by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Malaysia Sun
George W. Bush and several other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.
In a unanimous vote on Saturday the symbolic Malaysian war crimes tribunal, part of an initiative by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, found the former US President guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Seven of his former political associates, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were also found guilty of war crimes and torture.
Press TV has reported the court heard evidence from former detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay of torture methods used by US soldiers in prisons run by the American forces.
One former inmate described how he had been subjected to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months.
A high ranking former UN official, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, who also attended the trial, later told Press TV that the UN had been too weak during the Bush administration to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
He said: “The UN is a weak body, corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests. They don’t respect the charter. They don’t respect the international law. They don’t respect the Geneva Conventions…A redundant, possibly a dangerous, and certainly corrupted organization.”
Following the hearing, former Malaysian premier Mahatir said of Bush and others: “These are basically murderers and they kill on large scale.”
It was the second so-called war crimes tribunal in Malaysia.
The token court was first held in November 2011 during which Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were found guilty of committing “crimes against peace” during the Iraq war.
From Malaysia Sun:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 11, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Drew Sully / Indigenous Action
A group of Diné and Hopi people ( including traditional people and elders) upset by the latest colonial attack on indigenous peoples water rights, gathered to protest the visits of two US Senators to the Navajo Nation today. The people had gathered to say “no deal” to s2109, the bill that would allow for more water to flow into Arizona for the benefit of companies and urban growth.
Protesters chanted “water is life”, “free indian water ends now”, “let the water flow”, “sewage water for McCain and Kyl”, other chants were said in Diné.
Protesters waited for Navajo president Ben Shelly and US senators McCain and Kyl to exit the meeting in Tuba City, on the Navajo Nation. Earlier protesters marched in the streets of Tuba City, as Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly met with the senators to discuss the further dismantling of Navajo and Hopi water rights. Navajo Nation president Ben Shelly has left the meeting and said that there is no deal yet made, and that they are going to hear input from 7 of the 111 chapter houses (similar to districts) and council delegates.
Senators McCain and Kyl were in Tuba City to gain official support from the Tribal governments for their bill, Senate Bill 2109, described in a Native News Network article as:
Senate Bill 2109 45; the “Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement Act of 2012″ was introduced by Kyl and McCain on February 14, 2012, and is on a fast track to give Arizona corporations and water interests a “100th birthday present” that will close the door forever on Navajo and Hopi food and water sovereignty, security and self-reliance.
S.2109 asks the Navajo and Hopi peoples to waive their priority Water Rights to the surface waters of the Little Colorado River “from time immemorial and thereafter, forever” in return for the shallow promise of uncertain federal appropriations to supply minimal amounts of drinking water to a handful of reservation communities.
The Bill – and the “Settlement Agreement” it ratifies – do not quantify Navajo and Hopi water rights – the foundation of all other southwestern Indian Water Rights settlements to date – thereby denying the Tribes the economic market value of their water rights, and forcing them into perpetual dependence on uncertain federal funding for any water projects.
The fight for Diné and Hopi water rights continues as several indigenous struggles persist across Arizona to protect sacred sites, stop cultural genocide, and prevent further destruction of the earth and its people for corporate profit.
From Indigenous Action: http://www.indigenousaction.org/from-the-fontlines-of-the-water-wars-dine-and-hopi-water-rights-at-risk-protesters-gather-on-navajo-nation/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 25, 2012 | Male Supremacy, Worker Exploitation
By Gail Dines
I usually like watching Meryl Streep, but I seriously hope that she doesn’t win an Oscar on Sunday for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher. I couldn’t stand the thought of more people going to see such a dreadful piece of right-wing propaganda. I actually paid money to see The Iron Lady, a new film that is ostensibly about the life of Thatcher (nicknamed “the milk snatcher” for ending free school milk). All I could think about during the torturous 100 minutes, was what great timing this film is for the Republicans. Just as they try to sell neoliberal ideology to an increasingly impoverished working class, here comes a movie that celebrates one of their most ardent proponents. From the reviews, I expected a sanitized version of Thatcher’s hideously destructive policies, but this was so sanitized that you would have thought that this poor, misunderstood woman was in fact the best thing that ever happened to Britain since Marmite.
The film is mainly focused on the last few years where Thatcher’s increasing dementia makes her a kinder and gentler neoliberal. This was a clever ploy by the filmmakers since it would have been difficult to generate any empathy for Thatcher had it centered on her glory days of dismantling Britain’s welfare state. In place of the mean spirited, vicious shill of the elite that she was, we get a doddering old woman who has heart-warming conversations with deceased Denis. In flashbacks, she is depicted as the only Tory “man” enough to destroy the money-grabbing unions.
When we do get a glimpse, and mind you it is just a glimpse, of the hell she put the country through – from the miners’ strike to the Falkland’s war – the next scenes show her being celebrated, because tough as she was, and however bitter the medicine, we are assured that her policies delivered Britain from socialist decay to prosperity. When the filmmakers show her critics, it is either hapless Michael Foot frothing at the mouth, or angry strikers screaming in her face as poor Maggie looks on pained and scared. The working class is reduced to a band of nameless thugs who are busy burning buildings, and too stupid to understand how her draconian cuts will, in the long run, save them. To be fair, there are scenes of police brutality, but these are overwhelmed by images of Thatcher shuffling around in her slippers talking to Denis.
One of the more interesting themes in the film is the idea that Thatcher saw herself as a trailblazer for women. Much has been written about her dislike of feminism, and the fact that women and children suffered disproportionally from her policies, and that during her time in office, she appointed just one woman to her cabinet. Of course, few feminists want to own Thatcher as a kindred sister, but in a way, Thatcher should be seen as an example of what happens when feminism adopts Thatcherism.
In a bizarre way, Thatcher’s “feminism” was prescient in that today’s popular feminism, with its celebration of individual empowerment and personal choices, indeed makes Thatcher a Third Wave feminist success story. The movie celebrates her tough decisions, and her obstinate agency, whatever the consequences. Similarly, today’s feminism-lite is all about the elite women who get to enjoy the goodies that capitalism hands out to a few of us, devoid of any political understanding of how economic, political and legal institutions operate to limit the life chances of poor white women and women of color. These elite women run the mainstream blogs, journals and publishing houses, and it is their experiences that become normalized and celebrated as feminism.
That these women may be working in institutions that reproduce gender, class and racial inequality, and hence are now part of the problem, is ignored, and those who do point this out are smacked down for denying women “agency.” Equally problematic is the inability of elite feminists to understand that, just because they themselves have class and race privileges, this does not change the conditions of life for most women on the planet. Developing theory from the experiences of the most privileged individuals makes for a feminist movement that is popular with the boys, but irrelevant to most women. Thatcher famously said that there is no such thing as society; no structure, no collectivity, only individuals. She was wrong, but how awful that much of what passes for feminism today has embraced such an idea.
GAIL DINES is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston. Her latest book is Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality (Beacon Press)
From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/24/the-feminism-of-maggie-thatcher/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Feb 17, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Environment News Service
A natural gas drilling rush is on in rural North Dakota. And with it, residents are reporting growing numbers of respiratory ailments, skin lesions, blood oozing from eyes, and the deaths of livestock and pets.
Elsewhere, residents of Texas, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming and other states who thought they’d hit the lottery by signing natural gas drilling leases have watched their drinking water turn noxious: slick, brown, foamy, flammable.
In December, for the first time, federal regulators scientifically linked hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to the contamination of an aquifer, refuting repeated industry claims that the practice does not pollute drinking water.
It happened in the rural ranching community of Pavillion, Wyoming, an area riddled with 162 natural gas wells dug between 1990 and 2006. Despite a decade of complaints from residents that their reeking water was undrinkable – and that many suffered from nerve damage, asthma, heart trouble and other health problems – state officials did nothing.
Finally the EPA stepped in, launching a three-year study running from 2008 to 2011.
In its report, the EPA identified numerous fracking chemicals in Pavillion’s water. Cancer-causing benzene was found at 50 times safe levels, along with other hazardous chemicals, methane, diesel fuel, and toxic metals – in both groundwater and deep wells.
Now, across the country in Pennsylvania, the EPA is testing drinking water in 61 locations in Susquehanna County for possible fracking-related contamination.
Nationwide, residents living near fracked gas wells have filed over 1,000 complaints of tainted water, severe illnesses, livestock deaths, and fish kills. Complaints, sometimes involving hundreds of households, have risen in tandem with a veritable gold rush of new natural gas wells – now numbering about 493,000 across 31 states.
This month’s hearings on the EPA’s Pavillion report, led by the House subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, have been contentious, with pro-drilling politicians and industry representatives attacking its conclusions.
“The EPA is trying to go after fracking everywhere they can,” said subcommittee chairman Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican. “They’ve had absolutely no proof that fracking had polluted drinking water, that I know of.”
Both he and industry spokesmen implied that the media had created a poorly-informed frenzy, spreading fear and mistrust of fracking.
However, James Martin, the EPA’s regional administrator for the West, testified that cement casings that should have protected drinking water were weak or missing – a possible source of contamination.
Other witnesses, including Dr. Bernard Goldstein, of the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health, argued that the public should be concerned, noting that policy makers lack adequate information to protect public health.
Still, the fracking industry goes virtually unregulated. Why? The answer is money.
The oil and gas industry has reaped billions in profits from fracking. And since 1990, they’ve pumped $238.7 million into gubernatorial and Congressional election campaigns to persuade lawmakers that fracking is safe, which has effectively blocked federal regulation.
Republican candidates received at least three times more cash than Democratic candidates. Fracking industry spending especially targeted oversight – members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Top Congressional recipients include Joe Barton and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, with contributions of $514,945 and $417,556 respectively; Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, who received $372,450; and Tim Murphy, a Pennsylvania Republican who took in $275,499.
James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, who accepted $357,788, claimed the EPA study was “not based on sound science but rather on political science.”
The industry spent an additional $726 million on lobbying from 2001.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett also received hefty election support – $361,207. Corbett has signaled willingness to sign a fracking bill passed by the state Senate this month that offers huge benefits to natural gas drillers and essentially prevents municipalities and environmentalists from taking action against the location of wells.
Today, only four of 31 fracking states have significant drilling rules, while the gas industry is exempted from seven major federal regulations.
One of these, the “Halliburton loophole,” pushed through by former Vice-President/former Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney, exempts corporations from revealing the chemicals used in fracking fluid – bypassing the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts.
Recently, five states have adopted disclosure rules, though they still allow for “proprietary trade secrets.”
Another loophole leaves hazardous waste, including contaminated soil, water and drilling fluids, unregulated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
Still another loophole dodges the Superfund law, which requires that polluters remediate for carcinogens like benzene released into the environment – except if they come from oil or gas.
Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, which was invented by Halliburton in the 1940s, injects water, sand and chemicals into the ground at high pressure, blasting apart shale bedrock to release natural gas. However, industry’s reassurance that fracking is an old technology with a proven safety record is misleading.
Modern fracking is drastically different, using new chemical mixtures and millions rather than thousands of gallons of water injected at far higher pressure. It takes between one and 10 million gallons of water to frack one well.
Last week it was revealed that one well in Carrollton, Ohio, required 969,024 pounds (484.5 tons) of chemical additives, 5,066 tons of sand and 10.5 million gallons of water. Up to 40 percent of that water returns to the surface, carrying toxic drilling chemicals, high levels of salts, and sometimes, naturally-occurring radioactive material.
A 1990 industry study concluded that radium in drilling wastewater dumped off the Louisiana coast posed “potentially significant risks” of cancer for people who regularly eat fish from those waters.
Most fracking water remains underground, potentially polluting aquifers and drinking water. Streams and groundwater can be contaminated by spills, surface wastewater pits, and by millions of tons of chemical-laden dirt removed during the drilling process. Sewage treatment plants aren’t equipped to treat chemicals or radioactivity in frackwater that could end up in drinking water.
Today, 65 probable fracking chemicals are federally listed as hazardous. Many others remain unstudied and unregulated, making it impossible to assess the effects on water resources.
EPA documents note that some “cause kidney, liver, heart, blood, and brain damage through prolonged or repeated exposure,” and that fracking fluid migrates over unpredictable distances through different rock layers.
Last August, a national association of pediatricians published concerns that children are more susceptible to fracking chemical exposure than adults.
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