By Dave Ross, Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Will Miller Green Mountain Veterans for Peace, 4 May, 2013
Kent State Ohio, touched by history. Last night I met, and talked briefly with, Dean Kahler following a candlelight march to honor and remember the four students shot down in cold blood by the Ohio National Guard and the nine students they wounded. The students were shot down for protesting the war in Vietnam, my war, they were neither violent nor even threatening. Of the wounded who lived, Dean received the worst injuries and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. In the candlelight, he still looked young; he is appreciative that people still remember what happened that day at Kent and Jackson state.
I was with my friends from Vietnam Veterans Against the War / Old School Sappers who are also members of Veterans for Peace. In my memory of pictures I have seen of the Guard shooting down on the students, the hill they are standing looks impressive. Actually, it’s just a little rise looking over a nondescript parking area – just nothing dramatic at all. The organizers had laid out four tiny “plots” where the students fell – these small, empty spaces are where we left our candles and America left its soul.
For GJEP Board Chair and co-founder Orin Langelle’s blog post about Kent State including his photo from the Kent State protest at the 1972 Republican National Convention, visit the Langelle Photography website
Note: Clayton Thomas-Muller is tar sands campaign co-director with Indigenous Environmental Network and sits on the board of Global Justice Ecology Project
In the southern region of Mato Grosso do Sul, on the border of Brazil and Paraguay, the most populous indigenous nation of the country silently struggles for its territory, trying to contain the advance of its powerful enemies.
Expelled from their lands because of the continuous process of colonization, more than 40,000 Guarani Kaiowá now live on less than 1% of their original territory. On their lands today, there are thousands of hectares of sugarcane put in place by multinational enterprises that portray ethanol to the world as an “environment friendly” and “clean” fuel.
Without their lands and forests, the Guarani Kaiowá have for years coexisted with a malnutrition epidemic. And with no alternative means of subsistence, adults and children are exploited in the cane fields, exhaustively working day-in, day-out. In the production line of the so-called “clean” fuel, the Federal Public Prosecutor constantly sues the owners of the plantations because of their child labor and slave labor practices.
Amid the delirium of the “green gold fever” (the way people refer to sugarcane), indigenous leadership finds death as their fate–death ordered by the big farmers. Continue reading →
DAMOCRACY is an international movement striving to debunk the myth of dams as clean energy. While large dam projects worldwide are promoted as sources of renewable energy, in reality they cause irreversible damage to nature, people and cultures around the world.
Doga Dernegi (BirdLife in Turkey), Amazon Watch, International Rivers, RiverWatch, Gota D’água (Drop of Water) Movement, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA) and Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre (MXVPS) have formed the “Damocracy” movement on destructive dams, which is open for other groups working for the same purpose of debunking the myth of dams as clean energy.
Note: In honor of Christmas, a critique of Capitalism.
–The GJEP Team
This is a recording of a speech made by Arundhati Roy as a part of the 4th series of lecture under the Anuradha Ghandy Memorial Trust Lecture that was delivered on the 20th of January, 2012 at Xaviers college, Mumbai, India.
“Conflicts — both actual and perceived — can arise between sources of research funding and expectations of independence when reporting research results,” State University of New York at Buffalo President Satish said in an open letter to the university community. Photo: University at Buffalo
State University of New York at Buffalo (85074MF) is shutting down a research institute opened seven months ago to study natural-gas fracking after potential conflicts of interest raised what the college’s president called a “cloud of uncertainty” over its work.
The Shale Resources and Society Institute is closed effective immediately, university President Satish Tripathi said yesterday in a statement. The Public Accountability Initiative, a Buffalo nonprofit that says it focuses on corruption in business and government, said the insitute’s only report in April contained errors and didn’t acknowledge “extensive ties” by its authors to the gas industry.
“Conflicts — both actual and perceived — can arise between sources of research funding and expectations of independence when reporting research results,” Tripathi said in an open letter to the university community. “This, in turn, impacted the appearance of independence and integrity of the institute’s research.” Continue reading →
1. Las Abejas (the Bees) Denounced the Reactivation of Paramilitary Groups -
Las Abejas of Acteal, a civil society organization, denounced the reactivation of the paramilitary group, Mascara Roja, in Chenalhó Municipality. They attribute this to the large number of paramilitaries imprisoned for participating in the Acteal Massacre who have been released over the last several years. Las Abejas states that those released have re-grouped with those who never were brought to justice, and that they are now carrying firearms on the highways, in the mountains and on the paths to corn and coffee fields. Las Abejas also states that a PRI member shot a Zapatista in the back about a month ago. Furthermore, they denounced the resurgence of Paz y Justicia, the paramilitary group that is attacking 2 Zapatista communities in the region of the Roberto Barrios Caracol, near Palenque.
2. Alberto Patishtan Recovering from Neurosurgery – On October 3, Alberto Patishtan was transferred to the Manuel Velasco Suarez National Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery in Mexico City, and operated on October 8 to remove a brain tumor. The surgery was reportedly successful and he is recuperating now in the Vida Mejor Hospital in Tuxtla Gutierrez. His close friends report that he has recovered 70% of his eyesight! Meanwhile, Mexico’s Supreme Court accepted the request from Patishtan’s lawyer to consider whether the Court has the jurisdiction to hold a hearing and issue a ruling on Patishtan’s innocence. Amnesty International sent a letter to the Court in favor of Patishtan.
3. The Siege Against Comandante Abel and Union Hidalgo Communities – The Good Government Junta in Roberto Barrios denounced the continuing siege of the two Zapatista communities, Comandante Abel and Union Hidalgo, by paramilitaries. In a communiqué posted October 30 0n Enlace Zapatista, the Junta described how paramilitaries have already redistributed the land they stole from Zapatistas on September 6. They have harvested and taken away all the corn and bean crop. They fire shots into the air in the middle of the night and the police are patrolling to protect the paramilitaries. The Junta suggests, describing certain actions, that the state police are training the paramilitary members, who engage in military-style exercises. It also alleges that police and paramilitary activities are coordinated under one command. Moreover, it appears that those who stayed behind to protect the Zapatistas’ homes and belongings remain in the communities under siege.
4. Zapatista Detained in Zinacantan in Reprisal for Delivering an Invitation – In early October, the Good Government Junta in the Caracol of Oventik denounced that authorities in Jechvo (Zinacantan) once again used violence to cut off the water supply to the Zapatistas. One of the civilian Zapatistas, Mariano Gomez Perez, asked for help from the autonomous judge and the Junta. The autonomous judge sent a letter to the PRI agent, inviting the agent to a meeting to talk about the problem. When Gomez Perez attempted to deliver the written invitation, the PRI agent detained him and took him before a community assembly, which fabricated crimes against him and sent him to a Zinacantan municipal judge. The judge told the PRI agent not to accept the invitation. This situation is a repeat of 2004, when the same authorities, then PRD members, cut off the water supply to the Zapatistas. When Zapatistas from throughout the region brought water in a show of solidarity, the PRD members opened fire on them.
5. Six Zapatistas Detained in Guadalupe Los Altos – On October 12, the Good Government Junta in La Realidad denounced that 6 Zapatista support bases from Guadalupe Los Altos community had been in jail for 12 days and that their families were being threatened with expulsion. Community authorities are part of the CIOAC Official organization and are members of the PAN and PRD political parties. It seems that there is a history of provocations over the degree of participation in community issues, specifically making financial contributions to projects such as schools and roads. The Junta maintains that the Zapatistas have their own school, but are current in their contributions for the benefit of the community, as long as they are not projects of the bad government. This is a common point of contention in divided communities with a mix of pro-government party members and Zapatistas.
In Other Parts of Mexico
1. Investigation Into Ambush of 2 CIA Agents Continues – Investigations continue into what is now being called “the attempted murder” of 2 CIA agents and a Mexican marine on August 24 near Tres Marias. A judge extended the detention without charges (sometimes referred to as house arrest) of the 12 original Federal Police agents for an additional 40 days and 2 more federal police agents were detained in connection with the case. Mexico’s attorney general, Marisela Morales, termed the incident “attempted murder” the week following the testimony of the CIA agents who termed it a “direct attack.” Morales stated that all of the police agents currently detained will be charged within the next 2 weeks.
2. Police Raid 3 MichoacanTeachers Colleges, 176 Detained – State and Federal police raided teachers colleges in Tiripetio, Cheran and Arteaga, Michoacan to break up student protests. They detained 176 students who were protesting obligatory English and computer classes. Similar protests have occurred at teachers colleges in other states as the federal government tries to severely restrict and regulate them. Teachers colleges in Mexico prepare students to teach in rural and heavily indigenous areas. Many of the students are themselves indigenous. The schools have faced reduced budgets, admissions and staffing, as higher education in Mexico focuses more and more on business interests.
3. Urapicho Organizes Community Police – Another Purépecha community, Urapicho, a neighbor of Cherán, is constructing its own security force in the absence of any police protection from the official government. Urapicho posted a video on YouTube enumerating the problems they have faced from organized crime and woodcutters. Masked members of the community appear in the video talking about those who have been disappeared. One of them wears a hat with a Che logo and a Zapatista paliacate. The government has agreed to send the community police to the state’s police academy for training and has also added police encampments to the area. For those of you who participated in the March of the Color of the Earth in 2001, this community is in the general area of Nurio. You can watch the video (in Spanish) at:
Note: Yesterday, over 50 people, including Earth First!ers and local citizens, banded together to storm the Keystone XL construction site and ongoing tree sit, evading police and TransCanada security and locking down to construction equipment. You can read more about the action as posted previously on Climate Connections here. This video gives a pretty good idea of how things are heating up in the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline. Time to head to Texas and join the resistance!
Climate Connections exposes the intertwined root causes of social injustice, ecological destruction and economic domination through the lens of climate change.
Climate Connections is a project of Global Justice Ecology Project.
Kent State Ohio, touched by history. Last night I met, and talked briefly with, Dean Kahler following a candlelight march to honor and remember the four students shot down in cold blood by the Ohio National Guard and the nine students they wounded. The students were shot down for protesting the war in Vietnam, my war, they were neither violent nor even threatening. Of the wounded who lived, Dean received the worst injuries and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. In the candlelight, he still looked young; he is appreciative that people still remember what happened that day at Kent and Jackson state.
Christy Rodgers
Global Justice Ecology Project
hallieb
Jeff Conant
