by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Aug 8, 2013 | Defensive Violence, Property & Material Destruction, Strategy & Analysis
By Lexy Garza and Rachel / Deep Green Resistance
Humans are storytelling creatures, and our current strategy as a movement is a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. We need to ask whether that story matches up with reality, and with the way social change has happened throughout history.
So here’s the story as it stands:
- By raising awareness about the issues, we will create a shift in consciousness.
- A shift in consciousness will spark a mass movement.
- A mass movement can successfully end the murder of the planet by using exclusively pacifist tactics.
We all know this narrative, we hear it referenced all the time, and it resonates with a lot of people, but we need to examine it with a critical eye along with the historical narratives that are used to back it up. There are truths behind these ideas, but there is also the omission of truth, and we can decipher the interests of the historian by reading between the lines. Let’s take each piece of this narrative in turn to try and find out what’s been omitted and those interests that omission may be concealing.
So let’s start with the idea of “a shift in consciousness.” The idea that we can educate society into a new and different state of consciousness has been popularized most recently by writers like David Korten, who bases his analysis on the idea:
“The term The Great Turning has come into widespread use to describe the awakening of a higher level of human consciousness and a human turn from an era of violence against people and nature to a new era of peace, justice and environmental restoration.”
Another way that this idea is often mentioned is in the form of the Hundredth Monkey myth. A primatologist named Lyall Watson wrote about a supposed phenomenon where monkeys on one island began teaching each other to wash sweet potatoes in the ocean before eating them. Myth has it that once the hundredth monkey learned to do it, monkeys on other islands who had no contact with the original potato washing monkeys spontaneously began washing potatoes, exhibiting a kind of tipping point or collective jump in consciousness. The existence of this phenomenon has been thoroughly debunked, and even Watson himself has admitted that he fabricated the myth using “very slim evidence and a great deal of hearsay.” This hasn’t stopped optimistic environmentalists from invoking the hundredth monkey phenomenon to defend the idea that through raising our collective consciousness, by getting through to that hundredth monkey, we’ll spark a great turning of humankind away from the behaviors that are killing the planet.
Unfortunately, this line of thinking doesn’t pan out historically. Let’s take the example of resistance against the Nazi regime and the genocide it committed. And let’s look at some omitted historical information. In 1952, after the Nuremberg Trials, after all of the information about the atrocities of the holocaust had become common knowledge, still only 20% of German citizens thought that resistance was justifiable during wartime which, under the Nazis or any other empire, is all the time. And mind you, the question was not whether they personally would participate in the resistance; it was whether they thought any resistance by anyone was justifiable.
At the time that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, 80% of Southern whites still disapproved of giving legal rights to black people. So, raised awareness of the atrocities of the holocaust and of American slavery did not translate into an increased willingness to support resistance. It was not a shift in consciousness that got the civil rights act passed – it was the hard and dangerous work of organizing, protesting, and putting pressure on the government not by changing its mind but by forcing its hand. [1]
This same unfortunate trend is true about current efforts to educate about climate change. A recent Yale study found that raised awareness about the facts of climate change is not the most powerful influence on someone’s attitude about the issue. Far more powerful on an individual’s attitude are the attitudes of their culture and their community. Right now, the culture we live in here in the US is dedicated to downplaying the risks and tamping down any kind of resistance. Our way of life depends on the very technologies that are causing climate change, and it’s difficult to make someone understand something if their salary, much less their entire way of life, depends on not understanding it. [2]
Pointing these things out is not intended to devalue education efforts. If we didn’t think education was important, we wouldn’t be writing this, and every social justice movement that’s had a serious impact has been very intentional about education. But it’s important to put education in perspective as just one tactic in our toolbox. If we’re looking to education and raising awareness as a strategy unto themselves as many seem to be, history tells us that we’re bound to be disappointed.
So who is served by the dominance of this narrative? Those who are profiting from the destruction of the planet are the ones whose interests are served by this because the longer we wait for the mythical great turning, or the hundredth monkey, or the next level of consciousness, the more time we give this system to poison the air and water, gut the land, and chew up what little biodiversity we have left.
Ideas can be powerful, but only if they get people to act. History tells us that more awareness often does not translate into more action. Let’s take the focus off trying to change people’s ideas about the world, and start focusing on changing material circumstances.
Mass Movement
Part and parcel with the idea of a consciousness shift is the hope that such a shift will lead to a mass movement, and this idea is extremely prevalent among many environmentalists.
We have Bill McKibben saying things like, “I can’t think of anything we can do except keep trying to build a big movement. There’s nothing else that’s ever going to do it.” – Bill McKibben
This is a very absolute statement, and it shows that folks like McKibben who have the most clout in the mainstream environmentalist crowd are telling us in no uncertain terms that building a mass movement is the only hope that we have to halt the destruction of the planet. I would hope that if he’s so sure about that, he has history and some evidence on his side to back it up.
And to be certain, there are examples throughout history of times when numbers mattered. Strikes, the Montgomery Bus Boycott – the key factor in some victories has been numbers. But the omitted history here is that a mass movement is not the only thing that has ever worked.
One of the most successful movements against oil extraction to date has been MEND, which stands for Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta. The area was being ravaged by Shell, and just a few hundred people took on both the Nigerian military and Shell’s private military. They’ve won popular support among the Niger Delta community, and more importantly, those few hundred people have managed to make significant reductions in the oil output from the region, which is something that mainstream environmental movement can’t boast by any stretch of the imagination.
The French Resistance to German occupation during WWII played a significant role in facilitating the Allies’ rapid advance through France, and active resisters to the Nazi occupation of France was composed of about one percent of the population. Supporters, judging by how many people were reading the underground newspaper, were as much as ten percent of the population, but the active resistance – those who were organizing strikes, gathering intelligence on the German military, sabotaging arms factories, attacks on the electrical grid, telecommunications, attacking German forces and also producing underground media about these activities – these folks were a very small segment of the population, about one percent, hardly a mass movement.
The Irish Republican Army, which fought the British occupation of Ireland, is a similar case with regard to the numbers. At the peak of the IRA’s resistance, when they were the most active, they had 100,000 members, which was just over 2% of the population, only 15,000 of which were guerilla fighters. And they had 700 years of resistance culture to draw on, while our modern environmental movement has been losing ground steadily in the fifty years since its birth.
This is not to say that broad popular support isn’t something we should hope for or something we should value, but we do need to call into question the idea, an idea that people like Bill McKibben seem to completely buy into, that a mass movement is the only scenario we can hope for. The history of resistance tells us otherwise, it tells us that small groups of committed people can be and have been successful in resisting empire.
Who is served by the dominant mass movement narrative? The people who are murdering the planet are served by this narrative. They are the victors, and they will continue to be the victors until we stop buying into their version of history and their vision of the future. While we wait for a mass movement, they are capitalizing on our paralysis and our inaction. And another 200 species went extinct today.
Dogmatic Pacifism
Recently we’ve seen the rise of the term eco-terrorist to define groups or individuals who use tactics involving force. We’ve even seen recent legislation, like House Bills 2595 and 96 in Oregon, used to redefine tree sits and other nonviolent forest defense tactics as terrorism. The FBI defines eco-terrorism as “”the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against people or property by an environmentally oriented, subnational group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.”
When I hear the term eco-terrorism, I’m reminded of a bumper sticker that my friend has on her car, which says “they only call it class warfare when we fight back.” In this case, they only call it terrorism when people fight back. US imperialism, police violence, and the eradication of 200 entire species every single day – to the FBI, these things don’t count as terrorism. But the destruction of property, even if it harms no humans at all, gets condemned not only by the FBI, but by mainstream environmental organizations as well.
“The Sierra Club strongly condemns all acts of violence in the name of the environment,” said Bruce Hamilton, Sierra Club conservation director. “That type of criminal behavior does nothing to further the cause of promoting safe and livable communities.” I would like to hear Bruce Hamilton tell that to the living communities who are still alive today because of the use of forest defense tactics. I think they would disagree.
A side note on the Sierra Club: Between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club accepted over $25 MILLION in donations from Chesapeake Energy, one of the biggest gas drilling companies in the US and a firm heavily involved in fracking. Of course, the higher ups in the Club kept this from the members. At the time they ended their relationship with Chesapeake Energy in 2010, they turned their back on an additional $30 million in donations. We have to ask if a corporation, which like all corporations is singularly capable of focusing on profits, would donate any money much less that much money to a group using tactics they felt would be remotely likely to put a dent in their revenue.
So people like Hamilton are not only condemning acts they calls violent, but they’re condemning criminal behavior in the name of the environment. The problem with that is that the government, and the corporations that run it, THEY decide what is criminal and what isn’t, and they are increasingly criminalizing any action that has a chance of challenging their power or profits.
As activist Tim DeChristopher found out, something as nonviolent as bidding on land against oil companies is criminal. As occupy protesters found out, occupying public space is criminal.
If activists accept the line between legality and criminality as a line that cannot be crossed, they accept the idea that activists should only take actions sanctioned by the very people whose power we should be challenging. The state tends to criminalize, or classify as “violent,” any type of action that might work to challenge the status quo. Let’s keep that in mind as we look at the historical examples that are often used to back up this emphasis on the exclusive use of nonviolent tactics.
The fight against British occupation led by Gandhi is often the first and most prominent example used to promote exclusive nonviolence. Gandhi gained notoriety by leading large nonviolent protests like marches, pickets, strikes, and hunger strikes. He eventually was allowed to engage in negotiations with the occupying British who agreed to free imprisoned protesters from prison if Gandhi called off the protests. Gandhi is sometimes portrayed as single handedly leading a nonviolent uprising and forcing the British to make concessions, but we have to ask – what is the omitted history here?
The truth is that the success of the movement against the British occupation was not solely the result of pacifist tactics; it was the result of a diversity of tactics. While Gandhi was organizing, a socialist named Bhagat Singh became disillusioned with what he saw as the ineffectiveness and hypocrisy of Gandhi’s tactics. Singh went on to lead strikes and encourage militancy against the British occupation, and is considered one of the most influential revolutionary leaders in India, more revered by some in India than Gandhi. The combination of economic tactics, peaceful and symbolic actions, cultural revival, and yes, militancy, had an effect together. Most in the West, the activists that I’ve met that look to nonviolence as the primary guiding principle for their tactics have never heard of Bhagat Singh.
George Orwell had this to say on the topic of Gandhi: “Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If others imagine that one can somehow ‘overcome’ the German army by lying on one’s back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen. As an ex-Indian civil servant, it always makes me shout with laughter to hear, for instance, Gandhi named as an example of the success of non-violence. As long as twenty years ago it was cynically admitted in Anglo-Indian circles that Gandhi was very useful to the British government. Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”
Another prominent proponent of nonviolence was Martin Luther King Jr. For a people terrorized by the violence of poverty, police violence, white supremacist terrorism, and other horrors, the power of King’s words and the importance of his work, his significance to the civil rights movement, cannot be overstated. Other nonviolent groups and action like the freedom riders were very effective in demonstrating the reality of racist brutality. However, the gains made by the movement during that time were not solely the result of nonviolent tactics.
The Black Panther party and other groups were advocating for self-defense tactics and militancy, and they were widely censured for it by more mainstream elements within the movement, much like militant environmental defense is being censured by the mainstream today. A group called the Deacons for Defense and Justice was training black communities in armed self-defense tactics.
Again, in the case of the civil rights movement, it was not nonviolent tactics alone that produced the gains of that era; it was a diversity of tactics.
We already mentioned MEND, and MEND is not a nonviolent group. They are an armed militia, and they use tactics from sabotage to kidnapping oil executives in order to defend their land and their people. The land is being utterly decimated by oil extraction. The people live in poverty despite the Nigerian government making millions from the oil rich area. The tactics MEND uses are a last resort. Before MEND, the resistance in the Niger Delta was primarily nonviolent, and it was led by a man named Ken Saro-Wiwa. Ken Saro-Wiwa and his group, Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, never deviated from their commitment to nonviolence, even as Ogoni resistance leaders were being routinely murdered, both by oil company thugs and legally, through state execution. In 1995, despite a massive human rights outcry from around the world, Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed on false charges by the Nigerian government, along with eight other Ogoni resistance leaders. As Orwell pointed out, the Nigerian government and the oil companies it serves can stand “moral force” until the cows come home, it has no effect. But the physical force of MEND’s tactics was able to reduce oil output by one third between 2006 and 2008.
The movement for women’s suffrage is another movement often misremembered in the popular imagination as being won solely by nonviolent means. In Britain, women started out with pickets, and lobbying, and letters to the editor. But when these tactics failed, some suffragists moved on to direct action, such as chaining themselves to the railings outside the prime minister’s home, and to actually going and casting ballots illegally, which got them arrested. After a protest in 1910 turned into a near riot due to brutal police beatings of protesting women, the movement began to wage guerilla warfare, orchestrating systematic window smashing campaigns and arson attacks. The slogan of this movement was “deeds, not words.” They were imprisoned and tortured for their efforts, but in 1918, they won the right to vote. Again, this fight was won by a diversity of tactics.
So there’s a pattern here to which parts of history become mainstream, and which parts become marginalized and even forgotten.
Whose interests are served by omitting militancy from the historical record? It is in the interest of governments and corporations that we never seize the physical force to actually stop them.
However, plenty of people around the world ARE seizing that physical force, and they have been throughout history. Instead of haggling with Monsanto over ineffective regulations of GMO crops, and the labeling of GMO products, Hungary decided to burn all of Monsanto’s GMO corn fields within their borders to protect the integrity of their other crops. Another example of GMO resistance is that this past June in Southern Oregon, 40 Tons or 6,500 sugar beet GMO crops were destroyed by hand and the field burned over a three night period. There has been a complete media blackout of this in response, perhaps to avoid inspiring more folks to take this type of action.
Fracking equipment was set ablaze around so called New Brunswick in Canada two weeks later. This is coming at a time of increased indigenous resistance to hydraulic fracturing in the region, after numerous direct actions, midnight seizures of drilling equipment, and a local man being struck by a contractor’s vehicle.
Another example of resistance through physical force is that instead of accepting the Brazilian government ignoring their voices and sentencing their way of life to be destroyed, hundreds of indigenous demonstrators occupied and began to manually dismantle Belo Monte Dam construction.
So let’s look again at the narrative we began with:
- By raising awareness about the issues, we will create a shift in consciousness.
- A shift in consciousness will spark a mass movement.
- A mass movement can successfully end the murder of the planet by using exclusively pacifist tactics.
I hope that we’ve been able to demonstrate that while there are underlying truths here, this narrative leaves out a lot of important information, and as a result, a strategy based on this narrative is not working.
Here’s a version of those ideas that incorporates some of the omitted information that we talk about today.
- Education is vitally important, but we can’t expect raising awareness to galvanize most people into action, especially when action would threaten their privilege and entitlement.
- Popular support is valuable, but resistance has often been carried out by small groups of determined people, not by mass movements.
- Nonviolence can be a powerful tactic, but winning strategies are marked by a diversity of both peaceful and militant tactics.
What does this mean for our actions? How can we incorporate this information into our strategy?
- Vocally challenge these narratives
- Support extra-legal resistance
- Support political prisoners
- Adhere to security culture
We tried really hard as we were writing this to not sugarcoat any of this. When I’ve spoken frankly in the past about biodiversity collapse, catastrophic climate change, and the horror I feel in response to them, I’ve had some people say “tone it down. Don’t be so doom and gloom, you’ve got to give the people hope.” Let me say now for the record – fuck hope. We don’t need it. As one author put it, “hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency.” In other words, you only need hope in situations where you have no control, no power. Those who do have power, who are using that power to murder the planet, have written a narrative that masks the power we could wield, that lies in order to make sure we never claim the tools to challenge their profits.
Every day that we abide by their rules and accept the narrative that serves their power is a day we waste. But every day is also a new chance to rewrite that narrative, to change the story. With a truer understanding of the past we can form a more effective strategy for the present. With a more effective strategy in the present, we can reject a future on the dying planet they have us headed toward.
With everything, literally, at stake, it’s time to do what we can with what we have, and it’s time to claim the legacy of resistance that these and other examples of silenced history could teach us.
References
[1] http://books.google.com/books?id=kKv8PXwIiFkC&pg=PA237&lpg=PA237&dq=civil+rights+gallup+polling+1960&source=bl&ots=-TTg7n7EbO&sig=odTF9mCzMqJkuPH2xZoRYCDPYaI&hl=en&ei=HkLgS-WcFpKwNtWsmKsH&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CCAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false
[2] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1981907
This is the second part of a two piece series on strategic resistance by Lexy Garza and Rachel. The first piece is available here: http://dgrnewsservice.org/2013/07/24/time-is-short-resistance-rewritten/
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a 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
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 31, 2013 | Mining & Drilling, Obstruction & Occupation
By Christopher Smart / The Salt Lake Tribune
Several environmental groups protesting tar sands development in the Book Cliffs region of southeast Utah stopped work Monday on a road that will serve a strip mine to be operated by Calgary-based U.S. Oil Sands.
Celia Alario, a spokeswoman for Canyon Country Rising Tide and Peaceful Uprising, said dozens of protesters had peacefully stopped road building on Seep Ridge Road and also interrupted mining operations at the East Tavaputs Plateau site. Protesters surrounded heavy equipment and, in some cases, chained themselves to it, she said.
No one was arrested or cited, said Uintah County Chief Deputy Sheriff John Laursen. He confirmed that 50 to 60 protesters halted road work and, for a time, closed the county road.
“Mostly we just wanted to make sure no one got hurt,” Laursen said.
The CEO of U.S. Oil Sands said his company is not building the road. It does, however, have a small test mine at the site but is not now producing oil. In a telephone interview, Cameron Todd said the oil sands mining operation is scheduled to ramp up in 2014.
The protest came after a week-long training camp that brought environmentalists to Utah from around the region for instruction in nonviolent, civil disobedience, according to a statement released by the organizations.
“The devastating consequence of dirty energy extraction knows no borders,” said Emily Stock, a Grand County resident and organizer with Canyon Country Rising Tide. “We stand together to protect and defend the rights of all communities, human and non-human.”
The U.S. Oil Sands CEO said he would not respond to the environmentalists’ claims.
“There is a [county] road contractor that is using our site as a staging area,” Todd explained. “I feel sorry for the contractor.”
Uintah County had long planned improvements on Seep Ridge Road, said Cheri McCurdy, executive director of the county’s Transportation Special Service District.
Public hearings on the Environmental Assessment were held in May 2009. The BLM gave approval for the road expansion in 2011. The road will serve the general public, ranchers, recreationists and energy companies, she said.
U.S. Oil Sands has received all the required regulatory permits to mine for tar sands in the region, according to a spokeswoman for the Utah School Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA), which is leasing the land to the Canadian interest.
“They are generating money for public schools,” said Deena Loyola. “That’s our legislative mandate.”
Currently, tar sands from mining operations in Alberta, Canada, are being refined in Salt Lake City by Chevron Corp.
Members of the environmental coalition have not planned any activities for the remainder of the week, Alario said. But they do expect to organize future protests on the East Tavaputs Plateau, and other energy extraction sites.
From The Salt Lake Tribune: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/56659831-90/alario-county-energy-mine.html.csp
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 1, 2013 | Alienation & Mental Health, Male Supremacy, Noncooperation, White Supremacy
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
People laugh at anything and everything these days, and they expect you to laugh along. In this age of utter cynicism, little is sacred, little is off-limits from humor, little is safe from the cultural tide of callous abuse. What’s worse: you laugh along. You may not want to, but you do.
Laughter is a beautiful thing—until it meets abuse. Like a spoonful of sugar with a stab in the back, it attempts to cover for abuse. Or like pouring salt in the wound, it can be the abuse itself. “Come on, it’s just a joke,” say abusers, as they mock you to the core, as they target any trace of sensitivity—read: humanity—for utter ridicule.
As a friend says, “cruel humor is the humor of sociopaths.” Any boundary set by another, any boundary placed on humor, will be broken. And to them, that’s what makes it funny.
Far from “just jokes,” this is a serious social problem. As psychologist Lundy Bancroft writes, “[H]umor is . . . . one of the powerful ways a culture passes on its values.” What does this say about a culture in which, from the most personal level to the mass one, abuse is merited funny; in which there exists so-called “gay jokes” and “rape jokes” and “race jokes”; in which humor is rated congruently with the scale of oppression or atrocity it invokes?
Not laughing is an act of protest. Some things are funny, of course, and some things are absolutely not. Boundaries do exist and they must be respected. Abusers live to breach them, using humor as one vehicle, one excuse. They want us to laugh along. With most everyone else joining in, it can be hard not to. But we mustn’t; we can’t give in. We may feel alone as the tide washes over us, but we’re not: we share the turbulence with all those whom the jokes are made at the expense of, the ones whose boundaries are under siege.
I can hear the chorus of apologists now, red-faced and shouting their mantra: “politically correct, politically correct, politically correct.”
This sentiment is not new to me. For my first group of so-called radical friends, “P.C.” was enemy number one. They were against the state, the authorities, and, above all, anyone who put a damper on their fun.
These friends just wanted a laugh. So they called African-Americans “niggers” and tattooed swastikas on their arms. So they called women “sluts” and watched torture porn. So they called lesbians and gays “faggots” and formed a punk band specifically to mock the suicide of a local 15-year-old gay boy.
All this was done in the name of irony and shock value, which is, as one of these friends put it, the point of being radical.
If it makes me politically correct to say out loud that this is just wrong, that this is in fact fucking sick, so be it. But I’m not concerned with being “correct.” I care about stopping injustice, whatever form it comes in. I am politically opposed, never mind correct, to these heartless attacks on the physical and emotional boundaries of others.
Those so quick to make accusations of “P.C.” rarely bother to learn what it is they’re saying. It has a history, notes Sheila Jeffreys: In the 1980s and ‘90s, “the feminist and anti-racist policies that had been adopted by education authorities and universities in the UK and the USA were being denounced as ‘political correctness’. The term ‘politically correct’ was a term of abuse used automatically and unthinkingly by many, whenever challenges were raised to practices which entrenched the rights and interests of rich white men.”
That’s the point, isn’t it? All pretenses of joke aside, abusers have one basic aim: to preserve the existing hierarchy which allows them to abuse in the first place. With iron boots already pressing down on the necks of the oppressed, humor serves as but one tool to that end.
The pursuit of irony makes for sad, miserable, ugly lives. Those who grasp for it do so in the absence of any real human emotion and human relationship. This is the ultimate irony: their hearts and minds are too dull to participate in the world without pretending it is one long joke.
“Lighten up,” they say. We all want to think of ourselves as good people, even if we have to convince ourselves that being abusive is not a disqualifier. As social beings, it hurts to be told we’ve done wrong, that we’ve acted unacceptably, even though we may know deep in our bones that it is true: the joke went too far.
In his book, The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen recounts the story of a friend looking for some sympathy after being called out for a racist joke. The friend is wary to accept responsibility and seems to ask for advice only in the hope of strokes to his bruised ego. Writes Jensen: “Before he even tells me the joke, the answer is obvious: of course the joke is racist. He understands that because he knows enough to form the question. Though he is struggling to understand why, his gut tells him it is a racist joke. At some level he knows that he told a racist joke to a group of white people. Why is he asking me? Is it the hope that I’ll tell him it wasn’t so bad after all? Or does he need someone to confirm what he knows in his gut and tell him that he is still a good person?”
Humor is worthless without an audience. Like children testing their parents, one person can crack jokes all day long, but unless there others around, and unless these others are willing to laugh, he’ll soon bore of talking to himself.
There would be no audience to abusive humor if our culture as a whole wasn’t based on abuse. But it is; it manufactures and encourages sociopathy. To protect the boundaries of individuals, we need to dismantle the dominant culture. We need to dismantle the oppressions that become the fare of laughter.
Let us now deprive the cruel of an audience and deprive the culture that supports them of its capacity to exist. Let us insist that, yes, it is so bad after all and, no, they are not good people. Let us laugh when it is right to do so and stand firmly when it is wrong.
When abuse is eradicated, when the sacred is defended, when boundaries are protected absolutely, when justice is wrought, we can look to the abusers writhing in their lack of joke material and ask: Who’s laughing now?
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. He can be contacted at benbarker@riseup.net.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 17, 2013 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Strategy & Analysis
nBy Michael Carter, Deep Green Resistance Colorado Plateau
The Pipeline Proposal
The Great Basin stretches from Utah’s Great Salt Lake to the Sierra Nevada Mountains and from southern Idaho to southern California. About seven inches of rain falls in Nevada a year, and some areas receive less than five. The Great Basin is a cold desert, and in eastern Nevada and western Utah, it has been getting drier for a decade. [1]
The Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA), the water agency for Las Vegas, Henderson, and North Las Vegas, proposes pumping up to 200,000 acre-feet annually from eastern to southern Nevada through 300 miles of pipeline. An acre-foot is enough water to cover an acre of land a foot deep, or about 325,850 US gallons. Cost estimates vary from $3.5 billion (what SNWA tells the public) to $15 billion dollars (what SNWA was required by law to tell the State Engineer). This project is seen as a threat by several Indian tribes and rural communities, and is expected to do immense damage to many rare endemic species, desert vegetation, and the land itself, much of which is open range. [2]
Basin and Range
Life in the Great Basin’s valleys, human and otherwise, depends on shallow groundwater, springs, and creeks, which in turn depend on groundwater flows from rain and snow in mountain ranges. 200,000 acre-feet is about 65 billion gallons of water, equivalent to the average flow of Nevada’s Humboldt River. SNWA claims that it can pump this water from the Spring, Delamar, Dry Lake, and Cave Valleys without harm; though it’s clear to those who live in the Great Basin that if most of the water flowing in from the mountains is drawn away, eventually most everything in the valleys will die.
The Bureau of Land Management’s final decision on the right-of-way for the project [3] allows for the pumping of 150,000 annual acre-feet. [4] A drawdown projection commissioned by the Goshute Tribe [5] (and other analyses) reflect a far more destructive outcome than the SNWA claims. Access to Snake Valley (much of which is in Utah) groundwater is still in dispute, but the US Geological Survey has concluded the multiple valleys’ aquifers are connected, so it’s likely that Utah’s groundwater would be impacted anyway. [6]
According to the Great Basin Water Network, “Independent hydrologists dispute it is possible to pump and export so much water without causing major environmental degradation and destroying the livelihoods of rural residents in eastern Nevada and western Utah. The area targeted for the massive pumping proposal is home to National Wildlife Refuges… Great Basin National Park is surrounded by the proposed groundwater pump and export project. The proposed pumping scheme would bring two hundred or more wells with power lines, roads, and linked buried pipelines to cover the valleys on both sides of the National Park—some right on the border of the park.
Communities like Baker, Nevada on the Utah border would have large production wells in their backyard sending local water to a city 300 miles away.” [7] As pipeline foe Rick Spilsbury puts it, “This would mean the end of any economic development anywhere near the drained areas. The likely result would be a mass emigration and the eventual transformation of the area into a national toxic dump site.” Impacts to land, water, and air could extend as far as Salt Lake City and its surrounding urban areas (which already have some of the worst air pollution in the US). Physicians for Social Responsibility predicts a dewatered basin-and-range country could increase downwind particulate pollution from dust storms, including the toxic mineral erionite. [8] In textbook fashion, the city of Las Vegas is exporting suffering and violence to import resources that it cannot acquire in its immediate landbase.
Overdrawn River
Author Marc Reisner wrote, “To some conservationists the Colorado River is the preeminent symbol of everything mankind has done wrong—a harbinger of a squalid and deserved fate. To its preeminent impounder, the US Bureau of Reclamation, it is the perfection of an ideal.” [9] In 2013, American Rivers announced the Colorado as the US’s most endangered river, and that “over-allocation and drought have placed significant stress on water supplies, river health, and fish and wildlife. To underscore the immediacy of the problem, the basin is facing another drought this summer. The Bureau of Reclamation’s report released in December stresses that there is not enough water to meet current demands across the basin, let alone support future demand increases.” [10]
Under the interstate Colorado River Compact of 1922, the entire state of Nevada was allowed 300,000 acre feet per year (AFY) of Colorado River water. One AFY is approximately 3380 liters per day, “the planned water usage of a suburban family household, annually. In some areas of the desert Southwest, where water conservation is followed and often enforced, a typical family uses only about 0.25 [AFY].” [11] The Imperial Irrigation District, whose water rights predate the 1922 Compact, owns approximately three million acre feet (MAF) per year, and the entire city of Los Angeles uses about one MAF per year. Though laws controlling the use of water are typically state, not federal, and vary widely from state to state (in Arizona, for instance, there is little legally recognized relationship between ground and surface water), the 1922 Compact is a binding agreement between states. The Upper Basin must deliver a total of 7.5 MAF per year to the Lower Basin (the dividing line is at Lee’s Ferry in Glen Canyon, in Utah), and the US must deliver one MAF a year to Mexico. [12] Across the entire Colorado River basin, nearly all climate models predict an increase in both aridity and flooding. [13]
As increasing temperatures force the jet stream further north and more water evaporate from soil and reservoirs like Lake Powell (where an average 860,000 acre-feet of water—about 8 percent of the Colorado River’s annual flow—is lost every year) [14], overall water availability will decrease even if summer storms and spring runoff paradoxically become more intense. 2012 was the first recorded year the Colorado River flow peaked in April. [15] Though the water level in Lake Mead (where Las Vegas siphons its water from) has priority over Lake Powell’s (upstream), Las Vegas has little water from the river’s apportionment overall because in 1922, when the Compact was made, there were very few people in Nevada and no guess at what Las Vegas might become.
Southern Nevada at one point had the highest growth rate in the US, but following the economic recession Nevada had the highest national rate of foreclosures, bankruptcies, and unemployment. In 2010, there were 167,564 empty houses in Nevada—one in seven. In Las Vegas, residential property prices have fallen by 50 percent on average from 2008 to 2011, when Nevada homes changed hands for an average of $115,000. [16] As one SNWA pipeline opponent remarked, “My house in Las Vegas dropped from $307,500 to be foreclosed, and then resold at $190,000.”
When the SNWA groundwater pipeline was first conceived, the water agency was planning for growth on a much higher trajectory, and this momentum has carried through the recession to the present day. So while southern Nevada’s water future in general is threatened by drought and Nevada’s small original apportionment, the groundwater pipeline is driven by hopes for future growth, not immediate need. [16]
Indigenous Human Rights
The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, or CTGR (the name “Goshute” derives from the native word Ku’tsip or Gu’tsip, people of ashes, desert, or dry earth), [17] “reside in an isolated oasis in the foothills of the majestic Deep Creek Mountains on what is now the Utah/ Nevada state line,” according to their web page Protect Goshute Water. There are 539 enrolled tribal members, and about 200 of them live in Deep Creek Valley. “Our reservation lies in one of the most sparsely populated regions of the United States, and it has always been our home. Resulting from this isolation, we have benefited by retaining strong cultural ties to Goshute land, our traditions, and a resolute determination to protect our ways.
Ironically, water, the most elemental resource in our basin, is the very thing developers now seek to extract and send 300 miles away for Las Vegas suburbs. The Southern Nevada Water Authority’s pipeline proposal would draw 150,000 acre feet per year from the Great Salt Lake Watershed Basin lowering the water table, drying up our springs, and fundamentally changing access to water over this vast region for plants, wildlife, and people.” They go on to say that “SNWA’s groundwater development application is the biggest threat to the Goshute way of life since European settlers first arrived on Goshute lands more than 150 years ago.” [18]
In Spring Valley in eastern Nevada, a narrow band of swamp cedar trees mark the site of 1863 and 1897 US military massacres of Goshute and Shoshone peoples, and here is where the Goshute and Duckwater and Ely Shoshone tribes grieve and hold spiritual ceremonies. Goshute tribal chairman Ed Naranjo says that “Swamp Cedars is important to many tribes, certainly to CTGR, Ely, and Duckwater, but also to many Paiute, Shoshone, and Ute Tribes.” The Swamp Cedars Massacre is relatively obscure, compared to well-known massacres at Bear River [19] and Wounded Knee.
Goshute elders believe that murder victims physically and spiritually fed the swamp-cedar trees; according to former Goshute council chairman Rupert Steele, “Otherwise you’d never see swamp cedar grow this tall and strong.” In a 2011 Nevada State Engineer hearing, an SNWA attorney likened the Goshute beliefs to children fearing the bogeyman. The Spring Valley swamp cedar grove is one of many sites that could be drained by the SNWA pipeline. [20] A “Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape” report on Spring Valley, Nevada, prepared by an independent ethnographer for Goshute and Ely and Duckwater Shoshone tribes was ignored by the BLM in their environmental analysis. [21]
Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone Indian, says that “As far as the Native Americans of Nevada and Utah are concerned, this is just a continuation of the land and resource grab that has existed since the authoring of the Bill of Rights. Those who take have been writing the rules. The Colorado River Compact was organized specifically to exclude Native Americans and Mexicans from having any water rights. And the omission of Federal water protections for Native Americans from State water affairs was obviously not an oversight, or it would have been fixed by now. Native Americans don’t have the legal ability to stop their exploitation. [22]
“The Western Shoshone still hunt and gather here—right where the worst of the environmental damage will be. The mass killing of life in this area will not only be the final blow to Western Shoshone culture, it will be a serious threat to their long-term sustainability—and even viability. Water is life. And SNWA intends to take it.”
Opposition
Not surprisingly, a water appropriation on this scale has been hard fought by those whose livelihoods will be affected, as well as indigenous communities and environmental groups. Even within southern Nevada there’s some rate-payer opposition [23]—the project’s costs will be added to water bills—and Utah’s governor Gary Herbert recently rejected a proposed agreement with the SNWA for Snake Valley groundwater. [24] Litigation on various aspects of this project may well proceed to the US Supreme Court.
(Though Herbert’s decision was widely praised by both West Desert ranchers and environmentalists, not everyone in Utah concurred. Ron Thompson, of the Washington County, Utah, Water Conservancy District, criticized the move as “hypocritical for us to tell Nevada not to develop a water project. Ultimately they will figure out how to do it.” [25] Washington County wants to build its own expensive water pipeline from Lake Powell to the St. George area, and Thompson thinks Governor Herbert is sacrificing a “positive tradition of bi-state cooperation” in turning the SNWA down. A Lake Powell pipeline opponent observed that “It’s imperative that opposition to both projects stays active and coordinated.” [26])
Deep Green Resistance’s Southwest Coalition proposes this strategy:
Though we’re too recently involved to have any legal standing, our emphasis on indigenous solidarity has drawn us to ally ourselves with the affected indigenous groups. Though their governments haven’t agreed to any formal affiliation, we offer them support through:
1. Organizing opposition in communities outside the reservations.
2. Fundraising for efforts to fight the pipeline, whatever that might be. Donations are tax-deductible and can be made by PayPal to deepgreenfertileground@gmail.com. Please put “SNWA” in the comments section. The Great Basin Water Network also accepts donations, at or Great Basin Water Network, P O Box 75, Baker, NV 89311 (Nevada non-profit #35-2278153).
3. Influencing public opinion and promoting taxpayer opposition to the pipeline.
4. Sponsoring educational events and outreach. This might include inviting indigenous people (and supporting travel costs) to events we can organize in Salt Lake City and Las Vegas to speak against the pipeline.
5. Organizing protests and rallies. We can help redefine this issue as one of human rights violation, not only environmental destruction.
6. Encouraging negative press coverage of the SNWA and pipeline proposal. Encouraging positive press coverage of the Great Basin’s unique beauty, and the long indigenous people’s relationship with it.
7. Discouraging project investors/lenders.
8. We can also organize and train for nonviolent civil disobedience to fight the pipeline construction, should legal or administrative efforts fail. This is a tactical tool that’s aimed at physically stopping construction. It’s not symbolic, it’s strategic; there are ways of minimizing the expense and suffering to activists and maximizing expense and delay of the enemy, and we feel it’s best to plan for the unfortunate possibility that this struggle may well arrive at this point. We believe it’s our responsibility as privileged members of the dominant culture to put our bodies between the bulldozers and indigenous peoples and lands.
Miscellaneous Articles
- “Goshutes blast BLM study on Las Vegas water pipeline,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 5, 2012, http://www.lvrj.com/news/goshutes-blast-blm-study-on-las-vegas-water-pipeline-165082706.html
- Joe Schoenmann, “Water Authority gets state agency’s backing for pipeline to transport water from Lincoln, White Pine counties,” Las Vegas Sun, September 12, 2012, http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/sep/12/water-authority-gets-state-agencys-backing-pipelin/
- Cy Ryan, “Environmental impact statement issued for proposed water pipeline,” Las Vegas Sun, August 3, 2012, http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2012/aug/03/environmental-impact-statement-issued-proposed-wat/
- David McGrath Schwartz, “Nevada leaders largely silent on pipeline controversy,” Las Vegas Sun, October 14, 2011, http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2011/oct/14/nevada-leaders-largely-silent-pipeline-controversy/
- Tara Lohan, “Las Vegas Accused of Engineering Massive Water Grab: Is This the Future of the West?” AlterNet, January 25, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/environment/las-vegas-accused-engineering-massive-water-grab-future-west-photo-slideshow?image-1=11&paging=off
Endnotes
[1] “Great Basin Water Issues,” Great Basin Water Network, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.greatbasinwater.net/issues/index.php This page offers a good overview of Great Basin water issues, including the SNWA proposed pipeline.
See the U.S. Drought Monitor for current data: The U.S. Drought Monitor. National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, United States Department of Agriculture, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/
[3] Sandra Chereb, “BLM approves Las Vegas water pipeline project,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, December 27, 2012, http://www.lvrj.com/news/blm–approves–las–vegas–water–pipeline–project-184948361.html
“Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project Final EIS,” US DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, August 3, 2012, http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/prog/planning/groundwater_projects/snwa_groundwater_project/final_eis.html
“Clark, Lincoln, and White Pine Counties Groundwater Development Project EIS Record of Decision,” U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR BUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT, December 27, 2012, http://www.blm.gov/nv/st/en/prog/planning/groundwater_projects/snwa_groundwater_project/record_of_decision.html
[4] “SNWA appears as if it’s planning on Snake Valley water, said Rob Mrowka of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.
Despite the fact that the Nevada engineer approved water rights of 84,000 acre feet, he said, the BLM is set to approve a pipeline capable of carrying 117,000 acre feet.” Christopher Smart, “BLM poised to OK Las Vegas plan to pump and pipe desert groundwater,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 6, 2012, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54624691-90/blm–eis–final–las.html.csp
Brian Maffly, “BLM’s decision on Nevada-Utah pipeline called ‘pure folly’; Right of way helps southern Nevada, but Utah’s Snake Valley water not in play—yet,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 28, 2012, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55538357-78/nevada–blm–decision–groundwater.html.csp
[5] “Ancestral Lands/Drawdown Scenario Map,” Protect Goshute Water, accessed May 10, 2013
[6] “While the BLM’s final EIS spares Snake Valley along the Utah-Nevada border from groundwater pumping, critics say drilling in nearby valleys will draw down the aquifer beneath Snake Valley,” “Goshutes blast BLM study on Las Vegas water pipeline,” Las Vegas Review-Journal, August 5, 2012, http://www.lvrj.com/news/goshutes–blast–blm–study–on–las–vegas–water–pipeline-165082706.html
[7] “Great Basin Water Issues,” Great Basin Water Network, accessed May 11, 2013, http://www.greatbasinwater.net/issues/index.php
[8]“Dr. Jeff Patterson, president of PSR [Physicians for Social Responsibility], said Westerners should be worried because there is no evidence of any serious attempt to determine if erionite exists in the same areas that would be ‘de-watered by the proposed Las Vegas pipeline and would be kicked up in the particulate pollution. Erionite can cause serious lung disease and a highly lethal cancer called mesothelioma,’” Brian Moench, “No end to Nevada’s quest for water,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 6, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/56107724-82/utah–nevada–erionite–las.html.csp
[9] Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986, 121.
[10] Amy Souers Kober, “Announcing America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2013,” American Rivers, April 17, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20130531040706/http://www.americanrivers.org/newsroom/blog/akober-20130417-announcing-americas-most-endangered-rivers-2013.html
[11] Acre-foot,” Wikipedia, accessed May 14, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre–foot
[12] The Colorado River is managed and operated under numerous compacts, federal laws, court decisions and decrees, contracts, and regulatory guidelines collectively known as ‘The Law of the River,’” “Colorado River Compact,” Wikipedia, accessed May 14, 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Compact
[13] Melanie Lenart, “Precipitation Changes,” Southwest Climate Change Network, September 18, 2008, http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/node/790#references
Gregory J. McCabe, David M. Wolock, “Warming may create substantial water supply shortages in the Colorado River basin,” Geophysical Research Letters, Volume 34, Issue 22, November 27, 2007, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL031764/abstract;jsessionid=400E4E84287315178759E2F3CEDCB107.d02t03
[14] “Glen Canyon Dam,” Wikipedia, accessed December 10, 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Canyon_Dam
[15] COLORADO BASIN RIVER FORECAST CENTER , NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE / NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION, accessed May 11, 2013, http://www.cbrfc.noaa.gov/rmap/peak/peakpoint.php?id=CCUC2
[16] Nick Allen, “Las Vegas: how the recession has hit Sin City,” The Telegraph, May 16, 2011, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8517423/Las-Vegas-how-the-recession-has-hit-Sin-City.html
[17] The Confederated Tribe of the Goshute. Pia Toya: A Goshute Indian Legend. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000.
[18] “The Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation,” Protect Goshute Water, accessed May 15, 2013
[19] Kristen Moulton, “At Bear River Massacre site, the names of the dead ring out,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/55727028-78/bear–massacre–river–shoshone.html.csp
[20] Stephen Dark, “Last Stand: Goshutes battle to save their sacred water,” Salt Lake City Weekly, May 9, 2012, http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-35-15894-last–stand.html?current_page=all
[21] Sylvester L. Lahren, Jr. Ph.D., “A Shoshone/Goshute Traditional Cultural Property and Cultural Landscape, Spring Valley, Nevada. Confidential and Proprietary Report for the Goshute Tribal Council,” Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, August 9, 2010.
[22] Christopher Smart, “Snake Valley water could land in U.S. Supreme Court,” The Salt Lake Tribune, August 7, 2012, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/54642624-90/snake–valley–nevada–rights.html.csp
“Nevada Groundwater Conservation: The Problem,” Center for Biological Diversity, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/deserts/nevada/groundwater.html
Rob Mrowka, “Groups join together to confront water rights issue,” Desert Report, Center for Biological Diversity/Great Basin Water Network, June, 2011, accessed December 26, 2012, http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/public_lands/deserts/nevada/pdfs/DR_Summer2011_Mrowka.pdf
George Knapp and Matt Adams, “I-Team: Court Ruling Emboldens Water Grab Opponents,” October 31, 2011,
[23] “Water pipeline hits opposition even in thirsty Vegas,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 2011, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52398491-78/vegas–las–nevada–utah.html.csp
[24] Christopher Smart, Judy Fahys and Brian Maffly, “Herbert rejects Snake Valley water pact with Nevada,” Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 2013, http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/56090274-78/valley–agreement–snake–utah.html.csp
[25] Brian Maffly, “Rejecting Nevada water deal hurts Utah, critics say,” Salt Lake Tribune, May 25, 2013,
[26] “Lake Powell Pipeline,” Citizens for Dixie’s Future, accessed May 27, 2013, http://citizensfordixie.org/lake–powell–pipeline/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 10, 2013 | Defensive Violence, Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
By Jorge Barrera / APTN
A Colombia guerilla group is trying to draw Ottawa into its battle with a Toronto-based mining company which is quietly trying to secure the release of one of its executives who has been held hostage since January.
The Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional (ELN) kidnapped Gernot Wober, 47, on Jan. 18, during an attack on the Snow Mine camp in Bolivar state, which sits in the northern part of the country. The guerilla group kidnapped five other people, including three Colombians and two Peruvians, who have all since been released.
The guerilla group says that Wober, the vice-president of Toronto-based Braeval Mining Corp, won’t be released until the company gives up gold mining concessions in the San Lucas mountain range which the ELN claims were initially given to local miners who live in the area.
In a statement issued Wednesday and posted on the guerilla group’s website, the ELN took aim at the Canadian government.
“The Canadian government should at least be concerned about whether its anti-corruption laws are being followed by Canadian companies in their foreign operations,” said the ELN. “Neither the Colombian nor Canadian governments have bothered to investigate our accusations about the dispossession of four mining concessions held by communities in the southern part of Boliver (state) by the Northern American company Braeval Mining Corporation.”
The ELN claimed the Colombian government was increasing military operations against the group to secure Wober’s release.
The ELN is the smaller of Colombia’s main guerilla groups. It’s estimated the ELN has between 2,000 to 3,000 guerilla fighters.
A spokesperson for Braeval said the company has been advised not to comment on the kidnapping.
Foreign Affairs emailed a statement to APTN National News saying federal government “officials continue to work closely with our partners on the ground.” The statement said officials are also in contact with Wober’s family.
“The government of Canada will not comment on efforts to secure the hostage’s release,” said the statement. “Due to privacy considerations, we cannot provide additional information about the situation.”
The ELN has released no evidence to back its claims that Braeval wrongly obtained the mining concessions.
According to his on-line work history, Wober has extensive experience in the mining sector, including involvement in projects in the Yukon, the Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Manitoba.
The activities of foreign mining companies, including those based in Canada, have long been a point of contention among Indigenous and local communities in Colombia.
Under Canada’s free trade agreement with Colombia, Ottawa is required to present an annual report on human rights in Colombia every year. Last year’s report failed to report on human rights in the country.
The National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (NIOC) has called on Canada to pressure the Colombian government to respect Indigenous rights in its mining laws.
In a recent interview with Maria Patricia Tobon Yagari, a lawyer with the NIOC said that mining companies present a bigger threat than the armed groups because the firms fuel the violence.
“The presence of these miners have reinforced (the violence) because they have benefited from it. By using private security they have forced these Indigenous groups and Colombian campesinos to resist and it has increased the violence in the territories,” said Tobon Yagari.
Tobon Yagari was scheduled to appear on Parliament Hill on May 22 but her visa was initially denied by Ottawa.
Tobon Yagari said foreign mining firms have put pressure on the Colombian government to pass mining laws tailored in the interest of development.
“Of course Canadian miners have a large interest in getting legislation in their favour,” she said. “That is what is happening without our mining code and our situation in Colombia.”
Many Indigenous communities in Colombia are clinging precariously on the edge of extinction.
Of the 102 documented Indigenous nations in Colombia, 32 have populations under 500, 18 have populations of 200, while 10 have less than 100.
Tens of thousands of Indigenous people have been displaced from their territories which are often rich in minerals and hydrocarbons eyed by foreign mining firms.
Amnesty International has said it’s concerned about deepening ties between Canada and Colombia’s military as a result of the free trade deal.
“And recent changes to export controls in Canada to allow for the sale of automatic firearms to Colombia,” have added to list of problematic issues, said the international human rights organization.
The situation of Indigenous peoples in Colombia is so dire that the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples James Anaya has called for the UN special advisor on genocide to visit Colombia.
From APTN
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jun 5, 2013 | ANALYSIS, Strategy & Analysis
Industrial civilization is killing the planet. It is, by its very nature, entirely dependent upon tearing & rending apart the fabric of the living world for the raw materials which sustain industrial society. As civilization fells ever more forests, blows apart ever more mountains, dams ever more rivers, vacuums ever more fisheries, drains ever more wetlands, plows ever more prairies, and replaces ever more of the natural world with concrete and fields growing food for solely human use, the bloody hands of empire must reach ever further afield to grasp for new pockets of wilderness to seize.
As industrial society becomes more and more globalized, so too does industrial destruction. Wild places that may once have been too remote to access find the crushing weight of civilization brought to bear upon them.
While the reach and presence of this way of life accelerate around the planet, the privileges and material prosperities afforded by its war against life remain the property of a small minority at the center of empire. It is to this center that the overwhelming portions of planetary plunder flow. It’s coded into the way empires—and civilizations—operate. The center of power conquers outlying lands, colonizing them and forcefully extracting resources, which flow back to feed the bloated power base.
The pattern is the same, whether we’re talking about cities extracting food via agriculture from the surrounding lands or the global economy extracting oil, steel, wood, etc. from the Global South. It is the same dynamic of empire—of colonies and conquerors. We may rationalize the pattern through complex social and economic theory, but it doesn’t change the underlying relationship of exploiter and exploited.
Central to the smooth function of this way of life are the logistics and transportation necessary to physically transport those materials from the site of extraction to the center of empire. The global economy is incredibly complex, so much so that how exactly it operates in the physical world may seem inexplicable, and only comprehensible in the abstract. But despite this, there are very specific infrastructures—foundations of support—that are fundamental to its function. The infrastructure of globalized transportation and logistics is among these; without them, the precarious balance of industrial society would collapse.
In the incessant drive towards ever-greater efficiency—the drive to expand “economic production” (read the conversion of living landbases into private wealth) beyond any limitations—the industrial economy is becoming ever more dependent upon fast-paced transportation and logistics. It’s why most grocery stores only have a 72 hour supply of food in-store. By reducing inventory capacity and relying upon “Just-in-Time” transportation systems, industrialism has accelerated its pace, but at the expense of its stability.
For those who understand the destruction and horror that is this way of life—those who understand that it must be stopped and dismantled at any cost—the centrality and fragility of the systems responsible for the transportation of resources & goods presents a strategic target for disruption and sabotage.
Fortunately, these transportation networks are large and poorly defended. A paper recently released by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, written by Douglas Bland, cited the criticality and vulnerability of Canada’s rail transport infrastructure as weaknesses which could be exploited to cripple the entire Canadian economy. The report talks specifically about the potential of an “aboriginal uprising” in Canada and how such a mobilization could impact the industrial economy of the nation:
In the event of an insurgency, the Canadian economy could be shut down in weeks. The 2012 CP Rail strike cost an estimated $540-million a week, as it hit industries including coal, grain, potash, nickel, lumber and autos. Some First Nations leaders like Terry Nelson in Manitoba have already concluded that a covert operation involving burning cars on every railway line would be impossible to stop.
This vulnerability in the structure of modern civilization is present outside of Canada; indeed, it is characteristic of the global economy. These transportation and logistical networks—those that connect and maintain the flow between the different nodes of industrial production—are fragile, sprawling, and poorly guarded. And they’re very vulnerable to sabotage.
As just one recent example, some anonymous folks sabotaged rail lines in Central Oregon in celebration of May Day a month ago. In their own words,
Late at night on May Day we sabotaged a rail line in Central Oregon to interrupt the flow of commodities. Capital depends more than ever on the metropolis, the constant flow of commodities, services, capital, information, and any interruption of that flow is a small victory… This action was quick and easy. Using copper wire with the ends stripped, we wrapped both ends of wire around the rail and buried the middle section. This sends a false signal that there is a train on the tracks, delaying any other movement until the blockage is cleared.
Like many forms of sabotage, it doesn’t take much, as the communique issued by those behind this particular action so kindly describes.
Of course, while we understand that disrupting a single rail line on a single night will have little to no measurable impact on the masticating gears of industrialism, such sustained actions—as described by Bland’s paper—could translate into effective systems disruption. With the whole of the globalized economy so dependent upon such a precarious & precisely balanced transportation infrastructure, the impacts of such a campaign of sabotage could have massive and far reaching effects.
This way of life cannot last. It remains steady and standing only through actively destroying and consuming the fabric of the living world. The movement of materials—the blood soaked corpses of its victims—through the industrial system is central to this. To stop that movement is to stop the machine. While it may not be the first course of action many would turn to, and while it may make some uncomfortable, sustained and coordinated sabotage against the industrial transport infrastructure presents a strategic way to disrupt and halt the monstrous activity of industrial civilization.
Civilization is not static; it is a holocaust in motion. As we all know, an object in motion stays in motion, unless acted upon by an outside force. It’s long past time to apply that force.
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
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