by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 23, 2012 | Lobbying, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Robin Oisín Llewellyn / Mongabay
On hot days the broken stone and dried up silt from the San Sebastian mine in Eastern El Salvador bake in the sun. The slew of refuse is freckled with rock stained bright blue with cyanide, open to the elements that on rainier days will wash it downhill into the Rio San Sebastian below.
The openings of passages into the mine dot the mountainside, and further downhill a bright orange stream with a chemical stench flows into another. The American Commerce Group ceased operating here in 1999 but sought to return when the price of gold began its current escalation. After a Centre for Investigation of Investment and Commerce study found the local river to be 100,000 times more acidic than the area’s uncontaminated water, and cyanide levels to be ten times above safe levels, Commerce Group’s environmental permit was revoked. The company is subsequently suing the Salvadoran government for $100 million through the Central American Free Trade Agreement.
Rising concern over the environmental impact of mining led both presidential candidates in the 2009 elections in El Salvador to pledge to suspend mining operations, a promise kept by current president Mauricio Funes. To prevent further legal cases, which are already draining millions from the country’s coffers, the Salvadoran legislature is considering a special law suspending administrative procedures related to the exploration and exploitation of metallic mining concessions.
Salvadoran environmentalists, in turn, are urging their government to go beyond the suspension of mining projects, and instead ban metallic mining altogether. Thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital this month to urge parliament to sign a law that would enshrine a “human right to water,” which they said would make it impossible to grant mining permits.
In a presentation outside the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly last week, El Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsman Oscar Umberto Luna gave his support to a complete ban. Luna said that El Salvador’s environmental, climatic, institutional, social and economic conditions meant that it would not be viable for the “metallic mining industry to pursue its extractive activities without risk to the health and living conditions of the Salvadoran People and the resources on which they rely.”
The Ombudsman further urged that “the different state institutions must prioritize the human rights of the population, and keep in mind that true development pursues the improved overall quality of living of the population, not just economic profit.”
A law against mining would transform the country’s legislative framework towards foreign investment. Canadian group Pacific Rim is demanding $77 million to recoup its investments at its El Dorado concession in the northern province of Cabañas, claiming that the government violated the country’s 1999 investment law by denying it a license to extract gold and silver. The investment law allows disputes between foreign investors and the state to be taken outside of the country and decided by the World Bank’s International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
“Cyanide is not a vitamin”
Gatherings are being held around the country by anti-mining campaigners, raising awareness of the intertwined history of mining and water sources in the Central American gold belt. One meeting in the northern Salvadoran town of Ilobasco drew figures from a range of organizations united together in the National Roundtable against Mining.Ilobasco is in the agricultural countryside of Cabañas province, and the number of straw Stetsons dotting the sea of heads made the question asked from the podium almost rhetorical: “What do most of you do for a living?”
The audience responded en masse: “Farming!”
The speaker—Karen Vasquez of El Salvador’s Water Forum—echoed them before arguing that the access to land and water for tenant farmers would be made more difficult if the country failed to pass the proposed General Law on Water.The bill asserts that water is a “common good, finite, vulnerable, and essential for human life and ecosystems,” and prioritizes the human consumption of water over industrial uses. It has been sent by President Mauricio Funes to the Legislative Assembly for their approval, where it will be debated this month. The assembly is controlled by the President’s opponents, the right-wing ARENA party.
When Pacific Rim drilled to find gold beneath Cabañas, water sources used by local farmers dried up as subterranean water courses were diverted. Angel Ibarra of the Salvadoran Ecological Union sees such dangers reoccurring.
“Pacific Rim are talking about pursuing subterranean mining, so they’ll have to pump out the subterranean water and dehydrate the area, which would dry up the surface water and the wells,” he told the meeting in Ilobasco.
The proposed mine would, by its own projections, consume 3.2 million liters of water a year, and utilize cyanide to leach the gold from the rock.
“Cyanide is not a vitamin,” Ibarra says, responding to a member of the audience who told the podium that a chemist from the El Dorado mine visited their community to allay concerns over the compound. “Metallic mining causes cyanide and arsenic to be released into the area’s water, and causes acid mine drainage. There’s no such thing as green mining from a scientific or ecological perspective. It’s just propaganda.”
Acid mine drainage is caused by water generating acidity from the metal sulfides in disturbed rock formations. The sulphuric acid in turn releases toxic compounds and heavy metals, which are then washed into surface water.Ibarra points to the long term health damage that these elements can cause when released into the area’s water sources.
“The most serious problems begin when the mining stops, after the 6-10 years that the mine would function for,” he explains. “It’s afterwards that the kidney failures and the chronic illnesses begin. There are examples from other countries where this pollution has gone on for hundreds of years; we need a definitive ban on mining.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 23, 2012 | Gender, Pornography, Prostitution
By Gail Dines for Counterpunch
Feminists are busy people. We fight for equal rights, for stopping violence against women, for ending trafficking, prostitution, and stripping, and for a world where our children can have access to good education, health care, and day care. Now we have another job, because it seems that we are the only group willing to speak up on behalf of men’s humanity—and the only group that has steadfastly refused to buy into the pornified image of men as amoral life-support systems for erect penises.
The porn industry tells us that men need their porn, that ‘boys will be boys’. Now Susannah Breslin informs us in the Guardian that they also need strip clubs so they can express their ‘sexuality’ without fear of a sexual harassment lawsuit. Is this who men really are? Are they in fact so pathetic, socially inept, and incapable of developing authentic relationships with an equal partner? Do they really need to go to strip clubs because they are “a place where they can step outside the anxiety-fraught dating scene and talk to a woman who, as long as he keeps tipping, will give him the time of day”? Do they really need a safe space where they can treat women in ways that would warrant legal action in other contexts?
As the mother of a son, I have a vested interest in speaking up on behalf of men. My son—and I bet your son, too—was born with the full human capacity to develop a sexuality that is not based on the purchase of women’s bodies and feigned attention. But from the day my boy was born, this culture relentlessly bombarded him with messages that to be a real man was to be sexually exploitive, emotionally disconnected, and interested only in screwing as many women as he could. His masculinity was to be measured by his sexual conquests, and to refuse to buy into this limited, debased image of masculinity risked being labeled a pussy, a fag, a wimp—a gender traitor who had to be mercilessly ridiculed and policed by the alpha males of the pack.
When men do submit to the gender prison rules, when they become the sexual predator, the john, or the user, this is somehow construed as an expression of their authentic, inherent sexuality. It’s as if a young man woke up one day and, all by himself, came to the reasoned conclusion that the best way to develop and express his sexuality was to watch women who, often through lack of economic choice, are forced to strip in front of creepy men and pretend that they are thrilled to be spreading their legs to pay the rent and put food on the table for the kids. Both women and men are paying a heavy price for this commercially constructed distortion of sexuality.
In his book Guyland, which discusses masculinity in the U.S., sociologist Michael Kimmel explores how college-age men today are not keeping up developmentally with their female counterparts. Plugged into video games from an early age, masturbating to porn, drinking themselves into a stupor, and replacing dating with hook-up sex, young men are paying a heavy toll.
When we read Guyland in my classes, the women students lose hope of finding a man to partner with—and they are only in their early twenties! They often say that spending time with men their own age is like “babysitting,” and they feel frustrated and angry at having to pretend to be the cool hot girl who likes porn sex. Yet the sad truth is that to ask for something more than casual sex with a guy who gets his sex ed from porn is to break the rules of heterosexuality in a porn culture.
Men, you don’t know this, but we feminists are in fact your best friends. Unlike Breslin, we believe that you deserve the right to author your own sexuality. We have fought against a sex industry that strips you of your sexual integrity, because we know that you are capable of more than what they expect of you. Yes, men, we are rooting for you! But we are rapidly tiring of being the only group fighting for your rights. You need to stop collaborating with an industry that is out to get you, and join the feminists in fighting for an equal and just society that does not reduce you to a penis, and women to a vagina for rent. Stop the sex industry from defining who men are, because your sons (and daughters) deserve better than this.
From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/10/23/escape-from-guyland/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 19, 2012 | Alienation & Mental Health, Gender, Male Violence
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
“Hello! I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story.” These were the words written on the first two flashcards that 15-year old Amanda Todd shows viewers in the silent video she created about two months before she recently committed suicide to escape social torture.
Anti-bullying posters hang in every public school across the United States, yet kids continue to harass and hurt each other without intervention. Every school day, 150,000 students stay home out of fear of being picked on. Bullying has become epidemic, but still is only a symptom of the broader culture in which it exists. Despite even the most earnest efforts, youth problems and school problems cannot be solved until social problems and cultural problems are.
Amanda Todd is dead not only because she was born into this culture of bullying, but because she was born into it with a female body. Her flashcards continued: “In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam meet and talk to new people. Then got called stunning, beautiful, perfect, etc. Then wanted me to flash. So I did. 1 year later I got a msg on facebook from him. Don’t know how he knew me. It said if you don’t put on a show for me I will send ur boobs. He knew my address, school, relatives, friends, family names. Christmas break. Knock at my door at 4am. It was the police. My photo was sent to everyone. I then got really sick and got anxiety, major depression, and panic disorder.”
While tragic to be sure, Amanda’s case is but one among countless more that lead girls and women first to crippling depression and then to their deaths.
“I then moved and got into drugs and alcohol,” the flashcards went on. “My anxiety got worse…couldn’t go out. A year past and he came back with my new list of friends and school. But made a facebook page. My boobs were his profile pic. Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect people had for me…again. Then nobody liked me. Name calling, judged. I can never get that photo back. It’s out there forever. I started cutting. I promised myself never again. Didn’t have any friends and I sat at lunch alone. So I moved schools again.”
The public humiliation visited upon Amanda Todd is a routine experience for women living under patriarchy, the system currently ruling the world through a campaign of violence. Many girls who have been similarly targeted have not and likely will never have their stories told because, unlike Amanda, they have the added disadvantage of being poor or lesbian or not white on top of already being female, which is hard enough.
“Everything was better even though I sat still alone at lunch in the library every day. After a month later I started talking to an old guy friend. We back and fourth texted and he started to say he liked me. Led me on. He had a girlfriend. Then he said come over my gf’s on vacation. So I did…huge mistake. He hooked up with me. I thought he liked me. 1 week later I get a text get out of your school. His girlfriend and 15 others came including himself. The girl and 2 other just said look around nobody likes you. In front of my new school (50) people. A guy than yelled just punch her already. So she did…she threw me to the ground and punched me several times. Kids filmed it. I was all alone and left on the ground. I felt like a joke in this world…I thought nobody deserves this. I was alone.”
Patriarchy means rule by men. Women can certainly support this system, as we see in the case of the girls who attacked and abandoned Amanda Todd instead of supporting her when she needed it the most. Never will women truly benefit from patriarchy, though, as it is predicated on their subjugation to men. Patriarchy is a system of power that controls women’s lives in every sense: economically, socially, bodily, and otherwise. Men and women are trained from birth to accept and fit into their respective social classes, known in shorthand as masculinity and femininity.
Masculinity says that men are only real men when they are violating or dominating someone else, someone whom they’ve deemed as “Other.” Femininity is also designed by and benefits men, because it attempts to naturalize female submission by claiming that women just like to be hurt and controlled. The school years are some of the most formative for human development, and so serve as a prime opportunity to indoctrinate children into the myth of patriarchy.
Kindergarten through twelfth grade schooling may be too far back for some to clearly remember, but surely the word “cooties” rings a bell. In this single word is all we need to know about how girls and boys are trained to see one another. What they see is that despised “Other.” Not human beings. From girls versus boys playground games, to boys at a slumber party huddled around a Playboy, to incidents of date rape after prom, children know perfectly well the meaning of sexism, of sexual hatred, regardless of if they articulate it or not. Boys know how to do it and girls know how it feels to have it be done to.
And children know perfectly well the meaning of homophobia and racism, too.
Amanda’s flashcards continue: “I lied and said it was my fault and my idea. I didn’t want him getting hurt, I thought he really liked me. But he just wanted the sex…someone yelled punch her already. Teachers ran over but I just went and layed in a ditch and my dad found me. I wanted to die so bad…when he brought me home I drank bleach. It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actually die. Ambulence came and brought me to the hospital and flushed me.”
Few will hesitate to sum up the case of Amanda Todd as bullying, plain and simple, but perhaps it’s not so plain or simple. In her article about the Amanda Todd tragedy, educator and feminist Fazeela Jiwa takes the term “bullying” to task. She writes, “Bullying glosses over structural reasons for violence—reasons like race, gender, ability, and sexuality, among a myriad of insidious social hierarchies.”
From what is public knowledge about the trajectory of Amanda’s suffering, it’s hard not to see that the bullying she experienced was a direct result of her being female. Like all girls and women, she was a target of male violence. As Amanda has made clear, she was majorly coerced and exploited by two distinct male characters: the first pressured her to show her naked body over the internet, images of which he saved and used as blackmail against her for more sexual favors; the second manipulated her into having sex with him, only to later pit his girlfriend against her which resulted in the severe ambush that brought Amanda to first attempt suicide.
“After I got home all I saw on facebook—she deserved it,” read Amanda’s words. “Did you wash the mud out of your hair? I hope shes dead. Nobody cared. I moved away to another city to my moms. Another school…I didn’t wanna press charges because I wanted to move on. 6 months has gone by…people are pasting pics of bleach, clorex, and ditches. Tagging me. I was doing a lot better too. They said she should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn’t so stupid. They said I hope she sees this and kills herself.”
A few years ago, an anti-bullying event was hosted at City Hall. I and two other young activists and personal friends of mine were asked to speak on a panel on behalf of a radical community space with which we were involved. Other panels included teachers, parents, therapists, and students. All presented from their unique perspectives on the harms of bullying in school environments. Lesbian and gay high school students shared stories of being personally abused by kids at school: they told stories of being physically struck, shoved, and spit on. Many heterosexual students spoke, too. They were not spared from bullying either, targeted usually because they apparently looked or talked the wrong way.
Most of the adults who spoke suggested as a solution more strict consequences for those caught bullying. They also suggested more established support networks for the victims. Both ideas seemed appropriate to me, yet clearly incommensurate on their own. These have been the same solutions offered for years and bullying has not been prevented as a result. When it was my panel’s turn to speak, we pointed out that bullying is not an isolated act, but an obvious by-product of a culture sick with the drive of competition. We dared to be more explicit about the root problem: capitalism. (In case you’re wondering, no. The police stationed at the City Hall building were not in attendance at the event. And no, they did not ask us to spend the night.)
Who is ultimately responsible for Amanda Todd’s death? Who can stop bullying?
Is it the teachers? First of all, that depends on if the teacher is a decent human being. Many teachers, especially those who are male, do nothing but egg on the aggression in students. For our purposes, though, let’s say the teacher truly does care and wants to do what she or he can to prevent bullying. Well, next is how. The means available for teachers to make a difference are rapidly dwindling with school boards and administrations being taken over by the right-wing, comprised of people who are bent on disallowing even art and music programs, never mind a comprehensive anti-bullying curriculum. Regardless, much bullying happens out of the sight of teachers. It’s in the bathrooms, in the hallways, at recess, or before or after school.
Then it’s up to the parents to stop it. Once again, this depends on the parents being good human beings. Judging by the mass injustice and ecological crises caused by this society, I don’t see much reason to be optimistic about most people. However, for our purposes, let’s pretend these are parents that truly do care, that want to do what it takes to stop their child from bullying others or from being bullied. The parents can spend all the time they’d like having conversations with their child after school, but most kids learn just as much or more about life from the other kids they are around during the day. Unless every parent of every student is teaching the same lessons of love and compassion, and unless every student is listening in earnest and soaking up the morals, it’s only a matter of time before one child comes across another who says something like, “hey, let’s go make fun of that girl’s crooked teeth” or “hey, look at that fat kid.”
All of this brings us back to the original culprit; the one that creates the indecency of so many teachers and parents who enable bullying. I’m speaking of the dominant culture. If we have any chance of stopping the cruelty committed by children, we must stop the cruelty committed by adults. Where do we think the kids learn it? As Fazeela Jiwa notes, “Violent behavior stems from a tolerance of, or a reluctance to acknowledge, the power imbalances mired in the fabric of our social structures at all age levels…The same oppressive learned behaviors occur in the workplace, in bars and clubs, on the street, and in other adult-inhabited places.”
This whole country was founded on bullying. It started and continues with the genocide of indigenous people, the enslavement of Africans, the use of women as chattel, and the destruction of the natural world. To stop bullying means to stop the misogynists, white supremacists, homophobes, and earth-killers in power. It means to end capitalism.
Amanda Todd’s never ending story eventually did end when she tried again to drink bleach, and this time succeeded in taking her life. Even after her death, people continue to celebrate her humiliation and complain about the public outcry as annoying. This is sadism beyond words.
Those who are bullied need to know it’s not their fault. Those who are not bullied need to stand in absolute solidarity and intervene at every instance of abuse. As long as some people profit, whether socially or economically or both, from another’s suffering, none of us are free. Amanda’s never ending story is the never ending story of so many suffering under this cruel and ruthless culture. Unless we rise up to stop it, we can expect nothing from the future but more Amanda Todds.
“Why do I get this?” the flashcards in Amanda’s video finished. “I messed up by why follow me. I left your guys city. I’m constantly crying now. Every day I think why am I still here? My anxiety is horrible now. Never went out this summer. All from my past…lifes never getting better. Can’t go to school meet or be with people. Constantly cutting. I’m really depressed. I’m on antidepressants now and counseling and a month ago this summer I overdosed. In hospital for 2 days. I’m stuck…whats left of me now. Nothing stops. I have nobody. I need someone. My name is Amanda Todd.”
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 18, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction
By Agence France-Presse
An alarming 50 percent of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed in the last 100 years, threatening human welfare at a time of increasing water scarcity, a new report said.
Wetlands serve as a source of drinking water and provide protection against floods and storms, yet they have been decimated to make space for housing, factories and farms or damaged by unsustainable water use and pollution.
“In just over 100 years we have managed to destroy 50 percent of the world’s wetlands,” said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme.
“It is a startling figure,” he said at a UN conference in Hyderabad.
The report, compiled by an ongoing research project entitled TEEB, or The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity, said coastal wetland losses in some regions, including Asia, have been happening at a rate of 1.6 percent per year.
“Taking mangroves as an example, 20 per cent (3.6 million hectares) of total coverage has been lost since 1980, with recent rates of loss of up to one percent per year,” said the report released Tuesday.
“We need wetlands because our existence, our food and our water is at stake,” said Ritesh Kumar of the environmental group Wetlands International.
Wetlands are known to cover about 13 million square kilometres (five million square miles) of the Earth’s surface, and are a natural sink for Earth-warming carbon dioxide, act as fish nurseries and are important tourist attractions.
In the United States alone, wetlands are estimated to provide $23 billion worth of storm protection every year, the report said.
The report was released at a conference of the UN Convention on Biodiversity, where environment ministers will hold three days of talks from Wednesday to try and raise funds to stop the decline of Earth’s natural resources.
From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/17/half-of-all-wetlands-destroyed-since-1900-threatening-human-welfare/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 17, 2012 | Strategy & Analysis
The modern environmental movement began some 40 years ago, and by virtually every metric, the state of the planet has spiraled horrifically into catastrophe since then.
Air, the world over, is more polluted and congested with poisons than ever before. Water available to ecosystems and people is reduced every year as more and more is stolen for industry and corporate agriculture, and what is left over is increasing toxified; 80% of rivers in the U.S. no longer support life. On this continent, 98% of native forests have been felled forever, the insanity of their murder driven more by an over-abundance of timber mills and public subsidies than actual consumer demand. Climate change proceeds ever faster apace, and this summer, 97% of Greenland’s surface ice melted in seven days, and the entirety of North America was ravaged by extreme weather. Industrial fishing has devastated our oceans, and now 90% of large fish are extinct. Every day 200 species are extirpated forever.
The death machine of industrial civilization speeds ever apace, accelerating daily as it dismantles the living systems of earth. If it is to be stopped, we cannot afford any qualms about using any and all means available to halt it in its bloody tracks. Time is short, and militant, underground resistance is required if we are to decisively stop the powerful from exploiting the marginalized and destroying the planet. Attacks on the physical infrastructure of this corrupt arrangement of power—the oil, electric, and industrial infrastructure that prop it up and keep it functioning—are the surest route to a livable, desirable future.
But such serious and determined resistance doesn’t appear in a vacuum; it grows from an uncompromising culture of resistance, a culture that not only embraces the need to fight back, but that makes resistance its mandate.
Deep Green Resistance is working to build that culture of resistance, and as one small part of that, we’re introducing Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance, a weekly column dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation. Be on the lookout for essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more.
Underground and militant organizations and tactics have been a major part of nearly all social movements for the undeniably compelling reason that they are effective. And with everything worth loving at stake, that must be our metric. As an aboveground organization, we must dare to speak out in support of such resistance, dare to call for radical underground resistance, and dare to defend and openly celebrate it whenever it does take place.
Talking openly about such radical action, dissecting and studying the organization, tactics and strategies of past movements, we hope to help create an encouraging dialogue of learning, growth, and—of course—resistance.
In these times, in light of the ongoing omnicide inflicted by the dominant culture against life, it becomes a duty to unflinchingly embrace, advocate, defend and celebrate underground resistance. Another 200 species disappeared from the world forever today, and they were our kin. They will continue vanishing until we muster the collective courage to move beyond our fears and hesitations (however legitimate they may be), to decisively stop their murders; to dismantle the industrial system that is killing everything by any means necessary.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org
