ARIZONA BORDER WALL: Blasting of Mountain Sacred to O'odham Now Being Protested

Wednesday, Feb. 26 photo by Laiken Jordahl

Wednesday Border Wall Action Planned at Arizona’s Organ Pipe National Monument

By the Center for Biological Diversity

Censored News

Contact: Laiken Jordahl, ljordahl@biologicaldiversity.org

LUKEVILLE, Ariz.— Activists will gather Wednesday morning near Monument Hill to protest the Trump administration’s blasting of a sacred mountain to build the border wall through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

Customs and Border Protection scheduled a media event Wednesday, including detonations on the hill, at the same time that Tohono O’odham Chairman Ned Norris will testify at a congressional hearing about the administration’s destruction of sacred sites and cultural heritage.

“Blowing up sacred land is horrifying enough, but now the Trump administration will hold a dog-and-pony show to brag about it,” said Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s heartbreaking to watch them butcher this spectacular national monument and desecrate sacred indigenous lands. We’ll continue to fight Trump’s despicable border wall every step of the way .”

What: Protesters from environmental and indigenous groups will protest Trump’s border wall and destruction of Organ Pipe’s Monument Hill.

When: Wednesday, Feb. 26, at 10 a.m.

Where: Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, base of Monument Hill, South Puerto Blanco Road

Media availability: Activists with the Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club and members of the Tohono O’odham Nation will be available for interviews.

Background

The Trump administration is blowing up Monument Hill in Organ Pipe National Monument, home to endangered species and Native American burial sites, to build the border wall. Contractors are extracting millions of gallons of groundwater to mix concrete for the wall, imperiling Quitobaquito Springs. This rare desert oasis is home to two endangered species, the Sonoyta mud turtle and Quitobaquito pupfish.

More than 100 miles of new border-wall construction are planned or underway across Arizona, paid for with funds Trump diverted from Defense Department budgets. To rush wall construction, Trump waived dozens of laws that protect public lands, cultural resources, sacred sites and endangered wildlife. The Center and allies have sued to challenge Trump’s emergency declaration, which is funding this construction.
Blasted area at Monument Hill in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Photo credit: Laiken Jordahl/Center for Biological Diversity. Images are available for media use.


The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.

McCain's new mode of genocide: Theft of Apache sacred land for copper mining

Photo by Sandra Rambler, San Carlos Apache
"We need the water for our beloved children and grandchildren and all those who are yet to be born."

Once again, John McCain is the darling of the coyotes and snakes

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News

Sen. John McCain's new mode of genocide is no where more obvious than in the slick theft of Apache sacred lands for the benefit of a foreign corporation for copper mining. Of course, McCain's theft of sacred lands in Arizona is nothing new, nor is the complicity by the corrupt media who are in the saddle with fellow politicians and corporate bedfellows.

Apaches protest Resolution Copper
Photo by Sandra Rambler, San Carlos Apache

With deception and spin, McCain and his team of thieves hid away the theft of Oak Flat, sacred lands of Apache, in the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate on Friday, after being passed by the House. McCain and his fellow thieves in Congress have duped the public once again. And they all came out smiling.

The snakes used similar spin and deception for the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute, which was actually to clear Navajos off their land at Black Mesa for Peabody Coal. The coal fuels one of the world's dirtiest coal-fired power plants, Navajo Generating Station, on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. 

The stench of this government and media deception is also found in the secret files of the United States internment camps where Aleuts were forced to live, and many died of starvation and disease, during World War II. Even in the mid-Twentieth Century, the US government carried out a secret program of sterilizing American Indian women in Indian Health Service hospitals.

The deceptions are also obvious in the United States destabilization of Mexico by providing assault weapons to the drug cartels. The ATF's gunrunning, including Project Gunrunner, Fast and Furious and Operation Wide Receiver, began under the Bush administration in Texas in 2005, according a US Justice Dept. document.

Around the world, the US military's agenda is to provide weapons and whatever is needed for guerrillas, regardless of whether they are on the side of good or not. This fact is made clear in the US Army manuals. The purpose is to destabilize countries from within, which gives the US the advantage and enriches the US corporate war profiteers. It also creates homelessness for the dispossessed, who become migrants, and can once again be turned into profit by private prisons in the US.

Perhaps America is too busy shopping at Walmart -- which has made slaves of their employees while the owners became billionaires -- to care about the Obama administration killing innocent women and children with drones, as they strike without individuals being charged or given trials.

Perhaps Americans are too busy doing their holiday shopping to care that Indigenous Peoples defending their lands around the world have been assassinated in 2014 by mining companies and others.

Perhaps Americans are all satisfied with the watered-down US torture reports, media cover-ups of police murders of blacks, and dull TV news and national radio programs claiming there is no racism in America.

Perhaps one of the saddest of all of the news items in 2014 was the lack of it. As national reporters for Indian country news continued to stay home and plagiarize, they let the coyotes and snakes run free in Congress.

McCain, once again, is the darling of the coyotes and snakes.


Also see:
In their own words: Apache elders talk about Oak Flat
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/12/apache-elders-words-on-theft-of-sacred.html
Ecuadorian Indigenous leader protesting mining murdered enroute to climate summit
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/12/indigenous-leader-enroute-to-un-climate.html
Indigenous Peoples assassinated defending their lands
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2014/12/indigenous-leaders-assassinated.html

Petition to White House

Hidden in the defense bill was a package granting illegal land swap near Superior, Ariz., for the benefit of a foreign company Rio Tinto PLC who seek to mine copper.

Resolution Copper -- a Rio Tinto venture with BHP Billiton Ltd. -- would be given more than 2,000 acres of federal land in return for more than 5,000 acres of company land.

Conservation advocates and American Indian groups, particularly the San Carlos Apache Tribe, have for years been trying to block the swap, saying the mine would damage natural resources and culturally sensitive areas. A site called Apache Leap in the Tonto National Forest has been of particular concern.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-apache-land-grab/rnMfH0WL

More on these stories at Censored News www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com