Vandana Shiva: Global Leadership Forum: 12 - 13 March 2016

What follows is from *here*: 

Ofelia Rivas, Paloma Oldham, Claire Bergstresser, and other marchers declare state of human rights emergency in Arizona

What follows was found by me at Censored News. With thanks to Brenda Norrell.
This is a cross-post with a link, *here*, back to her website and the article's appearance there.

Marchers declare state of human rights emergency in Arizona

Please read this Peaks update as well: Stop Snowbowl: Upcoming Flagstaff Elections, Know Where They Stand (http://indigenousresistance.org/stop-snowbowl-upcoming-flagstaff-elections-know-where-they-stand/)

By Klee Benally

Censored News

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com
Photos by Ethan Sing and Shelby Ray

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. -- More than 300 people including dozens of organizations rallied in Wheeler Park, then marched through the streets of downtown Flagstaff, Arizona in response to escalating human rights violations.

"Arizona is in a state of human rights emergency," stated Eli Isaacs, a volunteer with the Repeal Coalition and an organizer of the march. "We may come from different parts of this community and face different issues, but this racist state and greedy corporations can only push us so far. With our backs against the wall, its easy to see the same forces are oppressing us all, its natural to find unity against common oppressors."

Community members and students addressed reproductive justice, hetero-sexism, cultural survival, racism, sexism, ageism, police brutality and racial profiling. The gathering spoke out against racist laws such as SB1070 and HB2281, and John McCain and John Kyl's water settlement. They urged protection of the San Francisco Peaks and all other sacred places. They agreed to be in solidarity and to support one another in the struggle for human rights.

Luis Fernandez, from Arizona ALCU, asked the crowd what human rights were. Voices rang out, crying "Access to shelter, enough food, safe birth control, freedom to worship as you please" and more.

In August 2011, The Havasupai Tribe, Klee Benally, a Dine’ (Navajo) activist, and the International Indian Treaty Council, filed an Urgent Action / Early Warning Complaint with the United Nations (UN) CERD Committee, on the desecration of Sacred San Francisco Peaks, Arizona. The complaint addressed Arizona Snowbowl’s clear-cutting of 40 acres of pristine forest and the laying of over 5 miles of a waste water pipeline in furtherance of a US Forest Service and City of Flagstaff supported project to spray artificial snow made of waste water effluent on the Holy San Francisco Peaks.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, known internationally as the CERD Committee is charged with monitoring compliance with the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD).

“The Forest Service, the City of Flagstaff, and the courts have proven that they do not understand or respect our spiritual ceremonies and practices and our spiritual relationship to the Earth,” said Klee Benally, arrested multiple times while demonstrating to protect the Holy Peaks. “We have no guaranteed protection for our religious freedom as Indigenous Peoples in the US. The desecration of this Holy site is an attack on our cultural survival.”

Steve Kugler, an advocate for the homeless, stated, "During 2007’s winter solstice, a Homeless Memorial Day Service was conducted on city hall lawn. Twelve names of the city’s unsheltered people that died from exposure during the winter were read.

Unknown to the public, twelve more people had died. These twelve were not acknowledged by city officials, nor were they mentioned in Flagstaff’s media. I feel that the officials did this, because the unreported twelve people were not substance abusers, they are a blight to Flagstaff’s service industry.

My take is that Flagstaff has 2,500 all season, homeless, people who do not have a voice. Thirty percent of the 2,500 homeless are students. Let me be their voice. Flagstaff’s city’s officials were elected by the people to be a proxy voice for the people. Do Flagstaff’s citizens have justice when its elected officials feel that they are above the law, adhere to their own agendas and are not accountable to the people that elected them to office?"

Ofelia Rivas from O'odham Voice Against the Wall, talked about resisting border militarization and how she just testified before a UN special rapporteur in Tucson, Ariz. "The rights of mother earth is what we need to protect today to survive as human beings." stated Rivas.

Paloma Allen, O'odham, who has been working to stop loop 202 from desecrating the sacred South Mountain in Phoenix stated, "Indigenous rights and indigenous identity don't mean anything to this state, that's why we have to be vocal."

Lola, a youth member of a new Flagstaff based group called B.L.A.S.T. spoke passionately about how she has been impacted by Arizona's immigration laws, "This has affected me by my family getting deported, I cannot see them any more because they are on the other side of the border. It just hurts me inside to have them leave and just wake up one day and they're not there. What if that was your family getting deported, what if that was your mother getting put in jail? That is not good, that's not a way we as humans should be treated. We all have rights we all should be treated equal, so I do not understand why they are trying to take away our families."

Raquel, a former member of Tucson based U.N.I.D.O.S., the youth organization that occupied Tucson Unified School District's (TUSD) school board meeting last year, stated, "It's very clear the path that this state lays for youth of color.

It's very clear from the militarization of schools, from the militarization of neighborhoods, from the militarization of the border itself on O'odham lands. The reason that ethnic studies is under attack is because these classes represent a rupture in the plan that Arizona had for youth of color. The TUSD fears resistance so much that every parent or teacher has to go through metal detectors."

Claire Bergstresser, an NAU student and member of Immigration Action Research Team, directly addressed SB1070 and HB2281. Bergstresser quoted HB 2281 as "prohibiting ethnic solidarity" and responded to it by expressing, "I could not understand why our government had mixed politics with education, why students were being limited education on ethnic studies, the things that they can connect with, understand, and love." Bergstresser addressed the crowd, "Your voice and your passions hold no borders and will be heard. At the end of the day, it is not the loudest voices that are remembered but the ones with the passion and courage to listen, express and act in the name of something bigger than yourself. We will march today for our passions, we will march today in the name of human rights, but also we will march today to have our voices heard."

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Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com

Navajo Testimony from Forgotten People at the Open Forum on the Rights of Indigenous People in Tucson, AZ, USA

What follows is being cross-posted from Brenda Norrell's Censored News website. You can link to and read this story at that site by clicking *here*.

Navajos testimony to UN Rapporteur: Housing and Water Rights

Forgotten People goes to the UN to secure

housing and water rights

Press statement by Forgotten People

Photo credit: Forgotten People

Censored News

http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

TUCSON, Ariz. --  Mary Lane, Glenna C. Begay, Leta O’Daniel, Leonard Benally, Marlene Benally and Norris Nez of Forgotten People presented on Land and Resources, Self-Government and the Open Forum on the Rights of Indigenous People in Tucson. 

A delegation of 14 members of Forgotten People met with the UN to call for recognition of the human right to housing and water. They urged the U.S. to pass legislation that abides by the declaration they signed in 2010, which establishes minimum basic rights for indigenous people globally including the U.S.

Forgotten People appreciates the significance of this historic mission by the United Nations to conduct an investigation into the plight of US Native Americans. Forgotten People believes greater investigation needs to be conducted into the lack of housing, poisoning of water sources, and neglect by the US government in our region to identify how the standards of the declaration are reflected in US law and policy and needed reforms and good practices.

A 43-year US government imposed Bennett Freeze affecting approximately 1,500,000 acres denied Navajo people electricity, running water and adequate sewage disposal. Even though the freeze was lifted by President Obama in 2009, they cannot find any funding or plan for rehabilitation for infrastructure, housing, water and roads.  Only 3% of the families have electricity.  Over 90% of the homes do not have access to piped water, requiring families to haul their water from other locations. Only 24 % of homes are habitable today. 

Since 1966, the population in the area has increased by approximately 65 percent, forcing several generations of families to live together in dwellings that have been declared unfit for human habitation.

A Relocation Act passed in 1974, resulted in the forced eviction of over 15,000 head of households and their families. Those that resisted relocation are under siege to this day by the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Indian Affairs using federal monies to confiscate livestock, bulldoze and dismantle water wells and deny people their civil and human rights. Due to a lack of infrastructure, families live in substandard homes, are forced to haul their own water, suffer negative economic and health impacts, are trapped in a circle of poverty and are still drinking contaminated water because they have no choice or have no water at all. 

The U.S. Department of Energy calls Navajo land a “National Sacrifice Area” in a region at the heart of the global warming issue. Black Mesa, Big Mountain is a microcosm of the global problem. The energy is produced on our lands using our resources, yet we receive no benefits from this activity. We suffer the local costs of this production, such as environmental damage and interference with sovereignty. In addition, our traditional lifestyle hangs at the edge of survival in an arid climate, and scientists predict that global warming will cause a permanent drought and dust bowl in the American Southwest, making this life impossible.

Wars of the future will be fought over water, as they are over oil today, as water, our Blue Gold, the source of human survival, enters the global marketplace.  Currently, President Ben Shelly of the Navajo Nation is working with Senator Kyl and McCain to pass legislation for the Little CO River Water Rights Settlement that gives away our water rights to Peabody Coal Company and NGS. Forgotten People believes the Settlement is a tragedy not only due to the minimizing Navajo rights but is waiving hundreds of millions of dollars in potential compensation for rights waived.

To compound the effects, the water rights settlement forever waives without redress for past present and future contamination of water sources when the U.S. EPA reports the presence of over 1,300 abandoned mines on reservation land and up to 25 % of the unregulated sources in the western Navajo Nation exceeds drinking water standard for kidney toxicants including uranium.

Forgotten People believes the US should be held accountable under the declaration and to commitments made internationally which establish minimum basic rights for indigenous people, including UN General Assembly (GA) Resolutions on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation and a commitment by the U.S. EPA at the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development to reduce the number of its citizens lacking access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 50% by 2015.

Forgotten People believes President Obama and Navajo Nation should sign a binding version of the declaration to ensure access to clean and potable water and housing as fundamental human rights and participation in decision-making in matters which would affect their rights under the declaration and international law.

Copies of Forgotten People’s interventions are available. For more information please contact Mary Lane, Vice-President, Forgotten People at (928) 401-1777 or via email: info@forgottennavajopeople.org

Forgotten People

P.O. Box 1661

Tuba City, AZ 86045

www.forgottennavajopeople.org

info@forgottennavajopeople.org

(928) 401-1777

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Posted by brendanorrell@gmail.com

The Radically Feminist Vandana Shiva on Patriarchal Economics and Agribusiness

image is from here

Small farmers, many of them women, are threatened the world over by corporate agribusiness that follows an aggressive economic-cultural-political anti-Life practice steeped and infused with Western White Male Supremacist values and worldviews. In India, among many other places, there is a crisis. Dr. Shiva has been addressing this crisis, offering radically feminist solutions to the problems of an increasingly globalised conservative capitalist patriarchal way of being that is as unethical ans it is unsustainable.

For some of the written history of this analysis and protest, please click on the following link (title):

Monocultures, Monopolies, Myths And The Masculinisation Of Agriculture
by Vandana Shiva
Director Research Foundation for Science,
Technology and Ecology - India

I found what follows at Toward Freedom *here*. But the original is from Al Jazeera and may be linked to at the end of this excerpt.

Vandana Shiva: No Therapy in Retail

Monday, 09 January 2012 09:15 Vandana Shiva

Share

Al Jazeera

The entry of big corporations into the food chain pushes up retail costs and decreases the share of the farmer.

New Delhi, India - In November 2011, when the UPA government announced that it had cleared the entry of big retail chains such as Walmart and Tesco into India through 51 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail, it justified the decision saying that FDI in retail would boost food security and benefit farmers' livelihoods.

But the assurance that FDI in retail would ease inflation did not resolve the political crisis the government was facing; it deepened it. Parliament was stalled for several days of the Winter Session, after which the government was forced to withdraw its decision.

The story of FDI in retail goes back to 2005, when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed an agriculture agreement with the US, along with the nuclear agreement. On the board of the US-India Knowledge Initiative in Agriculture, as it is called, sit Monsanto (the world's leading producer of GM seeds), ConAgra (among the world's biggest agribusinesses, along with Cargill) and Walmart (the world's largest retail giant).

Protests had prevented Walmart's entry into retail, but, in 2007, it did get a backdoor entry through a joint-venture with Bharti (their stores go by the names of Easyday and Best Price Modern Wholesale). No back-end infrastructure has been built so far, one of the other claims of the government about why we need retail giants.

The way the UPA government tried to ram through the decision on FDI in retail - without consulting the opposition parties, or even its allies - was clearly undemocratic. But the decision itself was also flawed. It illustrated a disconnect between an ideology based on market fundamentalism - which is the leaning of the present government - and the Indian reality of small farms and small retail.

Continue reading

Indigenous Day of Resistance press release

What follows was found *here* at the Inteligenta Indigena Novajoservo™ (IIN). You may also click on the title below to link to this news at another website. With thanks to the activists at both sites and with support for all who attend.

INDIGENOUS DAY of Resistance, Friday, January 27, 2012, San Francisco, CA

INDIGENOUS DAY of Resistance, Friday, January 27, 2012, San Francisco, CA on Betty Tuininga's TwitWall: INDIGENOUS DAY OF RESISTANCE

INDIGENOUS RIGHTS RALLY & FORUM

January 27, 2012
Indigenous Unity March at 10:30 AM

Meet at the Human Rights Commission
25 Van Ness Avenue
San Francisco, CA

March to the United Nations Plaza
Indigenous Rights Forum & Rally 11:00 AM

An Indigenous led Movement to Decolonize and Occupy the United Nations to demand repatriations for the theft of Tribal Lands, gold & other natural resources; and address issues of Civil Rights Violations, Hate Crimes, Broken Treaties, and the Human Rights inherent to ALL Indigenous People.

For More Information Contact:

United Native Americans,Inc.
United Native Americans,Inc@gmail.com
(510)672-7187

Censored News Honors Many Indigenous Women, selected by readers

poster image is from here

There are many groups of activists and heroes who are utterly ignored and willfully shut out of dominant society's cultural, economic, and political news. One such group is Indigenous women. In North America, there is a corporate media policy of not reporting news from an Indigenist perspective, or that is produced by Indigenous people. Anti-Indigenist white male supremacy works very hard to leave all of us with the idea that if Indigenous people exist and are activist, they must be men.

Leave it to Brenda Norrell at the very appropriately named "Censored News" website to publicly honor and make more widely visible the centuries-long reality of Indigenous women's activism. What follows is copied and re-posted with permissions granted by Brenda. She states:

Please feel free to repost this article and photo, with author and Censored News credits appearing at top of the article. Media, for contact info for interviews of the heroes: brendanorrell@gmail.com

Thank you to all the named and unnamed, recognised and unrecognised Indigenous women activists who fight battles unseen by most non-Indigenous people. And thank you, once again, to Brenda Norrell. Love and justice to you in 2012.

You may link back to the original site by clicking on the title just below. There are many more honored Indigenous activists named in that post beyond what I have re-posted here. I also provide at link back to the original site and article at the bottom of this post.

Censored News Person of the Year: The Indigenous Woman

By Brenda Norrell
Censored News
http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

Who made a difference this year?

The Indigenous Person of the Year, selected by readers of Censored News, is the Indigenous Woman.

Debra White Plume, Morning Star Gali, Waziyata Win, Tantoo Cardinal, Kahentinetha Horn and her daughter Dr. Ojistoh Horn, Corrina Gould, Kandi Mossett, Louise Benally, Buffy St Marie, Rigoberta Menchu, Hacha C Norris, Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman and many more were selected by readers as the Person of the Year. Censored News focuses on Indigenous Peoples and human rights.

Debra White Plume, Lakota grandmother and longtime activist from Pine Ridge, S.D., received the most nominations. Shown in the top left photo, White Plume, grandmother and voice against uranium mining on Lakota lands, was among those arrested this year at the White House during the action to halt the Tarsands and Keystone XL dirty oil pipeline during September.

Gwen Caldwell said that Debra White Plume was her top choice. "I selected Debra, because she sets an excellent example of what we as women should be doing and how we should be living. She is humble courageous, speaks her truth with honor and integrity!"

CJ Christian said, "Debra White Plume has made herself visible before the UN, fighting to save the Black Hills and to stop the Keystone pipeline. She works tirelessly for the First Nations People with sincere devotion, dedication, spirituality and integrity."

Roxann Karonhiarokwas selected Kahentinetha Horn, publisher of Mohawk Nation News, and her daughter, Dr. Ojistoh Horn, the first female Mohawk medical doctor from Kahnawake. Roxann described the mother and daughter as, “An amazing duet and strong women."

Roxann said, “I nominated Ojistoh because she delivers our babies. Being a matrilineal society she is responsible and takes a hands on role in the delivery of the mothers of our nation." She added, "That woman does not sleep. She does house calls and even looks after people during family events on her time off! I love that beautiful woman. She’s an inspiration and deserves it!”

"Kahentinetha is a woman who always worked for our people! I am honored to say I know these lovely ladies personally.”

Ben Manuel selected four dynamic, tireless human rights warriors: "Waziyata Win, Jessica Yee, Morning Star Gali and Debra White Plume." Richard Flittie added another voice of recognition for Morning Star Gali and Corrina Gould, both longtime activists struggling to save sacred places and reclaim Indigenous lands in California.

Manuel was among many who selected Dakota activist Waziyata Win for her work to bring Indigenous perspectives to the Decolonize/Occupy movement. (Shown in top right photo. Click for Oakland video.)

Among the dynamic Native American youths honored was Kandi Mossett, who hosted the Indigenous Environmental Network annual gathering in her homeland this summer, was arrested at the White House protesting the Tarsands Keystone XL pipeline in September, and was featured as a voice to protect Mother Earth at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, in December.

Hahana Bear selected Kandi, shown in lower left photo at top of page. Kandi was compelled to speak out after the deaths of friends and family from the oil and gas trucks, and devastating pollution, on her homeland, the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nations in North Dakota, also known as Three Affiliated Tribes and Fort Berthold.

Indigenous Women Honored

Ruth Nolan honored Cahuilla Indian Elder and Tribal Leader Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Morongo/Cahuilla, who passed away this past November.

Nolan said, “I selected Dr. Katherine Siva Sauvel, Cahuilla elder. elder, teacher and Cahuilla culture bearer (1920-2011) because she has been instrumental in saving the endangered Cahuilla language and way of life, and dedicated her life to passing along the oral histories and language and culture of the Cahuilla into the modern world. She was the first American Indian inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, and is a co-founder of the Malki Museum, the first American Indian museum in the United States.

“I had the incredible honor and good fortune to have met and learned much from Dr. Sauvel through my California desert Indian scholarship and position at College of the Desert, and was and remain incredibly touched, professionally and personally, by her extreme generosity and gentle yet strong touch in all matters related to sharing with so many others her native culture, to which she dedicated her passion and life's work. She is deeply appreciated by people across the country and globe, and truly missed.”

Toni Reynolds selected Cheyenne Bellecourt Eagleman. “She tells it like it is. She doesn't care if people get upset with her or not. She fights for Native rights, works with young people, raises her own children as a single parent, and works with numerous other issues. She is very respected and well known.”

Richard Flittie honored Pte San Win. "She is a young Lakota woman who lives on the Pine Ridge Reservation and works hard to take care of all the people there who need help. She is raising money for propane and for firewood and continues in her fathers footsteps on the political front for the Lakota people.Things like the Keystone XL pipeline. And she is always supporting and encouraging the carrying on of tradition and ceremony for her people."

Jeanne Combo selected Wangari Muta Maathai, who passed away in September of this year. She started the Green Belt Movement in Africa in 1977. She was honored for working with women to improve their livelihoods by increasing their access to resources like firewood for cooking and clean water. "She became a great advocate for better management of natural resources and for sustainability, equity, and justice."

Becka Nan Amos selected Hacha C. Norris. “Hacha is a strong and fearless woman who has taken her own education seriously -- and by this I mean learning truths and concepts the overculture has tried to hide and/or eradicate. She understands deeply the wrongness of the overculture and speaks out about it regularly with her actions as well as her words. I have learned so much from her, especially concerning my own white privilege -- and that's what I respect the most about her -- she's not afraid to call out people on the ways of thinking that we so badly need to change but often cannot even see. She's got guts, and not the greedy kind.”

Hacha C Norris, said, “Debra White Plume, Bertha Gutierrez, Buffy St. Marie, Tom BK Goldtooth, Alex White Plume, Kris Barney, Evo Morales, Subcomandante Marcos, Rigoberta Menchú, and yes all the 'Protestors' (whose names are many) who fight for Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, truth, justice and an end to capitalist exploitation and plunder of Mother Earth, and those who fight for food, heat, housing, education, jobs, health care and a voice.”

Bertha Gutierrez thanked Hacha C. Norris for selecting her. "I am humbled. All the people you have mentioned are people who inspire me and in no way shape or form do I feel I could fit in their shoes. Thank you for also inspiring me. Mi respeto para ti."

The women of the Blood Reserve are honored who faced off with oil and gas trucks this year in Alberta, Canada. On the southern border, O'odham Ofelia Rivas, and O'odham struggling against border agents and repression are honored. Northern Paiute traditional gatherer Wesley Dick, Kwassuh, is honored for refusing to accept the charges of Nevada Fish and Wildlife, and demanding justice. The longstanding efforts of Western Shoshone Carrie and Mary Dann are also recognized for their decades of struggle for the land and people. Lakotas Kent Lebsock, Debra White Plume and Alex White Plume, are honored for the Owe Aku International Justice Project.

The Navajo and Hopi of Black Mesa are honored who work together in their struggle to protect the land, air and water. Navajo Louise Benally and Ofelia Rivas, O'odham, are honored for speaking out at protests in December against the corporate profiteers, now coopting Arizona legislators, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in Phoenix.

Please click *here* for the rest of the post.

CNN Heroes: Soap, Water, Land, Shelter, are all Feminist Issues

 

Diane Latiker Nonprofit: Kids Off the Block What it does: Gives young people in Chicago a place to hang out and learn valuable life skills so they can stay off the streets and away from rampant gang violence
Diane says: "What I want people to know is that the work that I and so many others do can literally be the difference between life and death for a generation that seems to have lost all hope. ... If I can make a change in a generation, then my community's going to get better -- because they're going to be the ones that take it over."
Exploring the issue: In several cities around the world, streetwise "interrupters" are trying to stop teen violence before it starts.
Donate to Kids Off the Block

Robin Lim Nonprofit: Yayasan Bumi Sehat What it does: Offers free prenatal care, birthing services and medical aid to low-income women in Indonesia
Robin says: "Because the cost of childbirth often exhausts the family's income, the poor and even the middle-income people of the world find themselves in a downward spiral of suffering and loss, just when they should be celebrating the births of their babies."
Exploring the issue: Many women in the developing world do not have access to contraception or maternal care.
Donate to Yayasan Bumi Sehat

Derreck Kayongo
Nonprofit: Global Soap Project What it does: Collects partially used hotel soap in the United States, reprocesses it and then sends it abroad to save lives in impoverished countries
Derreck says: "Because of our work, this world is going to be a better place than we found it -- with no soap being thrown away and with no child or woman ... or any vulnerable populous left without a bar of soap to fend off disease."
Exploring the issue: In developing countries around the world, millions of children lack access to soap and clean water.
Donate to Global Soap Project

What appears above is from *here*.


Watching CNN's annual presentation of honors to various activists around the world, called CNN Heroes, reminds me, once again, of how many issues there are facing women and girls around the world. Far more issues than face those of us who are relatively wealthy, sheltered, and regionally advantaged.

Soap is needed to cleanse the skin of lethal bacteria. Clean, safe, accessible, free water is needed to live and be well. Unpoisoned and unoccupied land is a requirement for self-determination, community, spiritual health, and overall well-being. If one's land and water is occupied and possessed, or ravaged and poisoned by corporate power, by men, or by White-World settlers and invaders, it is difficult to sustain one's own life and the life of one's people. Safe, sturdy shelter is an increasingly rare thing. For women and girls to be physically safe, walls must offer protection from harmful forces both outside and inside.

What CNN Heroes does is to highlight (for two hours each year) activism by individuals, not collective activism designed to overthrow tyrannical and oppressive regimes, including regimes of men warring against women and girls. You will not hear the terms "white supremacy" or "male supremacy" or "the savage blood-thirst of the Western World" named as such in programs produced for CNN. It will honor amazing individuals only as long as those individuals do not publicly call for massive systemic change that disadvantages US corporate, raced, and patriarchal power.

What would the effect on the world be if all Western news media reported 24 hours a day/365 days a year on the necessity and value of anti-oppression activism? When will activists be given more than a few minutes to express thanks to CNN and instead detail how US corporate and military (patriarchal, imperialist) power murders millions of people, mostly poor, of color, and female?

When will Anderson Cooper speak to this in ways that educate his audience to the systemic, institutionalised dimensions of the harms spoken of in this annual special? I wonder. Because as long as the masses of media consumers are led to think that globalised atrocities and injustices are caused by unorganised or merely unfortunate events, we are left ignorant about how to properly support those activists who are working for radical social-political-economic change. And how to be those activists too.

CRAPPY HALLOWEEN: The Today Show, Brian Williams, Rock Center, and their collective CROCK OF CRAP

The CRAP-loaded media has been pissing me off a lot lately. I'll highlight a few reasons why.



Watch at 2:20 into this clip from the Today Show. How many things are disgustingly wrong with dressing a white-appearing woman and a chihuahua in "Indian Chief" costumes?


The Today Show cast, writers, and producers, and the writers and producers for Brian Williams and Rock Center are collectively nothing more than shills and sold-out vehicles for the Racist-Misogynist Right-wing and for ecocidal Big Oil.

On the Today Show on Halloween, there was an unbelievably blatant display of white supremacist racism. There was a segment on costumes for human and dog, and it was presented as a fashion show. Much to my disgust and horror (not the kind one might expect on Halloween), a white-appearing woman and a dog she was carrying came out dressed in what I can only refer to as a perverse native Amerikkkan costume: feathered headdress on each of them and a “Pocahontas”-type dress on the woman. And no one—not Matt Lauer or anyone else bothering to comment on how inappropriate, hurtful, and racist such an exploitive display of religious and cultural callousness and cruelty is. In case Matt and other NBC news and entertainment cronies are not aware of it, we live in a country where genocide against American Indians is on-going, and one of the ways it occurs is by appropriating and exploiting Native American cultures and religions; also by honoring with holidays the genocidal rapist savage named Christopher Columbus and by celebrating the beginning of the end of life as it was lived for thousands of years on Turtle Island, when Murderous Settlers sat down with Wampanoag Indians in "New England". See the following link for more:

http://www.uaine.org/dom.htm

We are also being fed the most racist-misogynist story--an endless story about how missing white girls and women matter, and missing or murdered girls and women of color do not:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/295168/nbc-today-show-investigator-takes-tour-of-missing-baby%E2%80%99s-home

Let's read a report about all the stories that are "too dark" for the Today Show and the NBC Nightly News to report on:

http://madamenoire.com/79158/no-one-misses-the-missing-black-girls/


Also on NBC is a new "news" program hosted by the nightly news anchor for NBC, Brian Williams. It is called “Rock Center” for Rockefeller Center in mid-town Manhattan. Let's keep in mind that Rockefellers helped make Corporate Capitalism the sleazy, greedy, unjust system it is. The Rockefellers have been the largest beneficiaries of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. The Fed makes damn sure the Filthy Rich stay ever filthier and even richer. For more, please see here: http://www.apfn.net/doc-100_bankruptcy27.htm

The first story of the hour was about there is an economic oasis in this miserable-for-the-middle-class economy. (This is an economy and economic system that has been miserable and murderous for working poor people for far longer than three years.) The media loves to toss us bones and pretend it is good news. In this case it's worse than that. There is no oasis, only the opportunity to make Big Oil Execs and their Shareholders ever more filthy rich than they already are. In a small town in Montana fracking is taking over, destroying the Earth, using up and polluting water, and turning the land of the Black Feet into wasteland. It is being funded by Big Oil and we are led to believe “it's all good” there. There's absolutely nothing sustainable about what's going on. It's same old ecocidal, genocidal atrocity packaged up NBC with by Brian Williams as the friendly-faced deliverer of more bad news that he actually believes is good. White people get to move there and get jobs doing awful things. They may get a house for a home out of it. When oil is no longer in the rocks there, the economy will die and the area will likely become a Ghost Town.

Let's see how sleazily the story-writers for Brian Williams and the very white Harry Smith evade responsibility for the systemic problems with the US globalised economy, which murders millions worldwide and is utterly unsustainable. Instead of responsible reporting, we are told that all any one needs is "opportunity" which is code for "Our immoral economic system will not offer you any meaningful way to live; but if you're privileged enough, or are willing to do work that most people cannot do, you may get the chance to earn enough money to stay in debt for the rest of your life."


http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/boomtown-north-dakota-town-becomes-hot-job-market/60kg0iy?cpkey=70e0703b-3ba2-434e-aabb-1c56c22aecf9%7c%7c%7c%7c

See, for the unacknowledged future of the story above:

From Boomtown to Ghost Town

Overview:

In order to fully understand the geographic concept of natural resource use, students should learn about the ways that resource extraction affects the physical and human landscape. In this lesson, they will discuss how a specific economic activity in a region can facilitate the creation of towns, which often turn into ghost towns if the economic activity ends.

On the same program, xenophobia, racism, and misogyny combined forces to produce a vile segment on the danger of Chinese women coming the US to give birth, so that their child is US-born and entitled to all that the US has to offer, such as a failing (and murderous) economic system, gross and rampant racism, wholesale destruction of the Earth, and heteropatriarchal practices that the US Right thinks are good for what ails Amerikkka. While it was noted that not many women from China are actually doing what the report said Chinese women are doing, it was also noted, in a way that made me think FOX News and NBC were now one and the same, that any and every incident of this occurring was an outrage and must be stopped.

From *the Asian Nation website*: 

Empress Tsu-his ruled China from 1898 to 1908 from the Dragon Throne. The New York Times described her as "the wicked witch of the East, a reptilian dragon lady who had arranged the poisoning, strangling, beheading, or forced suicide of anyone who had ever challenged her autocratic rule." The shadow of the Dragon Lady -- with her cruel, perverse, and inhuman ways -- continued to darken encounters between Asian women and the West they flocked to for refuge.

Far from being predatory, many of the first Asian women to come to the U.S. in the mid-1800s were disadvantaged Chinese women, who were tricked, kidnapped, or smuggled into the country to serve the predominantly male Chinese community as prostitutes. The impression that all Asian women were prostitutes, born at that time, "colored the public perception of, attitude toward, and action against all Chinese women for almost a century," writes historian Sucheng Chan.

Police and legislators singled out Chinese women for special restrictions "not so much because they were prostitutes as such (since there were also many White prostitutes around) but because -- as Chinese -- they allegedly brought in especially virulent strains of venereal diseases, introduced opium addiction, and enticed White boys into a life of sin," Chan also writes. Chinese women who were not prostitutes ended up bearing the brunt of the Chinese exclusion laws that passed in the late 1800s.

Racist-Misogynist Corporate greed and exploitation of the poor, working class, and middle class is apparently not an outrage to The Filthy Rich. Neither is the destruction of the Earth. Why doesn't Brian Williams report on the history and present of forced sterilisation of women of color in the US? Why doesn't the CROCK Center report on how Right-wing Republican cockholes work so diligently to control US women of color's and white women's reproductive organs and choices? Would such reports reveal that it is not Chinese women who exploit and abuse our system, but rather Filthy Rich White US Men?

What “offends” the big white cockholes who run this country is a very few Chinese women coming here. Last time I checked—and thanks to a friend of mine for reminding me of this—the US is heavily indebted to China because The Filthy Rich have run what was an apparently functional (while completely dysfunctional and deadly) economic system into the ground, where it now must blow water into rocks to get oil and call that “good”.

Why doesn't Brian get any other point of view—utilising all the many news reporters and newscasters he boasts will be appearing on the program over the weeks—on things like fracking, the harm of Big Oil to people, animals, and the Earth, and xenophobic racism and misogyny? Is Brian not able to do this? Is he just a puppet for his show's corporate producers. (Yes, he is.) Brian Williams is not allowed to say anything at all that might threaten the profits of those he serves—those who have bought his soul and who own his spirit.

If he does have a soul that is not thoroughly possessed by NBC Execs and Shareholders, then let him do a half-hour interview with Dr. Vandana Shiva on all that is fucked up about fracking and Big Oil's solutions to economic problems faced by the middle class. The sad truth is that even if he wanted to do it, his bosses wouldn't let him. You won't see Dr. Shiva on Rock Center any time soon. The only Asian women you'll see are the ones filling up a propaganda segment pretending it is Chinese women, not white US men, ripping us off and taking advantage of our allegedly moral and honorable and good systems of governance and commerce.

http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/born-in-the-u-s-a-chinese-women-escape-one-child-policy/6c5e6t7

NBC wants us to believe that everything out of the friendly-faced Brian Williams' mouth is truthful and responsible, when most of what he reports is neither.

Shame on you, Brian Williams and Harry Smith--and, especially, on your writers and producers--for misleading the US public and doing so to fatten the wallets and pad the off-shore bank accounts of the Filthy Rich. Does NBC stand for Nothing But CRAP?


(Note: CRAP: corporate racist atrocious patriarchy)

Will "ecocide" gets legal legs in UK and US courts?

image of book cover is from here

Let's not forget that Indigenous activists have been speaking out about this since the White Man's ecocidal practices first violated Sacred Ground. And if you haven't yet, please read the radical ecofeminist books by South Asian activist Vandana Shiva and the white Jewish North American ecofeminist, Starhawk.

From The Guardian:

See the video:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2011/oct/05/mock-ecocide-trial-video

Read the text (and please click on the title to link back to the source web page):

Test trial convicts fossil fuel bosses of 'ecocide'

Top lawyers put fossil fuel bosses on trial in the UK's supreme court in a mock case to explore if ecocide - environmental destruction - could join genocide as a global crime

Update: Two verdicts of guilty, one not guilty: that was the conclusion of the mock ecocide trial (details below) held at the UK's supreme court on 30 September. Real lawyers, judges and a public jury found the CEOs of fictional fossil fuel companies guilty of "extensive destruction, damage to or loss of ecosystem(s) to such an extent that the peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory, and of other territories, has been severely diminished", as a result of their company's extraction of oil from tar sands in Canada. The jury found one of the CEOs not guilt on the count of damage caused by an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Polly Higgins, the driving force behind the trial and who is working to have ecocide join genocide and three other crimes against peace in the UN, said: "For me the trial was a moment of truth. No longer is it acceptable to pursue profit without consequence. Corporate Ecocide is a global crime that is far greater and far more prevalent that most people realise. Those few people who dare to speak up about Corporate Ecocide in Wall Street have been arrested for speaking out about a greater crime, a far greater breach of the peace than their own shouting and campaigning. Surely it is now the time to prosecute the true destroyers of our world."

She added: "I'm not keen to see lots of [people] in the dock. What I want to see is people making responsible decisions. For example, a crime of ecocide could force governments to change the incentive structures for businesses by redirecting subsidises for fossil fuels towards clean energy sources. In this way the dirty energy companies that are wrecking the environment today could be transformed into the clean energy companies of tomorrow."

Original story (29/09/11): It's a grim list: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression (such as unprovoked invasions) and war crimes. All are recognised by the UN as crimes against peace and prosecuted through the international criminal court.

But should the bosses of polluting companies and the leaders of environmentally-unfriendly states join those responsible for mass murder in the dock. They could if a fifth crime against peace - ecocide - joined that list of human evils? The United Nations is now considering the proposal and the first test of how a prosecution for ecocide would work takes place on Friday, with fossil fuel bosses in the dock at the UK supreme court in London. It is a mock trial of course, but with real top-flight lawyers and judges and a jury made up of members of the public. The corporate CEOs will be played by actors briefed by their legal teams.

The crime of ecocide is the brainchild of British lawyer Polly Higgins, who in her UN submission defined it as:

Ecocide: The extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished.

Crimes being considered for prosecution in Friday's trial include the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands, a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fracking for shale gas in Nigeria and bauxite mining of Niyamgiri mountain, India. The real world parallels are not accidental, I'm sure.

An international law against ecocide, enforceable in the UK, will be assumed for the purposes of the mock trial. But there is no script and the jury's verdict is theirs alone to decide. "It is nerve-racking, it is not a done deal," says Higgins.

She argues the link between ecocide and genocide is that damage and destruction to the environment depletes the Earth's resources, which leads to conflict. Only by making ecocide a crime for which individuals can be jailed, will we change the norm which allows profit to be put before the planet, she told me.

Higgins says a key inspiration is William Wilberforce, whose campaigning led to the abolition of slavery in the UK. He changed to norm of how black people were treated, she says, and ecocide law would change the way the planet is treated. "We have go to the point when the ethical imperative trumps the economic imperative," she says. At the moment in many countries, she points out, the first responsibility of CEOs is a financial one to their shareholders. If environmental destruction is not illegal but can boost profit, it will happen, she says.

But she is not anti-corporate or anti-profit, she says: "I started as a corporate lawyer. Now I want to make the problem part of the solution." She says companies should be making profits from solving the problems of global warming, habitat destruction and the extinctions of animals and plants. The companies that traded in slaves did not go out of business after slavery was abolished, she claims.

I asked her about the problem of proving causation between the acts of companies and environmental damage, which has doomed previous attempted prosecutions in the US.

"Genocide is a crime of intent, but ecocide is not," she says. An ecocide law would create a pre-emptive responsibility to prevent ecological damage, she explains, in the same way that "superior responsibility" or "strict liablility" enables people to be prosecuted whether or not they intended to cause damage. "I am really not wanting to see lots of CEOs locked up," she says, but wants them deterred from ecocide in the first place.

I also asked her about the phrase in her ecocide definition that says "whether by human agency or by other causes". If there is a natural disaster, who can be prosecuted? The "other causes" term is there, she says, to place an obligation on governments to intervene in disasters to minimise damage.

If this all seems utter fantasy to you, it is worth noting that Bolivia has already passed laws granting all nature equal rights to humans. Furthermore, ecocide could become an international crime by amendment of the ICC's Statute of Rome, which would need 86 nations to back it. Are there 86 states backing the ICC who feel climate change, the crisis in the oceans and other environmental problems are trashing their "peaceful enjoyment" of the Earth's bounty? I wouldn't be surprised if there were.

Update (11:22 Friday): The two crimes chosen for the ecocide mock trial are the extraction of oil from Canada's tar sands, a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I'll update the post again when the verdict comes.

Note: The trial, organised by the Hamilton Group, begins at 0900 BST on Friday 30 September and will be broadcast live by Sky News's Supreme Court web channel. Members of the public can attend. I'll post updates on this page. Michael Mansfield QC leads the prosecution against Nigel Lickley QC for the defence. Michael Norman will sit as the judge and the jury are members of the public recruited through Facebook and other social media and vetted for conflicts of interest.

Individual vs. Collective Opportunity: which do we have in the US? (Answer: neither, really)

image of hurricane Katrina is from here

President Obama responded, in my mind cynically, to a criticism by Professor Cornel West and performer Tavis Smiley (see *here* for more). They charge, quite accurately, that he has ignored and been entirely unconcerned and uncaring, in policy and practice, to the plight of the poor in the US, and in particular to the struggles of African American males.

In the US currently, the reported (as opposed to actual) poverty rate among whites is much less than among African Americans. This is a consequence primarily of white supremacy fused to corporate capitalism. No other possibility exists in opportunity or in present life, than Black people in the US remaining significantly and substantively poorer than whites, collectively. Never mind Oprah Winfrey or Barack Obama: it is not simply “opportunity” that got them where they worked very hard to be. It is also a white dominated society's wish to appease anti-racism critics who use individual successes as “proof” that the system can work for any one of us. It most certainly cannot.

The collective and systemic truth of the truly perilous and dire situation for African Americans, among other groups of color, is one that President Obama, for all his intelligence, seems unable to comprehend or at least publicly declare: his “solution” is to attempt to increase opportunities for individuals, never for the collective. (And however inadequate those proposals are [link to his speech] they will not be supported by Conservative elected politicians—every one of 'em voted into office with the great help of corrupt media and corrupt wealth, neither of which is available to poor US Americans as a group.

Unaddressed by any of them is what Black, Brown, and Indigenous women (especially lesbians) in the US face: the devastating combination of capitalism's cruelties heaped onto the other cruelties of white, male, and het supremacy. To hear most prominent Black men in the US speak, you'd think Black (het) men always have it worse than Black (het) women. But to believe that you'd have to pretend that patriarchy, male supremacy, misogyny, and heterosexism don't exist at all, both within Black communities and in the larger white-dominated society. Every manifestation of male power over and against women impacts the lives of Black women—not just white men's misogyny, for example.

But returning to the concerns of West and Smiley, how is it that a very smart US president—of any color—could not get it that the US is well-organised to ensure that some groups of people are held down and spit on while the same US leaders promote the power and interests of a few—and not a few “individuals” either? How is it that Bill Clinton or Barack Obama don't get it that corporate capitalism exists, deregulated or not, to crush the life out of the poor while exploiting their labor and other human resources?

Far more cynical and cruel than President Obama are the white, male, and het supremacist activists who comprise the leadership of the ultra-ConservativeTea Party movement, an extremist activist political organisation looking out only for the interests and power-protection of the wealthiest, whitest, and most heterosexistly male members of society? Among them is the current early leader in the bid for president, governor of Texas, (P)Rick Perry.

The Tea Party, including Perry, advocates a particular vision of the US in which Social Security and Medicare, as federal programs, no longer exist as humane mechanisms to support the lives of the most dispossessed (read: structurally, systematically oppressed) members of society. Dispossessed by intention and design, not effect and bad luck. Nothing is accidental about who is poor in this country, if we look at groups of people, not individuals only.

What the Tea Party, GWBush and Co., Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama all have in common is the downright evil practice of extolling the alleged virtues of a “free” market economy tied to rampant militarism which imprisons most US Americans in debt and despair while horrifically destroying people abroad: particularly the people of Central Asia who happen to live in a region that has oil resources under what remains of its topsoil. The policies of these and other activist leaders are genocide, gynocide, and ecocide wrapped up in liberal platitudes.

Chief among the platitudes is this idea that our economic and social-political systems exist to offer meaningful opportunity to all US citizens. Contemporary forms of capitalism allowed to exist by the wealthy offer nothing of the kind; neither do contemporary forms of white, male, and het supremacy. All these well-organised and well-protected systems of power ensure that varied forms of gross violence and exploitation will be visited upon people who are not wealthy, white, male, or het.

Consider images brought to you by a weather reporter of a hurricane forming in the Atlantic Ocean as it makes its way toward the Caribbean, Gulf coast, and East Coast of the US. Consider how the weather is described as “a system”, sometimes a ferocious one merciless in its power to destroy what humans have constructed.

Consider how such a system, if well-organised, infused with enough energy, structured to swirl at great enough speeds with enough force, will do great harm. How much harm we cannot predict, as evidenced when Hurricane Irene swept up the Mid-Atlantic coast to the Northeast, cutting inland into New England. Consider how Hurricane Katrina, several years ago, in collaboration with ridiculous urban planning and construction along the Gulf coast, in collaboration with a woefully negligent US government, resulted in horror and pain that was thought to be impossible in the US, even in largely Black areas of the country.

The weather system called “a hurricane” in the US, has a structure—the visible structure is part of what constitutes such a system from other weather phenomena.

Corporate capitalism has a structure and it is hierarchical with a concentration of wealth among an elite few and a base of poverty shared among the many. Using the “right” to ownership of property as a means of control with State power backing it, the wealthy can and do exact great force against the poor and working people, exploiting them while telling them they have “opportunity” to also become as ruthless as they are.

In the US, this economic system with its earlier incarnations has resulted in an on-going genocide and has required on-going forms of slavery to be able to exist at all. Part of its structure is raced with white supremacy as one ruling ideology-in-practice. Male supremacy is another: rape and social subordination are two methods of its production: mass terrorism and submission are its objectives. Between the two is the spirit- and sex-shaming ideology-in-practice known as heterosexism. Braided, enforced, and enacted together, they strangle the power, will, and hope out of many of us, leaving us damaged, degraded, and depressed—if not dead. But—always more than the ruling oppressive forces would like—some of us keep fighting those virulently inhumane systems of domination and destruction with a vision of a world of unmilitarised peace, cooperative living, and mutual respect.

What is often missing in humane resistance movements is sustained, collective, group-based radical activism. Currently, struggles to make the US more humane are more like an occasional gust of wind than a well-formed lasting hurricane.

Using the ocean as a metaphor, single waves of activism can perhaps bring attention to horrible conditions and may shift the shape of a beach-front temporarily. But I look forward to the power of the oppressed forming into great unrelenting waves of revolutionary social, economic, and political transformation until the CRAP-infested shore is entirely washed away, allowing Indigenist ways of living to thrive again on this Earth.

Vandana Shiva on 'growth fetishism' and more: "Who Pollutes: The Rich and Powerful or Poor and Powerless?"

What follows is being cross-posted from ZCommunications. Please click on the title below to link back.

Who Pollutes: The Rich and Powerful or Poor and Powerless?

---

By Vandana Shiva

Saturday, July 23, 2011

On the 29^th of June, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met with editors of a few newspapers. When asked about whether he had been putting pressure on the Environment Ministry to approve environmentally destructive projects, he said “yes”, and justified by quoting Indira Gandhi “poverty is the biggest polluter, we need to have a balance”. Indira Gandhi had said this in Stockholm in 1972 at the first Environmental Conference. She had also quoted from the Atharvaveda – 

“Whatever, I dig of you, O Earth,

May that grow quickly upon you,

O Pure One, may my thrust never pierce thy

Vital points, thy heart”. 

The Prime Minister has conveniently ignored the more significant quote. 

The Prime Minister’s duty is to uphold the nation’s constitution and nations laws, including environmental laws, not subvert them. By admitting that he has been putting pressure on the environment ministry, he has admitted that he is subverting the law. Most commentators view the removal of Jairam Ramesh from the Environment Ministry during the July 12^th, 2011 cabinet reshuffle as a further step in environmental deregulation. 

While quoting Indira Gandhi to justify his subversion of environmental law, the Prime Minister seems to have forgotten that Indira Gandhi created the country’s environmental governance structure during her tenure as Prime Minister. It was Indira Gandhi’s intervention that supported the call of movements and scientists to not build a hydro-electric project in Silent Valley in Kerala saving a biodiversity rich ecosystem. It was Indira Gandhi’s concern that Mussorie, the queen of the hills, was being stripped naked by limestone mining that led to the Environment Ministry to take action. We were invited to do the study of the environmental impact of limestone mining in Doon Valley in 1981. Our study became the basis of the Supreme Court case. In 1983, the Supreme Court shut down the mines. 

In the pre-trade liberalization days, it was accepted that if commerce undermines ecosystems which support life, then commercial activity must stop, because life must carry on. Art. 21 of the Constitution make it the duty of the state to protect life. Since ecological processes support life, the state has a duty to protect ecology. 

Under Prof. Manmohan Singh’s leadership since the 1990’s based on “growth fetishism”, all ecological devastation is justified in the name of growth. Who is driving this ecological devastation and the pollution? The rich and powerful corporations or the poor and powerless women, farmers, tribals and the displaced rural communities who become urban slum dwellers? 

The poor live in the places polluted by the rich. They do not cause the pollution. And they live in polluted places because they are displaced from their homes in rural areas where they have lived sustainably for millennia. 

They are victims of pollution because they are victims of dispossession. This is environmental injustice. And it is an inevitable consequence of outsourcing of pollution from rich countries in the garb of FDI.  

Coastal Orissa is a case in point. In the Jagatsingpur district where POSCO’s giant steel plant is planned as the highest FDI of $ 12 billion farmers, grow biodiversity – betel vines and paddy, coconut and cashew, fruits and fish. There is no pollution and no waste.  There is a prosperity that GDP does not count. This economy of sustenance is being uprooted with violence to enable POSCO to export our iron-ore and steel. Every law of the land including the Forest Rights Act and the Coastal Zone Regulation Act are being violated as committee after committee has recognized. And when the Ministry of Environment Committees affirms the violation of laws, it is the Prime Minister who puts pressure on the Environment Minister to give an approval to POSCO. It was the women and children of Govindpur, Dinkia and Nuagaon who lay down in front of the police in the scorching sun to stop the land grab in June. They were still forming a human barricade when I visited on 23^rd June.  

The Prime Minister is intervening to promote this land grab and resource grab. POSCO gets our land and our resources. What we will inherit from the POSCO project is ecological destruction, pollution, displaced people and the destruction of our democracy.  

In India, it is the corporations that are building giant coal based power plants who are major climate polluters. It is the automobile industry that pushes more cars on our roads that are leading to higher carbon dioxide emissions. Emissions from the use of fossil fuel are driven by the economically powerful, not the poor. But it is the poor who are most vulnerable to the floods, droughts and cyclones that climate change intensifies. 

The same applies for toxic pollution. In 1996, we filed a case in the Supreme Court to stop the import of toxic waste from the U.S. This waste was generated by rich consumers in the U.S, not by the poor in India who put their lives at risk sorting out the toxic garbage. The Bhopal disaster and it its still continuing toxic pollution was not caused by the poor who died in thousands. It was caused by Union Carbide, now owned by Dow.  

A major issue related to toxics is the pesticide, endosulfan. The U.N has banned it. Most countries of the world have banned it. The Supreme Court has ordered an interim ban. 1000 people have died in Kasargod where endosulfan was sprayed on Cashew plantations for 20 years. More than 9000 are crippled. The innocent victims did not cause the toxic pollution. It was caused by powerful corporations who influence decisions and have blocked a ban on endosulfan, even as people die and children are born disabled. 

Toxic agrichemicals harm all life. Synthetic fertilizers run into rivers and oceans, creating “dead zones”. Nitrogen oxide released from nitrogen fertilizers accumulates in the atmosphere as a green house gas that is 300 times more damaging than carbon dioxide. These synthetic fertilizers also make bombs as the recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai and the Oklahoma bombings in the U.S have shown. 

We now have a new form of pollution in agriculture – genetic pollution from genetically engineered crops. Genetic pollution is destroying biodiversity and devastating farmers livelihoods.  

The poor do not cause chemical and genetic pollution – giant chemical / biotechnology corporations do. And the chemical corporations are also the gene giants who now control seed. Here too, instead of being the voice of poor and vulnerable farmers, the Prime Minister is the voice of powerful global corporations through his repeated reference to genetic engineering as the second Green Revolution.  

Whether it is atmospheric pollution, toxic pollution, genetic pollution or urban waste pollution, environmental pollution is an externality of a greed based economy which privatizes profit and natural resources and socializes pollution. The rich accumulate the land, the biodiversity, the water, the air and the profits. The poor bear the burden of dispossession and accumulated pollution.  

We expect the Prime Minister to uphold India’s Constitution and environmental laws not subvert them. We do not expect him to support and promote the polluters. We expect our Prime Minister to recognize that the poor are victims of pollution and environmental degradation, not its cause. We expect the Prime Minister to remember that he holds our precious natural heritage and natural capital in trust for future generations, not to be given away to greedy corporations and destroyed for short term profits. 

We expect our Prime Minister to grow beyond his “growth fetishism” and recognize that we are all part of Mother Earth, and pollution is violence against the Earth and people.