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| image is from here |
This is an invaluable 2010 ECD year-end post, from Censored News. Thanks, as always, through the years, to Brenda Norrell. Please click on the title just below the date, to link back to Brenda's news blog.
Friday, December 31, 2010
Censored in 2010: Defense of Mother Earth, the racist right, US torture and collapse of the media
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| (Photo: Dine Water Rights/march 2010) |
What was censored in 2010 on the issues of Indigenous Peoples and human rights? Due to the collapse of the media and the proliferation of the racist right, there's too much to print, but here are ten of the most censored issues.
1. The United States -- the last country in the world to support the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples -- fooled many people when President Obama announced the US would support the Declaration. However, the US did not "endorse," "adopt," or "sign on" to the Declaration. The US only announced "support," and attached a lengthy list of limitations from the US State Dept.
2. None of the elected Native American leaders from the United States joined Bolivian President Evo Morales in his push for new global standards to protect Mother Earth at the climate summits in Cochabamba or Cancun. Carbon trading scams continued, allowing the worst global polluters to continue to pollute. Even though coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of global warming and destruction in the Arctic habitat of wildlife, the Navajo Nation continued to push for another coal fired power plant, Desert Rock. Other Indian Nations continued the push for oil and gas drilling and other polluting industries. The Navajo Nation gave away Dineh water rights in Arizona and uranium mining companies continued to target Navajo, Lakota and other Indian lands.
3. The proliferation of the racist right fueled anti-migrant hysteria in Arizona and elsewhere. Along the US Mexico border, profiteering from migrant prisons and border security contracts continued. The shooting deaths of American Indians by city and county police in Washington State, South Dakota, and elsewhere, along with the arrest in Virginia of a Mohawk film crew, exposed the malignant racism in US law enforcement. The white superiority mindset of the Ku Klux Klan continues in the US, both within white cloaks and police uniforms. It also continues in state legislatures, including Arizona, and in Indian bordertowns.
4. President Obama spent only about 30 minutes with the 12 Native American leaders invited to the White House, and only about 30 minutes with the 565 Native leaders invited to the Interior Building, during the White House Tribal Nations Conference in Dec. It was originally proclaimed as a welcome to the White House for all Indian leaders, last year. Again this year, the 565 Native leaders did not get that handshake and welcome to the White House.
5. The US State Dept. wasted a great deal of time and money of grassroots Native people by holding "Listening Conferences," on human rights issues in numerous locations in 2010. In the final US Periodic Review to the United Nations, almost all were ignored. Even the online State Dept. summaries were pathetic, lacking key names and issues.
6. The United States, George Bush and Dick Cheney, were not held responsible for US torture, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, in 201o. US drones continued to be used for rogue assassinations and the killing of civilians. The US continued the School of Americas, Guantanamo, secret black sites of torture and the training of military soldiers from other countries in torture.
7. The pathetic collapse of the news industry left the industry on life support. Many journalists became, or continued to be, armchair journalists. Some continued cheerleading for the US war in Afghanistan, urging young people toward death, for a bogus war, without examining the truth behind this war. Still others focused on divisive politics, or simply collapsed into the Internet, plagiarizing, rewriting press releases, and making a few phone calls.
8. While the US media pointed its clean white fingers at Mexico's drug war, few reporters pointed out that there would be no drug war in Mexico if it were not for the demand by US citizens for illegal drugs. Few reporters pointed out that the Zetas, the most notorious murderers in the cartels in Mexico, were originally trained as human killing machines of the US special forces.
9. US Border Patrol agents, immigration agents and the US military continue to smuggle drugs and weapons, and murder and rape, with impunity, along the US/Mexico border. The US Army Special Ops continues to post online its operating manual, showing that it provides weapons and support to guerrillas to destabilize governments, and continue war. Ultimately this means the US is responsible for killing its own citizens, along with other innocent women, children and elderly.
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10: While global enforcement agencies focused on Wikileaks, rather than the perpetrators of the crimes, these agencies ignored the murdered and missing women and children in Canada, and the widespread global trafficking of women and children. Meanwhile, Wikileaks shed light on the white privilege mindset within the cables, as the US and its partner multi-national corporations continued to assassinate and make homeless Indigenous Peoples living on lands targeted for mining, dams and deforestation around the world.
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