Newmont protest in Denver, hotel revokes Carrie Dann ceremony

Human Rights and Environmental Groups to Protest Award to Newmont CEO

Marriott Hotel Revokes Contract for Alternative Award Ceremony to Western Shoshone Carrie Dann

When Denver’s elite arrive at the Downtown Marriott Hotel for Denver University’s annual fund-raising Korbel Dinner on Aug 30, they will be met by protesters from around the state.
While DU’s Graduate School of International Studies presents its “International Bridge-Building Award” to Newmont CEO Wayne Murdy, protesters will serve Murdy with a Citation for building Newmont’s bridge on a foundation of human rights and environmental abuses. GSIS Dean Tom Farer has refused to revoke the award to Murdy, over objections from a majority of GSIS tenured faculty and protests from communities that are directly affected by Newmont gold mines around the world.
The protesters, representing a host of Colorado-based non-profit organizations, will present what they call the “REAL International Bridge Builder’s Award” to Western Shoshone elder Carrie Dann. But the honoring ceremony will have to be held on public sidewalks now because the Marriott revoked the groups’ contract to hold the honoring ceremony in the Hotel’s Molly Brown room. More information on the Western Shoshone can be found at http://www.wsdp.org/.
In an email to the groups, Marriott’s Director of Event Planning Joe Humerickhouse wrote that the “Hotel see (sic) the Thursday event "Presentation by Carrie Dann" as a conflict of interest to a current piece of business” -- clearly a reference to DU’s Korbel Dinner.
It is unknown who pressured the Marriott to revoke its contract for the meeting room, but Glenn Morris of Colorado’s American Indian Movement, said, “This is reminiscent of Newmont changing the location for its annual shareholder's meeting three times a couple of years ago, for fear of negative scrutiny. Newmont doesn't want its record exposed, DU is embarrassed, and their response is to muscle the Marriott into trying to silence our voice by denying us a venue. Of course, they will not succeed, and we will be there, and we will have our say.”
READ MORE:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/denver-newmont-protest-marriott-revokes.html
August 29, 2007 press statement by:
Paula Palmer, Global Response, 303 444-0306 ext.103 paula@globalresponse.org
Glenn Morris, Colorado American Indian Movement, 303 519-2423, gtm303@gmail.comBetty Ball, Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center, 303 444 6981, betty@rmpjc.org
Juan Stewart, CU Indigenous Support Network, 303 506 9648, juan.stewart@colorado.edu
Kara Martinez, Denver Justice and Peace Committee, 303 623 1463, kara@denjustpeace.org
Glenn Spagnuola, Stop Newmont Coalition, 720-771-4669, http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=rockymtn.spags@att.net

Denver Post: Awarding Newmont's CEO inappropriate
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6751784

Photo: Carrie and Mary Dann. Photo Western Shoshone Defense Project.

Mohawks: Canada sets fire to kindling at Sharbot Lake

Mohawk Nation News
Aug. 29, 2007
The June 29th attempt to provoke indigenous violence failed. This hasn’t stopped the existing regime of stale dated colonial buffoons from trying to set a match to kindling. The only trouble is we ain’t kindling. We’r erock solid. They have the guns and pepper spray which they use to maintain their power. We’re the ones standing on therock of nation-to-nation relations and mutual respect. Thisknot on their brain gives them a distorted reflection of themselves and their delusions. Read more:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/mohawks-canada-sets-fire-to-kindling-at.html

Border justice, protest at federal building in Tucson

National Day of Action, Tucson federal building, Tuesday, August 28 2007/Photos by Brenda Norrell

By Brenda Norrell

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

TUCSON -- The "National Day of Action to Stop Anti-Immigrant Repression and Migrant Deaths at the U.S. - Mexico Border," called for justice, during a protest at the federal building today, Tuesday, Aug. 28.

Isabel Garcia, cochair of Coalicion Derechos Humanos, said that the United States would one day be held responsible for its crimes against humanity.

Those gathered remembered migrants who have died in custody while being denied their medications and U.S. citizens physically abused during false arrests.

Speakers made an urgent call for socially just legalization, justice for Elvira & Saul Arrellano, and a halt to deaths at the US/Mexico border. Further, they called for an end to all raids and a moratorium on all immigration detentions and deportations.

Human rights activists urged the U.S. to restore and expand the due process rights of all immigrants and protect and expand the labor, human and civil rights of all immigrants and refugees
The action was cosponsored by Derechos Humanos, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, May 1st Coalition, Borderlands Theater, Fundación México, Tucson Samaritans, Salt of the Earth Labor College, Humane Borders, No More Deaths, Tucson Jobs with Justice, AFSC, Wingspan, Tierra y Libertad and Citizens for Border Solutions.

Arizona Recovered Body Count Reaches 199 as the Department of Homeland Security Announces Plans to Increase and Expand Deadly Border Strategy

By Coalicion de Derechos Humanos

Arizona — The number of bodies recovered on the Arizona-Sonora border has reached 199 by the end of July 2007 according to data compiled by the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, a Tucson-based human rights group that works to raise awareness about the deadly effects of border militarization. Fifty-two bodies were recovered in the month of July alone, ensuring that last year’s total of 205 will surely be passed within the month of August. Read more:

http://http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/arizona-death-count-at-border-199.html

Arivaca, keeping it real

Here's a photo of the town of Arivaca, Arizona, in response to an incorrect comment received about the U.S. spy tower here. The reader said the spy tower did not matter, because there wasn't even a store in Arivaca. Not only are there stores, but there are many people living in Arivaca who are willing to voice opposition to the U.S. spying on private citizens. Photo Brenda Norrell (August 2007)

It's good to read the local Connection newspaper in Arivaca and see people living here are keeping alive the art of writing.

Here's the link to an update from C Hues in Arivaca on the spy towers from the Connection newspaper:

http://www.arivaca-newspaper.com/

(Photo Arivaca spy tower/Brenda Norrell)

More links at Arivaca.net

http://www.arivaca.net/project28.htm

Spy towers in southern Arizona, including Tohono O'odham Nation, still aren't working, Boeing selects new manager

Boeing names Korte SBInet program manager

August 23, 2ooy

By Alice Lipowicz

Washington Technology

Boeing Co. has named a new program manager for the Secure Border Initiative Network border surveillance system, which is one of the largest contracts awarded by the Homeland Security Department.
On Aug. 13, Daniel Korte took over as Boeing’s program manager for SBInet, replacing Jerry McElwee, who will assist in the transition and will remain at Boeing’s Integrated Defense Systems unit, said Eric Mazzacone, a Boeing spokesman. DHS awarded the estimated $8 billion contract to Boeing in September 2006 for a surveillance system along the southwest U.S. border. The Chicago-based company is currently implementing its first task order, known as Project 28, along a 28-mile section of the border in Arizona. While Project 28 initially was set to go live in mid-June, to date it is not fully operational. In Project 28, Boeing has installed nine towers with cameras, radar, various other sensors and communications networks near the border. The goal of SBInet is to integrate those systems so they can be used to effectively provide border patrol agents with information to assist them in identifying and apprehending illegal aliens who cross the border.
In recent weeks, DHS officials have acknowledged problems with integrating the systems and making them operational. The program also has been controversial among border communities, some of whom are complaining of privacy loss, environmental impacts and other concerns as a result of the SBInet system.

Read full story:

http://www.washingtontechnology.com/online/1_1/31297-1.html

Algonquin resisting uranium mining, brace for police raid

Urgent plea for help as judge orders Algonquins invaded on Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Brothers, Sisters, Friends, Allies, Supporters, and Environmentalists needed!

Mohawk Nation News
August 28, 2007

Judge Gordon Thompson has ordered the Algonquins who are blocking access to a proposed uranium mine north of Sharbot Lake to leave immediately. The people have been told to expect the police on Wednesday, August 29th. All supporters are asked to come to the site to help maintain the peace. This is only the beginning of things to come under the conservative regime with the help of the liberals at Queen’s Park Toronto . The Bush administration in Washington DC needs uranium for their military industrial schemes. Read more:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/algonquin-resisting-uranium-mining.html
Mohawk Nation News:
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/

Uncensored: Raytheon missiles and Navajo corn

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Here's the latest on the Raytheon missiles factory located on the Navajo Nation's commercial farm, where they grow potatoes, corn and other crops.
It was the subject of one of my last articles, censored by Indian Country Today, before I was terminated in September of 2006.
At the time, the Navajo farm, Navajo Agricultural Products Industries on tribal land near Farmington, N.M., was cutting a deal with Cuba to market its food crops.
The following article is just more cheerleading, without examining whether Raytheon is harming the land or environment in any way. It does show all the perks for Raytheon.
Another issue is that NAPI uses genetically-modified seeds, according to NAPI.
Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi, who was cheerleading this Raytheon expansion, has since been under federal probe and announced he will not seek reelection.
article:
http://www.daily-times.com/news/ci_6736107

Canada: Police provocateurs exposed by their boots' soles

Canadian police were actually the so-called rock throwing protesters at Montebello at the trilateral North American Summit, during Bush's visit to Canada. The soles of the boots of the arrested people are the same as the police boots' soles. The yellow dots gave them away.

http://www.anarkismo.net/newswire.php?story_id=6229

More from Google breaking news:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&scoring=n&q=provocateurs+Canada+montebello

Algonquin Pow-wow: Resisting uranium mining in Canada

Photo: http://www.aafna.ca/rice_celebration_2004.html
Photo Kevin Wight/Algonquin Rice Celebration 2004

Mohawk Nation News has taken a strong sovereignist position in support of the Sharbot Lake issue. We think that Canada must adhere to their request for a nation-to-nation relationship according to Algonquin, Canadian and international law.

The Algonquins are having a pow wow at Ardoch Lake on September 1st. See the poster below for information. We ecnourage all our brothers, sisters, friends and allies, native and non-native, to come and stand by and support the Algonquins in our fight against Frontenac Ventures. They want to open a uranium mine on our unsurrendered land. MREL who were making weapons and testing them on Algonquin land have now left for parts unknown, probably to turn up somewhere under another name. Read more:
http://http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/algonquin-pow-wow-sept-1-2007.html
Map and General Information on http://www.aafna.ca/ Contacts: Chief Paula Sherman paulasherman@trentu.ca; Chief DoreenDavis chiefdoreen@aol.com; JohnDavis john@plentycanada.com; RandyCota rcota@sympatico.ca

Readers respond: Migrant prisons in Texas, Wackenhut and abuse

Raymondville, Texas, migrant tent city prison:

Your list of infamous immigrant prisons being run for profit probably isn't complete without the "Tent City" in Raymondville, Texas. It's a series of temporary structures that was assembled in 90 days.
You can see the whole range of prisons for profit in Texas at http://texasprisonbidness.org/about-private-prisons/texas-private-prisons-map
Some are contract prisons for ICE, others are holding state prisoners from other states, some are holding youth. There's a lot of populations that can be confined for profit. Keep writing about it!
Kathleen

(Vigils at Hutto and Raymondville. Photos by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.)

Websites exposing Wackenhut abuses:
Enjoyed your post on Wackenhut and border patrols interesting. Have you seen http://www.eyeonwackenhut.org/ and http://www.focusong4s.org/? Those two sites have info on Wackenhut's many problems and rights abuses in the U.S. and abroad(Texas Prison Bid'ness)

Bush donors get kickbacks with contracts and favoritism

Bush Pioneers 2004

The list: GEO (who won multiple contracts to imprison migrants in Texas and Louisiana in 2007) and others who donated $100,000 to the Bush 2004 campaign.

The list includes lobbyist Jack Abramoff, officials from Wal-Mart, Verizon and the Christian Coalition, along with U.S. senators and a member of the Federal Reserve:

http://www.nndb.com/group/715/000117364/

Original article:

"Privatizing misery, deporting and imprisoning migrants for profit"

http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/08/privatizing-misery-deporting-and.html

Censored: U.S. torture, spy towers and crashing drones

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SASABE, Ariz. -- There's an explosion of news in southern Arizona, from the torture trial in Tucson to the spy towers along the border and the Sasabe border wall. The futile, seven-mile Sasabe border wall construction is slated to begin Monday without public comment.
It is sad that so few news reporters are reporting this news, relying instead on the Bush-agenda, parroting the same worn-out refrains about the border and the slow spin of corporate-manufactured news.
Thanks to everyone who has shared information. In the breaking news, there is an article on the corporation who really operates those Wackenhut migrant deportation buses at the border. It is the Danish company G4/S, listed on stock exchanges in London and Denmark.
The news that a Danish-owned corporation is deporting migrants for profit at the border, follows the news that Boeing joined with the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems to build the spy towers. So much for all that talk about U.S. patriotism and securing the borders in the name of U.S. nationalism.
It is dismal to see the profiteering of those building migrant prisons, especially to see GEO Group, Inc., receiving so many contracts to imprison migrants, after contributing $100,000 to Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
It is also horrible to know that the Hutto prison in Texas continues to imprison migrant and refugee infants and children.
We're researching now to see if Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are once again being used along the border. The Border Patrol had stopped using UAVs after one crashed near Nogales, Ariz. last year. We've just heard of new sightings. The dangers for those on the ground, include crashes and the lasers on board. The UAVs are being used in Afghanistan and robot UAVs are being designed to fire weapons.
As for the UAVs, the so-called environmental assessment for the spy towers says there was a change of plans: The UAVs would not be used in the Secure Border Initiative in Arizona. However, after the assessment was released, the Bush administration and Congress pressed for more crashing drones.
The Boeing and Israeli-Elbit spy towers continue to malfunction in the rugged desert mountains and canyons along the Arizona border. (Wi-Fi, what were they thinking?)
A special thanks to those who searched in the intense heat along the border this summer for the dying and dead, recovering bodies for family members.
Scroll down for more news from Zapatistas, Navajos, Lakotas and Mohawks. Delegations of Mohawks and members of the International Indian Treaty Council and AIM have been in Venezuela in the struggle against colonial oppression.
Thanks to all of you who turned this long hot summer, of unbearable heat in June, into a collaborative labor of love for the Censored Blog.
The monsoon rains are here, and while the mainstream media is still spinning the hype for the web of deception, at least the Sonoran desert is lush with green.
Thanks to all of you who continue to fight the good fight. You know who you are.

Uupdate from C Hues in Arivaca on the spy towers from the Connection newspaper:
http://www.arivaca-newspaper.com/category/tower-update/



Photo 1: Sasabe Store/Brenda Norrell Photo 2/UAV crashed near Tubac, Az/Fox News Photo 3: UAV/Photo U.S./ Photo 4: Spy tower northwest of Sasabe, Ariz., Aug. 2007/Brenda Norrell

Privatizing misery, deporting and imprisoning migrants for profit

The hidden agenda of the border hype:

Security guards and prisons in the dollars-for-migrants industry


By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SASABE, Ariz. -- Another industry has been privatized in the United States by the Bush administration. This time it is the transportation of migrants for deportation.
The Wackenhut Corporation, whose buses wait along the border to be filled with migrants for deportation, is actually a subsidiary of the Danish security corporation G4S (Group4/Securicor.)
G4S, with headquarters in Crawley, West Sussex, England, is listed on the stock exchanges in London and Denmark.
Some border residents are concerned that a foreign-owned corporation, and not a U.S.-owned corporation, is handling security and deportations of migrants at the border. Many are concerned that a corporation is profiteering from migrant deportations. Wackenhut/G4S took over these duties from the U.S. Border Patrol.
The executive director of the watchdog group Private Corrections Institute, Ken Kopczynski, wrote to the Censored Blog about the owners of Wackenhut.
"Great piece on the Minutemen and immigration, but Wackenhut is not connected to GEO Group. Group 4 bought out Wackenhut Corporation a number of years ago and sold off the corrections unit to George Zoley and friends. Part of the agreement was that they could no longer use the name Wackenhut, which currently is a subsidiary of Group 4/Securicor. Hope this helps and keep at ‘em," wrote Ken Kopczynski, executive director of Private Corrections Institute.
Imprisoning migrants for profit
George Zoley is CEO of GEO Group, Inc., which operates privatized prisons across the nation, including the notorious prisons in Florence, Arizona.
Building prisons for immigrants has been profitable for the GEO Group. In the year 2007 alone, GEO Group won contracts for a prison in Eagle Pass, Texas; an immigration detention facility in Jena, La. and a detention facility for U.S. Marshals service in Laredo, Tex.
After the Jena, La., immigration detention facility reaches full occupancy with 1,160 inmates in 2008, GEO expects $23.5 million annually in revenues.
GEO, whose major shareholder is Zoley, donated $100,000 to George Bush's reelection campaign in 2004. (GEO was previously called "Wackenhut Corrections," but no longer uses the Wackenhut name.)
Texas has some of the most notorious migrant prisons
GEO Group, with headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla., received a 10-year contract in January, for the detention of 2,407 "criminal aliens" at the Reeves County Detention Complex in Texas.
GEO took over the county's contract with the Federal Bureau of Prisons. GEO said it believes that the facility in Reeves County, with the county seat in Pecos, is the largest privately-operated prison in the world.
In Taylor, Texas, near Austin, another for-profit company, Corrections Corporation of America, imprisons migrant and refugee infants and children at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Recently, a prison guard exposed maggots in the food there. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Jorge Bustamante, was denied a request to tour Hutto in May, 2007. (Scroll to the end for more links on Texas prisons.)
Halliburton and migrant prisons
Halliburton's Kellogg Brown and Root received a contract for $385 million to build immigration detention centers "in the even to an emergency influx of immigrants." After obtaining the contract from Homeland Security in Jan., 2006, Halliburton separated from KBR. Then, Halliburton moved its headquarters to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2007.
Guarding and transporting migrants for profit
Meanwhile, the Danish-owned, G4S/Wackenhut Corporation describes its contract with Border Patrol.
On Aug. 30, 2006, Border Patrol and the Wackenhut Corporation signed a one-year agreement, with four one-year performance periods, to provide “Guard and Transportation” services to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.
Wackenhut said the scope of the contract covers the entire southwest United States/Mexican border to include Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.
"The value of the agreement is approximately $50 million dollars per year, with a total contract value of $250 million dollars over the five-year period," Wackenhut states.
"Transport service will initially involve over 100 secure, motor coach buses to include state of the art confinement systems, on-board digital/video surveillance, GPS tracking and over 270 armed security personnel from Wackenhut’s Custom Protection Division."
With project headquarters in Tucson, Wackenhut said there would be three additional support centers in the southwest border operations.
During a recent protest of labor struggles in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times reported, "Wackenhut is a subsidiary of the global security contractor G4S, which is under fire from international human rights groups and trade unions for alleged racist practices against black employees in South Africa, Malawi and Mozambique."
Wackenhut also imprisons Australian aboriginals and refugees in Australia.
The Wackenhut Corporation provides nuclear security and energy consulting services, according to its website.
Controversial security contract for Danish-owned Wackenhut
After taking over migrant deportation services from the Border Patrol, G4S/Wackenhut, announced on May 14, 2007, another controversial security contract, one at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility.
Wackenhut, from its U.S. headquarters in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., announced that the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration selected Wackenhut for award of the Oak Ridge Complex Protective Services Contracts.
These contracts provide for the security support services for the 33,725 acre Oak Ridge Reservation including the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the East Tennessee Technology Park, the Federal Office Building Complex and the Y-12 National Security Complex, Wackenhut said.
In August, peace activists were arrested at the atomic energy site, Y-12, a high-level security complex with a long history of secrecy, in Oak Ridge, Tenn:
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2007/aug/05/annual-y-12-protest-draws-200/

More information:
Background: "CorpWatch: Wackenhut's Free Market in Human Misery" (1999)
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=868 Bush donors get kickbacks with contracts and favoritism

Bush Pioneers 2004
The list of those donating $100,000 to the Bush campaign in 2004, includes GEO Group (which won multiple contracts to imprison migrants in Texas and Louisiana in 2007.)
The list includes lobbyist Jack Abramoff, officials from Wal-Mart, Verizon and the Christian Coalition, along with Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl, other senators and a member of the Federal Reserve: http://www.nndb.com/group/715/000117364/

G4S/Wackenthut:
http://www.g4s.com/


Readers respond:

Raymondville, Texas, migrant tent city prison:

Your list of infamous immigrant prisons being run for profit probably isn't complete without the "Tent City" in Raymondville, Texas. It's a series of temporary structures that was assembled in 90 days.You can see the whole range of prisons for profit in Texas at http://texasprisonbidness.org/about-private-prisons/texas-private-prisons-map
Some are contract prisons for ICE, others are holding state prisoners from other states, some are holding youth. There's a lot of populations that can be confined for profit. Keep writing about it!
Kathleen

Wackenhut sites exposing abuses:
Enjoyed your post on Wackenhut and border patrols interesting. Have you seen http://www.eyeonwackenhut.org/ and http://www.focusong4s.org/?
Those two sites have info on Wackenhut's many problems and rights abuses in the U.S. and abroad(Texas Prison Bid'ness)e:
http://www.privateci.org/


Please send comments on this article to: brendanorrell@gmail.com

Return to Censored Blog homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Life and death on the border, 'No significant impact'

The biggest hoax of all, the $31.5 million, seven-mile, border fence at Sasabe and its pitiful environmental assessment


By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

ARIVACA and SASABE, Arizona – Of all the whitewashed and pitiful U.S.-produced environmental assessments, the slim pile of papers for the Sasabe border fence is the worst.

In Sasabe, where border fence construction is slated to begin on Monday, residents did not even know the pitiful document existed.

The so-called environmental assessment was sent by FedEx to the Caviglia-Arivaca Library, after its release on July 27.

There was no request for public comment, simply a bundle of papers placed in the library. At the end of the document, where public comments usually appear, there are three letters from the U.S. Army praising the project.

The reason for the document’s existence is explained. The Sasabe fence is being built “to comply with the Congressional Fence Act of 2006” which requires that 700 miles of fence be built.

In other words, it does not matter that this seven-mile border fence, along the 2,000-mile border, is futile and impractical. Congress said to do it, so it will be built for $31.5 million, like a bridge to nowhere.

The failure to request public comments has not gone unnoticed. Arizona residents living along the border had one common sentiment about the U.S. plans to build the border fence: “They could care less what we think about it.”

It was only by accident that I stumbled across the assessment on Thursday, while looking back over another pitiful environmental assessment, the one for the border spy towers.

The environmental assessment for the “Pedestrian Fence” near Sasabe, Arizona is one more installment in what could become a trillion dollar disaster, the proposed US/Mexico border fence.

It only takes one look at the rugged mountains west of Sasabe to know that there will be no metal border wall built across those mountains. Yes, migrants and jaguars will make it over those mountain paths, but there is not going to be any wall construction.

The Sasabe border fence would only extend 4.5 miles to the east and 2.5 miles to the west of Sasabe Port of Entry. That is it, seven miles of border wall to nowhere, a border wall that will be easily avoided by migrants.

Since it is not possible to build a border wall over those mountains, the lead contractor Boeing has placed nine spy towers along the border. The only problem is, those are not working because of software problems.



Yes, the top camera was orbiting, and the red lights were flashing on the spy tower a few miles north of Sasabe, at the junction of Arivaca Road, on Thursday, but the towers are experiencing technical failure. There was another spy tower perched northwest of Sasabe, on the road to the Osa Guest Ranch.

Wi-Fi was used for the towers in these rugged mountains, canyons and desert. That is the same Wi-Fi that your local coffee shop uses. Anyone who uses Wi-Fi where there's interference, either interference from physical barriers or hackers, will enjoy this joke.

To make matters worse, the spy tower located in Arivaca is pointed at the homes of Arivaca community members. With its spy range of nine miles, there is no view of the border from that spy tower because of the mountains. Arivaca residents oppose the spy tower based on the invasion of privacy and are planning a lawsuit.

On the daylong drive from Tucson to Arivaca, Sasabe and Three Points, Arizona, on Thursday, there were about 30 Border Patrol units wandering around. The Border Patrol agents were watching the rain clouds form, talking on their cell phones and munching snacks at convenience stores.

A couple of Wackenhut buses, waiting to be loaded with migrants, sat empty along the highway. Their drivers were slouched over the steering wheels, no doubt experiencing one of the most boring days of their lives.

There was not a migrant in sight.

Things picked up a little over at the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, not that there were any people around, just more Border Patrol agents talking on their cell phones and wandering around.



There were however, some fine hummingbirds at the feeders, and lots of good information on the Pronghorns along the border. It turns out that the Sonoran Pronghorn migrate between Mexico and the United States, crossing the border in the desert between Ajo and Yuma. Pronghorns, the fastest mammal in North America, do not jump over fences like deer, they try to go through or under fences, which can be devastating to the Pronghorns.

Jaguar, too, at times migrate from Mexico to the United States through these mountains.

Which brings us back to the pitiful environmental assessment for the Sasabe border fence, that costly and futile expression of Congress in response to border hysteria elsewhere and media hype.

Perhaps this assessment was sent by FedEx to the Caviglia-Arivaca Library, because those who produced it were too embarrassed to deliver it themselves.

The pitiful environmental assessment lists the threatened and endangered species.

The conclusion: “No Significant Impact.”

Like its predecessors, the environmental assessments for the unmanned aerial vehicles and spy towers, the assessment is a joke.

The document itself, surely will have “No Significant Impact,” except to fuel the mistrust and anger of Arizona residents along the border.

In fact, unless you are an investigative reporter, or psychic, you probably cannot even find a copy of it.

However, just for the record, here is the list of the endangered and threatened species listed in the Sasabe border fence environmental assessment.

The Bald eagle and Chiricahua leopard frog are on the list of threatened species.

On the endangered list are the California Brown pelican; Desert pupfish; Gila chub; Gila topminnow; Huachuca water umbel; Jaguar; Kearney blue star; Lesser long-nosed bat; Masked Bobwhite; Mexican spotted owl; Nichol Turk’s head cactus; Ocelot (spotted cat); Pima pineapple cactus; Sonoran pronghorn and Southwestern willow flycatcher.

Listed as “candidate” species are the Acuna cactus; Sonoyta mud turtle; Yellow-billed cuckoo; Gooddings onion and San Xavier talussnail (land snail.)

The jaguar is “cinnamon-buff” with black spots and the largest cat native in the Southwest.

The endangered Lesser long-nosed bat is a subject that biologists have been reluctant to discuss. The border fence assessment describes them as “easily disturbed.” Bats are pollinators of the desert plants, including agave and cacti. They day roost in caves and abandoned tunnels, making their homes in Arizona between April and September. These bats fly south of the border for the rest of the year, according to the fence assessment.

The question remains whether the bats’ hunting ability will be affected by the spy towers’ high-tech equipment.

The fence assessment states there is critical habitat here for the Desert pupfish; Gila Chub; Huachuca water umbel; Mexican spotted owl and Southwestern willow flycatcher.

Mitch Ellis, Buenos Aires National Wildlife manager, said the lack of public notice and comment period does not satisfy the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. Ellis said he will not give permission to proceed with the fence on BANW land until the requirements are met.

Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris, Jr., said the Tohono O'odham Nation was not allowed to comment on the impact to cultural sites.

Already this summer, the United States' construction of the border vehicle barrier has resulted in Hohokam, O'odham ancestors, being dug up on tribal land and removed from their burial sites.

As for the pitiful environmental assessment for the Sasabe border fence, it was prepared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Worth and the Gulf South Research Corporation.

Biologists, ecologists and archaeologists participating, don’t worry. We’re not including your names.


Photos: Sasabe Port of Entry, Mexico/US border. Rugged mountains along border shown to the west, land is lush from monsoon rains. Photo 2: U.S. spy tower northwest of Sasabe, on the road to Osa Guest Ranch. Photo 3: Monsoon rain clouds form in the distance to the west, over Tohono O'odham tribal land. Photos Brenda Norrell Pronghorn photo/US Fish and Wildlife

'No significant impact'

Life and death on the border, 'No significant impact'
by Brenda Norrell
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/08/life-and-death-on-border-no-significant.html

CounterPunch: Bush's house of snakes

In today's CounterPunch online:
Bush's house of snakes
Indians, Border Biometrics and Migrating Corporations
by Brenda Norrell
http://www.counterpunch.org/norrell08232007.html

Reader comment:
I'm emailing to say I appreciated your article "Bush's House of Snakes" in today's Counterpunch . Your list of corporations in the Competitiveness Council is very valuable. I was unaware of the Indigenous People's efforts, because it is not reported in the mainstream media. I appreciate reading about this movement.
I support your awareness of the distinction between corporations and citizens made by the government. Many people do not realize that America is no longer a democracy. It is a corporatocracy. The USA has been the target of a successful, covert, hostile take-over by the corporatocracy and the nation now exists of, by, and for the entities that comprise the corporatocracy.
The corporatocracy consists of Big Military, Big Energy, Big Finance, Big Media, Big Politics (both republican and democratic parties), Big Religion, Big Government (all the bureaucracies at local, county, state, and federal levels), Big Ag, Big Pharm, and Big Government (all three branches of government). Citizens elected Al Gore in 2000, but the corporatocracy voided the election and installed its own CEO (Bush) and COO (Cheney).\Business enterprise has become the state religion of America.
Everything is commodified, most egregiously the trading in pollution credits. All decisions at all levels of society are rendered in economic terms. How will global warming affect the economy? Democrats and Republicans and liberals all worship the state religion. This is why none of the candidates can be trusted. They make speeches praising values of democracy and then vote the state religion, as evidenced by a Democrat-controlled Congress giving Bush almost $500 billion for defense. The war in Iraq is a religious war between Islam and Business Enterprise, not between Islam and Christianity.
I favor a return to the language of the Declaration of Independence. The purpose of the nation is "Life, LIberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." The goals of the Declaration are antithetical to the goals of the corporatocracy and of Business Enterprise. Commerce should serve Life, it should serve Liberty, and it should promote the Pursuit of Happiness. In fact it is the other way around, and Americans have given their lives and their liberties and surrendered all possibility of true happiness to commerce.
These are the messages our nation needs to hear. If we frame our argument in these terms, we address the true problems, not the false issues the corporatocracy uses to distract us.
John Omaha, PhD
john@johnomahaenterprises.com

In the beginning, there were the Denver spy files

Spygate, in the beginning there were the Denver spy files

Looking back, the ACLU announced Tuesday that the Pentagon is shutting down its spy database on peace activists

Update: After this article was published last night, an important comment came in: "Is the Pentagon shutting down its spy database on peace activists, because the spying will now be privatized like security was in Iraq? Will spying on private citizens be contracted out to corporations with short shelf lives, so the U.S. will not be held responsible?" Let us hear your thoughts ...

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

In the beginning, there were the Denver spy files.

The year was 2002. The revelation was that Denver Police within the Intelligence Bureau, were spying on American Indians, attorneys, at least one senator and peace activists. Not only were they spying on them then, but they had been for decades.
As the secret files were made public, the truth became clear: Police were spying on American Indians and peace activists all over the United States.
It was called the “new McCarthyism” by the editors who would print those stories, before the ACLU filed lawsuits in Denver and across the nation.
Navajo Times was among the first to print the articles that I wrote in October of 2002.
Glenn Morris, professor, AIM member and Columbus Day protest organizer said, “It seems that Indians, and Colorado AIM in particular, have been targeted in the ‘spy files.’”
Morris was targeted, along with Russell Means, Vine Deloria, Jr., Wilma Mankiller, Winona LaDuke, John Echohawk, John Mohawk, George "Tink" Tinker, Wallace Coffey, Ward Churchill, Dennis Banks, the Leonard Peltier Support Group, Big Mountain Support Group, Colorado AIM, and Indian staff and attorneys at the Native American Rights Fund.
“This is the Indian equivalent of having a police spy database in the Black community that consisted of files on WEB DuBois, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Thurgood Marshall, Jesse Jackson, NAACP, the Black Panthers, Cornell West, John Hope Franklin and Angela Davis, all at the same time,” Morris said.
Spy files were kept on great leaders, including Wilma Mankiller, John Echohawk, and former South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk.
In Nov., 2002, I interviewed Abourezk for the Lakota Journal in South Dakota.
“I didn’t like it and I think there should be a law against it. It should be stopped,” said Abourezk, an attorney in Sioux Falls.
Abourezk, who served on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said he doesn’t have a clue why he was spied on, even though he now has a copy of the file. The documents simply indicate his name and that Denver police were watching him.
Abourezk said years ago he encouraged the formation of the Anti-Defamation League of American Indians in Denver and supported formation of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Washington, a civil rights group.
“I haven’t been in Denver in 15 years,” Abourezk said.
The existence of the Denver spy files came about because of discovery in another court case. Then, after six new file cabinets of Denver police spy files were discovered, Morris pointed out that the City of Denver never voluntarily disclosed the existence of the files.
The spy files were revealed by the All Nations Alliance, which was the umbrella alliance for Transform Columbus Day, and the American Civil Liberties Union in March of 2002, Morris said.
Home addresses, the names of friends, car license plates, handwritten notes and mailing lists of human rights groups were in the spy files.
A “Free Leonard Peltier” bumper sticker landed great-grandmother Helen Henry, 82, in the Denver spy files.
“We are not sure with whom else the files have been shared, but in Russell Means’ and my file there are references to some sharing with the FBI,” Morris said.
Law enforcement knew of a plot to assassinate Ward Churchill, but never told him.
Morris said the ACLU, representing several plaintiffs including members of All Nations Alliance, filed a class action suit under a federal law which allows public officials who have violated one's civil rights to be sued in federal court.
Osage author and professor Tink Tinker was also targeted in the Denver Police spy operation. Tinker, an activist who spoke at Columbus Day protests along with Morris and Means in recent years, found 17 pages on his activities recorded in the Denver Spy Files.
Not only was Tinker targeted, but the religious graduate school where he is professor of American Indian Cultures and Religious Traditions was also targeted.
It is the Iliff School of Theology in Denver.
Tinker said, “Now the school where I teach -- a largely White, Christian (Methodist) graduate school of theology training ministers -- is also suspect of criminal activity!”
Tinker said the spy operation was underway long before incidents leading to the Patriot Act.
“Since this pre-dates the September 11, 2001, events and thus pre-dates passage of the Patriot Act, it demonstrates a considerable history of the disallowing of dissent in the United States -- a clear violation of constitutional intent in our so-called constitutional democracy,” Tinker said.
Tinker said spy files on Native Americans and human rights activists are now emerging across America.
“These ‘spy’ files -- which are not just a Denver phenomenon but are now coming to the surface in other cities from Portland, Ore., to New York -- also point to a particularly nagging problem with respect to the impunity enjoyed by police in this ‘free’ country that the president bragged about shortly after 9-11-01.”
Tinker said he expects the situation to worsen.
“It seems that freedom extends especially to the police in their increasing control of civil society in the United States,” Tinker said.
“What has been happening since 9-11-01 is even more scary. I predict that we will see an ever-increasing demonstration of police power, police impunity, disallowable of dissenting voices, and control of civil behaviors.”
Those words were spoken in 2002. Since that time, the Denver court case has resulted in new policies at the Denver Police Department.

However, city and federal spy files began to emerge like maggots in a dead carcass.
The ACLU began to reveal spy files on peace activists all over the country. The New York City Police scoured the country to spy on peace activists. The extent to which police eavesdropped on telephone conversations and followed people may never be known.
The “new McCarthyism,” is what the Quaker’s American Friends Service Committee, plaintiff in the Denver suit, called the spy files.
"First there were Salem witch trials. Next came the red scare of the 40s and 50s. Then it was targeting of Martin Luther King Jr. and members of the civil rights movement,” said Mary Ellen McNish, general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee.
“Today it's hundreds of groups and individuals who exercise their First Amendment right to speak out and express their views and opinions that are unfairly targeted and labeled.
“When will we learn from the mistakes of the past?"
The federal lawsuit, American Friends Service Committee v. City and County of Denver, was initially filed in Denver District Court March 28, 2002.
The Chiapas Coalition and other Latin American human rights groups were among those police labeled “criminal extremist.”
Denver police kept secret files on speakers at Amnesty International meetings and protesters at the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, D.C.
There are comments written in the spy files, like those of plaintiff Sister Antonia. Police wrote, the Sister said, "global financial policies are responsible for the uprisings in Chiapas, Mexico.”
The spy files list those "seen" at a demonstration protesting the celebration of Columbus Day in 2000.
License numbers and descriptions of vehicles used by peaceful protests are listed. There are home addresses and personal descriptions of peaceful protesters. The addresses of residences visited by individuals frequently are included.

Not so long ago, we were all shocked that the police kept secret spy files on peace activists in the United States.

ACLU: Denver spy files documents:
http://www.aclu-co.org/spyfiles/chronology.htm

ACLU: Pentagon shuts down spy database on peace activists, August, 21, 2007
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/31394prs20070821.html
A copy of the ACLU's report on the TALON database, No Real Threat: The Pentagon's Secret Database on Peaceful Protest, is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/27988pub20070117.html
More information on the ACLU's FOIA requests regarding the TALON database is available online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/24010res20060201.html

Photos: Colorado AIM/Columbus Day Protest in Denver 2006/Glenn Morris and Western Shoshone Carrie Dann at Columbus Day Protest

National Day to stop border deaths and repression

National Day of Action to Stop Anti-Immigrant Repression and Migrant Deaths at the U.S. - Mexico Border

Tuesday, August 28, 2007 4:30 - 7:00 pm

Federal Building300 W. Congress Street, Tucson, Arizona

Urgent call for: Socially just legalization; Justice for Elvira & Saul Arrellano; Stop the deaths at the border: An end to all raids;
A moratorium on all immigration detentions and deportations; Restore and expand the due process rights of all immigrants; Protect and expand the labor, human and civil rights of all immigrants and refugees

Cosponsored by:Derechos Humanos, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, May 1st Coalition, Borderland Theater, Fundación México, Tucson Samaritans, Salt of the Earth Labor College, Humane Borders

For more information, contact Derechos Humanos at: 520.770.1373


Photos from the protest Gov. Janet Napolitano in Tucson/Photos Brenda Norrell 2007

Navajo Nation Fair, Justice for the People, Justice for the Planet

Justice for the People, Justice for the Planet

2007 Climate Justice

Black Mesa Water Coalition Black Mesa Water Coalition and Indigenous Environmental Network presents: "Justice for the People, Justice for the Planet 2007" (J4P)2 September 6-8, 2007

Window Rock, AZEco-tent will be located east of Church's Chicken!Black Mesa Water Coalition (BMWC) and Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN) will host and sponsor the "Justice for the People, Justice for the Planet" (J4P) Eco-tent and concert.

J4P will create a space in honor of our Mother Earth and the historical roots of sustainability of Indigenous Peoples. J4P will highlight Climate Justice and the solutions needed to reduce global warming.

Healing ourselves is healing our Mother Earth. Our interconnectedness to our mother earth is the foundation of our identity as Indigenous Peoples and is the very strength that we rely on to heal our families and communities. The Navajo Nation Fair 2007 theme is, "Navajo leaders, yesterday, today and tomorrow."

Because our future is so reliant on our decisions and actions today, knowledge about our environment, current policy's, and earth systems is ever so important for a just and sustainable future for our communities This event is free and open to all!

Please join us to make this event fun and a great learning experience!Peace, Wahleah -- Wahleah JohnsField Organizer Black Mesa Water Coalition 1823 North Center Street, Suite #204 Flagstaff, AZ 86004

http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=wahleah@gmail.com (928) 213-5909 office http://www.campusclimatechallenge.org/

http://www.blackmesawatercoalition.org/

(double click on poster to enlarge)

Arizona residents chase away Minutemen with shotguns

Arizona residents armed with shotguns are chasing away the armed Minutemen

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

NOGALES, Ariz. -- The Minutemen are out in force in the region of Green Valley and Arivaca and some Arizona businessmen are arming themselves with shotguns to chase away the heavily-armed Minutemen, the self-proclaimed militia at the border.

The Minutemen are unwelcome vigilantes, say humanitarian groups and residents who are unpersuaded by the television hype and U.S. propaganda inspiring racism and border hysteria.

The Minutemen have been gathering at local businesses where they are unwanted.

"They park at Continental and the frontage road in Green Valley on a regular basis and yesterday they met in numbers in the parking lots of the Amado Mini Market, The Longhorn restaurant and the Cow Palace," said one volunteer searching for people dying along the border on Tuesday, Aug. 21.

Already, some area businessmen have chased the Minutemen off their property with shotguns. The Cow Palace Restaurant, however, appears to have let them stay in the area around the business.

On the road to Arivaca from Nogales, the buses labeled "Wackenhut" are usually parked outside the Cow Palace and Longhorn, waiting to be filled with migrants. Wackenhut, now owned by the Danish corporation G4S, is part of the new hired security at the border taking over duties of the Border Patrol.

The Minutemen's presence at this time is an overt attempt to dis-empower and discourage Arizona residents from mobilizing and opposing permanent checkpoints along I-19, human rights volunteers said.

"Our communities south of Tucson need to pass an ordinance against the Minutemen vigilantes like Austin, Texas did recently," one volunteer said.

"Do not be intimidated by these vigilantes."

Related articles:

Video shows Minutemen tearing down migrant camp

http://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/13892340/detail.html
.
Minutemen shooting at people in San Diego area
http://www.ocregister.com/column/one-minuteman-courtney-1815640-attorney-mailly
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Newly-elected Tohono O'odham Chairman Ned Norris, Jr., vows no border wall
Arizona Daily Star
Note: One error in this article in the Arizona Daily Star:
There is already one U.S. spy tower, with others planned, on the Tohono O'odham Nation near San Miguel on tribal land. It is near Homeland Security's migrant detention center, the holding "cage" where Indigenous women and children are temporarily imprisoned before being deported.
Further, a spy monitoring station for the southern Arizona spy towers will be on tribal land. Although officials say the nine spy towers in southern Arizona are not functioning, scanner communications report images are being received at the Tucson command center.
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/197095

Austin unanimously passes resolution opposing Minutemen vigilantes:
http://texascivilrightsreview.org/phpnuke/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=390

Photos by Brenda Norrell: Wackenhut bus waiting to be loaded with migrants at Three Points, Ariz., near Tohono O'odham border; Crosses remembering migrants who have died in the desert by Pan Left Productions

Response to Censored Blog, from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps in Tucson

"The links you have on your web page are not about our group. Our Group, Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, is a peaceful national neighborhood watch group. The group in the links on your web page is a group out of California called "Minuteman Project". They are a totally different group with no ties to our group. Our group actually has a nationally certified Search & Rescue team that looks for illegal aliens and provides them with water, food, and medical attention if needed. Our group doesn't detain or try to stop any illegals. We actually have a policy that prevents our members from having any contact, other than humanitarian, with any illegals. We let the Border patrol do the questioning, tracking, and detaining, that is their job, not ours.

I hope this sheds some light on what we really do, not more media hype."
Lance Altherr
Tucson Chapter Leader, Minutemen Civil Defense Corps
TucsonMM@msn.com



Return to Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Arctic Region is un-surrendered Turtle Island

Indigenous in defense of Arctic, as the U.S., Canada, Russia and other countries race to claim the thawing Northwest Passage


Mohawk Nation News
August 21, 2007

Originally, in January of 2006, this objection was sent out via electronic and registered mail to all states claiming sovereignty over our un-surrendered lands known as the Arctic Region/Turtle Island. This objection has been revised to include Russia and sent registered mail to the parties.
PUBLIC NOTICE OF OBJECTION TO ATTEMPTED USURPATION OF INDIGENOUS JURISDICTION KNOWN AS THE “ARCTIC REGION” OF TURTLE ISLAND BY THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, DENMARK, RUSSIA AND ANY OTHER NATION, CORPORATION, FOREIGN FEDERAL, STATE OR PROVINCIAL “GOVERNANCE” AGENCIES AND ALL “OUTSIDERS” AND NON-INDIGENOUS INTERESTS
Read more ...
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/arctic-is-un-surrendered-turtle-island.html


Bush in Canada, US races to claim thawing Northwest Passage's oil and gas
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070820-1640-bush-canada-mexico.html

Twin snakes at the northern border

In true snake fashion, Bush and Gonzales are slithering on both sides of the northern border

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

It should come as no surprise that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, George Bush’s twin viper, is meeting with American Indian tribes in Michigan and elsewhere at the northern border.

It was in Michigan that the National Congress of American Indians opposed Bush’s plans for biometrics and other new regulations for border cards.

Calling those a violation of treaty rights, NCAI opposed biometrics in border cards, during NCAI’s mid-year session in June, 2006 in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich.

Passing two resolutions, NCAI said biometrics and other security features would “likely infringe on tribal government as well as individual member rights.”

NCAI said the proposed border cards were “detrimental and in direct violation of existing treaty rights including hunting, fishing and spiritual observances, harming tribal economies and disrupting the daily life of border tribal community."

One type of biometrics, iris biometrics, is especially dangerous. If the lasers are not properly calibrated, blindness can result.

Gonzales’ visit to Indian tribes at the northern border comes at the same time that Bush is being protested at the North American Summit in Canada.

Using fear-mongering about the so-called war on terror, and throwing in fear of bird flu, Bush’s border agenda is to create new border regulations making border passage more difficult for people, while securing quick passage for chosen corporations.

It was the Mohawk warriors that alerted Indigenous Peoples to the grave dangers that the new trilateral union of the U.S., Canada and Mexico, would pose to Indigenous Peoples and their territories. As with NAFTA, the trilateral union is designed to favor corporations and the exploitation of Indigenous natural resources.

Gonzales is trying to win favor with American Indian tribes by saying the words he thinks they want to hear and sprinkling around a few million here and there, mere chicken feed compared with the needs.

But, as always with Bush and the house of snakes, there is a hidden corporate agenda and an element of Nazi-like control of the borders.

Here’s the chosen corporations of the tri-national working group, the North American Competitiveness Council:
United States:
 Campbell Soup Company Chevron Corporation Ford Motor Company FedEx Corporation General Electric Company General Motors Corp. Kansas City Southern Lockheed Martin Corporation Merck & Co., Inc. Mittal Steel USA New York Life Insurance Company The Procter & Gamble Company (joined in 2007) UPS Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Whirlpool Corporation

Read more, "Smelling the trilateral rat"
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Bush agenda at Canadian summit: U.S. wants oil and gas in the Arctic, free passage for select corporations

By Deb Riechmann
ASSOCIATED PRESS
4:40 p.m. August 20, 2007
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20070820-1640-bush-canada-mexico.html

Ensuring corporate border crossing, if borders are closed to people:

"Bush, Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper want to find a way to protect citizens in an emergency – perhaps an outbreak of avian flu or a natural disaster – without the tie-ups that slowed commerce after the Sept. 11 attacks."

Thawing Northwest Passage has oil and gas the U.S. wants ...

"Calderón and Harper both want tight relations with Bush, yet don't want to be seen as proteges of the unpopular president or leave the impression that the U.S. is encroaching on their sovereignty.
To that end, Harper used the meeting to assert his nation's claim to the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.
The race to secure subsurface rights to the Arctic seabed heated up when Russia sent two small submarines to plant a tiny national flag under the North Pole. The United States and Norway also have competing claims in the vast Arctic region, where a U.S. study suggests as much as 25 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and gas could be hidden.
Canada believes much of the North American side of the Arctic is Canada's, but the United States says the thawing Northwest Passage is part of international waters.
A senior Canadian government official said Harper raised the recent remarks of Paul Cellucci, Bush's previous U.S. ambassador to Canada. Cellucci argued that the U.S. should acknowledge the Northwest Passage as Canadian so that the Canadian navy could to patrol the area, monitor shipping and guard against potential terrorism and weapons smuggling."

Photo: CP

Smelling the trilateral rat

By Brenda Norrell

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

When you smell a rat, just follow the money.

The new trilateral partnership, Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, is now being protested by First Nations and others in Canada.

.

Under the guise of the war on terrorism, with the old stand-in of the fear of bird flu, the three amigos, leaders of the U.S., Mexico and Canada, want to tighten the border for people, while paving the way for certain corporations.

.

"The goal of this secret plan is to dissolve the three sovereign nations of United States, Canada and Mexico into a North American Union by 2010. All our resources: land, water, agricultural, also health and environment issues, will be not be controlled the peoples of these three sovereign countries but by the new un-elected government of the North American Union," said one First Nations warrior.

.
Mohawks released a statement of travel restrictions from First Nations protecting their territories from the conquest of the puppet leaders of corporations.

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"In Unity with People upon Earth against Globalization, North American Free Trade Agreement and meeting between puppet leaders of the corporations United States, Canada and Mexico at Chateau Montebello on twentieth day said August;

"In response to corporations State Of New York , United States Bureau Of Indian Affairs and Catskill Development LLC, attempts to interfere with Ancient governmental structure of Kanienkehaka and unauthorized negotiations, to deprive of Ancestral Land;

"In remembrance of our past struggles and in unity with continued struggle of all original People upon the Earth at Chiapas, Oaxaca, Wayúu People, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Kanenhstaton and others against the Vatican's terrorists."

"Rotiskenrakéhte shall exercise and maintain explicit reservation of Right, have Authority to use all force necessary, with necessary means to maintain the Peace and stop the destruction of life on Earth, by this Navigation And Travel Restriction to vessels of any nation or corporation engaging in commerce, commercial intercourse with corporate United States or Canada."

.

Passport requirements, border security and territorial disputes in the Arctic were among issues raised by Canada during the meeting with Bush.

Meanwhile, in the selection process of representatives of the tri-lateral partnership, Canada, Mexico and the United States all employed different methods. Canada and Mexico both selected individuals as members of their respective sections of the NACC, while the United States selected companies (15, with only 10 participating in trilateral meetings).

Here’s the chosen ones of the tri-national working group, the North American Competitiveness Council:

United States
 Campbell Soup Company
 Chevron Corporation
 Ford Motor Company
 FedEx Corporation
 General Electric Company
 General Motors Corp.
 Kansas City Southern
 Lockheed Martin Corporation
 Merck & Co., Inc.
 Mittal Steel USA
 New York Life Insurance Company
 The Procter & Gamble Company (joined in 2007)
 UPS
 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
 Whirlpool Corporation

Canada
 Dominic D’Alessandro, President and CEO, Manulife Financial
 Paul Desmarais, Jr., Chairman and Co-CEO, Power Corporation of
Canada
 David A. Ganong, President, Ganong Bros. Limited
 Richard L. George, President and CEO, Suncor Energy Inc.
 E. Hunter Harrison, President and CEO, Canadian National
Railway Company
 Linda Hasenfratz, CEO, Linamar Corporation
 Michael Sabia, President and CEO, Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE)
 Annette Verschuren, President, The Home Depot Canada
 Richard E. Waugh, President and CEO, The Bank of Nova Scotia

Mexico
 Armando Paredes Arroyo, President, Consejo Coordinador
Empresarial
 Gastón Azcárraga Andrade, President, Consejo Mexicano de
Hombres de Negocios (CMHN) and CEO of Mexicana de Aviación
and Grupo Posadas
 Ismael Plascencia, President, Confederación de Cámaras
Industriales (CONCAMIN)
 Valentín Díez, President, Consejo Mexicano de Comercio Exterior
(COMCE) and former Vice President of Grupo Modelo
 Jaime Yesaki Cavazos, President, Consejo Nacional Agropecuario
(CNA) and CEO of several poultry companies
 Claudio X. González, President, Centro de Estudios Económicos
del Sector Privado (CEESP) and Chairman of the Board and CEO,
Kimberly-Clark de México
 Guillermo Vogel, Vice President, Tubos de Acero de México
(TAMSA)
 César de Anda Molina, President and CEO, Avicar de Occidente
 Tomás González Sada, President and CEO, Grupo CYDSA
 Roberto Newell Garcia, CEO, Instituto Mexicano para la
Competitividad

Breaking news: Police fire tear gas on protesters:

http://www.edmontonsun.com/News/Canada/2007/08/20/4433012.html

Photo CP

Twin Snakes at the Northern Border

Bush and Gonzales slither on both sides of the border

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Uranium mining, Oglala Lakota and Mni Wakan (Sacred Water)

Uranium mining, Oglala Lakota and Mni Wakan (Sacred Water)

by Bring Back the Way

http://censored-news.blogspot.com/2007/08/uranium-mining-oglala-lakota-people-and.html

Yaqui and O'odham unite to plan Zapatistas' summits

UPDATE: Topics of discussion for Indigenous representatives, delegates and commissions attending summits

Photo: Vicam Pueblo Gov. Loreto Ramírez Mapoumea and Pueblo Mayor Florentino Buitimea Yoquihua meet with O'odham in Mexico Lt. Gov. Jose Garcia in Rancho el Penasco, Mexico, to plan upcoming Zapatistas regional and international summits. Photo Brenda Norrell
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Vicam Pueblo Yaqui hope Yaqui in the United States, and Indigenous throughout the Americas, will work with them in a spirit of unity in the struggle for Indigenous rights
.
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
.
RANCHO EL PENASCO, Sonora, Mexico -- Yaqui Zapatistas from Vicam Pueblo met with O'odham in Sonora and reached out to the world's Indigenous Peoples, extending a warm invitation to come and support the Zapatistas' regional and international summits to be held in October.

Gathered with O'odham at Rancho el Penasco, a dozen Yaqui Zapatistas from Vicam Pueblo, including Gov. Loreto Ramirez Mapoumea and Vicam Pueblo Mayor Florentino Buitimea Yoquihua, urged Indigenous from Alaska, Canada and the United States to join with Indigenous Peoples in northern Mexico for the North American Continental Regional Conference here, Oct. 8 -- 9, 2007.

"What happens here will determine how effective the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit is in Pueblo Yaqui," Gov. Ramirez said, speaking in Spanish through an interpreter.

"We are in solidarity with one another, and we want to be in solidarity with all of the Indigenous Peoples," Gov. Ramirez said during the reunion and planning meeting held Friday, Aug. 17.

The North American Continental Summit, Oct. 8 – 9, is one of four regional conferences. There are also Indigenous summits being held in Oaxaca, Oct. 4—5, Atlapulco, Oct. 6 –7 and Michaocan, Oct. 6 – 7, 2007.

The regional Indigenous gatherings precede the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit/Encuentro de Pueblos Indígenas de América, Oct. 11 -- 14 in Vicam Pueblo near Obregon in the southern part of the state of Sonora.

O'odham in Mexico Lt. Gov. Jose Garcia, among the O'odham who will host the North American Continental regional conference here, said it was wonderful to come together with Yaqui is such a spirit of unity and harmony.

"Respect," Lt. Gov. Garcia said was the feeling that permeated the meeting at Rancho el Penasco, an eco-tourism and biodiversity ranch located south of Magdalena de Kino, a 90-minute drive south of the Nogales, Arizona border.

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Topics of discussion:

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Garcia said the topics of discussion were established by the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit Commission (Comision Organizadora del Encuentro de Pueblos Indigenas de Americas.) The organizing commission includes the traditional authorities of Vicam Pueblo, National Indigenous Congress of Mexico and the Sixth Commission of the EZLN, as stated by Subcomandante Marcos in his August 15, 2007 statement.

The primary topic will be the war of capitalist conquest and its effect on Indigenous Peoples. The second topic is the resistance of Indigenous Peoples to this war of conquest in defense of Mother Earth and Indigenous territories and cultures. The third topic will be a discussion of why Indigenous Peoples are struggling.

The organizing commission said Indian tribes’ delegates, representatives or commissions are invited to bring the problems of their regions and discuss these topics at the regional and international summits.

Other attendees will be observers, without a voice or role in the decision-making process at the Indigenous summits, Garcia said, referring to Subcomandante Marcos’ statement.

Rancho el Penasco, near the US and Mexico border, has become a favorite meeting place for the Zapatistas from the south to meet with Indigenous Peoples from northern Mexico and the United States.

Subcomandante Marcos came to Rancho el Penasco in Oct. 2006 to meet with Indigenous Peoples in the north, then returned several times in the spring of 2007. Marcos said he found rest and harmony here at the ranch.

During the planning meeting Aug. 17, Yaqui from Vicam Pueblo offered to help in any way they could to ensure the success of the North American regional summit. O'odham appreciated their efforts.

"I think the most important thing is working together in unity. They talked about respect, which is sometimes only a word," Lt. Gov. Garcia said, emphasizing the respect shown by the Yaqui delegation.

Vicam Pueblo Yaqui said they are eagerly waiting to hear from Indigenous Peoples from throughout the Americas. They said they want input from the world's Indigenous Peoples and hope to hear news that Indigenous delegations will be arriving from throughout the world.

Yaqui extended a warm welcome to the world's Indigenous Peoples to attend the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit/Encuentro de Pueblos Indígenas de América.

Vicam Pueblo Yaqui extended a special invitation to Yaqui in the United States to work together with them a spirit of unity, in the struggle for Indigenous rights.

Garcia said Indigenous are welcome to arrive at Rancho el Penasco on the evening of Oct. 7th for the two-day summit. Camping is available. For those driving, there are motels nearby in Magdalena de Kino, located two miles north of Rancho el Penasco.
After the summit here, there will be a caravan of cars to the international gathering in Vicam Pueblo.

Brenda Norrell
brendanorrell@gmail.com
Contacts:
O'odham Lt. Gov. Jose Garcia
oodhamj@yahoo.com
Coordinator Martin Pina in Sonora, Mexico
mpina@guaymas.uson.mx

Vicam Pueblo, Mexico, contact:

Jahcabay@yahoo.com.mx
More information on summits:
Narco News
http://www.narconews.com/

TEMARIO:
1.- La guerra de conquista capitalista en los pueblos indígenas de América.
2.- La resistencia de los pueblos indígenas de América y la defensa de la madre Tierra, nuestros territorios y nuestras culturas.
3.- Por qué luchamos los pueblos indígenas de América
SEDE:
11,12,13 Y 14 DE OCTUBRE 2007
PUEBLO YAQUI DE VÍCAM, SONORA, MÉXICO

SUBSEDES:
4 Y 5 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Sur-Sureste: VALLES CENTRALES DE OAXACA
Responsable: CONSEJO INDÍGENA POPULAR DE OAXACA “RICARDO FLORES MAGÓN”.

6 Y 7 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Centro y Sudamérica: ATLAPULCO, Territorio ÑAHÑU, Estado de México
Responsable: CONGRESO NACIONAL INDÍGENA en Atlapulco.

6 Y 7 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Centro Pacífico-Centro Atlántico de México: NURIO, Territorio PURÉPECHA, Michoacán, México
Responsable: Purépecha-Ireta, Congreso Nacional Indígena

8 Y 9 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Norte del Continente Americano: Alaska, Canadá, Unión Americana y Norte de México: Rancho “EL PEÑASCO”, MAGDALENA, SONORA, MÉXICO
Responsable: Nación TOHONO O’ODHAM

INFORMES:
Comisión Sexta del EZLN, Correo electrónico: informes@encuentroindigena.org
Guardia Tradicional de la Tribu Yaqui, Vícam, Guaymas, Sonora, México, Tel. (045 ó 001)64 49 98 94 08
Organización de Comunidades Indígenas y Campesinas de Tuxpan, Jalisco: (01 ó 001) 371 41 764 15 comunidad_tuxpan@hotmail.com
Comisión Sexta: Enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx
Radio Bemba: vicam@radiobemba.org

COMISIÓN ORGANIZADORA: Autoridades Tradicionales de Pueblo Vícam, Tribu Yaqui; Congreso Nacional Indígena y Comisión Sexta del EZLN.

(Espanol) Enlace Zapatista

Pre-registration information for the intercontinental summit:
http://enlacezapatista.ezln.org.mx/

Mohawks in Venezuela: Indigenous from Peru need help

MNN. Thursday, August 16, 2007
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/ see "South America"

Brothers, Sisters, Friends and Allies, Your Help is needed;

Peru Earthquake

A large delegation of Indigenous people of Peru , are at the "1st International Congress of the Anti-Imperialist Indigenous Peoples of the Americas" in Venezuela who cannot go home. They can’t get in touch with their families. There are massive black outs, fires and so far over 400 people are dead. It was 7.9 on the Richter scale and the epicenter was in the ocean off Lima . The earth moved in waves into the interior. 90% of the people of Peru are Indigenous of many different nations. Millions of our people are affected. The media has not been able to go in directly to get information and presently rely on third hand information.

The victims are primarily Indigenous people who live around the epicenter. The Ministry of Indigenous Affairs in Venezuela , have provided the Peruvian delegates with cell phones but they still can’t get through because everything is down.

It was the "First International Congress of the Anti-Imperialist Indigenous Peoples of the Americas ". The delegation from the U.S. and Canada are asking everyone for assistance for the indigenous nations of Peru by providing any kind of aid, financial and otherwise. Send it to the Peruvian embassies in your countries and make sure you designate it for the victims.

The American Indian Council, the Mohawk indigenous women, the representative of the Mohawk Nation Office and the representatives of the International Indian Treaty Council who came to Venezuela to attend the congress are still in Caracas and asking for aid to help our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Anything you can do is greatly appreciated.

Embassy of the Republic of Peru in Ottawa, Canada - Embajada del Perú en Ottawa, Canadá.Peru - 130 Albert Street Suite 1901, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1P 5G4 Telephone (613) 238-1777, Fax (613) 232-3062, e-mail: emperuca@magi.com Peru - Consular and Cultural Section - Telephone (613) 233-2721, Fax (613) 232-3062 email: conperu@magmacom.com

Diplomatic representation in the US - chancery: 1700 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20036 telephone : [1] (202) 833-9860 through 9869 FAX: [1] (202) 659-8124 consulate(s) general: Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Paterson (New Jersey), San Francisco, San Juan (Puerto Rico)

Contact your Red Cross for arrangements to give relief for the earthquake victims of Peru.



Kahentinetha Horn, MNN Mohawk Nation News
from Caracas Venezuela


Posted by MNN. August 15, 2007. "Six Nations"


"ONE RULE OF LAW FOR ALL CANADIAN CITIZENS...",

has been the cry of many CANADIANS, however they are referring to the illegal imposition of their 'law' on sovereign nations, us the Six Nations Confederacy. The cry has also included equal treatment and application of the 'law' for Ongwehonweh (the real people) and Canadians.

Well, let's have it.

In CANADA all who are in 'contempt of court' or are 'violating a court order' or 'fail to acknowledge or respect the rule of law' are subject to arrest and detention and will go through the process of criminalization CANADA has laid out.

On April 20, 2006 @ Kanonhstaton (Douglas Creek Estates) CANADA, ONTARIO and the OPP set the standard for executing a 'contempt of court' injunction.

They declared it an acceptable standard of arrest for a 'contempt of court' charge to taser young children, drag women around by the hair, handcuff and assault 70 year old men, pepperspray unarmed women, men and children, beat grandmothers at a ratio of 5 to 1.

They declared it an acceptable standard of arrest to point high calibre weapons at close range at sleeping 10 month old and 2 year old babies and new mothers.

They declared it an acceptable standard of arrest to use snipers carrying all types of heavy artillery to chase down unarmed women and children in the dark.

They declared it legal and an acceptable standard to assault, threaten and terrorize unarmed, sleeping Natives of all ages.

Well, now let's talk about equal treatment under the 'law'.

Who drug Marie Trainer around by the hair for inciting violence on Native women? NOBODY.

Who is being held accountable for all levels of CANADA for not upholding section 35 of their constitution and breaking their own laws? NOBODY.

Who is being held accountable for UPPER CANADA stealing Six Nations' money from the GRAND RIVER NAVIGATION COMPANY to build the LAW SOCIETY OF UPPER CANADA? NOBODY.

One rule of law, yeah right.

The fight against discrimination against Ongwehonweh in the legal system is just beginning.

The very foundation of CANADA'S legal system is based on theft, fraud and deceit.

Theft of our land, theft of our lease money, forged documents, etc.

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE LAW...

ON TUESDAY AUGUST 21, 2007
FROM 10:00AM TO 12:00PM
@ The Law Society of Upper Canada
@ 130 Queen Street West in Toronto

A peaceful gathering to speak about the accepted and legislated discrimination against Natives,
the true history of the Law Society of UPPER CANADA and the CANADIAN "Rule of Law".

We need your support.
skennen, niawen.
(peace, thank you)

Janie Jamieson
Six Nations

O'odham host Zapatistas North American Regional Conference near border in October

Marcos in Rancho el Penasco 2007/Photo Brenda Norrell




Tohono O'odham to host Zapatistas gathering in Rancho el Penasco, south of the Arizona border, Oct. 8 --9, 2007

The North American Regional Conference welcomes all people, with a special welcome to Indigenous Peoples from Alaska, Canada, northern Mexico and the United States

By Brenda Norrell
Narco News

MAGDALENA DE KINO, Sonora, Mexico – Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas will return to the U.S and Mexico border region to host a subsidiary conference prior to the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit in Pueblo Yaqui, to support Indigenous struggles for land and liberty.

The Magdalena gathering in the north, Oct. 8 – 9, will be one of four regional gatherings during the month of October, with three other regional conferences to be held in Oaxaca, Oct. 4 -- 5, Atlapulco, Oct. 6 –7 and Michaocan, Oct. 6 – 7, 2007. Those regional Indigenous gatherings precede the Intercontinental Indigenous Summit in Yaqui Pueblo near Obregon, to be held Oct. 11 -- 14.

O’odham in Mexico Lt. Gov. Jose Garcia welcomed all to the gathering at Rancho el Penasco, the eco-tourism site south of Magdalena, where Marcos and the Zapatistas met with Mexico’s northern Indigenous tribes during 2006 and 2007.

“This is an opportunity for Indigenous everywhere to come together and get to know one another better,” Garcia said, after the EZLN made the official announcement Aug. 15. “People can come together and learn more about the Zapatistas.”

Garcia said while the Zapatista struggle is well known in southern Mexico, tribes in the northern part of Mexico still want to learn more.

“The Zapatistas in the south are facing the same struggle as we are in the north, the same struggle that Indigenous are facing everywhere.’

Garcia encouraged those attending to bring camping gear and food. There is water on site.

During earlier meetings with the Indigenous in the north, Zapatistas established a fishing camp to protect the fishing rights of the Cucapa (Cocopah) in Baja and supported struggles of the Seri, Mayo, Yaqui, and Kickapoo. Tohono O’odham asked Zapatistas for their support in opposing a hazardous waste dump at the ceremonial area of Quitovac, Sonora, and with border rights of passage as the militarization of the border increases.

ENCUENTRO DE PUEBLOS INDÍGENAS DE AMERICA TEMARIO:
1.- La guerra de conquista capitalista en los pueblos indígenas de América.
2.- La resistencia de los pueblos indígenas de América y la defensa de la madre Tierra, nuestros territorios y nuestras culturas.
3.- Por qué luchamos los pueblos indígenas de América
SEDE:
11,12,13 Y 14 DE OCTUBRE 2007
PUEBLO YAQUI DE VÍCAM, SONORA, MÉXICO
SUBSEDES:
4 Y 5 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Sur-Sureste: VALLES CENTRALES DE OAXACA
Responsable: CONSEJO INDÍGENA POPULAR DE OAXACA “RICARDO FLORES MAGÓN”.
6 Y 7 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Centro y Sudamérica: ATLAPULCO, Territorio ÑAHÑU, Estado de México
Responsable: CONGRESO NACIONAL INDÍGENA en Atlapulco.
6 Y 7 DE OCTUBRE 2007
Región Centro Pacífico-Centro Atlántico de México: NURIO, Territorio PURÉPECHA, Michoacán, México
Responsable: Purépecha-Ireta, Congreso Nacional Indígena
8 Y 9 DE OCTUBRE 2007:
Región Norte del Continente Americano: Alaska, Canadá, Unión Americana y Norte de México: Rancho “EL PEÑASCO”, MAGDALENA, SONORA, MÉXICO
Responsable: Nación TOHONO O’ODHAM
Informes:
COMISION SEXTA DEL EZLN, encuentroindigena.org. Correo electrónico: informes@encuentroindigena.org
Guardia Tradicional de la Tribu Yaqui, Vícam, Guaymas, Sonora, México, Tel. (045 ó 001)64 49 98 94 08
Organización de Comunidades Indígenas y Campesinas de Tuxpan, Jalisco: (01 ó 001) 371 41 764 15 comunidad_tuxpan@hotmail.com

Photo 2: Zapatistas at Rancho el Penasco, Sonora, in 2007. Photo Brenda Norrell

ACLU: Abu-Ghraib was torture, new documents

ACLU: Abu-Ghraib abuse was torture

New documents identitfy role of Major General Barbara Fast in those tortures. Two priests in Arizona attempted to deliver a letter to Fast in opposition to torture in 2006 and were arrested. Jesuit Steve Kelly and Franciscan Louie Vitale, in federal court Monday, were arrested as they knelt in prayer outside of Fort Huachuca in Arizona and are now facing prison.

ACLU Obtains New Details of Possible "Cover-Up" of Iraqi Prisoner Abuse (8/15/2007)

Senior Defense Department Officials Failed to Act on Reports of Abuse, Documents Suggest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: media@aclu.org

NEW YORK - Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union provide new evidence of a possible “cover-up” of Iraqi prisoner abuse by U.S. forces in 2003, and suggest that senior military officials failed to act promptly upon receiving reports of the abuse. The documents, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, also reveal that an Army investigator found that the conditions of prisoners held in isolation at Abu Ghraib qualified as torture.

“These documents make clear that prisoners were abused in U.S. custody not only at Abu Ghraib, but also in other locations in Iraq,” said Amrit Singh, an attorney with the ACLU. “Rather than putting a stop to these abuses, senior officials appear to have turned a blind eye to them.”

The documents detail Army Office of Inspector General investigations of alleged improprieties by Major General Barbara Fast, Major General Walter Wojdakowski and Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez. These investigations were initiated by the Department of Defense, after the 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal, and absolved all three officers of blame.

The inquiry into Major General Barbara Fast, the top intelligence officer attached to U.S. command in Iraq at the time the Abu Ghraib abuses occurred, provides new details of her role in responding to reports of prisoner abuse in the vicinity of the Baghdad International Airport in the summer of 2003. The outcome of the investigation illustrates the Defense Department’s refusal to hold her, or any other senior military officials, responsible for failing to put a stop to the known abuses, said the ACLU.
The inquiry into Fast also includes the testimony of a colonel who compiled a report in November 2003 that documented potential abuse of Iraqi detainees by a joint Special Operations and CIA unit looking for weapons of mass destruction. Although the colonel’s name was blacked out throughout the records, the ACLU believes this testimony is from retired Colonel Stuart Herrington.
The colonel maintains that someone called him in late November with details of prisoner abuse that occurred in June or July of 2003 in the vicinity of Baghdad International Airport. The colonel’s source had previously complained about the abuse to Major General Dayton, Commander of the Iraq Survey Group in charge of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction. The source had also reported the abuse to the Defense Intelligence Agency Chain of Command in Clarendon.
The colonel says that he met with Fast in late 2003 to brief her on his investigation and that he gave her a copy of his report. Subsequently, the Judge Advocate General’s office attached to U.S. Command in Iraq informed the colonel that it had found “no evidence to support the allegations that detainees were mistreated.” The colonel dismissed this conclusion as a “cover-up” and expressed “blunt dismay.” He could not fathom how his own report could be taken so lightly given that he had provided names of the witnesses and “already had two people who admitted it.”
The colonel testifies, moreover, that it was not until after the abuses of Abu Ghraib were made public, almost six months after he gave Fast the report, that she acknowledged finding his report in her e-mail account for the first time. Fast told him that she had not recognized his name and that she came across the e-mail while she was refreshing her memory on Abu Ghraib. The colonel testifies that he internally questioned the veracity of Fast’s claim of not having seen the report and whether “in light of the Abu Ghraib thing is this something here that’s convenient and comfortable?” However, based on his personal evaluation of her character, he decided that Fast must be telling the truth.
The Army Inspector General report clears Fast of all allegations of misconduct and concludes that Fast took prompt action to alert the proper authorities once she was informed of the alleged abuse.
Additional documents made public today by the ACLU reveal that Major General George Fay found that the conditions under which Abu Ghraib prisoners were isolated went far beyond the limits of abuse and were, in fact, torturous. Fay is quoted in the investigation as saying, “But what was actually being done at Abu Ghraib was they were placing people in their cells naked and they were - those cells they were placing them in, in many instances were unlit. No light whatsoever. And they were like a refrigerator in the wintertime and an oven in the summertime because they had no outside form of ventilation. And you actually had to go outside the building to get to this place they called the ‘hole,’ and were literally placing people into it. So, what they thought was just isolation was actually abuse because it’s - actually in some instances, it was torturous. Because they were putting a naked person into an oven or a naked person into a refrigerator. That qualifies in my opinion as torture. Not just abuse.”
Fay also says that a memo from then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld authorizing removal of clothing created a “mindset” in which that kind of humiliation was considered an “acceptable technique.” He notes that even though Rumsfeld later rescinded the memo, not everyone received notice that the interrogation of naked prisoners was no longer permissible.
In addition to the documents made public today, the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has resulted in the release of thousands of pages of government documents detailing the torture and abuse of detainees. The ACLU has created a search engine for the public to access the documents at www­.aclu.org/torturefoia/search/search.html
The ACLU brought the FOIA lawsuit in October 2003 with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case.
In addition to Singh, attorneys in the FOIA case are Lawrence Lustberg and Melanca Clark of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, P.C.; Jameel Jaffer and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
The documents released today are available online at: www­.aclu.org/safefree/torture/31303res20070815.html.

U.S. approves spy satellites for border

The U.S. moves one step closer to being a large concentration camp

The Wall Street Journal reports the U.S. has approved the use of spy satellites to spy on people at the border. Then local law enforcement is going to use it everywhere in the U.S.:
"Access to the satellite surveillance will be controlled by a new Homeland Security branch -- the National Applications Office -- which will be up and running in October.
"In recent years, some military experts have questioned whether domestic use of such satellites would violate the Posse Comitatus Act. The act bars the military from engaging in law-enforcement activity inside the U.S., and the satellites were predominantly built for and owned by the Defense Department." http://http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118714764716998275.html?mod=googlenews_wsj/

Lakota woman receives Nuclear Free award 2007

From the Nuclear-Free Future Award, a project of the Foundation for the Coming Generations, Munich, Germany
Email: info@nuclear-free.com
Tel.: +49 89 28 65 97 14


CHARMAINE WHITE FACE TO RECEIVE NUCLEAR-FREE FUTURE RESISTANCE AWARD


MUNICH -- The Nuclear-Free Future Awards honors individuals, organizations and communities for their outstanding commitment towards creating a world freed from the threat of nuclear weapons and atomic energy. This year, the Award jury members – who include Johan Galtung (Norway), Val Kilmer (New Mexico), Chris Peters (California), Kirkpatrick Sale (Massachusetts), Galsan Tschinag (Ulan Bator), and Christine von Weizsäcker (Germany) – have selected Charmaine White Face to receive, endowed with a money purse of $10,000, the Nuclear-Free Future Award in the category of Resistance.

Educated as a biologist, Charmaine White Face is the moving spirit behind the Defenders of the Black Hills, an organization that monitors abandoned uranium mines on sacred Lakota Lands and seeks the remediation of hazardous waste ponds that contaminate the region with high levels of radium 226, arsenic, lead and iron. A central part of Ms White Face’s message is that not just the Lakota, but all of us are threatened: aquifers cover massive areas of the continent, rivers empty into one another, radioactive dust is carried by the wind, and toxic poisons in the soil nourish grass and feed crops that eventually work their way into the mainstream food chain.

Hosted by the Salzburg, Austria, state government, the 10th annual Awards ceremony will take place in the storied Salzburg Residenz on 18 October 2007. Based in Munich, the Nuclear-Free Future Award is a project of the Franz Moll Foundation for the Coming Generations. For more information, please visit www.nuclear-free.com

Unified force to expose and halt U.S. torture

Government hysteria and fairy dancing, the United States' scary court arguments

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

TUCSON -- To hear military prosecutor Capt. Evan Seamone tell it, the Fort Huachuca Army Intelligence Training Center is much like a Bible School Class for eight-year-olds.

Capt. Seamone, with an inordinate amount of squeaky cleanness, told the U.S. District court that the Army interrogation trainers at Fort Huachuca abide by every aspect of international law and the Geneva Conventions.

U.S. interrogators would, never, never, engage in sexual assaults, forcing detainees to remain naked for long periods of time and would never use dogs to terrorize inmates, he said.

But, they did.

It was Monday, August 13, and the preliminary motions of the trespass case against two priests, Franciscan Louie Vitale and Jesuit Steve Kelly, were being heard.

In response, defense attorney Bill Quigley quickly listed the U.S. interrogators abuse in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. There were lap dances by female interrogators who smeared what appeared to be menstrual blood on the face of the Muslim detainee. There were extremes of heat and cold and sleep deprivation.

U.S. interrogators squatted on the Koran.

Detainees heads were duck-taped. There was rape, sodomy and sexual assault. Hoods were placed on their head and electric wires ran from their bodies, including their penises, to simulate torture. They were forced to masturbate and were filmed doing it. They were strip searched in front of female interrogators. Detainees were placed on leashes and forced to perform dog tricks. They were piled on top of one another naked.

Female interrogators fondled the genitals of male detainees.

Those were the lucky ones. Others were beaten and an unknown number, at least six, died during those tortures by U.S. military personnel.

Among those carrying out these abuses was the 800th Military Police Brigade. They punched and slapped inmates, forced them to remain naked for long periods of time, simulated torture with wires and placed dog chains around inmates' necks. Inmates were short-shackled to the floor.

As Quigley spoke, he delivered to the court, report after report, from the U.S. Army, Navy, FBI and Red Cross, detailing the torture. There were hundreds of cases of torture and few U.S. interrogators were ever prosecuted.

Why were there no whistleblowers, Quigley asked. If this is military intelligence, didn't they know what was going on?

Quigley then explained Project X. Between 1966 and 1991, torture manuals were produced at Fort Huachuca. Those torture manuals were used by the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., to train Latin military and leaders. The manuals became public in 1996. Those torture manuals resulted in mass tortures, murders, rapes and disappearances in Central and South America. An unknown number of Indigenous Peoples were tortured and murdered.

In the current court case in federal court in Tucson, Priests Vitale and Kelly are facing 10 months in prison, charged with federal trespass and the Arizona state charge of failing to yield to an officer at Fort Huachuca.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Magistrate Hector Estrada spent a great deal of time scolding the priests. Apparently, Judge Estrada didn't like the fact that the priests have been going to prison in their efforts to oppose war and the nuclear industry.

However, Capt. Seamone's arguments were very revealing about what goes on at Fort Huachuca. If the judge agrees, there will be more of this when the trial gets underway.

"No actual detainees are actually used," Capt. Seamone explained of the training of interrogators at Fort Huachuca. "Of course, this is role playing."

Besides, he described Fort Huachuca as "very picturesque."

On top of all that, Capt. Seamone just couldn't understand what the priests definition of torture was. To hear him tell it, Fort Huachuca, near Sierra Vista in southern Arizona, is no more than a sweet walk in the park.

Besides, he said, whatever occurred before new military regulations regarding torture were put in place in 2005 "are irrelevant."

Capt. Seamone added that whatever is going on in another country, or "what the CIA may be doing," doesn't address what is going on at Fort Huachuca.

The government's delivery was as rigid as a Ku Klux Klan mantra.

Meanwhile, there was a row of military commanders and police seated in the audience in court, prepared as witnesses for the government. They all sat extremely upright during the prosecutor's delivery, but their shoulders began to sag as Quigley described the sexual and physical assaults on prisoners.

No, they don't torture inmates at Fort Huachuca, they do it at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan, Quigley told the court. Further, Quigley asked if Fort Huachuca has addressed the torture. Quigley said it is believed that U.S. torture continues.

After listening to the preliminary arguments, one can only wonder why a federal court would even proceed with this case: Two priests kneeling in prayer outside a guard station. They weren't even inside the gates of Fort Huachuca. With a backlog of federal cases, why chose this one to proceed to trial?

Quigley explained that the priests had not even reached the guard station when they were arrested outside.

If they had been pizza delivery men, they would have been allowed in. "They could have driven farther in a car," Quigley told the court.

Capt. Seamone wanted these two priests to sound pretty scary. Capt. Seamone used the "A" word: "Anthrax" in court. No kidding. He said Army personnel had to take a great deal of precaution when they saw two Catholic priests approaching with a letter. He said this was because Anthrax was sent earlier to post office employees and Congressmen.

Whoa, now there's a stretch. At this point, I scribble in my notebook: "Fairy dancing." The government's mangling of truth with deception had created a sort of fairlyland.

What the priests really planned to do was to deliver a letter to Major Gen. Barbara Fast, then at Fort Huachuca. Major Gen. Fast was the commanding intelligence officer in Iraq at the time of the most grotesque tortures of detainees and went unpunished for her involvement.

While chastising the priests, the judge said that Martin Luther King, Jr., always obtained formal permits before he marched in protest. Members in the audience, apparently older than the judge, groaned at the misinformation.

The motions to the court were taken under advisement.

PHOTOS OF U.S. TORTURE AT Abu Ghraib in Iraq:
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=Abu+Ghraib

PHOTO at top: Buddhist monk Arjahn Sarayut Arnanta catches up with Fr. Louie Vitale as Vitale enters U.S. District Court in Tucson Monday. Vitale, with a tiny pink rose between his lips, and Jesuit priest Steve Kelly were arrested as they knelt in prayer outside the gates of Fort Huachuca in 2006. The priests now want to expose to the world the role of Fort Huachuca's Army Intelligence Training Center in torture by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Afghanistan. Arnanta said he had planned to spend the day searching for the dying along the U.S./Mexico border, but chose instead to spend the day supporting the priests' effort to expose torture. Photo Brenda Norrell


Read more: "Priests expose secret cycle of U.S. torture"
Counterpunch
by Brenda Norrell
http://www.counterpunch.org/

US Army torture manuals: (copy and past link if not functioning)
http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/manuals.htm

"Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our
children." Sitting Bull

Mohawk rail protest Montreal Tuesday, Aug. 14

Posted by Mohawk Nation News

At the August 12, 2007 People's Global Action (PGA) Consulta to plan actions against the upcoming meeting of Bush/Harper/Calderon and the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the following resolution was passed unanimously:

"We call for the immediate release of Mohawk political prisoner Shawn Brant, without condition; we also re-iterate our support for the self-determination and sovereignty of the Mohawks of Tyendinaga."

Tangibly, in Montreal , a picket will be held against CN RAIL this Tuesday, August 14 at NOON, at the Central Train Station (more details below). The picket will be denounce CN's racist lawsuits against Mohawk protesters, including Shawn Brant. We will publicly stand for Shawn Brant's immediate release from prison.

http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2007/08/august-14-picket-and-demo-against-cn.html
---

-- Support indigenous struggles for sovereignty, dignity and self-determination on Turtle Island ...

-- Oppose CN Rail's racism and colonialism ...

-- Protest Bush, Harper, Calderon and the "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP)

::::::::::::::::::::
TUESDAY, AUGUST 14th, NOON
Picket and Demonstration
Montreal Central Train Station
metro Bonaventure
(enter via the metro,
or via the street at 895 de la Gauchetière West,
between University and Mansfield)
::::::::::::::::::::

** Meet at the large departures/arrivals sign in the main lobby of the train station. Bring your banners, placards, flags and other symbols of dissent. **

-- We demand that CN Rail drop their racist lawsuits against Mohawk activists at Tyendinaga;
-- We stand in support and solidarity with indigenous struggles for sovereignty and self-determination all over Turtle Island;
-- We denounce CN Rail's role in the corporate North American
Competitiveness Council and the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP).

"When justice fails, block the rails!"

CN Rail is a multi-billion dollar company, headquartered in Montreal , whose tracks and installations occupy native lands from ocean-to-ocean.

CN Rail is currently pursuing multi-million dollar lawsuits against Mohawk activists from the community of Tyendinaga who are actively involved in the defense of their land.

The Mohawks of Tyendinaga are demanding the return of the Culberston Tract, which was stolen from them in 1832. Recently a portion of the land was reclaimed, with the Tyendinaga community demanding that the Ontario government revoke the license legitimizing a private quarry operation that is literally removing land from the Culberston Tract. For more info, consult: http://ocap.ca/firstnations/tyendinaga/culbertson

CN is threatening more lawsuits against other indigenous communities and activists who block CN rail lines.

CN Rail and their executives are targeting indigenous community organizers who have effectively brought the issue of native sovereignty to the forefront. In the context of unsettled land claims, and the fact that their tracks sit on appropriated native territory, CN Rail's actions are colonial and racist.

While CN uses the courts to attack native activists, their CEO -- E. Hunter Harrison – is a member of the North American Competitiveness Council, a key promoter of the recently formed "Security and Prosperity Partnership" (SPP) between Canada, the United States and Mexico. The SPP continues the imposition of the neo-liberal North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), combined with paranoid "Homeland Security" policies.

The SPP is an attack on all working and oppressed peoples, especially the indigenous peoples of " North America ". The SPP leaders – George Bush, Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon -- will be meeting later this summer, from August 20-21, in Montebello , Quebec (just 90 minutes from Montreal ).

Join us on August 14 in Montreal, as we build towards the protests against Bush, Harper and Calderon in Montebello on August 20 (info: www.psp-spp.com )

Organized and endorsed by: Block the Empire-Montreal (BLEM), Liberterre, No One Is Illegal-Montreal, La Rue Brique, Solidarity Across Borders, Tadamon! Montreal, La Pointe Libertaire and others (to add your group endorsement, please contact noii-montreal@resist.ca)

-> Text of the flyer passed out at the picket against CN on July 1,
2007 in Montreal:
http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2007/07/flyer-text-why-we-are-protesting.html

-> "About the SPP" Background: http://www.psp-spp.com/?q=en/aboutthespp

INFO: 514-848-7583, noii-montreal@resist.ca

::::::::::
::::::::::

Le 12 août dernier, lors de la Consulta du réseau de l'Action mondiale des peuples (AMP) en vue de planifier les actions contre le Sommet de Bush, Harper, Calderon et du Partenariat pour la sécurité et laprospérité (PSP), nous avons adopté à l'unanimité la résolution suivante :

«Nous exigeons la libération immédiate et inconditionelle du prisonnier politique Mohawk Shawn Brant; en ce sens, nous voulons également réitérer notre soutien à l'autodétermination et aux luttes pour la souveraineté des Mohawks de Tyendinaga.»

À Montréal, une ligne de piquetage contre la compagnie CN sera organisée, et aura lieu ce mardi le 14 août à MIDI, à la Gare centrale (plus de détails ci-dessous). Cette action dénoncera les poursuites racistes du CN à l'endroit des militants Mohawks, dont Shawn Brant. Nous appuyons publiquement la libération immédiate de Shawn Brant.
---

http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2007/08/14-aot-manifestation-contre-cn-et-le.html

-- Appuyez les luttes autochtones pour la souveraineté, la dignité et l'autodétermination sur l'Île de la Tortue

-- Dénoncez l'attitude raciste et colonialiste du CN

-- Manifestons contre Bush, Harper, Calderon et le « Partenariat pour la sécurité et la prospérité (PSP) »

::::::::::::::::::::
Le MARDI 14 août, midi
Manifestation
Gare centrale de Montréal
Métro Bonaventure
(Entrez par le métro, ou par l'entrée du 895 de la Gauchetière ouest, entre les rues University et Mansfield)
::::::::::::::::::::

** Point de rendez-vous à l'enseigne Départs/Arrivées, dans le hall principal de la gare. Apportez vos bannières, pancartes, drapeaux et autres symboles de protestation. **

-- Nous demandons que le CN abandonne ses poursuites en justice contre les militants Mohawks de Tyendinaga;
-- Nous sommes en solidarité et appuyons sans condition les luttes des peuples autochtones pour leur souveraineté et leur autodétermination, partout sur l'Île de la Tortue;
-- Nous dénonçons le rôle du CN dans le Conseil nord-américain pour la prospérité et le Partenariat nord-américain pour la sécurité et la prospérité.

« Quand le CN attaque, on bloque la track! »


Le CN est une société privée multi milliardaire, dont le siège social se trouve à Montréal et dont les rails et installations occupent illégitimement les territoires des autochtones, d'un océan à l'autre.

Le CN poursuit actuellement en justice (pour plusieurs millions de dollars) plusieurs activistes Mohawks de la communauté Tyendinaga ( Ontario ) qui sont activement impliqués dans la défense de leur territoire. Les Mohawks de Tyendinaga revendiquent le territoire de Culberson Tract, qui leur a été volé en 1832. Récemment, une partie des terres a été reprise et la communauté de Tyendinaga exige que le gouvernement ontarien révoque le permis légitimant l'exploitation d'une carrière privée qui enlève, littéralement, la terre du Culberson Tract. Pour plus de renseignements, visitez : http://ocap.ca/firstnations/tyendinaga/culbertson

Le CN menace d'engager d'autres poursuites contre des communautés et militant-e-s autochtones qui choisissent de bloquer les chemins de fer.

Le CN et ses cadres ciblent les organisateurs communautaires autochtones qui ont remis à l'ordre du jour l'enjeu des revendications territoriales non résolues et la souveraineté des peuples autochtones. Dans le contexte des revendications territoriales non résolues, et considérant que leurs chemins de fer se trouvent sur des territoires arrachés aux peuples autochtones, les actions en justice du CN sont profondément racistes et colonialistes.

Alors que le CN utilise le système de justice pour attaquer les activistes autochtones, le PDG de la compagnie, E. Hunter Harrison, est membre du Conseil nord-américain de la compétitivité, un acteur clé du nouvellement formé Partenariat nord-américain pour la sécurité et la prospérité (PSP), entre le Canada, les Etats-Unis et le Mexique. Le PSP poursuit le programme néolibéral imposé par l'Accord de libre échange nord américain (ALENA), mais y rajoute des politiques de « sécurité nationale ».

Le PSP est une attaque portée contre les travailleurs et les travailleuses et toutes les classes opprimées de l'Amérique du Nord. Les leaders du PSP – George Bush, Stephen Harper et Felipe Calderón – se rencontreront cet été, les 20 et 21 août prochain, au Château Montebello (Outaouais, Qc.), à 90 minutes de Montréal.

Joignez-vous à nous le 14 août à Montréal, alors que nous poursuivons nos actions contre Bush, Harper, Calderon et le PSP à Montebello, le 20 août prochain (info: www.psp-spp.com )

Cette action est organisée et endossée par : Bloquez l'Empire! –
Montréal (BLEM), Solidarité sans frontières, Liberterre, Personne n'est illégal-Montréal, Tadamon! Montréal, La Pointe Libertaire, La Rue Brique, et autres (pour associer le nom de votre groupe à la liste des endossements, veuillez écrire à noii-montreal@resist.ca )

-> Texte du tract distribué à la manifestation du 1er juillet à Montréal :
http://nooneisillegal-montreal.blogspot.com/2007/07/texte-du-tracte-pourquoi-nous.html

-> À propos du PSP: un autre point de vue: http://www.psp-spp.com/?q=fr/node/35

INFO: 514-848-7583, noii-montreal@resist.ca



Posted by MNN Mohawk Nation News

See: “NWO/Corporations”

http://www.mohawknationnews.com/news/news4.php?en=en&layout=mnn&category=48&srcurl=%2Fnews%2Fnews3.php%3Flang%3Den%26layout%3Dmnn%26sortorder%3D0

Priests expose secret cycle of U.S. torture

Protest U.S. torture this morning, Mon., Aug. 13, U.S. District Court, on corner of Granada and Congress in Tucson


Priests expose secret cycle of U.S. torture

Priests are prepared to go to prison to expose U.S. military intelligence behind the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

TUCSON – Two Roman Catholic priests, Jesuit Fr. Steve Kelly and Franciscan Fr. Louis Vitale, are exposing the secret cycle of U.S. torture, beginning with Fort Huachuca, a military intelligence operation in southern Arizona with a sordid history.

With pretrial motions beginning this morning, Aug. 13, they are prepared to go to prison in order to speak out against torture carried out by U.S. military.

With the two priests hoping for a jury trial, Fr. Kelly said they want to expose the human rights violations on a broad scale, citing international law and United Nations agreements. Fr. Kelly admits the U.S. courtroom can be a “very, very dangerous place.” Still, he adds, “The more they prosecute us; it makes for a more high profile case.”

“We would like to put torture on trial,” Fr. Kelly. “It is important for us to speak up.”

The tortures in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo – people hooded with electrical wires running from them – reveal the same torture techniques that were used in Central America. The United States actually published torture manuals to train Latin military, resulting in the rape, mutilation, disappearance and murder of masses of Indigenous Peoples in Central America in the 1980s.

Those torture manuals were produced in Fort Huachuca and used in training by the School of Americas in Fort Benning, Ga., in the 1980s. More recently, soldiers trained at the Fort Huachuca U.S. Army Intelligence Training Center, have gone on to torture at Abu-Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Fr. Kelly and Fr. Vitale were arrested as they knelt in prayer outside the gates of Fort Huachuca when they sought entry to speak with enlisted personnel on Nov. 19, 2006. They were delivering a letter denouncing torture and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, destined for Major Gen. Barbara Fast, commander at the post at the time. Major Gen. Fast was a key figure in the torture scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

After the priests were halted outside the gates and knelt in prayer, they were charged with federal trespass and the Arizona state charge of failure to comply with a police officer. They each face 10 months in prison.

Both priests spoke Sunday night, Aug. 12, at Southside Church, the building that served as the passageway and root of the Sanctuary Movement, were more than 10,000 Indigenous Peoples passed through in the 1980s and early 1990s, finding sanctuary and refuge from torture in Central America. At this site in the barrio of the now-famous Underground Railroad, the details of the United States’ torture were exposed.

Bill Quigley, attorney for Fr. Vitale and Fr. Kelly, spoke on torture. Quigley, professor of law at Loyola University in New Orleans, said these acts of torture do not just leave the detained person dehumanized, but shatter the lives of their families. Further, the torturers themselves become the victims of torture. Often, the torturers are young soldiers, fearful of not following orders.

Forty-four detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan have died in U.S. captivity that were hooded, strangled, gagged or beaten with blunt objects, he said.

Quigley described the tortures, which George Bush no longer considers torture.

One detainee from Saudi Arabia was tied with a leash, forced to wear a bra and strip-searched in front of women. He was forced to urinate in his clothing.

In Abu Ghraib, one detainee was forced to strip in front of females and commit a sexual act, which was recorded on film with the threat of showing his family. In another case, a detainee was chained to the prison floor, while a female performed a strip tease and spread what appeared to be menstrual blood on his face.

Quigley asked, “If the Iraqis did that to our soldiers, what would we do?”

Quigley said this brutality and sadism were often carried out by U.S. military police and military intelligence, sometimes by the National Guard.

There is now a prevalence of torture. There are 330 documented cases of U.S. military and civilians abused or killed detainees. Those cases involved 600 U.S. personnel and 460 inmates.

“There is a code of silence,” Quigley said. One method of ensuring the code of silence is to force others present to participate in the torture.

Fr. Vitale recalled the torture of Sister Dianna Ortiz by security forces in Guatemala in 1989. Ortiz described how the guard put cigarettes out on her body, including her breasts, and made her dance naked with him.

Fr. Vitale said, “But because he didn’t penetrate her, according to George Bush, it wasn’t torture.”

Fr. Vitale said there has already been one cause for celebration since arrests. Commander Major Gen. General Barbara Fast is no longer at Fort Huachuca. Major Gen. Fast was the highest raking intelligence officer tied to the torture at Abu Ghraib and yet she has never been punished. Two soldiers with ties to Fort Huachuca are among 28 implicated in the 2002 beating deaths of two prisoners in Afghanistan.

“We were successful. She is gone.”

Fr. Vitale said at Fort Huachuca, Fast and others taught how to break people down. Describing the inhumane acts of the torturers, he said, “It is about humiliation.”

As Fr. Vitale and Fr. Kelly spoke on Sunday night, it was clear, that truth has a way of seeping out. The news of a vigil taking place outside of Guantanamo filters past the impenetrable walls to the detainees in the prison of horror. With the passage of time, the details of what really goes on behind the walls of Fort Huachuca is revealed by former soldiers. Regardless of the consequences, some military personnel speak out and expose the tortures in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

According to one former solider at Fort Huachuca, “The whole world sees us as not very moral people.”

Fr. Kelly, dedicated in the struggle against nuclear weapons, described walking in protest of torture to Guantanamo prison in Cuba. He said that earlier, “George Bush said, ‘We’ve got nothing to hide, anyone is welcome to be here.’”

Therefore, on December 10, 2005, Fr. Kelly and about 25 others held a vigil outside the prison, hoping this news would filter in to the detainees. He knew this was possible, since he had been a prisoner himself, for attempting to literally beat a nuclear weapon into a plowshare. While in prison, the news of vigils and protests had filtered through to the imprisoned.

Now anti-torture proteters and prisoners of conscience in Tucson are organizing a November 18-19 torture teach-in and action, there is hope here that the protests against Fort Huachuca will grow as large as the protests against the School of the Americas. In the beginning, there were only about 20 protesters and now there are about 22,000 at Fort Benning during last year’s November protest.

In this room in Southside Church, there are many women and men with gray hair who have served six months in jail for stepping across the line at the School of the Americas in conscientious protest.

While Americans are complacent in their self-glory, the truth is, the rest of the world now views America as a country without morals, without adherence to international laws banning torture. Torture has become the United States' stain, a fall from grace in the eyes of the world.


The shockwaves from the case are already present. According to one soldier at Fort Huachuca, the tortureontrial.org website can no longer be accessed from the base.

During the evening, the Hopi Foundation Center for the Prevention and Resolution of Violence in Tucson offered a presentation of poetry from its Owl and Panther Program, which provides young victims of torture with the opportunity to express themselves through poetry.

Youth Vicki Hernandez read, “You can’t just torture a little bit.”

“Torture in any form is a crime against humanity.”

Pressing for the Military Commissions Act to be revoked, torture-free activists here pointed out that the MCA allows detainees to be subjected to stress positions, temperature extremes, sleep deprivation and possibly waterboarding. Further, it authorizes the use of evidence obtained through “coercion,” another word for torture, in U.S. military tribunals to secure convictions.

The MCA allows the President to detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge by designating them as “enemy combatants” or “unlawful enemy combatants.”

Further, legal U.S. residents and foreign citizens living in their own countries are subject to summary arrest and indefinite detention, with no hope of appeal.

It also authorizes retroactive immunity for U.S. military and intelligence officers for abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and secret CIA facilities.

In the MCA, the definitions of rape and sexual assault are diluted as compared to the standards of international law.

The MCA ignores the fact that rape and sexual assault can be perpetrated not just through force, but through any type of situation, that negates consent on the part of the victim. Further, MCA uses an older and more narrow definition of sexual assault by requiring “sexual contact” between the perpetrator and the victim.

This narrower definition of sexual assault would exclude acts such as forced nakedness, forced sexual entertainment, or practices witnessed at Abu Ghraib such as piling naked prisoners on top of one another or forcing prisoners to strip and wear female underwear on their heads.

The MCA provides legal justification for intelligence abuses that are un-American and which have led to a severe decline in the reputation of the United States among the community of nations.

Photo: Attorney Bill Quigley speaks at Southside Church as Fr. Louie Vitale and Fr. Steve Kelly listen. Youth speaks from Hopi Foundation Prevention and Resolution of Violence. Photos Brenda Norrell

Indigenous Alliance opposes militarization of border

Indigenous Peoples Day in Tucson
By Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras

TUCSON -- On Thursday, August 9, 2007 the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras (Indigenous Alliance Without Borders) convened a press conference and public forum to commemorate International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, commemorated annually since 1994, in recognition of the first United Nations working group on indigenous issues in Geneva, 1982.

Militarization of the southern border and how immigration and Homeland Security policies impact indigenous border communities, and further jeopardize the unity of indigenous communities with ties across the border, were major topics of discussion


Yaqui ceremonial leaders Julian Hernandez and Jose Matus, Yaqui director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders, addressed how such policies affect their community’s ability to maintain their traditions and ceremonies.

This was followed by a general discussion on how such policies violate the human rights of indigenous peoples on traditional indigenous lands, and calls for united action in protecting indigenous self-determination and the rights of the indigenous peoples whose lives and dignity are endangered in crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Shannon Rivers, Akimel O’odham from Gila River, pledged such action in joining with the public to address such issues through tribal councils.

Kat Rodriquez, Co-Chair of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, a partner in the Southwest Network’s “Border Campaign for Global Justice” also invited participants to join the Southwest Network in an upcoming Border Peoples Conference in response to a Border Governor’s Conference to be held in Puerto Peñasco, Sonora September 27-29.

Indigenous Day speakers included Michelle Cook, Dine’, Youth Representative for the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras and University of Arizona Native Scholar; Shannon Rivers, Akimel O’odham indigenous community activist; Julian Hernandez, Yaqui ceremonial leader in Barrio Libre community of South Tucson; Kat Rodriguez, Co-Chair of the Southwest for Environmental and Economic Justice; Tupac Enrique Acosta, Director of Tonatierra in Phoenix; and Jose Matus, Yaqui ceremonial leader and Director of Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras.

The event brought together local indigenous community leaders and social activists, non-indigenous activists and concerned members of the public to consider current obstacles to indigenous border justice, environmental protection of our southern indigenous borderlands, and the economic, social, and cultural survival of indigenous peoples both locally and around the world.

The event also brought attention to the history of indigenous peoples in gaining recognition of their issues in the United Nations. Participants noted that while the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) has served and continues to serve as an important tool for indigenous peoples in voicing their issues, the Forum alone will not provide solutions to the obstacles that indigenous peoples now face.

As Michelle Cook, recent representative of the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras at the UNPFII in May, stated, “I learned that although the United Nations is an important tool for the world’s indigenous people, it will neither bring justice nor true freedom by itself. True freedom will come from the people.”

The upcoming decision on the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was also addressed at the event. A vital instrument for protecting the rights of indigenous peoples internationally, the Declaration was adopted by the Human Rights Council in 2006.

However, consideration and action on the Declaration by the UN General Assembly was deferred due to concerns by African states. In concluding the panel, the Declaration was read by Tupac Enrique Acosta of Tonatierra. Acosta stated that just as the importance of indigenous peoples’ issues did not begin with the U.N. General Assembly’s declaration of an International Day of the World’s Indigenous “People,” the adoption or non-adoption of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the General Assembly will not change the fact that the rights stated within this Declaration are and will continue to be the “inherent” rights of indigenous peoples everywhere.

Photos by Brenda Norrell/Indigenous Alliance panel: Michelle Cook, Shannon Rivers, Julian Hernandez, Kat Rodriquez, Tupac Enrique Acosta; Photo 2: Jose Matus addresses group; Photo 3: Kat Rodriquez

Please contact the Alianza at alianza@indigenasinfronteras.org if you are interested in joining in action for indigenous rights at the Border Peoples Conference in Puerto Peñasco (Rocky Point) which is less than two hours south of the border at Lukeville, Arizona, on the coast.

Mayans dead, in prison 'cage' on Tohono O'odham land

Mayan had grim task of finding bodies

Guatemalan women found dead and Mayans in the prison 'cage' on Tohono O'odham tribal land

By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

TUCSON -- Speaking on the International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Sebastian Quinac, Cakchiquel Mayan from Guatemala, described the painful effort of searching for dead Guatemalan women on Tohono O'odham tribal land, and then seeing Mayans imprisoned in a "cage" on tribal land.

Quinac said he was asked by the Guatemalan government to search for the bodies of two Mayan women who recently died on Tohono O’odham tribal land near the border.

Quinac searched with the permission of the Tohono O’odham Nation, working with O’odham David Garcia. After recovering the Mayan women’s bodies, Quinac was horrified to see Mayan migrants caged like animals in the Homeland Security detention center on Tohono O’odham tribal land near the border at San Miguel, Arizona.

Quinac said 13 young women were in the cage. There were also three children and about 20 men. They were Mayans from Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guatemala.

During the press conference, Quinac pleaded with the Tohono O’odham Nation to stop allowing the Border Patrol to treat migrants in cruel and inhumane ways in the outdoor detention center, which is enclosed by a wire fence.

“As Indigenous Peoples, we value the culture and the land we walk on. And to find bodies, then to find people caged like animals in a zoo, it is an outrage. It is an outrage that an Indian Nation that is supposed to have respect, would allow this to happen.”

“Where is the outrage? Where is the autonomy to say, ‘Border Patrol, you can not do this on our land.”

During the press conference at the Santa Rosa Learning Center on August 9, Jose Matus, director of Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, said Indigenous Peoples have the right to cross the borders in their ancestral territories without harassment from the Border Patrol or facing death in the desert.

Michelle Cook, Navajo; Julian Hernandez, Yaqui ceremonial leader from Barrio Libre; Shannon Rivers, Akimel O'odham; Kat Rodriguez of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice and Tupac Enrique Acosta of Tonatierra spoke out on Indigenous rights.

(The full story will be in next week's Navajo Times.)
More Indigenous statements and photos on Censored homepage:
http://www.bsnorrrell.blogspot.com/


Photo: Sebastian Quinac, Mayan Cakchiquel from Guatemala, marched for migrants rights on May 1. Behind him Border Guardians hurl racial slurs and obscenities in Tucson. Photo Brenda Norrell

Michelle Cook: 'I refuse to be your canary'

Living in the days of prophecies, Navajo Michelle Cook remembers the words of a Hopi spiritual leader on the United Nations Indigenous Peoples Day



I Refuse to be your Canary
International Indigenous Day

By Michelle Cook, Navajo student at the University of Arizona

Hopi elders Thomas Banyacya said, “Nature, the first people, and the spirit of our ancestors are giving you loud warnings. You see increasing floods, more damaging hurricanes, hailstorms, climate changes, and the earthquakes- as our prophesies said would come…If we human do not wake up to the warnings, the Great Purification will come and destroy this world as the previous worlds were destroyed…It is up to all of us, as children of Mother Earth, to clean up this mess before it is too late”.

I think today we should remember the importance of our voice and remember the messages that indigenous peoples have given the United Nations and world. We must recall and celebrate the hard work of those who have gone into international arenas to defend and testify; driven by the love for their people and home.
Read full statement:
Censored News articles text:
http://censored-news.blogspot.com/

Photos Indigenous Alliance without Borders' Indigenous Peoples Day Tucson

Indigenous Peoples speak out on right of passage

by Brenda Norrell

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Indigenous Peoples from across the borders of the United States and Mexico and the United States and Canada called for the United States to honor their right of passage in their ancestral territories, during Indigenous Peoples Day in Tucson Thursday.
Further, Indigenous called for a new wave of humanitarian efforts to prevent people from dying in the borderlands, including Indigenous brothers and sisters desperate to survive.
Jose Matus, Yaqui director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders, said the Venezuela Embassy called last week to invite him to meet with President Hugo Chavez this week. However, because of Matus' prior commitment to the gathering in Tucson, he was unable to attend the Indigenous conference in Venezuela with the Mohawk delegation from the north.
See full story in next week's Navajo Times. See Indigenous statements at home page: http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Photos 1: Columnists Roberto Rodriquez and Patricia Gonzales, who will be teaching at the University of Arizona Photo 2: Tupac Enrique Acosta of Tonatierra in Phoenix with Martha Equihua, facilitator, Native American Youth Empowerment Project at the University of Arizona and project peer educator Gabriella Enos 3. Kat Rodriguez, co-chair of the Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice 4. Michelle Cook, Navajo; Shannon Rivers, Gila River O'otham; Julian Hernandez, Yaqui ceremonial leader in Barrio Libre, South Tucson; Kat Rodriguez, co-chair Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice; Tupac Enrique Acosta, Aztlan, Tonatierra of Phoenix 5. Jose Matus, Yaqui, director of the Indigenous Alliance without Borders addressing the gathering on Indigenous Peoples Day.
Photos by Brenda Norrell, contact for photo reprint permission: brendanorrell@gmail.com

Mohawks and Hugo Chavez unite to fight colonial oppression

MOHAWKS ATTENDING INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN VENEZUELA - THE BEARS ARE MOUNTING THE SILVER EAGLE TO MEET THE CONDOR

Mohawk Nation News

CARACAS, Venezuela -- The Indigenous people and President Hugo Chavez are bringing together 40 Indigenous nations of Venezuela from August 7 to 9, 2007. The Mohawk delegation is made up of two women, Kahentinetha, an elder and Karenhahes, Bear Clan Mother.

This congress is setting up a broad international movement of indigenous people to reject colonial oppression. During the 20th century, the European states that generated the colonial movement began to understand that they would destroy each other if they kept up the land and resources grab and the ensuing killing of Indigenous peoples. Colonialism was declared illegal. Canada continued to define a “person” as any individual other than an Indian until 1951. Canada still does not respect our sovereignty and presumes that their colonial law is the only law north of the 49th parallel. The U.S. usurps the Indigenous lands, resources and jurisdiction south of the 49th parallel.

Canada refuses to sign the Declaration of Indigenous rights at the United Nations, even though that declaration is a profoundly colonial instrument. International law recognizes that no state can absorb another without the free and fully informed consent of the people concerned in a free vote. The Indigenous peoples and nations never agreed to become part of Canada . Canada is addicted to old destructive models of social and economic relations and medieval ruling class credos. It thinks that social order is based on command and obedience, not agreement between equals, and that there can’t be wealth without poverty. Such nonsense.

The meeting in Venezuela will take place in Mapiricure, an indigenous community in the south. On August 9th President Hugo Chavez will be presented with the Indigenous Feather known as the “Penacho” and a headdress. This will be followed by a ceremony invoking the powers of the natural world. On that day 11 land titles will be turned over to the Indigenous Communal Councils by President Chavez.

The shamen carrying out the ceremony will be joined by shamen from Argentina , Brazil , Bolivia , Nicaraugua , Mexico , Panama and the U.S.

Here is a draft of the words that the Mohawk delegation will be delivering to the International Congress of Indigenous People “in Defence of the Planet”, outlining a new paradigm for human existence.

“Nia:wen for your invitation to witness this historic event. From our women, we bring greetings to the women of your country.

From the “Rotiyaner” who are the men of our nation, we bring greetings from our men to your men.

From our elders, those who are the grandmothers and grandfathers, we bring our greetings to you who are the grandmothers and grandfathers of this nation.

From the fathers and mothers of our nation we bring greetings to you who are the mothers and fathers to your nation.

From our young people we bring greetings to your young people of this nation.

From the children of our nation we bring greetings to the children of your nation.

From those who still crawl upon the earth and those who are still on the cradle board, we bring greetings to your children who crawl on the earth and those who are on the cradle board.

From those faces of our future who are still beneath the earth, we bring the greetings to those of your people whose faces are yet beneath the earth.

Now that we have said this, we may begin.

We would like to have had a larger delegation here to day. Due to our struggle to preserve our sovereignty we are oppressed and ignored on our own homeland we call Onowarekeh, also known also as “ Turtle Island ”. The foreign colonial governments of Canada and the United States limit our movements on our own land. They fail to teach their people about our existence, our philosophy, our laws.

Mr. Chavez, thank you for giving our people an opportunity to establish relations between our governments under our philosophy known as the “Kaianereh’ko:wa”, the Great Law of Peace. We are not under the colonial laws. We continue to adhere to our laws and traditions. We continue to ensure a future for our people as the Kanion’ke:haka/Mohawk.

We are the eyes and ears that will witness this event. This is the beginning of a message to other nations to work towards bringing people back together to form an alliance. We wish to develop a sane and healthy way of life that assures that all people are decently cared for.

We need to renew the solemn blood covenants that have bound all Indigenous Peoples of South America and Onowarekeh, our name for Turtle Island , for thousands of years. We are one blood. When one family member is oppressed the other must aid their covenant partners. Everyone is there to uplift each other. No one goes without.

Our perception is that the material world is to be shared and distributed equally. Our ancestors knew that when a hunter went into the woods and brought back a deer, the entire community shared in that bounty. This is common to all Indigenous peoples of the world. Those who have fallen away from these simple concepts and now practice colonialism must be brought back into the human family and saved from themselves.

We present you with a copy of the Great Law, our constitution, in both Mohawk and English, our Confederacy flag, the Unity flag and several books about us that will be of interest to you.

We, the Onkwehonweh [the original people], are the guardians of Onowarekeh. Recently South America was visited by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada. They both avoided Venezuela because they can’t understand what’s happening here and it frightens them. These are emotionally disturbed people. They don’t know how to exist on a level of equality with their fellow human beings.

They do not represent us or even the people of their countries. They follow habits of thought that have been proven to be ineffective and destructive to the continuation of human life on earth. They represent foreigners who have usurped our resources and deny us any rights to our ancestral heritage.

Our words as the true representatives are binding on Turtle Island . We have always been here. We belong to the land on which we were formed. Mr. Chavez is here with the true owners of the lands of Onowarekeh and South America . What we say between us is binding.

Under natural law and international law everyone has a right to our own government, nationality and land.

As elders of our nation, we are dedicated to work in the best interests of our people. Each of us has power in our lives. We have a duty to spread the Kaianerehkowa throughout the world. The white roots from the Tree of Peace go in the four directions. Those who wish to find shelter may trace its roots to the source. My nation and Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy are in need of this alliance at this time.

Mr. Chavez holds the same political positions as the Mohawk Nation. We are here to help fan the flames so that the fire grows larger to make a place for all humans to share its warmth and benefits.

No one needs anyone’s permission to promote alliances, unification of our peoples and to spread the peace as prescribed in the Kaianereh’ko:wa. We refuse to live under a dictatorship.

An opportunity came to us to come here. We seized it. Last September some of our people went to New York City , which is on Iroquois land, to hear Mr. Chavez speak. He was inspiring. They told us that they agreed with every word he said.

Our message of peace came to us from our ancestors, Dekanawida and Jigosaseh. They told our people to bring everyone into a covenant of peace, to link arms with all the other peoples of the world. We are continuing the work of our ancestors to bring the message of peace to you today.

South America has the same colonial past as Onowarekeh, Turtle Island . We have occupied our territories since time immemorial. This land is who we are. It is our identity. Mr. Chavez is one of us. His roots go deep into the soil, the jungles, the mountains and fields of Venezuela . From the earth he gets sustenance, vitality and ability to help his people. The people feel safe. His first instinct is to protect the Indigenous people and the visitors who are here.

Venezuela is a beautiful wealthy part of the world. Your resources are now being skillfully used to enhance the best interests of the land and the people who live upon it. You are tapping into the wellspring of ancestral memories that are hidden in the minds of every person living here.

Now all other Indigenous people are seeing that it is possible to take our lives under our own control, not be dominated by foreign forces and to do good.

We feel secure with the Venezuelans. You are competent and sure of who you are. Initially the multinational corporations felt intimidated by the turn of events. They are finding they can work with the original people in the best interests of all. Everyone is benefiting. The only way to achieve harmony and prosperity among us is to bring all our talents and innate abilities together.

Mr. Chavez has found a way to bring this out in all of his people. He represents the forces of a people who are on the move. He has offered a new paradigm. He is showing Indigenous peoples and others that we can take over our own lives and run our own affairs. We can do it so that no one feels intimidated or threatened. It is becoming the natural way to do things.

Dekanawaida and Jigosaseh, the man and woman who helped develop the Great Law of Peace, understood this. They realized that the strength of the Confederation was based on no nation dominating the others. Each, no matter how large or small, had a right to exist and remain who they are.

There was no stifling of the innate abilities of the Onondagas, Senecas, Oneidas , Cayugas, Mohawks or Tuscaroras. Larger nations did not overpower the smaller ones. We were equal. Diverse peoples were brought together to work in harmony for the benefit of everyone. No one could assert themselves over others.

This is the reason why the indigenous government in Venezuela is successful. Mr. Chavez has tapped into the same knowledge that exists in all Indigenous people. The renaissance in Venezuela is going to spread all over the world.

People always feel threatened by a new paradigm. We can expect many attacks from the colonial powers. We do not use guns but they point theirs at us. They don’t know what else to do. The young, the poor and even the middle class in the colonized countries are all suffering from the same insecurity and dislocation that has been imposed on us. They will join us once they understand.

If everyone doesn’t relearn how to look after the earth and each other, there will be nothing left for anyone to eat; no clean water to drink; and no clean air to breathe. The colonial commercial exploitation of the environment has been taken to such extremes that human life itself is in peril. We can work together to clean up the mess we have created as human beings and make the earth healthy again.

The greedy grasping power hungry people who are trying to gain control over all of humanity have lost touch with reality. Just when they think that they have achieved their goal of absolute control and domination, the pyramid of delusion will collapse beneath their feet. Life itself will be gone.

Nobody wants to suffer the consequences of a collapse of this order. Venezuela has a model that is working. People are free and work together to develop everyone to their full potential in whatever area of life they have chosen.

When somebody wants to go from one place to another through forests, jungles, swamps, deserts or mountains, somebody always goes ahead and cuts the trail. The others follow the steps of those who went ahead. They all get to their destination safely. It takes a courageous visionary to see far ahead the dangers that are prowling around. Hugo Chavez is a trailblazer in the realm of the world’s progressives. He helps whole groups of people move forward together. He is setting in motion an act that others will follow.

We have a chance to see how this model is working to its fullest potential so that the good life and good health is shared by all equally. We feel gratified and honored that we are taking part in the dedication of the land to the original people. We need more people like Hugo Chavez all over the world. We hope for the continued good health of Mr. Chavez, who cares to lead in troubled times. Artificial ways will dissolve themselves because they are not real. Humanity must go back to the natural relationships. We salute you, Venezuela , for showing the world how your humanitarian goals are being achieved and are inspiring others to achieve”.

Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

Send your comments on this movement to be presented to the Venezuelans and the Indigenous people who are attending his event at congresoindigena@gmail.com, Kahentinetha2@yahoo.com and katenies20@yahoo.com

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Mohawks in Venezuela; Indigenous Peoples Day

Breaking news: Mohawks in Venezuela


By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has extended an invitation to a delegation of Mohawks to meet with him. Read the story:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2007/08/mohawks-and-hugo-chavez-unite-to-fight.html
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AIM Indigenous Peoples Day, San Francisco, Thursday

Indigenous Peoples Day, New York, Thursday

INVITATION: Special Event, New York, August 9, 2007

On the United Nations International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples, the 9th of August, 2007, the most pressing priority issues affecting the Worlds' Indigenous Peoples must be addressed.Amid the day-long agenda full of cultural events, panels and speeches planned for the upcoming celebration of United Nations International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples (9 August 2007, UN Headquarters), one event will take place regarding the most pressing priority issue affecting the world’s indigenous peoples —the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.The U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is now in its most critical stage after 22 years. A decision that will affect the future and survival of indigenous peoples from around the world will be made in September by Member States at the 61st session of the General Assembly.For that reason an important special event will take place Thursday, August 9, 2 1/2 blocks from United Nations Headquarters at 217 E. 42nd Street, from 1:00 to 3:00 pm, featuring a 1-hour documentary, DISCUSSIONS ON THE UN DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES followed by special guest presentations by representatives of Member States and indigenous peoples’ organizations. A question and answer period is scheduled after the presentations.Interested members of the media and the public and representatives of Member States, UN Agencies, indigenous peoples’ organizations and other non-governmental organizations are invited to attend.This program is sponsored by Earth Peoples, The Society for Threatened Peoples and the NGO Committee on the United Nations International Decade of the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

Special Event: "The U.N. DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES"When: 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm , Thursday, August 9, 2007Where: 217 E 42nd street (2 blocks from the UN)(see attached pdf INVITATION FLYER with directions)Schedule:1:00-2:00 (sharp)Screening of Documentary: "DISCUSSIONS ON THE U.N. DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES". *Filmmaker Rebecca Sommer will be present2:00-3:00 pmPanel and Q+A :Special Guest Presentations by State and Indigenous Peoples RepresentativesGust speakers: Connie Taracena, Permanent Mission of GuatemalaLes Malezer, Chair of the Global Indigenous CaucusEnrique Ochoa, Permanent Mission of MexicoTonya Frichner, UN PFII meber 2008------------------------------*

DISCUSSIONS ON THE U.N. DECLARATION ON THE RIGHTS OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES is a one-hour work in progress film on one of the most-discussed pieces of legislation in UN history. For 25 years, governments and indigenous peoples have been discussing how to apply the universal declaration of Human Rights to the specific situations of indigenous peoples. This desperately needed Declaration, which articulated only the most basic of needs, was nonetheless rejected in November 2006. In this film, governmental and indigenous leaders present their issues of concern and the implications for the future. (First screened on the opening day of the 6th Session of the PFII in May 2007)to watch sample video clips click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D10JDA4OL2M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOUeGMa8iLI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl8Tz_nw8w&mode=related&search =

Censored at the border: Children in prisons, soldiers running cocaine

Censored at the border: Children in prison, soldiers running cocaine
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.infoshop.org/
Monday, August 06 2007 @ 05:15 PM

ARIVACA, Ariz. -- While Arizona border residents prepare to file a lawsuit to halt the spy tower cameras aimed at their homes along the US border, another staggering human rights violation is ongoing in Texas.

Migrant and refugee children are being imprisoned in Texas prisons, resulting in an ACLU lawsuit. A prison guard has now exposed maggots in the Hutto prison food, where babies and children are imprisoned near Austin.


The ongoing border hype, fueled by television news, has invigorated

Minutemen, Border Guardians and the Ku Klux Klan along the US/Mexico border.

Few national news reporters have covered the ongoing federal court sentencing of the National Guardsmen running cocaine from the Arizona border at Nogales, running it north to Tucson and Phoenix.So many Arizona Guardsmen wanted to run cocaine, that the FBI sting "Operation Lively Green" was shut down.

A Nogales policeman, Arizona prison guard and Airforce Security Squadron in Tucson were among the 99 soldiers and officials charged with running drugs from the border.

While governors and other politicians are cheerleading for military at the border, residents want the military out and the harassment and abuses at the border to stop.

Further, few news reporters have reported the fact that the remains of O'odham ancestors, Hohokam, were recently dug up for the border barrier and have not been reburied.

Congress continues to press for dangerous drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) for the border, ignoring the fact that the Border Patrol stopped using those in Arizona when a multi-million drone crashed near Nogales.

Television news, including some programs on CNN, have fueled the racism and xenophobia, resulting in the imprisonment of children in prisons in Texas and policies forcing migrants deeper into the desert to die in Arizona.Ultimately, Bush-friendly corporations are the ones who profiteer and benefit from the Nazi-like wave of border hysteria.

Those corporations include Halliburton's contract for migrant prisons, Wackenhut (now Geo Group) transporting migrants; Pinkerton guards and the Boeing/Israeli spy team constructing border spy towers with cameras aimed at residents in Arizona.

Read more on the Censored blog:http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Brenda Norrell has been a news reporter in Indian country for 25 years. After being terminated in 2006, after complaining of censorship, she began the Censored blog to expose the most censored issues.

Photo 1: Amnesty Photo 2: ACLU Photo 3: Sebastian Quinac, Mayan Cakchiquel from Guatemala, marched for migrants rights on May 1. Behind him Border Guardians hurl racial slurs and obscenities in Tucson. Photo Brenda Norrell

Mohawk Nation News: 'No' to merchants of death

BOY 'WAR' TOYS CLUB: MEMBERS ONLY
Special Report

Mohawk Nation News
August 1, 2007

Ardoch and Shabot Algonquins [42 miles north of Kingston
Ontario Canada] continue to block Frontenac Ventures Corp. and MREL [Mining
Resources Engineering Limited]. Frontenac wants to start uranium mining and
MREL is blowing up bombs on unceded Algonquin Indigenous territory.

We already know MREL keeps company with the military industry's "defense"
and law enforcement agencies. MREL is a member of "IABTI" [International
Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators) which has 85 "exclusive
club" members. MREL is one of the 33 "explosive experts". They're getting
together for the big "blow up" at the FPED (Force Protection Equipment Demonstration)
in Virginia U.S. this month.

Hundreds of companies are demonstrating their "war toys". It's sponsored in
part by TSWG (Technical Support Working Group). MREL is also part of this
"gang of blow offs" who are going to explode their creations for an action hungry
crowd of 10,000 pyromaniacs! Fire works were invented for fun and amusement.
The Europeans turned them into weapons of war.

MREL is on CADSI's [Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries]
list of hundreds of organizations known as the Canadian "merchants of death".
MREL is on a short list of 6 specially licensed “bomb makers” and “bomb-blower
-uppers” in Canada.

"defenseindustrydaily.com" describes itself as "military purchasing news for
defense procurement managers and contractors". Their articles swoon over
bombs, fighter planes, helicopters, ships, robots, bombs and more bombs,
"boooomm!" "crash!" "wham!" "bam!" "a-ahhh!" "k#%^!!!" e-e-eek!" "ow"!
"ala kazam!"

Another bomb maker has appeared on the horizon. "Canada Explosives" revealed
in an article on "Allen-Vanguard" of Ottawa that, "the U.S. has led the way in robots
for explosives and ‘ordnance disposal’, [Do the robots dance the tango too?]
That's ‘bang’ talk for killing people. [Once of these days they’ll boomerang and get
it right back. Who are the real terrorists anyway?] Allen-Vanguard was selected for
the Canadian Forces 5-year "mini-rov" [robot] program. The order is worth CDN$3.7
million. Another is worth CDN$1.6 million." It gets cheaper when you order more!

Canada gave Allen-Vanguard and MREL permission to give everybody a "blow up
job", you know, kill people. [I could go on but I digress.] It doesn't come cheap.
Allen-Vanguard is also a member of both IABTI and CADSI. Its facilities are at
Stoney Creek, Ontario. They are building a new research and development facility
in Cork County, Ireland.

In the past Canada was a conciliator. It built its reputation on peace. Peacemaking
requires courage, skill and tact. Too bad Canada’s position as a ‘peacemaker’ from
the time of Lester B Pearson has been shattered by the new macho image of
Canadians gleefully slaughtering people. [in Somalia, in Afghanistan, are we next?]
Does it really make it better that Canada is not as bad as the U.S.? How can anyone
tell the difference between those two war monsters?

Allen-Vanguard devices are used by the military in more than 120 countries on both
sides of the issue. [Gotta make money anyway they can!] They offer counter-terrorist
equipment systems for defeating “conventional and unconventional terrorist devices."
What's conventional about killing people? Whose convention? MREL provides them
with high speed cameras to take pictures of their war devastation.

Their customers include the RCMP, FBI, U.S. Secret Service, U.S. Army and Marine
Corps, fire and police departments in Canada and U.S., the Center for Disease Control
in Atlanta, Georgia, the Austrian National Response Team, the Swedish Response Team,
Denmark Special Security Forces, Irish Special Security Forces, the South Korean Army,
the Australian Army and the Israeli police." What are all these guys doing buying weapons
if their mission is supposed to be peace?

A strange connection has been made. A very interesting obituary recently appeared in the
Ontario Genealogical Society web site. It was a long tribute to Ontario Provincial Police
OPP murderer "Kenneth Deane". He killed unarmed Indigenous activist Dudley George
during a protest on unceded Chippewa territory at Ipperwash Park.

Deane belonged to "the exclusive ranks of the OPP's "Tactical Rescue Unit" [TRU], the
special squad deployed in hostage-taking situations". Were the Indigenous at Ipperwash
hostages? Are the Algonquin OPP at the Sharbot Lake protest members of TRU? Are they
marksmen that can pick off somebody they don’t want around there?

Deane was "leading a highly trained, four-man team of marksmen" when he shot and
killed Dudley George. Deane was one of the best marksmen in the business. He was t
rained to say that he "saw a weapon" even though other witnesses did not.

Deane was convicted of "criminal negligence" causing death and never went to jail. He
also never made it to the Ipperwash Inquiry.

Deane was in Oka [Quebec] with the OPP during the Mohawk Crisis in 1990. The Mohawks
at Kanehsatake were defending their territory. Snipers are assassins. He was brought in
as a specialist. He was at Grassy Narrows when another OPP was shot dead in 1991.

Deane was forced to resign in 1997. He went to work for security at a Ontario Hydro nuclear
station. His last job was Canadian sales manager for-Allen Vanguard Response Systems.
[When five white vans show up out of the blue at various “disturbances”, these are private
militias otherwise known as mercenaries]. “Security” is part of the Allen-Vanguard’s
business. Try to tell us now that Indigenous people are not targeted!

Now hold on a minute here. This large company that deals with dangerous stuff like bombs,
toxic chemicals, radiation and classified military contracts hires a guy who was convicted
of criminal negligence causing death in a high profile case! This is how a police state
operates, wouldn’t you say?

Deane was willing to pull the trigger on an Indigenous. Others would not do that. He was
a valuable commodity for those pushing this totalitarian agenda. They need guys who will
shoot Indigenous without question or remorse. We have to be very wary of police agencies
that produce guys like this on a massive scale. They are trained to become an automaton,
especially when their crosshairs are on an Indigenous. They are worse than street gangs
because they are trained, armed, funded and protected by the establishment.

When Deane killed Dudley George he got his “badge” and was promoted to the private
$ector! Kenneth Deane died in a car accident in February 2006 on Highway 401 near
Prescott during a snow squall. He was getting close to testifying at the Ipperwash Inquiry.
[With so much skullduggery, how can we be sure this guy is really dead? Maybe he’s been
sent overseas to shoot Indigenous people somewhere else!] Two other OPP officers
involved in the Dudley George shooting died in car accidents. Sgt. Margaret Eve died in
a car crash on Hwy. 401 near Chatham, Ontario, and Inspector Dale Linton died in a single
car accident near Smiths Falls, near Perth. This is where the Algonquins and their
supporters are fighting against a proposed uranium mine and explosives business
on Algonquin land.

Isn’t this suspicious! From “Jonestown” to “Exterminator”! We have just learned that Indian
Affairs Minister, Jim “Jonestown” Prentice is becoming the new Minister of National
Defense. Does his military experience for the job include turning Indian Affairs into a
“War Department”? He also allowed the “war mongers” to use us as “guinea pigs”
to try out their lethal weaponry and to test their killing machines on our lands. He is
joining the “big boys” who kill people rather than save humanity. He should turn DND
funds into fixing Canada’s crumbling infra structure. If not, Canada we will see more
“Minneapolis” type national disasters.

The Algonquins continue to block the Robertson mine site with no resolution in sight.
Support and donations are needed. [Contact: Chief Paula Sherman 705-696-2188;
Bob Lovelace 613-532-2166; Harold Perry 613-479-5534; Lynn Daniluk 613-267-0539;
Ormond Lee 613-267-7584; Chief Doreen Davis 613-484-8868].

Special Report to MNN
Edited by Kahentinetha Horn
MNN Mohawk Nation News

See: “Sharbot Lake”
http://www.mohawknationnews.com/news/news4.php?lang=en&layout=mnn&category=58&srcurl=%2Fnews%2Fnews3.php%3Flang%3Den%26layout%3Dmnn%26sortorder%3D0

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Downtown Tucson built on Indian cemetery, O'odham or Apache

Ancient bones evidence of an Indian cemetery
Arizona Daily Star
The 150- to 300-year-old skeletal remains of one, and possibly two, American Indians were unearthed this week in an area of Downtown Tucson where six others have been found in the last half century. The latest discovery is further evidence there was an Indian cemetery in the area, likely from the Pima or Apache tribe ... Read more:
http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/194892.php

Winnebago tribal member killed in Minnesota bridge collapse

Winnebago Tribal Member Killed In Bridge Collapse
KTIV news

The death toll from the Minnesota bridge collapse still stands at four. And, one of the victims has Siouxland ties. 32-year-old Julia Blackhawk is a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska.Her family got word of her death late last night. Her uncle, John Blackhawk, who's a Winnebago Tribal Council Member, says his niece had been taking classes at the University of Minnesota and was on her way home.

Her route to her home in Savage, Minnesota, takes her across the I-35 West bridge, which collapsed, Wednesday night.Authorities say Julia Blackhawk died of blunt force trauma.

After watching the events unfold on television, John Blackhawk said it's a shock to know a tragedy, like this, involves a loved one. "I think the thing that she would like to be remembered for is a mother," said John Blackhawk, Victim's Uncle. "She had two boys, of course, and um, I'm not sure how they're going to survive that. So I think first and foremost probably as a mother. The other is the recollection that I have of her is being that I'm her uncle and uncles are held in high esteem. So I guess I remember the respectful way that she treated me."Julia Blackhawk, a mother of two, has lived in the Twin Cities for about the last decade.

Tribal services are being held Thursday and Friday in Julia Blackhawk's honor. Her funeral is planned for this Saturday in Winnebago, Nebraska.Updated: August 2, 2007, 10:43 pm

Photos of those who lost their lives:

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/popup?id=3444195

Migrant prisons in Texas photos

Photos by Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.

(Above: Photos from vigil outside migrant prisons in Texas, where babies and children are also imprisoned. Photos 1 is Hutto near Austin, Texas and 2: Bayview-Raymondville.

Hutto prison denied access to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants in May as he tried to investigate the conditions.

MIGRANT BABY JAIL CELL in HUTTO, TEXAS

(Photo USA Today) A cell with a baby bed and children's toys is shown at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. The detention facility houses immigrant families awaiting deportation. Officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement describe the facility as a residential, nonsecure environment that keeps families together. However, advocacy groups say "it's a prison" and that separation and threats of separation were used as disciplinary tools on adults and children.LM Otero, Pool via APUSA Today: Migrant jails in Texas and Pennsylvaniahttp://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-02-22-immigration-detention_x.htm

Maggots in migrant food in Raymondville

Prison guard exposes maggots in migrant food at inhumane prison

http://www.kgbt4.com/Global/story.asp?S=6876377

Interview on Women's Radio online:

http://www.womensradio.com/content/templates/?a=1885&z=11

ACLU LAWSUIT OVER MIGRANT CHILDREN IN PRISON:

At the time of the ACLU's initial court filings, child detainees had to wear prison garb. They received one hour of recreation per day and opportunities to spend this hour outdoors were very rare. Children were detained in small cells for about 11 or 12 hours each day, and were prohibited from keeping food and toys in these cells, which lack any privacy.

http://www.aclu.org/immigrants/detention/hutto.html

Migrant Detention Center on Tohono O'odham tribal land in Arizona
by Brenda Norrell

SAN MIGUEL, Ariz. --This migrant detention center on Tohono O'odham tribal land, near the border in Arizona, is opposed by Tohono O'odham who say it is a violation of the Him'dag, the sacred way of being.
It is one of two migrant detention centers on tribal land, approved by the tribal government, which works with Homeland Security. (Migrants are transported by Wackenhut, notorious for human rights violations. Wackenhut is now apart of Geo Group.)
O'odham people opposing the militarization of their land say the abuses by the border agents are ignored, while migrants are subjected to inhumane treatment.
O'odham are harassed and spied on, while migrants' rapes and beatings by border agents often go unreported. (Photo Ofelia Rivas.)


AMNESTY: Migrant and refugee children in Hutto prison

Amnesty International USA's REFUGEE ACTION
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, Ste. 500Washington, DC 20003T. 202.544.0200F.202.546.7142E-mail. refugee@aiusa.org
June 18, 2007

UNITED STATES: Oppose the Detention of Refugee and Migrant Children
SUMMARY: Amnesty International is concerned about hundreds of migrant children and their parents who are detained at the Don T. Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, Texas. The Hutto building used to hold criminals before being converted to a temporary residence for refugee and migrant children. Children from Central America and other parts of the world including Greece, Ethiopia, Haiti, Iraq, Russia and Romania are detained at Hutto in prison cells for months at a time.
BACKGROUND: Every day, the United States government detains over 600 migrant children and their parents who are asking permission to remain here legally. Some families flee violence and war in their home countries and come to the United States hoping to be protected by our government. Others come because they want to have a better life than they left behind. When immigration officers find families who don't have permission to stay, they can lock them in facilities like Hutto until they decide whether to allow the families to remain in the U.S. Sometimes this process can take years.
The detention of families expanded dramatically in 2006 with the opening of the new 512-bed T. Don Hutto Residential Center. Prior to the opening of Hutto, the majority of immigrant families were arrested and then released from custody while they worked through their immigration cases. Hutto is a former criminal facility that houses immigrant children in prison cells. Some families with children have been detained in the facility for up to two years. The majority of children in the facility appear to be under 12 years old.
According to international standards to which the United States has agreed, asylum seekers, in particular, are not to be detained unless warranted by special circumstances. Migrants in detention are to be afforded the same rights as nationals who are detained, and even in detention, children have the right to be with their families, to get an education, to have recreational time, and to live in a place that is safe.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please contact the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, asking the government to stop holding migrant children and their parents in prison-like facilities. You can also copy your letter to the head of Hutto, and the Juvenile Coordinator for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Special thanks to Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. for the Texas photos.

Sarah White: Navajo political lies and degradation

Navajos are tired of the lies of politicians, energy corporations and the media

By Sarah Jane White
Dine CARE

Joe Shirley Jr. President of the Navajo Nation talks about the “Big Projects” and “Navajo Nation needs jobs” showed in several articles published in July 2007, Joe Shirley, Jr. was cited as saying “some homes on the reservation have only a blanket as a door cover”, this is questionable because people hosting a Dine traditional ceremony are the ones who would have a blanket covering their doorway as a signal to the deities that there is a ceremony taking place at a particular place. It is hard to believe that statement.

Joe Shirley, Jr. has made his campaign speeches last year to improve quality of life for the Navajo people living on the reservation, including those living off the reservation, such as in Phoenix and Albuquerque. We don’t see him trying to live up to those words. Instead, is he calling on corporations to make improvements for the Navajo people on his behalf? He made a contradictory statement for being self-reliant or self sufficient.

Joe Shirley, Jr. may have over-committed the Navajo Nation for the sake of “big projects” or the corporations are calling on him to collect their fees? Recent newspaper interview indicates a sign of desperation?

Desert Rock project will only benefit a handful of people, particularly the politicians and those associated with the development, since Desert Rock, LLC, is a corporation of non-Navajo ownership. We don’t expect the middle age workforce to be working at the “big projects” listed by him. Not to mention when week after week, we see job advertisements for licensed educators and industrial jobs in the local newspapers. Who will fill these positions?

Currently there are people associated with Desert Rock trying to garner support to make it look like the Draft Environmental Impact Statement hearing were widely supported by the Navajo people when the truth is there are more people opposed to the third proposed plant. Residents of the Four Corners deserve to be heard; after all, smokes emitted by these plants know no boundaries and all will be affected by it.

Furthermore, Indian Country Today’s article “Desert Rock project: Trouble and toil for a model in the making” on July 27, 2007 reflects policies to streamline the process and that more natural resources from Indian Country be converted into energy at cheap prices.

It is time the Navajo politicians quit calling the elders “Grandmas” or Shimasani”. Most Navajo politicians are middle age and are grandparents themselves so use appropriate terms when referencing elders as so much emphasis is made on K’e (relationship/kinship) by them. The elders prefer to be called “Shima” or “Shicheii.”

In conclusion, the Indian Energy Policy Act of 2005 and its amendments have created a nightmare for the Indian Tribes across the country. The Navajo nation government is taking the lead as illustrated by local and national newspaper interviews with Joe Shirley, Jr. on the big projects, specifically the Desert Rock project.

DENVER: STOP NEWMONT GENOCIDE Aug. 30

Colorado AIM organizes protest of Newmont mining

Newmont mining is destroying Indigenous lands and lives around the globe. With new death threats for resisters, following the Denver protest of Newmont, Colorado AIM calls out to those ready to be arrested to stop Newmont's genocide of Indigenous Peoples.

The protest is also a call to halt the genocide of Iraqi children.

PROTEST: Thursday, Aug. 30, 2007
Marriot Hotel (17th and California St., downtown Denver)
5:00 PM
BRING YOUR COURAGE, YOUR VOICE, YOUR BULLHORNS, and YOUR MOST CREATIVE PROTEST STRATEGIES

From COLORADO AIM:
On Thursday, August 30, 2007, the University of Denver Graduate School of International Studies (GSIS) will honor Wayne Murdy, CEO of Newmont Mining Corporation for the company's "progressive" work around the world. That work happens on every continent, and involves the invasion of indigenous peoples' territories from the Western Shoshone in Nevada to the Quechua/Aymara in Peru and Bolivia to the Aboriginal peoples ofAustralia.

Two years ago, Colorado AIM joined with the Stop Newmont Coalition to force Newmont to be accountable to the communities that it is destroying through its mining. Brothers and sisters from Peru, Ghana and Western Shoshone joined us at the annual shareholder's meeting to expose Newmont's practices.

Newmont was so frightened by our mobilization that it changed locations for the meeting three times, and ended up in an armed location with sharpshooters on the roof of the building where the meeting was held. This year, Newmont was so frightened of a repeat performance in Denver that it held its annual meeting in Delaware.

Newmont has been put on notice that as long as it is invading and poisoning indigenous peoples' territories, and steal Native peoples' natural resources, that there will be no business as usual. It will be exposed for its actions at every opportunity. Such an opportunity is Thursday, August 30, in downtown Denver.

Colorado AIM has joined the call for a mass protest action at the University of Denver's annual Korbel Dinner, the largest fundraiser for the Graduate School of International Affairs. The keynote speaker will be Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State under Bill Clinton.

DEAD CHILDREN IN IRAQ
On the estimated death of 500,000 children in Iraq because of U.S. sanctions there, Albright had the following exchange on CBS' "60Minutes."Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it." --60 Minutes (5/12/96) This statement alone is worth picketing the dinner for, but, in addition to Albright (after whose father the dinner is named), DU will be giving an award to Wayne Murdy of Newmont.

Here are two letters -- one from activists in communities being destroyed by Newmont, and one from OXFAM International, the renowned international human rights group. Both give reasons to protest this event. This is the link to the OXFAM letter:http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/earthworks/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6822&t=nodirtygold_sansleft.dwt

Indigenous leaders are in imminent threat. Father Marco Arana, whom we in Colorado AIM honored two years ago, is under death threats right now for opposing Newmont. Our Native sisters and brothers are asking for us to stand for them against Newmont here in Denver, Newmont's international headquarters.Can you give one or two hours of your time to walk with a sign, to raise your voice, and to let Newmont and DU know our outrage?

We march against Columbus and Columbus Day, but Newmont is the heir of Columbus, it is the living expression today of the Columbus legacy --invasion, greed and destruction. Join us in the streets, for all of our Native relations.

If you are arrestable at this action, and if you are willing to risk arrest at this protest, let the organizers know.
Thanks.

Top photo: Glenn Morris and Western Shoshone Carrie Dann protest Newmont in Denver/Photo Colorado AIM Photo 2: Newmont protest in Peru Photo 3: Iraq victims of war, Veterans for Peace Iraqi Memorial on Memorial Day 2007, in Santa Monica/Photo Brenda Norrell

Mexico urges media self-censorship to stay alive

URGENT BULLETIN: JOURNALISTS, MEXICO & BORDER:

Mexico's Attorney General endorses self-censorship by media in context of increasing danger; CENCOS urges government action
http://www.ifex.org/en/content/view/full/85278/

Español: Procuraduría General justifica la autocensura frente a los peligros crecientes; CENCOS exige al gobierno mejores garantías

From: Centro Nacional de Comunicación Social (CENCOS)
July 31, 2007

Self-censorship a "good strategy" for media to protect themselves, says Attorney General
Mexico City, 31 July 2007 -

In the context of insufficient government protection for journalists, the Attorney General of Mexico, Eduardo Medina Mora, has said that he considers it a "good strategy" for journalists working on stories about organized crime not to sign their names to their reports, in order to protect themselves against possible retaliation.
The Attorney General is apparently forgetting that the Judiciary has a constitutional responsibility to guarantee citizens the rights to freedom of expression and to inform and be informed.
In effect, the Mexican state is promoting the techniques of self-censorship that media outlets have been obliged to implement in order to protect the lives of their journalists.
In Sonora state, the newspaper "Cambio" decided to shut down temporarily, in light of repeated grenade attacks against its facilities.
Other media outlets have resorted to self-censorship, altering their editorial line to the detriment of their reading public. These include the newspapers "El Norte" and "Milenio", which decided not to attribute authorship to reports on drug-trafficking, and to refrain from investigating violent incidents beyond the information provided by officials. The same approach has been taken by the newspapers "El Imparcial" in Hermosillo, and "El Mañana" in Nuevo Laredo, as well as by the television station Televisa Monterray.
Similarly, the weekly "Proceso" announced to its readers in its 4 March issue that: "Drug cartels continue to impose their law - the law of blood - throughout the country, despite optimistic official proclamations about the success of combined police-military operations. Given these circumstances, 'Proceso' will, from this issue forward, follow a policy to protect its reporters by not attributing authorship to reports on drug-trafficking. Our publishing house will assume responsibility for the content and truthfulness of these reports."
For its part, the National Commission for Human Rights (Comisión Nacional de los Derechos Humanos) revealed in a report that, in the last six years, 33 journalists have been killed and six disappeared, apparently for reporting on drug-trafficking.
In response, all the Attorney General has to offer is its support for the Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Journalists (Fiscalía Especial para la Atención de Delitos Cometidos contra Periodistas), "since legal action is key to combating crime".
Within the framework of international standards and treaties, the government is obliged to act to protect these fundamental rights, all the more so considering Mexico has endorsed various international human rights instruments, such as the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) in 1981, and it has accepted the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights since 1998.
These commitments oblige the government to exercise all its powers to defend the full and free exercise of all human rights. Among the rights enshrined in the ACHR is freedom of expression, covered by Article 13, which states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought and expression. This right includes freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing, in print, in the form of art, or through any other medium of one's choice."
Article 133 of the Mexican Constitution, in turn, asserts the responsibility of the government to live up to all the commitments contained in treaties to which it is signatory.
CENCOS, as a civil society organization concerned for the right to freedom of expression, finds it very unfortunate that the Attorney General has made such a declaration. CENSOS urges the government instead to take concrete actions to protect journalists. It is not enough simply to recognize their work and to endorse their taking recourse to self-censorship.
MORE INFORMATION:
For further information, contact Francisco Barrón Trejo, Communications coordinator, or Brisa Maya Solís Ventura, Executive Director, CENCOS, Medellín 33, Colonia Roma, 06700 México, D.F., México, tel: +52 55 55 336 475 / 55 336 476, fax: +52 55 52 082 062, e-mail: cencos@cencos.org, Internet: http://www.cencos.org/

Billions for war in Iraq, while US bridge collapses

eBy Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

While billions continue flowing to the war in Iraq, including billions for profiteering corporations, the United States has failed to replace structurally-unsound bridges. The US has said funding was unavailable to repair or replace those US bridges.

The great tragedy in Minnesota and the recovery effort, following the collapse of one of the United States' Interstate bridges is live now on CNN. An estimated 30 to 50 cars are submerged in the Mississippi River.

Structurally deficient bridges listed by state:
http://www.bts.gov/publications/state_transportation_statistics/state_transportation_statistics_2006/html/table_01_07.html

Cost of the bogus war in Iraq that no one is winning: $448 billion and counting ...
http://www.nationalpriorities.org/Cost-of-War/Cost-of-War-3.html

World Indigenous Peoples Day San Francisco, Aug. 9

Yaqui reappointed to US Civil Rights position

Minutemen, Border Guardians and Ku Klux Klan invigorated by border hype and xenophobia

By Christina Leza
Indigenous Alliance Without Borders
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

WASHINGTON -- Jose R. Matus, Director of the Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras (Indigenous Alliance Without Borders), has been re-appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Arizona State Advisory Committee (SAC). Matus, 55, is a member of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe and serves as a ceremonial leader of the Yaqui community of Barrio Libre in the City of South Tucson, Arizona.

Matus says while some conditions have improved, border hysteria and xenophobia have increased.

“There is no question that things have improved over the past 30 years, but this country still needs to make a lot more progress in protecting the civil rights of Indigenous peoples, people of color, and all citizens and residents regardless of race, gender or religion," Matus said.

Matus observes that since the tragedy of 9/11, there has been an association in the public mind between illegal immigration and terrorism. As a result, anti-immigration hysteria, xenophobia and racial discrimination have never been higher.

As anti-immigration sentiment increases within the Southern Arizona border region, so do the activities of racist paramilitary groups such as the Minutemen, Border Guardians and the reinvigorated Klu Klux Klan.

Voices advocating for the civil and human rights of immigrants, indigenous rights of mobility, and fair and comprehensive immigration policies are met with deaf ears by those who have developed an Us-versus-Them mentality and who abuse terms like “terror,” “invasion,” and “national security” to justify the violation of civil rights in our region.

Matus stresses that when local activists advocate for “indigenous rights” or “immigrant rights,” they are advocating for civil and human rights.

The mission of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is to appraise federal laws and policies with respect to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws, or in the administration of justice, because of race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin; to study and collect information relating to discrimination or a denial of equal protection of the laws under the Constitution; to investigate complaints on the denial of citizens’ voting rights, and to discourage discrimination through public education. Four of this organization’s eight Commissioners are appointed by the President, and the remaining four are appointed by Congress. A State Advisory Committee is appointed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for each of the states and the District of Columbia. The Arizona State Advisory Committee is comprised of thirteen citizens who are familiar with local and state civil rights issues. These State Advisory Committee members assist the Commission in its fact-finding and public education functions, and serve without compensation for two-year terms. This is Matus’ second appointment to the Committee.

Matus has worked as an Indigenous Rights activist in Arizona for over 30 years and is the current Director of the Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, an affiliate of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development. Now in its 10th year, the Alliance was created by and for Indigenous peoples to promote respect for Indigenous civil and human rights, including traditional rights of mobility and passage for cultural preservation across the U.S. - Mexico border. The Indigenous Alliance consists of individual members of the Cocopah Nation, Tohono O'Odham Nation, Gila River Indian Community, Pascua Yaqui, Kickapoo, Kumeyaay, and O'Odham and Yaqui communities in Mexico, members of Indigenous cultures divided by the Southern border.

The Indigenous Alliance Without Borders will host a public forum in recognition of World Indigenous Day on Thursday August 9th, 11:30 am, at the Santa Rosa Learning Center in Tucson, AZ. The public is invited to hear panel members speak on the history of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations, how immigration policies affect local Indigenous communities, and how you can support the rights of Indigenous peoples locally and internationally.

Photos by Brenda Norrell: Jose Matus and Indigenous Alliance without Borders.

UPDATE: Alianza members and friends: The Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras-Indigenous Alliance Without Borderswill holda press conference and public forum in recognition of World Indigenous Day onThursday August 9th, 11:30 am at the Santa Rosa Learning Center in Tucson.
The public is invited to hear a panel of local indigenous leaders speak on thehistory of Indigenous peoples in the United Nations, how immigration policies affect local Indigenous communities, and how you can support the rights ofIndigenous peoples locally and internationally. Rebecca Sommer's film "Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations" will also be shown following our panel discussion.
The Santa Rosa Learning Center in Tucson is located at 1075 S. 10th Ave. The Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras is an affiliate of the Seventh Generation Fund for Indian Development. The Alliance was created by and for Indigenouspeoples to promote respect for Indigenous civil and human rights, including traditional rights of mobility and passage for indigenous cultural preservationacross the U.S. - Mexico border.
For more information please contact me at the email address below orcontact our Director, Jose Matus at (520)979-2125 or jrmatus@aol.com
Christina Leza
Department of Anthropology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721leza@email.arizona.edu
Alianza Indigena Sin Fronterase mail: alianza@indigenasinfronteras.orgwebsite: indigenasinfronteras.org

'Trespassing,' censored at Sundance, screening in Santa Barbara

"Trespassing," the most important film to ever be rejected by the Sundance Film Festival, screening in Santa Barbara

by Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/

SANTA BARBARA -- "Trespassing," the film that exposes how the nuclear industry has targeted American Indian communities in the Southwest will be screened at the Think Outside the Bomb National Conference on Saturday, Aug. 18.
After "Trespassing," was rejected and censored at Sundance Film Festival, and many of the world's leading avant-garde film festivals, it went on to win awards around the world. From the Tucson International Film Festival and festivals in Spain and Oaxaca, Mexico, fearless film festival organizers awarded it as a human rights' treasure.
The film features the struggles to protect Indian lands from nuclear testing and wasted dumps, including the Colorado Indian River Tribes, Mojave and Western Shoshone.
The film's message is also a lasting tribute to the life long struggle for reverence in defense of the land of Western Shoshone spiritual leader Corbin Harney, who recently passed to the Spirit World.
"Trespassing," reveals how the American Indian Movement, California residents and environmentalists worked with the Mohave and Colorado River Indian Tribes' members to halt the proposed nuclear dump at Ward Valley. It also documents the Western Shoshone's opposition to the nuclear annihilation of their territory.
Venue for Santa Monica:
Discussion with film director Carlos DeMenezes, film star Steve Lopez of the Fort Mojave Nation, and Shundahai Network co-founder Julia Moon Sparrow.
Where: UC Santa Barbara, Theatre & Dance 1701 [click here for campus map: http://www.aw.id.ucsb.edu/maps/] Starting Time: 8 p.m.
BACKGROUND:
Over nine years in the making, "Trespassing" is a feature-length documentary film that poetically examines our fight for survival. By focusing on the battle around nuclear storage in the United States, the film carefully unpacks a deadly controversy around land rights, uranium mining, nuclear testing and the disposal of nuclear waste.
Filmed in and around Native American sacred sites in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, Four-Corners and California’s Mojave Desert, "Trespassing" captures the breathtaking beauty of the natural environment, while documenting the actions of indigenous people and others as they risk relocation, eviction and arrest to prevent further desecration of these lands, the air and the water by nuclear waste.
In revisiting the consequences of U.S. nuclear policy, "Trespassing" reveals a common thread in the lives of its protagonists, demonstrating how the actions of the past resonate in the present. The film introduces a range of perspectives, including Stewart L. Udall (former Secretary of the Interior under Kennedy and Johnson), Corbin Harney (Western Shoshone spiritual leader), Steve Lopez (Fort Mojave Indian and Coordinator for the Native Nations Alliance), Anthony Guarisco (Director, Alliance of Atomic Veterans) and Dorothy Purley (Laguna Indian and former uranium miner). Each story adds a layer of humanity to this evocative meditation on the ability of a war culture to bring itself to the brink of annihilation while simultaneously producing "gatekeepers" to combat that annihilation."Trespassing" offers an in depth and provocative examination of historical survival and struggle designed to impact the present generation and alter a deadly course of action.
To view the trailer, visit http://www.trespassingdocumentary.com/site.asp
THINK OUTSIDE THE BOMB NATIONAL CONFERENCE
The film screening is a part of the Think Outside the Bomb national conference which takes place from August 16-19 at UCSB. Think Outside the Bomb is a national network of activists who come together based on a common interest in nuclear abolition. For more information, including regarding how to participate in the entire conference, visit http://www.thinkoutsidethebomb.org/.
MORE INFORMATION:
Contact Will Parrish or Katie Murray, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation - http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=youth@napf.org – (805) 965-3443. Or visit http://www.trespassingdocumentary.com/,http://www.thinkoutsidethebomb.org/, or http://www.wagingpeace.org/.
ADMISSION:
FREE, with suggested $10 donation.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
- Carlos DeMenezes took ten years to make Trespassing, his first feature-length documentary, winner of the Best Documentary Feature award at the 2005 Boston International Film Festival, Best Documentary at the 8th Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indigenas held in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006, and over 10 other documentary film awards. He studied film production at University of California Los Angeles Extension and trained at the Macunaima Theatre School in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and lives in Los Angeles, California.
- Steve Lopez is coordinator of the Native Nations Alliance and was a leader of the historic grassroots campaign that defeated the proposed Ward Valley, California nuclear waste dump (http://www.greenaction.org/wardvalley/index.shtml).
- Julia Moon Sparrow is co-founder and a former staff member of the Shundahai Network, dedicated to “breaking the nuclear chain”. Shundahai Network was founded in 1994 at the request of the internationally revered Western Shoshone activist Corbin Harney, who passed away this past July 10th. The organization has been at the forefront of resistance to nuclear colonialism, nuclear weapons testing, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, and a variety of other struggles. Shundahai is a Western Shoshone (Newe) word meaning “peace and harmony with all creation.”

Will Parrish
Youth Empowerment Director
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
PMB 121, 1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 1
Santa Barbara, CA 93108
http://us.f520.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=wparrish@napf.org
Phone: (805) 965-3443; Fax: (805) 568-0466
www.wagingpeace.org/youth; http://www.ucnuclearfree.org/; http://www.thinkoutsidethebomb.org/

Photos: Scene from Trespassing; Corbin Harney; Western Shoshone territory, now known as Nevada, scarred by the annihilation of bombs and nuclear testing/Courtesy photos