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Archive for the ‘Indigenous’ Category

170225 – Arizona Senate Bill 1142

Posted in Congress, Fear and Loathing, Indigenous, Justice, Politics on February 25, 2017| 1 Comment »

So, the Bundy clan decides to invade Malheur with loaded guns. They stand off everyone for a bunch of days, destroying property, dump shit on sacred indigeonus land and eventually someone gets killed. Under this law, these folks all deserve to lose their homes; though how much actual property seems to be a little vague here. But wait, those homes are jointly owned! Not everyone’s spouse attended this little invasion, though they might have approved. So, now the spouses are in the position of having to prove their innocence in this affair. As you know, we still have to prove guilt in this country, not innocence. Homes get taken , families are displaced and eventually the spouses prove their innocence and the wrongfulness of their share of the loss. They won’t get their homes back; they won’t get the costs back either.

Another story; the prolife group shows up at a Planned Parenthood office, chanting, signs and all. An abortion rights helper is walking a client to the door and knocks over a garbage can into a window. The prolife leaders get arrested and lose their homes, cause they were the ones that started this little protest. Same story as above with the families.

Another story;  CA Rep. Darrell Issa holds a townhall meeting, but he doesn’t show. Emotions are high on both sides because he barely won his district last time. He is coming up for re-election in 2018. More than 1000, maybe 2000 attend the meeting. Folks on both sides want an explanation of how the Republican health package replacement will work. Folks are generally respectful but things get broken. Issa gets arrested and loses his home for inciting a vandalizing protest, because he planned the townhall. His spouse is plenty peeved.

People.

Public protest means that the public attends. You can’t always control who shows up. In fact, you might expect that there will be counter agitators who would LollipopLOVE to see the planners get arrested. This bill, if passed, would promote that.

The Arizona bill is nothing more than an attempt to frighten folks and mute the voice of the people. It will not stand in court, if passed. However, it is a prime example of how to waste public money for nefarious political reasons.

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United Nations News Centre – UN chief says ‘today is about action by all sectors of society’

Posted in Climate, Communications, Environment, Health and Food, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Nature, Politics, tagged , , , on December 5, 2015| Leave a Comment »

Reblogged from the UN news Centre:

As the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) marked ‘ Day’ with dozens of events happening throughout its sprawling venue in the north-east of Paris, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the purpose of the occasion was to highlight solutions the world “ urgently” needs.

Source: United Nations News Centre – span style=color:#009933COP21:/span UN chief says ‘today is about action by all sectors of society’

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SOS Clinton Says Goodbye.

Posted in Environment, ERA, Feminism, Great American Women, Health and Food, Humanism, Indigenous, LGBT, Nature, Politics, Women's Rights, tagged , , , , , , on February 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

SOS Hillary Rodham Clinton conducted her last meeting for over 200 world representatives summarizing her/the State Dept’s achievements in prioritizing global partnerships with governmental and non governmental groups.

It’s worth watching the video in the link above. It really says something about her focus since 2009. It will be interesting to see how these new partnerships are nurtured under Kerry.

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Sunday Outrages

Posted in Communications, Disaster, Environment, Health and Food, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Nature, Politics, tagged , , on July 18, 2010| 1 Comment »

Truthout has published a photo essay by independent journalists on the current state of the Gulf. The photos and statistics continue to stun. If we want to change our future, the time is now:

The Source of Our Despair in the Gulf

by Dahr Jamail and Erika Blumenfeld

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Green or Goo, You Choose

Posted in 51 Percent, Communications, Disaster, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Nature, Politics, War, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Bradford Plummer has an interesting blog today over at TNR. He notes that our reaction to the oils spill terrifies him. Well, I’m terrified too.

I do understand the urgent need to reimburse losses for humans and companies who have been affected by this spill. In that respect the Government’s agreement with BP to supply $20 billion to the escrow fund is a start. Yet here we sit, 56 days into the spill, watching in agony, a spectacle of Harvard lawyers, engaged in a dance of legalese over exactly what, why, who, when and how anything should be actually done.

Our Chief of State has become an ambulance chaser.

Perhaps because we did so much to promulgate it, we are not acknowledging what it is, an intended culpable chemical attack on our country, and possibly several others. That is the nature of “risk”.

As local jurisdictions attempt their own rescues and the Coast Guard flails about, groups from locations like ours, from the Solano County’s International Bird Rescue Research Center, have gone to help. (See their page HERE on who else is involved and how you can help.)

Too, the President has announced the last appointees of the “National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling”. It includes several well-regarded souls known in the environmental movement.

However, I’m terrified that our government will not learn the lesson of opportunity in crisis. This is the opportunity to be the world leaders we can be, and end deep water drilling TODAY. Put a permanent cap on imported oils to our current recession reduced use and incorporate a schedule for permanent yearly reduction. Take some of the BP money and use it to retrain oil workers who would have, in the next twenty years, lost their jobs to obsolescence.

Most of all, I’m terrified that we will again undervalue and ignore the true loss of our natural resources. Left brained legal thinking presumes that a list of items damaged is a true quantifier of all that is lost. Yet no matter how extensive the list, it will not be inclusive. In political terms, two years more of presidential place holding will be a long time. In terms of compilation of damages to the Gulf, a two-year evaluation will be a flyspeck.

The current problem is conflict of interest. Despite his global warming pontifications, President Obama is not first an environmentalist. (One wonders how Teddy Roosevelt would have handled this mess.) He is a lawyer, a manager of assets and people-especially as they relate to energy and big business. As such, he needs to be convinced of his course, before he will take it.

In the mean time, as the Presidential ponderings continue, I see no evidence in the news that the BP spill would have failed to happen under a Republican President. I see plenty to suggest Republican culpability and general ennui from the previous terms.  Will the USA demand retribution for the loss of natural resources? Will we sue the government as co-conspirators on the attack of the peoples’ properties and natural resources? Will we provide the Brown Pelicans’ and their cohorts counsel?

Does anyone really envision that in two years the Democrats would replace the current bench sitter with another candidate? Do we seriously want another Republican right now? While these are head-splitting thoughts, they are political questions that are really irrelevant to the fundamental problem.  What is needed is to speak for the environment first, let our natural resource live in it’s most natural and originally native way. Then, develop a truly green energy policy from that, rather then the other way around. This mess underscores the need to make our voices known now. Our environment was ruthlessly and greedily attacked. If we don’t speak for the environment today, while we are angry, a short two years from now we will look back in shame.

Stop the Drilling!! We don’t need it. Make the Deep Water Moratorium Permanent!!

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Politico Reports Fund Deal with BP

Posted in 51 Percent, Disaster, Indigenous, Justice, Nature, Politics, War on June 16, 2010| Leave a Comment »

BP Pledges $20 billion to Escrow fund:

[DEAL REACHED: BP has agreed to finance a $20 billion escrow fund to pay claims to people who lost income in the Gulf Coast oil spill, an administration source tells POLITICO. Kenneth Feinberg, who was in charge of payments to families of victims of the 9/11 attacks, will oversee the fund.]

http://www.politico.com/politico44/

I note that this agreement appears to be only for lost income claims. There is NOTHING in this agreement on the attack to the environment.

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Gulf Disaster – Obama Transcript of Presidential Address

Posted in Communications, Congress, Disaster, Health and Food, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Media, Nature, Politics, War on June 15, 2010| 4 Comments »

On my way over to the WH to download this evening’s Presidential address re: the Gulf oil spill, I noticed that Dandelion already had. So, here is that blog’s  transcript link with just about the same two word comment I would make were I able to be that polite right now:

http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/barack-obamas-oval-office-address-on-bp-oil-spill-and-energy-transcript/.

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John Day Meetings

Posted in Children, Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, LGBT, Politics, War, tagged , , , on February 26, 2010| Leave a Comment »

John Day, Oregon had their first of two, town hall meetings, this morning, over the Aryan Nations intent to begin a compound in their town. If you weren’t able to see the live feed, but can watch video on your computer, click the UStream link HERE.

A second meeting will be held tonight. Check HERE for info.

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My Back Yard

Posted in Feminism, Human Rights, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Politics, War, tagged , , , , on February 25, 2010| 2 Comments »

Prisons, asylums, pedophiles, crooks, other felons who have completed “rehabilitation” (Whatever that might mean these days.) halfway houses, shelters: proximity to all these can change a home’s value.

I have a home. I have thought about what it might mean if someone with a criminal past takes up residence nearby. Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but confronted with the idea of these folks next door, I am undisturbed. People who have completed their sentence should be entitled to reenter the public stream. If I learned that some of these folks were still more dangerous than my other neighbors, I would become alert, but I would jump to the arguments of improper rehabilitation, inadequate understanding of the nature of human behavior, like that in pedophiles, poverty, pain, inadequate upbringing and subsequent failure of personal accountability. However, under the existing law they were entitled to try and begin anew. Rather, existing law should be rewritten to better address failures of rehabilitation, and rehabilitation, itself, should be changed.

I have great difficulty however, with the idea of a group of people moving into my neighborhood who are unrepentantly dedicated to the twin propositions of hatred and separatism. Since I choose to embrace the diversity of humanity, and I am a woman, I am a co-habitator and enemy of such groups; worthy therefore, of shooting, or maybe worse, since the bullet may have more value than me. It’s a personal conundrum, that the price of diversity means enmity, and that I would choose restriction for those who would shoot me as some form of first amendment rights, but have not yet done so. This is how I feel, and I am unable to reconcile it.

Consider then, Oregon, one of my favorite places, the home of relatives, and my husband’s childhood. Now, it is true that Eastern and Southern Oregon tends to the more conservative side. There are, as well, there are other rightist themes about. WorldNetDaily is alive and well in Roseburg. As a nest for right wing rabid bats, certain areas have found themselves over the years to be dripping in guano. Yet, it is no small thing when an Idaho Chapter of the Aryan Nations announces their intent to locate to John Day, Oregon.

From the perspective of a Californian, I also don’t like the idea that in a national emergency, Highway 395, the main backdoor road riding the spine of California and dipping into Reno, could be subject to the bottleneck of survivalist separatist antics of a racist group like the Aryan Nations. It smacks of the bad side of the TV series “Jericho”.

So though I have avoided it, finally today, I joined Facebook. HERE is why.

Don’t let this happen, John Day!!!  John Day is too beautiful a place to drip in guano.

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091214 – Monday Ketchup

Posted in 51 Percent, Communications, ERA, Feminist Majority, Humanism, Indigenous, Justice, Politics, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 14, 2009| Leave a Comment »

It’s a world sprung anew. Even as we tweet away, others are watching. Transparency will be even more important – it’s time to end the Patriot Act. Only if we are vigilant about our rights, and work to be part of the legal architecture that builds around our new forms of communication, will those rights be upheld. It’s up to us.

Twitter Tapping

Published: December 12, 2009

The government is increasingly monitoring Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites for tax delinquents, copyright infringers and political protesters. A public interest group has filed a lawsuit to learn more about this monitoring, in the hope of starting a national discussion and modifying privacy laws as necessary for the online era.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13sun2.html?src=tptw

I drove through Pecos once in 2006. It was in the evening, we were late, and my family, in the back of the RV was hot and already tired of the trip from SF to Leander, where my older daughter lived. There might have been three other cars on the road with me. A man was out on the main road with a big bunch of gorgeous looking cantaloupes – a tired man. His eyes bored right into mine as I passed. I hated myself even as I was doing it, but I passed him and his cantaloupes by.

Later, in the real estate news I saw homes going for next to nothing.  I saw a hundred acre farm, it could have been that tired old man’s, flat and plowed, with water and a home, for sale for less than most RV’s. Desperation builds desperate lives. Profit based prisons sprout and grow is such places. They are a disease of human nature preying on the desperate and less than equal. They do not provide equal protection under the law, as I think of it. They do not profit society. They profit people like those running the Vanguard Group and Geo Corporation and Wackenhut.

A Death in Texas

Profits, poverty, and immigration converge

Tom Barry

The Reeves County Detention Complex burns on the morning of February 2, 2009.

County Clerk Dianne Florez noticed it first. Plumes of smoke were rising outside the small West Texas town of Pecos. “The prison is burning again,” she announced.

About a month and a half before, on December 12, 2008, inmates had rioted to protest the death of one of their own, Jesus Manuel Galindo, 32. When Galindo’s body was removed from the prison in what looked to them like a large black trash bag, they set fire to the recreational center and occupied the exercise yard overnight. Using smuggled cell phones, they told worried family members and the media about poor medical care in the prison and described the treatment of Galindo, who had been in solitary confinement since mid-November. During that time, fellow inmates and his mother, who called the prison nearly every day, had warned authorities that Galindo needed daily medication for epilepsy and was suffering from severe seizures in the “security housing unit,” which the inmates call the “hole.”

http://bostonreview.net/BR34.6/barry.php

As the article below states, in fact, civil rights have been warred against since the law’s inception in 1964 – essentially how long our country has been leading off to the right. Human rights, that include equality by sex, were never achieved, even though some rights have been eked out law by law. It will take years to put us back on the path. The time to start is NOW and this looks like a start.

Civil Rights Division To Clean Up After 8 Years of Bush

Posted Wed, 12/09/2009 – 07:08

“Bush packed the Civil Rights Division with right-wing lawyers and administrators determined to erase even the most elementary gains made by minorities.”

The Obama administration has accomplished one solid achievement that may go down in the history books as at least a partial reversal of fortune for racial minorities in the United States. For eight long years, the Bush administration waged vicious political warfare against the very concept of civil rights, as we had come to understand it in America. Equal protection under the law became a dead letter in the U.S. Justice Department, whose Civil Rights Division was transformed into a bulwark of white male supremacy and petty reaction….]

http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/civil-rights-division-clean-after-8-years-bush

A settlement from a Democratic administration, and for the individuals who fought for their rights:

Tribal Justice News

[Attorney General Holder, Secretary Salazar Announce Settlement of Cobell Lawsuit on Indian Trust Management (AG) 
On Dec. 8, 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar announced a settlement of the long-running and highly contentious Cobell class-action lawsuit regarding the U.S. government’s trust management and accounting of over three hundred thousand individual American Indian trust accounts…



http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2009/December/09-ag-1312.html
…]

http://nativetimes.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2740:tribal-justice-news&catid=55&Itemid=31

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