Original Peoples

No longer dominated by the traditional “Big Green” groups that were taking big donations from corporate polluters, the new environmental movement is broader, more assertive and more creative. With extreme energy extraction and climate change bearing down on the world, environmental justice advocates are taking bold actions to stop extreme energy extraction and create new solutions to save the planet.  These ‘fresh greens’ often work locally, but also connect through national and international actions.

At one time most people referred to the Original Peoples of the western hemisphere as Indians, as though they were all a common ethnic group. In the Arctic they were called Eskimos. The Original Peoples, however, knew, and still know, themselves as Inuit, Innu, Haudenosaunee, Beothuk, Nuu-chah-nulth, Inka, Mapuche, etc. They all became known as Indians because Christopher Columbus landed somewhere in the Caribbean, likely the Bahamas, but he reckoned that he was in India.

A Canadian Yahoo blogger writes an article1 that oscillates between disinformation and propaganda.
The blogger quotes Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper: “Russia’s illegal occupation of Ukraine and provocative military activity remains a serious concern to the international community.” These words are proffered without analysis.
What occupation of Ukraine by Russia?

Like a spear thrusting into the Gulf of Mexico’s gut, the Isle de Jean Charles is turbulent with ruinous daily oil and gas accidents, rising sea levels, and tropical storms. Homes on the Isle de Jean Charles perch on delicate wooden stilts thirteen feet high, their paint peeling in the sun. A solitary road snakes down the spine of the shrinking island. Stained American flags billow slowly in the Gulf breeze, affixed to porches where one can catch the nasal tones of plaid-clad men bantering in Cajun French.

Wow, I am always puzzled at how lucky some people are as apposed to others. Presently, a lot of media fanfare and armed militia have come to the aid of rancher “Cliven Bundy.” It seems that they have helped him win the day. Or, so it would seem at least for now.

Four years have passed since WikiLeaks’ sensational release of the classified US military video titled Collateral Murder. On April 5 2010, the raw footage was published depicting airstrikes by a US Army helicopter gunship in the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad. The soldiers attacked Iraqis, killing about a dozen men wandering down a street, including two Reuters staffers, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh in the first of three reckless attacks involving civilians.

Earlier this month nearly 400 students were arrested in front of the White House protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline. The next group of people to head to Washington, D.C.

This Week:
1. Proto nazis in the Ukraine
2. the end of Bill McKibben’s innocence
3. Enbridge blockers found guilty
4. Fracking pipeline must be stopped

Packed with distortions and outright lies, Mongolia’s privatized former state media called them the ‘enemies of Mongolia’.  On 16 September 2013, the leaders of Mongolia’s Fire Nation  (Gal Undesten in Mongolian), an environment and human rights coalition, organized a mass protest in front of the Mongolian Parliament. Decades of grassroots organizing to establish environmental protections were at risk: on September 16 the Great State Khural (State Parliament) gathered with intentions to dismantle the so-called ‘Law With A Long Name’ (LLN).

A new report in Science News magazine (1-25-2014) by Bruce Bower details a re-evaluation of the view that the Rapa Nuians, the native inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), were responsible for the collapse of their population and society due to over exploitation of natural resources and the destruction of the rain forest on their island, a view recently popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005).