By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
After the Denver police spy files were revealed in 2002, my friends, the spied upon, said, "It isn't just happening in Denver. It is happening all over the United States."
In Denver, the secret police spy files became public through attorney discovery in a local court case. The spy files did not become public because of the integrity of the Denver Police Intelligence Division. Those secret police spy files included cases that went back 30 years. Of course all of the American Indian activists names were there, the usual suspects working for peace and justice. But there were surprises in the list of 3,200 individuals and 208 organizations.
Denver police spied on an 80-year-old grandmother because she had a "Leonard Peltier" bumper sticker on her car.
Denver police also spied on American Indian attorneys at the Native American Rights Fund and a senator who worked for Native American rights. South Dakota Sen. James Abourezk, who once headed the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, was spied on. Abourezk obtained a copy of his spy file and said he still didn't have a clue why he was targeted. Abourezk said he hadn't been in Denver in 15 years. The Abourezk spy file just said the Denver police were watching him.
Anyone helping Navajos at Big Mountain or Zapatistas in Chiapas in Denver was under Denver police surveillance.
The Quakers, it turned out, were among the most spied on in the US, revealing the insanity of US police probes of the peace-seeking.
In the end, after a lawsuit was filed against the Denver Police Department by American Indians, the ACLU and others, the spied-upon could go and retrieve their spy files in Denver. However, this required updating Denver police records with current IDs and personal information, so many passed.
Now, years later, spy files are worming their way out of police file cabinets everywhere, like maggots in wait, feeding on the dark and decaying fecal matter of failed trust.
American Indians were a primary target of the Denver police. In retrospect, it appears Denver activists were a sort of pilot project for extensive domestic spying because of the large network of multi-agency task forces in Colorado and secret US military operations in Colorado Springs.
Elsewhere in the United States, groups of peace activists opposed to the Iraq war and organizations working against the death penalty were targets. Their meetings were infiltrated by liars and deceivers. In Maryland, peaceful climate change activists were listed as "suspected terrorists." Code Pink women who never came to Maryland were tracked in spy files by Maryland State Police.
Now, it is revealed that one million Americans are on the US watch list. One million Americans are being spied on. How can any government provide manpower to spy on one million people?
One of the ways that the US spies on 1 million citizens is to place secret spy rooms at telephone companies, including Verizon and AT&T, as revealed in the book, The Shadow Factory. The US subcontracted Israeli companies to data mine the operations, so now Israeli companies have sensitive information on most Americans. Still there was so much information from recording everyone's phone calls and e-mails, it was often ineffective. Those plotting the 9/11 attack were within two miles of the NSA. Although the NSA was listening, probably even eating at the same cafes, the US agents said they did not know the 9/11 plotters were in the neighborhood.
The CIA has a new strategy: Advertising for CIA spies in American Indian newspapers.
In reality, this means that those Native American newspapers are now funded by the CIA. Advertisements for the CIA Clandestine Services have appeared now for months on the websites of Indian Country Today and Native American Times, even on the same webpages with articles about American Indians struggling against this same oppression.
Mohawk Nation News states that spies for foreign nations forfeit their birthright. The US and Canada are foreign governments.
"Espionage is a violation of the Kaianerehkowa, the Great Law, our constitution. A spy breaking their own nation's laws can be imprisoned. Wampum 58 provides that, 'any persons who submit to laws of a foreign people are alienated and forfeit their birthright and claims of the Rotino'shonni:onwe and territory,'" Mohawk Nation News states.
During the Earth First! trial in Prescott, Arizona in 1991, a particularly sleazy informant was on the witness stand, one of many who revealed a trail of FBI misconduct. Of course, that revelation of FBI misconduct did not prevent the majority of the five defendants from going to prison. The FBI even had to drive the monkey wrenchers to their so-called crime because they didn't have a ride.
The sleazy informant was a former boyfriend of one of the defendants. He was placed back in her home as a babysitter to be an informant. He bugged his former girlfriend's bedroom with a listening device. When the federal prosecutor was asked why she placed this sleazy informant on the witness stand, her response was, "Everyone knows that informants are always sleazy."
As a news reporter covering the Earth First! trial as a stringer for AP, this was the first of many revelations in federal court for me, including the fact that the federal prosecutors and the federal judges are on the same team. This trial also opened a window into the corrupt world of US spying and how federal agents coax people into what appears to be a crime.
The question remains, "Who is the criminal now?"
Read more:
ACLU, July 2008: Watch list hits 1 million
http://www.aclu.org/privacy/35968prs20080714.html
Israeli firms listen to your cell phone calls
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=95689436&ps=cprs
More on the Israeli telephone spy subcontractors:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1029006
AT&T whistleblower exposes network monitoring room
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/att-whistleblow.html
Tacoma, Wash., police spy files; police shared files with private prison contractor GEO (formerly Wackenhut)
http://seattle.indymedia.org/en/2009/01/271435.shtml
Brandon Darby, exposes himself as federal informant in Katrina aid at Common Grounds and RNC, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/05/us/05informant.html?ref=us
Obama says Freedom of Information Act is back in 2009:
http://www.narconews.com/Issue55/article3347.html
ACLU: Denver police spy files
FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force
Spy Files documents indicating that the FBI's Joint Terrorist Task Force is tracking peaceful protesters. Spy Files Documents relating to the Multi-Agency Group Intelligence Conference (MAGIC). http://www.aclu-co.org/spyfiles/samplefiles.htm
Maryland State Police spied on activists
http://www.aclu.org/police/spying/37898prs20081119.html
February 9, 2009
Investigation: COINTELPRO 'Reign of Terror'
From: LPBSG North Denver CO
Subject: The FBI must be investigated re. COINTELPRO “Reign of Terror”
Sample Letter : To The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Congressman Conyers,
COINTELPRO is an acronym for a series of counterintelligence programs conducted in the 1950s-1970s by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against various dissident groups and political activists.
Despite citizens’ efforts since 1975, no serious effort has been made to officially investigate alleged constitutional and human rights violations by the FBI against such organizations and individualsnor have such occurrences against residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, been addressed.
In 1975, the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (or “Church Committee”) was poised to address allegations of misconduct with respect to the FBI’s counterintelligence program and its targeting of Indigenous civil rights organizations and Native American activists following the 71-day siege at Wounded Knee, SD (27 Feb-8 May 1973). That hearing was cancelled and never rescheduled.
The last official request for relief, initiated in March 2004 (and still pending), was a request to your Committee for congressional hearings focused on the FBI’s improper use of confidential informants in Indian Country.
I join with other activists and organizations in asking the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, to schedule hearings on "COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact." This inquiry must include an investigation of the so-called “Reign of Terror” on the Pine Ridge Reservation (1973-1976), the many deaths and injuries that occurred during that time, and the role of the FBI in fomenting violence on the reservation in an attempt to “neutralize” the Indigenous rights movement.
All Americans have the right to know the truth. Most of all, however, Indians must be heard on these matters.
I believe that these measures will finally bring closure to the residents of Pine Ridge and put to rest the tragic events of the 1970s. I also believe this to be the Committee’s opportunity to find the truth and, hopefully, pass legislation that will begin to address some of the gross injustices committed not only against political activists and dissident organizations under the auspices of COINTELPRO, but reverse laws enacted since September 11, 2001, that have limited our constitutional freedoms.
Sincerely, [Your Full name + address & Signature] -- end sample letter --
Send a copy of your correspondence to: Senator Patrick Leahy,
Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. Senate
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
IPF WEBSITE:
http://users.skynet.be/kola/index.htm
and www.myspace.com/leonardpeltierisinnocent IPF e-mail: ipforum@skynet.be
Also, please visit the website of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee (LPDOC): www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
LPDOC e-mail: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Subject: The FBI must be investigated re. COINTELPRO “Reign of Terror”
Sample Letter : To The Honorable John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. House of Representatives
2138 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Congressman Conyers,
COINTELPRO is an acronym for a series of counterintelligence programs conducted in the 1950s-1970s by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) against various dissident groups and political activists.
Despite citizens’ efforts since 1975, no serious effort has been made to officially investigate alleged constitutional and human rights violations by the FBI against such organizations and individualsnor have such occurrences against residents of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota, been addressed.
In 1975, the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (or “Church Committee”) was poised to address allegations of misconduct with respect to the FBI’s counterintelligence program and its targeting of Indigenous civil rights organizations and Native American activists following the 71-day siege at Wounded Knee, SD (27 Feb-8 May 1973). That hearing was cancelled and never rescheduled.
The last official request for relief, initiated in March 2004 (and still pending), was a request to your Committee for congressional hearings focused on the FBI’s improper use of confidential informants in Indian Country.
I join with other activists and organizations in asking the Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, to schedule hearings on "COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact." This inquiry must include an investigation of the so-called “Reign of Terror” on the Pine Ridge Reservation (1973-1976), the many deaths and injuries that occurred during that time, and the role of the FBI in fomenting violence on the reservation in an attempt to “neutralize” the Indigenous rights movement.
All Americans have the right to know the truth. Most of all, however, Indians must be heard on these matters.
I believe that these measures will finally bring closure to the residents of Pine Ridge and put to rest the tragic events of the 1970s. I also believe this to be the Committee’s opportunity to find the truth and, hopefully, pass legislation that will begin to address some of the gross injustices committed not only against political activists and dissident organizations under the auspices of COINTELPRO, but reverse laws enacted since September 11, 2001, that have limited our constitutional freedoms.
Sincerely, [Your Full name + address & Signature] -- end sample letter --
Send a copy of your correspondence to: Senator Patrick Leahy,
Chairman Committee on the Judiciary
U.S. Senate
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
IPF WEBSITE:
http://users.skynet.be/kola/index.htm
and www.myspace.com/leonardpeltierisinnocent IPF e-mail: ipforum@skynet.be
Also, please visit the website of the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee (LPDOC): www.whoisleonardpeltier.info
LPDOC e-mail: contact@whoisleonardpeltier.info
Zapatistas: Women's Event, Oventik, March 2009
ZAPATISTA ARMY FOR NATIONAL LIBERATION
by Subcomandante Marcos
To the compañeras of the Other Campaign, the Zezta Internacional, and all women who are adherents of the Sixth Declaration:
Compañeras:
As part of the celebrations for the next International Day of Women in Struggle, the Comandantas of the CCRI-CG of the EZLN are organizing a sporting, cultural, and political event for March 7 and 8, 2009, in the Caracol of Oventik, Altos of Chiapas.
As the Comandantas were still discussing the characteristics of this encounter of Women in Struggle, we got news of the death of our compañera in the Other Campaign in Chihuahua, Doña Concepción García de Corral.
“Mamá Corral” we called her, we the Zapatistas, to this woman, mother of social strugglers fallen in combat and tenacious struggler herself for the return of those disappeared for political reasons. She took us in as her sons and daughters without conditions or opportunisms, and with a care and affection that had nothing to do with stages and photos. When those of us who make up the Sixth Commission met her personally, we felt in her that strength that has surely held up more than once our compañeras Mothers of the Disappeared of Chihuahua, our “mamaces” in the struggle.
Although the event was originally planned for Zapatista women, the Comandantas were thinking they would also invite OTHER women that are also our compañeras in Mexico and in the world, and, when we found out about the death of Doña Concepción García de Corral, they decided to give this celebration the nom de guerre that we knew and know her by: MAMÁ CORRAL, in order to honor women who are mothers and that, regardless of age, do not give up, do not sell out, do not give in.
And so, carrying out the orders of our bosses, the Comandantas Zapatistas, we send you an invitation to the:
MAMÁ CORRAL Political, Sporting, Cultural, and Artistic Event
To be held March 7 and 8, 2009, in the Caracol of Oventik, Chiapas, and which will have the following characteristics:
- Only WOMEN can participate directly in the sporting events and artistic and cultural acts, and they may participate regardless of age, race, religious belief, language, nationality, or sexual preference.
- The men who attend can only participate by cooking, taking care of children, cleaning, or working to support the event.
- There will be 3 sports: Basketball, Volleyball, and Soccer
- There will be cultural acts like songs, poetry, theater, mural newspapers, and dances.
- The women’s teams that form to participate in the sports should register on the Enlace Zapatista webpage, including which sport they want to participate in, how many women are on their team, their team name, and what their uniform will be if it is the case that they are going to wear uniforms. This is in order to organize the games in the tournament.
- The women or groups of women that are going to participate in the cultural numbers should also register on the Enlace Zapatista webpage, including what they are going to perform, how many people will perform, and what they are calling themselves if they are calling themselves something, so that we can program the event.
- The sporting events will start March 7, 2009 on the courts of the Caracol of Oventik and, if there are a lot of teams, will continue on March 8, 2009.
- The cultural acts will be scheduled for the evening of March 7 and the afternoon and evening of March 8, according to how many numbers are programmed.
- On March 8, 2009, the Comandantas Zapatistas will give a message of struggle.
That’s all for now.
Liberty and Justice for Atenco!
Liberty, Justice, and Safe Return of the Political Prisoners and the Disappeared!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, January 2009.
Story for Mama Corral by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
For Mama Corral
Compañeras:
As part of the celebrations for the next International Day of Women in Struggle, the Comandantas of the CCRI-CG of the EZLN are organizing a sporting, cultural, and political event for March 7 and 8, 2009, in the Caracol of Oventik, Altos of Chiapas.
As the Comandantas were still discussing the characteristics of this encounter of Women in Struggle, we got news of the death of our compañera in the Other Campaign in Chihuahua, Doña Concepción García de Corral.
“Mamá Corral” we called her, we the Zapatistas, to this woman, mother of social strugglers fallen in combat and tenacious struggler herself for the return of those disappeared for political reasons. She took us in as her sons and daughters without conditions or opportunisms, and with a care and affection that had nothing to do with stages and photos. When those of us who make up the Sixth Commission met her personally, we felt in her that strength that has surely held up more than once our compañeras Mothers of the Disappeared of Chihuahua, our “mamaces” in the struggle.
Although the event was originally planned for Zapatista women, the Comandantas were thinking they would also invite OTHER women that are also our compañeras in Mexico and in the world, and, when we found out about the death of Doña Concepción García de Corral, they decided to give this celebration the nom de guerre that we knew and know her by: MAMÁ CORRAL, in order to honor women who are mothers and that, regardless of age, do not give up, do not sell out, do not give in.
And so, carrying out the orders of our bosses, the Comandantas Zapatistas, we send you an invitation to the:
MAMÁ CORRAL Political, Sporting, Cultural, and Artistic Event
To be held March 7 and 8, 2009, in the Caracol of Oventik, Chiapas, and which will have the following characteristics:
- Only WOMEN can participate directly in the sporting events and artistic and cultural acts, and they may participate regardless of age, race, religious belief, language, nationality, or sexual preference.
- The men who attend can only participate by cooking, taking care of children, cleaning, or working to support the event.
- There will be 3 sports: Basketball, Volleyball, and Soccer
- There will be cultural acts like songs, poetry, theater, mural newspapers, and dances.
- The women’s teams that form to participate in the sports should register on the Enlace Zapatista webpage, including which sport they want to participate in, how many women are on their team, their team name, and what their uniform will be if it is the case that they are going to wear uniforms. This is in order to organize the games in the tournament.
- The women or groups of women that are going to participate in the cultural numbers should also register on the Enlace Zapatista webpage, including what they are going to perform, how many people will perform, and what they are calling themselves if they are calling themselves something, so that we can program the event.
- The sporting events will start March 7, 2009 on the courts of the Caracol of Oventik and, if there are a lot of teams, will continue on March 8, 2009.
- The cultural acts will be scheduled for the evening of March 7 and the afternoon and evening of March 8, according to how many numbers are programmed.
- On March 8, 2009, the Comandantas Zapatistas will give a message of struggle.
That’s all for now.
Liberty and Justice for Atenco!
Liberty, Justice, and Safe Return of the Political Prisoners and the Disappeared!
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast
For the Indigenous Revolutionary Clandestine Committee-General Command of the Zapatista Army for National Liberation
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, January 2009.
Story for Mama Corral by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
For Mama Corral
(stories to replace injections)
By Subcomandante Marcos
By Subcomandante Marcos
January 2009
To whom it may concern:
It was before dawn when the news arrived. The cold night got colder and the upon daybreak, we discovered something like a hole, as if we were missing something, as if we had lost something very much our own.
The geography from which we fight, the Zapatistas, is extensive. On maps it carries the name “Mexico,” and to get to each of its corners is a task even more extensive.
In the calendar of the Sixth we arrived at one of its strangest corners, because despite what the map and the mileage counter indicated, history, that complex network of calendars and geographies from below, signaled that we had arrived at one of our most pained hearts: Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
Ciudad Juárez. That of the young women workers killed with impunity. Killed for being women, for being young, for being workers… for being. That of the dignified rage of the inhabitants of Lomas de Poleo, resisting attacks, traps, slander, silence.
That of Mamá Corral.
No, I’m not going to tell her story. That is for those who have been with her all this time, and who remain at her side, struggling for the return of the disappeared.
We went to talk to her. It was a private meeting with her and other relatives of the disappeared. That’s what she asked for, that’s what we asked for. It was in the living room of her house. There we piled in some 15 or 20 people.
Doña Concepción García de Corral was the oldest… and the strongest.
As if the calendars she lived through searching for her son, José de Jesús, had not tired her. As if not giving up had allowed her to see further.
The relatives spoke. They said, in so many words, “We want to know the truth.”
Doña Concepción went beyond that: “If God has given me so many years of life it is because José de Jesús is still alive and I am going to find him.”
No, I don’t remember if those were her exact words, but I think that was the meaning.
Then I spoke.
I didn’t say much.
Or I said everything.
I don’t really remember, but I think that I told them what I would want people to tell my relatives if there were such a time, place, and manner: we didn’t go away because we didn’t love you, but rather because we do love you, but in a different way, in another manner.
Don’t give me too much credit, but it was then that I hugged Doña Concepción García de Corral and said in her ear, “Mamá Corral”.
Then I left.
I always leave.
Again the geographies and calendars came to bring us and take us. But it is in them and because of them that we know about her.
I think once we even dedicated a text to her. It should be around out there somewhere.
Maybe she read it. Maybe she smiled. Maybe she understood what we told her: “Here we are and we will not forget.”
So it happens that I was writing some stories because someone was sick and we had to give them something, even if from a distance.
And also because I’ve received a ton of protest letters. Some from supposed medical societies reprimanding me for my declarations against injections, and others from furious mamaces (mothers) because they were left holding the prepared syringe when the victim refused the torture, citing a supposed point in the supposed national program of struggle that supposedly prohibited the production, traffic, and consumption of injections. In sum, they hold me responsible of the most terrible epidemics and endemics.
That’s a lie. I haven’t received any letters of protest. But my ears are buzzing, which, according to my mother, means that someone is talking badly about you.
So, pressured by Lupita and Toñita, I went to work in my laboratory to produce an alternative medicine for injections. That’s when the first of the “Stories to replace Injections” came out.
While I was awaiting the decision of the Comandantas about whether they were going to have a sport and cultural event for March 8, I got the news, before dawn, of the death of Mamá Corral.
It came in a letter signed by the Committee of the Mothers of the Political Disappeared of Chihuahua that ended like this: “Subcomandante Marcos, please receive our acknowledgement and our condolences. Mamá Corral has left, but she’s still here at your side and at ours. Receive a big hug and our blessing.”
It hurt. A lot.
Later I reread those lines and I thought yes, she is at our side and on our side. And so, with the appropriate permissions, I made a few changes and modifications to the first of the “Stories to replace Injections,” and I told it to Mamá Corral, to Helena, and to all of the mamaces who hurt, just like I tell it here:
I. Remedy for a broken heart:
The Story of the Other Little Leaf
Once upon a time there was a little leaf that was at the top of a tree, the highest part of the tree. The little leaf was happy because she had a lot of other little leaves around and they all sang so nicely when the wind moved them. And the little leaf could see very far, the whole valley and even the neighboring mountains.
Of course, this also had its downside because, for example, since there were a lot of little leaves together, well, the gossip would fly. “Did you see so-and-so all stuck together with so-and-so,” they would say. And this would create a ruckus because the rumor would circulate and then somebody else would answer, “well look who’s talking, you who is always up there close to so-and-so from over there.” So, the little leaves fought a lot among themselves, as they are known to do.
It also would happen that, when it rained, the little leaves at the top were the first to get wet and they couldn’t say that thing about “how nice it is to see the rain and not get wet.”
But this had its compensations, because when the sun came out, those at the top were the first leaves to dry off.
So there the little leaf from this story was, swinging in the rains and the suns, when a strong wind came and threw her off the branch where she had been living. And the little leaf began to fly, turning somersaults, up and down with the air currents.
“¡Sweeeet!” said the little leaf, that was somewhat of a skater.
“¡Yesssssssss!” she yelled when she could do a double loop very close to the roof of a hut. Later a gust of wind drew her close to a cloud painted with many colors that said: “Freedom and Return of the Disappeared.”
And another read: “The good thing about skating the clouds is that the police can’t get up here.”
And the little leaf went from here to there like that.
But then the wind took its song somewhere else and the law of gravity applied itself in all its rigor and the little leaf, not really wanting to, fell all the way to the ground.
“¡Órales!” said the little leaf, “now what am I going to do?”
The little leaf wanted to return to the highest part of the tree. That’s where her friends were, even if they were gossipy. And even though she was the first to get wet in the rain, she was also the first to warm up in the sun, and she really could see far. And even if the wind knocked her off again, she could try the new pirouettes that had occurred to her, and she was even thinking about skating a cloud that had letters in many colors and funny sizes demanding freedom and justice.
The little leaf tried walking, but since she had always been hanging onto a branch in the tree, well she couldn’t really get the hang of walking.
Just then a little ant passed by. The little leaf recognized it, because it was a little ant that had come one time to the top of the tree and she had even given it a bite of her leaf.
“Hi!” said the little leaf to the little ant.
“And you, who are you? Do I know you?” responded the little ant, who, for a change, was in a bad mood.
The little leaf introduced herself: My name is Little Leaf and I live in the highest part of the tree, but I fell and now I want to go home but I don’t know how to do it, can you help me?
The little ant just looked at her awhile, then looked at the tree, then looked at the little leaf again. The little ant spent awhile just looking.
Finally the little ant said, “Well no, here you’re out of luck, because I would have to carry you and I’d have to climb alllllll the way up the tree without the birds eating me, or the anteater. And then, even if we get to the highest part of the tree, well then the problem is how we’re going to stick you back on the branch where you belong.
The little leaf stayed there looking at the little ant awhile, and then looked at the tree. She was there awhile just looking, that is, she was picking up the manners of the little ant.
Finally the little leaf said, “It won’t be a problem, because we can go buy glue in the copy shop or I can just hang on really tight to the branch where I belong.”
The little ant listened to the little leaf and stayed there looking at her awhile and…. well, now we’re not going to say she spent awhile looking because the story is going to get really long that way.
So the little ant said, “Alright then, I’ll take you, but first I have to go see my comadre (close friend) to ask for corn because I ran out. You want to come with me or you want to wait for me here?
The little leaf thought that, when the little ant found her comadre, they were going to take awhile just looking at each other and then the story was going to end without her having solved her problem, so she answered, “I’ll go with you! And that way we can by glue in the copy shop on the way.”
So the little ant carried the little leaf up the hill and started to walk in the direction of her comadre’s house.
On the way, the little leaf was looking at lots of things that she had never seen before, or that she had but from the top of the tree where she lived.
They passed by the little noncomformist stone on one side, the one that wanted to be a cloud, and they thought it looked quite large. While she was watching the little nonconformist stone do exercises to lose weight, the little leaf thought, “from above things look really different.”
“Or they aren’t seen at all,” said the little ant, who in addition to being hot-tempered could also hear the thoughts of other beings.
“Yeah, or they aren’t seen at all,” the little leaf thought.
They kept walking.
Well, the little ant walked that is, because the little leaf just went along looking at the same world that she had seen from above but, seen from below, it was another world.
And the little leaf looked and looked.
For example, she saw the bad and the bad guys, dressed as government functionaries, as businessmen, as airplanes bombing little children, as police beating and killing young people and disappearing social activists, as men raping women, as those who persecute those who practice other loves, as racists, as radio and television broadcasters, as journalists, as political analysts, as commissars of thought.
But she also saw a beetle with a helmet on, smoking a pipe and writing in an ultra-mini-micro-computer.
And she saw Lupita and Toñita playing with some giraffes that somebody gave them in the Festival of Dignified Rage. And she saw the Sup when he told the little girls that those weren’t giraffes, they were a couple of cows that had stretched their necks out because somebody wanted to make stew out of them, but the cows refused and resisted because they were rebellious cows and their necks stayed stretched out because of their resistance, but they weren’t giraffes. And she saw Toñita and Lupita scolding the Sup and they showed him a book of animals so he would see that these were indeed giraffes and not cows with their necks stretched out. And she saw that the Sup responded that that wasn’t true, that the same people who wanted to make stew out of the cows had written that book, so that it wouldn’t get out what they had tried to do. And she saw the little girls bringing syringes because they said the Sup was sick and that’s why he said so many dumb things, and they were going to cure him. And she saw the Sup running away. She didn’t see if they caught up with him or not.
And she saw the dark side of the moon, when Shadow, the warrior, carried her by in a sling.
And she saw Elias Contreras, Commission of Investigation for the EZLN, take some flowers to the tomb of Magdalena.
And she saw Old Antonio rolling a cigarette.
And she saw indigenous men and women, who had never gone to school, explaining the world to a researcher with a doctorate in the social sciences.
And she saw Zapatista troops building a shed to house Insurgent Radio.
And she saw Moy talking to the Autonomous Agrarian Commissions about a land problem.
And she saw a couple touching each other, their skin completely naked, and she saw that it didn’t matter if the couple was a woman and a man, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or an other and an other.
And she saw that someone had scratched on a wall, “A wall without graffiti is like a cone without ice cream,” and she saw that the wall had become a flag.
And she saw that nobody was prepared to confront Polifemo.
And she saw the calendars and geographies walk to meet each other.
All these things and more the little leaf saw, but that is for other stories.
Finally they arrived where the little ant’s comadre lived, and, as was expected, the comadre wasn’t there because they took so long and she had to go appear in another story, so they went to the copy shop to buy glue.
The little leaf, with everything she had seen, had forgotten that she was going to buy glue. So she said to the copy shop attendant, “I want a notebook and some fun colored pencils.”
The attendant responded, “How can colored pencils be fun? Colored pencils are colored pencils.”
From there followed a long discussion about whether inanimate objects can have feelings, a discussion that we won’t go into here because if we do the story will go in another direction.
Anyway, it turns out that the little leaf gets her colored pencils, her notebook, and her glue (because the little ant reminded her why they had gone to the copy shop).
A little while later, the little ant and the little leaf arrived at the foot of the tree.
They had already started climbing when, boom! It felt like an earthquake.
Everything began to crack and break.
As if a jigsaw puzzle had been taken apart and the pieces mixed up.
The radio, the television, and the newspapers from above didn’t say anything about it because they had also come apart, so what could be found out was due to alternative media having published it.
It turns out that the Zapatistas had won the war against oblivion and the whole world was turning to look and ending up backward.
Now the sun didn’t come up in the east, but in the west.
And what had been above ended up below and what had been below, above.
And it turns out that, to get to the branch where the little leaf lived, now they had to go down instead of up to get to the top of the tree.
“Sonofa…” said the little leaf and the little ant, and they started to argue with each other.
The little leaf blamed the little ant because it had taken so much time looking and during that time the Zapatistas had won and turned the world upside down.
“So that the world is right side up,” that’s what the Zapatistas said, and, as is usually the case, nobody understood them.
The End
Vale. Cheers and patient rage, Mamá Corral, patient rage.
SupMarcos
Mexico, January 2009
To whom it may concern:
It was before dawn when the news arrived. The cold night got colder and the upon daybreak, we discovered something like a hole, as if we were missing something, as if we had lost something very much our own.
The geography from which we fight, the Zapatistas, is extensive. On maps it carries the name “Mexico,” and to get to each of its corners is a task even more extensive.
In the calendar of the Sixth we arrived at one of its strangest corners, because despite what the map and the mileage counter indicated, history, that complex network of calendars and geographies from below, signaled that we had arrived at one of our most pained hearts: Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
Ciudad Juárez. That of the young women workers killed with impunity. Killed for being women, for being young, for being workers… for being. That of the dignified rage of the inhabitants of Lomas de Poleo, resisting attacks, traps, slander, silence.
That of Mamá Corral.
No, I’m not going to tell her story. That is for those who have been with her all this time, and who remain at her side, struggling for the return of the disappeared.
We went to talk to her. It was a private meeting with her and other relatives of the disappeared. That’s what she asked for, that’s what we asked for. It was in the living room of her house. There we piled in some 15 or 20 people.
Doña Concepción García de Corral was the oldest… and the strongest.
As if the calendars she lived through searching for her son, José de Jesús, had not tired her. As if not giving up had allowed her to see further.
The relatives spoke. They said, in so many words, “We want to know the truth.”
Doña Concepción went beyond that: “If God has given me so many years of life it is because José de Jesús is still alive and I am going to find him.”
No, I don’t remember if those were her exact words, but I think that was the meaning.
Then I spoke.
I didn’t say much.
Or I said everything.
I don’t really remember, but I think that I told them what I would want people to tell my relatives if there were such a time, place, and manner: we didn’t go away because we didn’t love you, but rather because we do love you, but in a different way, in another manner.
Don’t give me too much credit, but it was then that I hugged Doña Concepción García de Corral and said in her ear, “Mamá Corral”.
Then I left.
I always leave.
Again the geographies and calendars came to bring us and take us. But it is in them and because of them that we know about her.
I think once we even dedicated a text to her. It should be around out there somewhere.
Maybe she read it. Maybe she smiled. Maybe she understood what we told her: “Here we are and we will not forget.”
So it happens that I was writing some stories because someone was sick and we had to give them something, even if from a distance.
And also because I’ve received a ton of protest letters. Some from supposed medical societies reprimanding me for my declarations against injections, and others from furious mamaces (mothers) because they were left holding the prepared syringe when the victim refused the torture, citing a supposed point in the supposed national program of struggle that supposedly prohibited the production, traffic, and consumption of injections. In sum, they hold me responsible of the most terrible epidemics and endemics.
That’s a lie. I haven’t received any letters of protest. But my ears are buzzing, which, according to my mother, means that someone is talking badly about you.
So, pressured by Lupita and Toñita, I went to work in my laboratory to produce an alternative medicine for injections. That’s when the first of the “Stories to replace Injections” came out.
While I was awaiting the decision of the Comandantas about whether they were going to have a sport and cultural event for March 8, I got the news, before dawn, of the death of Mamá Corral.
It came in a letter signed by the Committee of the Mothers of the Political Disappeared of Chihuahua that ended like this: “Subcomandante Marcos, please receive our acknowledgement and our condolences. Mamá Corral has left, but she’s still here at your side and at ours. Receive a big hug and our blessing.”
It hurt. A lot.
Later I reread those lines and I thought yes, she is at our side and on our side. And so, with the appropriate permissions, I made a few changes and modifications to the first of the “Stories to replace Injections,” and I told it to Mamá Corral, to Helena, and to all of the mamaces who hurt, just like I tell it here:
I. Remedy for a broken heart:
The Story of the Other Little Leaf
Once upon a time there was a little leaf that was at the top of a tree, the highest part of the tree. The little leaf was happy because she had a lot of other little leaves around and they all sang so nicely when the wind moved them. And the little leaf could see very far, the whole valley and even the neighboring mountains.
Of course, this also had its downside because, for example, since there were a lot of little leaves together, well, the gossip would fly. “Did you see so-and-so all stuck together with so-and-so,” they would say. And this would create a ruckus because the rumor would circulate and then somebody else would answer, “well look who’s talking, you who is always up there close to so-and-so from over there.” So, the little leaves fought a lot among themselves, as they are known to do.
It also would happen that, when it rained, the little leaves at the top were the first to get wet and they couldn’t say that thing about “how nice it is to see the rain and not get wet.”
But this had its compensations, because when the sun came out, those at the top were the first leaves to dry off.
So there the little leaf from this story was, swinging in the rains and the suns, when a strong wind came and threw her off the branch where she had been living. And the little leaf began to fly, turning somersaults, up and down with the air currents.
“¡Sweeeet!” said the little leaf, that was somewhat of a skater.
“¡Yesssssssss!” she yelled when she could do a double loop very close to the roof of a hut. Later a gust of wind drew her close to a cloud painted with many colors that said: “Freedom and Return of the Disappeared.”
And another read: “The good thing about skating the clouds is that the police can’t get up here.”
And the little leaf went from here to there like that.
But then the wind took its song somewhere else and the law of gravity applied itself in all its rigor and the little leaf, not really wanting to, fell all the way to the ground.
“¡Órales!” said the little leaf, “now what am I going to do?”
The little leaf wanted to return to the highest part of the tree. That’s where her friends were, even if they were gossipy. And even though she was the first to get wet in the rain, she was also the first to warm up in the sun, and she really could see far. And even if the wind knocked her off again, she could try the new pirouettes that had occurred to her, and she was even thinking about skating a cloud that had letters in many colors and funny sizes demanding freedom and justice.
The little leaf tried walking, but since she had always been hanging onto a branch in the tree, well she couldn’t really get the hang of walking.
Just then a little ant passed by. The little leaf recognized it, because it was a little ant that had come one time to the top of the tree and she had even given it a bite of her leaf.
“Hi!” said the little leaf to the little ant.
“And you, who are you? Do I know you?” responded the little ant, who, for a change, was in a bad mood.
The little leaf introduced herself: My name is Little Leaf and I live in the highest part of the tree, but I fell and now I want to go home but I don’t know how to do it, can you help me?
The little ant just looked at her awhile, then looked at the tree, then looked at the little leaf again. The little ant spent awhile just looking.
Finally the little ant said, “Well no, here you’re out of luck, because I would have to carry you and I’d have to climb alllllll the way up the tree without the birds eating me, or the anteater. And then, even if we get to the highest part of the tree, well then the problem is how we’re going to stick you back on the branch where you belong.
The little leaf stayed there looking at the little ant awhile, and then looked at the tree. She was there awhile just looking, that is, she was picking up the manners of the little ant.
Finally the little leaf said, “It won’t be a problem, because we can go buy glue in the copy shop or I can just hang on really tight to the branch where I belong.”
The little ant listened to the little leaf and stayed there looking at her awhile and…. well, now we’re not going to say she spent awhile looking because the story is going to get really long that way.
So the little ant said, “Alright then, I’ll take you, but first I have to go see my comadre (close friend) to ask for corn because I ran out. You want to come with me or you want to wait for me here?
The little leaf thought that, when the little ant found her comadre, they were going to take awhile just looking at each other and then the story was going to end without her having solved her problem, so she answered, “I’ll go with you! And that way we can by glue in the copy shop on the way.”
So the little ant carried the little leaf up the hill and started to walk in the direction of her comadre’s house.
On the way, the little leaf was looking at lots of things that she had never seen before, or that she had but from the top of the tree where she lived.
They passed by the little noncomformist stone on one side, the one that wanted to be a cloud, and they thought it looked quite large. While she was watching the little nonconformist stone do exercises to lose weight, the little leaf thought, “from above things look really different.”
“Or they aren’t seen at all,” said the little ant, who in addition to being hot-tempered could also hear the thoughts of other beings.
“Yeah, or they aren’t seen at all,” the little leaf thought.
They kept walking.
Well, the little ant walked that is, because the little leaf just went along looking at the same world that she had seen from above but, seen from below, it was another world.
And the little leaf looked and looked.
For example, she saw the bad and the bad guys, dressed as government functionaries, as businessmen, as airplanes bombing little children, as police beating and killing young people and disappearing social activists, as men raping women, as those who persecute those who practice other loves, as racists, as radio and television broadcasters, as journalists, as political analysts, as commissars of thought.
But she also saw a beetle with a helmet on, smoking a pipe and writing in an ultra-mini-micro-computer.
And she saw Lupita and Toñita playing with some giraffes that somebody gave them in the Festival of Dignified Rage. And she saw the Sup when he told the little girls that those weren’t giraffes, they were a couple of cows that had stretched their necks out because somebody wanted to make stew out of them, but the cows refused and resisted because they were rebellious cows and their necks stayed stretched out because of their resistance, but they weren’t giraffes. And she saw Toñita and Lupita scolding the Sup and they showed him a book of animals so he would see that these were indeed giraffes and not cows with their necks stretched out. And she saw that the Sup responded that that wasn’t true, that the same people who wanted to make stew out of the cows had written that book, so that it wouldn’t get out what they had tried to do. And she saw the little girls bringing syringes because they said the Sup was sick and that’s why he said so many dumb things, and they were going to cure him. And she saw the Sup running away. She didn’t see if they caught up with him or not.
And she saw the dark side of the moon, when Shadow, the warrior, carried her by in a sling.
And she saw Elias Contreras, Commission of Investigation for the EZLN, take some flowers to the tomb of Magdalena.
And she saw Old Antonio rolling a cigarette.
And she saw indigenous men and women, who had never gone to school, explaining the world to a researcher with a doctorate in the social sciences.
And she saw Zapatista troops building a shed to house Insurgent Radio.
And she saw Moy talking to the Autonomous Agrarian Commissions about a land problem.
And she saw a couple touching each other, their skin completely naked, and she saw that it didn’t matter if the couple was a woman and a man, or a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or an other and an other.
And she saw that someone had scratched on a wall, “A wall without graffiti is like a cone without ice cream,” and she saw that the wall had become a flag.
And she saw that nobody was prepared to confront Polifemo.
And she saw the calendars and geographies walk to meet each other.
All these things and more the little leaf saw, but that is for other stories.
Finally they arrived where the little ant’s comadre lived, and, as was expected, the comadre wasn’t there because they took so long and she had to go appear in another story, so they went to the copy shop to buy glue.
The little leaf, with everything she had seen, had forgotten that she was going to buy glue. So she said to the copy shop attendant, “I want a notebook and some fun colored pencils.”
The attendant responded, “How can colored pencils be fun? Colored pencils are colored pencils.”
From there followed a long discussion about whether inanimate objects can have feelings, a discussion that we won’t go into here because if we do the story will go in another direction.
Anyway, it turns out that the little leaf gets her colored pencils, her notebook, and her glue (because the little ant reminded her why they had gone to the copy shop).
A little while later, the little ant and the little leaf arrived at the foot of the tree.
They had already started climbing when, boom! It felt like an earthquake.
Everything began to crack and break.
As if a jigsaw puzzle had been taken apart and the pieces mixed up.
The radio, the television, and the newspapers from above didn’t say anything about it because they had also come apart, so what could be found out was due to alternative media having published it.
It turns out that the Zapatistas had won the war against oblivion and the whole world was turning to look and ending up backward.
Now the sun didn’t come up in the east, but in the west.
And what had been above ended up below and what had been below, above.
And it turns out that, to get to the branch where the little leaf lived, now they had to go down instead of up to get to the top of the tree.
“Sonofa…” said the little leaf and the little ant, and they started to argue with each other.
The little leaf blamed the little ant because it had taken so much time looking and during that time the Zapatistas had won and turned the world upside down.
“So that the world is right side up,” that’s what the Zapatistas said, and, as is usually the case, nobody understood them.
The End
Vale. Cheers and patient rage, Mamá Corral, patient rage.
SupMarcos
Mexico, January 2009
February 8, 2009
Watching for whales
By Brenda Norrell
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
On the coast of northern California, I am watching for whales. A whale watcher says a pair came by last weekend and she followed them for miles, watching as the whales made their way south. "We're seeing the last of the ones going south and the first of the ones going north," she offers.
In late March, or April, she said, the mothers and babies come close to the shore.
Whales, it turns out, are one of the greatest healers, a remedy for grief and hopelessness. People wait and watch, reminded, that the whales make this journey every year, traveling from the icy waters of Alaska, to the sun-drizzled coastal waters of Baja California, to have their babies. Then, the mothers and babies make their way back north, in a poetic song journey. It is more than a migration, it is one of the great mysteries of life, a cycle of renewal.
The journey is 12,000 miles from the Arctic ocean, from Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas to the Pacific Coast of Baja lagoons. The whales travel at three to five miles per hour, a slow speed for a great journey. They dive for five to 15 minutes.
The whale talking woman, a volunteer with a great whale loving society that I missed the name of, gives me a pamphlet. We are watching for the Pacific Gray Whale, Eschrichtius robustus, the Baleen whale. At birth, when the baby whale sees the world for the first time in the waters off Baja, it weighs 1,500 to 2,000 pounds. The adult weighs 35 to 45 tons.
When the females are between five and 11 years old, they are in their life giving time, birthing cycle. The gestation is 13 months, and they give birth to new babies at intervals between one and three years. But the great gray whales seldom eat during migration, breeding and calving. They live off stores of blubber from their times of indulging in the summer.
These whales, and the their neighbors in the Arctic waters, the polar bears, seals, walrus and great migrating birds, are the reason to fight the coal-burning power plants in the U.S. The black carbons from power plants, along with tailpipe exhaust, are the primary reason the Arctic ice is melting and displacing the great wild life of the Arctic, polar bears, seals and walrus, this great hope of mankind.
It is why we fight the Desert Rock power plant, Peabody Coal and all the others, along with their public relation spins to benefit wealthy corporations and self-indulgent, glory-seeking politicians. While they spin their lies, the whales are migrating south, then north again, to remind us.
The whales come by each year and remind us of the great cycle, the great mystery of Creation.
They remind us to recycle, so the ocean is not clogged with great floating islands of disposable plastic shopping bags or barges of floating worn-out cell phones. They remind of what oil spills do and warn us of what is to come. They remind us that Exxon made its biggest profit ever and no one was there to bail Americans out at the gas pumps.
The whales remind us that Barrick Gold is ready to core out the heart of the Western Shoshone's sacred Mount Tenabo, for rings of gold for the flash of celebrity, vanity and opulence. They remind us that Barrick Gold, and coal, silver, copper and diamond mining companies, are doing this to Indigenous Peoples all over the world, ripping up their lands for the corporate dollar, aided by the red light district known as the media.
The whales remind of that the youth in America are pawns for politicians' wars. When kept poor enough these precious youths will gamble away their lives for unjust wars, suicides or desertion, especially when fueled by the lies of recruiting officers who promise a comfortable office job and television commercials that deceive, promising nobility and glory rather than the reality.
The real need is for desperate youths to die on the battlefield, shed their blood under the guise of patriotism. In reality they die, not to keep America safe, but for the corporate profits of the war machine makers who bankroll the politicians. They die for the Bushes and all their friends, they die for Raytheon, Honeywell, Boeing, Halliburton, DynCorp, Elbit Systems and all the others.
The whales remind us to be vigilant. They remind us that with new nuclear power plants comes an abomination to the future of mankind, poisoned lands of stored nuclear waste and poison in the hands of power. They remind us that the US tortures, carries out secret kidnappings, under the cover of television media.
The whales remind us of the hundreds of children in Palestine, bombed and shot at point blank range by Israeli soldiers. They remind us that the elected icons in the United States did not condemn this. They remind of that the coin-operated media has been silenced, leaving Americans to their lives of denial, zombies marching to shop at Wal-Mart, to make the Wal-Mart corporate owners the richest in the world, and the laborers in sweatshops around the world, the poorest in the world.
The whales remind us that the whole world is in migration. Here in the Pacific waters are the wonders of nature, the forces of earth and all of Creation. Migration is a certainty of mankind, and has been since time immemorial.
My Navajo friend Howard McKinley, who died when he was about 100 years old, told me what the old ones said about migration. On his porch in Tse Ho Tso, "the meadow between the rocks," known as Fort Defiance, Arizona, Howard said that Navajos always migrated, but their beginning was on Navajoland, between the Four Sacred Mountains. Howard spoke of the journeys, the migrations, and a mention of "Up through the Bamboo world," of which only a mention remained of Navajo migrations in the South Pacific.
The whales remind us that unless we search for truth and justice, and beauty, we may not find it.
The whales remind us.
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