April 16, 2013. Source: Making Contact Radio
Renowned Indian author Arundhati Roy says her country’s government has declared war on its own people. Her outspokenness earned her an invitation to spend time with Maoist rebels. On this edition, Arundhati Roy takes us into the jungles of India, as she reads excerpts from her new book ‘Walking with the Comrades’.
Special thanks to the Center for Place Culture and Politics at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.
Filed under Climate Justice, Independent Media, Media
By David P. Ball. April 11, 2013. Source: Indian Country Today Media Network
Photo: Derek Montague/The Labradorian
A 74-year old Inuit elder has ended a hunger strike and been released from jail after being arrested along with seven others protesting the controversial Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam on the Churchill River in Labrador.
But another of the arrestees says the protesters, who have been fighting for decades to gain full national recognition as Inuit descendants in Canada’s easternmost province, are undaunted.
“We’ve been pushed around for generations,” said Todd Russell, president of the NunatuKavut Community Council (formerly the Labrador Métis Association), who was taken into custody along with Elder James Learning for blocking roads to protest the controversial Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project. “We will defend ourselves in the court system, but we will continue to assert our aboriginal rights to our traditional territory, and we will continue to mount protest after protest if that’s what it takes to have our views known and our rights respected.”
At issue is the Muskrat Falls power project, a $7.7-billion plan to build a hydroelectric power station and a new dam on the Churchill River. The project would also see massive transmission lines installed to supply power to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
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Note: Take action to show support and solidarity. Click here to send a photo to the Human Rights Center and let the world know you stand with the women of Atenco.
-The GJEP Team
March 13, 2013. Source: El Enemigo Común
Seven years have gone by since the 3rd and 4th of May, 2006, when in the streets of Texcoco and San Salvador Atenco, the three levels of government, together with the three main political parties, and the whole apparatus of the Mexican State, unleashed their violence and brutality by means of their police and judicial forces against men and women who defended their right to work and solidarity among those at the bottom. During the police operation, 207 people were violently arrested and tortured physically, psychologically, and sexually during the the time they were taken from the town to the Santiaguito and La Palma prison. Afterwards they were dragged through judicial processes for years, inside and outside of prison.
In those days of 2006, solidarity between those at the bottom and to the left rose up throughout Mexico. From the rebellious dignity of the Mexican southeast, to the painful border in the north, it rose above borders, throughout the entire planet. That solidarity, that pain and rage that is born down below makes us never forget those days, that violence, the torture, the prison. We will not forget the inherent stupidity of the State and its violence, nor the dignity that challenged it, the dignity that rose up from the prisons. We down below and to the left, do not forget those days, that violence, nor those signs of solidarity and dignity.
Following those repressive days, a group of women who had been arrested and tortured by the Mexican State decided to file charges against the government for the sexual torture they were forced to suffer. The charges began in the national courts where, as expected, they were silenced and forgotten. This paved the way to file charges in international bodies such as the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights. In these seven years, these women have pushed forth the international court case with strength and dignity, bringing the Mexican State to court and making evident the nature of the capitalist system as well as the role of the State itself.
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Note: We must join the pests in building the resistance…
–The GJEP Team
Robyn Vinter, February 6 2013. Source: Farmers Weekly
Photo: Farmers Weekly
Some US farmers are considering returning to conventional seed after increased pest resistance and crop failures meant GM crops saw smaller yields globally than their non-GM counterparts.
Farmers in the USA pay about an extra $100 per acre for GM seed, and many are questioning whether they will continue to see benefits from using GMs.
“It’s all about cost benefit analysis,” said economist Dan Basse, president of American agricultural research company AgResource.
“Farmers are paying extra for the technology but have seen yields which are no better than 10 years ago. They’re starting to wonder why they’re spending extra money on the technology.”
One of the biggest problems the USA has seen with GM seed is resistance. While it was expected to be 40 years before resistance began to develop pests such as corn rootworm have formed a resistance to GM crops in as few as 14 years. Continue reading
Filed under Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Industrial agriculture
By Michael McNutt, January 29, 2013. Source: NewsOK
Photo: Chris Landsberger, The Oklahoman
About 200 American Indians sang, danced and chanted Monday outside the state Capitol to bring attention to environmental and sovereignty issues.
Those attending said they support the group, Idle No More. Many oppose TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline, which would move crude oil from Canada and North Dakota to the Gulf Coast.
They said they are concerned the project is harming the environment and could decimate tribal lands. About 850 workers are involved in the Oklahoma portion of its Gulf Coast pipeline.
“We would like to not see that happen mainly for our concerns with the earth and the land and the contamination aspects,” said Dave Narcomey, of Bristow and a member of the Seminole Nation. “There are also concerns about burial ground issues and violations … not just here but all over the country.”
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Note: Poor old Monsanto, they just can’t seem to catch a break. Who would have thought that making crops resistant to herbicides would mean that lots more would be used…oh yeah, we did and so did lots of our allies!
–The GJEP Team
By Carey Gillam, October 2, 2012. Source: Reuters, via NewsDaily.com
Oct. 1, 2012 (Reuters) — U.S. farmers are using more hazardous pesticides to fight weeds and insects due largely to heavy adoption of genetically modified crop technologies that are sparking a rise of “superweeds” and hard-to-kill insects, according to a newly released study.
Genetically engineered crops have led to an increase in overall pesticide use, by 404 million pounds from the time they were introduced in 1996 through 2011, according to the report by Charles Benbrook, a research professor at the Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources at Washington State University.
Of that total, herbicide use increased over the 16-year period by 527 million pounds while insecticide use decreased by 123 million pounds.
Benbrook’s paper — published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Sciences Europe over the weekend and announced on Monday — undermines the value of both herbicide-tolerant crops and insect-protected crops, which were aimed at making it easier for farmers to kill weeds in their fields and protect crops from harmful pests, said Benbrook.
By Paul Bocking, August 17, 2012. Source: Waging Nonviolence
Civil disobedience has halted production at Mexico’s “top grade producer of silver.” Farmers of the La Sierrita village, a close knit community of about 50 families, located 40 minutes north of the city of Gomez Palacio, Durango, have shut down the La Platosa mine owned by Canadian firm Excellon Resources for over a month.
This comes in response to the company’s refusal to negotiate with the community over its requests for the preferential hiring of local people on whose land the company operates, as well as pay the rental rates for its use. Labor conditions within the underground mine where many local residents work is also an issue. Dozens of community members have maintained a nonviolent blockade of the one road into the mine, allowing only essential maintenance workers to pass, resulting in extraction grinding to a halt.
In recent years mining operations have drawn local protests from Peru to Tanzania and Papua New Guinea. Mexico is the site of several high profile struggles, nearly all involving Canadian companies. Communities are opposing the loss of their land and its contamination with toxins, including arsenic and cyanide, which are used in abundance in the extraction of gold.
Filed under Actions / Protest, Latin America-Caribbean, Mining
By Agence France Presse Staff Writers, Aug 9, 2012. Source: Terra Daily
Villagers from northern Senegal vowed Thursday to fight a project by Senegalese and Italian investors to produce biofuels on their land, a venture already forced to relocate once by deadly protests.
“We will fight those who want to take our land. It is the land of our ancestors, an area of 26,000 hectares which houses villages, thousands of heads of cattle, mosques, cemeteries,” Oumar Ba, a representative of a collective of affected villages, told journalists.
“Whoever wants to take our land will first walk over our dead bodies,” said Ba, who lives in the village of Ndiael in the region of the same name.
The Senegalese-Italian company Senethanol/Senhuile had recently announced it was moving the project from the village of Fanaye, where violent protests in October 2011 left two people dead, leading government to suspend the venture.
Senethanol/Senhuile wants to grow sweet potatoes for the production of biofuels, a renewable energy source which has soared in popularity as oil prices rise and concerns grow over emissions from traditional fuels.
The United States and Brazil are the biggest producers, but investors have been criticised for buying up large swathes of land in Africa to produce fuel to be exported to their nations.
Filed under Actions / Protest, Africa, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Land Grabs
By Brenda Norrell, cross-posted from NarcoNews
Photos by Ben Powless, Mohawk, IEN
June 21, 2012 – RIO DE JANEIRO - Indigenous Peoples delivered the Kari-Oca II Declaration for the Protection of Mother Earth to leaders at Rio+20, the UN Conference on Sustainability, after the military halted hundreds of Indigenous Peoples from entering the area.
The Indigenous delegation delivering the Declaration today included members of the Indigenous Environmental Network and Lakota Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe.
The Kari-Oca II Declaration was presented to the UN Director for Sustainable Development Nikhil Seth, and Gilberto Carvalho, the Chief Minister to the Presidency of Brazil.
As world leaders seek to profiteer from nature at the summit, Indigenous Peoples, barred by the military from attending, are holding their own encampment at the Kari Oca II and produced the Kari-Oca II Declaration for the protection of Mother Earth. Indigenous leaders are demanding a halt to the false carbon market schemes which allow the world’s worst polluters to continue polluting and profiteering from nature.
Kandi Mossett, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara from North Dakota, was in the delegation of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Mossett said only a small group of Indigenous were allowed past the military to deliver the Declaration.
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We are everywhere. Expect us. Photo: Anonymous
Time for a Paradigm Shift
Though we are headed into a year of uncertainties–from the climate’s impact upon the Earth and all of us (humans, toads, rhinos, etc.); to failed economic systems pushing the green economy, corporate controlled hegemony and the potential commodification of all life; to a massive assault to control communications and peoples’ minds–Global Justice Ecology Project would like to take a moment to wish the 99% a Happy New Year. With resistance to the 1% building across the globe, we look forward to a 2012 that is filled with truth, direct action, non-compliance, fortitude, humor and the struggle for justice. Let 2012 be the year where we change the path of destruction to a new paradigm that respects the Earth and freedom for all. ¡Tierra y Libertad! --The GJEP Team
Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization
Christy Rodgers
Global Justice Ecology Project
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Jeff Conant