Peabody Coal admits divestment campaigns worked

By Brenda Norrell

Censored News
Dutch translation by Alice Holemans, NAIS
http://www.denaisgazet.be/nieuws/peabody-coal-geeft-toe-dat-afsplitsing-campagnes-gewerkt-hebben

What do Peabody Coal, Barrick Gold in Nevada, and Shell Oil in the Arctic, all have in common?
All three are cutting back on operations due to plummeting profits and worth. These three corporations never cared about the earth, Indigenous Peoples or the protests.

Still, the protests have succeeded in creating a new global awareness of climate change. They have made people around the world aware of the damage and destruction, displacement and disease from coal, gold and copper mining, oil and gas drilling, fracking and coal fired power plants.

However, without the loss of dollars and profits, neither the corporations, nor their partner the US government, would have cared less.

Peabody Coal now admits that the divestment campaigns -- which meant a loss of wealth -- did work.
Now, under probe by the New York Attorney General for climate change lies and inflating worth, Peabody agreed to tell investors of the lessening demand for coal and the impact of divestment campaigns.
The next step, as suggested in the probe and news coverage, is for those with claims against Peabody Coal to file lawsuits similar to the tobacco lawsuits.
These lawsuits will hold Peabody Coal responsible for its lies and cover-ups -- resulting in disease and death -- long after the facts were known about Peabody's coal mining and its role in feeding the dirty coal fired power plants, including those on Black Mesa on the Navajo Nation.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/09/business/energy-environment/peabody-energy-agrees-to-greater-disclosures-of-financial-risks.html?ref=business&_r=1&referer=

New! Exposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch

Dutch translation by Alice Holemans, NAIS
http://www.denaisgazet.be/nieuws/ontmaskerd-fbi-surveillance-van-school-of-the-americas-watch

Exposed: FBI Surveillance of School of the Americas Watch FBI used counter-terrorism authority to track pacifist human rights group for 10 years By Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Executive Director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund For a decade, the FBI flagrantly abused its counter-terrorism authority to conduct a widespread surveillance and monitoring operation of School of Americas Watch (SOAW), a nonviolent activist organization founded by pacifists with the aim of closing the U.S. Army's School of the Americas (now renamed) and ending the U.S. role in the militarization of Latin America. Hundreds of pages of documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, on behalf of SOAW, once again reveal the FBI's functioning as a political surveillance and intelligence operation and its use of its domestic terrorism authority against peaceful protest in the United States. SOAW organizes annual protests in Fort Benning, Ga., the site where the U.S. Army has trained many of the military leaders and dictators in Latin America who were responsible for massacres of opposition forces and the creation of torture centers, among other crimes against humanity. The training at the SOA is ongoing and the graduates of the institute continue to engage in extrajudicial executions and the repression of social movements in countries like Chile, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico. SOAW's mission and proven track record are peaceful. Yet the FBI deployed its "domestic terrorism" resources, reported to the "Counterterrorism Unit" and reached out to the Miami Domestic Intelligence Terrorism Squad. It used confidential informants inside the movement to collect information. The FBI's headquarters and counter-terrorism units were requested to provide the FBI's Field Office in Atlanta with "all intelligence relevant to the SOA, so that this information can be provided to local/military law enforcement agencies." Tracked despite 'peaceful intentions' A review of 10 years of redacted documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund on behalf of the SOAW show that, year after year, the FBI acknowledged that the organizers and the activities of the group were peaceful. And year after year, the FBI continued to keep its case open with claims that it was possible that there could be "more aggressive protest participants" or "factions of a radical cell" or other such pretextual alarmist warnings to justify its spying on protected First Amendment political activity. The documents have been made public and are searchable at http://www.JusticeOnline.org/soaw. In 2005, FBI reports admitted "the peaceful intentions" of the SOA Watch leaders but justified its work on the basis that "a militant group would infiltrate the protestors and use of the cover of the crowd to create problems." Yet they admitted that "At this time, there are no specific or known threats to this event." The vague, unspecified threat of future violence functioned as the annual excuse for the surveillance of peaceful dissent. Under this logic of counter-terrorism law enforcement activity, all constitutionally protected peaceful protest carries the seed of potential terrorism — we are all potential terrorists. This pattern of significant surveillance, allusions to violence and then reports of peaceful activity after the fact continued for years. Mass arrests and Confidential Informants The protests for many years involved thousands of people, and included arrests for peaceful, organized, nonviolent civil disobedience. Law enforcement described the mass arrests of 1,700 protesters in November 2000 as arrests for "acting in an overt manner." This included "wearing masks, coffins, puppets or pouring the red substance upon themselves." In 2006, Confidential Informants provided information about planning events in Massachusetts, and the numbers of buses coming from around the country. The FBI obtained shelters and command centers "at no cost" from real estate companies to work on logistics for the protest, which was again labeled an FBI "Special Events Readiness Level." Later they reviewed the 2006 protest as "uneventful" and came to a similar assessment for 2007. In 2008, undercover FBI agents traveled with protesters to the event to follow the activities of several "subjects of FBI-Minneapolis" although they had "never expressed or exhibited a propensity for violence." The FBI used Confidential Informants who dutifully reported on the planned schedule of activities for the protests, the names of organizers, including a person "who is or was a Maryknoll nun," and the name of a legal advisor to SOAW. The legal advisor, whose name was redacted but is otherwise identified with Loyola University, is evidently renowned human rights lawyer Bill Quigley. By 2009, after 10 years of surveillance, the FBI admitted "there has never been any significant incidents of violence or widespread property damage." Describing the demonstrations more as a "street festival," they finally closed the case. FBI's operating practice of political surveillance In 2012, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund uncovered hundreds of documents exposing that the FBI was treating the Occupy movement as a potential criminal and terrorist threat even though the agency similarly acknowledged in its own reports that organizers explicitly called for peaceful protest and did "not condone the use of violence." The PCJF obtained heavily redacted documents showing that FBI offices and agents around the country were in high gear conducting surveillance against the movement even as early as August 2011, a month prior to the establishment of the OWS encampment in Zuccotti Park and other Occupy actions around the country. Other documents obtained and released by the PCJF demonstrated that the Department of Homeland Security and the sprawling network of Fusion Centers in the United States similarly expended huge resources monitoring, tracking and reporting on peaceful, lawful and constitutionally protected protest activities. The FBI has recently been further exposed as monitoring and tracking, including through surveillance aircraft, the activities of the Black Lives Matter movement in cities around the United States. Unlearned lessons and unfinished work of the Church Committee In the mid-1970s, the Church Committee of the United States Senate conducted an investigation into U.S. intelligence agencies' abuse of law enforcement authority to target First Amendment activity and peaceful organizing through investigations, surveillance and disruption. As a result of the disclosures of the Committee, the FBI was required to enact restrictions on the use of its intelligence and law enforcement powers, prohibiting investigations into non-violent free speech activities. While Congress could have enacted binding legislation, the U.S. Attorney General was allowed to promulgate guidelines instead — guidelines that have been watered down by successive administrations over the past 40 years. These repeated revelations of the FBI unconscionably abusing its counter-terrorism authority against peaceful political movements — from SOAW to Occupy to Black Lives Matter — make it clear that the FBI cannot be its own watchdog or self-regulate. It makes it clear that surveillance, monitoring, tracking and infiltration of peaceful social justice movements is a programmatic, institutionalized and ongoing effort of the FBI. It is time for there to be legislatively enacted prohibitions on the FBI's use of domestic terrorism authority against peaceful protest and First Amendment-protected free speech activities in the United States. It is a fundamental right of the people to organize, to assemble, to speak and to peacefully demand change in U.S. policies and practices — without monitoring and investigation from the government's domestic terrorism agencies. Democracy and the Constitution require no less. SOAW activists from across the Americas are not intimidated, and will once again converge at Fort Benning, Georgia, from November 20-22 to speak out against repressive U.S. policies, and to engage in nonviolent direct action. The SOAW Legal Collective will provide legal support and monitor police activities, to ensure that the family friendly, permitted demonstrations will be safe for everyone.  Share this report!   Partnership for Civil Justice Fund http://www.justiceonline.org/ Partnership for Civil Justice Fund · United States This email was sent to brendanorrell@gmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here.

Roberto Rodriguez Uncensored: Brown People Making Noise

Brown People Making Noise:

Dehumanization, denigration and wanton killings

By Roberto Dr. Cintli Rodriguez

Historian Rudy Acuña commented earlier this year that when Brown people are killed by law enforcement, that the reason they are ignored by the national media is because they do not make enough noise.

I disagree. Brown peoples have always protested, albeit, perhaps not enough? I actually believe the reason they are ignored is at least twofold. The first reason is normalization; Brown-Indigenous peoples on this continent have been dehumanized, brutalized and wantonly killed since 1492, so much so, that their deaths barely registers a blip on the humanity scale. The same is true of Black peoples.

It is due also because the value this society places on Brown-Indigenous peoples is virtually zero. The lives of Black peoples is also valued at zero, but for some reason, mainstream media feels compelled to respond to African Americans, but seemingly no one else. And of course, their response to African Americans usually ranges from negative, to extremely negative.

However, when it comes to Brown-Indigenous peoples, the national mainstream media, appears to feel no moral compunction to even acknowledge their existence, except as caricatures, stereotypes, aliens or "enemy others." The result is a black and white world, via primarily a white prism.

The result is the silencing and invisibilization of many, many tens of millions of peoples. Enter Donald Trump… Yes, but not yet.

Years ago, in the era of black and white television, people thought that the reason for such a view was due to numbers or percentages; The media was black and white, because the African American population was "the largest minority" in the United States. As a life-long journalist, prior to becoming a professor, that was the rationale I heard at virtually every media conference beginning with the 1970s.

The truth is, a black/white view of the world is due to ideology or worldview, not numbers or percentages.  According to the Census, "Hispanics/Latinos" have been the largest "minority" since at least 2001. Per that yardstick, that black/white world should have ceased to exist. But it was never about the numbers.

I submit it has always been about the nation's guiding philosophies: providence, manifest destiny, the American dream and even American exceptionalism. This notion that God gave Whites this country [and continent] to establish heaven on earth, never envisioned Brown peoples as part of that vision; at best they/we were peoples in the way. These notions could only exist by exterminating, driving away, disappearing or assimilating the peoples that were already here… for thousands of years. And the ones that remain or the ones that keep coming across, I believe, are seen as reminders of unfulfilled visions or incomplete conquests or dreams. Despite this genocide of memory, Indian Country, it remains.

The best way to deal with them: ignore them, invisibilize them or silence them… the same way the mainstream media has always done. Law enforcement violence against Brown-Indigenous peoples is also through the roof, as evidenced by virtually all statistics (killedbypolice.net), but they rarely make the national news and in effect, never make it into the national conversation, which translates at best into non-existence when it comes time for solutions.

Why does the mainstream media persist with this black/white view of the world? The answer is because it is really about who is in, and who is out; who belongs, and who doesn't. In this world, Blacks belong, but only as dominated peoples. Brown-Indigenous peoples apparently upset this equation.  We can see evidence of this every single day in the media: silencing and invisibilization. But it is actually worse.

One simply needs to read the case of the native woman Jeanetta Riley, who was killed in Sandpointe, Idaho in April of this year, to see the value society places on Brown-Indigenous peoples. While the officers were cleared in her shooting death, a second shooting in a nearby town created massive outrage, resulting in an award of $80,000… for the owners of a dog that was killed by police.

That is not hyperbole. The price of Brown-Indigenous peoples has always been virtually worthless, akin to the price of Black peoples in this country.

This presidential campaign provides more proof; the one candidate who has accused Mexicans of being criminals and rapists, who has called for a 2,000-mile wall, the tripling of immigration agents, the deportation of between 11-30 million people, the creation of a special "deportation force," and who has called for the elimination of birthright citizenship, rather than being treated as a racial supremacist pariah, he was  recently rewarded by guest-hosting Saturday Night Live's Nov 7 show.

No surprise there. In its 41 years, SNL has had a worse hiring record of Brown peoples than any Fortune 500 company in the United States; two Latinos, but zero Mexicans/Central Americans, Asians or American Indians.

Going up outside the main gate of the University of Arizona where I teach, is a restaurant called "Illegal Pete's." Apparently, ignorant that Tucson is in Arizona – the SB 1070 anti-immigrant state, the owner feels free to dehumanize and insult millions of people. Here, police are required to check immigration status of anyone "suspected" of being in the country without proper documentation. Tucson is also where HB 2281, was birthed, which eliminated Ethnic Studies in Arizona's K-12 schools. The superintendent insisted that only a curriculum based on Greco-Roman values could be taught in the state's K-12 schools could be taught.

This issue is beyond dehumanization, but also includes the loss of many hundreds of lives, every year, and this is not a new development; it literally is part of that same violence brought to this continent since 1492. In 2015, this includes the hundreds of lives lost in the deserts and mountains due to intentional U.S. policies and it includes many hundreds of lives lost due to the unjustified use of force, many of which were filmed, but outside of the mainstream media. The killings and brutality of Black-Brown-Indigenous peoples are rampant and it is time to view this issue, not as abuse, but as crimes against humanity and at minimum, human rights violations. It is time either for the government to acknowledge this, or it is time to go to the criminal courts of the OAS and the UN. That is why they were created; to address human rights violations that a host country refuses to acknowledge or address.

Perhaps Acuña will come to acknowledge that this indeed is a way to make some noise.

Rodriguez is an associate professor in Mexican American Studies at the University of Arizona and can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com

COLUMN: http://drcintli.blogspot.com/

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Mohawk Nation News OFFICIAL. SHIT TSUNAMI HERE!

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http://mohawknationnews.com/blog/2015/11/10/official-shit-tsunami-here/