DECACS, Inc. and all its Initiatives

Archive for the ‘activism’ Category

Brazil’s New President Openly Threatens Genocide of Indigenous Amazonians

Brazil’s New President Openly Threatens Genocide of Indigenous Amazonians

NOVEMBER 6, 2018 AT 5:33 PM

Along with his pledge to sell off their rainforest home to agribusiness and mining, Bolsonaro has said openly “minorities will have to adapt … or simply disappear”

Credit: Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic

 

Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, campaigned on a plan to sell off major portions of the Amazon rainforest to agribusiness, mining. and hydro-power.

“Minorities have to adapt to the majority, or simply disappear,” he said on the campaign trail, adding that under his administration, “not one square centimeter” of Brazil will be reserved for the country’s indigenous peoples.

Thirteen percent of the land in Brazil is protected indigenous territory in the Amazon rainforest, where most of the world’s last uncontacted tribes take refuge. Bolsonaro has said he wants to put all of that land on the auction block.

Contacted members of the Awá of Brazil, only 100 of whom remain uncontacted by civilization. Credit: Charlie Hamilton James, National Geographic

Since his election on October 28, he’s announced a merging of the ministries of agriculture and the environment — the latter of which was supposed regulate the former — into a new “super ministry” to oversee his plan.

The new ministry will be headed by politicians from the “beef caucus,” a group of lawmakers who have historically opposed indigenous land conservation, supported agricultural expansion, and attempted to relax slave labor laws.

Not only is this a grave attack on the human rights of Brazil’s indigenous people, but also on their ability to continue acting as the best defenders of the world’s forests,” writes Becca Warner, an environmentalism journalist for The Ecologist.

“We need all the forest we can get, to capture carbon from the atmosphere and keep it locked away,” she says. “In fact, scientists agree that halting deforestation is just as urgent as reducing emissions.”

Bolsonaro should have little trouble pushing his agenda through Congress, as it is currently dominated by a three-wing political alliance known as the Bancadas do Boi, do Bíblia e da Bala.

In English, those are the political representatives of “Beef” (ranching and agribusiness), the “Bible” (religious conservatives) and “Bullet” (the military).

Indigenous peoples and their supporters say the new push to open protected forested lands to agriculture and mining has clear genocidal implications.

More than 20 land rights activists have been killed in Brazil so far this year, with most deaths linked to conflicts over logging and agribusiness

Fifty land rights campaigners were killed in Brazil last year for trying to protect forests from illegal logging and the expansion of cattle ranches and soy plantations, according to Global Witness.

Source: Brazil’s New President Openly Threatens Genocide of Indigenous Amazonians

Ntozake Shange Dies: The ‘For Colored Girls’ Playwright Was 70

'For Colored Girls' film screening, New York, America - 25 Oct 2010

 

Noted playwright, poet and novelist, Ntozake Shange died on Saturday morning. The news was announced via Shange’s official Twitter account. She was 70.

According to The Star Tribune, Shange had suffered multiple strokes in recent years, but her health was improving. She died peacefully in her sleep in an assisted living facility in Bowie, Md.

Shange was born Paulette L. Williams in Trenton, New Jersey on October 18, 1948. Her family was an advocate of the arts and their home welcomed legendary figures in black history including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Chuck Berry, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Shange took an interest in poetry. When she graduated from high school, she went on to study at Barnard College in New York City. It was there where she met fellow poet Thulani Davis, who she would collaborate with on various works. After graduating from Barnard, she traveled west to USC and earned a masters degree.

In 1975, she returned to New York City from Los Angeles and in the same year, for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf came to light. The play was a 20-part choreopoem that explored the lives of women of color in the United States. It was first produced Off-Broadway and then made its way to Broadway’s Booth Theater. The play became an acclaimed hit, earning an Obie Award and other accolades.

The play was adapted into a book in 1977 and then into the Tyler Perry film For Colored Girls which featured an all-star cast of black actresses including Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Thandie Newton, Anika Noni Rose, Kerry Washington, Phylicia Rashad, Whoopi Goldberg, and Tessa Thompson.

Like For Colored Girls, Shange’s other plays such as Spell No. 7 chronicled the black experience. In 1980, she adapted Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children which earned her another Obie Award.

Shange was also known as a primary figure in the Black Arts Movement, which was predominantly male. She was a pioneering figure and female trailblazer alongside notable figures from the movement and history including Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Rosa Guy, Lorraine Hansberry, Lucille Clifton, and Sonia Sanchez.

She continued to write and create throughout her years. In 2003, she was the visiting artist at University of Florida, Gainesville and wrote and oversaw the production of Lavender Lizards and Lilac Landmines: Layla’s Dream. Her essays, poems, and stories have appeared in numerous publications including The Black Scholar, Yardbird, Ms., Essence Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, VIBE, and Third-World Women

Shange is survived by her daughter, Savannah Shange and grand-daughter Harriet Shange Watkins.

Ntozake Shange@NtozakeShange1

To our extended family and friends, it is with sorrow that we inform you that our loved one, Ntozake Shange, passed away peacefully in her sleep in the early morning of October 27, 2018. Memorial information / details will follow at a later date.
The family of Ntozake Shange

 

Reposted from: https://deadline.com/2018/10/ntozake-shange-dead-for-colored-girls-playwright-obituary-1202490913/

Louis C.K. – You cant take a People’s historical context away from them.

Louis C.K. – You cant take a People’s historical context away from them.

Early life
C.K. was born on September 12, 1967, in Washington, D.C.,[2][4][12][13] the son of Mary Louise Székely (née Davis), asoftware engineer, and Luis Székely, an economist.[2] C.K.’s parents met at Harvard University, where his mother was completing her degree in a summer-school program.[1] They were married at St. Francis Church in Traverse City,Michigan.[14] C.K. has three sisters.[15]
When C.K. was a year old, his family moved to his father’s home country of Mexico, from where his father had earned a degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico prior to graduating from Harvard.[14] C.K.’s first language was Spanish; it was not until after the move to the U.S. that he began to learn English.[16] He has since mostly forgotten his Spanish.[17] C.K.’s paternal grandfather, Dr. Géza Székely Schweiger, was a surgeon. Székely Schweiger was aHungarian Jew whose family immigrated to Mexico, where he met C.K.’s paternal grandmother, Rosario Sánchez Morales.[18] Sánchez Morales was a CatholicMexican.[17] C.K.’s grandfather agreed to have his children raised Catholic, but was (according to C.K.) “quietly Jewish”.[19]
C.K.’s mother, an American with Irish ancestry, grew up on a farm in Michigan.[20][21] She graduated from Owosso High School in Owosso, Michigan. She attendedUniversity of Michigan and graduated from Ohio State University Phi Beta Kappa. C.K.’s maternal grandparents were M. Louise Davis and Alfred C. Davis.[14]

At age seven, C.K. left Mexico with his family to move back to the United States and settle in Boston.[22] Upon moving from Mexico to suburban Boston, C.K. wanted to become a writer and comedian, citing Richard PryorSteve Martin, and George Carlin as some of his influences.[1] When he was 10, his parents divorced. C.K. said that his father was around but he did not see him much and when he remarried, C.K.’s father converted to Orthodox Judaism, the faith of his new wife.[19] C.K. and his three sisters were raised by their single mother in NewtonMassachusetts.[23] The fact that his mother had only “bad” TV shows to view upon returning home from work inspired him to work on television.[23] C.K.’s mother raised her children as Catholic, wanting them to have a religious framework and understanding, and they attended after-school Catholic class until they completed communion.[19] C.K. has said that his father’s whole family still lives in Mexico. C.K.’s paternal uncle Dr. Francisco Székely is an academic and an international consultant on environmental affairs who served as Mexico’s Deputy Minister of Environment (2000–2003).[24]
C.K. attended Newton North High School, and graduated in 1985. He graduated with future Friends star, Matt LeBlanc whom he would later be nominated with in the same category at the Primetime Emmy Awards multiple times.[25] After graduating from Newton North High School, C.K. worked as an auto mechanic and at a public access TV cable station in Boston.[2] According to C.K., working in public access TV gave him the tools and technical knowledge to make his short films and later his television shows. “Learning is my favorite thing”, he said.[7] He also worked for a time as a cook and in a video store.[15]

Rachel Dolezar has a Twin Brother…..Why Do People Imitate Oppressed Groups???

Why Do People Imitate Oppressed Groups?

How Do They Manage to Get Into Positions of Power Among Them?

Did Black Lives Matter Organizer Shaun King 
Mislead Oprah Winfrey By Pretending To Be Biracial?
Source: by Milo Yiannopoulos19 Aug 2015

Baltimore Riots: A Product of the Soros Machine

Baltimore Riots: A Product Of The Soros Machine

Image source

By Brandon Turbeville

While Baltimore burns, the city has proven itself to be yet another staging ground in a long line of scenes involving “violent protests,” riots, and racial violence following an incident concerning police brutality, real or otherwise.

Although the issues that have set off the spark in most of these protests were entirely legitimate, government agencies, foundations, organizations, and NGOs immediately swooped in to divert the protests into racially charged fit throwing and often violent riots.

With a carefully orchestrated network that was capable of organizing large numbers of individuals on a moment’s notice, and a simultaneous media campaign that cleverly showed violence and riots but ignored peaceful or appropriately-directed violent acts, these organizations were able to turn what could and should have been a national movement into a racially-oriented hate-filled display of unrestrained destruction.

With this in mind, one might justifiably ask how these organizations might have such an effective network that operates in concert with a national corporate media apparatus in order to wreck legitimate movements and, out of those movements, create a counter-productive act of mindless fit-throwing?

The answer is the same as it has often been in Europe – the color revolution apparatus and George Soros.

Indeed, George Soros has been heavily involved in the social unrest and movement-wrecking activity that has taken place all across the United States in recent months. From Florida to Ferguson and now to Baltimore, George Soros’ Foundations have been involved in making sure that not only are American citizens unable to overcome racial divisions with mutual cooperation but that even the racially isolated participants are unable to accomplish anything of substance.

As Kelly Riddell of the Washington Times reported in January, 2015, regarding Soros’ involvement in Ferguson,

There’s a solitary man at the financial center of the Ferguson protest movement. No, it’s not victim Michael Brown or Officer Darren Wilson. It’s not even the Rev. Al Sharpton, despite his ubiquitous campaign on TV and the streets. 

Rather, it’s liberal billionaire George Soros, who has built a business empire that dominates across the ocean in Europe while forging a political machine powered by nonprofit foundations that impacts American politics and policy, not unlike what he did with MoveOn.org. 

Mr. Soros spurred the Ferguson protest movement through years of funding and mobilizing groups across the U.S., according to interviews with key players and financial records reviewed by The Washington Times. 

In all, Mr. Soros gave at least $33 million in one year to support already-established groups that emboldened the grass-roots, on-the-ground activists in Ferguson, according to the most recent tax filings of his nonprofit Open Society Foundations. 

The financial tether from Mr. Soros to the activist groups gave rise to a combustible protest movement that transformed a one-day criminal event in Missouri into a 24-hour-a-day national cause celebre. 

“Our DNA includes a belief that having people participate in government is indispensable to living in a more just, inclusive, democratic society,” said Kenneth Zimmerman, director of Mr. SorosOpen Society Foundations’ U.S. programs, in an interview with The Washington Times. “Helping groups combine policy, research [and] data collection with community organizing feels very much the way our society becomes more accountable.”

Indeed, the Open Society Institute has been promoting “democracy” all over the world if, by democracy, one means the overthrow of governments unfriendly to Anglo-American banking interests and installing new and more corrupt leadership in its place.

Riddell continues by writing,

Soros-sponsored organizations helped mobilize protests in Ferguson, building grass-roots coalitions on the ground backed by a nationwide online and social media campaign. 

Other Soros-funded groups made it their job to remotely monitor and exploit anything related to the incident that they could portray as a conservative misstep, and to develop academic research and editorials to disseminate to the news media to keep the story alive. 

The plethora of organizations involved not only shared Mr. Soros‘ funding, but they also fed off each other, using content and buzzwords developed by one organization on another’s website, referencing each other’s news columns and by creating a social media echo chamber of Facebook “likes” and Twitter hashtags that dominated the mainstream media and personal online newsfeeds. 

Buses of activists from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference in Chicago; from the Drug Policy Alliance, Make the Road New York and Equal Justice USA from New York; from Sojourners, the Advancement Project and Center for Community Change in Washington; and networks from the Gamaliel Foundation — all funded in part by Mr. Soros — descended on Ferguson starting in August and later organized protests and gatherings in the city until late last month. 

All were aimed at keeping the media’s attention on the city and to widen the scope of the incident to focus on interrelated causes — not just the overpolicing and racial discrimination narratives that were highlighted by the news media in August. 

“I went to Ferguson in a quest to be in solidarity and stand with the young organizers and affirm their leadership,” said Kassandra Frederique, policy manager at the Drug Policy Alliance, which was founded by Mr. Soros, and which receives $4 million annually from his foundation. She traveled to Ferguson in October. 

“We recognized this movement is similar to the work we’re doing at DPA,” said Ms. Frederique. “The war on drugs has always been to operationalize, institutionalize and criminalize people of color. Protecting personal sovereignty is a cornerstone of the work we do and what this movement is all about.” 

Ms. Frederique works with Opal Tometi, co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter — a hashtag that was developed after the killing of Trayvon Martin in Florida — and helped promote it on DPA’s news feeds. Ms. Tometi runs the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, a group to which Mr. Soros gave $100,000 in 2011, according to the most recent of his foundation’s tax filings. 

“I think #BlackLivesMatter’s success is because of organizing. This was created after Trayvon Martin, and there has been sustained organizing and conversations about police violence since then,” said Ms. Frederique. “Its explosion into the mainstream recently is because it connects all the dots at a time when everyone was lost for words. ‘Black Lives Matter’ is liberating, unapologetic and leaves no room for confusion.”

It should be noted that The Gamaliel Foundation, which is described as a “net-work of grassroots and interracial organizations,” is not only funded by George Soros, it was the Foundation where President Barack Obama began his career as a “community organizer” in Chicago. Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright who drew Conservative ire for a fiery sermon condemning America’s actions (his famous “Goddamn America speech), is a trustee of the Soros-funded Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, an organization that sent representatives to Ferguson early on.

In Ferguson, the use of clergy and ministers became a major part of the social movement as funded by Soros as well. Riddell reveals as much when she writes,

Representatives of Sojourners, a national evangelical Christian organization committed “to faith in action for social justice,” attended the weekend [Gamaliel’s weekend protest event in Ferguson]. The group received $150,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011. 

Clergy representatives from the Samuel Dewitt Proctor Conference, where the Rev. Jeremiah Wright serves as a trustee, also showed up. Mr. Wright was Mr. Obama’s pastor in Chicago before some of his racially charged sermons, including the phrase “God damn America,” forced Mr. Obama to distance himself. SDPC received $250,000 from Mr. Soros in 2011. 

During Gamaliel’s weekend protest event, Sunday was deemed “Hands Up Sabbath,” where clergy were asked to speak out about racial issues, using packets and talking points prepared for them by another religion-based community organizing group, PICO.

PICO is also supported by the Open Society Foundations, according to its website.

The Washington Times article also serves to shed light on a number of other more profile “national” organizations funded by Soros that descended upon Ferguson, now explaining some of the reasons that the protest movement on the ground in MO became such a disgraceful failure. Riddell further demonstrates this by writing,

Larry Fellows III, 29, a Missouri native, did find his voice in the chaos of Ferguson with the help of outside assistance backed by Mr. Soros

Mr. Fellows is co-founder of the Millennial Activists United, a key source of video and stories developed in Ferguson by youth activists used to inspire other groups nationally.

Mr. Fellows explained how he started his organization in an interview with the American Civil Liberties Union (another Soros-backed entity that sent national representatives to Missouri) in November. 

“Initially, it would just be that we would show up for protests, and the next day we’d clean up the streets. A lot of the same people were out at the protests and going out to lunch and talking about what was happening. That became a cycle until a lot of us figured out we needed to have a strategy,” Mr. Fellows explained to the ACLU, which posted the interview in its blog. 

“Then a lot of organizers from across the country started to come in to help us do the planning and do the strategizing. That helped us start doing it on our own and planning out actions and what our narratives were going to be,” he said. 

MAU has listed on its website that it has partnered with Gamaliel network churches. They’ve also received training on civil disobedience from the Advancement Project — which was given a $500,000 grant from Mr. Soros in 2013 “to build a fair and just, multi-racial democracy in America through litigation, community organizing support, public policy reform, and strategic communications,” according to the Foundation’s website. 

The Advancement Project, based in Washington, also arranged the meeting between community organizers in Ferguson and Mr. Obama last month to brief him on the situation in Ferguson and to set up a task force that examines trust between police and minority communities. 

In addition, the Advancement Project has also dedicated some of its staff to lead organizations in Ferguson, like the Don’t Shoot Coalition, another grass-roots group that preaches the same message, links to the same Facebook posts and “likes” the same articles as DPA, ACLU, Hands Up Coalition, OBS, MORE and others.

It should also be noted that the Open Society Institute, one of Soros’ main NGOs, has worked closely with Mayor Rawlings-Blake and Google in making Baltimore one of their “test cities” for smart technology and new fiber cables. Rawlings-Blake has had pleasant things to say about Soros in the past.

While the above information addresses the involvement of #blacklivesmatter groups and similar organizations active on the ground inside Ferguson as a matter of historical precedent, these organizations and similar operations such as the Black Youth Project (funded by Soros) and the Open Society Institute and its subsididiaries have had a sizable presence inside Baltimore in the time leading up to the Freddie Gray protests and continue to do so as we speak.

For instance, Baltimore United Viewfinders has received a sizeable grant from the OSI for the purpose of working with a coalition of community partners and the Maryland Institute College of Art to use digital media to engage East Baltimore youth in peer-to-peer arts and social justice programming. Other organizations and individuals have received grants from the OSI to promote “social justice” and “democracy” through theatre and the arts while others operate on a more charitable basis, providing guidance in healthcare matters and community organizing skills. As one will see from the discussion of the methodology of color revolutions below as well as the discussion of the preparation that goes into these social phenomena, the structure of “community organizations” and “community influence” is important to the color revolution apparatus. The ability to take advantage of unemployed, under-educated, lonely, and hopeless youth is one of the greatest opportunities that the Soros color revolution organizations understand and firmly grasp.

The relevance of the Soros connection may seem confusing to many. Certainly, however, no one in their right mind will suggest that a man that has made his fortune bankrupting nations and impoverishing their peoples lies awake at night wringing his hands over concerns for black people in America.

Soros is most well-known for playing a major role in the funding and facilitating of the “Bulldozer Revolution” in Serbia that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” of 2003, the 2006 push to move Turkey toward a more Islamist governing structure, and even the Occupy movement in the United States among a great many others – none of which brought anything other than greater misery, impoverishment, and police state mechanisms to bear on the general public. The Occupy movement, being the only exception, still brought nothing to its participants except the opportunity to burn off excess anger and energy along with a few cracked protester skulls. It was otherwise an incredible waste of time.

Regardless, the methods being used by the Soros machine in terms of the #blacklivesmatter and other related campaigns across the country are much the same as those used in Europe to usher in greater austerity, police states, and fascism through government-coup and social protest – i.e. a coordinated media campaign to provide the general public with a false perception of events as well as a false narrative, the use of social media and slogans, and the deployment of “swarming adolescents” in the streets.

When media campaigns alone are not enough, there are other methods that are able to be implemented if need be. For instance, a Mother Jones report revealed the fact that in some areas where rioting began, there appears to have been a concerted effort on the part of the authorities to create an environment in which riots would be inevitable. For example, in an instance where it was reported that teens in Baltimore attacked police by throwing rocks, it was never mentioned that police had corralled these teens – who should have been on their way home – off the bus and into an area in between the mall and the high school. According to onlookers, it appeared that both the teens and the police were surprised at the situation – the police surprised at the lack of violence and the teens surprised that they were kept from going home. Eventually, rocks and bottles were reportedly thrown at police and the situation deteriorated from there. Of course, the entire story was never fully reported in the mainstream press. Still, while the rocks and bottles may have started from those in the crowd, others may justifiably wonder if there were not provocateurs already placed simply waiting to cause violence as soon as the tension had reached a boiling point. As it is, it is very likely that protesters and police alike were dupes in a devious game.

Consider also the fact that the Baltimore authorities, despite implementing heavy-handed tactics against high schoolers on their way home, allowed criminals, thieves, and violent thugs to prey upon innocent people, private property, and communities for quite some time without a serious effort to stop them. In fact, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake even openly admitted that the looters were allowed to riot when she stated that “We also gave those who wish to destroy space to do that as well.” The police were prevented from actually stopping the riots and were kept largely unequipped as well. In other words, the riots were both allowed and encouraged until they had reached a boiling point and the National Guard was called in.

Of course, the color revolution and destabilization is not merely some communiqué presented to a small group of people that organically takes on a life of its own. There is an entire science behind the application of a movement of destabilization both when it takes place overseas as well as when it takes place domestically. As Pottenger and Frieson of Color Revolutions and Geopolitics write,

Many are the professions that utilize this type of understanding, including (but not limited to) marketing, advertising, public relations, politics and law-making, radio, television, journalism and news, film, music, general business and salesmanship; each of them selling, branding, promoting, entertaining, sloganeering, framing, explaining, creating friends and enemies, arguing likes and dislikes, setting the boundaries of good and evil: in many cases using their talents to circumvent their audiences’ intellect, the real target being emotional, oftentimes even subconscious.

Looking beneath the facade of the color revolutionary movement we also find a desire-based behavioral structure, in particular one that has been built upon historical lessons offered by social movements and periods of political upheaval.

It then makes sense that the personnel of such operations include perception managers, PR firms, pollsters and opinion-makers in the social media. Through the operational infrastructure, these entities work in close coordination with intelligence agents, local and foreign activists, strategists and tacticians, tax-exempt foundations, governmental agencies, and a host of non- governmental organizations.

Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.

Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.

Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.

With this explanation in mind, consider the description provided by Ian Traynor of the Guardian regarding the “revolutions” and “mass movements” which was taking place in Ukraine, Serbia, Belarus, and Georgia in 2004 and the time of the writing of his article. Indeed, Traynor’s depiction of the methodology used by the Foundations, NGOs, and government agencies stirring up dissent and popular revolt is equally illuminating. Traynor writes,

In the centre of Belgrade, there is a dingy office staffed by computer-literate youngsters who call themselves the Centre for Non-violent Resistance. If you want to know how to beat a regime that controls the mass media, the judges, the courts, the security apparatus and the voting stations, the young Belgrade activists are for hire. 

They emerged from the anti-Milosevic student movement, Otpor, meaning resistance. The catchy, single-word branding is important. In Georgia last year, the parallel student movement was Khmara. In Belarus, it was Zubr. In Ukraine, it is Pora, meaning high time. Otpor also had a potent, simple slogan that appeared everywhere in Serbia in 2000 – the two words “gotov je”, meaning “he’s finished”, a reference to Milosevic. A logo of a black-and-white clenched fist completed the masterful marketing.

In Ukraine, the equivalent is a ticking clock, also signalling that the Kuchma regime’s days are numbered.

Stickers, spray paint and websites are the young activists’ weapons. Irony and street comedy mocking the regime have been hugely successful in puncturing public fear and enraging the powerful.

These slogans and symbols are the product of mass marketers employed by State Departments and intelligence agencies for the sole purpose of destabilizing and/or overthrowing a democratically elected or unfavorable (to the oligarchy)government.

The details and techniques of the manipulation of mass numbers of people have only continued to become more and more advanced and sophisticated, particularly with the advent of social media.

As Jonathan Mowat wrote,

As in the case of the new communication technologies, the potential effectiveness of angry youth in postmodern coups has long been under study. As far back as 1967, Dr. Fred Emery, then director of the Tavistock Institute, and an expert on the “hypnotic effects” of television, specified that the then new phenomenon of “swarming adolescents” found at rock concerts could be effectively used to bring down the nation-state by the end of the 1990s. This was particularly the case, as Dr. Emery reported in “The next thirty years: concepts, methods and anticipations,” in the group’s “Human Relations,” because the phenomena was associated with “rebellious hysteria.” The British military created the Tavistock Institute as its psychological warfare arm following World War I; it has been the forerunner of such strategic planning ever since. Dr. Emery’s concept saw immediate application in NATO’s use of “swarming adolescents” in toppling French President Charles De Gaulle in 1967.[1]

[…]

In November 1989, Case Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio, under the aegis of that university’s “Program for Social Innovations in Global Management,” began a series of conferences to review progress towards that strategic objective, which was reported on in “Human Relations” in 1991. There, Dr. Howard Perlmutter, a professor of “Social Architecture” at the Wharton School, and a follower of Dr. Emery, stressed that “rock video in Kathmandu,” was an appropriate image of how states with traditional cultures could be destabilized, thereby creating the possibility of a “global civilization.” There are two requirements for such a transformation, he added, “building internationally committed networks of international and locally committed organizations,” and “creating global events” through “the transformation of a local event into one having virtually instantaneous international implications through mass-media.”[2]

The American people must quickly learn the formula behind color revolutions, destabilizations, and the agendas of the world oligarchy before it becomes too late for us all. They must learn that simply because “leaders” appear to them, attempt to speak the same language and articulate rage does not mean that these leaders are men of the people.

Protests are necessary. Directed rage may also be necessary. But the wanton destruction of communities belonging to you or your neighbors is not only counterproductive, it produces rage that will be aimed back at you, and justifiably so. The entire country is being played like a fiddle. Baltimore is not an isolated collection of dupes, it is a microcosm. It is time the American people wise up and become street smart before it is too late.

Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD? | The Liberian Observer

Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD? | The Liberian Observer

Scientists allege deadly diseases such as Ebola and AIDS are bio weapons
being tested on Africans. Other reports have linked the Ebola virus
outbreak to an attempt to reduce Africa’s population. Liberia happens to
be the continents’s fastest growing population.
By: 
Dr. Cyril Broderick, Professor of Plant Pathology
Dear World Citizens:
I have read a number of articles from your Internet outreach as well as articles from other sources about the casualties in Liberia and other West African countries about the human devastation caused by the Ebola virus. About a week ago, I read an article published in the Internet news summary publication of the Friends of Liberia that said that there was an agreement that the initiation of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was due to the contact of a two-year old child with bats that had flown in from the Congo. That report made me disconcerted with the reporting about Ebola, and it stimulated a response to the “Friends of Liberia,” saying that African people are not ignorant and gullible, as is being implicated. A response from Dr. Verlon Stone said that the article was not theirs, and that “Friends of Liberia” was simply providing a service. He then asked if he could publish my letter in their Internet forum. I gave my permission, but I have not seen it published. Because of the widespread loss of life, fear, physiological trauma, and despair among Liberians and other West African citizens, it is incumbent that I make a contribution to the resolution of this devastating situation, which may continue to recur, if it is not properly and adequately confronted. I will address the situation in five (5) points:
1.    EBOLA IS A GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM (GMO)
Horowitz (1998) was deliberate and unambiguous when he explained the threat of new diseases in his text, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola – Nature, Accident or Intentional. In his interview with Dr. Robert Strecker in Chapter 7, the discussion, in the early 1970s, made it obvious that the war was between countries that hosted the KGB and the CIA, and the ‘manufacture’ of ‘AIDS-Like Viruses’ was clearly directed at the other. In passing during the Interview, mention was made of Fort Detrick, “the Ebola Building,” and ‘a lot of problems with strange illnesses’ in “Frederick [Maryland].” By Chapter 12 in his text, he had confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of “black Africans overseas.” The book is an excellent text, and all leaders plus anyone who has interest in science, health, people, and intrigue should study it. I am amazed that African leaders are making no acknowledgements or reference to these documents.
2.  EBOLA HAS A TERRIBLE HISTORY, AND TESTING HAS BEEN SECRETLY TAKING PLACE IN AFRICA
I am now reading The Hot Zone, a novel, by Richard Preston (copyrighted 1989 and 1994); it is heart-rending. The prolific and prominent writer, Steven King, is quoted as saying that the book is “One of the most horrifying things I have ever read. What a remarkable piece of work.” As a New York Times bestseller, The Hot Zone is presented as “A terrifying true story.” Terrifying, yes, because the pathological description of what was found in animals killed by the Ebola virus is what the virus has been doing to citizens of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in its most recent outbreak: Ebola virus destroys peoples’ internal organs and the body deteriorates rapidly after death. It softens and the tissues turn into jelly, even if it is refrigerated to keep it cold. Spontaneous liquefaction is what happens to the body of people killed by the Ebola virus! The author noted in Point 1, Dr. Horowitz, chides The Hot Zone for writing to be politically correct; I understand because his book makes every effort to be very factual. The 1976 Ebola incident in Zaire, during President Mobutu Sese Seko, was the introduction of the GMO Ebola to Africa.
3.    SITES AROUND AFRICA, AND IN WEST AFRICA, HAVE OVER THE YEARS BEEN SET UP FOR TESTING EMERGING DISEASES, ESPECIALLY EBOLA
The World Health Organization (WHO) and several other UN Agencies have been implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments. The August 2, 2014 article, West Africa: What are US Biological Warfare Researchers Doing in the Ebola Zone? by Jon Rappoport of Global Research pinpoints the problem that is facing African governments. 
Obvious in this and other reports are, among others: 
(a) The US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), a well-known centre for bio-war research, located at Fort Detrick, Maryland; 
(b) Tulane University, in New Orleans, USA, winner of research grants, including a grant of more than $7 million the National Institute of Health (NIH) to fund research with the Lassa viral hemorrhagic fever; 
(c) the US Center for Disease Control (CDC); 
(d) Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Medicins Sans Frontiers); 
(e) Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company;  
(f) The UK’s GlaxoSmithKline; and 
(g) the Kenema Government Hospital in Kenema, Sierra Leone. 
Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Disturbingly, many reports also conclude that the US government has a viral fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Kenema, a town at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The only relevant positive and ethical olive-branch seen in all of my reading is that Theguardian.com reported, “The US government funding of Ebola trials on healthy humans comes amid warnings by top scientists in Harvard and Yale that such virus experiments risk triggering a worldwide pandemic.” That threat still persists.
4.    THE NEED FOR LEGAL ACTION TO OBTAIN REDRESS FOR DAMAGES INCURRED DUE TO THE PERPETUATION OF INJUSTICE IN THE DEATH, INJURY AND TRAUMA IMPOSED ON LIBERIANS AND OTHER AFRICANS BY THE EBOLA AND OTHER DISEASE AGENTS. 
The U. S., Canada, France, and the U. K. are all implicated in the detestable and devilish deeds that these Ebola tests are. There is the need to pursue criminal and civil redress for damages, and African countries and people should secure legal representation to seek damages from these countries, some corporations, and the United Nations. Evidence seems abundant against Tulane University, and suits should start there. Yoichi Shimatsu’s article, The Ebola Breakout Coincided with UN Vaccine Campaigns, as published on August 18, 2014, in the Liberty Beacon.
5.   AFRICAN LEADERS AND AFRICAN COUNTRIES NEED TO TAKE THE LEAD IN DEFENDING BABIES, CHILDREN, AFRICAN WOMEN, AFRICAN MEN, AND THE ELDERLY. THESE CITIZENS DO NOT DESERVE TO BE USED AS GUINEA PIGS! 
Africa must not relegate the Continent to become the locality for disposal and the deposition of hazardous chemicals, dangerous drugs, and chemical or biological agents of emerging diseases. There is urgent need for affirmative action in protecting the less affluent of poorer countries, especially African citizens, whose countries are not as scientifically and industrially endowed as the United States and most Western countries, sources of most viral or bacterial GMOs that are strategically designed as biological weapons. It is most disturbing that the U. S. Government has been operating a viral hemorrhagic fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Sierra Leone. Are there others? Wherever they exist, it is time to terminate them. If any other sites exist, it is advisable to follow the delayed but essential step: Sierra Leone closed the US bioweapons lab and stopped Tulane University for further testing.
The world must be alarmed. All Africans, Americans, Europeans, Middle Easterners, Asians, and people from every conclave on Earth should be astonished. African people, notably citizens more particularly of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone are victimized and are dying every day. Listen to the people who distrust the hospitals, who cannot shake hands, hug their relatives and friends. Innocent people are dying, and they need our help. The countries are poor and cannot afford the whole lot of personal protection equipment (PPE) that the situation requires. The threat is real, and it is larger than a few African countries. The challenge is global, and we request assistance from everywhere, including China, Japan, Australia, India, Germany, Italy, and even kind-hearted people in the U.S., France, the U.K., Russia, Korea, Saudi Arabia, and anywhere else whose desire is to help. The situation is bleaker than we on the outside can imagine, and we must provide assistance however we can. To ensure a future that has less of this kind of drama, it is important that we now demand that our leaders and governments be honest, transparent, fair, and productively engaged. They must answer to the people. Please stand up to stop Ebola testing and the spread of this dastardly disease.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely,
Dr. Cyril E. Broderick, Sr.

War in Our Collective Imagination

By David Swanson
Remarks at Veterans For Peace Convention, Asheville, NC, July 27, 2014.

I started seeing graphics pop up on social media sites this past week that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s murder.”  So I started asking people what exactly they think war is if it’s distinct from murder.  Well, war, some of them told me, takes place between armies.  So I asked for anyone to name a war during the past century (that is, after World War I) where all or even most or even a majority of the dying was done by members of armies.  There may have been such a war.  There are enough scholars here today that somebody probably knows of one.  But if so, it isn’t the norm, and these people I was chatting with through social media couldn’t think of any such war and yet insisted that that’s just what war is.  So, is war then over and nobody told us?

For whatever reasons, I then very soon began seeing a graphic sent around that said about Gaza: “It’s not war. It’s genocide.”  And the typical explanation I got when I questioned this one was that the wagers of war and the wagers of genocide have different attitudes.  Are we sure about that? I’ve spoken to advocates for recent U.S. wars who wanted all or part of a population wiped out.  Plenty of supporters of the latest attacks on Gaza see them as counter-terrorism.  In wars between advanced militaries and poor peoples most of the death and injury is on one side and most of it — by anyone’s definition — civilian.  This is as true in Afghanistan, where war rolls on largely unchallenged, as in Gaza, about which we are newly outraged.
Well, what’s wrong with outrage? Who cares what people call it? Why not criticize the war advocates rather than nitpicking the war opponents’ choice of words?  When people are outraged they will reach for whatever word their culture tells them is most powerful, be it murder or genocide or whatever.  Why not encourage that and worry a little more about the lunatics who are calling it defense or policing or terrorist removal?  (Eight-year-old terrorists!)

Yes, of course.  I’ve been going after CNN news readers for claiming Palestinians want to die and NBC for yanking its best reporter and ABC for claiming scenes of destruction in Gaza that just don’t exist in Israel are in fact in Israel — and the U.S. government for providing the weapons and the criminal immunity.  I’ve been promoting rallies and events aimed at swaying public opinion against what Israel has been doing, and against the sadistic bloodthirsty culture of those standing on hills cheering for the death and destruction below, quite regardless of what they call it.  But, as you’re probably aware, only the very most open-minded war advocates attend conventions of Veterans For Peace.  So, I’m speaking here backstage, as it were, at the peace movement.  Among those of us who want to stop the killing, are there better and worse ways to talk about it?  And is anything revealed by the ways in which we tend to talk about it when we aren’t hyper-focused on our language?

I think so.  I think it’s telling that the worst word anyone can think of isn’t war.  I think it’s even more telling that we condemn things by contrasting them with war, framing war as relatively acceptable.  I think this fact ought to be unsettling because a very good case can be made that war, in fact, is the worst thing we do, and that the distinctions between war and such evils as murder or genocide can require squinting very hard to discern.

We’ve all heard that guns don’t kill people, people kill people.  There is a parallel belief that wars don’t kill people, people who misuse wars, who fight bad wars, who fight wars improperly, kill people.  This is a big contrast with many other evil institutions.  We don’t oppose child abuse selectively, holding out the possibility of just and good incidents of child abuse while opposing the bad or dumb or non-strategic or excessive cases of child abuse. We don’t have Geneva Conventions for proper conduct while abusing children.  We don’t have human rights groups writing reports on atrocities and possible law violations committed in the course of abusing children.  We don’t distinguish UN-sanctioned child abuse.  The same goes for numerous behaviors generally understood as always evil: slavery or rape or blood feuds or duelling or dog fighting or sexual harassment or bullying or human experimentation or — I don’t know — producing piles of I’m-Ready-for-Hillary posters.  We don’t imagine there are good, just, and defensible cases of such actions.

And this is the core problem: not support for bombing Gaza or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Iraq or anywhere else that actually gets bombed, but support for an imaginary war in the near future between two armies with different colored jerseys and sponsors, competing on an isolated battlefield apart from any villages or towns, and suffering bravely and heroically for their non-murderous non-genocidal cause while complying with the whistles blown by the referees in the human rights organizations whenever any of the proper killing drifts into lawless imprisonment or torture or the use of improper weaponry.  Support for specific possible wars in the United States right now is generally under 10 percent.  More people believe in ghosts, angels, and the integrity of our electoral system than want a new U.S. war in Ukraine, Syria, Iran, or Iraq. The Washington Post found a little over 10 percent want a war in Ukraine but that the people who held that view were the people who placed Ukraine on the world map the furthest from its actual location, including people who placed it in the United States.  These are the idiots who favor specific wars.  Even Congress, speaking of idiots, on Friday told Obama no new war on Iraq.

The problem is the people, ranging across the population from morons right up to geniuses, who favor imaginary wars.  Millions of people will tell you we need to be prepared for more wars in case there’s another Adolf Hitler, failing to understand that the wars and militarism and weapons sales and weapons gifts — the whole U.S. role as the arsenal of democracies and dictatorships alike — increase rather than decrease dangers, that other wealthy countries spend less than 10 percent what the U.S. does on their militaries, and that 10 percent of what the U.S. spends on its military could end global starvation, provide the globe with clean water, and fund sustainable energy and agriculture programs that would go further toward preventing mass violence than any stockpiles of weaponry.  Millions will tell you that the world needs a global policeman, even though polls of the world find the widespread belief that the United States is currently the greatest threat to peace on earth.  In fact if you start asking people who have opposed every war in our lifetimes or in the past decade to work on opposing the entire institution of war, you’ll be surprised by many of the people who say no.

I’m a big fan of a book called Addicted to War.  I think it will probably be a powerful tool for war abolition right up until war is abolished.  But its author told me this week that he can’t work to oppose all wars because he favors some of them.  Specifically, he said, he doesn’t want to ask Palestinians to not defend themselves.  Now, there’s a really vicious cycle.  If we can’t shut down the institution of war because Palestinians need to use it, then it’s harder to go after U.S. military spending, which is of course what funds much of the weaponry being used against Palestinians.  I think we should get a little clarity about what a war abolition movement does and does not do.  It does not tell people what they must do when attacked.  It is not focused on advising, much less instructing, the victims of war, but on preventing their victimization.  It does not advise the individual victim of a mugging to turn the other cheek.  But it also does not accept the disproven notion that violence is a defensive strategy for a population.  Nonviolence has proven far more effective and its victories longer lasting.  If people in Gaza have done anything at all to assist in their own destruction, it is not the supposed offenses of staying in their homes or visiting hospitals or playing on beaches; it is the ridiculously counterproductive firing of rockets that only encourages and provides political cover for war/ genocide/ mass murder.

I’m a huge fan of Chris Hedges and find him one of the most useful and inspiring writers we have.  But he thought attacking Libya was a good idea up until it quite predictably and obviously turned out not to be.  He still thinks Bosnia was a just war.  I could go on through dozens of names of people who contribute mightily to an anti-war movement who oppose abolishing war.  The point is not that anyone who believes in 1 good war out of 100 is to blame for the trillion dollar U.S. military budget and all the destruction it brings.  The point is that they are wrong about that 1 war out of 100, and that even if they were right, the side-effects of maintaining a culture accepting of war preparations would outweigh the benefits of getting 1 war right.  The lives lost by not spending $1 trillion a year in the U.S. and another $1 trillion in the rest of the world on useful projects like environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, medicine and hygiene absolutely dwarf the number of lives that would be saved by halting our routine level of war making.

If you talk about abolishing war entirely, as many of us have begun focusing on through a new project called World Beyond War, you’ll also find people who want to abolish war but believe it’s impossible. War is natural, they say, inevitable, in our genes, decreed by our economy, the unavoidable result of racism or consumerism or capitalism or exceptionalism or carnivorism or nationalism.  And of course many cultural patterns interact with and facilitate war, but the idea that it’s in our genes is absurd, given how many cultures in our species have done and do without it.  I don’t know what — if anything — people usually mean when they call something “natural” but presumably it’s not the provocation of suicide, which is such a common result of participating in war, while the first case of PTSD due to war deprivation has yet to be discovered.  Most of our species’ existence, as hunter-gatherers, did not know war, and only the last century — a split-second in evolutionary terms — has known war that at all resembles war today.  War didn’t used to kill like this.  Soldiers weren’t conditioned to kill.  Most guns picked up at Gettysburg had been loaded more than once.  The big killers were diseases, even in the U.S. Civil War, the war that the U.S. media calls the most deadly because Filipinos and Koreans and Vietnamese and Iraqis don’t count.  Now the big killer is a disease in our thinking, a combination of what Dr. King called self-guided missiles and misguided men.
Another hurdle for abolishing war is that the idea rose to popularity in the West in the 1920s and 1930s and then sank into a category of thought that is vaguely treasonous.  War abolition was tried and failed, the thinking goes, like communism or labor unions and now we know better.  While abolishing war is popular in much of the world, that fact is easily ignored by the 1% who misrepresent the 10% or 15% who live in the places that constitute the so-called International Community.  Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come or weaker than an idea whose time has come and gone.  Or so we think.  But the Renaissance was, as its name suggests, an idea whose time came again, new and improved and victorious.  The 1920s and 1930s are a resource for us.  We have stockpiles of wisdom to draw upon.  We have example of where things were headed and how they went of track.

Andrew Carnegie took war profits and set up an endowment with the mandate to eliminate war and then to hold a board meeting, determine the second worst thing in the world, and begin eliminating that.  This sounds unique or eccentric, but is I believe a basic understanding of ethics that ought to be understood and acted upon by all of us.  When someone asks me why I’m a peace activist I ask them why in the hell anyone isn’t.  So, reminding the Carnegie Endowment for Peace what it’s legally obligated to do, and dozens of other organizations along with it, may be part of the process of drawing inspiration from the past.  And of course insisting that the Nobel Committee not bestow another peace prize on a war-thirsty presidential candidate or any other advocate of war is part of that.
World Beyond War
The case against war that is laid out at WorldBeyondWar.org includes these topics:
War is immoral.
War endangers us.
War threatens our environment.
War erodes our liberties.
War impoverishes us.
We need $2 trillion/year for other things.

I find the case to be overwhelming and suspect many of you would agree.  In fact Veterans For Peace and numerous chapters and members of Veterans For Peace have been among the first to sign on and participate.  And we’ve begun finding that thousands of people and organizations from around the world agree as people and groups from 68 countries and rising have added their names on the website in support of ending all war.  And many of these people and organizations are not peace groups.  These are environmental and civic groups of all sorts and people never involved in a peace movement before.  Our hope is of course to greatly enlarge the peace movement by making war abolition as mainstream as cancer abolition.  But we think enlargement is not the only alteration that could benefit the peace movement.  We think a focus on each antiwar project as part of a broader campaign to end the whole institution of war will significantly change how specific wars and weapons and tactics are opposed.

How many of you have heard appeals to oppose Pentagon waste? I’m in favor of Pentagon waste and opposed to Pentagon efficiency.  How can we not be, when what the Pentagon does is evil?  How many of you have heard of opposition to unnecessary wars that leave the military ill-prepared?  I’m in favor of leaving the military ill-prepared, but not of distinguishing unnecessary from supposedly necessary wars. Which are the necessary ones?  When sending missiles into Syria is stopped, in large part by public pressure, war as last resort is replaced by all sorts of other options that were always available.  That would be the case anytime any war is stopped.  War is never a last resort any more than rape or child abuse is a last resort.  How many of you have seen opposition to U.S. wars that focuses almost exclusively on the financial cost and the suffering endured by Americans?  Did you know polls find Americans believing that Iraq benefited and the United States suffered from the war that destroyed Iraq?  What if the financial costs and the costs to the aggressor nation were in addition to moral objections to mass-slaughter rather than instead of?  How many of you have seen antiwar organizations trumpet their love for troops and veterans and war holidays, or groups like the AARP that advocate for benefits for the elderly by focusing on elderly veterans, as though veterans are the most deserving?  Is that good activism?

I want to celebrate those who resist and oppose war, not those who engage in it.  I love Veterans For Peace because it’s for peace.  It’s for peace in a certain powerful way, but it’s the being for peace that I value.  And being for peace in the straightforward meaning of being against war.  Most organizations are afraid of being for peace; it always has to be peace and justice or peace and something else.  Or it’s peace in our hearts and peace in our homes and the world will take care of itself.  Well, as Veterans For Peace know, the world doesn’t take care of itself.  The world is driving itself off a cliff.  As Woody Allen said, I don’t want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen, I want to live on in my apartment.  Well, I don’t want to find peace in my heart or my garden, I want to find peace in the elimination of war.  At WorldBeyondWar.org is a list of projects we think may help advance that, including, among others:

  • Creating an easily recognizable and joinable mainstream international movement to end all war.
  • Education about war, peace, and nonviolent action — including all that is to be gained by ending war.
  • Improving access to accurate information about wars. Exposing falsehoods.
  • Improving access to information about successful steps away from war in other parts of the world.
  • Increased understanding of partial steps as movement in the direction of eliminating, not reforming, war.
  • Partial and full disarmament.
  • Conversion or transition to peaceful industries.
  • Closing, converting or donating foreign military bases.
  • Democratizing militaries while they exist and making them truly volunteer.
  • Banning foreign weapons sales and gifts.
  • Outlawing profiteering from war.
  • Banning the use of mercenaries and private contractors.
  • Abolishing the CIA and other secret agencies.
  • Promoting diplomacy and international law, and consistent enforcement of laws against war, including prosecution of violators.
  • Reforming or replacing the U.N. and the ICC.
  • Expansion of peace teams and human shields.
  • Promotion of nonmilitary foreign aid and crisis prevention.
  • Placing restrictions on military recruitment and providing potential soldiers with alternatives.
  • Thanking resisters for their service.
  • Encouraging cultural exchange.
  • Discouraging racism and nationalism.
  • Developing less destructive and exploitative lifestyles.
  • Expanding the use of public demonstrations and nonviolent civil resistance to enact all of these changes.

I would add learning from and working with organizations that have been, like Veterans For Peace, working toward war abolition for years now and inspiring others to do the same.  And I would invite you all to work with WorldBeyondWartoward our common goal.

David Swanson is Director of World Beyond War, host of Talk Nation Radio, author of books including War No More: The Case for Abolition, War Is A Lie, and When the World Outlawed War.

The Truth About the Nevada Rancher’s Standoff? Really??

Here’s the irony, the little part that most of these reporters on this situation are grossly overlooking. The “lands” that supposedly belong to the ranchers belonged to the Indigenous people before the European came and decided to take it over. In taking it over with the belief that they could and had the authority to do so, the whole of North and South America was “captured”. Now these people whose Ancestors did it to the Natives are crying out about how unfairly they are being treated. I always say, “When the shoe is on the other foot, it’s a tight squeeze.”

This government and its agents are doing exactly what they have been doing since they first came here. They feel they have the right to claim any land, anywhere they so desire and for any reason. Remember, the first settlements were in the Eastern Region of North America, then they decided to “Go West”. I am almost certain that that land which the Bundy ranch is on did not originally belong to anyone named “Bundy”! And to compare being there since 1870’s or so to being there for thousands upon thousands of years is a small fry of an argument to a government that not only feels it can claim land in its jurisdiction, but it can claim territory and it’s people’s way of life, all over the world.

How many of these same ranchers and citizen militias fought in the wars overseas? How many of them voted for war against a contrived enemy? How many of them hold prejudices and biases against “Immigrants”?

Federal Land Per State

My point is, if you support a government that oppresses others, steals from others, lies to others and creates chaos with others, what makes you think that that same government is not going to perpetuate that same abuse upon you? Your Ancestors laid down this government, this constitution, these laws…… exclusive of the Indigenous people, the Africans and women. You blatantly support your governments actions in creating a “Constitution” that was derived with these inherent exclusions. And now, you want that same government to treat “you” differently. Is this collective cognitive dissonance or is it ignorance or is it the idea that because your Ancestors did it to others, you believe that the fine print reads that you are exempt???

This is my major departure from this video and this reporter. It is as if he, Stefan, lives in the twilight zone, or on another planet or other reality. He seems grossly unable to connect these dots, that is, this land does not belong to the US government, State government, or city government. It was inhabited by a people who were brutally displaced and pushed into reservations so that invaders can take it over, settle on it, and claim that their family has been there for 2 centuries! I am sure that the few remaining tribes left in the area find this quite comical and a form of “chickens coming home to roost.”

I don’t know the land rights laws that are implied in the Constitution of the US or the State Constitution of Nevada, but what I do know is that everything is in Divine order and what goes around comes around. Humanity has this thing about owning land and its resources, they have been fighting wars over it since the beginning. What does that say about human beings? They are territorial, insecure, fearful beings who feel threatened by another territorial, insecure, fearful being. Rather than negotiating amicably, they would rather fight! Some are so bold to take their “flag” to another celestial body and plant it as if to claim that territory as well. In fact, they sell stars and plots of land on the Moon. Really??? This situation is simply a tiny pimple on the mound of a much bigger problem. Man’s disconnection from Source and therefore its disconnection from everything around him including the Sun, Moon, Stars and this here, Planet Earth.

Indian Reservations Map of Nevada, pdf 

Nevada Tribal Lands, Maps, Air Quality Analysis | Pacific 

Nevada Tribes – Nevada Indian Territory

Battle Mountain Band
35 Mountain View Drive #138-13
Battle Mountain
NV 89820-
(775) 635-2004
Fax: 635-8016
Carson Colony
2900 S. Curry St.
Carson City, NV 89704
(775) 883-6459
Fax: (775) 883-6467
Dresslerville Colony of the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California
1585 Watasheamu
Gardnerville, NV 89460
(775) 265-5645
Duck Valley Reservation – Nevada & Idaho Shoshone-Paiute Tribes
P.O. Box 219
Owyhee,
Nevada 89832
(208) 759-3100
Fax: (208) 759-3940
Duckwater Shoshone Tribe of the Duckwater Reservation
101 1st Street,
DUCKWATER, NV 89314
(775) 863-0227 ‎
Elko Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians
525 Sunset Street
Elko, NV 89801
(775) 738-9251
Ely Shoshone Tribe
16 Shoshone Circle
Ely
NV 89301-
(775) 289-3013
Fax: 289-3156
Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe
565 RIO VISTA DRIVE
FALLON, NEVADA 89406
Phone: (775) 423-6075
Fax: (775) 423-5202
Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe
Post Office Box 457
McDermitt
NV 89421-
(775) 532-8259
Fax: 532-8263
Goshute Tribe
White Pine County, Nevada
Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada
680 Greenbrae Dr., Suite 280
Sparks, NV 89431
Phone: (775) 355-0600 Ext. 130
Fax: (775) 355-0648
Las Vegas Paiute Tribe
1 Paiute Drive
Las Vegas
NV 89106-
(702) 386-3926
Fax: 383-4019
Lovelock Paiute Tribe
Box 878
Lovelock
NV 89419-
(775) 273-7861
Fax:(702) 273-7861
Moapa Paiute Band of the Moapa Indian Reservation
Post Office Box 56
Moapa
NV 89025-0340
(775) 865-2787
Fax: 865-2875
Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe
Post Office Box 256
Nixon
NV 89424-7401
(775) 574-1000
FAX: 574-1008
Reno-Sparks Indian Colony
98 Colony Road
Reno
NV 89502-
(775) 329-2936
Fax: 329-8710
Shoshone Paiute Business Council
P.O. Box 219
Omyhee
NV 89832-
South Fork Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians
Post Box B-13
Lee
NV 89829-
(775) 744-4223
Fax: 738-0569
Stewart Colony
5258 Snyder Ave.
Carson
Nevada 89701
(775) 883-7767
Fax: 887-3531
Summit Lake Paiute Tribe
510 Melarkey #11, Suite 207
Winnemucca
NV 89445-
(775) 623-5151
Fax: 623-0558
Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians (4 Bands)
525 Sunset Street
Elko
NV 89801-
(775) 738-9251
Fax: 738-2345
Walker River Paiute Tribe
Post Office Box 220
Schurz
NV 89427-
(775) 773-2306
Fax: 773-2585
Washoe Tribal Council
919 Highway 395 South
Gardnerville
NV 89410- (775) 883-1446
Fax: 265-6240
Wells Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone Indians
P.O. Box 809
Wells
NV 89835-
(775) 752-3045
Fax: 752-0569
Winnemucca Colony
420 Pardde
Susanville
CA 96130-
(916) 257-7093
Fax: 887-3531
Woodsfords Colony
96 Washoe Blvd.
Markleeville
CA 96120
(916) 694-2170
887-3531
Yerington Paiute Tribe Colony and Campbell Ranch
171 Cambell Lane
Yerington
NV 89447-
(775) 463-3301
Fax: 463-2416
Yomba Shoshone Tribe
HC 61 Box 6275
Austin
NV 89310-
(775) 964-2448
Fax: 962-2443 


Nana Baakan Connections

 

youtube facebook linkedin instagram twitter

Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, dies at 66 | Al Jazeera America

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST, TOO BAD SO SAD 😦

Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, dies at 66 | Al Jazeera America

Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, dies at 66

February 25, 2014 7:32PM ET
The first-term mayor was an attorney with a long record of black radical activism
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, a prominent attorney and human rights advocate who persuaded local voters into accepting a sales tax to fix crumbling roads and infrastructure in Mississippi’s capital city, died Tuesday, authorities said. He was 66.

City officials said Lumumba died at St. Dominic Hospital. A cause of death was not immediately clear, though City Council president Charles Tillman, who was sworn in as acting mayor, said he had met Monday with Lumumba, who had a cold.

“He kind of joked around about it,” Tillman said.

Lumumba served one term on the City Council and was sworn in as mayor last July. He was one of two candidates who defeated then-Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. in the Democratic primary in early June. Lumumba then defeated businessman Jonathan Lee in the general election.

As mayor, Lumumba persuaded Jackson voters to pass a referendum in January to add a 1-cent local sales tax to help pay for improvements to crumbling roads and an aging water and sewer system. He said then that the city needed an estimated $1.2 billion to completely fix its infrastructure, and raising sales tax by 1 percent would bring in at least $15 million a year until the tax expires in 20 years. Lumumba said the local tax will improve infrastructure, create jobs and increase public safety.
“It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that our beloved brother, human rights activist and mayor of this great city, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, passed away this afternoon,” Safiya Omari, Lumumba’s chief of staff, said Tuesday night.

Security guards escorted her away in tears. Omari made the announcement under Lumumba’s portrait inside Jackson’s antebellum city hall and surrounded by the seven members of the City Council. The building was crowded with city employees, politicians, ministers and other residents of Mississippi’s largest city.

State law says the council will set a special election for voters to choose a new mayor. The council has up to 10 days to meet about taking that action, then the election must be 30 to 45 days later
After the City Council adjourned its brief meeting, Bishop Ronnie Crudup, one of Jackson’s most prominent ministers, led the crowd in prayer.

“Lord, he was a good man, a man who had vision, vision for the city,” Crudup prayed.
City Council member Melvin Priester Jr. credited Lumumba for bringing a spirit of openness to city government.
“He has done a great deal in the last couple of months to change the culture of government in Jackson,” said Priester, who was elected earlier this year to Lumumba’s former seat on the City Council.

In 2011, Lumumba persuaded then-Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they had served 16 years for an armed robbery they said they didn’t commit. Barbour suspended their life sentences and released them. The sisters did not receive a pardon from Barbour when he left office in early 2012, although he granted pardons and other reprieves to more than 200 people during his final days as governor. Barbour released the women on the condition that Gladys give a kidney to Jamie.

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole issued a statement Tuesday saying Democrats are “deeply saddened by the loss of the promising new Mayor of our Capital City, the Honorable Chokwe Lumumba.”

“His young administration has been a great beacon of hope for so many of us,” Cole said. “He was just beginning to make an effective start tackling the long-neglected challenges faced by our capital city.”

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant issued a statement Tuesday saying he and his wife, Deborah, “are shocked and saddened by the news of Mayor Lumumba’s passing and are praying for his loved ones.”
“Just a short time ago, I had the opportunity to join the mayor in a church pew as we welcomed a new development to the city,” Bryant said. “His enthusiasm for Jackson will be deeply missed.”

Lumumba was born in Detroit as Edwin Taliaferro, and changed his name in 1969, when he was in his early 20s. He said he took his new first name from an African tribe that resisted slavery centuries ago and his last name from African independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

He moved to Jackson in 1971 as a human rights activist. He went to law school in Michigan in the mid-1970s and returned to Jackson in 1988.

Lumumba was involved with the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and ’80s. He said in 2013 that the group had advocated “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern U.S. Lumumba was vice president of the group during part of his stint. The group also advocated reparations for slavery, and was watched by an FBI counterintelligence operation.

“The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings,” Lumumba told The Associated Press in a 2013 interview. “I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or ‘hate white’ group in any way. … It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe.”

Lumumba said during the 2013 mayoral campaign that he has shown he can lead across racial lines. In 1990, when the Ku Klux Klan planned to march through Jackson, he said he organized counterdemonstrators, including a predominantly white group of Millsaps College students. He also said he wants to empower people who have been left out of the economic system.

“We have to talk about equitable development,” Lumumba said. “Each portion of the population should be able to develop, and no portion of the population should be given any preferential treatment.”

The Associated Press

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/9/19/in-mississippi-americaasmostrevolutionarymayor.html