Apaches Defend Homeland from Homeland Security

Brenda Norrell

[Rio Grande, Albuquerque. This photo shows the shore of the Rio Grande in Albuquerque. You see a sampling of the appealing fall colors as trees prepare for winter in the bosque. The Manzano mountain range can be seen in the background. This is as seen from the Central Avenue Overpass near the Rio Grande Botanic Garden. This was shot at aproximately 4:45 in the evening in early November, 2005.]

Apache land owners on the Rio Grande told Homeland Security to halt the seizure of their lands for the US/Mexico border wall on January 7, 2008. It was the same day that a 30-day notice from Homeland Security expired with the threat of land seizures by eminent domain to build the US/Mexico border wall.

"There are two kinds of people in this world, those who build walls and those who build bridges," said Enrique Madrid, Jumano Apache community member, land owner in Redford and archaeological steward for the Texas Historical Commission.

"The wall in South Texas is militarization," Madrid said of the planned escalation of militarization with Border Patrol and soldiers. "They will be armed and shoot to kill."


Wounded over ‘Bury My Heart’

Joe Orso

Like a wise man told me, it’s important to remember that native people’s history is not all dates and wars and tragedy. It contains a rich cultural and spiritual story that continues to speak. But to hear the full boom of those voices, we must look back, be silent and reflect on the devastation committed here not so long ago.

I once knew an Iraqi man who first learned of the Holocaust when he was an adult, traveling in Israel.

It was shocking to think that anyone on earth might not know this story, and the experience gave me a deeper appreciation for the power of education — and miseducation.

But while that was disturbing, I have been even more disturbed to find myself in the same position as the Iraqi man this past month.

Of course I’d learned something about Native American history growing up, and had a vague sense of tragedies and broken treaties. But it was not until reading “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” that I saw the enormity of the genocide that happened on this continent — an enormity on par with the tragedies of German history.


A wall to keep out Roma

Michaela Stanková

Tensions between the mainly Roma inhabitants of a settlement next to the village of Ostrovany, near Šarišské Michaľany in eastern Slovakia, and the village’s mainly non-Roma population now have a physical embodiment: a wall that the local authorities agreed to build in order to separate the settlement from the rest of the village. While non-Roma villagers claim the wall is the only way to prevent raids on their fruit gardens from the Roma settlement, local Roma protest that the wall has turned their settlement into a zoo.

Šarišské Michaľany recently became a symbol of the problems between the Roma minority and the non-Roma majority in Slovakia. Last year an inhabitant of the Roma settlement murdered a shop assistant in the village and this summer two boys from the settlement assaulted a 65-year old man who lost an eye and suffered other injuries in the attack. In response to the attack a far-right group, Slovenská Pospolitosť, used the village as the venue for the first of several protests which it organised to oppose what it called ‘the gypsy terror’ in eastern Slovakia.


'Liberation was just a big lie'

Olivia Ward


Malalai Joya, who was in Toronto to promote
her book, A Woman Among Warlords, says
Canada and the United States should pull their
troops out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.
(Nov. 18, 2009) Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star

Outspoken Afghan MP says Canadian mission is a big waste of time.

She sleeps in safe houses, with a rotating squad of bodyguards securing the doors. She goes out only in a billowing burqa. Even her wedding was held in secret.

Elected the youngest member of the Afghan parliament – and suspended for her outspoken criticism of the country's top officials – Malalai Joya has been labelled the bravest woman in Afghanistan.

Small, soft-spoken and now 31, she has survived at least four assassination attempts and is angry at the oppressive life she is forced to lead, dodging enemies she has denounced as bloody-handed warlords and drug kingpins.

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai is inaugurated Thursday for another four years in office after a fiercely disputed election, she says his term is already tainted by the corruption, criminality and violence of those around him. "(Prime Minister) Stephen Harper says this election was a success," she said. "But Karzai has not only insulted, but betrayed the Afghan people."

Karzai has vowed to launch anti-corruption investigations under pressure from Washington. But, Joya insists, Canada is wasting blood and treasure on keeping his government in power.


Black Elk Speaks -Part II

Black Elk
As told to John G. Neihardt

Chapter 14 :: The Horse Dance

There was a man by the name of Bear Sings, and he was very old and wise. So Black Road asked him to help, and he did.

First they sent a crier around in the morning who told the people to camp in a circle at a certain place a little way up the Tongue from where the soldiers were. They did this, and in the middle of the circle Bear Sings and Black Road set up a sacred tepee of bison hide, and on it they painted pictures from my vision. On the west side they painted a bow and a cup of water; on the north, white geese and the herb; on the east, the daybreak star and the pipe; on the south, the flowering stick and the nation's hoop. Also, they painted horses, elk, and bison. Then over the door of the sacred tepee, they painted the flaming rainbow. It took them all day to do this, and it was beautiful.

They told me I must not eat anything until the horse dance was over, and I had to purify himself in a sweat lodge with sage spread on the floor of it, and afterwards I had to wipe myself dry with sage.

That evening Black Road and Bear Sings told me to come to the painted tepee. We were in there alone, and nobody dared come near us to listen. They asked me if I had heard any songs in my vision, and if I had I must teach the songs to them. So I sang to them all the songs that I had heard in my vision, and it took most of the night to teach these songs to them. While we were in there singing, we could hear low thunder rumbling all over the village outside, and we knew the thunder beings were glad and had come to help us.

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Black Elk Speaks -Part I

Black Elk
As told to John G. Neihardt

In the summer of 1930, as part of his research into the Native American perspective on the Ghost Dance movement, Neihardt contacted an Oglala holy man named Black Elk, who had been present as a young man at the 1876 Battle of the Little Big Horn and the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre. As Neihardt tells the story, Black Elk gave him the gift of his life's narrative, including the visions he had had and some of the Oglala rituals he had performed. The two men developed a close friendship. The book Black Elk Speaks, grew from their conversations continuing in the spring of 1931, and is now Neihardt's most familiar work. The current popularity of the book shows the growth of interest in the social and ethical analysis of Native American tribes.

Chapter 01 :: The Offering of the Pipe

My friend, I am going to tell you the story of my life, as you wish; and if it were only the story of my life I think I would not tell it; for what is one man that he should make much of his winters, even when they bend him like a heavy snow? So many other men have lived and shall live that story, to be grass upon the hills.

It is the story of all life that is holy and is good to tell, and of us two-leggeds sharing in it with the four-leggeds and the wings of the air and all green things; for these are children of one mother and their father is one Spirit.

This, then, is not the tale of a great hunter or of a great warrior, or of a great traveler, although I have made much meat in my time and fought for my people both as boy and man, and have gone far and seen strange lands and men. So also have many others done, and better than I. These things I shall remember by the way, and often they may seem to be the very tale itself, as when I was living them in happiness and sorrow. But now that I can see it all as from a lonely hilltop, I know it was the story of a mighty vision given to a man too weak to use it; of a holy tree that should have flourished in a people's heart with flowers and singing birds, and now is withered; and of a people's dream that died in bloody snow.

But if the vision was true and mighty, as I know, it is true and mighty yet; for such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.

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Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Thunder Horse

Hidden away, out of sight but dotting the landscape of America, are the little known or forgotten Reservations of the Indigenous People of our land. Sadly, the average U.S. mainstream resident knows almost nothing about the people of the Native American reservations other than what romanticized or caricaturisation versions they see on film

or as the print media stereotypes of oil or casino-rich Indians. Most assume that whatever poverty exists on a reservation is most certainly comparable to that which they might experience themselves. Further, they assume it is curable by the same means they would use. But that is the arrogance of ignorance.

Our dominant society is accustomed to being exposed to poverty. It’s nearly invisible because it is everywhere.

We drive through our cities with a blind eye, numb to the suffering on the streets, or we shake our heads and turn away, assuming help is on the way. After all, it’s known that the government and the big charities are helping the needy in nearly every corner of the world.

But the question begs: What about the sovereign nations on America’s own soil, within this country, a part and yet apart from mainstream society? What about these Reservations that few people ever see?


The Gaza Chronicles: Part 3 - Shattered Minds And The Children of Gaza

Aditya Ganapathiraju


More than 95% children in Gaza experienced artillery shel-
ling in their area or sonic booms of low flying jets.

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 1- "The Forgotten Story"
The Gaza Chronicles: Part 2 - What a Siege Looks Like

It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa.– Professor Edward Said 1993 [1]

They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk [2]

Gaza is a place that needs a million psychologists.— Ayed, a psychotherapist from Northern Gaza [3]

Over 40 years of Israeli military occupation have had a devastating effect on Gaza; airstrikes, artillery shelling, ground invasions, jet flybys and their sonic booms have all led to an epidemic of suffering among Gaza’s most vulnerable inhabitants.[4]

Soon after the recent winter Israeli assault, a group of scholars at the University of Washington discussed different aspects of the situation in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian Territories. Dr. Evan Kanter, UW school of medicine professor and the current president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, delivered a somber talk describing the mental health situation among Gaza’s population.[5]

Dr. Kanter cited studies that revealed 62 % of Gaza’s inhabitants reported having a family member injured or killed, 67% saw injured or dead strangers and 83% had witnessed shootings. In a study of high school aged children from southern refugee camps in Rafah and Kahn Younis, 69% of the children showed symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress (PTS), 40% showed signs of moderate or severe depression, and a whopping 95% exhibited severe anxiety. Seventy percent showed limited or no ability to cope with their trauma. All of this was before the last Israeli invasion.


The Gaza Chronicles: Part 2 - What a Siege Looks Like

Aditya Ganapathiraju


Deterioration of Sanitation and Water Utilities:twenty million gallons of raw
and untreated sewage has to be dumped into the Mediterranean every day, ac-
cording to local officials. Photo: Electronic Intifada

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 1- "The Forgotten Story"
The Gaza Chronicles: Part 3 - Shattered Minds And The Children of Gaza

“Gaza is an example of a society that has been deliberately reduced to a state of abject destitution,” Sara Roy wrote in July. It has led to “mass suffering, created largely by Israel,” and aided by the active participation of the United States, European Union, and Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. [1]

The Israeli policy of isolating Gaza from the West Bank has been a gradual process that started in the early 1990s. It tightened soon after Hamas’ electoral victory in 2006, and turned even more devastating after Hamas’s 2007 takeover, degrading the society to the point where 96 percent of Gaza’s population of 1.5 million is dependent on humanitarian aid for basic survival. [2]

This “perverse” situation is unique in international affairs in that humanitarian groups are sustaining the Israeli occupation by providing care for a civilian population and territory whose humanitarian needs and economy are being deliberately decimated for political reasons, with full backing of the Israeli High Court, Roy explained. [3]


The Gaza Chronicles: Part 1 -"The Forgotten Story"

Aditya Ganapathiraju

The Gaza Chronicles: Part 2 - What a Siege Looks Like
The Gaza Chronicles: Part 3 - Shattered Minds And The Children of Gaza

Why are people on Gaza so unhappy? Well, if you had to live in a prison, wouldn’t you be unhappy? — Former CIA officer Robert Baer[1]

It’s the most terrifying place I’ve ever been in… it’s a horrifyingly sad place because of the desperation and misery of the way people live. I was unprepared for camps that are much worse than anything I saw in South Africa. – Professor Edward Said 1993[2]

They may be living but they’re not alive. – Journalist Philip Rizk[3]

The situation on the ground in Gaza has continued to deteriorate since January. One of the most densely populated areas in the world, this small coastal strip is home to a million and a half Palestinians, many of them refugees for over 60 years. It is now the worst condition it’s been in since 1967 when the Israeli army took military control of the land.[4]


How Television Controls And Programs Minds

L. Wolfe

Turn Off Your Television

Read this powerful indictment of uncontrolled TV viewing written in the early 1990s and then take stock of how much the Boob Tube is on in your own home. Its message is even more important today with TVs blaring in airports, bars, even offices. It is time to try Mr. Wolfe's therapy:

"Do you want to stay stupid and let your country go to hell in a basket? Why don't you just walk over to the set and turn it off. That's right, completely off. Go on, you can do it. Now isn't that better? Don't you feel a little better already? You've just taken the first step in deprogramming yourself. It wasn't that hard, was it? Until we speak again, try to keep it off. Now that will be a bit harder."
-Jim Marrs

The subconscious is powerful. It is aware of every particle and detail around you. But it doesn't know the difference between fact or fiction and acts on all information passing through the conscious mind as fact, and responds to it. So what do you think happens when you watch silly, moron, goofy commercials and television programs? They are training your thought processes. -Hey buddy, I'm talking to you. Yes, you, the guy sitting in front of the television. Turn down the sound a bit, so that you can hear what I am saying. Now, try to concentrate on what I am going to say. I want to talk to you about your favorite pastime. No, it's not baseball or football, although it does have something to do with your interest in spectator sports. I'm talking about what you were just doing: watching television.


U.S. nuclear arms in Japan: a firsthand account

Brian A. Victoria

Is it right for the lives of Japanese civilians near U.S. military bases to be held hostage to U.S. military activities on the Korean Peninsula?

Dear Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama,

In the fall of 1980 I was assigned as a civilian university professor to provide Japanese language instruction to the officers and men of the USS Knox (FF-1052), a destroyer home-ported in Yokosuka. Sharing quarters with the ship's nuclear weapons officer, I soon became aware that the Knox was outfitted with an ASROC antisubmarine missile system including nuclear depth bombs.

I say this because: 1) The operations manual for these nuclear weapons lay in plain sight on the floor beneath the officer's desk; 2) receipts for the nuclear weapons first loaded on the ship in Guam were on his desk; and 3) an armed marine stood guard 24 hours a day in front of a door on the ship marked with a radiation hazard sign.


Psychological impact of disasters on children

Zain Ul Abideen

A disaster is the tragedy of a natural or human made hazard (a hazard is a situation which poses a level of threat to life, health property or environment) that negatively affects society or environment. But, disasters in whatever intensity took place, affected psychologically nearly each and every person of the country and children due to their vulnerability were and yet until now are worst victims of these disasters. Children are mostly susceptible to disaster suffering, and it is noticeable in many complex psychological and behavioral symptoms. On the other hand, sometimes the post-disaster psychological effects in children are not recognized. Sometimes parents, teachers and other concerned persons underestimate not only the intensity but the extent of the stress reactions in children. As children are expected to have different level of emotional maturity, very limited coping strategies based on their age, that’s why psychological responses in children are different from those in adults. Methods of intervention for children following disasters reasonably differ from adults.


Responding to Carol Miller's Op-Ed Criticizing Health Care Reform

Tyler Taylor

This is a guest blog by Tyler Taylor, M.D., who has a solo, patient-focused medical practice in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The piece was written in response to Sunday's op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal North by Carol Miller.

As a member of Physicians for a National Health Plan for over five years, and an enthusiastic Obama supporter, I find Carol Miller's op-ed in the Albuquerque Journal disturbing. When people on the right misrepresent the facts, all of my capacity for surprise has been exhausted. It's more upsetting though when my progressive kin seem to be doing that.

I disagree with several of Carol Miller's main points. For example, there is much more in this bill than "health insurance reform." It also is not accurate to say that the "reference benefit package" will include fewer services than most insured people have today, since the commission that will decide that won't even be created till this bill is passed. I fully agree that waiting till 2013 for most of this bill to take effect is unacceptable, but assuming that's a cynical political ploy by Obama seems unjustified. Is it not more likely this was one of many compromises needed to get some Blue Dog support?


We Need Health Care, Not Insurance

Carol Miller

Imagine real reform, as simple as adding people ages 55 to 65 years old to Medicare in 2010, 35-55 in 2011, and so on until everyone is included by 2013. The bills that promote this kind of reform are under 200 pages, they are simple to implement, cost effective and equitable. Choose a doctor, choose a hospital when needed and let the government pay the bills. Everyone in one system. That is what real health reform would look like.

A very complex, mandatory private insurance scheme recently passed the U.S. House. The public is being overwhelmed by sound bites on one hand about how great it is, on the other, how terrible. We are hearing few of the details that are actually in the bill. Having read the bill, it is clear now that what started as health reform has emerged from the political process as health "deform," building on the worst, not the best of the current system.


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