Environmental Racism

Editor: “Since July of last year, Brant’s only daughter, 13-year-old Teyohate, has been in Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, fighting acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a fast-moving cancer that Brant believes was triggered by the water on the reserve. Three other children on the reserve, all around the same age, have also being diagnosed with cancer. One of them, 13-year-old Paula Sero-Loft, Teyohate’s best friend and classmate at Quinte Mohawk School, located no more than 600 metres from the controversial landfill, was buried last September.” [Read more at Warrior Publications: Reserve despair hits home for outspoken Mohawk, Shawn Brant]

Intercontinental Cry

by Jay Taber

Feb 7, 2013

Listening to Mohawk activist Shawn Brant describe the apartheid design of indigenous poverty in Canada and elsewhere as a means of creating hopelessness and despair in order to continue colonial resource extraction, I was reminded that contrary to popular myths, there never were any good colonial intentions. Speaking at the Osgoode Law symposium, Brant argues the time is right to defend indigenous territories by denying the legitimacy of Canada and the corporations it represents. Taking it a step further, he says that if Canada and its corporations attempt to overwhelm indigenous nations by force, they should be met with the same.

Meanwhile, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, is seeking information on extractive and energy industries in or near indigenous territories. As part of the UN study of industrial impacts on human rights and indigenous peoples, Dr. Anaya has established an interactive website for comments and information about environmental racism practiced by corporations, as well as by the U.S. military.

 

[Jay Taber is an associate scholar of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, an author, and a contributing editor of Fourth World Journal. Since 1994, he has served as the administrative director of Public Good Project.]

Video: Shawn Brant speaks at the Community Movements Conference in Peterborough Ontario on March 3rd 2012. The conference was organized by SAID Trent Students.

http://youtu.be/mhqf2WhHeE0

Peaceful Protests Profit from History of Militant Resistance | Idle No More

 

Another excellent analysis of the Idle No More movement by Zig Zag …

 

January 12, 2013

by Zig Zag

Warrior Publications

Warrior at Oka, 1990, standing on top of abandoned & over turned police car.

“Unbelievable how chicken the police are to remove these people from blocking the railway. If it was anybody but natives they would have been arrested a week ago.”

Letter posted by Gerry, Jan 2, 2013, “First Nation blockade in Sarnia coming down,” Canadian Press, Jan 2, 2013

Any time there is a significant Native blockade or occupation, there are demands for its immediate removal by angry citizens. During Oka, 1990, and Six Nations 2006, for example, mobs of non-Natives rallied and sometimes rioted demanding that the military intervene to end the disputes. →

EDITORIAL: Asymmetrical Warfare

By Jay Taber

Jan 13, 2013

Intercontinental Cry

There was no illusion of collaboration between Ottawa and the Assembly of First Nations on Friday. AFN is wholly dependent on Ottawa for its existence. They are collaborators by colonial design. They may see themselves as making the best of a bad situation, but they are not challenging the system of dominion. →

Mohawk Nation: Traitors Among Us

Cross-posted with Libya360

January 13, 2013

Introduction by Cory Morningstar Via Wrong Kind of Green

The tragedy of such a “successful” campaign which is supposed to belong/be representative of the Indigenous Peoples/First Nations, is that the very people the campaign is supposed to speak for – like the Mohawks – have had their voices completely crushed by the privileged liberal left. Such articles that voice a different opinion other than the narrative echoed in the media (like below) are given no platform whatsoever, while 350’s Bill McKibben & Naomi Klein’s opinions are obsessively shared via social media and “left” media.

 

It is of little surprise that the corporate NGOs such as Avaaz, Greenpeace, Amnesty International et al are all circling and embedding themselves in this campaign like vultures. They must pacify it to the best of their ability.

 

The question is just why the left is allowing the voices of the radical grassroots to be ignored and marginalized – replacing them with the voices of those who protect the system. Do we want systemic change or do we only want reform?

 

Criticisms such as outlined below, so carefully articulated, are screaming to be heard by those who wrote them – those who refuse to abandon their ancestral roots. There is no doubt that throngs of First Nations peoples feel completely isolated, ignored and alone in their very precious ideologies.

 

Will they EVER be heard? Who will share their voices? If not us, then who? Certainly not Avaaz, nor McKibben, nor Greenpeace, nor the AFN/band leaders who feed from Harper’s trough.

 

Time to drop the Black Wampum

Mohawk Nation

The Indigenous People charge the Band Councils, Assembly of First Nations, provincial and territorial native organizations and all ‘Indian’ entities of the Corporation of Canada with “conspiracy” and “fraud”.

Wampum 44 of the Kaianerekowa, provides that the Women are the “progenitors of the soil”. Our duty is to preserve the land’s integrity on behalf of all our relatives.

Traditionals carry out penalty for treason

Wampum 58 provides that as you knowingly betrayed and violated the will of the People, you have conspired to commit treason. You worked with a foreign entity to try to dissolve and destroy our title and birthright. As corporate agents of Canada you have no authority to enter into any agreements or contracts for any of our lands or possessions with them or any corporate entities.  You represent only yourselves and those who voted for you. You are helping them to fraudulently use our land and resources as collateral to raise money on the international stock market to come in and rape our land.

“Any chief or other persons who submit to laws of a foreign people are alienated and forfeit all claims in the Iroquois nations, and to those of our Indigenous allies who abide by the law of the land, the Kaianerekowa”.  These traitors are not in but out of the canoe.

Your connections with these foreign entities should be thoroughly investigated, starting with the shareholder list of the Corporation of Canada.

If the Corporation of Canada wishes to enter into any formal agreement with the true Indigenous People, they must go through proper protocol with their Queen.  Order-in-Council UK [1704] affirms that a new impartial court can be set up to hear the land disputes on Onowaregeh.  We would be in agreement with countries such as Venezuela, Iran, Panama, Netherlands and Estonia setting up this impartial third party court.

When Canada has no traitors, the corporation cannot trade the resources they have been stealing from us.

Corporate traitors on the hunt

Senator Patrick “House Injun” Brazeau said that the chiefs have to be prepared with a “business plan solution”.  Our solution is to get rid of assimilated Indians like you.

The settlers to legally enter our land made agreements according to The Great Peace of Montreal 1701 based on the Guswentha. The Royal Proclamation 1763 affirmed this arrangement.  Parliament represents the party that agreed to live here, but reneged on it. At this point we have no choice but to control our own destiny.

Traitors are worse than the enemy, the lowest of the low.  Every culture loathes them.  They help foreign governments overthrow, make war against and seriously injure their own people. They undermine us from within.

Traitors have been punished by public execution, hanging, shooting at dawn and beheading. Russians shot their traitors in the head and made the family pay for the bullet.  In our way, the women make the decision to drop the black wampum in front of the traitor. Traitors would be banished and shunned forever, their name never to be heard ever again. Their family has no rights and no voice.  The seed dies.

Among many, one of the foremost traitors among us is Oren Lyons from Onondaga.  He requested Canada to send the army on us in the 1990 Mohawk Oka Crisis.  We were peacefully protesting the expansion of a golf course on our burial and ceremonial site.

As the Field Warriors say:  “You want a statue, or get an Order of Canada, be a traitor.”

Indian Traitors soon to be extinct

Dedicated to the soon-to-be-extinct corporate Indian traitors,  Mick Jagger sang:  “I’m on the run, I hear the hounds.  My luck is up, my chips are own.  So good-bye baby, so-long now.  Wish me luck, I’m going to need it, child.  The hand of fate is on me now.  The hand of fate is heavy now”.

 

[MNN Mohawk Nation News kahentinetha2@yahoo.com  For more news, books, workshops, to donate and sign up for MNN newsletters, go to www.mohawknationnews.com  More stories at MNN Archives.  Address:  Box 991, Kahnawake [Quebec, Canada] J0L 1B0]

Idle No More Movement Urged to Remain Grassroots Ahead of Jan 11 Protests

The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude (Part I) by Etienne de la Boetie

“States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an instant—when consent is withdrawn.”

Audio presentation of Étienne de La Boétie’s classic book, “The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude.” Includes an introduction by Murray N. Rothbard.

Read ‘The Politics of Obedience’ by Étienne de La Boétie online or listen to the podcast. →

WATCH: This is What Activism Looks Like

This is What Courage Looks Like…

This is What Direct Action Looks Like…

This is What Civil Disobedience Looks like…

A short documentary portrait of Jonathan Paul, former Animal Liberation Front member who was sentenced to 51 months in federal prison for his part in the 1997 Cavel West arson.

A Dog Park Production.

For more information on Jonathan Paul read: “My brother is in prison. He is my hero…” at this link:

http://alexandrapaul.com/alexandras-corner/my-brother-is-in-prison-he-is-my-hero/

Why Militant Direct Action? Because IT WORKS!

August 10, 2012

Dr Steve Best

Yet another concession from the vivisection-industrial complex that militant direct action (MDA) tactics (liberation, sabotage, and intimidation) have been all too effective weapons against them. As reported in the UK blog, Animal Warfare:

“An article in the Guardian about 2 activists convicted of peaceful protest and free expression reveal some interesting admissions from those inside the vivisection industry – old school animal rights tactics work! While many peoples response will be ‘no shit’, it is a point worth re-emphasising as the movement becomes increasingly pacifistic in the UK.

The Guardian reports that `In 1981 there were 34 companies breeding laboratory animals. Today there are just three because of activists’ intimidation of staff and of companies supplying services and products to laboratories.’

This is confirmed by Andy Cunningham, a Harlan manager who admits `Part of the overall reduction in company numbers has involved consolidation of businesses, but there is no doubt that intimidation has led to the closure of many other companies.’

Replace ‘intimidation’ with ‘robust protest’ and they are totally right! The animal rights movement has the formula for success. While we must adapt to the changing legal framework we must not abandon the time-tested methodology.

We must focus our energy and get back to old school animal rights. But focus on what? Professor Roger Morris, head of bioscience at King’s College London gives us a clue `We are now down to our last three major breeders in the UK. We can manage with that, but if we lose another we will be in a very uncomfortable situation.’”

Here are some more juicy confessions:

“Because of terrorist acts by animal activists, crucial research projects have been delayed or scrapped. More and more of the scarce dollars available to research are spent on heightened security and higher insurance rates. Promising young scientists are rejecting careers in research. Top-notch researchers are getting out of the field.” Susan Paris, president of the pro-vivisection group Americans for Medical Progress

“Where the direct, collateral, and indirect effects of incidents [of sabotage] are factored together, the ALF’s professed tactic of ‘economic sabotage’ can be considered successful, and its objectives, at least toward the victimized facility, fulfilled.” Report to Congress on Animal Enterprise Terrorism

“[Militant direct action tactics are] changing the kind of work people will do in the future. If students come to me interested in primate research, I would tell them to think about other things.”UCLA vivisector, Dario Ringach, who reluctantly abandoned nonhuman primate research in 2006 after relentless ALF attacks on his colleagues.

So next time a pacifist tells you that MDA “doesn’t work” and is “counter-productive,” tell them where to shove their ignorant, treacherous lies.

 

MUST WATCH: Dr Steve Best – The Paralysis of Pacifism

 

WKOG: An excellent lecture by Dr Steven Best. Not to be missed.

“The desire for a nonviolent and cooperative world is the healthiest of all psychological manifestations. This is the overarching principle of liberation and revolution. Undoubtedly, it seems the highest order of contradiction that, in order to achieve nonviolence, we must first break with it in overcoming its root causes. Therein lies our only hope.” — Ward Churchill, Pacifism as Pathology

 

Conference: “The Paralysis of Pacifism: In Defense of Militant Direct Action and “Violence” for Animal Liberation” held by Prof. Steve Best in ex slaughterhouse of Aprilia – Italy – 06 September 2012.

Prof. Steve Best is a writer, speaker, public intellectual, and activist. Steven Best engages animal rights, species extinction, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media and culture, globalization, and capitalist domination. He is Associate Professor of Humanities and Philosophy at the University of Texas, El Paso.

This conference has been organized by “Per Animalia Veritas” which is an organization that promotes antispecism as a radical revolution for a renewed cruelty-free and vegan society through militant activism.

To subscribe to Steve Best’s blog visit: http://drstevebest.wordpress.com/

Sierra Club, NRDC & Big Greens Thank Obama for Granting Drilling Permits to Almost all the Oil Resources in Alaska’s Reserve

“It’s like saying, without any irony: “Thank you so much for putting poison in my living room, kitchen and bathroom, but sparing my bedroom so my family can still cling to our ‘habitat’ that is ‘conserved’!  Thank you for being so considerate!  We’ll be sure to tell everyone to elect you again!”.  Never mind the contamination to air, headwater, groundwater, rain, the fragmentation of habitat, damage to biodiversity, and the threat of spills in these extremely sensitive ecosystems! – Scientist Maggie Zhou

 

October 30, 2012

Under the Obama administration, for the first time in history, production permits were issued to oil and gas corporations for drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, both onshore and offshore.

Of little surprise, Sierra Club [link], NRDC [link] and other “big greens” are asking American citizens to thank Obama for striking “a needed balance between responsible development and conservation of special areas within the Reserve.” [Direct quote taken from Sierra Club’s “Personalize Your Message” as found on their website, captured in screenshot below]

The Obama administration’s own press release states:

“The approximately 11.8 million acres that would be available for leasing under the preferred alternative – which makes the vast majority of projected oil resources in the NPR-A available for leasing – are estimated to hold approximately 549 million barrels of discovered and undiscovered economically recoverable oil and approximately 8.7 trillion cubic feet of discovered and undiscovered economically recoverable natural gas.” [Emphasis added]

So thank you Obama for eagerly bringing the total destruction of our planet’s climate and ecosystems.  And thank you, professional “environmentalist” sycophants, for, as always, not demanding what is actually necessary. We certainly do not expect these corporate cockroaches under the guise of environmental NGOs to crawl out of their funders’ deep pockets.

Of course this is nothing new. We have witnessed such faux “victories” before. Yet most remain unaware that many of the big greens behind The Tar Sands Action campaign (including RAN, Greenpeace, and the David Suzuki Foundation) are the same organizations that sold out the Boreal Forest in 2008 and 2010. (View this sublime 1 minute video with Greenpeace below or here.)

http://youtu.be/GKC8OQmDtXk

Most recently we have the “Defend our Coast” campaign (led by Greenpeace, Council of Canadians and 350.org) claiming that “Together we will stop the expansion of tar sands tankers and pipelines to the West Coast.” [Emphasis added – note the language. There is no plan to shut down the tar sands but only to stop the expansion.]

Council of Canadians, working hand in hand with 350.org on this pipeline campaign makes their cautious position clear stating:

“Our campaign is an extension of our ongoing Energy and Climate Justice work. We continue to call on governments to ensure Canadians’ energy security and work to transition off fossil fuels, including the unsustainable development of the tar sands. Limiting additional pipeline capacity will force a slowdown of the current relentless pace of tar sands development. We approach the climate change crisis from a justice perspective, seeking to address its root causes, which include unsustainable production, consumption and trade that are driven by corporate-led globalization. Real solutions to the climate crisis must be based on democratic accountability, ecological sustainability and social justice.” [Emphasis added]

One who has little understanding of the non-profit industrial complex may find it ironic that as far back as 2009 when both climatologist James Hansen and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, former head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) United Nations called for the shutting down of the tar sands. Yet, as the climate crisis has accelerated at a pace that paints the grimmest scenario possible, instead of demanding what is necessary, almost 4 years after the bold statements by both Hansen & Pachauri, largely conservative individuals by most anyone’s standards, the so-called “leaders” of the climate movement “demand” stopping the expansion of/limiting additional capacity of tar sands tankers and pipelines and the stopping of KXL. The Keystone pipeline, by the way, was 2/3rds complete and in operation before the “KXL” campaign even began.

The shock and surprise routine on the pandering to corporate interests by NGOs is getting stale. It is easy to publicly voice one’s disdain of Obama, Romney, the Democrats and Republicans along with all of the different people (Euro-American’s leading the charge) and corporations/industries that are destroying the Earth. Yet the liberal left continues to be silent on the NGOs at the forefront of a dead movement who lead the sheep to the slaughter.

Also dull is the the self absolution that is doled out by the liberal left: “If Obama or Amerikkka would just invest in green energy. If we would just spend more money on green technology.” The liberal left continues to immerse themselves in fantasy. Lying to themselves and each other, when the truth is that there is no renewable energy source that will allow the west to live at the level that we are living today. Further, there is no renewable energy source that is not so carbon intensive in manufacturing that it will not affect the environment and climate. That’s it. End of story. The same person who is shocked at Obama’s decision is the same person who gets up in the morning and subconsciously goes about their daily lives absolved of any person of guilt for any carbon emissions because it is the “corporations that are all the problem”… yes, they are the problem… but the Western man is also.” – Forrest Palmer, WKOG