Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
CONTACT:
Brendan Gilfillan
gilfillan.brendan@epa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is touring areas in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana that could be impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico today and tomorrow.
Today, Administrator Jackson joined U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for an overflight of the oil spill, and a meeting with state and local officials. Later today, the Administrator will tour a stretch of the Mississippi coastline that could be impacted by the spill and hold a community meeting in Waveland, Miss. to discuss the spill and the government’s response. The Administrator will also visit EPA employees at a mobile air monitoring station that EPA has established in the area.
Tomorrow, the Administrator will hold an 8:30 a.m. meeting with community leaders in New Orleans. The Administrator will also tour Plaquemines Parish in New Orleans and meet with representatives of the fishing, oyster and shrimping industries. Additional details on those visits will be released as they become available.
April 30, 2010
4:00 p.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
Leo Seals Community Center
527 Hwy 90
Waveland, Miss.
May 1, 2010
8:30 a.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
.. Greater Little Zion Baptist Church
5130 Chartres St.
New Orleans, La.
R138
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View all news releases related to emergency response
Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533685442#ixzz0mesP3WLP
Friday, April 30, 2010
Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
CONTACT:
Brendan Gilfillan
gilfillan.brendan@epa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is touring areas in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana that could be impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico today and tomorrow.
Today, Administrator Jackson joined U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for an overflight of the oil spill, and a meeting with state and local officials. Later today, the Administrator will tour a stretch of the Mississippi coastline that could be impacted by the spill and hold a community meeting in Waveland, Miss. to discuss the spill and the government’s response. The Administrator will also visit EPA employees at a mobile air monitoring station that EPA has established in the area.
Tomorrow, the Administrator will hold an 8:30 a.m. meeting with community leaders in New Orleans. The Administrator will also tour Plaquemines Parish in New Orleans and meet with representatives of the fishing, oyster and shrimping industries. Additional details on those visits will be released as they become available.
April 30, 2010
4:00 p.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
Leo Seals Community Center
527 Hwy 90
Waveland, Miss.
May 1, 2010
8:30 a.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
Greater Little Zion Baptist Church
5130 Chartres St.
New Orleans, La.
R138
Note: If a link above doesn't work, please copy and paste the URL into a browser.
View all news releases related to emergency response
CONTACT:
Brendan Gilfillan
gilfillan.brendan@epa.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
Administrator Jackson Tours Areas Potentially Impacted by BP Spill
WASHINGTON – EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson is touring areas in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana that could be impacted by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico today and tomorrow.
Today, Administrator Jackson joined U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for an overflight of the oil spill, and a meeting with state and local officials. Later today, the Administrator will tour a stretch of the Mississippi coastline that could be impacted by the spill and hold a community meeting in Waveland, Miss. to discuss the spill and the government’s response. The Administrator will also visit EPA employees at a mobile air monitoring station that EPA has established in the area.
Tomorrow, the Administrator will hold an 8:30 a.m. meeting with community leaders in New Orleans. The Administrator will also tour Plaquemines Parish in New Orleans and meet with representatives of the fishing, oyster and shrimping industries. Additional details on those visits will be released as they become available.
April 30, 2010
4:00 p.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
Leo Seals Community Center
527 Hwy 90
Waveland, Miss.
May 1, 2010
8:30 a.m. CST Administrator Jackson Holds Community Meeting
Greater Little Zion Baptist Church
5130 Chartres St.
New Orleans, La.
R138
Note: If a link above doesn't work, please copy and paste the URL into a browser.
View all news releases related to emergency response
Emergency Response News Release (HQ): EPA Establishes Web site on BP Oil Spill
Emergency Response News Release (HQ): EPA Establishes Web site on BP Oil Spill
CONTACT:
Joint Information Center
985-902-5231
985-902-5240
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
EPA Establishes Web site on BP Oil Spill
EPA launches site to inform the public about health, environmental impacts of spill
WASHINGTON – As part of the ongoing federal response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, EPA today established a website to inform the public about the spill’s impact on the environment and the health of nearby residents. The website – http://www.epa.gov/bpspill - will contain data from EPA’s ongoing air monitoring along with other information about the agency’s activities in the region. Also today, Administrator Jackson joined Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to tour the region. The Administrator will spend the next 36 hours visiting with community groups and meeting EPA staff responding to the spill.
Additional information on the broader response from the U.S. Coast Guard and other responding agencies is available at: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com
“We are taking every possible step to protect the health of the residents and mitigate the environmental impacts of this spill,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. “For several days, EPA has been on the ground evaluating air and water concerns and coordinating with other responding agencies. We are also here to address community members -- the people who know these waters and wetlands best. They will be essential to the work ahead.”
EPA has established air monitoring stations along Plaquemines Parish on the Louisiana coast. EPA established those facilities to determine how oil set on fire in the gulf and oil that is reaching land is impacting air quality. EPA is monitoring levels of a number of chemicals potentially emitted by oil, including volatile organic compounds such as xylene, benzene and toluene.
EPA has also deployed two Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzers – mobile laboratories that collect and analyze air quality samples in real time – to monitor air quality in the region.
EPA tested smoke from the controlled burn two days ago and found the Louisiana coast had not been affected because an off-shore breeze was blowing away from land and out to sea during that time. The agency will continue to collect and share data with the public, and will coordinate and share information with local health officials.
In addition to monitoring air quality, EPA is also assessing the coastal waters affected by the spreading oil. EPA deployed our twin-engine aircraft to assist in the collection of air sampling data and photograph the spill and surrounding area.
All of the data EPA collects will be posted tohttp://www.epa.gov/bpspill , along with frequently asked questions, fact sheets about potential health impacts of the spill, and links to more information on the spill and the government’s response.
R135
Note: If a link above doesn't work, please copy and paste the URL into a browser.
CONTACT:
Joint Information Center
985-902-5231
985-902-5240
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 30, 2010
EPA Establishes Web site on BP Oil Spill
EPA launches site to inform the public about health, environmental impacts of spill
WASHINGTON – As part of the ongoing federal response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, EPA today established a website to inform the public about the spill’s impact on the environment and the health of nearby residents. The website – http://www.epa.gov/bpspill - will contain data from EPA’s ongoing air monitoring along with other information about the agency’s activities in the region. Also today, Administrator Jackson joined Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to tour the region. The Administrator will spend the next 36 hours visiting with community groups and meeting EPA staff responding to the spill.
Additional information on the broader response from the U.S. Coast Guard and other responding agencies is available at: http://www.deepwaterhorizonresponse.com
“We are taking every possible step to protect the health of the residents and mitigate the environmental impacts of this spill,” EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson said. “For several days, EPA has been on the ground evaluating air and water concerns and coordinating with other responding agencies. We are also here to address community members -- the people who know these waters and wetlands best. They will be essential to the work ahead.”
EPA has established air monitoring stations along Plaquemines Parish on the Louisiana coast. EPA established those facilities to determine how oil set on fire in the gulf and oil that is reaching land is impacting air quality. EPA is monitoring levels of a number of chemicals potentially emitted by oil, including volatile organic compounds such as xylene, benzene and toluene.
EPA has also deployed two Trace Atmospheric Gas Analyzers – mobile laboratories that collect and analyze air quality samples in real time – to monitor air quality in the region.
EPA tested smoke from the controlled burn two days ago and found the Louisiana coast had not been affected because an off-shore breeze was blowing away from land and out to sea during that time. The agency will continue to collect and share data with the public, and will coordinate and share information with local health officials.
In addition to monitoring air quality, EPA is also assessing the coastal waters affected by the spreading oil. EPA deployed our twin-engine aircraft to assist in the collection of air sampling data and photograph the spill and surrounding area.
All of the data EPA collects will be posted tohttp://www.epa.gov/bpspill , along with frequently asked questions, fact sheets about potential health impacts of the spill, and links to more information on the spill and the government’s response.
R135
Note: If a link above doesn't work, please copy and paste the URL into a browser.
A Global Appeal: Call to Participate in a Counter Hearing regarding Genocide in Canada
A Global Appeal: Call to Participate in a Counter Hearing regarding Genocide in Canada, Winnipeg, June 15, 2010 - please post and circulate
Help Us Remove the Gag from Survivors
of Genocide in Canada:
Participate in our Peoples' Inquiry into Residential Schools on June 15 in Winnipeg -
Put and End to the Government and Church Coverup known as the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission"
Issued by the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, Canada
May 1, 2010
Dear friends,
For nearly two decades, in the face of enormous repression and concealment by church and state, our network has documented the stories of torture, genocide and murder by survivors of Indian residential schools across Canada, and has forced this issue onto the national political agenda.
In response, the groups responsible for the death of nearly half the children in these institutions - the government of Canada and the Catholic, Anglican and United Church - have exonerated themselves from their crimes and established their own "truth and reconciliation commission" (TRC) to whitewash their responsibility for clearly intentional crimes against humanity.
This "TRC" is in essence an enormous miscarriage of justice.
The TRC has no power to lay criminal charges or issue subpoenas, will not allow the naming of names or presenting of evidence of wrongdoing in residential schools, will not grant protective immunity to those testifying, and will prevent its findings to be used in courts of law.
With such restrictions and censorship, the TRC will be incapable of conducting any serious inquiry into crimes in Indian residential schools, or of issuing any kind of detailed or accurate report about this tragic history that claimed the lives of at least 50,000 children over a century.
Not only will this "official" self-examination by the parties guilty of a crime provide no satisfaction to the thousands of survivors who are seeking an open forum in which they can be freely heard, and seek justice, but the mandate of the "TRC" violates international human rights protocols requiring an impartial and open inquiry into apparent crimes against humanity, and the proper consultation of victims of such criminal acts.
In response, our network and other survivors of church abuse will be holding a counter hearing process across Canada to provide a real and open inquiry into the Indian residential schools of Canada.
This counter hearing will be known as The Peoples' Inquiry into Crimes in Indian Residential Schools, and will commence on the day that the "TRC" opens its first forum, on Tuesday, June 15 at The Forks in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Our hearing will be held near to the site of the TRC event and will invite survivors to present their full stories and evidence of what they suffered in these schools, and what they still endure, in an uncensored venue.
We anticipate and have requested the presence of international human rights observers at our event on June 15, in order to monitor the evidence submitted to our forum, and any possible irregularities or restrictions occurring at the government's "TRC" event.
Our campaign has the support of survivors' groups, human rights networks and the news media in Europe and other regions, and its events and findings will be reported around the world.
Our aim is to produce and issue an eventual Counter Report to the government's TRC report that can be used to bring charges against Canada and its churches.
We invite you to officially endorse and take part in our June 15 counter hearing and open forum, and help us record for the world the complete evidence of crimes in Canadian Indian residential schools.
We see our campaign as part of a growing international movement to bring to justice those responsible for the organized criminal abuse and trafficking in children, including church, government and police agencies.
Please contact us at this email or at 250-753-3345 in Canada. More information will be sent to you soon, as part of international press advisories concerning our actions.
Sincerely,
Rev. Kevin Annett, Secretary
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind, Elder, Anishinabe Nation
for The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared - Canada
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
......................................................................................................
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org , and watch Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT on the same website.
UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide
- Winner, Best Foreign Documentary Film, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, March 2007, Best Director of a Foreign Documentary, New York Independent Film Festival, October 2006
- Winner, Best Canadian Film, Creation Aboriginal Film Festival, Edmonton, 2009
“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"As a long time front line worker with the Elders' Council at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world."
Carol Muree Martin - Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation
"I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him."
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Help Us Remove the Gag from Survivors
of Genocide in Canada:
Participate in our Peoples' Inquiry into Residential Schools on June 15 in Winnipeg -
Put and End to the Government and Church Coverup known as the "Truth and Reconciliation Commission"
Issued by the Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared, Canada
May 1, 2010
Dear friends,
For nearly two decades, in the face of enormous repression and concealment by church and state, our network has documented the stories of torture, genocide and murder by survivors of Indian residential schools across Canada, and has forced this issue onto the national political agenda.
In response, the groups responsible for the death of nearly half the children in these institutions - the government of Canada and the Catholic, Anglican and United Church - have exonerated themselves from their crimes and established their own "truth and reconciliation commission" (TRC) to whitewash their responsibility for clearly intentional crimes against humanity.
This "TRC" is in essence an enormous miscarriage of justice.
The TRC has no power to lay criminal charges or issue subpoenas, will not allow the naming of names or presenting of evidence of wrongdoing in residential schools, will not grant protective immunity to those testifying, and will prevent its findings to be used in courts of law.
With such restrictions and censorship, the TRC will be incapable of conducting any serious inquiry into crimes in Indian residential schools, or of issuing any kind of detailed or accurate report about this tragic history that claimed the lives of at least 50,000 children over a century.
Not only will this "official" self-examination by the parties guilty of a crime provide no satisfaction to the thousands of survivors who are seeking an open forum in which they can be freely heard, and seek justice, but the mandate of the "TRC" violates international human rights protocols requiring an impartial and open inquiry into apparent crimes against humanity, and the proper consultation of victims of such criminal acts.
In response, our network and other survivors of church abuse will be holding a counter hearing process across Canada to provide a real and open inquiry into the Indian residential schools of Canada.
This counter hearing will be known as The Peoples' Inquiry into Crimes in Indian Residential Schools, and will commence on the day that the "TRC" opens its first forum, on Tuesday, June 15 at The Forks in downtown Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Our hearing will be held near to the site of the TRC event and will invite survivors to present their full stories and evidence of what they suffered in these schools, and what they still endure, in an uncensored venue.
We anticipate and have requested the presence of international human rights observers at our event on June 15, in order to monitor the evidence submitted to our forum, and any possible irregularities or restrictions occurring at the government's "TRC" event.
Our campaign has the support of survivors' groups, human rights networks and the news media in Europe and other regions, and its events and findings will be reported around the world.
Our aim is to produce and issue an eventual Counter Report to the government's TRC report that can be used to bring charges against Canada and its churches.
We invite you to officially endorse and take part in our June 15 counter hearing and open forum, and help us record for the world the complete evidence of crimes in Canadian Indian residential schools.
We see our campaign as part of a growing international movement to bring to justice those responsible for the organized criminal abuse and trafficking in children, including church, government and police agencies.
Please contact us at this email or at 250-753-3345 in Canada. More information will be sent to you soon, as part of international press advisories concerning our actions.
Sincerely,
Rev. Kevin Annett, Secretary
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind, Elder, Anishinabe Nation
for The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared - Canada
www.hiddenfromhistory.org
......................................................................................................
Read and Hear the truth of Genocide in Canada, past and present, at this website: www.hiddenfromhistory.org , and watch Kevin's award-winning documentary film UNREPENTANT on the same website.
UNREPENTANT: Kevin Annett and Canada's Genocide
- Winner, Best Foreign Documentary Film, Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, March 2007, Best Director of a Foreign Documentary, New York Independent Film Festival, October 2006
- Winner, Best Canadian Film, Creation Aboriginal Film Festival, Edmonton, 2009
“Kevin is more deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize than many who have received it in the past.”
- Dr. Noam Chomsky
Institute Professor Emeritus
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
"As a long time front line worker with the Elders' Council at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, I stand behind what Kevin Annett is trying to do for our people. The genocide that continues today and which stemmed from the residential schools needs to be exposed. Kevin Annett helps break the silence, and brings the voice of our people all over the world."
Carol Muree Martin - Spirit Tree Woman
Nisgaa Nation
"I gave Kevin Annett his Indian name, Eagle Strong Voice, in 2004 when I adopted him into our Anishinabe Nation. He carries that name proudly because he is doing the job he was sent to do, to tell his people of their wrongs. He speaks strongly and with truth. He speaks for our stolen and murdered children. I ask everyone to listen to him and welcome him."
Chief Louis Daniels - Whispers Wind
Elder, Turtle Clan, Anishinabe Nation
Winnipeg, Manitoba
Race issues flare up at Chamberlain,SD school
Race issues flare up at Chamberlain,SD school
Posted by: "NDN News" tamra@NDNnews.com tamra_ndnnews
Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:59 pm (PDT)
If anyone wants to contact the Superintendant about this issue, here is the
contact info:
Tim Mitchell
301 East Kellam
Chamberlain, SD 57325
605-234-4477
tim.mitchell@k12.sd.us
Race issues flare up at Chamberlain school
CHAMBERLAIN --- Racial tensions in the Chamberlain school rose Wednesday
after four students left school because of a controversy surrounding
homemade T-shirts proclaiming "White Pride World Wide."
Superintendent Tim Mitchell said the incident is under investigation by
school officials.
"There has to be a reason why these kids made these shirts and showed up,"
Mitchell said. "We just don't know what it is yet."
According to published statistics from last year, American Indians make up
approximately 32 percent of the student population in the Chamberlain School
District, compared to the 55 percent of students who are white.
Wednesday, six white high school students arrived at school wearing the
shirts, which also bore a peace sign and the word "Peace" on the front.
It was the backside of the shirts, however, that caused administrators to
intervene. On the back of the shirts was a symbol consisting of a plus sign
in a circle --- often referred to as a sun cross or Odin's cross --- and the
words "White Pride World Wide." The word "cracker," a derogatory slang term
for impoverished white people, was also written on the back of each shirt.
Mitchell said the word "cracker" and the symbol, commonly used by white
supremacists, violated the school's dress code by promoting racial slurs.
The students were asked to remove or change their shirts or be sent home.
While two changed their shirts, the remaining four left school with parental
notification.
"The administration has ruled that they broke the dress code and that the
shirts had become disruptions to the school and the learning environment,"
Mitchell said.
Codie Novotny, a 16-year-old sophomore at Chamberlain High School, was one
of the students who left school Wednesday. She said the shirts were worn in
reaction to accusations by students in the Native American Club that white
students and teachers are racist.
Because Indian students sometimes wear clothing proclaiming "Native Pride,"
Novotny said, it's only fair that white students be allowed to do the same
thing.
"We were trying to make a point to the school," Novotny said. "They're
allowed to wear (Native Pride clothing) in school."
The adviser for the Native American Club declined to comment Wednesday.
Novotny admitted that she can understand why the word "cracker" could be
against school policy. Still, she believes that clothing proclaiming "white
pride" should be acceptable.
"I still don't think it's fair," Novotny said.
Mitchell said he hopes something can be learned from the incident.
"Right now, we're trying to figure out why these six students decided to
wear these shirts and if there's some sort of appropriate way that we could
have some sort of dialogue as to what prompted them to do this particular
act," Mitchell said. "Is there something that we need to do in a more
appropriate setting to take a look at why they felt they had to make these
shirts?"
Mitchell said there is a constant effort at the school to make sure students
and faculty are "culturally proficient" at the school.
"We certainly now need to pull everybody together to discuss in a positive
way how we can move forward in a positive direction."
http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/42645/
Posted by: "NDN News" tamra@NDNnews.com tamra_ndnnews
Thu Apr 29, 2010 7:59 pm (PDT)
If anyone wants to contact the Superintendant about this issue, here is the
contact info:
Tim Mitchell
301 East Kellam
Chamberlain, SD 57325
605-234-4477
tim.mitchell@k12.sd.us
Race issues flare up at Chamberlain school
CHAMBERLAIN --- Racial tensions in the Chamberlain school rose Wednesday
after four students left school because of a controversy surrounding
homemade T-shirts proclaiming "White Pride World Wide."
Superintendent Tim Mitchell said the incident is under investigation by
school officials.
"There has to be a reason why these kids made these shirts and showed up,"
Mitchell said. "We just don't know what it is yet."
According to published statistics from last year, American Indians make up
approximately 32 percent of the student population in the Chamberlain School
District, compared to the 55 percent of students who are white.
Wednesday, six white high school students arrived at school wearing the
shirts, which also bore a peace sign and the word "Peace" on the front.
It was the backside of the shirts, however, that caused administrators to
intervene. On the back of the shirts was a symbol consisting of a plus sign
in a circle --- often referred to as a sun cross or Odin's cross --- and the
words "White Pride World Wide." The word "cracker," a derogatory slang term
for impoverished white people, was also written on the back of each shirt.
Mitchell said the word "cracker" and the symbol, commonly used by white
supremacists, violated the school's dress code by promoting racial slurs.
The students were asked to remove or change their shirts or be sent home.
While two changed their shirts, the remaining four left school with parental
notification.
"The administration has ruled that they broke the dress code and that the
shirts had become disruptions to the school and the learning environment,"
Mitchell said.
Codie Novotny, a 16-year-old sophomore at Chamberlain High School, was one
of the students who left school Wednesday. She said the shirts were worn in
reaction to accusations by students in the Native American Club that white
students and teachers are racist.
Because Indian students sometimes wear clothing proclaiming "Native Pride,"
Novotny said, it's only fair that white students be allowed to do the same
thing.
"We were trying to make a point to the school," Novotny said. "They're
allowed to wear (Native Pride clothing) in school."
The adviser for the Native American Club declined to comment Wednesday.
Novotny admitted that she can understand why the word "cracker" could be
against school policy. Still, she believes that clothing proclaiming "white
pride" should be acceptable.
"I still don't think it's fair," Novotny said.
Mitchell said he hopes something can be learned from the incident.
"Right now, we're trying to figure out why these six students decided to
wear these shirts and if there's some sort of appropriate way that we could
have some sort of dialogue as to what prompted them to do this particular
act," Mitchell said. "Is there something that we need to do in a more
appropriate setting to take a look at why they felt they had to make these
shirts?"
Mitchell said there is a constant effort at the school to make sure students
and faculty are "culturally proficient" at the school.
"We certainly now need to pull everybody together to discuss in a positive
way how we can move forward in a positive direction."
http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/event/article/id/42645/
Cherokee Phoenix Weekly Newsletter
Cherokee Phoenix Weekly Newsletter
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533684420
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533684420
White House Says No New Offshore Drilling Until Investigation is Complete
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Threatens to Jeopardize President Obama's Offshore Drilling Policy
By HUMA KHAN
April 30, 2010http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gulf-mexico-oil-spill-jeopardize-obamas-offshore-drilling/story?id=10512504
--
http://s279.photobucket.com/albums/kk158/davidckitchen/?action=view¤t=WillGulfofMexicoOilSpillJeopardizeO.flv
Footage shows spilled oil being burned in an effort to clean up the accident.
"All he has said is that he is not going to continue the moratorium on drilling but... no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on "Good Morning America" today, defending the administration's policy.
Axelrod said no new offshore drilling will go forward until "there is an adequate review of what happened here and what is being proposed elsewhere."
As Gulf Coast residents brace for mounds of slick to hit their shores, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has seeped into the energy debate in Washington, D.C. and threatens to disrupt Obama's policy and the bipartisan energy legislation in the Senate.
Obama last month lifted a longtime ban on offshore drilling and oil and gas exploration, saying it was crucial to U.S. energy security. In a rare case of bipartisanship, the proposal won broad support from Republicans. But it angered environmentalists, who argued that offshore drilling won't help lower gas prices or reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil. Rather, it will adversely impact marine life and beaches.
The Senate energy and climate bill drafted jointly by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts,Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, also encouraged offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at attracting Republican support.
But now, with environmentalists and some lawmakers pointing to the Gulf of Mexico disaster and arguing that there is no truly safe offshore operation, the Obama administration and senators who drafted the bill could have a tougher time moving forward.
"The problem for the president and for the Congress in general is that they were already facing this very uphill climb because there was this really diverse disagreement about how to shape an effective energy bill or climate bill," said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University. "Now it all becomes much more complex."
The administration was hoping to build a broad coalition for an energy and climate bill, experts say, and this incident only complicates that matter.
"The administration, I think, has moved quite systematically to try to broaden and strengthen that coalition and this really, I think, substantially complicates what was already a very complicated job of building a broad enough coalition so there would be adequate support for climate changelegislation," said Bill Galston, senior fellow at Brookings Institute and a former policy adviser to President Clinton. "This is sure going to slow things down."
The Deepwater Horizon exploration well, operated by BP Oil and owned by Transocean Ltd., exploded and started burning April 20. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rig. Much of the sea life in the region is in danger and the beaches are likely to be heavily polluted as slick washes up to the shore.
Democratic lawmakers already are lining up against Obama's policy to expand offshore drilling and any bill that includes such measures. On Thursday, Democratic senators spent more time debating offshore drilling than the financial reform bill.
"I'm deeply concerned that the current five-year plan recently announced by the administration would allow oil drilling less than 5 miles from Cap May, New Jersey," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey. "It is a wakeup call for all of us."
Menendez and Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, also a Democrat, are calling on the president to nix it altogether.
"Big oil has perpetuated a dangerous myth that coastline drilling is a completely safe endeavor, but accidents like this are a sober reminder just how far that is from the truth," the senators said in a joint statement Thursday.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, wants to block Obama's offshore oil drilling plan while the Deep Water Horizon investigation is ongoing and called on him to ask "tough questions" of big oil companies.
"It's unclear whether any additional shut-off controls would have made a difference in this case," Nelson wrote in a letter to Obama Thursday. "But the questions about the practices of the oil industry raised in the wake of this still-unfolding incident require that you postpone indefinitely plans for expanded offshore oil drilling operations."
Meanwhile, environmental groups are hoping that the incident will validate their opposition.
"There are grave environmental concerns which this horrific spill has highlighted," said Bob Deans, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which opposed the policy. "We need a time out on any action to go forward with new offshore drilling because this has obviously raised a bunch of questions. We need a full comprehensive independent investigation."
The White House said it is too early to tell how the incident would impact the president's proposal, and defended it, saying that the policy is only the beginning.
"There will be ample opportunity for public input. There will be ample opportunity for congressional and governor input," Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said Thursday. "That is the beginning of the process, not the end of the process. ... We need to stay focused on the incident. We need to learn from the incident."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed that the president's decision was "the beginning of a longer process" that will take into account any new developments, including the oil spill from BP's well.
Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told reporters that he believes the fundamental practices of offshore drilling are safe and that this particular incident was highly unusual, but "everything is on the table."
Drill baby drill, became Spill baby spill, then burn baby burn became, kill baby kill as all the sea life and the economy of the gulf dies.
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Threatens to Jeopardize President Obama's Offshore Drilling Policy
By HUMA KHAN
April 30, 2010http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gulf-mexico-oil-spill-jeopardize-obamas-offshore-drilling/story?id=10512504
--
http://s279.photobucket.com/albums/kk158/davidckitchen/?action=view¤t=WillGulfofMexicoOilSpillJeopardizeO.flv
Footage shows spilled oil being burned in an effort to clean up the accident.
"All he has said is that he is not going to continue the moratorium on drilling but... no additional drilling has been authorized and none will until we find out what happened here and whether there was something unique and preventable here," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said on "Good Morning America" today, defending the administration's policy.
Axelrod said no new offshore drilling will go forward until "there is an adequate review of what happened here and what is being proposed elsewhere."
As Gulf Coast residents brace for mounds of slick to hit their shores, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has seeped into the energy debate in Washington, D.C. and threatens to disrupt Obama's policy and the bipartisan energy legislation in the Senate.
Obama last month lifted a longtime ban on offshore drilling and oil and gas exploration, saying it was crucial to U.S. energy security. In a rare case of bipartisanship, the proposal won broad support from Republicans. But it angered environmentalists, who argued that offshore drilling won't help lower gas prices or reduce the United States' dependence on foreign oil. Rather, it will adversely impact marine life and beaches.
The Senate energy and climate bill drafted jointly by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts,Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut, also encouraged offshore oil drilling, a move aimed at attracting Republican support.
But now, with environmentalists and some lawmakers pointing to the Gulf of Mexico disaster and arguing that there is no truly safe offshore operation, the Obama administration and senators who drafted the bill could have a tougher time moving forward.
"The problem for the president and for the Congress in general is that they were already facing this very uphill climb because there was this really diverse disagreement about how to shape an effective energy bill or climate bill," said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University. "Now it all becomes much more complex."
The administration was hoping to build a broad coalition for an energy and climate bill, experts say, and this incident only complicates that matter.
"The administration, I think, has moved quite systematically to try to broaden and strengthen that coalition and this really, I think, substantially complicates what was already a very complicated job of building a broad enough coalition so there would be adequate support for climate changelegislation," said Bill Galston, senior fellow at Brookings Institute and a former policy adviser to President Clinton. "This is sure going to slow things down."
The Deepwater Horizon exploration well, operated by BP Oil and owned by Transocean Ltd., exploded and started burning April 20. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates that 5,000 barrels a day are leaking from the rig. Much of the sea life in the region is in danger and the beaches are likely to be heavily polluted as slick washes up to the shore.
Democratic lawmakers already are lining up against Obama's policy to expand offshore drilling and any bill that includes such measures. On Thursday, Democratic senators spent more time debating offshore drilling than the financial reform bill.
"I'm deeply concerned that the current five-year plan recently announced by the administration would allow oil drilling less than 5 miles from Cap May, New Jersey," said Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey. "It is a wakeup call for all of us."
Menendez and Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, also a Democrat, are calling on the president to nix it altogether.
"Big oil has perpetuated a dangerous myth that coastline drilling is a completely safe endeavor, but accidents like this are a sober reminder just how far that is from the truth," the senators said in a joint statement Thursday.
Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, wants to block Obama's offshore oil drilling plan while the Deep Water Horizon investigation is ongoing and called on him to ask "tough questions" of big oil companies.
"It's unclear whether any additional shut-off controls would have made a difference in this case," Nelson wrote in a letter to Obama Thursday. "But the questions about the practices of the oil industry raised in the wake of this still-unfolding incident require that you postpone indefinitely plans for expanded offshore oil drilling operations."
Meanwhile, environmental groups are hoping that the incident will validate their opposition.
"There are grave environmental concerns which this horrific spill has highlighted," said Bob Deans, spokesman for the Natural Resources Defense Council, which opposed the policy. "We need a time out on any action to go forward with new offshore drilling because this has obviously raised a bunch of questions. We need a full comprehensive independent investigation."
The White House said it is too early to tell how the incident would impact the president's proposal, and defended it, saying that the policy is only the beginning.
"There will be ample opportunity for public input. There will be ample opportunity for congressional and governor input," Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, said Thursday. "That is the beginning of the process, not the end of the process. ... We need to stay focused on the incident. We need to learn from the incident."
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stressed that the president's decision was "the beginning of a longer process" that will take into account any new developments, including the oil spill from BP's well.
Deputy Interior Secretary David Hayes told reporters that he believes the fundamental practices of offshore drilling are safe and that this particular incident was highly unusual, but "everything is on the table."
Drill baby drill, became Spill baby spill, then burn baby burn became, kill baby kill as all the sea life and the economy of the gulf dies.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
GA legislature votes to ban CO gas chambers
GA legislature votes to ban CO gas chambers
BB Knowles
President & Founder
www.ncvaw.org
THINK GASSING ANIMALS IS SAFE AND/OR HUMANE?
GUESS AGAIN! CLICK HERE FOR THE TRUTH:
http://ncche.com/
BB Knowles
President & Founder
www.ncvaw.org
THINK GASSING ANIMALS IS SAFE AND/OR HUMANE?
GUESS AGAIN! CLICK HERE FOR THE TRUTH:
http://ncche.com/
Native bands lose appeal on water rights
Native bands lose appeal on water rights
Posted By: Anthony Jay Henhawk Jr
To: Members in First Nations & Aboriginal Rights
Alberta's highest court has dismissed an appeal filed by the Tsuu T'ina Nation and Samson Cree Nation in their case against the province.
The two aboriginal communities -- the Tsuu T'ina bordering southwest Calgary, and Samson Cree in Hobbema north of Red Deer -- argued the province didn't properly consult them on the development of a water management plan for the South Saskatchewan River Basin, which was approved in August 2006.
The First Nations asked the Alberta Court of Appeal to overturn the previous ruling in favour of the province because Alberta's duty to consult hadn't been met.
In a 34-page decision, Justice Cliff O'Brien wrote that the province had, in fact, taken appropriate steps to consult with the First Nations.
He added that proceedings giving rise to the appeal were "not vehicles for determining the appellants' water rights."
O'Brien noted those issues are being presented before the Court of Queen's Bench in a different matter launched by the two First Nations.
"It seems reasonable that these issues, including the determination of appropriate relief, should be left to be dealt with in the context of the broader litigation," O'Brien wrote in the decision.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Native+bands+lose+appeal+water+rights/2966623/story.html#ixzz0mWUeNNPQ
Posted By: Anthony Jay Henhawk Jr
To: Members in First Nations & Aboriginal Rights
Alberta's highest court has dismissed an appeal filed by the Tsuu T'ina Nation and Samson Cree Nation in their case against the province.
The two aboriginal communities -- the Tsuu T'ina bordering southwest Calgary, and Samson Cree in Hobbema north of Red Deer -- argued the province didn't properly consult them on the development of a water management plan for the South Saskatchewan River Basin, which was approved in August 2006.
The First Nations asked the Alberta Court of Appeal to overturn the previous ruling in favour of the province because Alberta's duty to consult hadn't been met.
In a 34-page decision, Justice Cliff O'Brien wrote that the province had, in fact, taken appropriate steps to consult with the First Nations.
He added that proceedings giving rise to the appeal were "not vehicles for determining the appellants' water rights."
O'Brien noted those issues are being presented before the Court of Queen's Bench in a different matter launched by the two First Nations.
"It seems reasonable that these issues, including the determination of appropriate relief, should be left to be dealt with in the context of the broader litigation," O'Brien wrote in the decision.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Native+bands+lose+appeal+water+rights/2966623/story.html#ixzz0mWUeNNPQ
Native American gloves stolen from Western Michigan historical display
Native American gloves stolen from Western Michigan historical display
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533633040
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533633040
"I Am Not a Mascot" student video
"I Am Not a Mascot" student video
Jimbo,
And friends, the struggle continues. AIM-WEST will see about posting video about Mascots, on the website. Also, the AIM agenda in Minneapolis is set for June 3-5, 2010. People who are interested in traveling now need to start saving cash for a ticket. I didn’t see anything about lodging….We can talk more about this at the AIM-WEST meeting on Wednesday, May 14 at SFCC, (second Wednesday of the month…). And, also an update on the California State Board of Education with regards to Mascots in Public Schools.
Tony Gonzales
AIM-WEST
www.aimwest.info
ere at the University of Colorado Denver a group of undergraduate students in an Ethnic Studies class produced a video about the use of Indian mascots for sports teams called "I Am Not a Mascot". Some of the video focuses specifically on Colorado schools which currently use Indian mascots (or which have switched mascots), but much of the video is of more general interest.
You can view it at http://vimeo.com/11070010
Lando Archibeque
Social Science Bibliographer
Auraria Library, serving:
Community College of Denver
Metropolitan State College of Denver
University of Colorado Denver (downtown campus)
Orlando.Archibeque@ucdenver.edu
Kúmateech /Later
André Cramblit, Operations Director
Northern California Indian Development Council (NCIDC)
(http://www.ncidc.org) 707.445.8451
American Indian Movement
Grand Governing Council Meeting
June 3-5, 2010 Minneapolis, MN
Tentative Agenda
June 3rd
12:00 Noon Arrival, registration and tour of AIM institutions
Meeting site: MN Chippewa Tribes Office
Indigenous Peoples Green Jobs Coalition
1308 E. Franklin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Phone: Valerie @ 763 479-9573
4:00 PM Report from AIM Chapters, Communities and Support Groups
6:00 PM Dinner
June 4th
9:00 AM Opening Ceremony and Introductions – Clyde Bellecourt, Chief Terry Nelson, Kieth Lussier and Frank Paro
10:00 AIM Membership Standards, Guiding Principles and Trademark Protection
Panel Members: Dennis Banks, Janice Denny and Larry Leventhal
11:00 AIM Youth Panel, Moderator, Keith Lussier
Regional Youth representatives
12:30 Lunch – Luncheon speaker, Dennis Banks
2:00 Spiritual Leaders and Medicine People Forum
Panel Members: Eddie Benton Banai, Arvol Looking Horse and Warfield Moose, moderator, Mitch Walking Elk
3:45 Community Health Development
Panel members: Dr. Rock, Susan Hibbs, Marcy Gilbert, Ted Means, Pat Bellanger and Herb Powless
Page two
4:30 Treaty Rights
Panel members: Larry Leventhal Esq., William Means, Chris Mato Nunpa, and Chief Terry Nelson
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Entertainment: Mitch Walking Elk, and Drum Group
Movie: Disturbing the Universe Slide Show: Dick Bancroft.
June 5th
9:00 AM Political Prisoners - Legal Rights and AIM Patrol
Panel Members: Len Foster, Lonnie Blake, Clyde Bellecourt, Reid Raymond Esq. and MaDonna Thunder Hawk
10:30 Culturally Based Education/ Racism in Sports and Media
Panel Members: Vicki Howard, Elaine Salinas, Mike Hearth, Roxanne Gould, Charlene Teeters, Lisa Bellanger and Jerry Lopez
11:30 Economic Development, Green Jobs and AIM Interpretive Center
Panel Members: Justin Heinemann, Pat Spears, Valerie Martinez, Winona LaDuke and Clyde Bellecourt
1:00 Lunch
2:30 Communications
Panel Members: KILI Radio, Circle News, NMTN and MIGIZI
3:30 Break
4:00 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples/ Border Issues and Migration
Panel Members: Bill Means, Antonio Gonzales, Jimbo Simmons, and Chief Terry Nelson
5:30 Closing Ceremonies
Jimbo,
And friends, the struggle continues. AIM-WEST will see about posting video about Mascots, on the website. Also, the AIM agenda in Minneapolis is set for June 3-5, 2010. People who are interested in traveling now need to start saving cash for a ticket. I didn’t see anything about lodging….We can talk more about this at the AIM-WEST meeting on Wednesday, May 14 at SFCC, (second Wednesday of the month…). And, also an update on the California State Board of Education with regards to Mascots in Public Schools.
Tony Gonzales
AIM-WEST
www.aimwest.info
ere at the University of Colorado Denver a group of undergraduate students in an Ethnic Studies class produced a video about the use of Indian mascots for sports teams called "I Am Not a Mascot". Some of the video focuses specifically on Colorado schools which currently use Indian mascots (or which have switched mascots), but much of the video is of more general interest.
You can view it at http://vimeo.com/11070010
Lando Archibeque
Social Science Bibliographer
Auraria Library, serving:
Community College of Denver
Metropolitan State College of Denver
University of Colorado Denver (downtown campus)
Orlando.Archibeque@ucdenver.edu
Kúmateech /Later
André Cramblit, Operations Director
Northern California Indian Development Council (NCIDC)
(http://www.ncidc.org) 707.445.8451
American Indian Movement
Grand Governing Council Meeting
June 3-5, 2010 Minneapolis, MN
Tentative Agenda
June 3rd
12:00 Noon Arrival, registration and tour of AIM institutions
Meeting site: MN Chippewa Tribes Office
Indigenous Peoples Green Jobs Coalition
1308 E. Franklin Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Phone: Valerie @ 763 479-9573
4:00 PM Report from AIM Chapters, Communities and Support Groups
6:00 PM Dinner
June 4th
9:00 AM Opening Ceremony and Introductions – Clyde Bellecourt, Chief Terry Nelson, Kieth Lussier and Frank Paro
10:00 AIM Membership Standards, Guiding Principles and Trademark Protection
Panel Members: Dennis Banks, Janice Denny and Larry Leventhal
11:00 AIM Youth Panel, Moderator, Keith Lussier
Regional Youth representatives
12:30 Lunch – Luncheon speaker, Dennis Banks
2:00 Spiritual Leaders and Medicine People Forum
Panel Members: Eddie Benton Banai, Arvol Looking Horse and Warfield Moose, moderator, Mitch Walking Elk
3:45 Community Health Development
Panel members: Dr. Rock, Susan Hibbs, Marcy Gilbert, Ted Means, Pat Bellanger and Herb Powless
Page two
4:30 Treaty Rights
Panel members: Larry Leventhal Esq., William Means, Chris Mato Nunpa, and Chief Terry Nelson
6:00 Dinner
7:30 Entertainment: Mitch Walking Elk, and Drum Group
Movie: Disturbing the Universe Slide Show: Dick Bancroft.
June 5th
9:00 AM Political Prisoners - Legal Rights and AIM Patrol
Panel Members: Len Foster, Lonnie Blake, Clyde Bellecourt, Reid Raymond Esq. and MaDonna Thunder Hawk
10:30 Culturally Based Education/ Racism in Sports and Media
Panel Members: Vicki Howard, Elaine Salinas, Mike Hearth, Roxanne Gould, Charlene Teeters, Lisa Bellanger and Jerry Lopez
11:30 Economic Development, Green Jobs and AIM Interpretive Center
Panel Members: Justin Heinemann, Pat Spears, Valerie Martinez, Winona LaDuke and Clyde Bellecourt
1:00 Lunch
2:30 Communications
Panel Members: KILI Radio, Circle News, NMTN and MIGIZI
3:30 Break
4:00 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples/ Border Issues and Migration
Panel Members: Bill Means, Antonio Gonzales, Jimbo Simmons, and Chief Terry Nelson
5:30 Closing Ceremonies
Cape Wind Energy Project has been approved now
Cape Wind Energy Project has been approved now
The tribes there have lost their battle it seems.....
bluejay
Secretary Salazar Announces Approval of Cape Wind Energy Project on Outer Continental Shelf off Massachusetts
BOSTON, Mass – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today approved the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound, but will require the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.
“After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving the Cape Wind project at the Horseshoe Shoal location,” Salazar said in an announcement at the State House in Boston. “With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our Nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region.”
The Cape Wind project would be the first wind farm on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, generating enough power to meet 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island combined. The project would create several hundred construction jobs and be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the nation, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons annually. That is equivalent to removing 175,000 cars from the road for a year.
A number of similar projects have been proposed for other northeast coastal states, positioning the region to tap 1 million megawatts of offshore Atlantic wind energy potential, which could create thousands of manufacturing, construction and operations jobs and displace older, inefficient fossil-fueled generating plants, helping significantly to combat climate change.
Salazar emphasized that the Department has taken extraordinary steps to fully evaluate Cape Wind’s potential impacts on traditional cultural resources and historic properties, including government-to-government consultations with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and that he was “mindful of our unique relationship with the Tribes and carefully considered their views and concerns.”
Because of concerns expressed during the consultations, Interior has required the developer to change the design and configuration of the wind turbine farm to diminish the visual effects of the project and to conduct additional seabed surveys to ensure that any submerged archaeological resources are protected prior to bottom disturbing activities.
Under these revisions, the number of turbines has been reduced from 170 to 130, eliminating turbines to reduce the visual impacts from the Kennedy Compound National Historic Landmark; reconfiguring the array to move it farther away from Nantucket Island; and reducing its breadth to mitigate visibility from the Nantucket Historic District. Regarding possible seabed cultural and historic resources, a Chance Finds Clause in the lease requires the developer to halt operations and notify Interior of any unanticipated archaeological find.
Salazar said he understood and respected the views of the Tribes and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, but noted that as Secretary of the Interior, he must balance broad, national public interest priorities in his decisions. “The need to preserve the environmental resources and rich cultural heritage of Nantucket Sound must be weighed in the balance with the importance of developing new renewable energy sources and strengthening our Nation’s energy security while battling climate change and creating jobs,” Salazar said.
“After almost a decade of exhaustive study and analyses, I believe that this undertaking can be developed responsibly and with consideration to the historic and cultural resources in the project area,” Salazar said. “Impacts to the historic properties can and will be minimized and mitigated and we will ensure that cultural resources will not be harmed or destroyed during the construction, maintenance, and decommissioning of the project.”
He pointed out that Nantucket Sound and its environs are a working landscape with many historical and modern uses and changing technologies. These include significant commercial, recreational and other resource-intensive activities, such as fishing, aviation, marine transport and boating, which have daily visual and physical impacts, and have long coexisted with the cultural and historic attributes of the area and its people.
A number of tall structures, including broadcast towers, cellular base station towers, local public safety communications towers and towers for industrial and business uses are located around the area. Three submarine transmission cable systems already traverse the seabed to connect mainland energy sources to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island. Visual and physical impacts associated with Nantucket Sound and its associated shorelines abound; it is not an untouched landscape.
Salazar disagreed with the Advisory Council’s conclusion that visual impacts from the proposed wind farm, which will be situated between and at substantial distance from Cape Cod, Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard, provide a rationale for rejecting the siting of the project. The viewshed effects are not direct or destructive to onshore traditional cultural properties. In no case does the turbine array dominate the viewshed. The project site is about 5.2 miles from the mainland shoreline, 13.8 miles from Nantucket Island and 9 miles from Martha’s Vineyard.
Nevertheless, Interior has required the developer to reduce the number of turbines and reconfigure the array to diminish its visual effects. Moreover, the developer will be required to paint the turbines off-white to reduce contrast with the sea and sky yet remain visible to birds.
No daytime Federal Aviation Administration lighting will be on the turbines, unless the U.S. Coast Guard requires some “day beacons” to ensure navigation safety. FAA nighttime lighting requirements have been reduced, lessening potential nighttime visual impacts. The upland cable transmission route was located entirely below ground within paved roads and existing utility rights of way to avoid visual impacts and potential impacts to unidentified archeological or historic resources.
These mitigation measures, coupled with the overall distance from which the turbine array will be viewed at any location, will reduce the visual impacts of the project. Lease terms also require the developer to decommission the facility when the project has completed its useful service life, deconstructing the turbines and towers and removing them from the site.
The Secretary also disagreed that it is not possible to mitigate the impacts associated with installation of piers for wind turbines in the seabed, noting that piers for bridges, transmission lines and other purposes are routinely built in relatively shallow waters consistent with those found in Horseshoe Shoals. A number of marine archaeological studies have indicated that there is low probability that the project area contains submerged archaeological resources. Most of the area has been extensively reworked and disturbed by marine activities and geological processes.
Nonetheless, Interior will require additional and detailed marine archaeological surveys and other protective measures in the project area. A full suite of remote sensing tools will be used to ensure seafloor coverage out to 1000 feet beyond the Area of Potential Effect. More predictive modeling and settlement pattern analyses also will be conducted as well as geotechnical coring and analyses to aid in the identification of intact landforms that could contain archaeological materials. Moreover, the Chance Finds Clause in the lease will not only halt operations if cultural resources or indicators suggesting the possibility of cultural habitation are found but also allow the Tribes to participate in reviewing and analyzing such potential finds.
The Advisory Council’s regulations provide that the Interior Department must take into account the Council’s comments on particular projects. The Department, as the decision-making authority, is required to consider the Council’s comments but is not legally bound to follow its recommendations or conclusions.
The Cape Wind Associates, LLC facility would occupy a 25-square-mile section of Nantucket Sound and generate a maximum electric output of 468 megawatts with an average anticipated output of 182 megawatts. At average expected production, Cape Wind could produce enough energy to power more than 200,000 homes in Massachusetts. Horseshoe Shoals lies outside shipping channels, ferry routes and flight paths but is adjacent to power-consuming coastal communities. One-fifth of the offshore wind energy potential of the East Coast is located off the New England coast and Nantucket Sound receives strong, steady Atlantic winds year round. The project includes a 66.5-mile buried submarine transmission cable system, an electric service platform and two 115-kilovolt lines connecting to the mainland power grid.
Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533632146#ixzz0mYWcf3Ho
The tribes there have lost their battle it seems.....
bluejay
Secretary Salazar Announces Approval of Cape Wind Energy Project on Outer Continental Shelf off Massachusetts
BOSTON, Mass – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today approved the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound, but will require the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.
“After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving the Cape Wind project at the Horseshoe Shoal location,” Salazar said in an announcement at the State House in Boston. “With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our Nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region.”
The Cape Wind project would be the first wind farm on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, generating enough power to meet 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket Island combined. The project would create several hundred construction jobs and be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the nation, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons annually. That is equivalent to removing 175,000 cars from the road for a year.
A number of similar projects have been proposed for other northeast coastal states, positioning the region to tap 1 million megawatts of offshore Atlantic wind energy potential, which could create thousands of manufacturing, construction and operations jobs and displace older, inefficient fossil-fueled generating plants, helping significantly to combat climate change.
Salazar emphasized that the Department has taken extraordinary steps to fully evaluate Cape Wind’s potential impacts on traditional cultural resources and historic properties, including government-to-government consultations with the Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah) and the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe and that he was “mindful of our unique relationship with the Tribes and carefully considered their views and concerns.”
Because of concerns expressed during the consultations, Interior has required the developer to change the design and configuration of the wind turbine farm to diminish the visual effects of the project and to conduct additional seabed surveys to ensure that any submerged archaeological resources are protected prior to bottom disturbing activities.
Under these revisions, the number of turbines has been reduced from 170 to 130, eliminating turbines to reduce the visual impacts from the Kennedy Compound National Historic Landmark; reconfiguring the array to move it farther away from Nantucket Island; and reducing its breadth to mitigate visibility from the Nantucket Historic District. Regarding possible seabed cultural and historic resources, a Chance Finds Clause in the lease requires the developer to halt operations and notify Interior of any unanticipated archaeological find.
Salazar said he understood and respected the views of the Tribes and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, but noted that as Secretary of the Interior, he must balance broad, national public interest priorities in his decisions. “The need to preserve the environmental resources and rich cultural heritage of Nantucket Sound must be weighed in the balance with the importance of developing new renewable energy sources and strengthening our Nation’s energy security while battling climate change and creating jobs,” Salazar said.
“After almost a decade of exhaustive study and analyses, I believe that this undertaking can be developed responsibly and with consideration to the historic and cultural resources in the project area,” Salazar said. “Impacts to the historic properties can and will be minimized and mitigated and we will ensure that cultural resources will not be harmed or destroyed during the construction, maintenance, and decommissioning of the project.”
He pointed out that Nantucket Sound and its environs are a working landscape with many historical and modern uses and changing technologies. These include significant commercial, recreational and other resource-intensive activities, such as fishing, aviation, marine transport and boating, which have daily visual and physical impacts, and have long coexisted with the cultural and historic attributes of the area and its people.
A number of tall structures, including broadcast towers, cellular base station towers, local public safety communications towers and towers for industrial and business uses are located around the area. Three submarine transmission cable systems already traverse the seabed to connect mainland energy sources to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island. Visual and physical impacts associated with Nantucket Sound and its associated shorelines abound; it is not an untouched landscape.
Salazar disagreed with the Advisory Council’s conclusion that visual impacts from the proposed wind farm, which will be situated between and at substantial distance from Cape Cod, Nantucket Island and Martha’s Vineyard, provide a rationale for rejecting the siting of the project. The viewshed effects are not direct or destructive to onshore traditional cultural properties. In no case does the turbine array dominate the viewshed. The project site is about 5.2 miles from the mainland shoreline, 13.8 miles from Nantucket Island and 9 miles from Martha’s Vineyard.
Nevertheless, Interior has required the developer to reduce the number of turbines and reconfigure the array to diminish its visual effects. Moreover, the developer will be required to paint the turbines off-white to reduce contrast with the sea and sky yet remain visible to birds.
No daytime Federal Aviation Administration lighting will be on the turbines, unless the U.S. Coast Guard requires some “day beacons” to ensure navigation safety. FAA nighttime lighting requirements have been reduced, lessening potential nighttime visual impacts. The upland cable transmission route was located entirely below ground within paved roads and existing utility rights of way to avoid visual impacts and potential impacts to unidentified archeological or historic resources.
These mitigation measures, coupled with the overall distance from which the turbine array will be viewed at any location, will reduce the visual impacts of the project. Lease terms also require the developer to decommission the facility when the project has completed its useful service life, deconstructing the turbines and towers and removing them from the site.
The Secretary also disagreed that it is not possible to mitigate the impacts associated with installation of piers for wind turbines in the seabed, noting that piers for bridges, transmission lines and other purposes are routinely built in relatively shallow waters consistent with those found in Horseshoe Shoals. A number of marine archaeological studies have indicated that there is low probability that the project area contains submerged archaeological resources. Most of the area has been extensively reworked and disturbed by marine activities and geological processes.
Nonetheless, Interior will require additional and detailed marine archaeological surveys and other protective measures in the project area. A full suite of remote sensing tools will be used to ensure seafloor coverage out to 1000 feet beyond the Area of Potential Effect. More predictive modeling and settlement pattern analyses also will be conducted as well as geotechnical coring and analyses to aid in the identification of intact landforms that could contain archaeological materials. Moreover, the Chance Finds Clause in the lease will not only halt operations if cultural resources or indicators suggesting the possibility of cultural habitation are found but also allow the Tribes to participate in reviewing and analyzing such potential finds.
The Advisory Council’s regulations provide that the Interior Department must take into account the Council’s comments on particular projects. The Department, as the decision-making authority, is required to consider the Council’s comments but is not legally bound to follow its recommendations or conclusions.
The Cape Wind Associates, LLC facility would occupy a 25-square-mile section of Nantucket Sound and generate a maximum electric output of 468 megawatts with an average anticipated output of 182 megawatts. At average expected production, Cape Wind could produce enough energy to power more than 200,000 homes in Massachusetts. Horseshoe Shoals lies outside shipping channels, ferry routes and flight paths but is adjacent to power-consuming coastal communities. One-fifth of the offshore wind energy potential of the East Coast is located off the New England coast and Nantucket Sound receives strong, steady Atlantic winds year round. The project includes a 66.5-mile buried submarine transmission cable system, an electric service platform and two 115-kilovolt lines connecting to the mainland power grid.
Read more: http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533632146#ixzz0mYWcf3Ho
C - 9 Approved Rescinds Environment Act
C - 9 Approved Rescinds Environment Act
from the Eagle Watch #39
Now add this comment from Graham Porter into the mix of your current readings. It is a truly insane picture yet we receive messages from many sensible and caring people every day and sure you do too. We really have to keep a handle on our own state of mind to be angry enough to take action, afraid enough to not forget but calm enough to get through the day. If you have children and grand children you can't just give up. You must keep on trying to make change in a Life affirming and Life sustaining way for our future generations. There is still hope as long as WE are alive.
Kittoh
From: Graham Porter
Subject: C - 9 Approved Rescinds Environment Act
because of the recent approval and passing of Bill - 9, the Environment Act had been rendered useless. Now, no one has protection from pollution, of any type. Get ready to get ill, very ill.
The Developers must have had the inside scoop to the decision that had allowed Bill C-9, Budget Implementation Act, to be passed in parliament, which includes rescinding the Environment Act. The Original Jack Ass, put the provinces bail out money in the Budget Bill and In the Implementation Act knowing full well the greed of the provinces would pave the way for the destruction of the Environment Act.
Now the only protection anyone has against the 'free for all' pollution of the Heritage Classed Grand River and any other stream of way or water way within the Six Nations Grand River Territory is the Grand River Notification Act, and for Six Nations Haudenosaunee to adopt the Recinded Environment Act and put it together with the Grand River Notification Act to strengthen it and at the same time adopt a longer time. So far the Grand River Notification Act has only a one year life, and each year, the day after, all the Developers File their plans witht he Provinces and the Provinces have an assembly line stamp of Approval waiting for them, side stepping the Grand River Notification Act before it can be brought back into power. This has happened every year.
One day I was looking for the license office, I mistakenly walked into the properties office, and as fast as the people there noticed I was Aboriginal, it was like watching 'CockRoaches' flee when the light is turned on. Those people grabbed our property maps and scurried into darken corners of the office, and at the same time hiding their faces. Glnacing over their shoulders to make sure where I stood. I got as far as to the middle of the first room before I was met by a woman that abruptly steered me back out the front door as she told me the office I was looking for was in one of the other temporary portables next door. I had to laugh. It was just like walking into a bath room by mistake. hahahahahaha
Graham Steve Porter Hill
rr1 ohsweken on n0a1m0
5194452492
Rural Route 1,Ohsweken, Ontario N0A 1M0 Canada
Six Nations Grand River Territory
Aboriginal Researcher - whalehead_2000@yahoo.com
from the Eagle Watch #39
Now add this comment from Graham Porter into the mix of your current readings. It is a truly insane picture yet we receive messages from many sensible and caring people every day and sure you do too. We really have to keep a handle on our own state of mind to be angry enough to take action, afraid enough to not forget but calm enough to get through the day. If you have children and grand children you can't just give up. You must keep on trying to make change in a Life affirming and Life sustaining way for our future generations. There is still hope as long as WE are alive.
Kittoh
From: Graham Porter
Subject: C - 9 Approved Rescinds Environment Act
because of the recent approval and passing of Bill - 9, the Environment Act had been rendered useless. Now, no one has protection from pollution, of any type. Get ready to get ill, very ill.
The Developers must have had the inside scoop to the decision that had allowed Bill C-9, Budget Implementation Act, to be passed in parliament, which includes rescinding the Environment Act. The Original Jack Ass, put the provinces bail out money in the Budget Bill and In the Implementation Act knowing full well the greed of the provinces would pave the way for the destruction of the Environment Act.
Now the only protection anyone has against the 'free for all' pollution of the Heritage Classed Grand River and any other stream of way or water way within the Six Nations Grand River Territory is the Grand River Notification Act, and for Six Nations Haudenosaunee to adopt the Recinded Environment Act and put it together with the Grand River Notification Act to strengthen it and at the same time adopt a longer time. So far the Grand River Notification Act has only a one year life, and each year, the day after, all the Developers File their plans witht he Provinces and the Provinces have an assembly line stamp of Approval waiting for them, side stepping the Grand River Notification Act before it can be brought back into power. This has happened every year.
One day I was looking for the license office, I mistakenly walked into the properties office, and as fast as the people there noticed I was Aboriginal, it was like watching 'CockRoaches' flee when the light is turned on. Those people grabbed our property maps and scurried into darken corners of the office, and at the same time hiding their faces. Glnacing over their shoulders to make sure where I stood. I got as far as to the middle of the first room before I was met by a woman that abruptly steered me back out the front door as she told me the office I was looking for was in one of the other temporary portables next door. I had to laugh. It was just like walking into a bath room by mistake. hahahahahaha
Graham Steve Porter Hill
rr1 ohsweken on n0a1m0
5194452492
Rural Route 1,Ohsweken, Ontario N0A 1M0 Canada
Six Nations Grand River Territory
Aboriginal Researcher - whalehead_2000@yahoo.com
Do I look Illegal?
Do I look Illegal?
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533631576
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendId=98128197&blogId=533631576
Behind the Arizona Immigration Law: GOP Game to Swipe the November Elections
Behind the Arizona Immigration Law:
GOP Game to Swipe the November Election
Our investigation in Arizona discovered the real intent of the show-me-your-papers law.
by Greg Palast for Truthout.org
[Phoenix, AZ.] Don't be fooled. The way the media plays the story, it was a wave of racist, anti-immigrant hysteria that moved Arizona Republicans to pass a sick little law, signed last week, requiring every person in the state to carry papers proving they are US citizens.
I don't buy it. Anti-Hispanic hysteria has always been as much a part of Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and excessive air-conditioning.
What's new here is not the politicians' fear of a xenophobic "Teabag" uprising.
What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.
Captives of Sheriff Joe's prison, Maricopa County, Arizona
So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?
No, not one.
Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?
The answer was provided by a federal prosecutor who was sent on a crazy hunt all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. "We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case."
This prosecutor, David Iglesias, is a prosecutor no more. When he refused to fabricate charges of illegal voting among immigrants, his firing was personally ordered by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, under orders from his boss, Karl Rove.
Iglesias' jurisdiction was next door, in New Mexico, but he told me that Rove and the Republican chieftains were working nationwide to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria with public busts of illegal voters,even though there were none.
"They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments," Iglesias told me. The former prosecutor, himself a Republican, paid the price when he stood up to this vicious attack on citizenship.
But Secretary of State Brewer followed the Rove plan to a T. The weapon she used to slice the Arizona voter rolls was a 2004 law, known as "Prop 200," which required proof of citizenship to register. It is important to see the Republicans' latest legislative horror show, sanctioning cops to stop residents and prove citizenship, as just one more step in the party's desperate plan to impede Mexican-Americans from marching to the ballot box.
[By the way, no one elected Brewer. Weirdly, Barack Obama placed her in office last year when, for reasons known only to the Devil and Rahm Emanuel, the President appointed Arizona's Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano to his cabinet, which automatically moved Republican Brewer into the Governor's office.]
State Senator Russell Pearce, the Republican sponsor of the latest ID law, gave away his real intent, blocking the vote, when he said, "There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."
How many? Pearce's PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats, too. Again, I asked Pearce's office to give me their the names and addresses from their phony registration forms. I'd happily make a citizens arrest of each one, on camera. Pearce didn't have five million names. He didn't have five. He didn't have one.
The horde of five million voters who swam the Rio Grande just to vote for Obama was calculated on a Republican website extrapolating from the number of Mexicans in a border town who refused jury service because they were not citizens. Not one, in fact, had registered to vote: they had registered to drive. They had obtained licenses as required by the law.
The illegal voters, "wetback" welfare moms, and alien job thieves are just GOP website wet-dreams, but their mythic PR power helps the party's electoral hacks chop away at voter rolls and civil rights with little more than a whimper from the Democrats.
Indeed, one reason, I discovered, that some Democrats are silent is that they are in on the game themselves. In New Mexico, Democratic Party bosses tossed away ballots of Pueblo Indians to cut native influence in party primaries.
But what’s wrong with requiring folks to prove they’re American if the want to vote and live in America? The answer: because the vast majority of perfectly legal voters and residents who lack ID sufficient for Ms. Brewer and Mr. Pearce are citizens of color, citizens of poverty.
According to a study by prof. Matt Barreto, of Washington State University, minority citizens are half as likely as whites to have the government ID. The numbers are dreadfully worse when income is factored in.
Just outside Phoenix, without Brewer's or Pearce's help, I did locate one of these evil un-American voters, that is, someone who could not prove her citizenship: 100-year-old Shirley Preiss. Her US birth certificate was nowhere to be found as it never existed.
In Phoenix, I stopped in at the Maricopa County prison where Sheriff Joe Arpaio houses the captives of his campaign to stop illegal immigration. Arpaio, who under the new Arizona law, will be empowered to choose his targets for citizenship testing, is already facing federal indictment for his racially-charged and legally suspect methods.
I admit, I was a little nervous, passing through the iron doors with a big sign, "NOTICE: ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE PROHIBITED FROM VISITING ANYONE IN THIS JAIL." I mean, Grandma Palast snuck into the USA via Windsor, Canada. We Palasts are illegal as they come, but Arpaio's sophisticated deportee-sniffer didn't stop this white boy from entering his sanctum.
But that's the point, isn't it? Not to stop non-citizens from entering Arizona -- after all, who else would care for the country club lawn? -- but to harass folks of the wrong color: Democratic blue.
Greg Palast has investigated the illegal disenfranchisement of voters for BBC Television, Rolling Stone (with Robert Kennedy Jr.), Harper's, The Nation and Truthout.org. Palast co-authored the investigative comic book, "Steal Back Your Vote" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., available in full color print or for download at www.StealBackYourVote.com for a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.
GOP Game to Swipe the November Election
Our investigation in Arizona discovered the real intent of the show-me-your-papers law.
by Greg Palast for Truthout.org
[Phoenix, AZ.] Don't be fooled. The way the media plays the story, it was a wave of racist, anti-immigrant hysteria that moved Arizona Republicans to pass a sick little law, signed last week, requiring every person in the state to carry papers proving they are US citizens.
I don't buy it. Anti-Hispanic hysteria has always been as much a part of Arizona as the Saguaro cactus and excessive air-conditioning.
What's new here is not the politicians' fear of a xenophobic "Teabag" uprising.
What moved GOP Governor Jan Brewer to sign the Soviet-style show-me-your-papers law is the exploding number of legal Hispanics, US citizens all, who are daring to vote -- and daring to vote Democratic by more than two-to-one. Unless this demographic locomotive is halted, Arizona Republicans know their party will soon be electoral toast. Or, if you like, tortillas.
In 2008, working for Rolling Stone with civil rights attorney Bobby Kennedy, our team flew to Arizona to investigate what smelled like an electoral pogrom against Chicano voters ... directed by one Jan Brewer.
Brewer, then Secretary of State, had organized a racially loaded purge of the voter rolls that would have made Katherine Harris blush. Beginning after the 2004 election, under Brewer's command, no less than 100,000 voters, overwhelmingly Hispanics, were blocked from registering to vote. In 2005, the first year of the Great Brown-Out, one in three Phoenix residents found their registration applications rejected.
That statistic caught my attention. Voting or registering to vote if you're not a citizen is a felony, a big-time jail-time crime. And arresting such criminal voters is easy: after all, they give their names and addresses.
Captives of Sheriff Joe's prison, Maricopa County, Arizona
So I asked Brewer's office, had she busted a single one of these thousands of allegedly illegal voters? Did she turn over even one name to the feds for prosecution?
No, not one.
Which raises the question: were these disenfranchised voters the criminal, non-citizens Brewer tagged them, or just not-quite-white voters given the José Crow treatment, entrapped in document-chase trickery?
The answer was provided by a federal prosecutor who was sent on a crazy hunt all over the Western mesas looking for these illegal voters. "We took over 100 complaints, we investigated for almost 2 years, I didn’t find one prosecutable voter fraud case."
This prosecutor, David Iglesias, is a prosecutor no more. When he refused to fabricate charges of illegal voting among immigrants, his firing was personally ordered by the President of the United States, George W. Bush, under orders from his boss, Karl Rove.
Iglesias' jurisdiction was next door, in New Mexico, but he told me that Rove and the Republican chieftains were working nationwide to whip up anti-immigrant hysteria with public busts of illegal voters,even though there were none.
"They wanted some splashy pre-election indictments," Iglesias told me. The former prosecutor, himself a Republican, paid the price when he stood up to this vicious attack on citizenship.
But Secretary of State Brewer followed the Rove plan to a T. The weapon she used to slice the Arizona voter rolls was a 2004 law, known as "Prop 200," which required proof of citizenship to register. It is important to see the Republicans' latest legislative horror show, sanctioning cops to stop residents and prove citizenship, as just one more step in the party's desperate plan to impede Mexican-Americans from marching to the ballot box.
[By the way, no one elected Brewer. Weirdly, Barack Obama placed her in office last year when, for reasons known only to the Devil and Rahm Emanuel, the President appointed Arizona's Democratic Governor Janet Napolitano to his cabinet, which automatically moved Republican Brewer into the Governor's office.]
State Senator Russell Pearce, the Republican sponsor of the latest ID law, gave away his real intent, blocking the vote, when he said, "There is a massive effort under way to register illegal aliens in this country."
How many? Pearce's PR flak told me, five million. All Democrats, too. Again, I asked Pearce's office to give me their the names and addresses from their phony registration forms. I'd happily make a citizens arrest of each one, on camera. Pearce didn't have five million names. He didn't have five. He didn't have one.
The horde of five million voters who swam the Rio Grande just to vote for Obama was calculated on a Republican website extrapolating from the number of Mexicans in a border town who refused jury service because they were not citizens. Not one, in fact, had registered to vote: they had registered to drive. They had obtained licenses as required by the law.
The illegal voters, "wetback" welfare moms, and alien job thieves are just GOP website wet-dreams, but their mythic PR power helps the party's electoral hacks chop away at voter rolls and civil rights with little more than a whimper from the Democrats.
Indeed, one reason, I discovered, that some Democrats are silent is that they are in on the game themselves. In New Mexico, Democratic Party bosses tossed away ballots of Pueblo Indians to cut native influence in party primaries.
But what’s wrong with requiring folks to prove they’re American if the want to vote and live in America? The answer: because the vast majority of perfectly legal voters and residents who lack ID sufficient for Ms. Brewer and Mr. Pearce are citizens of color, citizens of poverty.
According to a study by prof. Matt Barreto, of Washington State University, minority citizens are half as likely as whites to have the government ID. The numbers are dreadfully worse when income is factored in.
Just outside Phoenix, without Brewer's or Pearce's help, I did locate one of these evil un-American voters, that is, someone who could not prove her citizenship: 100-year-old Shirley Preiss. Her US birth certificate was nowhere to be found as it never existed.
In Phoenix, I stopped in at the Maricopa County prison where Sheriff Joe Arpaio houses the captives of his campaign to stop illegal immigration. Arpaio, who under the new Arizona law, will be empowered to choose his targets for citizenship testing, is already facing federal indictment for his racially-charged and legally suspect methods.
I admit, I was a little nervous, passing through the iron doors with a big sign, "NOTICE: ILLEGAL ALIENS ARE PROHIBITED FROM VISITING ANYONE IN THIS JAIL." I mean, Grandma Palast snuck into the USA via Windsor, Canada. We Palasts are illegal as they come, but Arpaio's sophisticated deportee-sniffer didn't stop this white boy from entering his sanctum.
But that's the point, isn't it? Not to stop non-citizens from entering Arizona -- after all, who else would care for the country club lawn? -- but to harass folks of the wrong color: Democratic blue.
Greg Palast has investigated the illegal disenfranchisement of voters for BBC Television, Rolling Stone (with Robert Kennedy Jr.), Harper's, The Nation and Truthout.org. Palast co-authored the investigative comic book, "Steal Back Your Vote" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., available in full color print or for download at www.StealBackYourVote.com for a donation to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund.
A spate of earthquakes, a documentary about a plane crash, and an old power plant..
A spate of earthquakes, a documentary about a plane crash, and an old power plant..
From the Eagle Watch #38
We received this article from Ace Hoffman in California the day after we published "When Science Fiction Becomes Reality: Crowding Skies with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Snoop and Kill"
Imagine the implications of UAV's flying around city airspaces near where nuclear reactors exist such as the Toronto area and many other places on great Turtle Island.
Kittoh
From: Ace Hoffman
Subject: A spate of earthquakes, a documentary about a plane crash, and
an old power plant...
April 12th, 2010
Dear Readers,
A pair of old nuclear reactors operates -- most of the time -- about a dozen miles from where I live. I'm downwind of them a lot of the time.
Recently, two events -- an ongoing series of local earthquakes, and a documentary about a local plane crash -- reminded me what a nightmare-waiting-to-happen nuclear power plants really are.
"SONGS" (as the radiation factory calls itself) stands for San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. I call it SONWGS, which stands for San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station. The waste from "SanO" has been building up since the first reactor opened in 1967. That unit operated until 1992, but nearly all its fuel remains on-site and is expected to stay there for the foreseeable future. (The proposed national repository, Yucca Mountain, has been all but cancelled by the Obama administration and in any case, is inadequate -- and was more than a decade behind schedule when it was mothballed.)
The strongest of the recent earthquakes (and the only one I felt) was a 7.2, centered in northern Mexico, less than 100 miles from San Onofre. San Onofre is only built to withstand a 7.0 earthquake whose epicenter is no closer than about five miles away. That's hardly the same as a 7.2 earthquake directly underfoot. It's one thing to be shaken, it's another to be ripped apart.
It costs a lot to "over-engineer" a building, but nevertheless the assumption made at San Onofre is that it has been over-engineered to withstand at least a 7.5 trembler, which is much, much worse than a 7.0 earthquake. (On the logarithmic Richter Scale an 8.0 earthquake creates ten times the ground shaking of a 7.0.) Thus, the "experts" are routinely claiming that they are certain that San Onofre has been built to withstand five times more ground-shaking than it is actually designed to withstand! They delude themselves in many ways, and try to delude the public along with them.
Despite assurances, there is NO basis to assume San Onofre has been over-engineered at all, and every reason to think it might not survive a "design basis earthquake" (7.0). For example, many other buildings, built more recently, did NOT survive earthquakes with magnitudes LESS than their design basis. Building earthquake-resistant structures is an inexact science, if not pure art.
The other event which occurred recently, and made me think about possible outcomes of San Onofre's continued operation, was the premier run of a documentary, Return to Dwight and Nile. The documentary covers the 1978 crash -- mainly, the immediate aftermath -- of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 in North Park, San Diego, about 50 miles from San Onofre. Shown only a few miles from the crash site, the movie brought many in the audience to tears.
PSA Flight 182 was a Boeing 727 three-engine jet, packed with 135 souls on board, originating in Sacramento, the state capital, with a brief stopover in Los Angeles, the state's largest city. On final approach to Lindbergh Field in San Diego, the jet collided with a Cessna 172 which had inexplicably changed course from the heading Air Traffic Control (ATC) had given it. The jet did not inform ATC that it had lost sight of the Cessna, despite having been told by ATC to maintain visual traffic separation. The tower was not using radar even though it was available to them. Just prior to the accident joking and laughter can be heard on the Flight 182 cockpit voice recorder...
Famously, a person on the ground managed to snap two photos of the doomed and plummeting jetliner moments before impact. The photos show the plane at about a 50 degree angle to the ground, right wing down and in flames, visibly gashed. "Ma, I love yah" are the last words on the cockpit voice recorder, coming about one second after the captain told the passengers, "Brace yourself" and a few seconds after his last transmission to ATC: "Tower, we're going down, this is PSA."
Many of the passengers happened to be PSA employees and probably knew that bracing themselves wouldn't have helped. After the crash, pieces of bodies hung from trees and were in piles knee deep in the impact zone. The mushrooming cloud of black smoke was visible for miles. 144 people died altogether, including the two occupants of the single-engine prop plane and seven people on the ground.
The normal commercial airline route from Los Angeles to San Diego overflies San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station. There is a small uncontrolled airport near San Onofre, from whence crazy people have sometimes stolen airplanes. From whence airplanes have sometimes taken off only to crash into the sea less than a mile from San Onofre.
In 2003, in Angola, Africa, someone STOLE a 727 jet! It was never recovered.
At any moment, San Onofre could be hit by an earthquake or by a commercial jetliner, falling uncontrollably or guided by terrorists. And it's simply not worth the risk.
San Onofre's nuclear waste cannot be safely contained or transported. Nor can it be easily or entirely or efficiently or (for that matter...) cost-effectively transmuted, let alone destroyed. Virtually all of the waste ever created at every nuclear power plant in America is still located on-site where it was created -- and NOT even in the famous "containment domes" (only the fuel in the operating reactor is inside the domes, not the waste). The waste currently being stored at San Onofre contains the equivalent potential radiological impact of more than 50,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Each operating reactor contains about 1000 Hiroshima-sized bombs worth of radiation. Each year, about 50 bombs worth of plutonium is included in that production of radioactive "byproducts." Rogue country's nuclear power plants do the same...
The vulnerabilities increase daily as more and more nuclear waste piles up with nowhere to put it. Waste so deadly that one sugar-cube-sized chunk of it, if it were dispersed locally, would be enough to contaminate a medium-sized city for thousands of generations and fatally poison tens or hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.
Waste so deadly that in official public documents describing "worst case scenarios" only a tiny fraction is released -- on the order of 0.001% or even 0.000001% of the total inventory of one shipment or one storage cask (and most of what is released is assumed to remain nearby, in chunks...).
When the atomic bomb was used against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many people died due to the immediate effects of the blast: First there is the intense broiling heat of the gamma radiation burst (which lasted only milliseconds). Then there comes an intestine-yanking, eyeball-popping, object-tossing, window-shard-making concussion wave. That's soon followed by tornado-force winds and the debris they carry, along with horizontal sheets of fire, which suck the oxygen out of the collapsing buildings. Then a rain of radioactive fallout, "hot" chunks, some as big as your thumb, fall from the sky, a black rain, an inescapable, choking dust.
Then, in the aftermath, the lack of proper medication for so many gravely-injured people kills thousands more... But it was the long-term effects of the radiation exposure which killed the most people and which is STILL killing people. And deforming them. And debilitating them. So far, hundreds of thousands have died from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki radiation. Radiation which will keep on killing, because some of the isotopes are very long-lived... and because genetic damage can appear many generations after exposure... and because there is no safe dose of radiation. None whatsoever.
Unlike conventional weapons, which only kill noncombatants who happen to be in the vicinity of the blast, uranium and plutonium weapons kill randomly for many millennia after they are used -- including so-called "depleted" uranium weapons, which are only "depleted" of one radioactive isotope of uranium, but not other radioactive isotopes. The use of uranium weapons in any form is truly a crime against all of humanity. So too is the use of nuclear power to generate electricity, or for propulsion for military vessels.
When Chernobyl exploded and spewed radiation into the water, air and soil globally, "only" dozens of people died from the blasts, the fires, and the gamma radiation at the power plant, and other immediate effects. The entire nuclear industry's success -- such as it is -- is based on the lie that these deaths were virtually the ONLY deaths from Chernobyl. Nuclear power proponents don't even acknowledge the continuing deaths of the "liquidators" -- the brave (though often compelled into service, and kept ignorant about the risks) Russian citizen-soldiers who smothered the flames and built the cement enclosure -- known as a sarcophagus -- around the stricken plant (which leaks and must be rebuilt, and which will need to be rebuilt many times over the coming millennia). The nuclear industry denies that anybody who survived those first few days after Chernobyl's "accident" was harmed in any way. But in fact it is an ongoing catastrophe.
Nuclear power proponents ignore all the damage to the local population around Chernobyl because they say all excess radiation fades to "background" dose levels, which, they say, are harmless. Wrong! Wrong because many types of man-made radioactive isotopes are especially good at getting inside the body, where they can do the most harm. These isotopes are rare or unheard-of in nature but are created in copious quantities in nuclear power plants. And wrong because "natural, background" radiation DOES cause cancer. Adding to the background radiation dose just causes MORE cancer.
According to peer-reviewed scientific studies which have been suppressed in the United States and by all nuclear nations, the real number of dead from Chernobyl may already be over one million, making it by far the worst industrial accident in history. And the death toll from Chernobyl will continue to climb for thousands of generations.
Cancers from a single (brief) high radiation exposure to a population tend to show up in waves: Various types of cancers often have "typical" latency periods before appearing -- they are now discovering types of cancers that only start to show up more than 50 years after exposure! Cancers from long-term exposures presumably also tend to have a latency period, but it's harder to define, and even harder to analyze.
Children in the areas surrounding Chernobyl are especially at risk, not only because of their much-greater sensitivity to radiation's harmful effects, but because they are much more likely to play in the dirt, and are closer to the "ground shine" that still occurs nearly a quarter of a century after the accident, over thousands of square miles of contaminated soil around Chernobyl. (Nevertheless, the most common pathway into the body for radionuclides from Chernobyl is currently ingestion of contaminated food and water.)
Chernobyl is in our blood, in our our brains (not just figuratively) and in our flesh and bones. Chernobyl kills silently. We are ALL victims of Chernobyl. Chernobyl must never be repeated, yet another Chernobyl-size accident (or worse) is threatened daily by more than a thousand nuclear reactors, including military reactors and research reactors, both of which are just as dangerous as commercial reactors.
In the blink of an eye, reactor operators can make a fateful error. Pilots do. Submarine captains do. Presidents do. So naturally, one must assume that control room operators can and do, too. But even if they and everyone else were infallible, nature still has its say.
The tsunami sea wall at San Onofre is only about 30 feet high. Dry casks, filled with used reactor core assemblies, are stored along the coast, and are said to be effective under up to 50 feet of water -- but it was never properly tested, of course, or even asserted to be true under oath. In 2004 there was widespread evidence of tsunami waves greater than 60 feet. And in the past few years there have been widespread allegations of fraud and cover-ups in the dry cask construction business, including at San Onofre.
Nuclear power is an expensive excess. We don't need it because there are safer ways to get electricity, which is, itself, only a transport method for getting energy to do work wherever we happen to need it or want it. There is no intrinsic reason our electricity must be generated by one source over any other. The cleanest possible energy source should be used, and nuclear power has no place in any proper energy portfolio. It's yesterday's solution that didn't work then, and doesn't work now.
Energy conservation (such as a widespread and rapid switch to L.E.D. lights, for instance) combined with pumped energy storage, offshore wind farms, solar panels on rooftops, and a variety of other renewable energy methods would rejuvenate our economy, eliminate excess CO2 production, reduce our risk, eliminate future costs of handling nuclear waste we don't make, and promote the public welfare, as required by law and common sense.
Like most of the world's nuclear power plants, San Onofre is old and dilapidated. It's falling apart. And even if it weren't, even if it were shiny and new, the combination of San Onofre's incredibly toxic, unbelievably unstable, unquestionably immoral, and undoubtedly uneconomic (in the long run), lethal waste amidst millions of mostly-unaware people and "routine" events like earthquakes and airplane crashes dooms Southern California for no good reason.
It's time to shut San Onofre and all of the other nuclear power plants for good.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author has studied nuclear power for many decades, and has had a fascination for aviation and aircraft handling characteristics, as well as accident statistics, for even longer. He also writes award-winning educational science tutorials for The Animated Software Company.
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
phone: (800) 551-2726; (760) 720-7261
address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
From the Eagle Watch #38
We received this article from Ace Hoffman in California the day after we published "When Science Fiction Becomes Reality: Crowding Skies with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to Snoop and Kill"
Imagine the implications of UAV's flying around city airspaces near where nuclear reactors exist such as the Toronto area and many other places on great Turtle Island.
Kittoh
From: Ace Hoffman
Subject: A spate of earthquakes, a documentary about a plane crash, and
an old power plant...
April 12th, 2010
Dear Readers,
A pair of old nuclear reactors operates -- most of the time -- about a dozen miles from where I live. I'm downwind of them a lot of the time.
Recently, two events -- an ongoing series of local earthquakes, and a documentary about a local plane crash -- reminded me what a nightmare-waiting-to-happen nuclear power plants really are.
"SONGS" (as the radiation factory calls itself) stands for San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. I call it SONWGS, which stands for San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station. The waste from "SanO" has been building up since the first reactor opened in 1967. That unit operated until 1992, but nearly all its fuel remains on-site and is expected to stay there for the foreseeable future. (The proposed national repository, Yucca Mountain, has been all but cancelled by the Obama administration and in any case, is inadequate -- and was more than a decade behind schedule when it was mothballed.)
The strongest of the recent earthquakes (and the only one I felt) was a 7.2, centered in northern Mexico, less than 100 miles from San Onofre. San Onofre is only built to withstand a 7.0 earthquake whose epicenter is no closer than about five miles away. That's hardly the same as a 7.2 earthquake directly underfoot. It's one thing to be shaken, it's another to be ripped apart.
It costs a lot to "over-engineer" a building, but nevertheless the assumption made at San Onofre is that it has been over-engineered to withstand at least a 7.5 trembler, which is much, much worse than a 7.0 earthquake. (On the logarithmic Richter Scale an 8.0 earthquake creates ten times the ground shaking of a 7.0.) Thus, the "experts" are routinely claiming that they are certain that San Onofre has been built to withstand five times more ground-shaking than it is actually designed to withstand! They delude themselves in many ways, and try to delude the public along with them.
Despite assurances, there is NO basis to assume San Onofre has been over-engineered at all, and every reason to think it might not survive a "design basis earthquake" (7.0). For example, many other buildings, built more recently, did NOT survive earthquakes with magnitudes LESS than their design basis. Building earthquake-resistant structures is an inexact science, if not pure art.
The other event which occurred recently, and made me think about possible outcomes of San Onofre's continued operation, was the premier run of a documentary, Return to Dwight and Nile. The documentary covers the 1978 crash -- mainly, the immediate aftermath -- of Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 182 in North Park, San Diego, about 50 miles from San Onofre. Shown only a few miles from the crash site, the movie brought many in the audience to tears.
PSA Flight 182 was a Boeing 727 three-engine jet, packed with 135 souls on board, originating in Sacramento, the state capital, with a brief stopover in Los Angeles, the state's largest city. On final approach to Lindbergh Field in San Diego, the jet collided with a Cessna 172 which had inexplicably changed course from the heading Air Traffic Control (ATC) had given it. The jet did not inform ATC that it had lost sight of the Cessna, despite having been told by ATC to maintain visual traffic separation. The tower was not using radar even though it was available to them. Just prior to the accident joking and laughter can be heard on the Flight 182 cockpit voice recorder...
Famously, a person on the ground managed to snap two photos of the doomed and plummeting jetliner moments before impact. The photos show the plane at about a 50 degree angle to the ground, right wing down and in flames, visibly gashed. "Ma, I love yah" are the last words on the cockpit voice recorder, coming about one second after the captain told the passengers, "Brace yourself" and a few seconds after his last transmission to ATC: "Tower, we're going down, this is PSA."
Many of the passengers happened to be PSA employees and probably knew that bracing themselves wouldn't have helped. After the crash, pieces of bodies hung from trees and were in piles knee deep in the impact zone. The mushrooming cloud of black smoke was visible for miles. 144 people died altogether, including the two occupants of the single-engine prop plane and seven people on the ground.
The normal commercial airline route from Los Angeles to San Diego overflies San Onofre Nuclear (Waste) Generating Station. There is a small uncontrolled airport near San Onofre, from whence crazy people have sometimes stolen airplanes. From whence airplanes have sometimes taken off only to crash into the sea less than a mile from San Onofre.
In 2003, in Angola, Africa, someone STOLE a 727 jet! It was never recovered.
At any moment, San Onofre could be hit by an earthquake or by a commercial jetliner, falling uncontrollably or guided by terrorists. And it's simply not worth the risk.
San Onofre's nuclear waste cannot be safely contained or transported. Nor can it be easily or entirely or efficiently or (for that matter...) cost-effectively transmuted, let alone destroyed. Virtually all of the waste ever created at every nuclear power plant in America is still located on-site where it was created -- and NOT even in the famous "containment domes" (only the fuel in the operating reactor is inside the domes, not the waste). The waste currently being stored at San Onofre contains the equivalent potential radiological impact of more than 50,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Each operating reactor contains about 1000 Hiroshima-sized bombs worth of radiation. Each year, about 50 bombs worth of plutonium is included in that production of radioactive "byproducts." Rogue country's nuclear power plants do the same...
The vulnerabilities increase daily as more and more nuclear waste piles up with nowhere to put it. Waste so deadly that one sugar-cube-sized chunk of it, if it were dispersed locally, would be enough to contaminate a medium-sized city for thousands of generations and fatally poison tens or hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions.
Waste so deadly that in official public documents describing "worst case scenarios" only a tiny fraction is released -- on the order of 0.001% or even 0.000001% of the total inventory of one shipment or one storage cask (and most of what is released is assumed to remain nearby, in chunks...).
When the atomic bomb was used against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many people died due to the immediate effects of the blast: First there is the intense broiling heat of the gamma radiation burst (which lasted only milliseconds). Then there comes an intestine-yanking, eyeball-popping, object-tossing, window-shard-making concussion wave. That's soon followed by tornado-force winds and the debris they carry, along with horizontal sheets of fire, which suck the oxygen out of the collapsing buildings. Then a rain of radioactive fallout, "hot" chunks, some as big as your thumb, fall from the sky, a black rain, an inescapable, choking dust.
Then, in the aftermath, the lack of proper medication for so many gravely-injured people kills thousands more... But it was the long-term effects of the radiation exposure which killed the most people and which is STILL killing people. And deforming them. And debilitating them. So far, hundreds of thousands have died from the Hiroshima and Nagasaki radiation. Radiation which will keep on killing, because some of the isotopes are very long-lived... and because genetic damage can appear many generations after exposure... and because there is no safe dose of radiation. None whatsoever.
Unlike conventional weapons, which only kill noncombatants who happen to be in the vicinity of the blast, uranium and plutonium weapons kill randomly for many millennia after they are used -- including so-called "depleted" uranium weapons, which are only "depleted" of one radioactive isotope of uranium, but not other radioactive isotopes. The use of uranium weapons in any form is truly a crime against all of humanity. So too is the use of nuclear power to generate electricity, or for propulsion for military vessels.
When Chernobyl exploded and spewed radiation into the water, air and soil globally, "only" dozens of people died from the blasts, the fires, and the gamma radiation at the power plant, and other immediate effects. The entire nuclear industry's success -- such as it is -- is based on the lie that these deaths were virtually the ONLY deaths from Chernobyl. Nuclear power proponents don't even acknowledge the continuing deaths of the "liquidators" -- the brave (though often compelled into service, and kept ignorant about the risks) Russian citizen-soldiers who smothered the flames and built the cement enclosure -- known as a sarcophagus -- around the stricken plant (which leaks and must be rebuilt, and which will need to be rebuilt many times over the coming millennia). The nuclear industry denies that anybody who survived those first few days after Chernobyl's "accident" was harmed in any way. But in fact it is an ongoing catastrophe.
Nuclear power proponents ignore all the damage to the local population around Chernobyl because they say all excess radiation fades to "background" dose levels, which, they say, are harmless. Wrong! Wrong because many types of man-made radioactive isotopes are especially good at getting inside the body, where they can do the most harm. These isotopes are rare or unheard-of in nature but are created in copious quantities in nuclear power plants. And wrong because "natural, background" radiation DOES cause cancer. Adding to the background radiation dose just causes MORE cancer.
According to peer-reviewed scientific studies which have been suppressed in the United States and by all nuclear nations, the real number of dead from Chernobyl may already be over one million, making it by far the worst industrial accident in history. And the death toll from Chernobyl will continue to climb for thousands of generations.
Cancers from a single (brief) high radiation exposure to a population tend to show up in waves: Various types of cancers often have "typical" latency periods before appearing -- they are now discovering types of cancers that only start to show up more than 50 years after exposure! Cancers from long-term exposures presumably also tend to have a latency period, but it's harder to define, and even harder to analyze.
Children in the areas surrounding Chernobyl are especially at risk, not only because of their much-greater sensitivity to radiation's harmful effects, but because they are much more likely to play in the dirt, and are closer to the "ground shine" that still occurs nearly a quarter of a century after the accident, over thousands of square miles of contaminated soil around Chernobyl. (Nevertheless, the most common pathway into the body for radionuclides from Chernobyl is currently ingestion of contaminated food and water.)
Chernobyl is in our blood, in our our brains (not just figuratively) and in our flesh and bones. Chernobyl kills silently. We are ALL victims of Chernobyl. Chernobyl must never be repeated, yet another Chernobyl-size accident (or worse) is threatened daily by more than a thousand nuclear reactors, including military reactors and research reactors, both of which are just as dangerous as commercial reactors.
In the blink of an eye, reactor operators can make a fateful error. Pilots do. Submarine captains do. Presidents do. So naturally, one must assume that control room operators can and do, too. But even if they and everyone else were infallible, nature still has its say.
The tsunami sea wall at San Onofre is only about 30 feet high. Dry casks, filled with used reactor core assemblies, are stored along the coast, and are said to be effective under up to 50 feet of water -- but it was never properly tested, of course, or even asserted to be true under oath. In 2004 there was widespread evidence of tsunami waves greater than 60 feet. And in the past few years there have been widespread allegations of fraud and cover-ups in the dry cask construction business, including at San Onofre.
Nuclear power is an expensive excess. We don't need it because there are safer ways to get electricity, which is, itself, only a transport method for getting energy to do work wherever we happen to need it or want it. There is no intrinsic reason our electricity must be generated by one source over any other. The cleanest possible energy source should be used, and nuclear power has no place in any proper energy portfolio. It's yesterday's solution that didn't work then, and doesn't work now.
Energy conservation (such as a widespread and rapid switch to L.E.D. lights, for instance) combined with pumped energy storage, offshore wind farms, solar panels on rooftops, and a variety of other renewable energy methods would rejuvenate our economy, eliminate excess CO2 production, reduce our risk, eliminate future costs of handling nuclear waste we don't make, and promote the public welfare, as required by law and common sense.
Like most of the world's nuclear power plants, San Onofre is old and dilapidated. It's falling apart. And even if it weren't, even if it were shiny and new, the combination of San Onofre's incredibly toxic, unbelievably unstable, unquestionably immoral, and undoubtedly uneconomic (in the long run), lethal waste amidst millions of mostly-unaware people and "routine" events like earthquakes and airplane crashes dooms Southern California for no good reason.
It's time to shut San Onofre and all of the other nuclear power plants for good.
Sincerely,
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, CA
The author has studied nuclear power for many decades, and has had a fascination for aviation and aircraft handling characteristics, as well as accident statistics, for even longer. He also writes award-winning educational science tutorials for The Animated Software Company.
-----------------------------------------
Ace Hoffman
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
phone: (800) 551-2726; (760) 720-7261
address: PO Box 1936, Carlsbad, CA 92018
Friends of the Buffalo
Friends of the Buffalo
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&bID=533625334
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.ListAll&bID=533625334
Drill baby drill, became Spill baby spill, then burn baby burn became, kill baby kill
Drill baby drill, became Spill baby spill, then burn baby burn became, kill baby kill as all the sea life and the economy of the gulf dies with the sea life.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Racists vandalize our community office
We knew that Arizona's new radical immigration law would stir up hate speech and racist voices nationwide.1 But we didn't know it would hit so close to home.
Just before our friends at Washington CAN arrived to plan an immigrant rights march, racist vandals slashed their tires, spray-painted "heil Hitler" symbols and hurled a steel ball through the window.2
We're tired of this violence. We're tired of members of Congress having to close down their offices due to death threats and smashed windows. We're tired of the hate speech and threats.
So we're sending a giant banner made up of the names of all TrueMajority members who stand together against this racist violence. WashCAN staff and volunteers will carry the banner this Saturday as a sign of solidarity against hate.
Will you stand with us against this violence? Click here to add your name to the right side of history.
http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/7002/azracism?campaign_KEY=1680
We'd like to believe this is an isolated incident. But it's not. Hate speech and violence have been on the rise in America the last few months. Whether it's spitting on John Lewis, a congressman and civil rights icon, or attacking the offices of our friends and allies in Seattle -- the source is the same.
Now Arizona's "show your papers" law is emboldening white supremacists and racists across the country. It has to stop. What will be next? Armed militiamen patrolling not just the Mexican border but the streets of our neighborhoods too?
If we don't take a stand and back up our friends on the front lines, it's not hard to imagine how this will get out of hand.
Sign now to support our Seattle office's march for immigrant rights and the fight to stop the racism before it spreads further. If you've got a Facebook account, after you sign on to show support click the "Like" button and we'll proudly add your profile picture to the banner too.
- Japhet
Japhet Els
TrueMajority / USAction
1 - latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0428-arizona-boycott-20100428,0,3848260.story
2 - kirotv.com/news/23277469/detail.html
Just before our friends at Washington CAN arrived to plan an immigrant rights march, racist vandals slashed their tires, spray-painted "heil Hitler" symbols and hurled a steel ball through the window.2
We're tired of this violence. We're tired of members of Congress having to close down their offices due to death threats and smashed windows. We're tired of the hate speech and threats.
So we're sending a giant banner made up of the names of all TrueMajority members who stand together against this racist violence. WashCAN staff and volunteers will carry the banner this Saturday as a sign of solidarity against hate.
Will you stand with us against this violence? Click here to add your name to the right side of history.
http://act.truemajorityaction.org/p/7002/azracism?campaign_KEY=1680
We'd like to believe this is an isolated incident. But it's not. Hate speech and violence have been on the rise in America the last few months. Whether it's spitting on John Lewis, a congressman and civil rights icon, or attacking the offices of our friends and allies in Seattle -- the source is the same.
Now Arizona's "show your papers" law is emboldening white supremacists and racists across the country. It has to stop. What will be next? Armed militiamen patrolling not just the Mexican border but the streets of our neighborhoods too?
If we don't take a stand and back up our friends on the front lines, it's not hard to imagine how this will get out of hand.
Sign now to support our Seattle office's march for immigrant rights and the fight to stop the racism before it spreads further. If you've got a Facebook account, after you sign on to show support click the "Like" button and we'll proudly add your profile picture to the banner too.
- Japhet
Japhet Els
TrueMajority / USAction
1 - latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0428-arizona-boycott-20100428,0,3848260.story
2 - kirotv.com/news/23277469/detail.html
How to Cuddle With an Elephant Seal
How to Cuddle With an Elephant Seal
http://www.wimp.com/elephantseal
http://www.wimp.com/elephantseal
It Won't Be Long Until They Deport Indigenous People
It Won't Be Long Until They Deport Indigenous People
Many years ago (1950s) my family moved to Georgia. My mother is/ was a very tan/ brown skinned person (She has gotten a little lighter in her 80s). In an effort to fit in she would bleach and dye her hair a lighter color. She had this fear in the back of her mind, as the whole family did, that the law that was still on the books in Georgia until then Governor, Jimmy Carter repealed in in the 1970s, that stated that it was illegal to be a Native American person and live in the state of Georgia.
I grew up knowing that I was different only in that my skin tanned just a little darker and did not burn as easily. I knew that most of the Caucasian kids were not more intelligent not only because I made higher scores on SAT tests than most of them, but because there awareness of every day things to my family was limited.
My family taught me that a person's heart or their inner person was more than what their flesh looked like, their age or national origin.
But I noticed in my youth that this society promoted the look of the flesh more than the spirit or mind. They have beauty contests that glorify a certain look that is very slanted to the way what certain Caucasians (not all Caucasians) see as beauty. They glorify the youth instead of venerating the elders and wisdom grown with age. They have a large emphasis on owning things and having wealth and power.
So now we come to the present law SB 1070 in Arizona that is supposed to be pointed toward the Illegal Mexican Immigrants. But the funny thing is that many of these Mexican immigrants are Mayan, Aztec, or other Indigenous People who are fleeing north to escape persecution and death. And they can not get papers from an indifferent Mexican government.
And the not so funny thing about it is that many Native Americans look like our Indigenous brothers and sisters from south of the USA's Mexican border. As Indigenous People, in the past we traded and intermarried with these folks and had no borders. These borders were artificially erected by Illegal European Immigrants who came uninvited to change and a destroy a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. They came with greater technology for making wars and with diseases that decimated Indigenous populations much more than their wars against us did. But they were not grown in the heart where it counts.
So they borrowed Indigenous forms of government, foods, etc and called it theirs.
And they outlawed Indigenous Religions, ways of dressing, our language and they outlawed Indigenous People from their traditional home lands sent them to places to isolate them from the rest of the population and they invented a caricature of a violent Native Peoples that did not even come close to the real Indigenous People so they could justify their actions.
Now we have another caricature of Hispanic People invented for political reasons which will effect Native Americans also because some of Native Americans look like Hispanics.
So now the powers that be can racial profile certain Native People who live in Arizona.
Arizona has a rich Native American history with several Tribes (that I call Nations) living there
Dine' (Navajo), Hopi, etc. So now the fear comes back. Will we be taken from our land yet again? My granddaughters are brown because their daddy was Hurani (Native from South America) and their mom is Cherokee. Will they be sent away? And I am not forgetting our brothers and sisters north of their artificial borders in Canada and Alaska. Are they going to card recent Caucasian Immigrants?
No. Just those who might effect their control.
What is behind this politically motivated racial profiling? FEAR. People of color will soon out number the Caucasian voters in the near future. Uh Oh. They gotta stop this.
Forget the cheap labor. When they out number Us (the Caucasians who think this way) we will never get our big money, world conquering, Manifest Destiny world view accomplished.
Many People are complacent these days. But the racial profiling is a painful reminder.
Yes, we have an African American President. But the Manifest destiny crew is still on the job yelling, "Take America Back!" And by the Creator, they mean it. So they get rid of the biggest threat in their eyes. Hispanics. And in the mix, many Indigenous People will feel the effects also.
Dave Kitchen
Townsend, Georgia
--
Trying to start a fight on the internet is like challenging Stephen Hawking to a foot race.
Many years ago (1950s) my family moved to Georgia. My mother is/ was a very tan/ brown skinned person (She has gotten a little lighter in her 80s). In an effort to fit in she would bleach and dye her hair a lighter color. She had this fear in the back of her mind, as the whole family did, that the law that was still on the books in Georgia until then Governor, Jimmy Carter repealed in in the 1970s, that stated that it was illegal to be a Native American person and live in the state of Georgia.
I grew up knowing that I was different only in that my skin tanned just a little darker and did not burn as easily. I knew that most of the Caucasian kids were not more intelligent not only because I made higher scores on SAT tests than most of them, but because there awareness of every day things to my family was limited.
My family taught me that a person's heart or their inner person was more than what their flesh looked like, their age or national origin.
But I noticed in my youth that this society promoted the look of the flesh more than the spirit or mind. They have beauty contests that glorify a certain look that is very slanted to the way what certain Caucasians (not all Caucasians) see as beauty. They glorify the youth instead of venerating the elders and wisdom grown with age. They have a large emphasis on owning things and having wealth and power.
So now we come to the present law SB 1070 in Arizona that is supposed to be pointed toward the Illegal Mexican Immigrants. But the funny thing is that many of these Mexican immigrants are Mayan, Aztec, or other Indigenous People who are fleeing north to escape persecution and death. And they can not get papers from an indifferent Mexican government.
And the not so funny thing about it is that many Native Americans look like our Indigenous brothers and sisters from south of the USA's Mexican border. As Indigenous People, in the past we traded and intermarried with these folks and had no borders. These borders were artificially erected by Illegal European Immigrants who came uninvited to change and a destroy a way of life that had existed for thousands of years. They came with greater technology for making wars and with diseases that decimated Indigenous populations much more than their wars against us did. But they were not grown in the heart where it counts.
So they borrowed Indigenous forms of government, foods, etc and called it theirs.
And they outlawed Indigenous Religions, ways of dressing, our language and they outlawed Indigenous People from their traditional home lands sent them to places to isolate them from the rest of the population and they invented a caricature of a violent Native Peoples that did not even come close to the real Indigenous People so they could justify their actions.
Now we have another caricature of Hispanic People invented for political reasons which will effect Native Americans also because some of Native Americans look like Hispanics.
So now the powers that be can racial profile certain Native People who live in Arizona.
Arizona has a rich Native American history with several Tribes (that I call Nations) living there
Dine' (Navajo), Hopi, etc. So now the fear comes back. Will we be taken from our land yet again? My granddaughters are brown because their daddy was Hurani (Native from South America) and their mom is Cherokee. Will they be sent away? And I am not forgetting our brothers and sisters north of their artificial borders in Canada and Alaska. Are they going to card recent Caucasian Immigrants?
No. Just those who might effect their control.
What is behind this politically motivated racial profiling? FEAR. People of color will soon out number the Caucasian voters in the near future. Uh Oh. They gotta stop this.
Forget the cheap labor. When they out number Us (the Caucasians who think this way) we will never get our big money, world conquering, Manifest Destiny world view accomplished.
Many People are complacent these days. But the racial profiling is a painful reminder.
Yes, we have an African American President. But the Manifest destiny crew is still on the job yelling, "Take America Back!" And by the Creator, they mean it. So they get rid of the biggest threat in their eyes. Hispanics. And in the mix, many Indigenous People will feel the effects also.
Dave Kitchen
Townsend, Georgia
--
Trying to start a fight on the internet is like challenging Stephen Hawking to a foot race.
Counter Demonstrations Against Tea Party, Racism & Racial Profiling May 1st
Counter Demonstrations Against Tea Party, Racism & Racial Profiling May 1st
Progressives, workers and social justice activists have Latino immigrants to thank for revitalizing May 1st in the United States and 2010 is the year join the marches in high numbers. May Day is International Workers Day, celebrated world-wide, but, born in the United States in 1886 when there were over 11,000 strikes for the 8-hour day. To draw workers away from the political dissent and international solidarity of May Day, business interests invented the apolitical Labor Day holiday. But, in recent years, hundreds of thousands of immigrants—most from Mexico—have brought May Day back to fiery life. This year, we must not only stand with immigrants but, also, stand up for ourselves.
This is a call for many movements to unite on May Day: those working for immigrant rights and human rights;those active around police accountability; African-American and Native American communities who have been hardest hit by the Great Recession with high unemployment and those trying to organize a union at their job; the peace movement which must call for a re-ordering of priorities from war to needs at home.
The term “May day! May day!” is an international signal used by navy and air pilots to signal an emergency. The just-passed Arizona law SB1070 aims “to identify, prosecute and deport” undocumented immigrants. Both supporters and opponents of the law call it the strictest and broadest immigration law in decades. It grants police broad powers and puts all Latino people at risk, regardless of their immigration status, by requiring one prove one’s immigration status or citizenship with papers. Arizona’s law comes after an escalation in workplace raids over the last year where undocumented workers, primarily from Mexico and Guatemala are rounded up from meat-packing factories, canneries and the harshest workplaces in the United States.
Do you know that many of the winter vegetables you eat are harvested by Mexican workers in Arizona?
The SB1070 law is the dictionary definition of racial profiling with the goal of ethnic cleansing Latino people out of Arizona—a state like the rest of the U.S. Southwest and Texas that was originally northern Mexico until it was stolen in the 1840s Spanish-American War. To put it more bluntly, Mexican people were already living on the land now called Arizona when white settlers arrived, so, white people who call for deporting undocumented Mexicans are engaging in ethnic cleansing.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer claims that racial profiling would not be tolerated and that police will get special training in how to implement the new law. The New York Times quoted the governor saying,“We have to trust our law enforcement.”
How’s that “trust the police” been working out so far for Latinos (regardless of status), African-Americans, American Indians, the poor of all colors, homeless people and the mentally ill? All are vulnerable to daily harassment, arrests without charges, being Tasered, beaten, choked, shot and murdered. No amount of “special training” has had an impact on police abuses of unarmed civilians. Police remain above the law, facing no charges, no trials, no convictions and not even fired from their jobs, regardless of how violent their actions towards the “the Others” who are targeted.
White progressives working on human rights—whether opposing U.S. torture policies, Israel’s oppression of Palestinians or Colombia’s paramilitary death squads, must recognize the parallels here at home. May 1st is an opportunity to make the connections between all these other human rights abuses and the rising attacks on immigrants and abusive police impunity here at home.
Peace activists must show up to make the connections between U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with draconian repressive measures here at home (domestic spying on Muslims, environmental activists, anti-war dissidents) which Arizona’s 1070 law is the latest example of. The anti-war movement can get a much-needed re-charge on May 1st raising the cry, “Money for JOBS! NOT for War!”
But, it’s equally crucial that May Day be widely resurrected by working people and labor activists.
The African-American community had high hopes that the first Black president would make their long unmet needs a priority—especially with unemployment reaching as high as 50% for youth in American cities. As white unemployment stabilizes, Black unemployment remains twice as high, on average over 16%. Stimulus money has not been targeted to Black communities or Black-owned businesses. In spite of laws requiring government contractors to hire a percentage of African-American workers, such goals are rarely met. Even as inner city communities lack enough safe and affordable housing, community clinics, libraries, youth centers and as schools in these neighborhoods crumble, little stimulus money has come to address these needs—which also would create much-needed jobs. Black people need to be at May Day to raise their voices for these critical priorities and to resist the anti-immigrant sentiments that undermine the 21st century civil rights movement that’s so crucial to build. Like African-Americans, Latinos are the primary “products” filling the cells of the bulging prison-industrial complex. American Indians/Indigenous people face 60% to 80% unemployment and the same lack of basic infrastructure on Reservations and in cities that Black people are dealing with. There are many points of solidarity to be had.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is being stirred up as a means to mis-direct ALL American workers’ legitimate anger about rising unemployment, falling wages, and inceeased job insecurity, CREATEED by Corporate-friendly policies and the Wall Street banksters’ bailout. Anti-immigrant organizations aim to to funnel anger towards Mexican immigrants rather than Corporate CEOs and their bi-partisan protectors in Congress.
After the 2008 election, President Obama and the Democratic Party majority in Congress shelved EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act), which would level the playing field between bosses and workers who want to form a union. For 30 years, American workers’ right to organize on the job has, in practice, been gutted. With impunity, bosses illegally fire workers. Bosses propagandize and pressure workers not to vote for a union, threatening to move the company while illegally barring union organizers from the workplace.. The result is a huge drop in unionized workers in the U.S,: from a 1950s high in the private sector of almost 40% to 7% today. Workers’ health and safety laws exist primarily on paper with little meaningful enforcement—as the recent miners’ disaster tragically exposes. Massey Coal had HUNDREDS of safety violations yet was not shut down. There’s no whistle-blower protections for workers who report dangerous, unhealthy working conditions.
So-called “independent contractors”–that is “temp workers”— are the fastest rising sector on the job (now at least 30% of workers). Being a “independent contractor” means no job security, no benefits, no unemployment insurance, no rights.
Labor has plenty of reasons to turn out in large numbers this. May 1st
Simon Johnson, author of the new book “ 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown” observes that the 2008 financial meltdown resulted in the loss of EIGHT MILLION JOBS while 2009 was the best year ever for salaries and bonuses for the same Wall Street financiers and bankers who CAUSED this Great Recession and job loss. Progressive dissent has been puny.
It’s overdue for progressives to have a loud reply to the Wall Street thieves and those in Congress and th4e White House who (so far) continue to cater to the SIX “too big to fail” banks which continue the SAME practices that led to the 2008 meltdown—and could create another, even worse, economic crisis in a few years. These banksters continue to foreclose homes, hike up credit card rates to loan shark levels and do predatory lending and checking accounts. Health insurance CEOs continue to rake in huge salaries and to raise premiums and co-pays, so that more and more businesses drop health insurance benefits or cut workers and families continue to be priced out of health care access. (It’s not at all clear that the Democrats’ health insurance bill will solve these problems—and the bill doesn’t even go into full effect until 2017, meaning thee problems remain.
Meanwhile the right-wing has captured a lot of attention with their Tea Party movement where a confused outcry rails against the Obama Administrator’s “nationalizing” (government ownership) of the banks or “government-run health care”—- that have not happened! They demand a restoration of the so-called “free market” and “ending regulations that kill jobs!”— the very things that CREATED the economic crisis and have been losing jobs since the 1970s. Tea Party people express plenty of anti-immigrant sentiment, as well, as they say “I want MY country back!” Perhaps, with some education on the facts and a progressive alternative, some Tea Party people would see that it’s (primarily white) Corporate CEOS and bankers who have robbed them—not undocumented immigrants, African-Americans or the poor.
It’s high time for progressives to escalate our own mass movement, to make it loud enough it cannot be ignored. The immigrant rights movement’s recent May Day marches have gotten far more media attention than any peace rallies since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The labor movement needs a jump-start. It’s crucial to have a broad, united progressive counter to the reactionary, racist Tea Parties.
Finally, Arizona’s 1070 law must be loudly denounced. We’ve already seen what happens when harsher measures are imposed on a targeted group of targeted people in the post-September 11th attacks on Muslim communities. We’ve seen how that led to Abu Graibe and Guantanamo, the undermining of the rule of law and the shredding of the Constitution. Undocumented immigrants have been suffering similar human rights abuses in invisible detention centers aground the country, many of them run by for-profit companies like Corrections Corporations of America. History—past and more recent—shows what happens when we do not resist the State scapegoating a minority group in economic hard times or a “national security crisis” (whether real or manufactured). No more excuses for inaction.
The words of Martin Luther King Jr.*** and the United Farm Workers were co-opted for the 2008 presidential campaign and all progressives need to take them back. We the People need to seize those words for ourselves and restore their original meaning. May 1st is the time “to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.” Together, Si Se Puede! Yes We Can!
Find out where the MAY 1st Immigrants Rights & Workers Rights March is in your area.
***Quote you never hear :
Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Address at March on Washington,August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Lydia Howell
Lydia Howell is an independent journalist in Minneapolis, winner of the 2007 Premack Aard for Public Interest Journalism, and producer/host of “Catalyst:politics & culture” on KFAI Radio.
--
Trying to start a fight on the internet is like challenging Stephen Hawking to a foot race
Progressives, workers and social justice activists have Latino immigrants to thank for revitalizing May 1st in the United States and 2010 is the year join the marches in high numbers. May Day is International Workers Day, celebrated world-wide, but, born in the United States in 1886 when there were over 11,000 strikes for the 8-hour day. To draw workers away from the political dissent and international solidarity of May Day, business interests invented the apolitical Labor Day holiday. But, in recent years, hundreds of thousands of immigrants—most from Mexico—have brought May Day back to fiery life. This year, we must not only stand with immigrants but, also, stand up for ourselves.
This is a call for many movements to unite on May Day: those working for immigrant rights and human rights;those active around police accountability; African-American and Native American communities who have been hardest hit by the Great Recession with high unemployment and those trying to organize a union at their job; the peace movement which must call for a re-ordering of priorities from war to needs at home.
The term “May day! May day!” is an international signal used by navy and air pilots to signal an emergency. The just-passed Arizona law SB1070 aims “to identify, prosecute and deport” undocumented immigrants. Both supporters and opponents of the law call it the strictest and broadest immigration law in decades. It grants police broad powers and puts all Latino people at risk, regardless of their immigration status, by requiring one prove one’s immigration status or citizenship with papers. Arizona’s law comes after an escalation in workplace raids over the last year where undocumented workers, primarily from Mexico and Guatemala are rounded up from meat-packing factories, canneries and the harshest workplaces in the United States.
Do you know that many of the winter vegetables you eat are harvested by Mexican workers in Arizona?
The SB1070 law is the dictionary definition of racial profiling with the goal of ethnic cleansing Latino people out of Arizona—a state like the rest of the U.S. Southwest and Texas that was originally northern Mexico until it was stolen in the 1840s Spanish-American War. To put it more bluntly, Mexican people were already living on the land now called Arizona when white settlers arrived, so, white people who call for deporting undocumented Mexicans are engaging in ethnic cleansing.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer claims that racial profiling would not be tolerated and that police will get special training in how to implement the new law. The New York Times quoted the governor saying,“We have to trust our law enforcement.”
How’s that “trust the police” been working out so far for Latinos (regardless of status), African-Americans, American Indians, the poor of all colors, homeless people and the mentally ill? All are vulnerable to daily harassment, arrests without charges, being Tasered, beaten, choked, shot and murdered. No amount of “special training” has had an impact on police abuses of unarmed civilians. Police remain above the law, facing no charges, no trials, no convictions and not even fired from their jobs, regardless of how violent their actions towards the “the Others” who are targeted.
White progressives working on human rights—whether opposing U.S. torture policies, Israel’s oppression of Palestinians or Colombia’s paramilitary death squads, must recognize the parallels here at home. May 1st is an opportunity to make the connections between all these other human rights abuses and the rising attacks on immigrants and abusive police impunity here at home.
Peace activists must show up to make the connections between U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan with draconian repressive measures here at home (domestic spying on Muslims, environmental activists, anti-war dissidents) which Arizona’s 1070 law is the latest example of. The anti-war movement can get a much-needed re-charge on May 1st raising the cry, “Money for JOBS! NOT for War!”
But, it’s equally crucial that May Day be widely resurrected by working people and labor activists.
The African-American community had high hopes that the first Black president would make their long unmet needs a priority—especially with unemployment reaching as high as 50% for youth in American cities. As white unemployment stabilizes, Black unemployment remains twice as high, on average over 16%. Stimulus money has not been targeted to Black communities or Black-owned businesses. In spite of laws requiring government contractors to hire a percentage of African-American workers, such goals are rarely met. Even as inner city communities lack enough safe and affordable housing, community clinics, libraries, youth centers and as schools in these neighborhoods crumble, little stimulus money has come to address these needs—which also would create much-needed jobs. Black people need to be at May Day to raise their voices for these critical priorities and to resist the anti-immigrant sentiments that undermine the 21st century civil rights movement that’s so crucial to build. Like African-Americans, Latinos are the primary “products” filling the cells of the bulging prison-industrial complex. American Indians/Indigenous people face 60% to 80% unemployment and the same lack of basic infrastructure on Reservations and in cities that Black people are dealing with. There are many points of solidarity to be had.
Anti-immigrant sentiment is being stirred up as a means to mis-direct ALL American workers’ legitimate anger about rising unemployment, falling wages, and inceeased job insecurity, CREATEED by Corporate-friendly policies and the Wall Street banksters’ bailout. Anti-immigrant organizations aim to to funnel anger towards Mexican immigrants rather than Corporate CEOs and their bi-partisan protectors in Congress.
After the 2008 election, President Obama and the Democratic Party majority in Congress shelved EFCA (the Employee Free Choice Act), which would level the playing field between bosses and workers who want to form a union. For 30 years, American workers’ right to organize on the job has, in practice, been gutted. With impunity, bosses illegally fire workers. Bosses propagandize and pressure workers not to vote for a union, threatening to move the company while illegally barring union organizers from the workplace.. The result is a huge drop in unionized workers in the U.S,: from a 1950s high in the private sector of almost 40% to 7% today. Workers’ health and safety laws exist primarily on paper with little meaningful enforcement—as the recent miners’ disaster tragically exposes. Massey Coal had HUNDREDS of safety violations yet was not shut down. There’s no whistle-blower protections for workers who report dangerous, unhealthy working conditions.
So-called “independent contractors”–that is “temp workers”— are the fastest rising sector on the job (now at least 30% of workers). Being a “independent contractor” means no job security, no benefits, no unemployment insurance, no rights.
Labor has plenty of reasons to turn out in large numbers this. May 1st
Simon Johnson, author of the new book “ 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown” observes that the 2008 financial meltdown resulted in the loss of EIGHT MILLION JOBS while 2009 was the best year ever for salaries and bonuses for the same Wall Street financiers and bankers who CAUSED this Great Recession and job loss. Progressive dissent has been puny.
It’s overdue for progressives to have a loud reply to the Wall Street thieves and those in Congress and th4e White House who (so far) continue to cater to the SIX “too big to fail” banks which continue the SAME practices that led to the 2008 meltdown—and could create another, even worse, economic crisis in a few years. These banksters continue to foreclose homes, hike up credit card rates to loan shark levels and do predatory lending and checking accounts. Health insurance CEOs continue to rake in huge salaries and to raise premiums and co-pays, so that more and more businesses drop health insurance benefits or cut workers and families continue to be priced out of health care access. (It’s not at all clear that the Democrats’ health insurance bill will solve these problems—and the bill doesn’t even go into full effect until 2017, meaning thee problems remain.
Meanwhile the right-wing has captured a lot of attention with their Tea Party movement where a confused outcry rails against the Obama Administrator’s “nationalizing” (government ownership) of the banks or “government-run health care”—- that have not happened! They demand a restoration of the so-called “free market” and “ending regulations that kill jobs!”— the very things that CREATED the economic crisis and have been losing jobs since the 1970s. Tea Party people express plenty of anti-immigrant sentiment, as well, as they say “I want MY country back!” Perhaps, with some education on the facts and a progressive alternative, some Tea Party people would see that it’s (primarily white) Corporate CEOS and bankers who have robbed them—not undocumented immigrants, African-Americans or the poor.
It’s high time for progressives to escalate our own mass movement, to make it loud enough it cannot be ignored. The immigrant rights movement’s recent May Day marches have gotten far more media attention than any peace rallies since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The labor movement needs a jump-start. It’s crucial to have a broad, united progressive counter to the reactionary, racist Tea Parties.
Finally, Arizona’s 1070 law must be loudly denounced. We’ve already seen what happens when harsher measures are imposed on a targeted group of targeted people in the post-September 11th attacks on Muslim communities. We’ve seen how that led to Abu Graibe and Guantanamo, the undermining of the rule of law and the shredding of the Constitution. Undocumented immigrants have been suffering similar human rights abuses in invisible detention centers aground the country, many of them run by for-profit companies like Corrections Corporations of America. History—past and more recent—shows what happens when we do not resist the State scapegoating a minority group in economic hard times or a “national security crisis” (whether real or manufactured). No more excuses for inaction.
The words of Martin Luther King Jr.*** and the United Farm Workers were co-opted for the 2008 presidential campaign and all progressives need to take them back. We the People need to seize those words for ourselves and restore their original meaning. May 1st is the time “to remind America of the fierce urgency of now.” Together, Si Se Puede! Yes We Can!
Find out where the MAY 1st Immigrants Rights & Workers Rights March is in your area.
***Quote you never hear :
Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Address at March on Washington,August 28, 1963. Washington, D.C.
In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.
Lydia Howell
Lydia Howell is an independent journalist in Minneapolis, winner of the 2007 Premack Aard for Public Interest Journalism, and producer/host of “Catalyst:politics & culture” on KFAI Radio.
--
Trying to start a fight on the internet is like challenging Stephen Hawking to a foot race
Lawsuit Wins 18,000 Illegal Arrests of Demonstrators For Peltier & Others
Lawsuit Wins 18,000 Illegal Arrests of Demonstrators For Peltier & Others
Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.?
$14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests
$18,000 to each arrestee – IF you file before May 17, 2010!
Spread the Word!
Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. It was held on in front of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington , D.C. The march was called to take place on April 15, the day before militant actions to oppose the criminal policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were meeting in that city; thousands of youth took part in those protests.
The IAC rally demanded freedom for all political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. It sought to draw the attention of the international media -- which was gathering to hear the bankers and financiers at the IMF/World Bank meeting -- to the millions of prisoners held captive in U.S. dungeons.
The IAC aimed to deepen class consciousness and to link a militant current of new activists to solidarity with the most oppressed African-American, Latino/a and Native American prisoners. Although the demonstration was a legally permitted protest, the public focus on the institutionalized racism of the prison system itself presented a major and intolerable challenge to the state’s repressive apparatus.
After the rally ended at the Department of (In)justice, the march proceeded to the IMF building. Suddenly, and without warning or an order to disperse, the Washington , D.C. , police closed the streets and arrested 700 protesters, along with some members of the media and passersby. Many arrestees were held for 18 to 24 hours in police buses and holding cells, painfully handcuffed wrist-to-ankle in cramped positions.
There was widespread media coverage of the police sweep and massive arrests of demonstrators as they marched to the IMF building.
The IAC was determined to expose the pre-emptive and disruptive attacks on a legal demonstration and to publicize the massive illegal arrests. The organization was not going to allow the flagrant violation of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly to go unchallenged.
IAC activists painstakingly gathered the names and detailed depositions of many of the arrestees. They provided this information, along with extensive video footage, and hundreds of photographs, to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund attorneys, who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of those arrested.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund diligently persevered and successfully sued the District of Columbia and won the largest class-action settlement of protester claims in U.S. history, totaling nearly $14 million. It insures that each class member can file a claim to receive $18,000 in financial compensation, that the arrests will be expunged, and that all arrestees who join in the settlement will receive a court order declaring their arrest null and void.
Several lead plaintiffs in this case have already pledged to donate their funds from the settlement to the IAC to continue its 19-year legacy of organizing against war, racism and corporate bailouts, and for jobs and human needs.
How to file a claim
Those who can file a claim are "all persons who were detained and arrested on April 15, 2000 near the area of 20th Street, NW and I and K Streets, Washington D.C. , in connection with the protest against the Prison Industrial Complex during the IMF/World Bank demonstrations."
The funds will be distributed through a Class Administrator; the toll-free number is 1-877-567-4780. Claim forms can be downloaded atwww.BeckerSettlement.com. Mail them to: Becker v. District of Columbia Administrator, c/o Gilardi & Co. LLC, P.O. Box 8060 , San Rafael , CA 94912-8060 . The deadline for filing all claims for financial compensation is May 17.
Those who filed forms to be included in the lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund are not automatically included in this settlement. Each individual arrested must file a new Proof of Claim Form and mail it to the Class Administrator at the above address before May 17. This is the only way to receive the $18,000 settlement. Otherwise, unclaimed funds will revert to the government.
The IAC wants to help insure that all individuals who were arrested on April 15, 2000, in Washington , D.C. , receive their fair share of the settlement. The IAC has set up a special phone number -- 347-828-3430 -- and email address -- April2000arrest@iacenter.org -- to directly answer your questions and to help you file your claim form. The IAC encourages calls and emails concerning this urgent matter.
Also, contact information, comments and questions for the IAC about the lawsuit or how to file a claim can also be posted at www.iacenter.org/iacsuit
The IAC wants to help confirm that everyone who is entitled to a financial settlement receives the allocated funds over the next two years. So, please keep the IAC informed about the status of your claim.
Even for those who have filed their claim forms and are confident that they are part of the settlement, let the IAC know. IAC organizers will return all calls and emails inquiring about the lawsuit settlement. Please forward this email to your friends, other activists or anyone who could be a claimant.
Were you arrested at IAC demonstration on April 15, 2000 in Washington, D.C.?
$14 Million Suit Won against Illegal Arrests
$18,000 to each arrestee – IF you file before May 17, 2010!
Spread the Word!
Ten years ago this month, the International Action Center initiated a major demonstration focused on the Prison Industrial Complex. It was held on in front of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington , D.C. The march was called to take place on April 15, the day before militant actions to oppose the criminal policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which were meeting in that city; thousands of youth took part in those protests.
The IAC rally demanded freedom for all political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier. It sought to draw the attention of the international media -- which was gathering to hear the bankers and financiers at the IMF/World Bank meeting -- to the millions of prisoners held captive in U.S. dungeons.
The IAC aimed to deepen class consciousness and to link a militant current of new activists to solidarity with the most oppressed African-American, Latino/a and Native American prisoners. Although the demonstration was a legally permitted protest, the public focus on the institutionalized racism of the prison system itself presented a major and intolerable challenge to the state’s repressive apparatus.
After the rally ended at the Department of (In)justice, the march proceeded to the IMF building. Suddenly, and without warning or an order to disperse, the Washington , D.C. , police closed the streets and arrested 700 protesters, along with some members of the media and passersby. Many arrestees were held for 18 to 24 hours in police buses and holding cells, painfully handcuffed wrist-to-ankle in cramped positions.
There was widespread media coverage of the police sweep and massive arrests of demonstrators as they marched to the IMF building.
The IAC was determined to expose the pre-emptive and disruptive attacks on a legal demonstration and to publicize the massive illegal arrests. The organization was not going to allow the flagrant violation of the rights of freedom of speech and assembly to go unchallenged.
IAC activists painstakingly gathered the names and detailed depositions of many of the arrestees. They provided this information, along with extensive video footage, and hundreds of photographs, to Mara Verheyden-Hilliard and Carl Messineo, Partnership for Civil Justice Fund attorneys, who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of those arrested.
The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund diligently persevered and successfully sued the District of Columbia and won the largest class-action settlement of protester claims in U.S. history, totaling nearly $14 million. It insures that each class member can file a claim to receive $18,000 in financial compensation, that the arrests will be expunged, and that all arrestees who join in the settlement will receive a court order declaring their arrest null and void.
Several lead plaintiffs in this case have already pledged to donate their funds from the settlement to the IAC to continue its 19-year legacy of organizing against war, racism and corporate bailouts, and for jobs and human needs.
How to file a claim
Those who can file a claim are "all persons who were detained and arrested on April 15, 2000 near the area of 20th Street, NW and I and K Streets, Washington D.C. , in connection with the protest against the Prison Industrial Complex during the IMF/World Bank demonstrations."
The funds will be distributed through a Class Administrator; the toll-free number is 1-877-567-4780. Claim forms can be downloaded atwww.BeckerSettlement.com. Mail them to: Becker v. District of Columbia Administrator, c/o Gilardi & Co. LLC, P.O. Box 8060 , San Rafael , CA 94912-8060 . The deadline for filing all claims for financial compensation is May 17.
Those who filed forms to be included in the lawsuit filed by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund are not automatically included in this settlement. Each individual arrested must file a new Proof of Claim Form and mail it to the Class Administrator at the above address before May 17. This is the only way to receive the $18,000 settlement. Otherwise, unclaimed funds will revert to the government.
The IAC wants to help insure that all individuals who were arrested on April 15, 2000, in Washington , D.C. , receive their fair share of the settlement. The IAC has set up a special phone number -- 347-828-3430 -- and email address -- April2000arrest@iacenter.org -- to directly answer your questions and to help you file your claim form. The IAC encourages calls and emails concerning this urgent matter.
Also, contact information, comments and questions for the IAC about the lawsuit or how to file a claim can also be posted at www.iacenter.org/iacsuit
The IAC wants to help confirm that everyone who is entitled to a financial settlement receives the allocated funds over the next two years. So, please keep the IAC informed about the status of your claim.
Even for those who have filed their claim forms and are confident that they are part of the settlement, let the IAC know. IAC organizers will return all calls and emails inquiring about the lawsuit settlement. Please forward this email to your friends, other activists or anyone who could be a claimant.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
An Indigenous organization statement of outrage & disagreement with the SB 10
An Indigenous organization statement of outrage & disagreement with the SB 10
First Nations United, an Indigenous organization statement of outrage & disagreement with the SB 10
AIM SB is in ageement & supports this Statement from First Nations United.
let the Governor of Arizona know how you feel about the racist bill SB 1070 The Dis-honorable Jan Brewer Governor of Arizona 1700 West Washington Phoenix, Arizona 85007 Telephone (602) 542-4331 Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883 Fax (602) 542-1381
______________________________..___________________________
All Saints Church
3044 Longfellow Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
http://www.facebook.com/l/..140d6;www.firstnationsunited...com
PRESS RELEASE
April 26, 2010
"While the power of the Europeans has continued, I see the other part of the Ghost Dance prophecy coming true today. So-called 'Hispanics,' with faces that sure look like Indians to me, are returning to repopulate North America. We cannot always speak to each other because we have learned the languages of different colonial powers. But these Indians have as much right to come and go on our land as the geese when they migrate north and south. No one would dare to ask them for their passports and visas as they cross man made borders.
Instead of seeing 'Hispanics' as outsiders who do not belong here, we need to start seeing them as ancestors of the original inhabitants of these lands. They are the living fulfillment of the Ghost Dance prophecy."
-Chief Billy Redwing Tayac, Piscataway Nation
First Nations United, an Indigenous organization largely made up of members of the Red Lake/Ojibwe and Dakota nations, would like to formally express its outrage and disagreement with the SB 1070 ("Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods") Bill passed last week by the state of Arizona. This bill is extremely detrimental to the indigenous communities (including indigenous peoples of Latin American origin), which reside in the state of Arizona as well as those who live throughout the country. The language of the bill states that if there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is an illegal immigrant, a "reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable" to check for documents. Such language purposefully promotes the racial profiling of brown-skinned people, and in particular, of people of American indigenous background. As an indigenous organization, which stands for the civil and human rights of indigenous peoples throughout the continent, we are concerned that this bill will promote the unfair and discriminatory arrests, prosecution, and deportation of people of American indigenous descent-not only of those who belong to federally recognized tribes, but also of the hundreds of thousands of indigenous people who have migrated from South/Central America and Mexico to what is now called "the United States." Indigenous peoples across the continent do not recognize the borders established by the settler colonialist state on our lands, and, we do not agree with the malicious and dehumanizing way in which the settler colonialist government wants to enforce them.
As an Indigenous organization, we recognize that indigenous peoples from Latin America have every right to migrate up and down the continent as they please and as they have done through trade and communication routes since time immemorial. The native peoples of the continent should be the ones establishing immigration laws and enforcing them. However, because we were disempowered through genocide and colonization, and because we have consistently treated "foreigners" in a more humane and hospitable way, we respect peoples' rights to migrate. If we did enforce such power, only tribal identifications from throughout the continent (including documentation identifying peoples from Latin American indigenous ancestry) would be recognized as legitimate, and we could very well racially profile people of Caucasian descent as the true and eternal foreigners.
As the first peoples of this continent, we pose this question to Governor Brewer, Senator Russell Pearce, and law enforcement in the state of Arizona, "Who are you to check for documents?" We remind them that the power they have taken to legislate was established by an immigrant and illegal settler colonialist government, which has consistently relied on the genocide and mistreatment of the original peoples of this continent.
First Nations United greatly objects to SB 1070 and denounces Governor Brewer, Senator Pearce, and the State of Arizona as anti-Indigenous, cruel, and racist. We call for an Indigenous boycott of the State of Arizona until this bill is repealed or found unconstitutional as it will gravely violate the civil and human rights of indigenous people in the state and throughout the country.
FIRST NATIONS UNITED
Gabriela Spears-Rico
Doctoral Candidate
Dep't of Comparative Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley
506 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 643-0796 [Tel]
(510) 642-6456 [Fax]
First Nations United, an Indigenous organization statement of outrage & disagreement with the SB 10
AIM SB is in ageement & supports this Statement from First Nations United.
let the Governor of Arizona know how you feel about the racist bill SB 1070 The Dis-honorable Jan Brewer Governor of Arizona 1700 West Washington Phoenix, Arizona 85007 Telephone (602) 542-4331 Toll Free 1-(800) 253-0883 Fax (602) 542-1381
______________________________..___________________________
All Saints Church
3044 Longfellow Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55407
http://www.facebook.com/l/..140d6;www.firstnationsunited...com
PRESS RELEASE
April 26, 2010
"While the power of the Europeans has continued, I see the other part of the Ghost Dance prophecy coming true today. So-called 'Hispanics,' with faces that sure look like Indians to me, are returning to repopulate North America. We cannot always speak to each other because we have learned the languages of different colonial powers. But these Indians have as much right to come and go on our land as the geese when they migrate north and south. No one would dare to ask them for their passports and visas as they cross man made borders.
Instead of seeing 'Hispanics' as outsiders who do not belong here, we need to start seeing them as ancestors of the original inhabitants of these lands. They are the living fulfillment of the Ghost Dance prophecy."
-Chief Billy Redwing Tayac, Piscataway Nation
First Nations United, an Indigenous organization largely made up of members of the Red Lake/Ojibwe and Dakota nations, would like to formally express its outrage and disagreement with the SB 1070 ("Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods") Bill passed last week by the state of Arizona. This bill is extremely detrimental to the indigenous communities (including indigenous peoples of Latin American origin), which reside in the state of Arizona as well as those who live throughout the country. The language of the bill states that if there is "reasonable suspicion" that a person is an illegal immigrant, a "reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable" to check for documents. Such language purposefully promotes the racial profiling of brown-skinned people, and in particular, of people of American indigenous background. As an indigenous organization, which stands for the civil and human rights of indigenous peoples throughout the continent, we are concerned that this bill will promote the unfair and discriminatory arrests, prosecution, and deportation of people of American indigenous descent-not only of those who belong to federally recognized tribes, but also of the hundreds of thousands of indigenous people who have migrated from South/Central America and Mexico to what is now called "the United States." Indigenous peoples across the continent do not recognize the borders established by the settler colonialist state on our lands, and, we do not agree with the malicious and dehumanizing way in which the settler colonialist government wants to enforce them.
As an Indigenous organization, we recognize that indigenous peoples from Latin America have every right to migrate up and down the continent as they please and as they have done through trade and communication routes since time immemorial. The native peoples of the continent should be the ones establishing immigration laws and enforcing them. However, because we were disempowered through genocide and colonization, and because we have consistently treated "foreigners" in a more humane and hospitable way, we respect peoples' rights to migrate. If we did enforce such power, only tribal identifications from throughout the continent (including documentation identifying peoples from Latin American indigenous ancestry) would be recognized as legitimate, and we could very well racially profile people of Caucasian descent as the true and eternal foreigners.
As the first peoples of this continent, we pose this question to Governor Brewer, Senator Russell Pearce, and law enforcement in the state of Arizona, "Who are you to check for documents?" We remind them that the power they have taken to legislate was established by an immigrant and illegal settler colonialist government, which has consistently relied on the genocide and mistreatment of the original peoples of this continent.
First Nations United greatly objects to SB 1070 and denounces Governor Brewer, Senator Pearce, and the State of Arizona as anti-Indigenous, cruel, and racist. We call for an Indigenous boycott of the State of Arizona until this bill is repealed or found unconstitutional as it will gravely violate the civil and human rights of indigenous people in the state and throughout the country.
FIRST NATIONS UNITED
Gabriela Spears-Rico
Doctoral Candidate
Dep't of Comparative Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley
506 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
(510) 643-0796 [Tel]
(510) 642-6456 [Fax]
25 Years of Promoting “Positive Indian Parenting”
25 Years of Promoting “Positive Indian Parenting”
Posted By: Eddie Sherman
To: Members in National Indian Child Welfare Association
Dear NICWA Cause Members:
The most current issue of NICWA’s “Pathways Practice Digest”, about the AI/AN child welfare field, is online at http://www.nicwa.org/pathways/.
What is Pathways?
A practical forum for services to American Indian children & families, Pathways Practice Digest gives you:
- News about what is happening in the field
- Opportunities in technical assistance
- Networking information
- Ideas about programs that are working
- Knowledge about funding sources
- Ideas about ICWA implementation
- Information about difficult-to-place children
In the Spring 2010 Issue
- 25 Years of "Positive Indian Parenting"
- A Historic Survey Project on Childhood Violence Begins
- Alaska ICWA Case May Go to the U.S. Supreme Court
- Where Your NICWA Donation Funds Go
- Canadian and U.S. Child Welfare Have Mutual Challenges, Frustrations
For more information or if you have any questions, please contact:
Kristy Alberty
NICWA Executive Communications Manager
kristy@nicwa.org 503.222.4044, ext. 133
USDA PROMOTES PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG NATION'S YOUTH THROUGH EXPANDED PROGRAMS
USDA PROMOTES PHYSICAL ACTIVITY AMONG NATION'S YOUTH THROUGH EXPANDED PROGRAMS
Release No. 0214.10
Contact:
USDA Office of Communications (202) 720-4623
Secretary Vilsack Urges Kids to Get Outdoors and Get Active as part of First Lady Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move!' Campaign
WASHINGTON, April 27, 2010 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA's Forest Service will contribute $500,000 in 2010 to the "More Kids in the Woods" program for projects that promote active lifestyles and connect kids to nature.
"If we are going to put an end to childhood obesity, we must promote healthy, active lifestyles and encourage our kids to get off the couch and go outside," said Vilsack. "Our "More Kids in the Woods" challenge not only promotes physical activity, it fosters environmental awareness and stewardship among young people as we face critical environmental challenges, such as the effects of climate change. "More Kids in the Woods" helps kids make the connection between healthy forests, healthy communities and their own healthy lifestyles."
The contribution will be leveraged with $1.5 million in donations and in-kind services from partners. The "More Kids in the Woods" challenge is a cost-share program in the Forest Service's long-standing Kids in the Woods program that involves thousands of partners who contribute their time, energy and resources to help us connect kids and families with our natural world.
The Forest Service selected 21 projects for funding from more than 130 high-quality agency proposals created to promote environmental stewardship through innovative, hands-on activities. All "More Kids in the Woods" projects are designed to spark curiosity about nature and promote understanding of the role of the nation's forests and grasslands in providing clean, abundant water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and recreation. Project partners are committed to helping children develop a love for the land that will enable them to meet the conservation challenges of the 21st century through healthy lifestyles choices and natural resource careers.
Below is a list of the 21 projects:
Forest Fun and Native Arts Camp - Clearwater National Forest & Nez Perce Tribe, Grangeville, Idaho; $39,300; This project will expand a successful summer camp to three new locations across the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and will integrate nature resource education with Nez Perce cultural arts.
Kids Take Flight Educational Program - White River National Forest & Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, Glenwood Springs, Colo., $38,000; This program will reach 500 kids, age 6-12, with unique hands-on wildlife experiences such as releasing rosy-finches, experiencing dragonfly metamorphosis and investigating owls.
Four Mile Ranch Environmental Education - San Juan National Forest & Audubon, Colorado Pagosa Springs, Colo. , $65,353;The Four Mile Ranch Environmental Education program provides local elementary school students with hands-on, experiential science education and outdoor learning opportunities.
Aldo Adventures on the Gila - Gila National Forest & Various Partners, Silver City, N.M., $62,100; Named after famed conservationist, Aldo Leopold, this program expands a successful program and supports fishing days, wilderness camping expeditions, outdoor labs and field days.
Science at the Station: Bringing Nature to Life in the Woods and on the Range - Coronado National Forest & University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., $154,360; This project will help rejuvenate and reinvent the historic Florida Station as an outdoor learning center, building strong partnerships between federal, state, county and private partners to bring diverse outdoor experiences to local children.
Forest Service Alliance with Environmental Educators to get More Kids into the Woods - Caribou-Targhee National Forest & Various Partners, Idaho Falls, Idaho, $130,085; This comprehensive project builds an alliance of multi-sector partners to increase the opportunities, across all lands, that local children have to learn outdoors and develop outdoor recreation skills.
Nature Caching Camp - Manti-LaSal National Forest & Snow College, Price, Utah, $47,704; This innovative project aims to get kids outside and physically active, by using the high-tech gadgets kids love with the wonder of nature, through nature caching and overnight campouts.
Natural Resources Science Camp - Pacific Southwest-Redwood Sciences Lab, Six Rivers National Forest & Cities of Eureka and Arcata Recreation Divisions, Arcata, Calif., $82,700; Fourteen, week-long summer day camps will reach kids, 6-14, and focus on exploring local environments, and learning about research and careers in natural resources.
Outdoor Experiences Program: "The mountains are calling and I must go." - Inyo National Forest & Mono Lake Committee, Bishop, Calif., $111,600; During five-day-long trips, this partnership-based program connects youth from Los Angeles and the Eastern Sierra region to their watershed through outdoor recreation, education and stewardship activities.
The Richmond Edible Forest Project - Pacific Southwest Research Station & Urban Tilth, Albany, Calif., $136,200; This innovative project will build a team of inner-city youth to design and install a pilot "edible forest" in a city park, engage more than 700 youth in education, and share best practices so the project can be replicated broadly.
Ryan Meadow Wetland Restoration and Conservation Education Project, Phase 1 - Deschutes National Forest & Discover Your Northwest, Bend, Ore., $214,400; Focused on a restored 60-acre wetland along the Deschutes River, this project will develop a comprehensive ecosystem monitoring program with standards-correlated curriculum, hands-on filled trips and community outreach.
Canopy Connections - Pacific Northwest Research Station & HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Portland, Ore., $47,514; Quiet observation time, creative writing, art and science inquiry projects are wrapped around each participant's personal guided ascent seventy feet above the forest floor into the canopy of an old-growth Douglas-fir tree.
Greenway Trust - Mt. Baker-Snolqualmie National Forest & The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Everett, Wash., $93,450; Partners will engage and energize more than 2,500 youth through a year-round series of scaffolded land stewardship and education projects in and adjacent to the Snoqulamie Watershed.
24/7 Forest Stewardship Challenge - Ouachita National Forest & Audubon Arkansas, Hot Springs, Ark., $57,200; This project will reach more than 250 youth through a variety of active, outdoor experiences to help them learn 24 native plants and animals, and seven steps they can take to protect natural resources.
Youth Taking Action Statewide Environmental Challenge - National Forests in Alabama & Alabama Department of Public Health, Montgomery, Ala., $41,800; Partnering with the Alabama Department of Public Health, and working through a series of 'youth challenges' this project encourages youth to become active in the outdoors and care for the environment.
"Project Wild" for Florida Youth - National Forests in Florida & National Wild Turkey Federation Tallahassee, Fla., $140,000; This project builds a coalition of partners to coordinate and integrate outdoor learning experiences within Florida school systems.
Project Venture North - Superior National Forest & Project Venture, Duluth, Minn., $118,900; Working with local partners, this program will enhance efforts to get Native American youth outside, working and learning experientially, bridging gaps between schools and communities, and building youth leadership skills.
Bronx River On-Water Education Program - Northern Research Station & Rocking the Boat, New York City, N.Y., $492,278; Using boats built by their peers, students explore and restore the Bronx River, implementing eight environmental projects designed in collaboration with scientists.
* Studying Climate Change in the Chugach Children's Forest - Chugach National Forest & Anchorage School District and Alaska Geographic Society, Anchorage, Alaska $28,802; Six hundred underserved 5th Grade students from Anchorage, Alaska will travel to Portage Glacier to learn about climate change by investigating glaciers and studying climate and weather data.
Bear Smart - Chugach National Forest & Alaska Department of Fish & Game & Cordova School District, Anchorage, Alaska $12,000; This uniquely Alaskan project will help the community's 'walk or bike to school' initiative by educating youth and their families about avoiding bear encounters
This is the fourth year the Forest Service has matched funds and in-kind contributions from partners for "More Kids in the Woods." Partners include local, state, and federal agencies and American Indian tribes. Project activities include summer camps, after-school programs, and wilderness expeditions. The challenge-cost share will serve more than 15,000 children throughout the nation, including under-served and urban youth.
Promoting active and healthy lifestyles is a priority of the Obama Administration. First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. The campaign has four primary tenets: helping parents make healthy food choices, serving healthier food in schools; improving access to healthy, affordable food; and increasing physical activity. The Administration has introduced its plans to improve school meals, introduced a financing initiative to reduce food deserts, implemented new research tools that detail local food environments and health outcomes, including grocery store access and disease and obesity prevalence, and announced a broad range of public/private commitments to solve America's childhood obesity epidemic. Learn more by visiting www.LetsMove.gov.
In order to combat the childhood obesity epidemic, the Obama Administration is working to increase the opportunities for exercise and physical activities through partnerships like "Fuel Up to Play 60" which brings together the NFL, National Dairy Council and other partners to encourage physical activity and eating nutritious food through sports clinics, appearances, and public service announcements.
The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages 193 million acres of National Forest System land, provides stewardship assistance to non-federal forest landowners and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world. For more information, visit: www.fs.fed.us
#
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 (voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_gAC9-wMJ8QY0MDpxBDA09nXw9DFxcXQ-cAA_2CbEdFAEUOjoE!/?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010%2F04%2F0214.xml
-----
Teresa Anahuy
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FirstPeoplesNews
Release No. 0214.10
Contact:
USDA Office of Communications (202) 720-4623
Secretary Vilsack Urges Kids to Get Outdoors and Get Active as part of First Lady Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move!' Campaign
WASHINGTON, April 27, 2010 - Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that USDA's Forest Service will contribute $500,000 in 2010 to the "More Kids in the Woods" program for projects that promote active lifestyles and connect kids to nature.
"If we are going to put an end to childhood obesity, we must promote healthy, active lifestyles and encourage our kids to get off the couch and go outside," said Vilsack. "Our "More Kids in the Woods" challenge not only promotes physical activity, it fosters environmental awareness and stewardship among young people as we face critical environmental challenges, such as the effects of climate change. "More Kids in the Woods" helps kids make the connection between healthy forests, healthy communities and their own healthy lifestyles."
The contribution will be leveraged with $1.5 million in donations and in-kind services from partners. The "More Kids in the Woods" challenge is a cost-share program in the Forest Service's long-standing Kids in the Woods program that involves thousands of partners who contribute their time, energy and resources to help us connect kids and families with our natural world.
The Forest Service selected 21 projects for funding from more than 130 high-quality agency proposals created to promote environmental stewardship through innovative, hands-on activities. All "More Kids in the Woods" projects are designed to spark curiosity about nature and promote understanding of the role of the nation's forests and grasslands in providing clean, abundant water, clean air, wildlife habitat, and recreation. Project partners are committed to helping children develop a love for the land that will enable them to meet the conservation challenges of the 21st century through healthy lifestyles choices and natural resource careers.
Below is a list of the 21 projects:
Forest Fun and Native Arts Camp - Clearwater National Forest & Nez Perce Tribe, Grangeville, Idaho; $39,300; This project will expand a successful summer camp to three new locations across the Nez Perce Indian Reservation and will integrate nature resource education with Nez Perce cultural arts.
Kids Take Flight Educational Program - White River National Forest & Rocky Mountain Bird Observatory, Glenwood Springs, Colo., $38,000; This program will reach 500 kids, age 6-12, with unique hands-on wildlife experiences such as releasing rosy-finches, experiencing dragonfly metamorphosis and investigating owls.
Four Mile Ranch Environmental Education - San Juan National Forest & Audubon, Colorado Pagosa Springs, Colo. , $65,353;The Four Mile Ranch Environmental Education program provides local elementary school students with hands-on, experiential science education and outdoor learning opportunities.
Aldo Adventures on the Gila - Gila National Forest & Various Partners, Silver City, N.M., $62,100; Named after famed conservationist, Aldo Leopold, this program expands a successful program and supports fishing days, wilderness camping expeditions, outdoor labs and field days.
Science at the Station: Bringing Nature to Life in the Woods and on the Range - Coronado National Forest & University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., $154,360; This project will help rejuvenate and reinvent the historic Florida Station as an outdoor learning center, building strong partnerships between federal, state, county and private partners to bring diverse outdoor experiences to local children.
Forest Service Alliance with Environmental Educators to get More Kids into the Woods - Caribou-Targhee National Forest & Various Partners, Idaho Falls, Idaho, $130,085; This comprehensive project builds an alliance of multi-sector partners to increase the opportunities, across all lands, that local children have to learn outdoors and develop outdoor recreation skills.
Nature Caching Camp - Manti-LaSal National Forest & Snow College, Price, Utah, $47,704; This innovative project aims to get kids outside and physically active, by using the high-tech gadgets kids love with the wonder of nature, through nature caching and overnight campouts.
Natural Resources Science Camp - Pacific Southwest-Redwood Sciences Lab, Six Rivers National Forest & Cities of Eureka and Arcata Recreation Divisions, Arcata, Calif., $82,700; Fourteen, week-long summer day camps will reach kids, 6-14, and focus on exploring local environments, and learning about research and careers in natural resources.
Outdoor Experiences Program: "The mountains are calling and I must go." - Inyo National Forest & Mono Lake Committee, Bishop, Calif., $111,600; During five-day-long trips, this partnership-based program connects youth from Los Angeles and the Eastern Sierra region to their watershed through outdoor recreation, education and stewardship activities.
The Richmond Edible Forest Project - Pacific Southwest Research Station & Urban Tilth, Albany, Calif., $136,200; This innovative project will build a team of inner-city youth to design and install a pilot "edible forest" in a city park, engage more than 700 youth in education, and share best practices so the project can be replicated broadly.
Ryan Meadow Wetland Restoration and Conservation Education Project, Phase 1 - Deschutes National Forest & Discover Your Northwest, Bend, Ore., $214,400; Focused on a restored 60-acre wetland along the Deschutes River, this project will develop a comprehensive ecosystem monitoring program with standards-correlated curriculum, hands-on filled trips and community outreach.
Canopy Connections - Pacific Northwest Research Station & HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, Portland, Ore., $47,514; Quiet observation time, creative writing, art and science inquiry projects are wrapped around each participant's personal guided ascent seventy feet above the forest floor into the canopy of an old-growth Douglas-fir tree.
Greenway Trust - Mt. Baker-Snolqualmie National Forest & The Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Everett, Wash., $93,450; Partners will engage and energize more than 2,500 youth through a year-round series of scaffolded land stewardship and education projects in and adjacent to the Snoqulamie Watershed.
24/7 Forest Stewardship Challenge - Ouachita National Forest & Audubon Arkansas, Hot Springs, Ark., $57,200; This project will reach more than 250 youth through a variety of active, outdoor experiences to help them learn 24 native plants and animals, and seven steps they can take to protect natural resources.
Youth Taking Action Statewide Environmental Challenge - National Forests in Alabama & Alabama Department of Public Health, Montgomery, Ala., $41,800; Partnering with the Alabama Department of Public Health, and working through a series of 'youth challenges' this project encourages youth to become active in the outdoors and care for the environment.
"Project Wild" for Florida Youth - National Forests in Florida & National Wild Turkey Federation Tallahassee, Fla., $140,000; This project builds a coalition of partners to coordinate and integrate outdoor learning experiences within Florida school systems.
Project Venture North - Superior National Forest & Project Venture, Duluth, Minn., $118,900; Working with local partners, this program will enhance efforts to get Native American youth outside, working and learning experientially, bridging gaps between schools and communities, and building youth leadership skills.
Bronx River On-Water Education Program - Northern Research Station & Rocking the Boat, New York City, N.Y., $492,278; Using boats built by their peers, students explore and restore the Bronx River, implementing eight environmental projects designed in collaboration with scientists.
* Studying Climate Change in the Chugach Children's Forest - Chugach National Forest & Anchorage School District and Alaska Geographic Society, Anchorage, Alaska $28,802; Six hundred underserved 5th Grade students from Anchorage, Alaska will travel to Portage Glacier to learn about climate change by investigating glaciers and studying climate and weather data.
Bear Smart - Chugach National Forest & Alaska Department of Fish & Game & Cordova School District, Anchorage, Alaska $12,000; This uniquely Alaskan project will help the community's 'walk or bike to school' initiative by educating youth and their families about avoiding bear encounters
This is the fourth year the Forest Service has matched funds and in-kind contributions from partners for "More Kids in the Woods." Partners include local, state, and federal agencies and American Indian tribes. Project activities include summer camps, after-school programs, and wilderness expeditions. The challenge-cost share will serve more than 15,000 children throughout the nation, including under-served and urban youth.
Promoting active and healthy lifestyles is a priority of the Obama Administration. First Lady Michelle Obama launched the Let's Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation so that children born today will reach adulthood at a healthy weight. The campaign has four primary tenets: helping parents make healthy food choices, serving healthier food in schools; improving access to healthy, affordable food; and increasing physical activity. The Administration has introduced its plans to improve school meals, introduced a financing initiative to reduce food deserts, implemented new research tools that detail local food environments and health outcomes, including grocery store access and disease and obesity prevalence, and announced a broad range of public/private commitments to solve America's childhood obesity epidemic. Learn more by visiting www.LetsMove.gov.
In order to combat the childhood obesity epidemic, the Obama Administration is working to increase the opportunities for exercise and physical activities through partnerships like "Fuel Up to Play 60" which brings together the NFL, National Dairy Council and other partners to encourage physical activity and eating nutritious food through sports clinics, appearances, and public service announcements.
The mission of the USDA Forest Service is to sustain the health, diversity, and productivity of the nation's forests and grasslands to meet the needs of present and future generations. The agency manages 193 million acres of National Forest System land, provides stewardship assistance to non-federal forest landowners and maintains the largest forestry research organization in the world. For more information, visit: www.fs.fed.us
#
USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. To file a complaint of discrimination, write: USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Ave., SW, Washington, DC 20250-9410 or call (800) 795-3272 (voice), or (202) 720-6382 (TDD).
http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/usda/!ut/p/c4/04_SB8K8xLLM9MSSzPy8xBz9CP0os_gAC9-wMJ8QY0MDpxBDA09nXw9DFxcXQ-cAA_2CbEdFAEUOjoE!/?contentidonly=true&contentid=2010%2F04%2F0214.xml
-----
Teresa Anahuy
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FirstPeoplesNews
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