Sunday, August 26, 2012
GOP and the Klan
Bigotry justified by ignorance isn't limited to the Republican Party, but for American Indian women, biblical based racism foundational to the GOP is lethal. As Ryan Dreveskracht explains, the apartheid mindset that plagues American politics via the Republican Party exposes Indian women on reservations to preventable violence by whites. By forbidding tribal police from arresting white perpetrators of murder and rape on reservations, the GOP is encouraging vigilante vengeance, ironically something the Republican forebears in organizations like the Klan had a lot of experience at.
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Buffalo Soldier
As noted in this post at Mohawk Nation News, buffalo soldiers today -- as they did during the period after the American Civil War -- are tools of white power over indigenous peoples. From the 10th Cavalry that murdered plains Indians, to Pentagon patsies like Colin Powell, they sold their soul to the white master for a piece of the genocidal action. Even Barack Obama, although not a military figure, might be considered a buffalo soldier in spirit as he betrays indigenous peoples foreign and domestic.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Occupy South Africa
Nicholas Mirzoeff at Occupy 2012 examines the issues involved in the re-conquest of Africa: extraction of minerals, subjugation of autonomy, implementation of debt, and expansion of climate change. Reporting on the memorial for South African miners murdered by police, he notes a new wave of resistance is imminent, this time in support of nationalizing wealth in order for the black citizens to enjoy the fruits of their labor, rather than giving it all over to the white mine owners. Bringing the message back to American shores, the same might be said for resource extractors from the Arctic to Patagonia.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The Continuum of Violence
In her Religion Dispatches essay Masculinity and Mass Violence, Elizabeth Drescher explores the topic of "religiously informed, institutionalized, and naturalized versions of masculinity [that] play no small part in the continuum of violence."
Monday, August 20, 2012
Freedom of Expression
On the day Julian Assange was granted political asylum by the Government of Ecuador, Democracy Now discussed the implications of abandoning international legal protections of journalists and publishers like Wikileaks. The day after UK police attempted to invade the Ecuadoran embassy, Julian Assange addressed the citizens of London from the balcony of the Ecuadoran embassy on the topic of shining a light on the secret crimes of the powerful, in particular the US war on whistleblowers. In the same week that three members of the punk rock band Pussy Riot were imprisoned in Russia for singing about government corruption, Assange's claim that rogue state unity in oppression must be met by civil society determination in response required no further elaboration.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Insanity of Inhumanity
The changes in the world that have left outmoded inventions like the national security state and globalization behind, while palpable to anyone liberated from the doctrine of domination, pose a tremendous psychic threat to the orthodox sects that still have a monopoly of force. As such, the symbols of that threat -- who expose the colossal fraud of national security or defy the monopoly of force by the consolidated wealth behind globalization -- are in constant danger of retaliatory projects running on automatic pilot in the agencies of domination.
While the orthodox sects in the US and the UK ponder projects like the kidnapping or assassination of Julian Assange and the overthrow of Evo Morales, the cat is already out of the bag: the national security game is up. Everybody now knows the benign superpower myth was a hoax.
So where do we go from here? What do we do to bring the insanity of inhumanity to an ignominious end?
While the orthodox sects in the US and the UK ponder projects like the kidnapping or assassination of Julian Assange and the overthrow of Evo Morales, the cat is already out of the bag: the national security game is up. Everybody now knows the benign superpower myth was a hoax.
So where do we go from here? What do we do to bring the insanity of inhumanity to an ignominious end?
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Fighting Obama
Chris Hedges discusses the federal lawsuit he and Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg filed against the Obama Administration for violating our Constitutional rights under the guise of national defense. Since December, when Obama authorized silencing whistleblowers and criminalizing dissent using military courts to deprive US citizens of due process, the federal judge hearing their suit issued an injunction against the President's totalitarian plan. And what else could you call using the military to arrest, detain, and murder US citizens without access to a lawyer or trial, simply because they express themselves in opposition to presidential policy? It's why we have separation of powers, so would be dictators -- like Bush and Obama -- don't have free hand to lock away peace activists in gulags like Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Mobilizing Resentment
In the early 1990s, national Anti-Indian organizations joined the
Washington Association of Realtors and the Building Industry Association
in Washington state to create property rights groups with
sufficient funding and organizational support to defeat implementation
of Growth Management environmental protection by altering the political
climate. Key to that Wise Use Movement
task was the recruitment of paramilitary white supremacists willing to
threaten tribal and environmental activists, thus generating widespread
fear among communities in fourteen counties statewide.
Four years into their campaign to mobilize resentment, eight white supremacist Christian-Patriot militia members were sentenced to federal prison for violations of explosives and firearms statutes, in which they planned to murder their political opponents. I later wrote an eyewitness account of this turmoil.
Today, in the Klamath River Basin of Northern California and Southern Oregon, tribes and environmentalists are threatened from a mobilization of resentment by the agricultural industry, with assistance from national Anti-Indian organizations. As Charles Tanner Jr. reports at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, the nascent hate campaign is receiving active support from the Tea Parties.
Whether this confluence of white nationalism with industrial power will be able to derail restoration of the Klamath River is hard to tell at this point in time. What is certain, though, is that the reshaping of the political landscape there -- as in Washington state twenty years ago -- by white supremacists with industry backing, is unlikely to be one conducive to either conservation or cooperation.
*Additional information about the Wise Use Movement and its Anti-Indian component is available on the Public Good Project website, most notably Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound, as well as in the Center for World Indigenous Studies DayKeeper Press.
Wikipedia pages on the Militia Movement and the Christian Patriot Movement contain a number of helpful references. News articles about the connection between industry-financed property rights field agents and the militias ran in the Portland Oregonian in 1996, and in the Anacortes American in 1997. Neither are available online.
Steal this State by Paul de Armond and Jim Halpin, an article about Wise Use and county secession, ran in the August 17, 1994 issue of Eastsideweek; Merchant of Fear, an expose by de Armond and Halpin of Wise Use fundraiser Alan Gottlieb, ran in the October 26, 1994 issue of Eastsideweek, a defunct Seattle area publication. Angry White Guys with Guns: the Rise of the Citizen Militias, by Daniel Junas, ran in the Spring 1995 issue of Covert Action Quarterly. All three articles are transcribed on the Public Good site.The July 1996 FBI arrest of Washington State Militia/Freemen and the subsequent trial was covered in the Seattle Times, as well as in the Bellingham Herald by crime reporter Cathy Logg. The Herald stories are not archived online, but the transcript of the federal indictment of the Christian Patriots is available at Public Good.
Coalition for Human Dignity compiled a thorough documentation of the Christian-Patriot militias, but their online archive disappeared after they disbanded as an organization. Western States Center also compiled reports on Wise Use violence, but these apparently have not been digitally maintained. Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment played a key role in education and organizing in the Pacific Northwest, but disbanded at the end of the 1990s. For scholars, Political Research Associates has compiled a useful bibliography for Studying the US Political Right.
Four years into their campaign to mobilize resentment, eight white supremacist Christian-Patriot militia members were sentenced to federal prison for violations of explosives and firearms statutes, in which they planned to murder their political opponents. I later wrote an eyewitness account of this turmoil.
Today, in the Klamath River Basin of Northern California and Southern Oregon, tribes and environmentalists are threatened from a mobilization of resentment by the agricultural industry, with assistance from national Anti-Indian organizations. As Charles Tanner Jr. reports at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, the nascent hate campaign is receiving active support from the Tea Parties.
Whether this confluence of white nationalism with industrial power will be able to derail restoration of the Klamath River is hard to tell at this point in time. What is certain, though, is that the reshaping of the political landscape there -- as in Washington state twenty years ago -- by white supremacists with industry backing, is unlikely to be one conducive to either conservation or cooperation.
*Additional information about the Wise Use Movement and its Anti-Indian component is available on the Public Good Project website, most notably Wise Use in Northern Puget Sound, as well as in the Center for World Indigenous Studies DayKeeper Press.
Wikipedia pages on the Militia Movement and the Christian Patriot Movement contain a number of helpful references. News articles about the connection between industry-financed property rights field agents and the militias ran in the Portland Oregonian in 1996, and in the Anacortes American in 1997. Neither are available online.
Steal this State by Paul de Armond and Jim Halpin, an article about Wise Use and county secession, ran in the August 17, 1994 issue of Eastsideweek; Merchant of Fear, an expose by de Armond and Halpin of Wise Use fundraiser Alan Gottlieb, ran in the October 26, 1994 issue of Eastsideweek, a defunct Seattle area publication. Angry White Guys with Guns: the Rise of the Citizen Militias, by Daniel Junas, ran in the Spring 1995 issue of Covert Action Quarterly. All three articles are transcribed on the Public Good site.The July 1996 FBI arrest of Washington State Militia/Freemen and the subsequent trial was covered in the Seattle Times, as well as in the Bellingham Herald by crime reporter Cathy Logg. The Herald stories are not archived online, but the transcript of the federal indictment of the Christian Patriots is available at Public Good.
Coalition for Human Dignity compiled a thorough documentation of the Christian-Patriot militias, but their online archive disappeared after they disbanded as an organization. Western States Center also compiled reports on Wise Use violence, but these apparently have not been digitally maintained. Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment played a key role in education and organizing in the Pacific Northwest, but disbanded at the end of the 1990s. For scholars, Political Research Associates has compiled a useful bibliography for Studying the US Political Right.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
IRS Sues Sioux
The Government of the United States has a long history of trying to destroy the Sioux Indians, and the Sioux have a long history of resistance. As Oglala Sioux Tribe president John Steele reports, the latest attack on the Sioux by the US comes in the form of the IRS, which, contrary to domestic and international law, is attempting to tax tribal benefits like housing, health and education.
While those of us outside Indian country gird ourselves for US Government attacks on our benefits like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, we can take a lesson from the Sioux on resilience and determination in fighting the corruption of the American republic. The time may not be far off when seniors and the disabled will have to join Native Americans in defending democracy in this country.
While those of us outside Indian country gird ourselves for US Government attacks on our benefits like Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, we can take a lesson from the Sioux on resilience and determination in fighting the corruption of the American republic. The time may not be far off when seniors and the disabled will have to join Native Americans in defending democracy in this country.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
Collective Quebecois
Quebec professors support students right to strike, refuse to become state informants as part of state repression of students freedom of speech and assembly, reject state violence against collective political power.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
Mining the Moon
Writing at Le Monde diplomatique, Philippe Riviere looks at privatising space, where venture capital from Internet moguls and other entrepreneurs is seeking to exploit commercial opportunities from mining the moon to blowing up asteroids. As these captains of industry seek to further enrich themselves from space stations and yuppies in orbit, the chaos of capitalized space traffic poses another problem fairly familiar to us here on earth: how to clean up the mess.
While space debris and accidents outside our atmosphere might not be our most pressing concern, consequent disruptions of satellite communications could become one. Then again, why worry? They've done such a good job managing things here on this planet, what could possibly go wrong?
While space debris and accidents outside our atmosphere might not be our most pressing concern, consequent disruptions of satellite communications could become one. Then again, why worry? They've done such a good job managing things here on this planet, what could possibly go wrong?
