add_a_radical Is a new and fun community for meeting other bloggers with not-so-common political views. Radicals from the left and right and any other direction you can think of! Anyone is welcome to join and look for friends to add, but we must remind you to please READ the rules before you post.
Freedom! Lakota Sioux Indians Declare Sovereign Nation Status
Threaten Land Liens, Contested Real Estate Over Five State Area in U.S.West Dakota Territory Reverts back to Lakota Control According to U.S., International Law
WASHINGTON, DC - December 20 - Lakota Sioux Indian representatives declared sovereign nation status today in Washington D.C. following Monday's withdrawal from all previously signed treaties with the United States Government. The withdrawal, hand delivered to Daniel Turner, Deputy Director of Public Liaison at the State Department, immediately and irrevocably ends all agreements between the Lakota Sioux Nation of Indians and the United States Government outlined in the 1851 and 1868 Treaties at Fort Laramie Wyoming.
"This is an historic day for our Lakota people," declared Russell Means, Itacan of Lakota. "United States colonial rule is at its end!"
"Today is a historic day and our forefathers speak through us. Our Forefathers made the treaties in good faith with the sacred Canupa and with the knowledge of the Great Spirit," shared Garry Rowland from Wounded Knee. "They never honored the treaties, that's the reason we are here today."
The four member Lakota delegation traveled to Washington D.C. culminating years of internal discussion among treaty representatives of the various Lakota communities. Delegation members included well known activist and actor Russell Means, Women of All Red Nations (WARN) founder Phyllis Young, Oglala Lakota Strong Heart Society leader Duane Martin Sr., and Garry Rowland, Leader Chief Big Foot Riders. Means, Rowland, Martin Sr. were all members of the 1973 Wounded Knee takeover.
"In order to stop the continuous taking of our resources – people, land, water and children- we have no choice but to claim our own destiny," said Phyllis Young, a former Indigenous representative to the United Nations and representative from Standing Rock.
Property ownership in the five state area of Lakota now takes center stage. Parts of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana have been illegally homesteaded for years despite knowledge of Lakota as predecessor sovereign [historic owner]. Lakota representatives say if the United States does not enter into immediate diplomatic negotiations, liens will be filed on real estate transactions in the five state region, clouding title over literally thousands of square miles of land and property.
Young added, "The actions of Lakota are not intended to embarrass the United States but to simply save the lives of our people".
Following Monday's withdrawal at the State Department, the four Lakota Itacan representatives have been meeting with foreign embassy officials in order to hasten their official return to the Family of Nations.
Lakota's efforts are gaining traction as Bolivia, home to Indigenous President Evo Morales, shared they are "very, very interested in the Lakota case" while Venezuela received the Lakota delegation with "respect and solidarity."
"Our meetings have been fruitful and we hope to work with these countries for better relations," explained Garry Rowland. "As a nation, we have equal status within the national community."
Education, energy and justice now take top priority in emerging Lakota. "Cultural immersion education is crucial as a next step to protect our language, culture and sovereignty," said Means. "Energy independence using solar, wind, geothermal, and sugar beets enables Lakota to protect our freedom and provide electricity and heating to our people."
The Lakota reservations are among the most impoverished areas in North America, a shameful legacy of broken treaties and apartheid policies. Lakota has the highest death rate in the United States and Lakota men have the lowest life expectancy of any nation on earth, excluding AIDS, at approximately 44 years. Lakota infant mortality rate is five times the United States average and teen suicide rates 150% more than national average. 97% of Lakota people live below the poverty line and unemployment hovers near 85%.
"After 150 years of colonial enforcement, when you back people into a corner there is only one alternative," emphasized Duane Martin Sr. "The only alternative is to bring freedom into its existence by taking it back to the love of freedom, to our lifeway."
We are the freedom loving Lakota from the Sioux Indian reservations of Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana who have traveled to Washington DC to withdraw from the constitutionally mandated treaties to become a free and independent country. We are alerting the Family of Nations we have now reassumed our freedom and independence with the backing of Natural, International, and United States law. For more information, please visit our new website at www.lakotafreedom.com.
In Utter Pradesh, India, oppression of women and corruption reaps the whirlwind, as an vigilance committee of women (the gulabi, or "pink" gang,) begins to take the law into their own hands.
The pink women of Banda shun political parties and NGOs because, in the words of their feisty leader, Sampat Pal Devi, "they are always looking for kickbacks when they offer to fund us".
Two years after they gave themselves a name and an attire, the women in pink have thrashed men who have abandoned or beaten their wives and unearthed corruption in the distribution of grain to the poor.
They have also stormed a police station and attacked a policeman after they took in an untouchable man and refused to register a case.
"Nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and the police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law in our hands. At other times, we prefer to shame the wrongdoers," says Sampat Pal Devi, between teaching a "gang" member on how to use a lathi (traditional Indian stick) in self defence.
The western media is so partial on the Lebanon war it's unbelievable. And that goes specially for the BBC, fans of the BBC. Let me be partial in the other sense, then you can make up your own minds on not believing anyone or anything.
The US has a plan for a "new Middle East" oil cow that requires Israel to be the only relatively independent, working state in the region. Among the things that make Israel the perfect "ally" is that it doesn't count for oil production. It's just an excellent aircraft carrier for the US, which still needs to pay a modicum of attention to public opinion. It still needs to hide its Fallujas and Abu Ghraibs if it can. When it isn't the US but "Israel", then there's no need for that.
Hey, look, we have a Holocaust on our side. Six million murdered can't be wrong.
The Israeli tool has waged an all-out war against the population of Lebanon. This war has been planned for months. The kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers was a bit flimsy as an excuse to finally launch it, but it was the best they were going to get. War against the population means: almost 1500 civilians dead as the result of deliberate, relentless targeting of residential areas of no military value. One million displaced in a country of three and a half million people. Massive numbers of automatic telephone calls from the Israeli Defence Forces to Lebanese individuals as a measure of intimidation, toguether with raining of threatening tracts on Beirut ("move out, we are going to bomb your houses")--this intimidation of civilians would be a war crime if the Geneva conventions actually meant anything. The towns and villages of the South have been flattened. 60% to 70% of all livestock and agriculture has been destroyed. The land is littered with unexploded ordnance. South Beirut has been annihilated. Civil infraestructure has been destroyed--roads, all bridges, power plants. An oil spill has been provoked that will poison the whole lebanese coast for years.
Marjajoun. An Israeli military unit enters the town. It finds itself surrounded by the Hizbullah, and takes the Christian population and the small local Lebanese army contingent hostage. The Hizbullah don't want a massacre, the Israelis don't want to lose soldiers. A deal is negotiated. Israel will let the lebanese army and the civil population leave. The convoy sets out, with explicit permission from the Israelis, who control from the air all movement along the roads. An hour out of town, the bombing starts. The civil convoy is bombed eleven times. Deliberately, treacherously. Cold-blooded murder. One more war crime, one more notch in your belt, Israel.
Kana. The word itself is enough.
South Beirut. The center of the southern dahiyeh, the suburbs, is in ruins from the first. It keeps getting bombed anyway, as are the adjacent neighbourhoods. Churches are left standing in an attempt to divide the population, but the mosques go down. And the houses, and the shopping areas. The cleansing strategy goes not only for the south of the country, but for the south of Beirut where the poorest segments of the population live. One particular neighbourhood, Chiyah, which is between Beirut proper and the suburbs, is bombed the first few days of the war but then left alone. People think it's safe. Those who can't afford to move further away, those who have family or friends in Chiyah take refuge there. The population density grows enormously in a neighbourhood which has nothing of strategic interest to anyone. Just houses. People. When Israel bombs it again it is a massacre. In one single building sixty people died.
Israel knows what it's doing. It knows where its bombs fall. All of the houses of Hizbullah leaders and their families, the offices of all organisations linked to Hizbullah, all of that is bombed in the first few days with perfect precision. There is no "collateral damage". There are no mistakes. The civilian dead are targeted as civilians to be killed. The strategic goal is to fragment Lebanese society and destroy its support of the armed resistance in the South. This is a war against Lebanon, as a society, as a country, as a working democracy. Not against the Hizbullah, though obviously the Hizbullah must be destroyed since it is blocking the way.
The war is not against the Hizbullah, it is against Lebanon. The resistance is not the Hizbullah, it is the Lebanese population. Hizbullah represents the armed resistance, and a bloody good job it's done in that sense, keeping the Israeli army out, destroying its Merkava tanks and its myth of invincibility. For the first time in a conflict with Israel there are more Israeli combatants killed than Arab ones. Hizbullah is resisting the Israeli army, not fighting the people of Israel. 43 Israeli civilians killed (including four who died of heart attacks during rocket fire) and 116 soldiers. Contrast this with Lebanese casualties and then tell me Hizbullah is a group of fanatical terrorists.
But that's just the armed resistance (which by the way is not only Hizbullah, though they are clearly the ones who count most. Other Lebanese groups have lost combatants too). The war is against the population, and the population has resisted by refusing to fold and refusing to be divided. The million displaced have been taken in with tremendous solidarity, by people of all confesions and social strata. The crowded living conditions in unprepared venues have not produced epidemics because all the civil society organisations (women's groups, ecologists, migrant groups, LGBT, you name it) have switched their focus to resisting, and resisting here includes not only helping the inmediate victims, but getting society to cope with them. With the lack of petrol. With the electricity cuts. With the trauma and shock.
The goal was disuniting the country, but the result has been the opposite. I was in Lebanon in 2004, involved in work which put me in contact with all the political forces of the country. This included all the radical leftist organisations. I saw how people from many of these were politically and personally very vehemently against the Hizbullah. Today those same people support the Hizbullah's armed resistance unconditionally, quite conscious of the price they're paying for it. And quite conscious that any number of dead is preferable to the destiny selected for them by the US and Israel.
The civil population has been targeted explicitly, and it has resisted actively. Israel has waged war on the unarmed people of the country and lost that war, just as it has lost the war against the armed fighters of the Hizbullah. Yes, the Hizbullah are the heroes now. Hassan Nasrallah is the new Saladin, the new Che Guevara. The Arabs of whatever religion, the Muslims of whatever ethnicity, indeed the downtrodden of whatever origin have a new icon and a new champion. But the true victims and the true victors of this war are the civilians of Lebanon.
Hello, new here but and hope this is acceptable to this community.
I have a few questions that I've been having a hard time tracking down answers to. Hopefully no one will mind my inquiries and hopefully someone may be able to help.
1) Does anyone know the specifics on "Executive Orders" in the case of the Presidential office? If I remember correctly from my days in highschool there is a limit on how many and how often a president can make an Executive Order and under what circumstances (ie. imminent disaster). Also isn't there a time limit on how long they can last? I remember that the president can declare war without congress agreeing to it for 3 days I believe, well not quite declare war but hold a military action. My memory might be slightly rusty on this as well if anyone can clear it up please.
2) Does anyone have any recordings of Bush's speaches and any Speaker of the House/etc. press conferences concerning Hurricane Katrina? I came across a transcript of one where Bush, after the flooding had begun, called it a "temporary inconvenience". It was on the White House's own website and a transcript from a press conference so I'm guessing that there has to be audio/video of the conference somewhere. Any other audio/video recordings related to the subject would be greatly appreciated as well. I am a resident of New Orleans and have been greatly affected by this "temporary inconvience".
3) I'm sure I could find the answer to this if I dug hard enough, but Bush and Co. are constantly rattling off about us being in a 'war'. A 'new type of war' which they ellude to as being indefinite in time frame. If we are truly in a state of war didn't Congress have to declare an act of war? And if so when did they do so? What was the justification? And who are we at war against? According to congress, not the ever-ellusive 'terrorists', not Al-Qaeda (a nation can't be at war with a terrorist organisation!), not Iraq or Afghanistan. Who exactly are we at war with according to them if they did make a Declaration of War?
4) Did the DHS becoming part of the government and the restructuring that followed move any organisations from other branches of government to the Executive branch? I'm assuming that the DHS falls under the Executive branch at any rate.
Please forgive any blatent missunderstandings on my part, I'm not a political scientist by a long shot, so a bit rusty on a lot of this.
URGENT: if you're going to participate, please e-mail NOW.
below: attachment received from Julia O'Connell Davidson asking for support to fight the deportation of the Freed Brimingham Women. If you feel you can support, either use the letter that Julia has supplied or draft your own to Harriet Harman and/or your own MP.
I write to express my concern about the planned removal of women picked up by police during a raid on the Cuddles massage parlour, Birmingham, last Friday 30th September. Press coverage of the raid made much of the fact that the police went into the property to execute a warrant in human trafficking, and that they had ‘rescued’ and ‘freed’ nineteen women from ten countries who had been held at the premises against their will behind locked doors and an electric fence. It is therefore extremely disturbing to learn that six of these women were almost immediately transferred to Yarleswood Detention Centre, where they are now once again behind locked doors and an electric fence, and face removal tomorrow. It seems highly improbable that in the space of four days, police and immigration officers have been able to gather sufficient evidence to accurately determine whether or not these women are ‘victims of trafficking’, and it is clearly impossible for the women to have accessed their internationally recognised rights to recovery, or legal redress and compensation in such a short period of time.
You recently stated that ‘Human trafficking is nothing less than modern day slavery’ and ‘Our starting point must be that those who are trafficked are victims. It is not us who need protecting from them, but they who need protecting from the traffickers.’ Recognising your sincere opposition to the exploitation and abuse of victims of trafficking, I would urge you to intervene immediately on behalf of these women and other potential victims to ensure that they have time to access the specialist legal advice and other support services that they undoubtedly require.
I look forward to receiving your assurance that these women will not be removed and will have their fundamental human rights protected here in the UK.
Read all about John G. Roberts Jr. the newest sack of slime to be working under bush. Roe vs. Wade? soon to be overturned. People in Abu-ghraib and Guantanomo bay? No enforceable human rights. separation of church and state? nah, not any more. he also says that public lands (forests, parks, etc.) are just ripe for pillaging.
in brief the guy bush wants to put in office is a really charming character. thank you once again, el presidente.
Please sign this petition to protect the National Forests of the United States. You must be a US citizen to sign. The petition reads:
To: U.S. Congress Dear members of Congress:
Please introduce the Forever Wild Act, as supported by the Native Forest Council, to the 109th session of Congress. Our public lands, now owned and hereafter acquired, deserve complete and total protection from extractive industries. Do everything in your power to eliminate all logging, road building, grazing, mining, and drilling on every acre of Federal public lands, including but not limited to: National Forests, National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, Wilderness Areas, BLM lands, and National Monuments.
ST. JOHN'S, Nfld. — Ocean temperatures in the North Atlantic hit an all-time high last year, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on one of the most sensitive and productive ecosystems in the world.
Sea ice off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador was below normal for the tenth consecutive year and the water temperature outside St. John's Harbour was the highest on record in 2004, according to a report released Wednesday by the federal Fisheries Department.
A porn company had an adult actress shoot a live buffalo and then have hardcore sex next to the corpse. I'm completely speechless. I'm wondering, is there a group of people that isn't offended by this? Some markets don't need exploitation.
The non-violent struggle to stop the construction of a new US military air base atop a coral reef in Okinawa's Henoko Bay has reached a new level of intensity and danger. (See below for information on WHAT YOU CAN DO and for detailed information/talking points on the proposed air base and the 8-year campaign to stop it.)
Japan's Defense Agency (which is in charge of the base construction) has imposed a 24-hour/7-day work schedule in an attempt to "forcibly initiate drilling" and overwhelm the campaign of non-violent civil disobedience that has successfully blocked drilling in the bay for over a year. Defending the bay and occupying the four existing drilling platforms have now become an increasingly dangerous 24-hour effort. The stepped-up work schedule not only violates guidelines agreed upon by the Defense Agency and Okinawa Prefecture, the Agency's timing doesn't add up. Recent statements by both the US and Japanese governments suggest that both sides may finally be ready to rethink the Henoko air base project given the "long delays and high costs".( Read more...Collapse )
The ideal White House/Pentagon script for Iraq calls for a pro-American government, total control of at least 12% of the world's known oil reserves and 14 military bases to make it happen. Reality has been churning up other ideas.
Whenever there is a so-called "transfer of power" in Mesopotamia, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, like clockwork, steps on a plane to Baghdad. On his latest trip designed to issue orders for the new, supposedly sovereign Iraqi government, Rumsfeld, in a splendid Freudian slip, let it be known on the record the US "does not have an exit strategy" in Iraq: only a "victory strategy". This is code for "we're not going anywhere".
Seriously. Do animals have feelings the same way we do? Shit, of course they do. I don't know where humanity gets off, thinking we're significantly different to animals - I assure you we are all animals. The emotions and desires and hopes and depressions and fears that make up each of us have their roots in a complex system of emotional punishment and reward which is hardwired into us and which makes us more able to survive by making appropriate choices.
All emotions are survival techniques.
If we had half a brain we'd be aware of this and would be a lot more concerned about the levels of depression in our own society. But that's an aside.
Of course animals have the same types of emotion we do (although we must be careful not to ascribe the same triggers to those emotions - what makes a kangaroo happy may be our idea of a Day From Hell, and vice versa).
... new research suggests that animals have far more complex cognitive and social skills than we gave them credit for. The focus in recent decades has been on wildlife but the uncomfortable truth now emerging is that something similar holds for animals we like to eat: pigs, sheep, cows, chickens.
and
First for some findings. Last October, Ana da Costa and colleagues at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge reported that when sheep were isolated from their flock, they experienced stress as measured by increases in heart rate, stress hormones and bleating. But showing them pictures of familiar sheep faces reduced their stress on all three counts. The same effect was not produced when they were shown pictures of goat faces or inverted triangles.
Cows, too, can recognise a familiar face, says Donald Broom, professor of animal welfare at the University of Cambridge, and often form long-lasting, cooperative partnerships. They also show a physiological response on learning something new. He and colleague Kristin Hagen put heifers in a situation where they had to press a panel to open a gate and gain access to food. Those that learned the task were more likely to experience a leap in heart rate and to gallop than those that did not -"the eureka response".
Other research has shown that if offered a choice of two feeding stalls, pigs will avoid the one they remember being shut into, previously, for several hours after eating, and go for the one they were released from quickly. Lame broiler hens, or hens bred for meat, will choose food laced with painkillers over food that is not.
Isn't it time the human race stopped being psychopaths en masse (nobody else is real, nobody else has feelings) and at least admitted what it is we do, even if we then carry on doing it?
And isn't the idea of a cow having a "Eureka" moment the most delightful thing you've ever read?
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Prior to April 2004, HIV treatment was available free on the NHS to anyone who could show that they had been in the UK for more than 12 months. This ensured that any long stay resident of the UK, no matter how they became one, would receive the health treatment they needed on public health grounds.
However, in response to media and political agitation about "treatment tourism", new restrictions were imposed from April 2004. These now mean that long stay visitors, anyone living in the UK without documentation, and anyone refused asylum or leave to remain, but not removed from the UK, are liable to be charged for their HIV treatment except in an emergency (i.e. short term admissions in order to avert death, but not to avert illness or suffering). This effectively means that these groups are being denied treatment that would dramatically improve their health, increase their ability to work and decrease their ability to pass on the virus, as they are unlikely to be able to afford to pay.
the term "treatment tourism"? makes me want to smash things.
further information here, with a thingy for e-mailing your mp (and rather sophisticated this one is, too). i really recommend that you do it.
Members of the Washington, DC Metro Police have been trained by gurus at the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in a new form of crimebusting voodoo that purports to help them "profile" the public, and zero in on vibes emanating from bad people.
According to a recent Washington Post article, the police are "targeting people who avoid eye contact, loiter, or appear to be looking around transit stations more than other passengers... Anyone identified as suspicious will be stopped and questioned about what they are doing and where they are going."
"It is effective," Metro spokesperson Lisa Farbstein gushed. She boasted to the Post that "a few pickpockets have been caught over the past six months as officers in uniform and plain clothes have been applying their special observation skills."
One such TSA program, at Boston's Logan International Airport (which has nabbed an unknown number of pickpockets) is currently under challenge from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The ACLU is concerned that it could serve as a smokescreen behind which racial profiling can be concealed.
I can't be the only person who finds this utterly, utterly, utterly ominous.
Quoted from the above BBC link:
Torture to uncover brain secrets
Torture is being used to help scientists understand how the brain works.
Volunteers are to undergo torture to see if faith eases pain.
Oxford University scientists will carry out experiments on hundreds of people in a bid to understand how the brain works during states of consciousness.
One aspect of the two-year study will involve followers of both religious and secular faiths being burnt to see if they can handle more pain than others.
Some volunteers will be shown religious symbols such as crucifixes and images of the Virgin Mary during the torture.
Researchers believe the study may improve understanding of faith, how robust it is and how easily it can be dislodged.
The team from the newly-formed Centre for Science of the Mind also want to include people with survival techniques in the torture experiments, which may help the special forces easily identify people with high pain thresholds.
Volunteers will have a gel containing chilli powder or heat-pad applied to the back of their hand to simulate pain.
Scans A team of neurologists, pharmacologists and anatomists will then analyse how people react by using brain scans.
Another part of the research involves tests using anaesthetic, to see what effect it has on the brain and why some people need higher doses to make them unconscious.
Baroness Greenfield, director of the centre, said 20 years ago scientists had shied away from studying the brain in such away but that was now changing.
"We want to find out what the brain is doing, how it is working when we are having feelings and most importantly of all when we are conscious.
"I am not promising we are going to solve the problem, I don't think we are.
"But I think we are going to get more of an insight."
Centre deputy director Toby Collins added: "The reason we are using pain is that it is easily standardised but varies greatly between individuals.
"The pain matrix is not fully understood yet."
Dr Alison Gray, a spokeswoman for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: "The experience of pain depends on biological factors such as the amount of tissue damage and release of natural pain killers - endorphins - in the brain.
"We know anecdotally that religious believers can tolerate great pain when there is a specific purpose, and I would speculate that this would operate via endorphin release.
"Religious practices such as prayer and meditation release endorphins and would in theory increase the pain threshold.
"It will be interesting to see what these trials show, it may be that the specific purpose of bearing the pain is missing, if so I would expect the tests would be inconclusive."
But the Church of England said it was possible religion could be of help.
A spokesman said: "Pain is a fact of life, whatever your beliefs. Christians feel pain just like everyone else, but many would say that their belief in a God who cares and the promises of the Bible are a huge comfort in difficult times."
message from empower (a thai organisation working primarily with female sex workers)
Situation Report Thailand 29th December 2004
On the 26th December an earthquake causing waves of 10 meters struck along the islands and coastline of south east Thailand. The disaster has affected six provinces in all i.e. Phuket, Krabi, Phangnga, Trang, Ranong and Satun.
Dear all, We are grateful for the warm thoughts and well wishes sent in the wake of the disaster here in Thailand. Surang from SWING is still in Phuket trying to assess what's happening and we have friends working in other areas doing the same. We will keep everyone updated as we get information. In the meantime Empower Chiang Mai is collecting donations to send as a larger lump sum to the official Thai disaster fund. We want to show sex worker support for the sex workers and others affected by the earthquake. The donation will be made in the name of the "Network of Sex Worker Projects" via Empower. If you would like to donate the bank details are as follows: Name of Bank: Khrung Thai Bank Name of Account: Ms Pornpit Puckmai, Ms Buyu Vanderstien, Ms Thanta Laovilawanyakul Account Number: 554-1-132922-4 Branch: Si Yek Sanaam Bin ISB: KRTH THBK Thank you, Porn Empower Chiang Mai
bonus link: info on SWING, a new thai organisation working primarily with male sex workers.
Gosh, so the Freedom of Information Act won't actually mean that the information is freely available, then. I wonder who gets to decide which "outdated records" are "no longer any use".
globalfeminisms, 
confused