Domingo M. Lechón
Diagonal
La “lucha contra el narco” es utilizada por las autoridades mexicanas para justificar la creciente militarización del país. Sin embargo, organizaciones sociales y de derechos humanos sostienen que “la guerra real es contra los de abajo” y denuncian que los numerosos abusos y violaciones de derechos humanos forman parte de planes de contrainsurgencia.
El chiapaneco Mariano Abarca fue detenido el pasado 17 de agosto por un comando policial de agentes encapuchados que viajaban en coches sin placas ni distintivos. Los policías no llevaban identificación ni orden de detención. La presión social hizo que a las 24 horas se informara de dónde estaba detenido, aunque por las irregularidades policiales y judiciales no se sabe de qué se le acusa. Abarca pertenece al municipio de Chicomuselo, una zona donde las concesiones mineras de empresas canadienses devastan tierras y acuíferos. Él es un luchador social reconocido en Chiapas, perteneciente a la Red de Afectados por la Minería, que iba a celebrar en su pueblo, a los pocos días, su segundo encuentro. Sus vecinos se han organizado para exigir su libertad y responsabilizan de su detención a los gobiernos municipal, estatal y federal y a la minera canadiense Black Fire.
Casos como éste se dan con frecuencia en México: la maquinaria político-judicial-militar, amparada en la llamada lucha contra el narcotráfico, reprime la protesta social con total impunidad. Recientemente, en el Estado de Guerrero, seis camiones de Ejército mexicano repletos de soldados entraron en la comunidad Puerto de las Joyas, municipio de Petatlán, y según relatan integrantes del Colectivo Contra la Tortura y la Impunidad (CCTI), dijeron que iban “en contra de campesinos revoltosos”, amenazaron a los lugareños con quemar sus hogares y acabaron llevándose a varios.
En ese Estado del sur mexicano han sido asesinados ocho militantes de organizaciones ecologistas en los últimos dos años, y actualmente más de 100 se encuentran en prisión por acusaciones fabricadas desde el poder. La directora adjunta de Amnistía Internacional, Kerrie Howard, considera que la región guerrerense de Ayutla es “un peligro constante para las personas que defienden los derechos humanos de las comunidades indígenas más marginadas”. Pero esto no es una excepción, ni en Guerrero ni en el resto del país.
Militarización y narcotráfico
México está militarizado. La presencia de soldados, camiones y tanquetas es constante, y se producen abusos y violaciones de los derechos de la población con total impunidad. Además, como reconoce Gustavo Castro, coordinador de la organización Otros Mundos Chiapas, “ha empeorado la situación, el narcotráfico ha invadido el aparato gubernamental y al mismo Ejército. Policías, autoridades, funcionarios que combaten supuestamente la delincuencia organizada están pagados por el narcotráfico que está mejor armado que las policías”, por lo que la violencia es constante. El país parece estar en guerra, aunque “la guerra real es contra los de abajo, por sus tierras, los recursos naturales y para obtener el silencio que necesita el sistema para seguir avanzando”, precisa un integrante de La Otra Jovel, una coordinadora de organizaciones. Este resalta que además “del robo de las transnacionales y la corrupción de las autoridades oficiales”, hay otros agentes, como la industria del turismo que necesita esas tierras para tener infraestructura y los recursos naturales para privatizarlos.
El presidente de los EE UU, Barack Obama, de visita el pasado agosto en México, recalcó su confianza en el Gobierno mexicano y en la lucha conjunta contra el tráfico de drogas. La administración norteamericana ha dado luz verde a seguir con la Iniciativa Mérida (o Plan México) con la que su gobierno apoya económica y logísticamente al Ejército mexicano y ha desbloqueado la totalidad de estos fondos, a pesar de que esta colaboración militar estaba supeditada al esfuerzo en la defensa de los derechos humanos del Gobierno mexicano. Poco después de la visita de Obama fueron hechos públicos documentos desclasificados de la Agencia de Inteligencia de Defensa (DIA) que describen el apoyo del Ejército de México a los grupos paramilitares en Chiapas, entre 1994 y 1999, como práctica habitual de contrainsurgencia aprobada por las altas instancias del Gobierno. Estos documentos, encontrados en Washington por la investigadora Kate Doyle, son una muestra clara de la guerra sucia contra la rebeldía chiapaneca y del protagonismo de las autoridades en la masacre de 45 indígenas desarmados en Acteal. Además, el reciente testimonio de un ex comandante del grupo paramilitar Paz y Justicia confirma que el Ejército mexicano planificó, organizó y apoyó, desde que lanzara en 1995 su ofensiva contra el Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN), a grupos paramilitares en tres regiones de Chiapas.
La decisión de la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nación de liberar a 20 acusados de la masacre de Acteal es interpretada por la izquierda mexicana como el siguiente paso de la represión: la impunidad.
“Todo eso se sabe, por eso estamos tan indignados al ver que la Corte intenta limpiar el expediente y quitar responsabilidad en la comisión de delitos de lesa humanidad a los presidentes, funcionarios y mandos militares de esa época. Quieren limpiar la cara al régimen que gobernaba entonces, que es el mismo que está regresando”, afirma contundente Raúl Vera, quien en esa época era obispo adjutor de la diócesis de San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, junto a Samuel Ruiz.
A la pregunta de cómo hacer para seguir luchando ante tanta represión, Gustavo Castro, que también participa en la Red de Afectados por la Minería, responde: “No dejar de luchar y manifestarse para no ceder a la criminalización legalizada que hace el Gobierno del movimiento social, de los sindicatos o cualquier derecho a la manifestación publica y pacífica. La denuncia pública es importante así como hacer visible la impunidad a nivel internacional”.
Plan Mérida
A mediados de agosto el gobierno de EE UU anunció que iba a liberar el 15% de las ayudas destinadas a México a través del Plan Mérida que el Congreso de EE UU había bloqueado en 2008 hasta que hubiera avances en el respeto a los derechos humanos en este país. Ya el pasado junio la cámara estadounidense había aprobado la entrega de un paquete de 420 millones de dólares como parte de ese Plan, fondos que se suman a los 700 ya autorizados anteriormente. Así, sólo restan 280 millones de dólares para alcanzar los 1.400 millones prometidos a México en 2007 en material y equipamiento para sus fuerzas de seguridad.
Share This
Tecpatl
Our Word is Our Weapon, if you have anything you would like us to publish please send us an email @ maiz_centeotl_chicomecoatl@riseup.net
Subscribe To Maiz Today!!!!
Posts
All Comments
9/21/09
If Health Care Excludes Some Immigrants, Are Quarantines Next?
Roberto Rodriguez
New America Media
South Carolina Rep. Joe “You Lie” Wilson has touched a raw nerve with his outburst during the president's health care speech. Yet, he may have also opened the proverbial Pandora’s box regarding “illegals” with his accusation that they would get health care under reforms proposed by Pres. Obama. Not dealt with properly by the president and the Democratic Party, Wilson’s incivility could end up unleashing a new and more rabid anti-immigrant movement of the kind seen in Europe.
Played out to its logical conclusion, this dynamic of not providing health care for undocumented immigrants, in the event of a pandemic, could lead to calls for widespread quarantines and calls for massive dragnet raids, incarceration programs and large-scale deportations. And as occurs now, the inability to distinguish between legal or so-called illegal aliens – with the predisposed belief that all “Mexicans” (Central and South Americans included) are an illegal and illegitimate population – means that all red-brown peoples in this country could be viewed and treated as suspect.
That aside, germs, viruses and diseases do not discriminate, nor do they ask for legal documentation. They cross borders freely in both directions, and neither walls nor moats can hold them back. This is the perfect example of why health policies should be in the hands of health professionals, not political ideologues.
In the climate we live in, assuring Americans that only legal residents will be eligible to receive health benefits plays well in the conservative political arena. However, from a health standpoint, it borders on suicidal. People on all sides of the issue should recognize the health implications of keeping 12 million people (or 20 million, according to immigration restrictionists) outside of the nation’s health care system.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs has made a career of scaring Americans into believing that “illegal aliens” are the cause of all of the nation’s problems. He has even irresponsibly spread lies about them spreading leprosy. Yet, for the sake of argument, suppose Dobbs is correct in his basic premise that migrants (illegal or otherwise) are apt to carry and spread infectious and communicable diseases. The logical response to this threat would be to quarantine, or deport, the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants instantly.
Since even the most rabid restrictionists acknowledge that this would be impossible, from a health standpoint, it makes better sense to ensure that all people in the United States have access to preventive health care. This would not solely be for the sake of the migrants, but also for the sake of the entire U.S. population.
Under President Barack Obama’s health plan, undocumented aliens will be excluded. As it stands now, legal residents who have been in the country for fewer than five years are also denied many health benefits. This backward policy will continue.
As La Opinión newspaper in Los Angeles recently opined, such a policy is bad health policy and bad economic policy. However, Democrats, more concerned with Wilson’s insult to the president and to Congress, have been blindsided to the extent that they will be forced to adopt or maintain these medically unsound policies. In fact, to prove Wilson wrong, they will be pressured into injecting or advocating militaristic solutions (to search and find undocumented residents) into not simply the health care bill, but probably all future legislation.
The idea of intentionally excluding anyone from the nation’s health plan is to court a massive disaster. It may lead to the drumbeat demand that beyond employment – public and private – every service rendered by government, from education to housing, must be done so through its E-verify program – a program designed to verify legal residency among job applicants. In rabid times, it could result in an even more radical proposal: a demand to use E-verify for every commercial purpose, including the checkout stand.
At the immigration kangaroo court called Operation Streamline earlier this year in Tucson, Ariz., I saw the future: because of the swine flu (H1N1) epidemic, like a surreal movie, all of the defendants – who were from Mexico and Central America – wore protective masks in the federal courtroom. In the event of a more severe and deadly pandemic, it is highly likely that our elected leaders and politicians will insist that only U.S. citizens have access to immunization and health care.
The truth is that only where we permit other human beings to be dehumanized would a society think of denying people the right to basic health care. The other truth is that nowadays we live in a completely globalized world, which necessarily calls for global solutions and global (financial) cooperation.
It’s a health issue, stupid.
Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com.
New America Media
Editor's Note: Germs and viruses know no boundaries, so for the United States to not expand health care access to the undocumented would be playing with fire, writes NAM contributing writer Roberto Rodriguez.
South Carolina Rep. Joe “You Lie” Wilson has touched a raw nerve with his outburst during the president's health care speech. Yet, he may have also opened the proverbial Pandora’s box regarding “illegals” with his accusation that they would get health care under reforms proposed by Pres. Obama. Not dealt with properly by the president and the Democratic Party, Wilson’s incivility could end up unleashing a new and more rabid anti-immigrant movement of the kind seen in Europe.
Played out to its logical conclusion, this dynamic of not providing health care for undocumented immigrants, in the event of a pandemic, could lead to calls for widespread quarantines and calls for massive dragnet raids, incarceration programs and large-scale deportations. And as occurs now, the inability to distinguish between legal or so-called illegal aliens – with the predisposed belief that all “Mexicans” (Central and South Americans included) are an illegal and illegitimate population – means that all red-brown peoples in this country could be viewed and treated as suspect.
That aside, germs, viruses and diseases do not discriminate, nor do they ask for legal documentation. They cross borders freely in both directions, and neither walls nor moats can hold them back. This is the perfect example of why health policies should be in the hands of health professionals, not political ideologues.
In the climate we live in, assuring Americans that only legal residents will be eligible to receive health benefits plays well in the conservative political arena. However, from a health standpoint, it borders on suicidal. People on all sides of the issue should recognize the health implications of keeping 12 million people (or 20 million, according to immigration restrictionists) outside of the nation’s health care system.
CNN’s Lou Dobbs has made a career of scaring Americans into believing that “illegal aliens” are the cause of all of the nation’s problems. He has even irresponsibly spread lies about them spreading leprosy. Yet, for the sake of argument, suppose Dobbs is correct in his basic premise that migrants (illegal or otherwise) are apt to carry and spread infectious and communicable diseases. The logical response to this threat would be to quarantine, or deport, the 12 to 20 million illegal immigrants instantly.
Since even the most rabid restrictionists acknowledge that this would be impossible, from a health standpoint, it makes better sense to ensure that all people in the United States have access to preventive health care. This would not solely be for the sake of the migrants, but also for the sake of the entire U.S. population.
Under President Barack Obama’s health plan, undocumented aliens will be excluded. As it stands now, legal residents who have been in the country for fewer than five years are also denied many health benefits. This backward policy will continue.
As La Opinión newspaper in Los Angeles recently opined, such a policy is bad health policy and bad economic policy. However, Democrats, more concerned with Wilson’s insult to the president and to Congress, have been blindsided to the extent that they will be forced to adopt or maintain these medically unsound policies. In fact, to prove Wilson wrong, they will be pressured into injecting or advocating militaristic solutions (to search and find undocumented residents) into not simply the health care bill, but probably all future legislation.
The idea of intentionally excluding anyone from the nation’s health plan is to court a massive disaster. It may lead to the drumbeat demand that beyond employment – public and private – every service rendered by government, from education to housing, must be done so through its E-verify program – a program designed to verify legal residency among job applicants. In rabid times, it could result in an even more radical proposal: a demand to use E-verify for every commercial purpose, including the checkout stand.
At the immigration kangaroo court called Operation Streamline earlier this year in Tucson, Ariz., I saw the future: because of the swine flu (H1N1) epidemic, like a surreal movie, all of the defendants – who were from Mexico and Central America – wore protective masks in the federal courtroom. In the event of a more severe and deadly pandemic, it is highly likely that our elected leaders and politicians will insist that only U.S. citizens have access to immunization and health care.
The truth is that only where we permit other human beings to be dehumanized would a society think of denying people the right to basic health care. The other truth is that nowadays we live in a completely globalized world, which necessarily calls for global solutions and global (financial) cooperation.
It’s a health issue, stupid.
Rodriguez, a professor at the University of Arizona, can be reached at: XColumn@gmail.com.
Guatemala: Una Población con los Huesos Marcados por el Hambre
Por Alba Trejo
SEMlac
Guatemala, septiembre (Especial de SEMlac).- Guatemala tiene niños y niñas muy, pero muy pequeños; con la piel adherida a sus huesos, el cuerpo invadido de manchas y ronchas purulentas.
Son niñas, niños e incluso mujeres, con ojos profundamente hundidos y huesudos pómulos, acostumbrados a convivir con fuertes catarros y diarreas prolongadas. Disimulan su edad por su escaso peso.
Los hay en todas partes de este país de 14 millones de habitantes, pero es en el oriente y gran parte del occidente donde la presencia de los diminutos y escuálidos habitantes se nota aún más.
El Programa Mundial de Alimentos (PMA) permite conocer que en Centroamérica existe una población de al menos siete millones de infantes de menos de cinco años y que, de estos, 2.5 millones padecen de desnutrición crónica.
Sin embargo, la mitad de ellos, es decir un millón 250 000 está en Guatemala, un país donde, actualmente, han muerto 25 niños y niñas por las secuelas provocadas por el hambre que, en su corta vida, padecieron desde la gestación.
Atol, caldos de hierbas y frijol. A eso se reduce la dieta de las víctimas de la desnutrición crónica en esta nación. Esos, además, son los únicos alimentos que ingieren las mujeres en su período de gestación.
Estas razones han sido suficientes para que la Oficina Mundial de la Salud (OMS) considerara a Guatemala, dos años atrás, la nación de América Latina con los índices más altos de desnutrición.
Irma Palma, oficial de salud de la OMS, dijo a SEMlac que el hambre en la población infantil y las mujeres no solo se deriva de la sequía que ocurre cada año, cada vez más intensa. También está la pobreza que padecen los pueblos indígenas y del oriente.
El recuento de los daños informados por el presidente Álvaro Colom incluye a 54.000 familias que sufren las consecuencias de la sequía, y 400.000 más que viven en riesgo de padecerla. Por eso se ha comenzado a repartir por toneladas, en determinados lugares, la galleta nutritiva, que contiene las vitaminas necesarias para controlar el hambre y sus efectos.
La desnutrición no es un tema nuevo en este país. En 2002, la Oficina de Naciones Unidas (ONU) anunció que cerca de 6.000 niños se encontraban "en peligro de muerte" en Guatemala por problemas de desnutrición.
En esa ocasión, la portavoz del Programa Mundial de Alimentos (PMA), Christiane Berthiaume, dijo atinadamente que la situación era tan extrema que a miles de niñas y niños "sólo les queda la piel y huesos".
Las enfermedades detectadas por la desnutrición crónica en Guatemala, según Ramiro Quezada, oficial de salud del Fondo Nacional para la Infancia (UNICEF), son las infecciones respiratorias agudas, las diarreas agudas, neumonías y enfermedades de la piel.
Quezada dijio a SEMlac que existen seis de 22 departamentos que conforman el país con los mayores índices de desnutrición, principalmente aquellos donde viven los descendientes mayas, que siempre han sido los más pobres entre los pobres.
Palma coincide con Quezada al indicar que la desnutrición crónica en Guatemala aparece en esas regiones durante la gestación y en los primeros dos o tres años de vida, lo que ha hecho mella en 49,3 por ciento en niños menores de cinco años.
Los habitantes indígenas, que conforman 60 por ciento de la población, solo logran agenciarse su mala alimentación durante ocho meses al año, durante las cosechas. El resto del año tienen que buscar la forma se agenciarse de alimentos.
Un estudio del Instituto de Estadísticas Nacional determinó que la comida de las regiones mayas regularmente consta de tortilla, frijol y chile, y que posiblemente una vez a la semana allí se consumen huevos y escasamente carne.
En el oriente la situación se torna más difícil, ya que la falta de lluvia ha provocado frustradas cosechas, lo que empobrece aún más a las poblaciones y aumenta los niveles de hambruna, destaca un informe de la Comisión Nacional para la Reducción de Desastres (CONRED).
Pero mientras la problemática se soluciona, la mujer tiene que lidiar con la desnutrición, porque en muchas regiones no se le asocia con la pobreza; tal es el caso del oriente del país.
La investigación "Prevención de la desnutrición en el oriente. Nuevos cuidados, mismas representaciones", efectuada en ese sitio, donde se encuentra el punto álgido de la desnutrición y sequía, destaca que allí tener hijos desnutridos implica ser mala madre y mala esposa.
Pese a que a veces se admite que la falta de alimentos es uno de los motivos de la desnutrición infantil, los discursos recalcan una responsabilidad compartida con las madres.
Son ellas las que no le dan de comer a la hora, al despistarse en otros quehaceres; no preparan bien la comida o bien su leche no es competente, fueron las impresiones de la población en el informe.
Sin embargo, expertos del Instituto de Nutrición en Centroamérica y Panamá (INCAP) coinciden en señalar a SEMlac que la mujer tiene un papel fundamental en el logro de la seguridad alimentaria y nutricional en el hogar.
Mostraron estudios donde se reporta que en bajas condiciones de pobreza y nivel de educación formal, la competencia de la madre para un mejor cuidado de sus hijos está determinada, principalmente, por la autoestima y capacidad de toma de decisiones.
Pero en este país, por su situación, la mujer no puede cumplir esa función, ya que resultan bajos índices de desarrollo humano que se le asocian. Por ejemplo, el número de nacimientos: seis hijos por mujer antes de cumplir los 35 años de edad.
Aunque Guatemala dispone desde hace más de 30 años de servicios de planificación familiar, los actuales niveles de prevalencia del uso anticonceptivo, especialmente entre la población maya, se asemejan más a los niveles entre la población del África que a las que se registran en los otros países de América Latina.
El motivo fundamental es que las guatemaltecas tienen dificultades para acceder a los métodos anticonceptivos por razones económicas y culturales, en un país donde utilizar una píldora o una inyección significa, para los hombres, el engaño marital.
Además, en esta nación la mujer muere por quedar embarazada: 190 mujeres por cada 100.000 niñas y niños nacidos vivos, según los registros del Ministerio de Salud Pública y Asistencia Social (MSPAS).
A la población infantil también le va mal. El trabajo acapara a por lo menos 400.000 niñas entre siete y 14 años que no asisten a un centro educativo porque tienen labores en casa. Y solo tres de cada 10 niños van a la escuela.
Los descendientes mayas se ven más afectados, 74 de cada 100 indígenas son pobres, y 39 de cada 100 viven en condiciones de extrema pobreza, de acuerdo con un informe elaborado por el organismo internacional de los derechos humanos Human Right Watch.
El PMA señala a seis de los 22 departamentos guatemaltecos como los sitios donde existe mayor índice de desnutrición, tanto entre madres como infantes. En Sololá y Quiché, en el occidente, 76 de cada 100 habitantes, entre quichés y kaqchiqueles, padecen desnutrición crónica.
Entre los esfuerzos para paliar este flagelo, UNICEF, el PMA y el Ministerio de Salud promueven intensamente el cereal llamado "Vitacereal", un producto que contiene soya, maíz y proteínas, y busca nutrir a las mujeres embarazadas, a quienes están en período de lactancia y a niñas y niños de seis a 36 meses.
Palma señala que, además, han sugerido que las comunidades cuenten con madres consejeras, que puedan replicar los conocimientos a otras de la comunidad. Pero aún hace falta fortalecer las estructuras comunitarias para transmitir conocimientos en temas de seguridad alimentaria y nutricional.
Los niños necesitan alimentos espesos varias veces al día, ya que su estómago es pequeño y si se les alimenta con caldos y atoles no llenan sus requerimientos nutricionales. Necesitan, además, alimentos variados que les proporcionen energía, proteína, grasa, vitaminas y minerales, destaca Palma.
Mientras tanto, el gobierno implementará un plan de insumos agrícolas, bolsas pecuarias y huertos familiares para reducir la vulnerabilidad en situaciones alimentarias.
El presidente Álvaro Colom solicitó a la comunidad internacional una ayuda millonaria para paliar esta crisis. Eva Werner, la embajadora de Suecia dijo que esa solicitud será evaluada y que la primera etapa es atender el corredor seco; después vendrá la atención a la desnutrición.
The Differences Between a Leader and a Boss
Leadership
By Pedro Brizuela
Organization of Community and Ethnic Development (ODECO)
Narco News
It has long been said that a leader isn’t born, but made. The emergence of leadership is a social phenomenon since it surges from the heart of the people in the heat of popular struggles for the most heartfelt needs of the population. Leaderships comes from study and from the spirit that comes from addressing the public’s needs.
A leader is a person who is conscious of those social, economic, political and cultural needs of the society he and she share. That’s why the leader keeps his and her eye on the people’s freedom because freedom is the conquest of human needs. This person is a conductor for the freedom of the people. His and her role in history comes because he and she see farther ahead than most and deeply feel the suffering of his and her people, whose necessities are extreme due to misery, ignorance and injustice, which compliment each other in the cycle of repression.
A leader has a heavy responsibility with history. That’s why his and her characteristics should have the following:
The Differences Between a Leader and a Boss
A leader and a boss have many differences in how they behave around others:
-For the boss, his and her authority is a privilege of power, while for the leader it is a gift of service.
Character: Leadership is the ability and will to conduct men and women in a common purpose and to have the character that inspires trust. Never deny your own experience and convictions to keep the peace.
Charisma: The first impression can be determinative. How can a person have charisma? Worry more about making others feel good about themselves than about whether they feel good about you.
Commitment: This is what separates the doers from the dreamers.
People do not follow leaders who lack commitment. Commitment can be demonstrated in a wide range of aspects that include the hours one chooses to dedicate to the work, whether one works to better his and her own abilities and what you do for your compañeros even when it involves self sacrifice.
He and she who has done what is best for his and her own time lives for all time.
Communication: Without it, you travel alone.
To develop excellent communication skills is essential for effective leadership. The leader has to be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others.
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
Ability: If you develop yourself, others will see the best in you.
Ability goes beyond words. It is the ability of a leader to say it, plan it, and do it in a manner that others notice that you know how and they will join you in it through to meeting the final goal.
Courage: One person with courage makes for a majority.
“Courage is correctly seen as the highest of human qualities… because it is what guarantees everything else.” – Winston Churchill
Discernment: Finish unsolved puzzles.
“Intelligent leaders believe only half of what they hear. Leaders with discernment know which half to believe.” – John C. Maxwell
Focus: The sharper your focus the smarter you’ll be.
If you chase two rabbits, both escape.
“What people say, what people do and what people say they do are completely different things.” – Margaret Mead
Generosity: Your candle loses no light when it illuminates others.
“Nobody receives honors for what they give. Honor is the reward for what one gives.” – Calvin Coolidge
“Giving is the highest calling of life.” – John C. Maxwell
Initiative: Don’t leave home without it.
“Success seems to be related to action. Successful people are active. They make mistakes but they don’t give up. (An intelligent man is not one who makes no errors but, rather, one who upon making them corrects them well and quickly)” – Conrad Hilton
“Of all the things that a leader should be afraid of, complacency should be the first.” – John C. Maxwell
Listening Skills: To connect with hearts use your ears.
“The ear of a leader has to vibrate with the voices of the people.” – Woodrow Wilson
“A good leader stimulates others to tell him what he needs to know, not what he wants to hear.” – John C. Maxwell
Passion: Take life by the horns and love it.
“When a leader expresses himself with passion, he generally finds passionate response.” – John C. Maxwell
“Anybody can do things superficially but once one has made a promise, there is something in the blood and it is very difficult to stop.” – Bill Cosby
Positive Attitude: If you believe you can, you can.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can change their lives just by changing their attitudes.” – William James
“A successful person is one that can construct a firm foundation from bricks that others have thrown away.” – David Brinkley
Problem Solving: You can’t let your problems become a problem.
A leader isn’t measured by the problems he tackles. He always looks for problems his own size.
The measure of success is not if you have a difficult problem to resolve but, rather, whether it is the same problem you had last year.
Cultivating Relationships: If you take initiative, they will imitate you.
The most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to relate to the people.
To the people, it doesn’t matter how much you know, but, rather, that what you know is interesting to them.
Responsibility: If you don’t bring the ball you can’t lead the team.
Success at any level requires that you take responsibility. In the end, the only quality that a successful person has is the ability to be responsible. A leader can abandon anything except for responsibility.
Self Confidence: No one can be a good leader if he wants to do it all the same way or obtain credit for doing it.
Self Discipline: The first person you need to lead is you.
“The first great victory is the conquest of the self.” – Plato
An indecisive man can never say he is in charge of himself. He belongs to anyone that can capture him.
Service: To progress, put others first.
The true leader serves. He serves the people. She serves their best interests and in doing so isn’t always going to be popular, and may not always impress: But since true leaders are motivated by love more than desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price.
Learning: To keep on leading, keep on learning (learn by doing).
Listening and reading should take up about ten times more hours than talking. This guarantees that you are in a process of continued apprenticeship and self betterment.
Vision: You can only achieve what you can see.
The value of a great leader to comply with his vision comes from passion, not from position. The future belongs to those who see the possibilities before they become obvious.
Note: The order of these qualities does not indicate their priority because… they’re all priorities!
By Pedro Brizuela
Organization of Community and Ethnic Development (ODECO)
Narco News
Editor’s Note: This essay appears in the textbook for the School of Leaders in Honduras. Read more about the school in this related story.
Facing the Question of Leadership
It has long been said that a leader isn’t born, but made. The emergence of leadership is a social phenomenon since it surges from the heart of the people in the heat of popular struggles for the most heartfelt needs of the population. Leaderships comes from study and from the spirit that comes from addressing the public’s needs.
A leader is a person who is conscious of those social, economic, political and cultural needs of the society he and she share. That’s why the leader keeps his and her eye on the people’s freedom because freedom is the conquest of human needs. This person is a conductor for the freedom of the people. His and her role in history comes because he and she see farther ahead than most and deeply feel the suffering of his and her people, whose necessities are extreme due to misery, ignorance and injustice, which compliment each other in the cycle of repression.
A leader has a heavy responsibility with history. That’s why his and her characteristics should have the following:
a) A leader should address the true problems of society in search of collective solutions.
b) A leader studies the origins and causes of those problems.
c) A leader must facilitate, orient and conduct those that work with him and her.
d) A leader must maintain a close relationship with the people in the context of the social goals persued.
e) A leader must learn by doing and avoid bureaucracy.
f) A leader should have a plain understanding of the reality in which she and he operates.
g) A leader must obtain a wide understanding of culture.
h) He and she must be honest, simple and in solidarity, rejecting opportunist vices and other manifestations of that nature.
i) A leader always works so that his and her social or political movement maintains the highest level of unity in action.
j) A leader makes alliances with movements that share at least some important aspects with his and her own.
k) A leader must be a specialist in the matters of his and her movement.
l) A leader must confront reality in a critical, objective and creative manner.
m) A leader must have firm and decisive politics to address conflict.
n) She and he must be attentive, respectful of the opinions of others, know how to listen and to respond.
o) A leader must avoid all acts that have the vice of intrigue. He and she should refrain from opining on matters that he and she do not know about.
p) A leader constantly strengthens the friendships and solidarity between his partners in struggle and between them and the people.
q) A leader is honest and transparent in his and her actions, disciplined and loyal to his and her principles.
r) A leader must carry his and her principles and human values with him and her. His and her words must not be divorced from his and her deeds.
s) A leader never abandons the fundamental goals of his and her social, political or cultural movement.
t) A leader practices and defends the democratic aspirations of the people.
u) A leader knows how to make and receive criticism.
The Differences Between a Leader and a Boss
A leader and a boss have many differences in how they behave around others:
-For the boss, his and her authority is a privilege of power, while for the leader it is a gift of service.
* The boss orders, “I’m in charge here.” The leader thinks, “I serve here.”
* The boss pushes the group while the leader stimulates it, conducting it.
* The boss rests on the authority delegated to him and her by superiors. The leader is driven by his and her conscience.
* The boss inspires fear. The leader inspires confidence and respect. That’s why you fear your boss, while you love your leader.
* The boss looks for someone to blame when something goes wrong.
* The leader stimulates correction of the error.
* The boss shouts, scolds, looks for who to blame while the leader corrects and stimulates the betterment of his and her colleagues, since it is better to make a mistake while acting than to fail to act out of fear of making a mistake.
* The boss assigns tasks, obligations and duties, ordering each individual on what he and she should be doing while observing whether they obey or not. The leader leads by example, working alongside his colleagues, her and his words match his and her deeds because understanding what to do is the best form of speaking.
* The boss does work that is a job, the leader undertakes activities that are a privilege.
* The boss knows how things must be done. The leader teaches how they should be done.
* The boss guards and protects the secrets to success. The leader makes sure everyone learns them in order to achieve success.
* The boss manages the people, the leader conducts them toward the shared goal.
* The boss privatizes while the leader socializes.
* The boss looks at his collaborators as numbers or chits, the leader sees them as a work team that he belongs to in egalitarian conditions.
* The boss says “go do it,” the leader says “let’s go do it.”
* The leader is a compass: he fosters real commitment from all the members, formulates plans with clear goals, motivates, supervises and promotes the ideal of hope.
* The leader has a clear vision of what he and she want and the mission to achieve it.
* The boss arrives late. The leader gets there early or on time.
* The leader makes ordinary people into extraordinary ones who commit themselves to the established mission in a way that allows for the peoples’ transcendence and fulfillment. He and she give his collaborators another reason to live.
* A leader is extraordinary. There is nothing common or bland about him and her.
The 21 indispensable qualities of a leader
Character: Leadership is the ability and will to conduct men and women in a common purpose and to have the character that inspires trust. Never deny your own experience and convictions to keep the peace.
Charisma: The first impression can be determinative. How can a person have charisma? Worry more about making others feel good about themselves than about whether they feel good about you.
Commitment: This is what separates the doers from the dreamers.
People do not follow leaders who lack commitment. Commitment can be demonstrated in a wide range of aspects that include the hours one chooses to dedicate to the work, whether one works to better his and her own abilities and what you do for your compañeros even when it involves self sacrifice.
He and she who has done what is best for his and her own time lives for all time.
Communication: Without it, you travel alone.
To develop excellent communication skills is essential for effective leadership. The leader has to be able to share knowledge and ideas to transmit a sense of urgency and enthusiasm to others.
Educators take something simple and make it complicated. Communicators take something complicated and make it simple.
Ability: If you develop yourself, others will see the best in you.
Ability goes beyond words. It is the ability of a leader to say it, plan it, and do it in a manner that others notice that you know how and they will join you in it through to meeting the final goal.
Courage: One person with courage makes for a majority.
“Courage is correctly seen as the highest of human qualities… because it is what guarantees everything else.” – Winston Churchill
Discernment: Finish unsolved puzzles.
“Intelligent leaders believe only half of what they hear. Leaders with discernment know which half to believe.” – John C. Maxwell
Focus: The sharper your focus the smarter you’ll be.
If you chase two rabbits, both escape.
“What people say, what people do and what people say they do are completely different things.” – Margaret Mead
Generosity: Your candle loses no light when it illuminates others.
“Nobody receives honors for what they give. Honor is the reward for what one gives.” – Calvin Coolidge
“Giving is the highest calling of life.” – John C. Maxwell
Initiative: Don’t leave home without it.
“Success seems to be related to action. Successful people are active. They make mistakes but they don’t give up. (An intelligent man is not one who makes no errors but, rather, one who upon making them corrects them well and quickly)” – Conrad Hilton
“Of all the things that a leader should be afraid of, complacency should be the first.” – John C. Maxwell
Listening Skills: To connect with hearts use your ears.
“The ear of a leader has to vibrate with the voices of the people.” – Woodrow Wilson
“A good leader stimulates others to tell him what he needs to know, not what he wants to hear.” – John C. Maxwell
Passion: Take life by the horns and love it.
“When a leader expresses himself with passion, he generally finds passionate response.” – John C. Maxwell
“Anybody can do things superficially but once one has made a promise, there is something in the blood and it is very difficult to stop.” – Bill Cosby
Positive Attitude: If you believe you can, you can.
“The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can change their lives just by changing their attitudes.” – William James
“A successful person is one that can construct a firm foundation from bricks that others have thrown away.” – David Brinkley
Problem Solving: You can’t let your problems become a problem.
A leader isn’t measured by the problems he tackles. He always looks for problems his own size.
The measure of success is not if you have a difficult problem to resolve but, rather, whether it is the same problem you had last year.
Cultivating Relationships: If you take initiative, they will imitate you.
The most important ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to relate to the people.
To the people, it doesn’t matter how much you know, but, rather, that what you know is interesting to them.
Responsibility: If you don’t bring the ball you can’t lead the team.
Success at any level requires that you take responsibility. In the end, the only quality that a successful person has is the ability to be responsible. A leader can abandon anything except for responsibility.
Self Confidence: No one can be a good leader if he wants to do it all the same way or obtain credit for doing it.
Self Discipline: The first person you need to lead is you.
“The first great victory is the conquest of the self.” – Plato
An indecisive man can never say he is in charge of himself. He belongs to anyone that can capture him.
Service: To progress, put others first.
The true leader serves. He serves the people. She serves their best interests and in doing so isn’t always going to be popular, and may not always impress: But since true leaders are motivated by love more than desire for personal glory, they are willing to pay the price.
Learning: To keep on leading, keep on learning (learn by doing).
Listening and reading should take up about ten times more hours than talking. This guarantees that you are in a process of continued apprenticeship and self betterment.
Vision: You can only achieve what you can see.
The value of a great leader to comply with his vision comes from passion, not from position. The future belongs to those who see the possibilities before they become obvious.
Note: The order of these qualities does not indicate their priority because… they’re all priorities!
Honduras: El Pueblo se Volcó a las Calles en el Día de la Independencia Centroamericana
80 Días de Lucha y Resistencia en todo el País
Giorgio Trucchi
Rel-UITA
El pasado 15 de septiembre ha sido una jornada histórica para toda Honduras. Centenares de miles de hondureños han marchado en todas las ciudades y pueblos del país para conmemorar el Día de la Independencia centroamericana, reafirmar el espíritu unionista de Francisco Morazán y celebrar el día 80 de resistencia contra el golpe de Estado, perpetrado por las fuerzas reaccionarias nacionales e internacionales
Al finalizar la gigantesca marcha que recorrió las principales avenidas de Tegucigalpa, integrantes de la conducción colegiada del Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado dieron lectura a una proclama en la que aseveran que “Nuestra Patria está en insurrección no violenta contra el régimen usurpador que asaltó con las armas las instituciones del Estado el 28 de junio, por lo que ninguna conmemoración independentista bajo esa infame y opresora dictadura golpista puede ser considerada. Hoy padecemos la misma opresión del imperio español, que por 300 años impuso cruz y espada a los heroicos pueblos que sobrevivimos a la barbarie. El pueblo de Honduras –continúa la proclama– está en pie de lucha. Hoy celebramos 80 días de incansable resistencia en todo el país por la restauración de la democracia, el retorno del Presidente Constitucional Manuel Zelaya Rosales y la convocatoria a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente”.
El Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado reivindicó también el derecho del pueblo hondureño al ejercicio de la desobediencia a un régimen despótico, surgido de la fuerza de las armas, tal como lo prevé el artículo 3 de la Constitución.
Proclamó la necesidad de una nueva Constitución “para sentar las bases de nuestra verdadera independencia económica y social, haciendo que la oligarquía, junto con la cúpula político-militar, jamás vuelvan a romper el Orden Constitucional sin recibir su merecido”. También volvió a desconocer y rechazar el proceso electoral militarizado “con que pretenden legalizar la barbarie del pasado 28 de junio”, y agradeció profundamente a todos los pueblos del mundo por “sus invaluables demostraciones de solidaridad en respaldo a nuestra causa. Mientras nuestra lucha se agiganta, los usurpadores se desploman cercados por la humanidad”, concluye la proclama.
Fue una marcha impresionante
Según Porfirio Ponce, vicepresidente del Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria de la Bebida y Similares (STIBYS), afiliado a la UITA, y miembro del Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado, “Hemos conmemorado la independencia de Honduras y de Centroamérica bajo un régimen de facto, golpista, que si por un lado ha quitado la paz a nuestro pueblo, por el otro ha provocado la unidad y el fortalecimiento del movimiento popular hondureño. A 80 días de lucha desde el golpe se ha desarrollado una movilización jamás vista antes. La gente ha salido a la calle en todo el país –continuó Ponce–, y en Tegucigalpa la participación ha sido impresionante, con mucha más gente que la del pasado 5 de julio, cuando se esperaba la llegada del presidente Manuel Zelaya. Calculamos varios centenares de miles de personas que coparon el Boulevard Morazán y el centro de la ciudad, hasta llegar al Parque Central, en una columna de varios kilómetros”.
El vicepresidente del STIBYS explicó a Sirel que la actividad se desarrolló sin mayores problemas y el Ejército y la Policía no pudieron reprimir la marcha por la enorme cantidad de gente. “Ese pueblo ha despertado, y hoy más que nunca estamos seguros de que nadie va a poder detener el proceso que nos llevará a la Asamblea Constituyente. Ese pueblo tiene fe que va a recuperar lo que le pertenece a través de una Constitución hecha para el pueblo y no para los ricos oligarcas del país”.
Zelaya y Ortega celebran la Independencia
En ocasión de la semana de conmemoración de la Independencia Centroamericana, los presidentes de Nicaragua y Honduras, Daniel Ortega Saavedra y Manuel Zelaya Rosales, recibieron la “Antorcha de la Libertad” de mano de estudiantes nicaragüenses en la Hacienda San Jacinto, lugar histórico en el que en 1856 el Ejército de Nicaragua derrotó a los filibusteros del aventurero estadounidense William Walker.
“En este sitio histórico se desarrolló una de las batallas que son símbolo de la lucha para defender nuestra libertad –dijo Manuel Zelaya–. Seguimos trabajando y luchando por la Patria, porque nuestros adversarios y enemigos siguen siendo los mismos, y tenemos que duplicar nuestros esfuerzos para seguir venciéndolos para defender la democracia. Hoy que en Honduras se ha suprimido la libertad y que vuelven los deseos de los grupos oligárquicos de mantener al pueblo como esclavo –continuó el Presidente hondureño– el pueblo de Nicaragua se une al de Honduras en defensa de la democracia en Centroamérica. No descansaremos y no daremos tregua hasta lograr rescatar la democracia en Honduras y derrocar al régimen golpista que usurpa el poder de la nación”, concluyó.
Por su lado, el presidente Daniel Ortega dijo que no se puede seguir hablando de democracia en América Latina mientras en Honduras siguen los golpistas atropellando y asesinando al pueblo. “La comunidad internacional tiene la obligación moral y ética de acompañar al pueblo hondureño en esta batalla, para que los golpistas salgan de Honduras”, concluyó. En los próximos días el presidente Manuel Zelaya, quien junto a los miembros de su gobierno permanecen en Nicaragua, hablará ante el plenario de la Asamblea General de la ONU.
Giorgio Trucchi
Rel-UITA
El pasado 15 de septiembre ha sido una jornada histórica para toda Honduras. Centenares de miles de hondureños han marchado en todas las ciudades y pueblos del país para conmemorar el Día de la Independencia centroamericana, reafirmar el espíritu unionista de Francisco Morazán y celebrar el día 80 de resistencia contra el golpe de Estado, perpetrado por las fuerzas reaccionarias nacionales e internacionales
Al finalizar la gigantesca marcha que recorrió las principales avenidas de Tegucigalpa, integrantes de la conducción colegiada del Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado dieron lectura a una proclama en la que aseveran que “Nuestra Patria está en insurrección no violenta contra el régimen usurpador que asaltó con las armas las instituciones del Estado el 28 de junio, por lo que ninguna conmemoración independentista bajo esa infame y opresora dictadura golpista puede ser considerada. Hoy padecemos la misma opresión del imperio español, que por 300 años impuso cruz y espada a los heroicos pueblos que sobrevivimos a la barbarie. El pueblo de Honduras –continúa la proclama– está en pie de lucha. Hoy celebramos 80 días de incansable resistencia en todo el país por la restauración de la democracia, el retorno del Presidente Constitucional Manuel Zelaya Rosales y la convocatoria a la Asamblea Nacional Constituyente”.
El Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado reivindicó también el derecho del pueblo hondureño al ejercicio de la desobediencia a un régimen despótico, surgido de la fuerza de las armas, tal como lo prevé el artículo 3 de la Constitución.
Proclamó la necesidad de una nueva Constitución “para sentar las bases de nuestra verdadera independencia económica y social, haciendo que la oligarquía, junto con la cúpula político-militar, jamás vuelvan a romper el Orden Constitucional sin recibir su merecido”. También volvió a desconocer y rechazar el proceso electoral militarizado “con que pretenden legalizar la barbarie del pasado 28 de junio”, y agradeció profundamente a todos los pueblos del mundo por “sus invaluables demostraciones de solidaridad en respaldo a nuestra causa. Mientras nuestra lucha se agiganta, los usurpadores se desploman cercados por la humanidad”, concluye la proclama.
Fue una marcha impresionante
Según Porfirio Ponce, vicepresidente del Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria de la Bebida y Similares (STIBYS), afiliado a la UITA, y miembro del Frente Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado, “Hemos conmemorado la independencia de Honduras y de Centroamérica bajo un régimen de facto, golpista, que si por un lado ha quitado la paz a nuestro pueblo, por el otro ha provocado la unidad y el fortalecimiento del movimiento popular hondureño. A 80 días de lucha desde el golpe se ha desarrollado una movilización jamás vista antes. La gente ha salido a la calle en todo el país –continuó Ponce–, y en Tegucigalpa la participación ha sido impresionante, con mucha más gente que la del pasado 5 de julio, cuando se esperaba la llegada del presidente Manuel Zelaya. Calculamos varios centenares de miles de personas que coparon el Boulevard Morazán y el centro de la ciudad, hasta llegar al Parque Central, en una columna de varios kilómetros”.
El vicepresidente del STIBYS explicó a Sirel que la actividad se desarrolló sin mayores problemas y el Ejército y la Policía no pudieron reprimir la marcha por la enorme cantidad de gente. “Ese pueblo ha despertado, y hoy más que nunca estamos seguros de que nadie va a poder detener el proceso que nos llevará a la Asamblea Constituyente. Ese pueblo tiene fe que va a recuperar lo que le pertenece a través de una Constitución hecha para el pueblo y no para los ricos oligarcas del país”.
Zelaya y Ortega celebran la Independencia
En ocasión de la semana de conmemoración de la Independencia Centroamericana, los presidentes de Nicaragua y Honduras, Daniel Ortega Saavedra y Manuel Zelaya Rosales, recibieron la “Antorcha de la Libertad” de mano de estudiantes nicaragüenses en la Hacienda San Jacinto, lugar histórico en el que en 1856 el Ejército de Nicaragua derrotó a los filibusteros del aventurero estadounidense William Walker.
“En este sitio histórico se desarrolló una de las batallas que son símbolo de la lucha para defender nuestra libertad –dijo Manuel Zelaya–. Seguimos trabajando y luchando por la Patria, porque nuestros adversarios y enemigos siguen siendo los mismos, y tenemos que duplicar nuestros esfuerzos para seguir venciéndolos para defender la democracia. Hoy que en Honduras se ha suprimido la libertad y que vuelven los deseos de los grupos oligárquicos de mantener al pueblo como esclavo –continuó el Presidente hondureño– el pueblo de Nicaragua se une al de Honduras en defensa de la democracia en Centroamérica. No descansaremos y no daremos tregua hasta lograr rescatar la democracia en Honduras y derrocar al régimen golpista que usurpa el poder de la nación”, concluyó.
Por su lado, el presidente Daniel Ortega dijo que no se puede seguir hablando de democracia en América Latina mientras en Honduras siguen los golpistas atropellando y asesinando al pueblo. “La comunidad internacional tiene la obligación moral y ética de acompañar al pueblo hondureño en esta batalla, para que los golpistas salgan de Honduras”, concluyó. En los próximos días el presidente Manuel Zelaya, quien junto a los miembros de su gobierno permanecen en Nicaragua, hablará ante el plenario de la Asamblea General de la ONU.
Uranium and Genocide in Indian Country
Cry Me a River
By BRENDA NORRELL
When Paul Zimmerman writes in his new book about the Rio Puerco and the Four Corners, he calls out the names of the cancers and gives voice to the poisoned places and streams. Zimmerman is not just writing empty words.
Zimmerman writes of the national sacrifice area that the mainstream media and the spin doctors would have everyone forget, where the corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet, in his new book, A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science.
“A report in 1972 by the National Academy of Science suggested that the Four Corners area be designated a ‘national sacrifice area,” he writes.
Then, too, he writes of the Rio Puerco, the wash that flowed near my home when I lived in Houck, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation in the 1980s. The radioactive water flowed from the Churck Rock, N.M., tailings spill on down to Sanders, where non-Indians were also dying of cancer, and it flowed by New Lands, Nahata Dziil Chapter, where Navajos were relocated from their homes on Black Mesa. They moved there from communities like Dinnebeto. Some elderly Navajos died there in New Lands, not just from the new cancers, but from broken hearts.
Zimmerman points out there was plenty of evidence of cancers from Cold War uranium mining and radioactive tailings left behind, but few studies were commissioned to document it. In the early 1980s, I asked the Indian Health Service about the rates of death around the uranium mines and power plants. No studies were ever conducted, according to the IHS press officer. I was shocked. Fresh out of graduate school with a master’s degree in health for developing nations, I really could not believe it.
This week, Zimmerman released a chapter of his new book to aid the struggles of Indigenous Peoples, after reading about the Havasupai Gathering to Halt Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon.
As I read his chapter, I am flooded with memories, memories of people dying, radioactive rocks and the deception and censorship that continues on the Navajo Nation.
In the 1990s, USA Today asked me to report on the uranium tailings and deaths at Red Valley and Cove near Shiprock, N.M. In every home I visited, at least one Navajo had cancer and their family members had died of cancer. In some homes, every family member had cancer. In one home, an eighty-year-old Navajo woman looked at the huge rocks that her home was made of. She said some men came with a Geiger counter and told her the rocks were extremely radioactive. Then, on another day, I walked beside the radioactive rocks strewn in Gilbert Badoni's backyard near Shiprock.
The dust we breathed at Red Valley and Cove was radioactive. When the Dine’ (Navajo) in the south and Dene in the north mined uranium without protective clothing, the US and Canada knew they were sending Native American miners to their deaths.
“Declassified documents from the atomic weapons and energy program in the United States confirm that official secret talks on the health hazards of uranium mining were discussed both in Washington and Ottawa. In 1932, even before the Manhattan Project, the Department of Mines in Canada published studies of the mine at Port Radium, warning of the hazard of radon inhalation and ‘the dangers from inhalation of radioactive dust.’ Blood studies of miners confirmed that breathing air with even small amounts of radon was detrimental to health,” Zimmerman writes.
When I moved to the Navajo Nation in 1979, I was a nutrition educator with the Navajo Hopi WIC Program. I had no intention of becoming a news reporter or an activist. Later in the 1980s, as a news reporter, I reported on Peabody Coal and its claim that it was not damaging the land or aquifer on Black Mesa.
Louise Benally, resisting relocation at Big Mountain said, “These big corporations lie you know.”
No, I didn’t know that then. But I know that now.
Earl Tulley, Navajo from Blue Gap, said something that changed my life. Tulley told me about the multi-national corporations, how they seize the land and resources of Indigenous Peoples, not just on the Navajo Nation, but around the world.
But it wasn’t until I covered federal court in Prescott, Arizona, as a stringer for Associated Press, that I learned of how it all continues. Covering the Earth First! trial in the 90s, I realized that federal judges and federal prosecutors are on the same team. The FBI can manipulate and manufacture evidence, even drive people to a so-called crime if the guys don’t have a ride.
During the federal trial of former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald, it became obvious: If you are an American Indian, you can forget about justice. Later, during the trials of American Indian activists it was clear: Federal prosecutors can just write a script and send people to prison.
There are parts of the American justice system concealed from most people: Distorted facts and planted evidence. News reporters seldom learn of the witnesses who receive federal plea agreements and lie on the witness stand. Few people except news reporters, ever sit through these long, and tediously dull at times, federal trials which can go on for months.
A three month trial of American Indians, or environmentalists, will smash any romantic myth about justice for all in the US court system. The bias and politics embedded within the justice system, and the back door deals of Congressmen with the corporations who bankroll them, seldom make the evening news.
Arizona Sen. John McCain and company brought about the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute, which was actually a sweetheart deal for Peabody Coal mining on Black Mesa. When they emerged from the back door deals, they swiftly went out to throw candy to Native Americans in the parades, claiming they were the best friends of Indian country. Money is the reason the Navajo Nation Council went along with coal mining on Black Mesa. The revenues from coal mines, power plants and oil and gas wells pay the salaries and expense accounts of the Navajo councilmen and Navajo President.
While I was on Mount Graham in Arizona at the Sacred Run, I learned of another part of the story. I learned about Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society. Former San Carlos Apache Councilman Raleigh Thompson told me of the meeting with Skull and Bones. Thompson was there. Thompson told how the Skull and Bones members, including President George HW Bush's brother Jonathan Bush and an attorney, tried to silence the San Carlos Apache leaders. The San Carlos Apaches were seeking the return of Geronimo’s skull, during meetings in New York in the 1980s. Geronimo had asked to be buried in the mountains on San Carlos.
The more I read from the book Secrets of the Tomb, the more it became obvious that the Skull and Bones members weren’t just seizing money. Their desire was for power. They wanted world domination.
So, now years later, I see the Skull and Bones Society rear its head again in the Desert Rock power plant deal on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners, protested by Navajos living on the land in the longstanding protest Dooda Desert Rock. Follow the money at Sithe Global and it leads back to Blackstone and a member of Skull and Bones.
Skull and Bones members controlled production of the first atomic bomb, according to Alexandra Robbins, author of Secrets of the Tomb. Zimmerman writes of this time, “The Manhattan Project is inaugurated, physicists are secretly recruited, clandestine outposts spring up in the wilderness, and a fevered race against time ensues to transform abstract theories into a deliverable weapon.”
The proposed Desert Rock power plant would be in the Four Corners, the same “national sacrifice area,” where the Cold War uranium mines, coal mines, power plants and oil and gas wells are already polluting and causing disease and death. The air, land and water are contaminated and the region is desecrated. It is the Navajos sacred place of origin, Dinetah, a fact voiced by Bahe Katenay, Navajo from Big Mountain, and censored.
Navajos at Big Mountain, and the Mohawk grandmothers who write Mohawk Nation News, make it clear: The government initiated tribal councils are puppets of the US and Canadian governments.
Several years before Dan Evehema passed to the Spirit World, relaxing on his couch after protesting in the rain backhoes and development on Hopiland, at the age of 104, he shared truth, speaking through a translator.
Evehema said the Hopi Sinom never authorized or recognized the establishment of the Hopi Tribal Council, a puppet of the US government.
In the early Twentieth Century, Hopi were imprisoned at Alcatraz for refusing to cooperate with the US. In the latter part of the century, when the threat of forced relocation of Navajos was great, traditional Hopi, including Evehema and Thomas Banyacya, stood with and supported Navajos at Big Mountain. Mainstream reporters don’t like to report these facts, since it deflates their superficial coverage, based on corporate press releases.
As I was being censored out of the news business (at least the type that results in a paycheck) Louise Benally of Big Mountain once again revealed the truth of the times. When she compared the war in Iraq to the Longest Walk of Navajos to Bosque Redondo, she spoke of the oppression and deceptions of the US colonizers, comparing the torture and starvation of this death walk to what the US was doing in Iraq. Benally was censored.
It was more than just a censored story. It was a statement of the times we live in: Hush words too profound to be written. The times had come full circle. Indian people once oppressed by US colonizers were now serving as US soldiers for US colonizers, killing other Indigenous Peoples. Victims had become perpetrators.
During much of the Twentieth Century, Indian children in the US, Canada and Australia were kidnapped. Stolen from their parents, these children were placed in boarding schools. In Canada, the residential schools were run by churches. In all three countries, young children were routinely abused, sexually abused and even murdered.
On the Longest Walk in 2008, while broadcasting across America, we saw the marsh at Haskell in Kansas. Here, there are unmarked graves of the children who never came home. At Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, we read the tombstones in the rows of tiny graves, the names of the children who never came home.
In the US, Canada and Australia, children were forbidden to speak their Native tongue, which carried their songs and ceremonies. Indian children were beaten, locked in cellars, tortured and raped. Many died of pneumonia, malnutrition and broken hearts. Some were shot trying to escape.
At Muscowequan Catholic residential school in Lestock, Saskatchewan, Canada, a young girl was raped by a priest. When she gave birth, the baby was thrown into the furnace and burned alive in front of child survivor Irene Favel.
In the US, the young boys who survived were militarized, made into US soldiers. Zimmerman writes that Australia, like Canada and US, carried out a holocaust of Aboriginal peoples. “What occurred in Australia is a mirror image of the holocaust visited on Native Americans. When the British claimed sovereignty over Australia, they commenced a 200 year campaign of dispossession, oppression, subjugation and genocide of Aboriginal peoples.”
Indigenous Peoples around the world targeted by uranium mining, including the Dene in the north, linked to Dine’ (Navajo) in the south by the common root of the Athabascan language. From the Dine’ and Dene and around the earth to Australia, there was a recipe for death for Indigenous Peoples by the power mongers.
The US policy of seizing the land and destroying the air, water and soil is clear in Nevada and Utah. While Western Shoshone fight the nuclear dump on their territory at Yucca Mountain in what is known as Nevada, Goshutes at Skull Valley in Utah are neighbors with US biological and chemical weapons testing.
Zimmerman writes, “Dugway Proving Ground has tested VX nerve gas, leading in 1968 to the ‘accidental’ killing of 6,400 sheep grazing in Skull Valley, whose toxic carcasses were then buried on the reservation without the tribe’s knowledge, let alone approval. The US Army stores half its chemical weapon stockpile nearby, and is burning it in an incinerator prone to leaks; jets from Hill Air Force Base drop bombs on Wendover Bombing Range, and fighter crashes and misfired missiles have struck nearby. Tribal members’ health is undoubtedly adversely impacted by this alphabet soup of toxins.”
Zimmerman makes it clear that the genocide of Indigenous Peoples was not an accident. Indigenous People were targeted with death by uranium mining and nuclear dumping. Indian people were targeted with destruction that would carry on for generations, both in their genetic matter and in their soil, air and water.
One ingredient in the recipe for death is division: Divide and control the people and the land. This is what is happening at the southern and northern borders on Indian lands. Just as the US continues the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for war profiteers and politics, the racism-fueled US border hysteria results in billions for border wall builders, security companies and private prisons.
It comes as no surprise that the Israeli defense contractor responsible for the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, Elbit Systems, was subcontracted by Boeing Co. to work on the spy towers on the US/Mexico border. Militarized borders mean dollars, oppression and power.
The US Border Patrol agents harass Indian people at the US borders, even murder people of color on the border at point blank range. More often than not, the murdering border agents walk away free from the courts.
Meanwhile, the US under the guise of homeland security, seizes a long strip of land -- the US/Mexico corridor from California to Texas --including that of the Lipan Apache in Texas. As Indigenous Peoples in the south are pushed off their lands, corn fields seized by corporations, they walk north to survive, many dying in the Southwest desert.
Another ingredient in US genocide in Indian country is internal political division and turmoil: Distract the people with political turmoil, to make it easier to steal their water and land rights. If that doesn’t work, put them in prison. In Central and South America, the mining companies have added another step: Assassinate them.
The US made sure that Latin countries were able to carry out torture and assassinations by training leaders and military personnel at the School of the Americas. Even Chiquita Bananas admitted in court that they hired assassins to kill anyone who opposed the company, including Indigenous Peoples and farmers, in Colombia.
So, when Zimmerman writes of uranium and the sacrifices of Indigenous Peoples, those are not just empty words. They are words that mark the graves, words that name the cancers, words that mark the rivers and words that give rise to names.
To give voice to a name is to break the silence.
Thank you Paul Zimmerman for sharing this chapter with all of us.
Brenda Norrell is a freelance writer and Americas Program border analyst. Her blog can be found at CENSORED NEWS.
By BRENDA NORRELL
When Paul Zimmerman writes in his new book about the Rio Puerco and the Four Corners, he calls out the names of the cancers and gives voice to the poisoned places and streams. Zimmerman is not just writing empty words.
Zimmerman writes of the national sacrifice area that the mainstream media and the spin doctors would have everyone forget, where the corners of New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet, in his new book, A Primer in the Art of Deception: The Cult of Nuclearists, Uranium Weapons and Fraudulent Science.
“A report in 1972 by the National Academy of Science suggested that the Four Corners area be designated a ‘national sacrifice area,” he writes.
Then, too, he writes of the Rio Puerco, the wash that flowed near my home when I lived in Houck, Arizona, on the Navajo Nation in the 1980s. The radioactive water flowed from the Churck Rock, N.M., tailings spill on down to Sanders, where non-Indians were also dying of cancer, and it flowed by New Lands, Nahata Dziil Chapter, where Navajos were relocated from their homes on Black Mesa. They moved there from communities like Dinnebeto. Some elderly Navajos died there in New Lands, not just from the new cancers, but from broken hearts.
Zimmerman points out there was plenty of evidence of cancers from Cold War uranium mining and radioactive tailings left behind, but few studies were commissioned to document it. In the early 1980s, I asked the Indian Health Service about the rates of death around the uranium mines and power plants. No studies were ever conducted, according to the IHS press officer. I was shocked. Fresh out of graduate school with a master’s degree in health for developing nations, I really could not believe it.
This week, Zimmerman released a chapter of his new book to aid the struggles of Indigenous Peoples, after reading about the Havasupai Gathering to Halt Uranium Mining in the Grand Canyon.
As I read his chapter, I am flooded with memories, memories of people dying, radioactive rocks and the deception and censorship that continues on the Navajo Nation.
In the 1990s, USA Today asked me to report on the uranium tailings and deaths at Red Valley and Cove near Shiprock, N.M. In every home I visited, at least one Navajo had cancer and their family members had died of cancer. In some homes, every family member had cancer. In one home, an eighty-year-old Navajo woman looked at the huge rocks that her home was made of. She said some men came with a Geiger counter and told her the rocks were extremely radioactive. Then, on another day, I walked beside the radioactive rocks strewn in Gilbert Badoni's backyard near Shiprock.
The dust we breathed at Red Valley and Cove was radioactive. When the Dine’ (Navajo) in the south and Dene in the north mined uranium without protective clothing, the US and Canada knew they were sending Native American miners to their deaths.
“Declassified documents from the atomic weapons and energy program in the United States confirm that official secret talks on the health hazards of uranium mining were discussed both in Washington and Ottawa. In 1932, even before the Manhattan Project, the Department of Mines in Canada published studies of the mine at Port Radium, warning of the hazard of radon inhalation and ‘the dangers from inhalation of radioactive dust.’ Blood studies of miners confirmed that breathing air with even small amounts of radon was detrimental to health,” Zimmerman writes.
When I moved to the Navajo Nation in 1979, I was a nutrition educator with the Navajo Hopi WIC Program. I had no intention of becoming a news reporter or an activist. Later in the 1980s, as a news reporter, I reported on Peabody Coal and its claim that it was not damaging the land or aquifer on Black Mesa.
Louise Benally, resisting relocation at Big Mountain said, “These big corporations lie you know.”
No, I didn’t know that then. But I know that now.
Earl Tulley, Navajo from Blue Gap, said something that changed my life. Tulley told me about the multi-national corporations, how they seize the land and resources of Indigenous Peoples, not just on the Navajo Nation, but around the world.
But it wasn’t until I covered federal court in Prescott, Arizona, as a stringer for Associated Press, that I learned of how it all continues. Covering the Earth First! trial in the 90s, I realized that federal judges and federal prosecutors are on the same team. The FBI can manipulate and manufacture evidence, even drive people to a so-called crime if the guys don’t have a ride.
During the federal trial of former Navajo Chairman Peter MacDonald, it became obvious: If you are an American Indian, you can forget about justice. Later, during the trials of American Indian activists it was clear: Federal prosecutors can just write a script and send people to prison.
There are parts of the American justice system concealed from most people: Distorted facts and planted evidence. News reporters seldom learn of the witnesses who receive federal plea agreements and lie on the witness stand. Few people except news reporters, ever sit through these long, and tediously dull at times, federal trials which can go on for months.
A three month trial of American Indians, or environmentalists, will smash any romantic myth about justice for all in the US court system. The bias and politics embedded within the justice system, and the back door deals of Congressmen with the corporations who bankroll them, seldom make the evening news.
Arizona Sen. John McCain and company brought about the so-called Navajo Hopi land dispute, which was actually a sweetheart deal for Peabody Coal mining on Black Mesa. When they emerged from the back door deals, they swiftly went out to throw candy to Native Americans in the parades, claiming they were the best friends of Indian country. Money is the reason the Navajo Nation Council went along with coal mining on Black Mesa. The revenues from coal mines, power plants and oil and gas wells pay the salaries and expense accounts of the Navajo councilmen and Navajo President.
While I was on Mount Graham in Arizona at the Sacred Run, I learned of another part of the story. I learned about Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society. Former San Carlos Apache Councilman Raleigh Thompson told me of the meeting with Skull and Bones. Thompson was there. Thompson told how the Skull and Bones members, including President George HW Bush's brother Jonathan Bush and an attorney, tried to silence the San Carlos Apache leaders. The San Carlos Apaches were seeking the return of Geronimo’s skull, during meetings in New York in the 1980s. Geronimo had asked to be buried in the mountains on San Carlos.
The more I read from the book Secrets of the Tomb, the more it became obvious that the Skull and Bones members weren’t just seizing money. Their desire was for power. They wanted world domination.
So, now years later, I see the Skull and Bones Society rear its head again in the Desert Rock power plant deal on the Navajo Nation in the Four Corners, protested by Navajos living on the land in the longstanding protest Dooda Desert Rock. Follow the money at Sithe Global and it leads back to Blackstone and a member of Skull and Bones.
Skull and Bones members controlled production of the first atomic bomb, according to Alexandra Robbins, author of Secrets of the Tomb. Zimmerman writes of this time, “The Manhattan Project is inaugurated, physicists are secretly recruited, clandestine outposts spring up in the wilderness, and a fevered race against time ensues to transform abstract theories into a deliverable weapon.”
The proposed Desert Rock power plant would be in the Four Corners, the same “national sacrifice area,” where the Cold War uranium mines, coal mines, power plants and oil and gas wells are already polluting and causing disease and death. The air, land and water are contaminated and the region is desecrated. It is the Navajos sacred place of origin, Dinetah, a fact voiced by Bahe Katenay, Navajo from Big Mountain, and censored.
Navajos at Big Mountain, and the Mohawk grandmothers who write Mohawk Nation News, make it clear: The government initiated tribal councils are puppets of the US and Canadian governments.
Several years before Dan Evehema passed to the Spirit World, relaxing on his couch after protesting in the rain backhoes and development on Hopiland, at the age of 104, he shared truth, speaking through a translator.
Evehema said the Hopi Sinom never authorized or recognized the establishment of the Hopi Tribal Council, a puppet of the US government.
In the early Twentieth Century, Hopi were imprisoned at Alcatraz for refusing to cooperate with the US. In the latter part of the century, when the threat of forced relocation of Navajos was great, traditional Hopi, including Evehema and Thomas Banyacya, stood with and supported Navajos at Big Mountain. Mainstream reporters don’t like to report these facts, since it deflates their superficial coverage, based on corporate press releases.
As I was being censored out of the news business (at least the type that results in a paycheck) Louise Benally of Big Mountain once again revealed the truth of the times. When she compared the war in Iraq to the Longest Walk of Navajos to Bosque Redondo, she spoke of the oppression and deceptions of the US colonizers, comparing the torture and starvation of this death walk to what the US was doing in Iraq. Benally was censored.
It was more than just a censored story. It was a statement of the times we live in: Hush words too profound to be written. The times had come full circle. Indian people once oppressed by US colonizers were now serving as US soldiers for US colonizers, killing other Indigenous Peoples. Victims had become perpetrators.
During much of the Twentieth Century, Indian children in the US, Canada and Australia were kidnapped. Stolen from their parents, these children were placed in boarding schools. In Canada, the residential schools were run by churches. In all three countries, young children were routinely abused, sexually abused and even murdered.
On the Longest Walk in 2008, while broadcasting across America, we saw the marsh at Haskell in Kansas. Here, there are unmarked graves of the children who never came home. At Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania, we read the tombstones in the rows of tiny graves, the names of the children who never came home.
In the US, Canada and Australia, children were forbidden to speak their Native tongue, which carried their songs and ceremonies. Indian children were beaten, locked in cellars, tortured and raped. Many died of pneumonia, malnutrition and broken hearts. Some were shot trying to escape.
At Muscowequan Catholic residential school in Lestock, Saskatchewan, Canada, a young girl was raped by a priest. When she gave birth, the baby was thrown into the furnace and burned alive in front of child survivor Irene Favel.
In the US, the young boys who survived were militarized, made into US soldiers. Zimmerman writes that Australia, like Canada and US, carried out a holocaust of Aboriginal peoples. “What occurred in Australia is a mirror image of the holocaust visited on Native Americans. When the British claimed sovereignty over Australia, they commenced a 200 year campaign of dispossession, oppression, subjugation and genocide of Aboriginal peoples.”
Indigenous Peoples around the world targeted by uranium mining, including the Dene in the north, linked to Dine’ (Navajo) in the south by the common root of the Athabascan language. From the Dine’ and Dene and around the earth to Australia, there was a recipe for death for Indigenous Peoples by the power mongers.
The US policy of seizing the land and destroying the air, water and soil is clear in Nevada and Utah. While Western Shoshone fight the nuclear dump on their territory at Yucca Mountain in what is known as Nevada, Goshutes at Skull Valley in Utah are neighbors with US biological and chemical weapons testing.
Zimmerman writes, “Dugway Proving Ground has tested VX nerve gas, leading in 1968 to the ‘accidental’ killing of 6,400 sheep grazing in Skull Valley, whose toxic carcasses were then buried on the reservation without the tribe’s knowledge, let alone approval. The US Army stores half its chemical weapon stockpile nearby, and is burning it in an incinerator prone to leaks; jets from Hill Air Force Base drop bombs on Wendover Bombing Range, and fighter crashes and misfired missiles have struck nearby. Tribal members’ health is undoubtedly adversely impacted by this alphabet soup of toxins.”
Zimmerman makes it clear that the genocide of Indigenous Peoples was not an accident. Indigenous People were targeted with death by uranium mining and nuclear dumping. Indian people were targeted with destruction that would carry on for generations, both in their genetic matter and in their soil, air and water.
One ingredient in the recipe for death is division: Divide and control the people and the land. This is what is happening at the southern and northern borders on Indian lands. Just as the US continues the war in Iraq and Afghanistan for war profiteers and politics, the racism-fueled US border hysteria results in billions for border wall builders, security companies and private prisons.
It comes as no surprise that the Israeli defense contractor responsible for the Apartheid Wall in Palestine, Elbit Systems, was subcontracted by Boeing Co. to work on the spy towers on the US/Mexico border. Militarized borders mean dollars, oppression and power.
The US Border Patrol agents harass Indian people at the US borders, even murder people of color on the border at point blank range. More often than not, the murdering border agents walk away free from the courts.
Meanwhile, the US under the guise of homeland security, seizes a long strip of land -- the US/Mexico corridor from California to Texas --including that of the Lipan Apache in Texas. As Indigenous Peoples in the south are pushed off their lands, corn fields seized by corporations, they walk north to survive, many dying in the Southwest desert.
Another ingredient in US genocide in Indian country is internal political division and turmoil: Distract the people with political turmoil, to make it easier to steal their water and land rights. If that doesn’t work, put them in prison. In Central and South America, the mining companies have added another step: Assassinate them.
The US made sure that Latin countries were able to carry out torture and assassinations by training leaders and military personnel at the School of the Americas. Even Chiquita Bananas admitted in court that they hired assassins to kill anyone who opposed the company, including Indigenous Peoples and farmers, in Colombia.
So, when Zimmerman writes of uranium and the sacrifices of Indigenous Peoples, those are not just empty words. They are words that mark the graves, words that name the cancers, words that mark the rivers and words that give rise to names.
To give voice to a name is to break the silence.
Thank you Paul Zimmerman for sharing this chapter with all of us.
Brenda Norrell is a freelance writer and Americas Program border analyst. Her blog can be found at CENSORED NEWS.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Armas
