All Notebook Entries

By Brenda Norrell

Photo: Bolivian President Evo Morales at Copenhagen Summit by Earl Tulley, Navajo

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia -- Bolivian President Evo Morales, announcing the objectives of the upcoming Peoples Climate Summit, made it clear that the so-called developed countries of the world have usurped the bounties of Mother Earth at the expense of the poorest people in the world.

Cautioning mankind of the suffering and displacement which leads to forced migration, Morales called for The Peoples World Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth's Rights, in Cochabamba, Bolivia, April 19-22, 2010.

Stressing the need to reestablish harmony with nature and establish the rights of Mother Earth, Morales welcomed those willing to work for the good of all mankind, and those governments willing to work for the best interests of their people.

Many of us come to The Field several times a day,  waiting for that new entry from Al.  Thus my entry title.  He's busy.  Full Tilt Boogie #1 busy.  Janis Joplin's last band busy, producing a Pearl.  Our patience will be rewarded.

Meanwhile:  Don't forget to check the other entries from our other journalists and co-publishers while you're here.

“Esto es una masacre, esto es terrorismo de Estado” asegura Julián Contreras

Descargar audio en Mp3:
http://archivos.radiobembafm.org/010210_gero_fong.mp3

Carlos Aparicio entrevista en Cénit, noticiario de medio día transmitido en Radio Bemba 95.5 FM, a los activistas del Frente Nacional Contra la Represión en Chihuahua, Carlos Fong Ronquillo y Julián Contreras, el pasado 1 de febrero.

Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

Si la muerte de 49 niños no es suficiente para que nosotros nos levantemos entonces, ¿qué jodidos va a ser? — Abraham Fraijo, papá de Emilia, fallecida en el incendio de la guardería ABC el 5 de junio de 2009.

Evergreen and Elbit are flying surveillance over Haiti orphanages

By Brenda Norrell

CIA contractor Evergreen International Aviation, Inc., and the Israeli border spy contractor Elbit Systems, have teamed up to fly surveillance drones over Haiti orphanages in the remote mountains of Haiti.

As Danske Bank divested in Elbit investments because of Elbit's ethics violations, Evergreen publicaly announced it has teamed up with Elbit for air surveillance of Haiti orphanages.

While CNN censors the emergency in the Dakotas, the US funnels relief dollars to the US military with George W. Bush taking the lead

UPDATE Friday night: Chairman Joseph Brings Plenty declares state of emergency on Cheyenne River Sioux Nation in central South Dakota; awaits federal declaration from Obama http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

By Brenda Norrell

School of Americas protesters sentenced to six months in prison

Updated Wed., Jan. 27, 2010

By Brenda Norrell

Supporters Argue that the Closure of Luz y Fuerza is an Affront to Taxpayers, Electricity Customers, Workers, and Subcontractors

The Mexican Electric Workers Union (SME) is keeping the pressure on the federal government leading up to negotiations between the union and the government over the fate of 18,000 SME members who have still not accepted their severance packages. 

The truth from New York Times could have meant one less person would have been beaten, raped or murdered by the US Border Patrol this year

Update: Comments added from Ofelia Rivas, Tohono O'odham, on New York Times interview

Paquita is how her family, friends and co-workers used to call her since she was born, finally succumbed to death after her battle with a very aggressive cancerous tumor in the liver.  Maria Francisca Vendiola, also known as Maria Francisca Alvarez Serrano was a Mexican-American farm migrant laborer who worked for Pete Psquinelli Produce Company for several years. 

UPDATE: Skull ballot box removed from auction

By Brenda Norrell

NEW YORK -- Christie's auction house in New York said a skull ballot box from the Skull and Bones Society has been withdrawn from the sale. A Christie's spokesperson said a title claim resulted in the removal.

Bush Formula for Disaster Relief: Deprivation, Militarization and Genocide

By Brenda Norrell

Concern over U.S. government’s latest jailhouse deal prompts House of Death informant to contact Narco News

Over the weekend, Narco News received a call from an inmate at the Buffalo Federal Detention Center, located in Batavia in upstate New York.

The caller was Guillermo Ramirez Peyro, who is familiar to anyone who has been following the House of Death case over the past five-plus years.

“I have no contact with anyone,” Ramirez Peyro told Narco News. “I’m isolated, with no TV, not even a newspaper anymore … in the Special Housing Unit. I can come out of the cell only to use the shower and, at times, the phone.”

Chiapas Government Arrests Opposition Politician for Anti-mining Organizer's Murder

On January 13, the Chiapas government arrested Walter Antonio León Montoya and accused him of being the "intellectual author" of the November 27 assassination of Chiapan anti-mining organizer Mariano Abarca Roblero. León Montoya is a former federal congressman from the opposition Institutional Revolution Party (PRI).  Chiapan Gov. Juan Sabines is from the Democratic Revolution Party (PRD), which controls the state.

Abarca's organization, the Mexican Network of People Affected by Mining (REMA), denies that León Montoya had anything to do with Abarca's murder.  In a press release, the organization argues, "It would appear that the accusation that León Montoya planned the assassination of Mariano Abarca Roblero is a strategy of political revenge."

REMA has accused employees of the Canadian mining company Blackfire Exploration of planning and carrying out Abarca's execution. The state arrested three former or current Blackfire employees after eyewitnesses identified them as the culprits.

Obama's selection of George Bush for Haiti relief ties with Obama's Nobel Peace Prize as the most horrendous error. Profiteering from misery is what Bush does best.

By Brenda Norrell

President Obama selected war criminal and corporate thief George W. Bush to head up US relief efforts to Haiti, along with Bill Clinton.

No, this is not a joke or satire. It is not a Saturday Night Live spoof. It is a fact.

Now, the Clinton and Bush duo is pleading with Americans to donate to Haiti relief by way of them.

Two Workers Detained and Later Released Following Other Campaign Mobilizations

Following President Felipe Calderon’s executive order that shut down state-owned Luz y Fuerza and put its 44,000 workers out of a job, Mexico’s other state-owned electricity company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), began to remove equipment from Luz y Fuerza facilities. When Calderon shut down Luz y Fuerza, he put its infrastructure and territory under the CFE’s control.  However, former Luz y Fuerza workers, who consider their sudden firing to be illegal and immoral and continue to fight for work, were outraged that the CFE was “plundering” expensive equipment from their former workplace.  Workers set up protest barricades in front of their former workplaces in order to block the CFE’s trucks from hauling out more equipment.  Representatives from the Mexican Electricians Union (SME) visited the barricades, informed the workers that they were engaging in unsanctioned protest activity, and requested that the workers remove them. Workers at many barricades refused the union’s request, and the union refused to recognize and support the wildcat barricades.

I spent the Christmas holidays in my hometown of Cheyenne, Wyoming. It is always interesting to return to the U.S. and to get back in touch with a bit of the reality there.

One evening I was attending an open house party when I saw a former public high-school principal that I have known for a long time. I don’t remember if he greeted me, or simply began to speak about Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez. The remark was something like this: “That crazy Chávez thinks the U.S. is sending spy planes over Venezuelan territory. What do we need spy planes for when we have satellites providing all the information we need?”

As of New Year's day 2010 it is now legal to possess, use, and in some instances grow various types of formly banned plants in the Czech Republic. Mexico passed similar legislation in 2009 decriminalizing possession and use of certain drugs, but the Czech government went even further by allowing possession of larger amounts, than Mexico. A week prior to decriminalizing many drugs, the government made it legal to allow limited cultivation of marijuana, coca, mescaline cactus, and forty varieties of psilocybin mushrooms. Read links below for further information.

Sources: Prague Daily Monitor, Le Monde (in French), Unified Networkers of Drug Users Nationally

By Brenda Norrell (UPDATE Jan. 14, 2010)

Kevin Annett, human rights activist beaten in Vancouver on Wednesday, released a new article today exposing the role of Canada's police and churches in sex crimes and child trafficking, including the abuse of Native women and children.

Kevin Annett, a community minister, was assaulted by two men in Vancouver's downtown eastside on Wednesday, Jan. Jan. 6, 2010,  just two days after he published an article on church and government complicity in child trafficking on Canada's west coast.

By Brenda Norrell

Photo: Hopi and Navajo protest Peabody permit in Denver. Photo Mano Cockrum

The mainstream media continued aiding and abetting the dirty coal industry this week, in the genocidal targeting of American Indian lands for toxic and polluting industries that the rest of humanity doesn't want in their backyards.

Troubled Nigerian kid is blowback from Pakistan’s badlands

David Headley, a U.S. citizen of Pakistani descent, was arrested by the FBI last October for allegedly conspiring to carry out violent acts in Denmark against the newspaper that published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005.

Headley, a resident of Chicago, is also in the headlights of Indian law enforcers, who suspect he played a role in the attacks on civilians in Mumbai, India, last year that resulted in 166 deaths.

But there is a far larger ball of intrigue that begins to unwind once you begin to pull on the Headley string.

By Brenda Norrell

Updated Jan. 9, 2010

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced an Alternative Climate Summit, to be held in April, as Navajo and Hopi celebrate a victory. The US Interior Department rejected Peabody Coal's permit for coal mining on Black Mesa in northern Arizona.

The US Department of Interior, Office of Hearing and Appeals, in Salt Lake City said the Office of Surface Mining violated the law.

El documento generó furiosas críticas por parte de la comunidad prohibicionista

El Departamento de Salud del gobierno de la ciudad de Nueva York editó un manual de 16 páginas titulado Take charge, take care (“Toma el mando, toma el cuidado”) dirigido a la comunidad consumidora de drogas intravenosas. En ese estado mueren anualmente mil personas por sobredosis y sólo en 2006 los decesos por esta causa se colocaron como la cuarta causa de muerte en adultos después de las enfermedades cardiacas, el cáncer, el DPA, 2008).

By Brenda Norrell

The US made new threats about the condemnation and seizure of Lipan Apache lands in Texas for the US/Mexico border wall, as the abuses of Indigenous Peoples in the borderzone continues unabated. President Obama continues the genocidal borderland policies of the Bush administration.

Let's recap what's occurred. First Dick Cheney was accusing Obama of 'dithering' because he wasn't sending the extra troops to Afghanistan in a hurry, using every conservative and reactionary outlet at his disposal. Then (surprise!) we had the Fort Hood shooting by Major Malik Hasan, mowing down 12 fellow soldiers. Obama then had no choice but to order 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan (or it would have looked like he didn't care about terror, thereby giving Cheney's narrative some credence).

FACEBOOK DELETES INVITE TO CIA DRONE PROTEST

By Brenda Norrell

Updated Jan. 4, 2010

Cindy Sheehan said Facebook deleted an invitation to the CIA Drone Protest in Langley, Virginia, scheduled for Jan. 16, 2010. Sheehan said "the CIA is becoming overly involved in terrorizing populations." Sheehan joins a powerhouse of women activists to lead the CIA Drone Protest, including Cynthia McKinney, Ann Wright, Kathy Kelly and Debra Sweet.

Perhaps today a small child ran into misfortune.  There may have been a drug-related shootout in her neighborhood that spilled over and took her life.  Maybe her brother, in poverty, had wanted so badly to help the family that he got involved in drug trading, and a local branch of an organized crime group had decided he wasn't serving them correctly.  Or maybe, her parents were in an organized crime group, or her aunt or uncle were.

Ten events of the decade, 2000 to 2009

By Brenda Norrell

Indigenous Peoples made history throughout this decade, struggling to protect Mother Earth, resisting colonization and exposing genocide. In the movements to resist oppression and protect the sacred, Native people carved out their place in history. Here are ten of those events: