November 23, 2009
US Censorship: Editors the blood is on your hands
What the United States does best is to deceive the masses with the media
By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
TUCSON -- During the past few weeks, there's been a wave of censorship and news distortion surrounding events in Tucson. In the first case, the O'odham Solidarity Project hosted the event, "Apartheid in America: Surviving Occupation in O'odham Lands."
There were several ways that this event was censored by editors and publishers. First of all, most didn't even send reporters. Then, there are reporters who wrote articles that were not published. Here is the primary way that editors censor a reporter's article. They say, "Get the other side of the story." In the case of the O'odham event, speakers spoke and there was no opposition. Their words deserve to be quoted.
Of course the bottom line was that most newspapers did not want to risk quoting the controversial Ward Churchill, the guest speaker. They were afraid to print his words and engaged in a form of censorship. In the borderzone, the media is reluctant to point out the similarities between the militarization of the US/Mexico border and the border of Palestine. Along with the militarization and oppression, the two borders have in common the same spy industry contractor, the Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems, subcontracted in the US by Boeing. The city of Tucson is nursed by the poison milk of war manufacturers and military operations.
The O'odham Solidarity Event offered a special potency because of the presentations by Ofelia Rivas and her brother Julian Rivas, O'odham living on the border, a region militarized by US border agents, where the elected tribal government and tribal police oppress their own people. Here, O'odham have no civil rights. O'odham and migrants are murdered by US border agents who are never held accountable.
The second case of news distortion was in the coverage of the Southwest Weekend of Witness to End Torture. In one newspaper's coverage, both the peaceful protesters and the counter protesters were covered as if they stood on the same moral ground. However, to report this accurately as a journalist, the newspaper should have pointed out that the counter protesters screamed insults and slurs constantly.
Sierra Vista, home to Fort Huachuca's US Army Intelligence Center, made the news in recent years when the Ku Klux Klan joined with Minutemen. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists Sierra Vista as the home of a hate organization, the anti-immigrant American Border Patrol. This climate of hate, with its rancid hate speech, was obvious during the peaceful vigil, protest and walk.
Of course neither AP nor the major newspapers in the US sent reporters to cover the US torture vigil. Those present at the vigil called for an end to US torture, the closure of Guantanamo and an end to drones. Drones, unmanned aerial vehicles are now carrying out "rogue assassinations," and killing civilians.
At Fort Huachuca, five people peacefully crossed over onto the army base and were voluntarily arrested to bring attention to Fort Huachuca's longstanding role in publishing torture manuals and training soldiers who carry out torture. The production of the School of Americas torture manual was here, a fact made public by the US in 1996. Major Gen. Barbara Fast, who previously served at Fort Huachuca, was the chief of interrogations at Abu Ghraib.
During the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of people in the Americas were tortured, raped and assassinated as a result of US torture training by the School of the Americas. The US kidnappings and torture continues around the world, masked with the words "secret renditions." Mercenaries, such as Blackwater, now XE, murdered with impunity. Bush and Cheney have not been held accountable for violating the Geneva Conventions.
So, for those editors and publishers who censor and distort the facts of the oppression at the border, and the United States role in ongoing torture and assassinations, the blood is also on your hands.
Video coverage of the O'odhan event and torture vigil and arrests at:
http://www.livestream.com/earthcycles
Photos and articles at Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com/
Southern Poverty Law Center's Hate Map:
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp
AIM West this week
Nov. 23 -- 27, 2009
By Mark Anquoe
Photo: Mark Anquoe/by Brenda Norrell
Brothers and Sisters,
Lots of things happening this week in San Francisco. If you're interested in the American Indian Movement and want to be more involved, come to one of our meeting days (monday and wednesday). If you want to see and be seen, please join us for a public feast on Tuesday or the Alcatraz Sunrise Ceremony on Thursday morning. And PLEASE join us at the Emeryville Shellmound Protest on Friday. Details below. See you there! --
MONDAY, November 23, 2009
10:00am - 5:30pm
Koret Auditorium, SF Main Public Library 100 Larkin St. San Francisco, CA Opening ceremonies for anniversary week events. Speakers include Bill Means, Madonna Thunder Hawk, Mike Flores and Mark Maracle. Also special screening of AIM-West film production "El Salvador: I Want My People To Live".
TUESDAY, November 24, 2009 12:00pm - 5:00pm
Bahai'i Center 170 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA Potluck feast, speakers, singers and traditional dancers from all over Indian Country! Special program starts at 12:00pm. Speakers will include Mary Jean Robertson and Clyde Bellecourt. Bring food to share! Food prep starts at 10am WEDNESDAY, November 25, 2009 10:00am - 5:00pm
Bahai'i Center 170 Valencia St
San Francisco, CA A full day of topics led by a panel of distinguished community organizers: Sacred Sites; Immigration and Border issues; Environment and COP-15 in Copenhagen; Treaties, and Mineral Resource and Mining Extraction; Prisoner Rights and strategy campaign for Leonard Peltier’ Executive Clemency; Federally Recognized, Unrecognized and Disenrollment; Building AIM chapters and defining role of supporters, coalitions, alliances, and capacity building; Youth and International Solidarity with Liberation Movements.
THURSDAY, November 26, 2009
5:00am - 9:00am
Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Annual UnThanksgiving Sunrise Gathering on Alcatraz Island. Board ships from Pier #33 - Hornblower Alcatraz Tours, purchase tickets online, $14 kids under 5 free! The sunrise program will be broadcast from THE ROCK live on radio KPFA 94.1 starting at 6am to 9am with Miguel Molina, and Co-Anchored by Tony Gonzales of AIM-WEST with Mary Jean Robertson, DJ of KPOO radio. For those of you too far away to attend, this event will be audio broadcast live at http://www.kpfa.org/
FRIDAY, November 27, 2009 11:00am - 2:00pm
Bay Street Mall Ohlone and Shellmound Way Emeryville, CA Annual Black Friday protest at Emeryville's Bay Street Mall. The Bay Street Mall was built on top of an ancient Ohlone burial site after years of protest actions by the local Native American community. The construction of the mall unearthed HUNDREDS of human remains, many of which were taken away to landfill in the name of consumerism. While the construction of the mall couldn't be stopped, we in the Bay Area Native American community ask the non-Native community to join us in protesting this obscene structure. On "Black Friday" every year we remind the public that this is sacred Indian land and the Bay Street Mall should be boycotted.
FRIDAY, November 27, 2009
6:00pm - 10:00pm Bahai'i Center 170 Valencia St San Francisco, CA Benefit fundraiser at the Bahai’I Center, 170 Valencia Street in San Francisco! Tickets $10-20 donation, no one turned away for lack of funds. Doors open at 6 pm until 10 pm. Music by Bob Young Project, Local Artists, special guests and much more!! Please bring cans of food for Inter-Tribal Friendship House in Oakland. -- Mark Anquoe AIM-West http://www.aimwest.info/
California Shellmounds
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZenzsAWMvE
Footage from the 2006 Emeryville Shellmound Protest including that evening's news story. When Native American protesters decided to walk away from their secluded "protest corner", the police tried to stop and intimidate the protesters. The walkers refused to stop. Video shot by Perry Matlock end edited by Mark Anquoe.
PLEASE JOIN US THIS YEAR! 11am, Friday, November 27, 2009. Meet at Shellmound and Ohlone Way in Emeryville, CA. For more information visit :
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/11/20/18629643.php
http://www.aimwest.info/
California shellmounds are massive ancient structures built by Native Americans that were used as human burial sites. The Bay Street Mall in Emeryville, California was built on the ruins of a 3500 year old Ohlone Shellmound. The construction of the shopping mall was strongly opposed by the local Native American community, who wanted the sacred site to be left undisturbed.
Despite their opposition, the mall was built in 2001. During the mall's construction, hundreds of human remains were found and visibly removed as waste in front of protesters. Since that time, the Native American community in the San Francisco Bay Area has held annual protests on Black Friday ("The biggest shopping day of the year") to ask the non-Native community to boycott the shopping center that has permanently desecrated this unique and irreplaceable sacred Ohlone site.
The number of burials found [...] still remains a mystery.
"We did find a lot of intact burials," said Oakland archeologist Sally Salzman Morgan, who was hired by Emeryville to study the site. "Its too inflammatory to say how many there were. But most (burials) were disturbed."
Rosemary Cambra, tribal chair of the Muwekma Ohlone, calls the citys new, culturally-sensitive development the legally-permitted erasing of a culture. "Were still living in the world of politics of erasure," Cambra said. "Its just an old way of racism. Nothing has really changed for tribal groups in the Bay Area."
--Mark Anquoe
AIM-West
http://www.aimwest.info
November 22, 2009
Kailey Wong's Photos: Alcatraz Occupation Reunion
Kailey Wong's photos of the 40th Anniversary of the Alcatraz Occupation, with support for college students. Thank you for sharing these photos! 40th Anniversary of the Occupation of Alcatraz at UC Berkeley."A gathering of old and young warriors to commemorate the occupation of Alcatraz as Native American Land. Keynote speakers, Dr. LaNada War Jack and Dr. Lehman Brightman gave moving lectures. After lunch, we marched en mass to support the student occupation of Wheeler Hall as a protest to the Board of Regents raising the student tuition 32 percent."
Read about student occupation: 'Wheeler Hall occupation ends peacefully'
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