tribal election for Principal Chief.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/14/us-usa-cherokees-idUSTRE78D05X20110914?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
The World of Free Energy
By Peter Lindemann, D.Sc.
Originally written March 1, 2001
http://www.wanttoknow.info/newenergysources
IN THE LATE 1880's, trade journals in the electrical sciences were predicting “free electricity” in the near future. Incredible discoveries about the nature of electricity were becoming common place. Nikola Tesla was demonstrating “wireless lighting” and other wonders associated with high frequency currents. There was an excitement about the future like never before.
Within 20 years, there would be automobiles, airplanes, movies, recorded music, telephones, radio, and practical cameras. The Victorian Age was giving way to something totally new. For the first time in history, common people were encouraged to envision a utopian future, filled with abundant modern transportation and communication, as well as jobs, housing and food for everyone. Disease would be conquered, and so would poverty. Life was getting better, and this time, everyone was going to get “a piece of the pie.” So, what happened? In the midst of this technological explosion, where did the energy breakthroughs go? Was all of this excitement about “free electricity”, which happened just before the beginning of the last century, all just wishful thinking that “real science” eventually disproved?
Current State of Technology
Actually, the answer to that question is NO. In fact, the opposite is true. Spectacular energy technologies were developed right along with the other breakthroughs. Since that time, multiple methods for producing vast amounts of energy at extremely low cost have been developed. None of these technologies have made it to the “open” consumer market as an article of commerce, however. Exactly why this is true will be discussed shortly. But first, I would like to describe to you a short list of “free energy” technologies that I am currently aware of, and that are proven beyond all reasonable doubt. The common feature connecting all of these discoveries, is that they use a small amount of one form of energy to control or release a large amount of a different kind of energy. Many of them tap the underlying Ether field in some way; a source of energy conveniently ignored by “modern” science.
1) Radiant Energy
Nikola Tesla’s Magnifying Transmitter, T. Henry Moray’s Radiant Energy Device, Edwin Gray’s EMA Motor, and Paul Baumann’s Testatika Machine all run on Radiant Energy. This natural energy form can be gathered directly from the environment (mistakenly called “static” electricity) or extracted from ordinary electricity by the method called “fractionation.” Radiant Energy can perform the same wonders as ordinary electricity, at less than 1% of the cost. It does not behave exactly like electricity, however, which has contributed to the scientific community’s misunderstanding of it. The Methernitha Community in Switzerland currently has 5 or 6 working models of fuelless, self-running devices that tap this energy.
2) Permanent Magnets
Dr. Robert Adams (NZ) has developed astounding designs of electric motors, generators and heaters that run on permanent magnets. One such device draws 100 watts of electricity from the source, generates 100 watts to recharge the source, and produces over 140 BTU’s of heat in two minutes! Dr. Tom Bearden (USA) has two working models of a permanent magnet powered electrical transformer. It uses a 6-watt electrical input to control the path of a magnetic field coming out of a permanent magnet. By channeling the magnetic field, first to one output coil and then a second output coil, and by doing this repeatedly and rapidly in a “Ping-Pong” fashion, the device can produce a 96-watt electrical output with no moving parts. Bearden calls his device a Motionless Electromagnetic Generator, or MEG. Jean-Louis Naudin has duplicated Bearden’s device in France. The principles for this type of device were first disclosed by Frank Richardson (USA) in 1978. Troy Reed (USA) has working models of a special magnetized fan that heats up as it spins. It takes exactly the same amount of energy to spin the fan whether it is generating heat or not. Beyond these developments, multiple inventors have identified working mechanisms that produce motor torque from permanent magnets alone.
3) Mechanical Heaters
There are two classes of machines that transform a small amount of mechanical energy into a large amount of heat. The best of these purely mechanical designs are the rotating cylinder systems designed by Frenette (USA) and Perkins (USA). In these machines, one cylinder is rotated within another cylinder with about an eighth of an inch of clearance between them. The space between the cylinders is filled with a liquid such as water or oil, and it is this “working fluid” that heats up as the inner cylinder spins. Another method uses magnets mounted on a wheel to produce large eddy currents in a plate of aluminum, causing the aluminum to heat up rapidly. These magnetic heaters have been demonstrated by Muller (Canada), Adams (NZ) and Reed (USA). All of these systems can produce ten times more heat than standard methods using the same energy input.
4) Super-Efficient Electrolysis
Water can be broken into Hydrogen and Oxygen using electricity. Standard chemistry books claim that this process requires more energy than can be recovered when the gases are recombined. This is true only under the worst case scenario. When water is hit with its own molecular resonant frequency, using a system developed by Stan Meyers (USA) and again recently by Xogen Power, Inc., it collapses into Hydrogen and Oxygen gas with very little electrical input. Also, using different electrolytes (additives that make the water conduct electricity better) changes the efficiency of the process dramatically. It is also known that certain geometric structures and surface textures work better than others do. The implication is that unlimited amounts of Hydrogen fuel can be made to drive engines (like in your car) for the cost of water. Even more amazing is the fact that a special metal alloy was patented by Freedman (USA) in 1957 that spontaneously breaks water into Hydrogen and Oxygen with no outside electrical input and without causing any chemical changes in the metal itself. This means that this special metal alloy can make Hydrogen from water for free, forever.
5) Implosion/Vortex
All major industrial engines use the release of heat to cause expansion and pressure to produce work, like in your car engine. Nature uses the opposite process of cooling to cause suction and vacuum to produce work, like in a tornado. Viktor Schauberger (Austria) was the first to build working models of Implosion Engines in the 1930's and 1940's. Since that time, Callum Coats has published extensively on Schauberger’s work in his book Living Energies and subsequently, a number of researchers have built working models of Implosion Turbine Engines. These are fuelless engines that produce mechanical work from energy accessed from a vacuum. There are also much simpler designs that use vortex motions to tap a combination of gravity and centrifugal force to produce a continuous motion in fluids.
6) Cold Fusion
In March 1989, two Chemists from the University of Utah (USA) announced that they had produced atomic fusion reactions in a simple tabletop device. The claims were “debunked” within 6 months and the public lost interest. Nevertheless, Cold Fusion is very real. Not only has excess heat production been repeatedly documented, but also low energy atomic element transmutation has been catalogued, involving dozens of different reactions! This technology definitely can produce low cost energy and scores of other important industrial processes.
7) Solar Assisted Heat Pumps
The refrigerator in your kitchen is the only “free energy machine” you currently own. It’s an electrically operated heat pump. It uses one amount of energy (electricity) to move three amounts of energy (heat). This gives it a “co-efficient of performance” (COP) of about 3. Your refrigerator uses one amount of electricity to pump three amounts of heat from the inside of the refrigerator to the outside of the refrigerator. This is its typical use, but it is the worst possible way to use the technology. Here’s why. A heat pump pumps heat from the “source” of heat to the “sink” or place that absorbs the heat. The “source” of heat should obviously be HOT and the “sink” for heat should obviously be COLD for this process to work the best. In your refrigerator, it’s exactly the opposite. The “source” of heat is inside the box, which is COLD, and the “sink” for heat is the room temperature air of your kitchen, which is warmer than the source. This is why the COP remains low for your kitchen refrigerator. But this is not true for all heat pumps. COP’s of 8 to 10 are easily attained with solar assisted heat pumps. In such a device, a heat pump draws heat from a solar collector and dumps the heat into a large underground absorber, which remains at 55 degrees F, and mechanical energy is extracted in the transfer. This process is equivalent to a steam engine that extracts mechanical energy between the boiler and the condenser, except that it uses a fluid that “boils” at a much lower temperature than water. One such system that was tested in the 1970's produced 350 hp, measured on a Dynamometer, in a specially designed engine from just 100-sq. ft. of solar collector. (This is NOT the system promoted by Dennis Lee.) The amount of energy it took to run the compressor (input) was less than 20 hp, so this system produced more than 17 times more energy than it took to keep it going! It could power a small neighborhood from the roof of a hot tub gazebo, using exactly the same technology that keeps the food cold in your kitchen. Currently, there is an industrial scale heat pump system just north of Kona, Hawaii that generates electricity from temperature differences in ocean water.
There are dozens of other systems that I have not mentioned, many of them are as viable and well tested as the ones I have just recounted. But this short list is sufficient to make my point: free energy technology is here, now. It offers the world pollution-free, energy abundance for everyone, everywhere. It is now possible to stop the production of “greenhouse gases” and shut down all of the nuclear power plants. We can now desalinate unlimited amounts of seawater at an affordable price, and bring adequate fresh water to even the most remote habitats. Transportation costs and the production costs for just about everything can drop dramatically. Food can even be grown in heated greenhouses in the winter, anywhere. All of these wonderful benefits that can make life on this planet so much easier and better for everyone have been postponed for decades. Why? Whose purposes are served by this postponement?
The Invisible Enemy
There are four gigantic forces that have worked together to create this situation. To say that there is and has been a “conspiracy” to suppress this technology only leads to a superficial understanding of the world, and it places the blame for this completely outside of ourselves. Our willingness to remain ignorant and actionless in the face of this situation has always been interpreted by two of these forces as “implied consent.” So, besides a “non-demanding public,” what are the other three forces that are impeding the availability of free energy technology?
1st Force — The Money Monopoly
In standard economic theory, there are three classes of Industry. These are Capital, Goods, and Services. Within the first class, Capital, there are also three sub-classes. These are: 1) Natural Capital. This relates to raw materials (such as a gold mine) and sources of energy (such as a hydroelectric dam or an oil well). 2) Currency. This relates to the printing of paper “money” and the minting of coins. These functions are usually the job of Government. And 3) Credit. This relates to the loaning of money for interest and its extension of economic value through deposit loan accounts. From this, it is easy to see, that energy functions in the economy in the same way as gold, the printing of money by the Government, or the issuing of credit by a bank.
In the United States, and in most other countries around the world, there is a “money monopoly” in place. I am “free” to earn as much “money” as I want, but I will only be paid in Federal Reserve Notes. There is nothing I can do to be paid in Gold Certificates, or some other form of “money.” This money monopoly is solely in the hands of a small number of private stock banks, and these banks are owned by the Wealthiest Families in the world. Their plan is to eventually control 100% of all of the Capital resources of the world, and thereby control everyone’s life through the availability (or non-availability) of all goods and services. An independent source of wealth (free energy device) in the hands of each and every person in the world, ruins their plans for world domination, permanently. Why this is true is easy to see. Currently, a nation’s economy can be either slowed down or sped up by the raising or lowering of interest rates. But if an independent source of capital (energy) were present in the economy, and any business or person could raise more capital without borrowing it from a bank, this centralized throttling action on interest rates would simply not have the same effect. Free energy technology changes the value of money. The Wealthiest Families and the Issuers of Credit do not want any competition. It’s that simple. They want to maintain their current monopoly control of the money supply. For them, free energy technology is not just something to suppress, it must be PERMANENTLY FORBIDDEN!
So, the Wealthiest Families and their Central Banking institutions are the First Force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology. Their motivations are the imagined “divine right to rule”, greed, and their insatiable need to control everything except themselves. The weapons they have used to enforce this postponement include intimidation, “expert” debunkers, buying and shelving of technology, murder and attempted murder of the inventors, character assassination, arson, and a wide variety of financial incentives and disincentives to manipulate possible supporters. They have also promoted the general acceptance of a scientific theory that states that free energy is impossible (Laws of Thermodynamics).
2nd Force — National Governments
The Second Force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology is National Governments. The problem here is not so much related to competition in the printing of currency, but in the maintenance of National Security. The fact is, the world out there is a jungle, and humans can be counted upon to be very cruel, dishonest, and sneaky. It is Government’s job to “provide for the common defense.” For this, “police powers” are delegated by the Executive Branch of Government to enforce “the rule of law.” Most of us who consent to the rule of law do so because we believe it is the right thing to do, for our own benefit. There are always a few individuals, however, that believe that their own benefit is best served by behavior that does not voluntarily conform to the generally agreed upon social order. These people choose to operate outside of “the rule of law” and are considered outlaws, criminals, subversives, traitors, revolutionaries, or terrorists.
Most National Governments have discovered, by trial and error, that the only Foreign Policy that really works, over time, is a policy called “Tit for Tat.” What this means to you and me is, that governments treat each other the way they are being treated. There is a constant “jockeying” for position and influence in world affairs, and the STRONGEST party wins! In economics, it’s the Golden Rule, which states: “The one with the Gold makes the Rules.” So it is with politics also, but its appearance is more Darwinian. It’s simply “survival of the fittest.” In politics, however, the “fittest” has come to mean the strongest party who is also willing to fight the dirtiest. Absolutely every means available is used to maintain an advantage over the “adversary”, and everyone else is the “adversary” regardless of whether they are considered friend or foe. This includes outrageous psychological posturing, lying, cheating, spying, stealing, assassination of world leaders, proxy wars, alliances and shifting alliances, treaties, foreign aid, and the presence of military forces wherever possible. Like it or not, this IS the psychological and actual arena National Governments operate in. No National Government will ever do anything that simply gives an adversary an advantage for free. NEVER! It’s national suicide. Any activity by any individual, inside or outside the country, that is interpreted as giving an adversary an edge or advantage, in any way, will be deemed a threat to “National Security.” ALWAYS!
Free energy technology is a National Government’s worst nightmare! Openly acknowledged, free energy technology sparks an unlimited arms race by all governments in a final attempt to gain absolute advantage and domination. Think about it. Do you think Japan will not feel intimidated if China gets free energy? Do you think Israel will sit by quietly as Iraq acquires free energy? Do you think India will allow Pakistan to develop free energy? Do you think the USA would not try to stop Osama bin Laden from getting free energy? Unlimited energy available to the current state of affairs on this planet leads to an inevitable reshuffling of the “balance of power.” This could become an all-out war to prevent “the other” from having the advantage of unlimited wealth and power. Everybody will want it, and at the same time, want to prevent everyone else from getting it.
So, National Governments are the Second Force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology. Their motivations are “self-preservation.” This self-preservation operates on three levels. First, by not giving undue advantage to an external enemy. Second, by preventing individualized action capable of effectively challenging official police powers (anarchy) within the country. And third, by preserving income streams derived from taxing energy sources currently in use. Their weapons include the preventing of the issuance of patents based on National Security grounds, the legal and illegal harassment of inventors with criminal charges, tax audits, threats, phone taps, arrest, arson, theft of property during shipment, and a host of other intimidations which make the business of building and marketing a free energy machine impossible.
3rd Force — Delusion and Dishonesty in the FE Movement
The Third Force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology consists of the group of deluded inventors and out right charlatans and con men. On the periphery of the extraordinary scientific breakthroughs that constitute the real free energy technologies, lies a shadow world of unexplained anomalies, marginal inventions and unscrupulous promoters. The first two Forces have constantly used the media to promote the worst examples of this group, to distract the public’s attention and to discredit the real breakthroughs by associating them with the obvious frauds.
Over the last hundred years, dozens of stories have surfaced about unusual inventions. Some of these ideas have so captivated the public’s imagination that a mythology about these systems continues to this day. Names like Keely, Hubbard, Coler, and Henderschott immediately come to mind. There may be real technologies behind these names, but there simply isn’t enough technical data available in the public domain to make a determination. These names remain associated with a free energy mythology, however, and are sited by debunkers as examples of fraud.
The idea of free energy taps very deeply into the human subconscious mind. A few inventors with marginal technologies that demonstrate useful anomalies have mistakenly exaggerated the importance of their inventions. Some of these inventors also have mistakenly exaggerated the importance of THEMSELVES for having invented it. A combination of “gold fever” and/or a “messiah complex” appears, wholly distorting any future contribution they may make. While the research thread they are following may hold great promise, they begin to trade enthusiasm for facts, and the value of the scientific work from that point on suffers greatly. There is a powerful, yet subtle seduction that can warp a personality if they believe that “the world rests on their shoulders” or that they are the world’s “savior.” Strange things also happen to people when they think they are about to become extremely rich. It takes a tremendous spiritual discipline to remain objective and humble in the presence of a working free energy machine. Many inventors’ psyches become unstable just BELIEVING they have a free energy machine. As the quality of the science deteriorates, some inventors also develop a “persecution complex” that makes them very defensive and unapproachable. This process precludes them from ever really developing a free energy machine, and fuels the fraud mythologies tremendously.
Then there are the out right con men. In the last 15 years, there is one person in the USA who has raised the free energy con to a professional art. He has raised more than $100,000,000, has been barred from doing business in the State of Washington, has been jailed in California, and he’s still at it. He always talks about a variation of one of the real free energy systems, sells people on the idea that they will get one of these systems soon, but ultimately sells them only promotional information which gives no real data about the energy system itself. He has mercilessly preyed upon the Christian Community and the Patriot Community in the USA, and is still going strong. His current scam involves signing up hundreds of thousands of people as locations where he will install a free energy machine. In exchange for letting him put the FE generator in their home, they will get free electricity for life, and his company will sell the excess energy back to the local utility company. After becoming convinced that they will receive free electricity for life, with no out-front expenses, they gladly buy a video that helps draw their friends into the scam as well. Once you understand the power and motivations of the first two Forces I have discussed, its obvious that this person’s current “business plan” cannot be implemented. This one person has probably done more harm to the free energy movement in the USA than any other Force, by destroying people’s trust in the technology.
So, the Third Force postponing the public availability of free energy technology is delusion and dishonesty within the movement itself. The motivations are self-aggrandizement, greed, want of power over others, and a false sense of self-importance. The weapons used are lying, cheating, the “bait and switch” con, self-delusion and arrogance combined with lousy science.
4th Force — A Non-Demanding Public
The Fourth Force operating to postpone the public availability of free energy technology is all of the rest of us. It may be easy to see how narrow and despicable the motivations of the other Forces are, but actually, these motivations are still very much alive in each of us as well. Like the Wealthiest Families, don’t we each secretly harbor illusions of false superiority, and the want to control others instead of ourselves? Also, wouldn’t you “sell out” if the price were high enough, say, take $1 million dollars, cash, today? Or like the Governments, don’t we each want to ensure our own survival? If caught in the middle of a full, burning theater, do you panic and push all of the weaker people out of the way in a mad, scramble for the door? Or like the deluded inventor, don’t we trade a comfortable illusion once in a while for an uncomfortable fact? And don’t we like to think more of ourselves than others give us credit for? Or don’t we still fear the unknown, even if it promises a great reward?
You see, really, all Four Forces are just different aspects of the same process, operating at different levels in the society. There is really only ONE FORCE preventing the public availability of free energy technology, and that is the unspiritually motivated behavior of the human animals. In the last analysis, free energy technology is an outward manifestation of Divine Abundance. It is the engine of the economy of an enlightened society, where people voluntarily behave in a respectful and civil manner toward each other. Where each member of the society has everything they need, and do not covet what their neighbor has. Where war and physical violence has become socially unacceptable behavior and people’s differences are at least tolerated, if not enjoyed.
The appearance of free energy technology in the public domain is the dawning of a truly civilized age. It is an epochal event in human history. Nobody can “take credit” for it. Nobody can “get rich” on it. Nobody can “rule the world” with it. It is simply, a Gift from God. It forces us all to take responsibility for our own actions and for our own self-disciplined self-restraint when needed. The world as it is currently ordered, cannot have free energy technology without being totally transformed by it into something else. This “civilization” has reached the pinnacle of its development, because it has birthed the seeds of its own transformation. The unspiritualized human animals cannot be trusted with free energy. They will only do what they have always done, which is take merciless advantage of each other, or kill each other and themselves in the process.
If you go back and read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged or the Club of Rome Report, it becomes obvious that the Wealthiest Families have understood this for decades. Their plan is to live in The World of Free Energy, but permanently freeze the rest of us out. But this is not new. Royalty has always considered the general population (us) to be their subjects. What is new, is that you and I can communicate with each other now better than at anytime in the past. The Internet offers us, the Fourth Force, an opportunity to overcome the combined efforts of the other Forces preventing free energy technology from spreading.
The Opportunity for a Just Society
What is starting to happen is that inventors are publishing their work, instead of patenting it and keeping it secret. More and more, people are “giving away” information on these technologies in books, videos and websites. While there is still a great deal of useless information about free energy on the Internet, the availability of good information is rising rapidly. Check out the list of websites and other resources at the end of this article.
It is imperative that you begin to gather all of the information you can on real free energy systems. The reason for this is simple. The first two Forces will never allow an inventor or a company to build and sell a free energy machine to you! The only way you will ever get one is if you, or a friend, build it yourself. This is exactly what thousands of people are already quietly starting to do. You may feel wholly inadequate to the task, but start gathering information now. You may be just a link in the chain of events for the benefit of others. Focus on what you can do now, not on how much there still is to be done. Small, private research groups are working out the details as you read this. Many are committed to publishing their results on the Internet.
All of us constitute the Fourth Force. If we stand up and refuse to remain ignorant and action-less, we can change the course of history. It is the aggregate of our combined action that can make a difference. Only the mass action that represents our consensus can create the world we want. The other three Forces WILL NOT help us put a fuelless power plant in our basements. They will not help us be free from their manipulations. Nevertheless, free energy technology is here. It is real, and it will change everything about the way we live, work and relate to each other. In the last analysis, free energy technology obsoletes greed and the fear for survival. But like all exercises of Spiritual Faith, we must first manifest the generosity and trust in our own lives.
The Source of Free Energy is INSIDE of us. It is that excitement of expressing ourselves freely. It is our Spiritually guided intuition expressing itself without distraction, intimidation or manipulation. It is our open-heartedness. Ideally, the free energy technologies underpin a just society where everyone has enough food, clothing, shelter, self-worth, and the leisure time to contemplate the higher Spiritual meanings of Life. Do we not owe it to each other, to face down our fears, and take action to create this future for our children’s children? Perhaps I am not the only one waiting for me to act on a greater Truth.
Free energy technology is here. It has been here for decades. Communications technology and the Internet have torn the veil of secrecy off of this remarkable fact. People all over the world are starting to build free energy devices for their own use. The Bankers and the Governments do not want this to happen, but cannot stop it. Tremendous economic instabilities and wars will be used in the near future to distract people from joining the free energy movement. There will be essentially no major media coverage of this aspect of what is going on. It will simply be reported as wars and civil wars erupting everywhere, leading to UN “Peace Keeper” occupation in more and more countries.
Western Society is spiraling down toward self-destruction, due to the accumulated effects of long-term greed and corruption. The general availability of free energy technology cannot stop this trend. It can only reinforce it. If, however, you have a free energy device, you may be better positioned to survive the political/social/economic transition that is underway. No National Government will survive this process. The question is, who will ultimately control the emerging World Government, the First Force, or the Fourth Force?
The last Great War is almost upon us. The seeds are planted. After this will come the beginning of a real Civilization. Some of us who refuse to fight will survive to see the dawn of the World of Free Energy. I challenge you to be among the ones who try.
Copyright 2009 Peter Lindemann http://www.free-energy.ws
Books:
Living Energies by Callum Coats
The Free Energy Secrets of Cold Electricity by Peter Lindemann, D.Sc.
Applied Modern 20th Century Aether Science by Dr. Robert Adams
Physics Without Einstein by Dr. Harold Aspden
Secrets of Cold War Technology by Gerry Vassilatos
The Coming Energy Revolution by Jeane Manning
Links:
For full 10-page text of this new energy document: http://www.WantToKnow.info/freeenergy
References and patent numbers listed at the end of the 10-page text. Spread the word. For other excellent articles and resources, see our New Energy Information Center
About Peter Lindemann
Dr. Peter Lindemann became interested in free energy in 1973, when he was introduced to the work of Edwin Gray. By 1981, he had developed his own free energy systems based on variable reluctance generators and pulsed motor designs. During the 1980s, he worked off and on with both Bruce DePalma and Eric Dollard, and in 1988 joined the board of directors at Borderland Sciences Research Foundation, serving until 1999. Currently, he is a research associate of Dr. Robert Adams in New Zealand, as well as a close collaborator with Trevor James Constable in the United States.
Dr. Lindemann is one of the foremost authorities on the practical applications of Ether technology and Cold Electricity. He is currently director of research for Clear Tech, Inc., Box 37, Metaline Falls, WA 99153, phone 509-446-2353, fax 509-446-2354. To find out more about his work, you may visit the Clear Tech website at http://www.Free-Energy.cc.
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1094, August 28, 2011
1. Honduras: Killings Continue as Aguán Becomes “New Colombia”
2. Chile: General Strike Adds to Pressure on the Government
3. Nicaragua: Dole Settles Pesticide Case With 4,000 Ex-Employees
4. Haiti: Genome Study Confirms UN Troops Brought Cholera
5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico,
Haiti
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from
Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua
Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription,
write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com. It is archived at
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com
*1. Honduras: Killings Continue as Aguán Becomes “New Colombia”
Honduran campesino leader Pedro Salgado and his wife, Reina Mejía,
were murdered on the evening of Aug. 21 at their home in the La
Concepción cooperative, in Tocoa municipality in the northern
department of Colón. Salgado was the president of the cooperative and
a vice president of the Unified Campesino Movement of the Aguán
(MUCA), a leading organization in a decade-old struggle for land in
Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley.
The murders came just one day after the shooting death of Secundino
Ruiz, who is president of the nearby San Isidro cooperative and of
another campesino organization, the Authentic Claimant Movement of
Aguán Campesinos (MARCA) [see Update #1093]. Both MUCA and MARCA won
land for their members under an agreement they signed with Honduran
president Porfirio (“Pepe”) Lobo Sosa in April 2010 [see Update
#1029]. The killing of Salgado and Mejía brought the number of people
killed in the Lower Aguán in two weeks to 14 or more, including Ruiz,
six private guards (previously reported as five), four people working
for a Pepsi distributor and a food vendor riding with them. (Comité de
Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras 8/21/11 via Vos el Soberano
(Honduras); FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) 8/22/11
via Adital (Brazil))
Campesino groups trace the Aguán struggle back to the 1992
Agricultural Modernization Law, which changed restrictions on the size
of land holdings to allow businesses to own more than 300 hectares.
Campesinos feel that land which should have been theirs through
agrarian reform has gone to big businesses like Grupo Dinant, a food
product and cooking oil company founded by Miguel Facussé Barjum.
There are 40,000 campesinos living “in extreme poverty” in the valley
“who need a piece of land to farm,” MUCA general secretary Johnny
Rivas told the Spanish wire service EFE. Groups like MUCA started
forming about 11 years ago and have relied on a strategy of peaceful
occupations of large estates—although Rivas didn’t discount the
possibility that some sectors of the campesino movement might have
arms.
African oil palms have replaced bananas as the main commercial crop in
the valley, and tensions increased as landowners like Facussé saw the
potential for the palms in the biofuel business, which could attract
carbon credits and international financing [see Update #1077]. To
maintain their estates, the landowners have hired private guards and
supplied them with arms. Campesino groups consider the guards
paramilitaries and blame them for most of the 51 killings of
campesinos that they say have taken place in the past two years.
Meanwhile, narco traffickers and other criminals have reportedly moved
into the area.
President Lobo’s government has negotiated some land transfers under
the agrarian reform policy, but the government’s main response to the
violence in the Aguán has been to send in soldiers and police agents.
There are now about 1,000 police and military personnel stationed in
the valley in an operation codenamed Xatruch II, but the violence
continues. Juan Almendárez, a former rector of the National Autonomous
University of Honduras who has mediated in talks between campesino
groups and the government, told EFE that the military and police
presence isn’t meant to maintain order but “to weaken the campesino
leadership.” He adds that the authorities can’t control the narco
traffickers “because of inability” and because the security forces
themselves are corrupt. The only way to resolve the valley’s problems
is “by giving land to the campesinos, along with credits and technical
assistance so that they can cultivate the land.”
With soldiers, paramilitaries and drug traffickers now operating in
the valley, Honduran activists fear the Aguán is becoming a “new
Colombia.” The right wing charges that there are also guerrilla
groups, allegedly trained by Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; an Aug. 25
article in La Prensa, the Honduran daily with the largest circulation,
claimed a man known as “The Commander” was leading a band of at least
300 rebels. Campesino and activist groups, which deny the stories
about guerrillas, charge that some of the private guards have been
trained by the US and that the landowners have been recruiting
paramilitaries from Colombia.
“We’re experiencing an extremely difficult situation in the region,”
Wilfredo Paz Zúniga, the local coordinator of the National Popular
Resistance Front (FNRP), told Argentine journalist Claudia Korol. He
asked her to tell “international human rights organizations [and]
friendly international journalists” that “we urgently need the
presence of an international commission, even if just for weeks or
days… Maybe this way the terrible murders of campesino leaders in the
region could be stopped.” (EFE 8/23/11 via Que.es (Spain); La Prensa
(Honduras) 8/25/11; Vos el Soberano 8/27/11)
The Boston-based organization Grassroots International has set up a
web page at http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/5123/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=7981
with a letter on the situation that activists can send to Honduran
and US officials.
Secondary students continue to occupy schools around the country to
protest what they say is an effort to privatize the public education
system. Nahúm Alexander Guerra, a student at the Pompilio Ortega
Agricultural School in Macuelizo in the northwestern department of
Santa Bárbara, was killed the night of Aug. 22 as he stood by the door
of the school, which the students had occupied. An unidentified man
yelled “strikers,” and shot the teenager in the chest and in the arm.
(El Tiempo (San Pedro Sula) 8/23/11)
*2. Chile: General Strike Adds to Pressure on the Government
Tens of thousands of Chilean workers, students and teachers
participated in a 48-hour strike on Aug. 24 and 25 initiated by the
Unified Workers Confederation (CUT), the country’s main labor
federation, to call “for a different Chile.” The demands included
changes to the Labor Code, a reduction in taxes on fuel, and reform of
the Constitution, created in 1980 during the 1973-1990 dictatorship of
Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The strike also backed the student protest
movement that has paralyzed schools for three months to push for a
reversal of the Pinochet-era privatization of education [see Update
#1092].
Aug. 24, the first day of the strike, was marked by confrontations
between the carabinero militarized police and strike supporters,
including students attempting to block roads in Santiago and other
cities. Police and protesters also clashed in the poorer neighborhoods
on the outskirts of the capital. The government of rightwing president
Sebastián Piñera reported that at least 348 people were arrested
during the day and 36 were injured, including 19 police agents.
According to the government, the strike call was only respected by 14%
of employees in the public sector, where the unions are strongest,
while union sources put the number at 80%. In the evening thousands of
people took to the streets to bang on pots and pans in a cacerolazo
protest to support the strike.
The second day, Aug. 25, brought massive marches throughout the
country. Organizers estimated that 250,000 to 300,000 people marched
in Santiago, and an equal number took part in the mobilizations in the
rest of the country. Jaime Gajardo, president of the Teachers
Association of Chile, called the Santiago march “the largest of this
year’s mobilizations”—which are generally considered the largest since
the restoration of democracy in 1990. But according to Deputy Interior
Minister Rodrigo Urbilla, only 50,000 people participated in the
Santiago march and a total of 175,000 protested nationwide; the Labor
Ministry reported that most public employees were at work, with just
9.1% observing the strike. Despite the disturbances by masked youths
that have routinely accompanied recent demonstrations, President
Piñera’s spokesperson, Andrés Chadwick, conceded that in general “the
[Santiago] march was peaceful and orderly” and “there were no major
problems.” The government reported that 153 police agents and 53
civilians were injured nationally and almost 1,400 people were
arrested.
There was one fatality: 16-year-old Manuel Gutiérrez Reinoso, who was
shot in the Villa Jaime Eyzaguirre neighborhood in Macul, a commune in
Greater Santiago. He was walking with his brother and a friend to
observe what was happening, according to his brother, when carabineros
passed by in a truck and three shots were heard. Other witnesses
confirmed this. Manuel Gutiérrez died in a hospital in the early
morning of Aug. 26. (La Jornada (Mexico) 8/25/11, 8/26/11, 8/27/11
from correspondent and unidentified wire services; La Tercera
(Santiago) 8/27/11)
Students and their supporters were engaged in a number of protests in
addition to the general strike. On Aug. 23, the day before the labor
action, a group of artists and performers sat in at the Santiago
office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) in support of some 35 students who were on
hunger strike to push their demands for education reform. Three of
them—students at High School A-131 in the city of Buin, in Maipo
province, part of Greater Santiago-- had been fasting for 36 days.
These three students ended their strike on Aug. 24, along with three
others from the same school. “We’re suspending our strike but not our
struggle,” one of the strikers, 19-year-old Gloria Negrete, said at a
press conference. She was hospitalized after losing some 26 pounds and
contracting a respiratory infection. (LJ 8/24/11, 8/25/11)
The president of Brazil’s National Student Union (UNE), Daniel
Iliescu, visited Chile to participate in the general strike and also
to announce a Continental Day of Struggle by Latin American Youth, a
day of protests to be held in March 2012 around public education
issues. Camila Vallejo, president of the Federation of University of
Chile Students (FECH), was planning to reciprocate by visiting Brazil
on Aug. 31 to join a student march in Brasilia (DF) calling for the
government there to allocate 10% of the country’s gross domestic
product (GDP) to education, along with 50% of the Pre-Salt Social
Fund, a special government fund financed by profits from Brazil’s
sub-salt oilfields. (Adital (Brazil) 8/25/11)
*3. Nicaragua: Dole Settles Pesticide Case With 4,000 Ex-Employees
Dole Food Company, a California-based agricultural multinational,
announced in Managua on Aug. 11 that it had arrived at a settlement
with some 5,000 former banana workers who said their health had been
damaged by prolonged and unprotected exposure to the pesticides
Nemagon and Fumazone, brand names for dibromochloropropane (DBCP). The
settlement, arranged with Dole by the Texas-based law firm Provost
Umphrey, covers 3,153 Nicaraguans, 780 Costa Ricans and 1,000
Hondurans; the former employees or their survivors—about 300 of the
workers have died--should start receiving payment in two or three
months. The amount wasn’t disclosed.
The pesticides, now banned, have been linked to cancer, sterility and
birth defects. Dole used them on its Central American banana
plantations from 1973 to 1980. About 17,000 former banana workers
brought suits in Nicaragua against Dole and the pesticides’
manufacturers about 10 years ago. A Nicaraguan court awarded the
workers $489.4 million in compensation in 2002, and the workers staged
a series of protests to get the Nicaraguan government to enforce the
court’s decision. US courts eventually ruled against them [see Updates
#672, 732, 734, 826]. The issue was the subject of a 2009 documentary
film, “Bananas!”
The Aug. 11 settlement doesn’t cover the 13,874 Nicaraguan workers who
are represented by other law firms, and the suits against the
manufacturers--Dow Chemical Company, Shell Oil Company, Shell Chemical
Company, Shell Chemical Company LLP and Occidental Chemical
Corporation—remain open. In making the settlement, Dole admitted no
wrongdoing, according to Dole spokesperson Humberto Hurtado. “This is
the style of the transnationals, with a dual intention: not to appear
as murderers to the public and to protect themselves from future
suits,” a representative of the workers, Jacinto Obregón, explained.
“But the memo the manufacturer, Dow Chemical Company, put out is
clear. They recognized that although the product was toxic, it could
be sold in Latin America as long as the profits were greater than the
losses from lawsuits.” (El Nuevo Diario (Managua) 8/12/11; AFP 8/12/11
via La Tribuna (Tegucigalpa); La Nación (San José, Costa Rica)
8/12/11, some from AFP)
*4. Haiti: Genome Study Confirms UN Troops Brought Cholera
A comparison that Danish and US researchers have made of the whole
genomes of cholera bacteria found in patients in Haiti and in Nepal
provides nearly conclusive evidence that Nepalese soldiers in the
United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) were the
inadvertent cause of a cholera outbreak that has killed more than
6,000 Haitians. The genomes are “practically identical,” Harvard
University microbiologist John Mekalanos told the magazine Science.
“This is as close as you can come to molecular proof.”
The first cases of cholera were reported in October 2010 around the
city of Mirebalais in Haiti’s Central Plateau. Local people blamed
MINUSTAH troops at a base where they said had fecal matter had leaked
into a nearby river. The soldiers at the base had recently arrived
from Nepal, right after an outbreak of cholera there. On-the-ground
research by a French epidemiologist, Dr. Renaud Piarroux, supported
the Haitians’ suspicions, as have subsequent studies, but MINUSTAH
spokespeople have repeatedly denied that there’s proof of the claim
[see Update #1086]. With the new study, which was published on Aug.
23, the United Nations should take full responsibility by paying
compensation or by backing a massive effort to stop the epidemic,
Piarroux told Science. “More than 6,000 people are dead,” he said.
“It's our fault, as the people of the world.” (Science 8/23/11)
The genome report appeared as MINUSTAH troops were being blamed for
further unsanitary practices in the Central Plateau. There were
reports that human wastes were dumped in the Guayamouc River near
Hinche, capital of Center department, on Aug. 6 and in the Ahibon
River, near Fort Marmont, 15 km from Hinche, on Aug. 21. MINUSTAH has
denied the charges. Dozens of people protested on Aug. 21, shooting
guns, throwing stones and blocking National Route 3, which passes
through Hinche, for more than an hour. (AlterPresse (Haiti) 8/23/11)
On Aug. 11 an organization in the southern coastal town of Port-Salut,
the Research Committee for the Development and Organization of
Port-Salut (CREDOP), charged that MINUSTAH troops from Uruguayan were
prostituting impoverished underage Haitians at their base. The
Uruguayan navy denied the accusations on Aug. 16, saying it had
conducted an interrogation of all 108 troops on the base. The
Uruguayan contingent is studying the possibility of suing CREDOP for
unfounded allegations. (Haiti Press Network 8/11/11; TeleSUR 8/17/11)
[MINUSTAH troops from Sri Lanka were repatriated in 2007 because of
similar charges; see Update #923.]
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Latin America, Chile, Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico,
Haiti
UNASUR: South American Alliance Confronts Economic Crisis
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6448
Beyond the Drug War: The Pentagon’s Other Operations in Latin America
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/26/beyond-drug-war-pentagon%E2%80%99s-other-operations-latin-america
WikiLeaks Cables of Interest on Latin America, Released July 24 - August 21 2011
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3182-wikileaks-cables-of-interest-on-latin-america-released-july-24-august-21-2011-
Demanding Economic and Educational Reform in Chile
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163006/demanding-economic-and-educational-reform-chile
Seeking Social Justice Through Education in Chile
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/3190-seeking-social-justice-through-education-in-chile
Bolivia: Morales Accuses U.S. Of Inciting Indigenous Protests
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/22/bolivia-morales-accuses-u-s-of-inciting-indigenous-protests/
Bolivia: TIPNIS Marchers Face Accusations and Negotiations
https://nacla.org/blog/2011/8/26/bolivia-tipnis-marchers-face-accusations-and-negotiations
Bolivia: Morales Clashes with Native Protesters over Road through Tropical Park
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/bolivia-archives-31/3192-bolivia-morales-clashes-with-native-protesters-over-road-through-tropical-park-
Peru passes "historic" indigenous rights law
http://ww4report.com/node/10260
Native Peruvians More Marginalized Despite Growth
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/peru-archives-76/3183-native-peruvians-more-marginalized-despite-growth-
Ecuador: New Oil Policy Threatens Amazonian Peoples
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3185-ecuador-new-oil-policy-threatens-amazonian-peoples
Unions Call for House Committee Investigation of Possible Misuse of
U.S. Aid in Colombia
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3191-unions-call-for-house-committee-investigation-of-possible-misuse-of-us-aid-in-colombia
Colombia: Interview with Eberto Diaz Montes, President of FENSUAGRO
(United National Federation of Peasant Farmers and Farm Workers)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/3184-colombia-interview-with-eberto-diaz-montes-president-of-fensuagro-united-national-federation-of-peasant-farmers-and-farm-workers
Colombia beefs up security in Amazon oil zone following FARC attacks
http://ww4report.com/node/10268
Chávez Says Venezuela Only Recognizes Gaddafi Gov In Libya
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/24/chavez-says-venezuela-only-recognizes-gaddafi-gov-in-libya/
The Islamo-Bolivarian Threat (Venezuela)
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3188-the-islamo-bolivarian-threat
El Salvador: high court refuses to extradite officers accused in Jesuit Massacre
http://ww4report.com/node/10258
The Honduran Resistance at the Crossroads: An Interview With Carlos Amaya
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/24/honduran-resistance-crossroads-interview-carlos-amaya
Human Rights Caravan Protests Migrant Kidnappings
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5267
Sandak Workers Defend Their Jobs, Win the Protection of a Legal Strike
http://www.ueinternational.org/MLNA/mlna_articles.php?id=191#1336
Maquiladora Factories in Mexico Manufacture Toxic Pollutants
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3186-maquiladora-factories-in-mexico-manufacture-toxic-pollutants
Mexico: "terrorists" massacre 50 in blaze at Monterrey's Casino Royale
http://ww4report.com/node/10259
Nowhere to Turn: Sex Trafficking in Nuevo León, Mexico
https://nacla.org/news/2011/8/25/nowhere-turn-sex-trafficking-nuevo-le%C3%B3n-mexico
Mexico’s Drug War Refugees Rarely Secure Asylum In United States
http://latindispatch.com/2011/08/25/mexicos-drug-war-refugees-rarely-secure-asylum-in-united-states/
Abandoned like a stray dog (Haiti)
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/8/22/january-12-victims-abandoned-like-a-stray-dog.html
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
This Update is archived at:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/08/wnu-1094-killings-continue-in-honduras.html
Lets Talk about it Special guest Denise Pictou Maloney
by claire Kaiser
in Education
on Sat, Mar 26, 2011
Tune in an listen to Denise Pictou Maloney, the
daughter of Annie Mae Aquash, talk about her
mothers life, and death. Learn about how Denise
and her family have been fighting for justice for
their mother for the last 35 years
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/claire-kaiser/2011/03/26/lets-talk-about-it-special-guest-denise-pictou-maloney
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE PRESS RELEASE:
STATEMENT ON NEGATIVE FACEBOOK PUBLICITY USING THE
NAME OF THE OGLALA SIOUX TRIBE AND/OR OGLALA LAKOTA
NATION BY INDIVIDUALS OF FACEBOOK GROUP “HIT”
(HOSTILE INDAN TRIBES) WHICH IS MODERATED BY NUMEROUS
INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE OGLALA
SIOUX TRIBAL GOVERNMENT!
**********************************************************************
PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION - The Oglala Sioux Tribe would like to
issue a statement to the general public and media regarding the
negative
FACEBOOK publicity using the name of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and/or
Oglala Lakota Nation by individuals of FACEBOOK group “HIT” (Hostile
Indian Tribes) which is moderated by numerous individuals who are not
affiliated with the Oglala Sioux Tribal Government.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe has received telephone calls and emails from
numerous concerned citizens that are upset by the postings which seem
to be specifically about the recent shootings in Rapid City, South
Dakota and is being spread as though it is the Oglala Sioux Tribe
“talking” which has caused not only controversy and confusion, but
highlights negative language and misrepresentation of the Lakota
people
and the Oglala Nation as a whole.
In fact, the Oglala Sioux Tribe Judiciary Committee sent a star-quilt
and card of condolence which was presented to the Rapid City Police
Department and signed by members of the Oglala Sioux Tribal Council.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe recently played host to United States Attorney
General Eric Holder and 31 United States Attorney’s from throughout
the
United States to address Law Enforcement Issues and to mark the 1
year
signing of the Tribal Law and Order Act of 2010 which was signed into
law by President Barack Obama.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe remains committed to providing adequate Law
and
Order on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as well as continued work
with
the Rapid City Police Department. Rapid City Police Chief Steve
Allender
visited last year with various Officers from the Rapid City Police
Department during an Oglala Sioux Tribal Council meeting to commit
working
with the Oglala Sioux Tribe Department of Public Safety.
The Oglala Sioux Tribe wishes to extend our prayers to the two (2)
Officers
who lost their lives in the line of duty and would like to publicly
disapprove these radical individuals and/or groups who are not
authorized
to use the Oglala Sioux Tribe, Oglala Lakota Nation or the Tribal
Membership
in their words of hate and remorse for actions that could not be
controlled
by anybody!
Oglala Sioux Tribe
PINE RIDGE INDIAN RESERVATION
Post Office Box 2070
Pine Ridge, South Dakota ~ 57770 ~
www.oglalalakotanation.org
http://www.oglalalakotanation.org/OLN/Home_files/8-9-2011%20OST%20Press%20Release.pdf
Older Than America
This is an importaint hard hitting film a must see. It is very
difficult not to feel this film to the core if you are a serviver of
boarding school atrocitys. This story can be told all over Indian
Counrty thousands of times and should be told. Older Than America is a
must for people who have not got a clue to why some do the things they
do or not. The story out shines the actors and you can see that is the
point. There is healing in the telling and I am greatfull this story
is out here for all to see. "Older Than America"
I found it on netflix, you can see it free for a month. Please watch
it and spread the word.
http://olderthanamerica.com/
Weekly News Update on the Americas
Issue #1089, July 24, 2011
1. Argentina: Is Barrick Gold Shrinking Chilean Glaciers?
2. Puerto Rico: Opposition Mounts to Gas Pipeline
3. Costa Rica: Medical Workers Gain Little in Strike
4. Colombia: Teachers Flee Paramilitary Threat
5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US
ISSN#: 1084 922X. Weekly News Update on the Americas covers news from
Latin America and the Caribbean, compiled and written from a
progressive perspective. It has been published weekly by the Nicaragua
Solidarity Network of Greater New York since 1990. For a subscription,
write to weeklynewsupdate@gmail.com . It is archived at
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/
*1. Argentina: Is Barrick Gold Shrinking Chilean Glaciers?
In a report published on July 19, the Argentine branch of the
environmental group Greenpeace charged that operations by the
Toronto-based Barrick Gold Corporation in the Andes at the border with
Chile had already significantly damaged three small glaciers. Citing a
2005 technical study, Greenpeace said the surface of the Toro 1, Toro
2 and Esperanza glaciers “diminished by between about 56% and 70%
because of the activities carried out by Barrick” even before mining
operations had begun. The regions on either side of the border are
arid, and farmers in the valleys largely depend on Andean glaciers as
a source of water.
Barrick, the world’s largest gold mining company, has two open-pit
gold and silver mines near the glaciers. Veladero, in Argentina’s
northwestern San Juan province, has been in production since 2005,
with a projected life of 14 years; Pascua Lama, partly in San Juan
province and partly in Chile’s Huasco province, is scheduled to open
in 2013, with a projected life of 21 years.
Greenpeace attributes the shrinkage of the three small glaciers to
exploratory and other preliminary work on the mines, such as road
construction, drilling and the use of explosives, which could cover
the glaciers’ surfaces with dust and discarded material. Although most
glaciers are being affected by global warming, Greenpeace says other
glaciers in the area didn’t experience the same shrinkage as the three
closest to the mine. Environmentalists expect that the other glaciers
will suffer similar damage as mining operations expand.
The Veladero and Pascua Lama mines have been targets of protests for
years [see World War 4 Report 5/17/08]. Barrrick originally intended
to move the three glaciers as part of the operation, but this plan was
shelved after strong protests by Chilean environmentalists. Argentina
has passed a law for the protection of Andean glaciers which could
limit damage from the mines. However, Barrick has filed for injunctive
relief from the measure, and in November 2010 an Argentine judge
suspended the law in San Juan province, ruling that it would cause
economic damage. (Adital (Brazil) 7/20/11)
*2. Puerto Rico: Opposition Mounts to Gas Pipeline
Two US Congress members, Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AR) and Luis
Gutiérrez (D-IL), are seeking signatures from their colleagues on a
letter to US president Barack Obama about a proposed natural gas
pipeline in Puerto Rico. “At a time when we should be promoting
renewable, clean energy throughout the country, a 92-mile
pipeline--nearly as long as the entire island--is a step in the wrong
direction,” the representatives wrote in the letter, which has been
endorsed by Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). The project (“Gasoducto” in
Spanish) shouldn’t proceed without an environmental impact statement
conducted by the US Corps of Engineers, according to Grijalva and
Gutiérrez. (El Nuevo Día (Guaynabo) 7/12/11)
The activity in Congress reflects growing opposition to the $450
million project, which would carry imported natural gas from the
Peñuelas-Guayanilla area on the southwest coast to a place near San
Juan on the north coast.
Rightwing governor Luis Fortuño of the New Progressive Party (PNP) Is
promoting the Gasoducto as a way to transition from oil to natural
gas; pipeline advocates say this will save $60-$100 million a year,
about one-third of the cost of generating Puerto Rico’s electricity.
But on July 13 the People’s House (“Casa Pueblo”), a respected
environmental organization based in the town of Adjuntas, released a
study suggesting that any savings would be offset by environmental
damage and risks to the 200,000 people who live near the area the
pipeline will pass through. Critics also note that the biggest
contractor for the project, Pedro Ray Chacón, has no experience with
this type of operation; he is said to be personally close to Gov.
Fortuño. (People’s World 7/21/11)
On July 22 the New York daily El Diario-La Prensa ran an editorial
opposing the pipeline and calling on “Puerto Ricans outside the
island…to express their concerns.” (ED-LP 7/22/11) The paper is the
main Spanish-language periodical in New York City, which has a large
population of Puerto Ricans and people of Puerto Rican descent,
including two members of Congress.
Adding to the Gasoducto’s problems, in a letter dated July 12 the US
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) refused to let the
EcoEléctrica company proceed with planned modifications to its
terminal in southern Puerto Rico until the company complies fully with
FERC regulations. The modifications are necessary if the terminal is
to handle the liquefied gas when it arrives in Puerto, so this delay
will in turn delay use of natural gas in electricity generation at
least until 2012. (Claridad (Puerto Rico) 7/19/11)
An opinion poll published by the daily El Nuevo Día in March indicated
that 56% of the population wasn’t convinced that the Gasoducto would
lower the costs of electricity, with only 27% thinking that it would;
17% were undecided. An overwhelming 61% of the people polled said they
were concerned about the safety of pipeline, while just 19% expressed
confidence. The poll was carried out by The Research Office, Inc., a
company based in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico, from Mar. 7 to Mar. 14. El
Nuevo Día noted that that this period included the Mar. 11 earthquake
and tsunami that devastated a nuclear power plant in Japan—at a time
when Puerto Ricans were still concerned about a January 2010
earthquake that hit southern Haiti, some 400 miles to the west. (END
3/27/11, 4/1/11))
*3. Costa Rica: Medical Workers Gain Little in Strike
After 24 hours of negotiations, the Costa Rican government and all the
unions representing medical workers for the Costa Rican Social
Security Fund (CCSS) signed an agreement on July 23 ending a strike
that the unions had started four days earlier over economic issues.
This was the first major strike to confront President Laura Chinchilla
since she took office in May 2010. As in a number of Latin American
countries, social security includes medical care in Costa Rica, and
the CCSS employs some 48,000 medical workers at 29 hospitals.
The unions’ main demand was for the government to pay off its debt to
the CCSS, which the unions say has reached $1.446 billion. The
government holds that the number is much lower. In the settlement the
government agreed to pay 85 billion colones (about $169 million) for
now; the two sides also agreed to set up a joint commission to study
the fund’s financial problems. The unions’ other major demand was for
CCSS workers to continue getting full credit for sick days in the
calculations for their pensions and yearly bonuses. The government
wouldn’t back down from its decision to start giving partial credit to
CCSS workers, as it does with other workers. The government also held
firm on its decision to dock strikers for the four days they were out,
although there are to be no other reprisals.
During the strike the government and the unions gave dramatically
different accounts of how effective the action was. The CCSS said 5%
to 10% of the workers observed the strike call; the unions claimed
that while many doctors continued to work, 75% to 80% of the other
medical employees had participated in the walkout. (Adital (Brazil)
7/20/11; Prensa Latina 7/20/11; AFP 7/23/11 via El Universal
(Caracas); La Nación (San José) 7/24/11)
*4. Colombia: Teachers Flee Paramilitary Threat
All 44 teachers at the public high school in Las Delicias, a village
in Tierralta municipality in the northern Colombian department of
Córdoba, sought refuge in Montería, the department’s capital, on July
22 after being threatened by a paramilitary group. According to
Domingo Ayala Espitia, president of the Córdoba Teachers Association
(Ademacor), the paramilitaries sent the teachers text messages
demanding 15 million pesos (about $8,535). More than 1,100 students
attended the abandoned school.
The threats reportedly came from members of the Gaitanist Self-Defense
Forces of Colombia, said to be a group of drug traffickers. Various
armed groups--which the government and the media now call “bacrim,”
short for “bandas criminales” (criminal gangs) [see Update #1086]--are
described as successors to the far-right United Self-Defense Forces of
Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary group whose members were demobilized
from 2003 to 2006, during the administration of former president
Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010).
The Las Delicias displacement is the second such incident in the
department; last year 12 teachers fled a rural high school in
Montelíbano municipality. Four teachers have been killed in Córdoba so
far this year, and at least 197, including the Las Delicias teachers,
have received threats. (EFE 7/23/11 via Univision; InfoBAE (Argentina)
7/24/11)
*5. Links to alternative sources on: Chile, Peru, Colombia, Venezuela,
El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Haiti, US
Chile’s Sebastián Piñera Shuffles Cabinet As Popularity Drops
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/19/chiles-sebastian-pinera-shuffles-cabinet-as-popularity-drops/
Peru: populist prez-elect appeases plutocrats with primary appointments
http://ww4report.com/node/10149
Peru: outgoing García government in final effort to disband
"uncontacted" indigenous reserves
http://ww4report.com/node/10146
Colombia: labor strife rocks oil port
http://ww4report.com/node/10148
Venezuelan Funds Dry Up For Hugo Chávez Supporters In New York
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/18/venezuelan-funds-dry-up-for-hugo-chavez-supporters-in-new-york/
El Salvador: Social Programs Bolster Support for Funes Government
https://nacla.org/blog/el-salvador-social-programs-bolster-support-funes-government
Guatemala: Resisting the New Colonialism
http://www.cipamericas.org/archives/5136
Mexico AG purges office, charges 111 officials with corruption
http://ww4report.com/node/10151
Mexico: relatives of disappeared stage hunger strike
http://ww4report.com/node/10147
Is the Mexican Economy Booming?
https://nacla.org/blog/mexican-economy-booming
Aid Caravan to Cuba Crosses U.S.-Mexican Border
https://nacla.org/blog/aid-caravan-cuba-crosses-us-mexican-border
Haiti: Cash for Work – At What Cost
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2011/7/18/cash-for-work-at-what-cost.html
House Committee Votes To Stop Funding OAS (US)
http://latindispatch.com/2011/07/21/house-committee-votes-to-stop-funding-oas/
House Homeland Security hearing on Hezbollah's hyperbolized
hemispheric shenanigans (Latin America)
http://ww4report.com/node/10152
For more Latin America news stories from mainstream and alternative sources:
http://www.cipamericas.org/
http://latindispatch.com/
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/967/blastContent.jsp
http://www.ueinternational.org/Mexico_info/mlna.php
http://nacla.org/
http://upsidedownworld.org/
http://venezuelanalysis.com/
http://ww4report.com/node/
For immigration updates and events:
http://thepoliticsofimmigration.blogspot.com/
END
This Update is archived at:
http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011/07/wnu-1089-is-barrick-gold-shrinking.html
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