Photos: No Olympics on Stolen Land March

By Arthur Manuel

Censored News

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

Photos by Arthur Manuel

Canada may have conducted it's Opening Ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympics but not without a very strong opposition to Canada's terrible and tragic human rights and destructive environmental records. Thousands took to the streets in Vancouver from the Art Gallery to the BC Place Stadium.

Indigenous Elders led the way with chants of No Olympics on Stolen Indigenous Land.

The demo was a strong cross section between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples joining together to oppose the 2010 Winter Olympics for all the trouble they cause for the benefit of few big companies that cash in. The demo attracted the media and did disrupt the Opening Ceremony which would otherwise gone by without a hitch. Making substantive and positive pressure at the 2010 Winter Olympics is really important because Canada is trying to buy their way around their terrible human record at our expense. Any ways here are some pictures I took today of this very wonderful event. --Arthur Manuel

IPS news: Thousands protest Olympics

Olympic Resistance Network organiser Sozan Savehilaghi said, "The Olympics are taking place on lands that have never been surrendered. The people that are going to be impacted in a negative way the most are indigenous people; they have the highest rates of poverty, of abuse, and they are highly over-represented in prisons."

Read article:

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50325

Snowbound in HELL

Just when you think everything is going to be OK, you find you're in Crawford, Texas

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

Photo: Out the train window near Crawford,

Texas/Photo Brenda Norrell

TEXAS -- In the Fort Worth train station, we are like children waiting for Christmas, like children who only get presents at that one special time of year. All we want is for the Amtrak train to finally get here and take us out of this cold waiting room, this icebox inside the bigger freezer outside where huge flakes of snow are bonding with jagged chunks of ice.

Surrounded by the down-and-out of downtown Fort Worth, a woman on my right moans with pain at the cold and the pin in her wrist wrapped in gauze. President Obama is now on the television above us, saying we shouldn’t begrudge the executives who got multi-million dollar bonuses in bailout dollars.

I look around me at the pitiful mass of human beings. Most have lost their jobs or lost their homes, some have lost their hope. Everyone has lost something. Outside frail and desperate people are pushing shopping carts with rags through the snow. Sadder looking still are the young men in camouflage, all going somewhere, some home after a tour of duty, others on their way to war. They look so young, like fifteen year olds, all so very sad, all with downcast eyes, worried and troubled eyes.

Obama’s words about bonuses for the rich are salt on the wounds here and the wounds are fresh. Mothers with babies cringe at his words, as homeless people shuffle past the menacing security guards, trying to avoid being chased into the freezer outside.

Here, surrounded by people who live out of shopping carts, surrounded by people wrapped in blankets, Obama’s words glorifying bailout dollars for the rich are daggers to the hearts. It is an error, not just an error for the future of a politician, but an error coming from a human being in a time of so much loss.

It is cold, a rare snowstorm has blanketed Texas, and people are hungry.

Finally, we are onboard the Amtrak train and headed south. A blind man sits across from me. A couple goes to get him a cheeseburger and I think, yes, America is changing for the better. The grief and loss has yielded a gentler humanity, a more caring society.

But just as I ponder this, the Amtrak announcer tells us that we will soon be passing through Crawford, Texas, and the very café where George W. Bush and his wife liked to have their morning coffee. Ugh. What? How could this happen? I don't want to remember George W. Bush and the sorrow, grief and trail of torture and death he left around the world. I don’t want to remember this man who left a dark stain of greed across the land, a stain in the earth of blood and death.

What I do want to know is where Cindy Sheehan held her protests here in Crawford, Texas. I want to think of her standing out there, standing out there somewhere, telling the world that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are wrong. I want to visualize her out there, taking a stand for her son.

But the Amtrak man doesn’t mention Cindy Sheehan.

A young man down on his luck without a dime from South Carolina says he has never been anywhere. He had never been out of South Carolina or the factory town where he worked. “You’ll love Texas,” an African American man says, who has lived here all his life.

I wondered. I wondered about this state that had executed so many people, including blacks, before the time when DNA could have proven the innocent were innocent. I wondered about this state, where genocide and massacres annihilated most of the original inhabitants and drove most of the remaining Native Americans to the state’s remote border regions.

I wondered about this state that glorifies a man like George W. Bush.

In the south, people say, “Wipe that grin off your face.” It is a tell-tale sign, you know. Bush’s grin after 9/11; Bush’s grin when he lied about the “weapons of mass destruction.”

In Austin, the Amtrak man tells us that the city has more live music than any other, even Nashville. He tells us about the bats that live under the bridge and, that because of a Supreme Court decision, this state capitol has the Ten Commandments displayed.

Contemplating Texas, I guess they need a little extra something.

But the hills and plains of northern Texas are now giving way to the Southwest, my Southwest, and I am going home to it. The closer we come to San Antonio, there is the raw and wild feel of the Southwest and the border, with all its grief and happiness, misery and celebration, stretching from here to California. I am going home.

Vancouver: No Dirty OILympics

NO DIRTY OILympics SAY THOUSANDS OF ACTIVISTS TO PREMIER STELMACH
Media release
12 February 2010 (Vancouver) — The entire Olympic Resistance march stopped in front of Alberta House today to say STOP THE TAR SANDS and STOP GREENWASHING THE OLYMPIC GAMES. Delegates from the Indigenous Environmental Network, tar sands impacted communities and Albertan residents, were joined by a diverse crowd of thousands of people, to condemn the environmental and social justice crimes of the Alberta tar sands and to confront Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach, who was set to speak.
The group was there to ensure the complete horror story of the tar sands was communicated to the crowd awaiting the opening of the 2010winter olympics and Premier Stelmach's Speech.
“We want to ensure that the public knows the true tarmageddon story. A story filled with toxic lakes, growing cancer rates, broken treaties,pipelines and human rights abuses,” said Warner Naziel from the Wet'suwet'en First Nation. “The impacts of the tar sands are being felt by people across Canada, the United States and beyond. My community is just one of many threatening by the sprawling tar sandsmonster. The Premier can't use the international Olympic spotlight to gloss over the enormous human rights and environmental price tag associated with the tar sands.”
This greenwashing of the tar sands by Alberta's Premier is beingechoed by several tar sands companies that are also financially involved in the games. Suncor, Petro Canada, RBC and TransCanada pipelines all have a stake in the toxic tar sands industry.
“The world is watching to see if we'll clean up our act. It's well past time this government stops selling out to big oil and corporate interests and begins creating the renewable energy economy of the future,” said Clayton Thomas Muller, Tar Sands Campaigner with the Indigenous Environmental Network . “These tar sands corporations and all the dirty oil money in the world can't buy a tar sands greenwash.While their profits rise, people die — this is the nature of this tarsands industry. It's time to shut them down.”
Extracting oil from the tar sands generates up to five times more carbon dioxide than conventional drilling, and irreversibly damages the land, water, and forests.
– 30 –
For more information, please contact:
Clayton Thomas Muller – 1.218.760.6632 (Tar Sands Organizer, IEN)
Warner Naziel – 250.877.3915 (Wet'suwet'en First Nation Resident)
Scott Harris – 780.233.2528 (Prairie Organizer, Council of Canadians)

MNN: Could the sword hanging over Canada suddenly fall?

COULD THE SWORD HANGING OVER CANADA SUDDENLY FALL?
Mohawk Nation News
http://www.mohawknationnews.com

MNN. Feb. 13, 2010. The Vancouver 2010 Olympics had to retreat on the native land issue and to allow public political demonstrations. At least 5000 took to the streets to protest “No Olympics on Native Land" in the face of a militarized city. People can see injustice and they want to correct it.
The opening ceremony told the world that this is native land.
Two Mohawks did an amazing job commenting on the opening ceremony on APTN. They were not subservient and confidently spoke on equal terms as our people welcomed foreign nations to our land.
Ongwehone must be respected. We produced the spirit of equality and a voice for everyone. We welcomed the dispossessed, oppressed, poor and refugees who had no place else to go. Great Turtle Island has been a sanctuary from tyranny for the entire world.
For 500 years there has been a tremendous attempt to subjugate us and our territory. Even if we are outnumbered a million to one, this land is our birthright. Everybody in the world knows that.
The ruling elite in Vancouver are recent colonial British arrivals. As irresponsible capitalists they robbed and pillaged the salmon fishery and used native girls to work in the factories. Forests are being depleted. Water is being sold or polluted. Mining is stripping and poisoning our land.
The technical side of one of the main events requiring tremendous speed became dangerous. It killed a 21-year-old luge athlete from Georgia. Other lugers had gone off the same track at the same place. He hit a steel pole and died. Now a wall has been built there. The organizers have since decided the men should start at the women’s start line because it’s too fast and was not properly constructed. In the opening ceremony, a flawed fourth cauldron did not rise out of the floor.
The “Pineapple Express” is a regular El Nino weather front when the warm south Pacific weather moves north making the venues into slush mountains. Whistler postponed downhill practices because the downpour made the hill too treacherous.
Obviously this is a gigantic project. There have been flaws. They are now scrambling to make sure no one else gets hurt.
Canada’s resources have been drained at the insistence of the IOC. Quebec and Ontario police forces were brought to Vancouver leaving the east with skeleton staffs. 16,000 law enforcement and soldiers are standing around and looking for terrorists. In eastern Canada US military are on standby south of the border in case of a problem.
On opening day the biggest military assault is launched in Afghanistan. Thousands of villagers are being attacked and killed. NATO forces are on the same slippery slide as the dead athlete. They will hit their head. Do they think they are going to wipe out the Afghan rebellion doing a surge, putting more soldiers in and pushing them back?
The Mohawks did not want to be annihilated by Frontenac who waged a war of genocide. We could not be subdued. In the end they had to make treaties with us.
The Sword of Damocles hangs over Canada. The ruling government is looking forward to glory, power, luxury and fame.
The Olympics is their banquet. As they devour the moment, a sharp sword dangles dangerously from a hair directly over their heads.
The Iroquois Confederacy [of Onondaga, Mohawk, Seneca, Oneida, Cayuga and Tuscarora] made covenants with the Ongwehonwe nations of Great Turtle Island.
We became the lead negotiators with the European invaders and concluded the Two Row wampum agreement. The newcomers had to respect our birthright and inherent power. We never ceded anything. They can never have legal rights over us, our land, waters, resources and air. They are visitors.
The financial oligarchy always looks for puppets, who eventually turn against their masters.
During the US Civil War the French provided advisers, arms and encouragement to the south to fight the north. When it was over, a Seneca sat between them and helped negotiate the settlement. [History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy, Jennings and Fenton].
In the fights between the French and English, we always and continue to remain neutral. We Indigenous do not want war on our territory. The Ongwehonwe land owners should negotiate any settlements between these conflicting factions.
This current propaganda calling the Mohawks of Kahnawake near Montreal as racists is bogus. It is meant to justify Quebec moving in. Kahnawake is a neutral enclave that is not dominated by the Separatist-French-European interests in Quebec.
Quebec may even already be dominated by foreign interests who want to take over Canada. Quebec could be the beachhead to get a foothold into Great Turtle Island to place missiles, soldiers and military bases.
The innocence of dedicated athletes should remain untouched. We hope that the death at the Olympics is not a bad omen. We feel bad that this young man died needlessly. We give our condolences to his family and the athletes. Amateur sports should remain with the people rather than become a commercial orgy of capitalists, bankers and corporations.

Kahentinetha Horn, MNN Mohawk Nation News kahentinetha2@yahoo.com
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