2009 Photo: No to Torture

This photo vanished TWICE from the Censored News blog, so it is now being reposted. Torture protester Joshua Harris is being carried away by soldiers at the Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Joshua was one of five people arrested as they crossed on to the base in November, to make a stand against US torture. Fort Huachuca is where the School of Americas torture manual was produced. The US acknowledged production of the manual in 1996. The manual was used to train military leaders, including those in Latin America responsible for the torture, rape and murder of Indigenous Peoples. Fort Huachuca was also linked to torture at Abu Ghraib. Photo Brenda Norrell.

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Brenda Norrell: Hate Crimes for Christmas
UN Observer - ‎Dec 29, 2009‎
2009-12-29 Hate crimes against African-Americans and the number of hate groups increased in the United States during this decade, according to US ...
Ten Events of the Decade
The NarcoSphere - Brenda Norrell -
By Brenda Norrell Indigenous Peoples made history throughout this decade, struggling to protect Mother Earth, resisting colonization and exposing genocide. ...
US Coyote at Work: Indian Trust Fund Settlement Scam
The NarcoSphere - Brenda Norrell - ‎Dec 9, 2009‎
By Brenda Norrell The same US government that brought us the home mortgage, seize-everything-you-have scam, and the bail-out-the-billionaires programs, ...
Hate crimes for Christmas
The NarcoSphere - Brenda Norrell - ‎Dec 27, 2009‎
Hate crimes against African-Americans and the number of hate groups increased in the United States during this decade, according to US ...
Indigenous Peoples in Copenhagen: Ruling out the Nuclear Option -- Neither ...
The NarcoSphere - Brenda Norrell - ‎Dec 13, 2009‎
By Brenda Norrell Photo by Ben Powless, Mohawk youth from Six Nations, Ontario, now in Copenhagen. Indigenous Peoples led the 100000 strong Peoples Climate ...
Leave It in the Ground
Sri Lanka Guardian - Brenda Norrell - ‎Dec 13, 2009‎
(December 14, Washington, Sri Lanka Guardian) As snow covers the land on Black Mesa, Louise Benally, Navajo resisting relocation on Big ...
A new emerging news industry seeks higher moral ground
Atlantic Free Press - Brenda Norrell - ‎Dec 9, 2009‎
by Brenda Norrell There is a news revolution underway, evolving in much the same way that the Civil Rights movement evolved. People got fed up, ... US border crisis. Imperialist Human Rights violations of the poor prompt ICE ...

Ten Events of the Decade

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Photos by Brenda Norrell: Big Mountain Sundance grounds destroyed; Marcos and Comandantes in Magdalena, Sonora, Mexico; Mike Wilson, Tohono O'odham, at his humanitarian water station on O'odham land near border.

Indigenous Peoples made history throughout this decade, struggling to protect Mother Earth, resisting colonization and exposing genocide. In the movements to resist oppression and protect the sacred, Native people carved out their place in history. Here are ten of those events:
--Five Navajo women were arrested as they brought the Sundance Tree in at Big Mountain on Navajoland. Then, the Sundance grounds were destroyed at Big Mountain by BIA, Hopi Rangers and Apache County officers, who put the Sundance Tree through a wood chipper. Navajos resisting relocation at Big Mountain also joined Hopi and Lakota in New York and addressed stockholders of Lehman Brothers, demanding a halt to Peabody Coal's mining on Black Mesa.
--Lakota protected the remains of the Ghost Dancers from excavations at the Stronghold. The Ghost Dancers fled there from the Massacre of Wounded Knee, to the Stronghold in the Badlands on Pine Ridge, S.D. It was also here that the US seized Lakota lands and displaced families for a bombing range during WW II. Also in this decade, Lakotas faced off with the Lewis and Clark Expedition in Chamberlain, S.D., demanding the Expedition halt, because Lewis and Clark were harbingers of genocide for American Indians.
--Kahentinetha Horn and Katenies, publisher and editor of Mohawk Nation News, Mohawk grandmothers beaten by Canadian border guards. Kahentinetha suffered a heart attack, induced by border agents in a stresshold and is now recovering. Katenies is now in jail, resisting the colonizers court system in Canada.
--Solidarity between Native Americans in the United States and the Zapatistas Subcomandante Marcos and the Comandantes, solidified when the Zapatistas came to Sonora, Mexico, near the Arizona border, and were hosted by the O'odham, Yaqui, Kumeyaay and other Indian Nations along the northern border of Mexico.
--The Indigenous Border Summits of the Americas, 2006 and 2007, brought together Indigenous Peoples from the northern and southern borders to document human rights abuses for the United Nations. Mohawk Warriors led the resistance by speaking out against the arrest of Indigenous Peoples, a federal spy tower and construction of the border wall, all on Tohono O'odham land.
--The struggle to protect American Indian sacred places: From gold mining on Mount Tenabo on Western Shoshone land, coal-fired power plants on Navajoland and snow made from sewage water on San Francisco Peaks, to biker bars at Bear Butte, Native Americans struggled throughout the decade to protect Mother Earth. Havasupai and Acoma Pueblo hosted forums to halt uranium mining in the Southwest.
--The passing of great Native American leaders and pathmakers, including Floyd Westerman and Roberta Blackgoat, and the rise of the mediums of video, music and the Internet to tell stories and document the facts. During the collapse of the mainstream media, these mediums exposed atrocities, including the assassinations of Indigenous mining activists, and inspired action, including the Indigenous Environmental Network's actions for climate change in Copenhagen.
--Indigenous women rising to the forefront to speak out against border oppression, US colonization, oppression by elected tribal governments and the truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. From Big Mountain on Navajoland to the O'odham on the border in the south to the Mohawks on the border at the north, Indigenous women's words were flames of truth.
--Humanitarian aid at the border: Even now when faced with arrest and prosecution, volunteers continue to put out water for the dying and rescue migrants dying in the Sonoran Desert.
--The sovereign self: The rise in resistance to oppression, based on personal sovereignty, in the collective movement for justice, dignity and autonomy.
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Quotes of the Decade: Lakota, Ponca and Kiowa to Lewis and Clark Genocide Re-enactors:
http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com/2010/01/quotes-of-decade-lewis-and-clark-and.html

Happy New Year Censored News Readers

Happy New Year and the best in 2010. (Photo: Havasupai Gathering to Halt Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon, held in July, 2009. Photo Brenda Norrell.)

Reflections: A sense of place and the muse

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

Writers know that when it comes to being present, there is no substitute for being there. Some reporters spend their entire lives writing about issues and people, without ever being there. Their news reports are based on press releases, primarily written by politicians and corporations. Their contact is often a phone call or two and the comments are quoted, regardless of whether the comments are facts or lies. Many of these reporters rely on plagiarism, rewriting the articles of reporters who are actually on the scene, or at least know what they are writing about.
There is hollowness to their writing. For readers, there is a feeling in the gut, a sense of intuition, that something is wrong, that the writer isn't telling the truth.
This has been the situation for the past 28 years that I've been a journalist. Sadly now, because of the collapse in the economy and the bankruptcy of so many newspapers, even these shallow news articles are vanishing, with their shallow news reporters.
The bankruptcy and moral decay of the news media has an even more profound and tragic outcome. It is allows corporate criminals to continue without watchdogs, including the seizure of Indigenous lands and water rights. The assassinations continue by mining and logging companies around the world, with Canadian mining companies now in the forefront of the genocide of Indigenous Peoples.
By manipulating public sentiment, as CNN has become a master at, corporations and politicians are carrying out their crimes without media watchdogs. Internet news does expose these crimes, but much of America does not have access to the Internet. Even for those who do, not all Americans read the news online.
Still, CNN and television news can be held responsible. So can those reporters who continue to promote corporate and political agendas, such as the coal-fired power plant Desert Rock on Navajoland opposed by Navajos who live on the land, Peabody Coal's mining of Black Mesa and President Obama’s war in Afghanistan.
Even now when the media has fallen to an all time low in public opinion and respect, publishers and producers still care when the public says they have had enough.
So drop them a line or make a phone call. Tell them that you know what they are doing. Tell them that you are fed up.
For writers and reporters, we are always reminded to listen to the muse, that quiet and steady voice within that gives up direction. Sometimes our conscious minds do not want to listen to the muse. That was the case when I wrote, “Hate Crimes for Christmas." It was not easy to write this on Christmas Day. After it was published, I expected a steady stream of hate mail in response from people arguing in favor of the war in Afghanistan and defending President Obama’s first year in office. I expected people to argue that military recruiters are not targeting people of color as expendables to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, there have been no such e-mails.
The hate crimes are a matter of public record. Of course, during the days when the Ku Klux Klan reigned with terror over the past decades, especially in the Deep South, less of these crimes were reported and prosecuted.
The same is true for the torture and murder of American Indians in bordertowns. The ACLU has documented that American Indians are more often targeted by police in routine traffic stops than non-Indians. After being charged, American Indians are given longer sentences for the same crimes than non-Indians.
The American Indian Movement has been exposing these facts over the past decades. It has become known as DWI "Driving While Indian."
Not all of the news is bad. There are still many people out there who care and sacrifice for humanity. Thank you to each of you.
Once again, thank you to all the readers of Censored News, without you there would be no reason to publish it. May your dreams be a reality in 2010.


Also see: Common Dreams: Collapse of Media among top 10 stories:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/01-0