by DGR News Service | Oct 7, 2014 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts, Toxification
By Sacred Mauna Kea
Mauna Kea Protest
Tuesday, October 7, 2014 — 7am to 2pm,
Saddle Road at the entrance to the Mauna Kea Observatory Road
Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians will gather for a peaceful protest against the Astronomy industry and the “State of Hawaii’s” ground- breaking ceremony for a thirty-meter telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea.
Native Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians will gather for a peaceful protest
against the Astronomy industry and the “State of Hawaii’s” ground-
breaking ceremony for a thirty-meter telescope (TMT) on the summit of
Mauna Kea.
CULTURAL ISSUES: Mauna Kea is sacred to the Hawaiian people, who
maintain a deep connection and spiritual tradition there that goes
back millennia.
“The TMT is an atrocity the size of Aloha Stadium,” said Kamahana
Kealoha, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner. “It’s 19 stories tall,
which is like building a sky-scraper on top of the mountain, a place
that is being violated in many ways culturally, environmentally and
spiritually.” Speaking as an organizer of those gathering to protest,
Kealoha said, “We are in solidarity with individuals fighting against
this project in U.S. courts, and those taking our struggle for
de-occupation to the international courts. Others of us must protest
this ground-breaking ceremony and intervene in hopes of stopping a
desecration.”
Clarence “Ku” Ching, longtime activist, cultural practitioner, and a
member of the Mauna Kea Hui, a group of Hawaiians bringing legal
challenges to the TMT project in state court, said, “We will be
gathering at Pu’u Huluhulu, at the bottom of the Mauna Kea Access
Road, and we will be doing prayers and ceremony for the mountain.”
When asked if he will participate in protests, he said, “We’re on the
same side as those who will protest, but my commitment to Mauna Kea is
in this way. We are a diverse people…everyone has to do what they know
is pono.”
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: The principle fresh water aquifer for Hawaii
Island is on Mauna Kea, yet there have been mercury spills on the
summit; toxins such as Ethylene Glycol and Diesel are used there;
chemicals used to clean telescope mirrors drain into the septic
system, along with half a million gallons a year of human sewage that
goes into septic tanks, cesspools and leach fields.
“All of this poisonous activity at the source of our fresh water
aquifer is unconscionable, and it threatens the life of the island,”
said Kealoha. “But that’s only part of the story of this mountain’s
environmental fragility. It’s also home to endangered species, such as
the palila bird, which is endangered in part because of the damage to
its critical habitat, which includes the mamane tree.”
LEGAL ISSUES: Mauna Kea is designated as part of the Crown and
Government lands of the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Professor Williamson PC Chang, from the University of Hawaii’s
Richardson School of Law, said, “The United States bases its claim to
the Crown and Government land of the Hawaiian Kingdom on the 1898
Joint Resolution of Congress, but that resolution has no power to
convey the lands of Hawaii to the U.S. It’s as if I wrote a deed
saying you give your house to me and I accepted it. Nobody gave the
land to the U.S., they just seized it.”
“Show us the title,” said Kealoha. “If the so-called ‘Treaty of
Annexation’ exists, that would be proof that Hawaiian Kingdom citizens
gave up sovereignty and agreed to be part of the United States 121
years ago. But we know that no such document exists. The so-called
‘state’ does not have jurisdiction over Mauna Kea or any other land in
Hawaii that it illegally leases out to multi-national interests.”
“I agree with how George Helm felt about Kahoolawe,” said Kealoha. “He
wrote in his journal: ‘My veins are carrying the blood of a people who
understood the sacredness of land and water. Their culture is my
culture. No matter how remote the past is it does not make my culture
extinct. Now I cannot continue to see the arrogance of the white man
who maintains his science and rationality at the expense of my
cultural instincts. They will not prostitute my soul.’”
“We are calling on everyone, Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians alike, to
stand with us, to protect Mauna Kea the way George and others
protected Kahoolawe. I ask myself every day, what would George Helm
do? Because we need to find the courage he had and stop the
destruction of Mauna Kea.”
From Sacred Mauna Kea: http://sacredmaunakea.wordpress.com/
by DGR News Service | Aug 18, 2014 | White Supremacy
By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance San Diego
We need to be clear about what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri.
Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that your people were stolen from their ancestral homes and stacked like lumber in the hulls of filthy ships to be sold half a world away. Millions of your people drowned in their own piss, shit, and vomit on these ships, were murdered when they resisted those stealing them, or threw themselves to the sharks when finally seeing the light of day on the ships’ decks. Your people’s reward for surviving the nightmare of the slaving ships was the nightmare of being sold into slavery.
Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that as slaves your peoples were subjected to psychological, spiritual, and physical tortures to ensure their complicity in the slave system. When a slave refused to comply he or she was whipped, starved, placed in collars, or even killed. If a slave escaped, the nation’s first police forces were established to hunt the slave down and return the slave to the nightmare. If your people organized into true resistance, taking up arms to defend themselves from the horrors of slavery, the nation’s first police forces – comprised of white men – arrived to brutally put down the resistance executing every slave involved.
Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that the justification for your enslavement was something as arbitrary as your skin color. Europeans with white skin spend centuries telling your people, Africans with black skin, that you are less than human. After over three centuries of slavery, some white people decide that your people should no longer be enslaved. Another group of white people deny your people’s right to freedom and the nation’s bloodiest war is fought over your freedom. 620,000 soldiers die to decide your fate.
Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that white people are angry about the war fought on your people’s behalf, are angry about your newfound freedoms, are just plain angry and looking to take it out on someone. For the next hundred years, your people are routinely lynched, shot, beaten, and raped for perceived slights to these white people. A system develops, called Jim Crow, where white people decide that just because slavery is ended it does not mean white people have to share space with your people.
Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that your people produce leaders that undermine the Jim Crow system. Some preach a peaceful approach to empowering your people. Those leaders are assassinated. Some preach an approach that includes every available tactic. Those leaders are assassinated, too.
What if we didn’t have to pretend? What if this was your reality? What if, when you looked into your ancestral past, you were met with pictures of the crisscrossing puffy scars of flogged backs? What if, when you thought of the way your people arrived on this continent, you could only think of those slave logs that demonstrated the way to maximize “cargo space” by the most effective means of stacking human bodies? What if, when you noticed the lightness in your skin color, you could not help but wonder if one of your ancestors was raped by a white man?
What if we didn’t have to pretend?
We all know the truth. We do not have to pretend. A black man is killed every 28 hours by police or vigilantes in this country. [1] There are more black men in prison right now than there were enslaved in 1850. [2] The life expectancy for African-Americans is four years shorter than white Americans.
Now, what if another young black man in your community was killed by a white cop? What if you wanted to know the name of the cop who shot him? What if they wouldn’t tell you? What if you were so heart-broken, so angry, that you demanded justice and the cops responded by pointing machine guns at you? What would you do?
***
Make no mistake, police forces exist as the domestic arm of occupying colonial governments. Stanley Diamond, the brilliant anthropologist, wrote, “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.” This analysis helps us to understand that police forces do not exist to protect oppressed classes. It should be obvious as we see the white men pointing machine guns at black demonstrators in Ferguson that police forces exist to ensure the oppression of oppressed classes.
In order to understand what is going on in Ferguson, we must get to the roots of the problem. The problem is civilization. I define civilization as groups of humans living in concentrations large enough to require the importation of so-called natural resources for survival. When groups of humans require the importation of resources for survival, they will do whatever it takes to acquire those resources. Eventually, as Diamond’s quote illustrates, civilized groups will develop armies of conquest to ensure access to the resources required. Civilized groups will also develop domestic armies – police forces – to ensure that domestic labor follows the will of those in power.
This was true for the earliest examples of civilization like the ancient Sumerians who developed a system of slavery for ensuring labor for necessary irrigation and the ancient Romans who simply could not maintain control over the flow of resources they required for their empire before it collapsed. This is true for the United States today with conquering armies demonstrating power through violence in oil-rich countries to ensure access to fossil fuels and police forces terrorizing domestic citizens to ensure the established social order.
It is my view that other systems of domination that developed later are essentially expressions of civilization. European colonization of the rest of the world became necessary as resources in Europe dwindled. The current model of racism, prevalent in the United States today, was developed to ensure the labor force civilization depended on to avoid collapse. Racism, of course, must be eradicated to keep a black man from being murdered by the state’s domestic army every 28 hours, but racism is best understood in material terms. It follows, then, that the roots of racism exist in the material necessities of civilization. Undo civilization, and the civilized addiction to other’s resources – and the racism supporting the addiction – will collapse.
This is not to say, however, that bigotry and hate will not persist after the collapse of civilization. As civilization collapses, we will see intensified violence visited upon communities of color. This is why it is absolutely essential that members of privileged classes assert their solidarity with communities of color right now. The sooner we come to the support of targeted communities like Ferguson, the stronger those communities will be as they face the escalation of violence.
***
I woke up this morning to a plea from the American Civil Liberties Union to sign their petition titled “Our Communities Are Not Warzones.” The petition asks the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice to “stop funding the siege on communities of color.”
Whether we like it or not, our communities ARE war zones. How else do we account for a black man being killed by cops and vigilantes every 28 hours? How else do we account for more black men in prison than were enslaved in 1850? How else do we account for the fact that one in four American women will be raped in her lifetime? How else do we account for the fact that in America a solid percentage of rape perpetrators are cops? How else do we account for 100 – 200 species a day going extinct? How else do we account for carcinogens in every mother’s breast milk? How else do we account for the 250 trees – with lives as valuable to them as your life is valuable to you – cut down around the world a second?
Our communities ARE war zones. It is only through great privilege that we are allowed to think that they are not. I support every effort to undermine the power of the police, but we cannot downplay the severity of what is going on. This plays right back into the hands of our oppressors and entrenches the violence being delivered upon us by hiding it.
The ACLU wants to send a signed piece of paper asking those in power to stop providing weapons and equipment to police forces. There is only one way to make sure police forces stop getting these weapons and equipment, and that is to physically stop their access to these weapons.
I am not in Ferguson. I am not privy to conversations in the resistance community there. I cannot say what is best for oppressed peoples.
I support a wide-variety of tactics they may decide are necessary for justice in their communities. I refuse to participate in the current efforts to shout down the righteous anger or condemn angry actions by members of the oppressed African community in Ferguson. I am not arguing for specific tactics, but I do want to break open a space to discuss every tool in the toolbox. If peaceful civil disobedience is the way to go, great. If more militant actions are needed, I stand ready to support. This is a war, after all.
References
[1] http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdf
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander-more-black-men-in-prison-slaves-1850_n_1007368.html
[3] http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20130718/us-blacks-still-lag-whites-in-life-expectancy-study
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 DGR News Service | Jun 17, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Mining & Drilling
Deep Green Resistance is dedicated to the fight against industrial civilization and its legacy of racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. For this reason, DGR would like to publicly state its support for the Oglala Lakota in their current fight against the genocidal mining operations of the Cameco Corporation.
Cameco is currently attempting to expand its already illegal resource extraction campaign despite undeniable evidence that their abuse of the Earth is leading to increased rates of cancer, diabetes, and other life-threatening illnesses among the Lakota people.
The only acceptable action on the part of the Cameco Corporation is immediate cessation of any and all mining activities in the ancestral home of the Lakota people; anything else will be met with resistance, and DGR will lend whatever support it can to those on the front lines.
The indigenous peoples of this land have always been at the forefront of the struggle against the dominant culture’s ecocidal violence, and DGR would like to offer its support and encouragement to Debra White Plume, the Lakota activist group Owe Aku, and all other indigenous women and men fighting for the future of the planet. The time for resistance is long past, and we are thankful every day that the Earth has warriors like the Oglala Lakota fighting in its defense.
For more information, please visit Owe Aku International at http://oweakuinternational.org/
by DGR News Service | Apr 15, 2014 | Listening to the Land
By Max Wilbert / Deep Green Resistance Great Basin
Ely, Nev. – A camping tour of the region that will be affected by the Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA) groundwater development project is taking place over memorial day weekend – and you’re invited.
The trip, which will take place from May 24th to 26th, will begin at the north end of the water grab region, at the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation in Ibapah, Utah – a community which has been organizing to stop the groundwater project for years.
Trip organizer Max Wilbert says the goal is to get to know the land threatened by water extraction.
“These regions of eastern Nevada are some of the most beautiful, remote landscapes in the West,” Wilbert said. “Once you see that beauty, you want to fight to protect it.
Members of the Goshute and Shoshone tribes are holding the event in collaboration with community members from across the southwest (Tuscon, Moab, and Salt Lake City). Their goal is to raise awareness of the unique natural and cultural heritage of the region.
“My people have lived here sustainably for over 10,000 years,” said Rick Spilsbury, a Shoshone man and area-resident who is guiding the tour. “We want that for all of the Earth for another 10,000 years.”
SNWA is the organization that delivers water to Las Vegas and the surrounding area, and is planning a $15 billion project to extract groundwater out of mountain valleys in eastern Nevada.
Proponents of the project say that the water and pipeline is required to meet rising water demand in Las Vegas, especially as water levels in the Colorado River and Lake Mead continue to decline. Critics say the pipeline will decimate ecosystems and small farming, ranching, and indigenous communities, and that Las Vegas residents will be stuck with a massive bill.
by DGR News Service | Mar 18, 2014 | Toxification
By Reuters
A major oil pipeline owned by Sunoco Logistics Partners LP leaked thousands of gallons of crude oil into a nature preserve in southwest Ohio late on Monday.
Between 7,000 and 10,000 gallons (26,000-38,000 liters) of sweet crude leaked into the Oak Glen Nature Preserve about a quarter of a mile from the Great Miami River, according to early estimates from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.
The leak, which occurred on a line operated by Mid-Valley Pipeline Co, a division of Sunoco, was discovered at 8:20 p.m. EDT on Monday (0020 GMT Tuesday). The company shut the line, which helped reduce the pressure of the leaking oil, an EPA spokeswoman said, but it was unclear if oil was still spewing from the pipe.
Some oil reached a wetland a mile away and on Tuesday, clean-up crews were preparing to vacuum the wetland, located 20 miles north of Cincinnati.
The oil did not appear to have reached the Great Miami River, though tests were still being completed, the EPA said.
“The extent of impact to the resource is currently unknown,” said a statement from the Great Parks of Hamilton County, which oversees the Oak Glen preserve. “The EPA is assessing the situation to determine appropriate action.”
Sunoco was not immediately available for comment.
The pipeline is part of Sunoco’s mid-west system that runs about 1,000 miles from Longview, Texas to Samaria, Michigan, providing crude oil to a number of refineries, primarily in the U.S. Midwest.
Read more from The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/18/major-oil-pipeline-leaks-more-than-7000-gallons-of-crude-oil-into-ohio-nature-preserve/
