2015 wrapped up with a bang, with dozens of militant actions carried out by anarchists under the banner of “Black December.” In Turkey, aspiring Fuhrer, Tayipp Erdogan, is attempting to wipe out the Kurds, but is faced with fierce resistance from the PKK and its allies. On the music break, a Savage Fam drops an anti-colonial hip-hop classic with “War Mask”.
Section 91(24) of the Canadian Constitution Act, 1867, allots to the federal level of government the trust of “Protection” confirmed by King George the Third in the Royal Proclamation of 1763:
On 8 December 2015, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau told gathered First Nations leaders: “It is time for a renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples, one that understands that the constitutionally guaranteed rights of First Nations in Canada are not an inconvenience but rather a sacred obligation.”1
There’s a real sense that we are past staying this mono-cultural collapse, and a book that came out 20 years ago, enlightens now more than ever, with the multiple forces of environmental, economic and societal collapses occurring under the weight of an elite and the barbarity of capitalism and extreme ecosystems and social systems exploitation.
The armed militia members occupying a federally owned wildlife outpost in eastern Oregon have demanded that the land be “returned” to them. But who really has claim to this forest? We speak with Jacqueline Keeler, a writer and activist of Dineh and Yankton Dakota heritage who wrote about the 2014 Bundy ranch standoff for The Nation and is now working on a new piece which in part examines the history of the Paiute tribe’s treaty rights to the forest currently occupied by the nearly all-white militia.
As 2016 dawns and we contemplate our personal goals and expectations it is important to review them in the context of the geopolitical reality we currently inhabit. Here in the United States we find ourselves in the midst of what appears to be one of the most interesting and\or disturbing presidential campaigns in recent memory.
As Vermonters we are perhaps the most weather conscious people in North America. We feel the winter winds through the drafts of old farm houses, smell the melting snow when collecting our sap buckets, hear the birds of summer while tending our farms and gardens, and see the beauty of fall written across the hills in oranges, reds, and yellows. Many of us still work with our hands, be it as loggers, farmers, carpenters, midwives, or crafts-people.
I was a practicing lawyer for 28 years before being imprisoned in 1997 for 3 months for “criminal contempt of court.” In 1999 I was disbarred on the ground this particular conviction of a “crime” was so heinous, as to amount to “conduct unbecoming,” justifying that most extreme of available punishments.
Fires – almost certainly started by logging gangs – are raging across large areas of Maranhão state in Brazil. Despite global calls for action to protect the rare pre-Amazon forest and local uncontacted Awá tribespeople from being wiped out, so far the authorities have done very little to contain the blaze.
Finished the first draft of a book about my commentary looking at the belly of the beast from the lower intestine up at the unending gluttony of Capitalism. It feels good, and I am ready to send it to the publisher, after a fellow dissident — John Steppling — looks at it, and, I hope writes a bang up introduction to inculcate some magic from my muses. As always, though, being hyper precarious in this rot gut society, I can’t see much these days as worthy of celebratory zeal to the point of letting my guard down.
