All Notebook Entries

Ending litigation, filed by former DEA agent Richard Horn, will cost taxpayers a pretty penny

Former DEA agent Richard Horn, and his attorney, former federal prosecutor Brian Leighton, have struck a deal to end a long-running legal case in which Horn accused former CIA and State Department officials of spying on him and sabotaging his anti-narcotics mission in Burma — now known as Myanmar.

By Brenda Norrell

Photo: Angie Ramon, Tohono O'odham, views the crosses in memory of the migrants who died crossing the Sonoran Desert, at the Dia de los Muertos on Oct. 31, 2009, in San Xavier, Tohono O'odham land. Ramon remembered her son Bennett Patricio, Jr., who was run over and killed by the US Border Patrol. Based on the evidence, Ramon said her son walked upon US Border Patrol agents invovled in drug smuggling in the desert at 3 a.m. and was intentionally murdered. She took the case to Ninth Circuit federal court, but found no justice. Photo Brenda Norrell.

Profiteering from misery: Alaskan Natives' private migrant prison for profit is disturbing trend in violation of the traditional teachings of Native Americans

By Brenda Norrell

Photo: Outdoor migrant detention center on Tohono O'odham land, where temperatures can reach 116 degrees in summer, known as 'The Cage." Photo by Ofelia Rivas.

TUCSON -- Native Americans say the disturbing trend of profiteering from foul and abusive private migrant prisons by American Indian Nations violates traditional teachings to honor the sacredness of life and all humanity.
The San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham Nation has planned a migrant prison in secret for years. Recently, outcry from neighbors at Sahuarita, Ariz., halted the plan. However, a second site selected in secret is east of Three Points, Ariz. and has not been made public.

Recent DOJ pleadings in state-secrets case appear to rely on fabrications

U.S. government attorneys seem to have made another major blunder in the closely watched state-secrets privilege case involving former DEA agent Richard Horn.

Government lawyers who are seeking to advance national security claims in Horn’s case have already been accused of committing a fraud on the court. In addition, Paul E. Forster, a former agent with the State Department Inspector General’s Office (OIG) is now prepared to testify in the case that his superiors whitewashed an investigative report that substantiated Horn’s charges against CIA and State Department employees.

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- In a sudden change of heart, the editor of the Arizona Daily Starr said he would like to offer his neighborhood for the Navajo Generating Station.
After encouraging the EPA to forget about new clean air standards, he said he realized that this was an act of environmental racism. He said he realized that his desire to continue this polluting power plant on the Navajo Nation was wrong.

By Brenda Norrell

SKY CITY, Acoma Pueblo, N.M. -- Where were the news reporters during the 7th Southwest Uranium Forum? Only two people identified themselves as news reporters at the gathering, a correspondent for Washington Post and another from the Four Corners Free Press.

Where was the American Indian media? Where were the Native American newspapers and radio stations?

Recently, Associated Press and the Arizona Republic were quick to attack environmentalists by rewriting the press releases of politicians and corporations. But where were their reporters when Indigenous Peoples gathered to tell their stories of how uranium mining, and the radioactive waste strewn and left behind, caused the deaths of their children, parents, brothers and sisters?

Conflicting Press Releases Cast Doubt on Government Claims

This past October 16, the Mexican Federal Police transferred Chiapan peasant leader Jose Manuel “Don Chema” Hernandez Martinez to a maximum-security federal prison located in Nayarit, 26 hours from his home.  Don Chema is a leader of the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ).  The government claims that it transferred him “for his own safety.”

On October 9, the government claims to have uncovered a massive weapons stockpile—reportedly the largest weapons seizure in the history of Chiapas, and the biggest weapons seizure in the entire country so far this year.  The Chiapas state government says in a press release that “according to statements made by the men detained in this operation, the arsenal would be linked to José Manuel Hernández Martínez.”

Streaming live video: Indigenous Uranium Forum
Acoma Pueblo
http://www.livestream.com/earthcycles

By Brenda Norrell

ACOMA PUEBLO, N.M. -- The Indigenous Uranium Forum will be broadcast live Thursday, Oct. 22, at 8:30 a.m. Mountain Time, through Saturday noon. Earthcycles www.earthcycles.net will provide live coverage, carrying the voices of Indigenous uranium victims to the world. Acoma Pueblo and Havasupai leaders join Anishinabe Winona LaDuke at the forum. Uranium victims and activists will speak from Pueblo, Navajo, Goshute and Lakota lands, along with Indigenous Peoples from Bolivia, Canada and Alaska.

In a memo issued ''to the DEA, FBI, and US Attorneys around the country'' in charge of carrying out the War on Drugs-TM, the Obama administration basically said (if you read between the lines as I do) that there was nothing wrong with the act of smoking pot in and of itself, but when violence, pushing drugs on minors, money laundering, etc. are also part of the mix, THEN the adjoining act of doing drugs becomes intertwined also in the overall illegal activity...

Government Transferred “Don Chema” to a Federal Maximum-Security Prison

The way the government is treating Jose Manuel Hernandez Martinez, also known as “Don Chema,” one would think he’s the head of a drug cartel.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio

For Immediate Release
Contact Juan Haro, (212) 561-0555

Most Powerful Landlord in East Harlem, Multi-National Dawnay, Day Group, Comes Crashing Down

October 14, 2009—In a battle of David and Goliath proportions, tenants and members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio fought back against the attempts of the multi-billion dollar London-based corporation Dawnay, Day Group to push low-income families from their homes.

Thousands of East Harlem tenants have just been notified that the 47 buildings they reside in have been seized, due to Dawnay, Day’s failure to pay its massive outstanding debts, and are now under receivership, completing the demise of this multi-national company, a powerful threat to the community of El Barrio.

Agents — Two Since Retired, One Now Leading High-powered Task Force — Call Claims “Absurd” and “Despicable”

A top gun with the DEA’s Special Operations Division, along with two fellow law enforcers, are not what they seem, if Gaetano (Guy) DiGirolamo Sr., a convicted heroin dealer, is to be believed.

The trio are, in fact, drug dealers themselves, argues Yale law professor Steven B. Duke in court pleadings filed on behalf of his client, DiGirolamo.

A Spanish Company and National Action Party Members Hope to Exploit Luz y Fuerza's Fiber Optic Network

Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME) Secretary General Martin Esparza claims that President Felipe Calderon busted his union in order to take control of a 1,100-kilometer fiber optic network.  The fiber optic network in question was built with public money and was the property of Luz y Fuerza del Centro, the government-owned electricity company that the military and federal police shut down this past weekend.  The union's opposition to Calderon's agenda of cronyism and privatization is at the heart of the dispute, according to Esparza.

In an interview with the Mexican weekly Proceso, Esparza explains how politicians from the president's National Action Party (PAN) facilitated a foreign company's exploitation of Luz y Fuerza's fiber optic cable, while simultaneously stifling Luz y Fuerza's bid for a permit to utilize its own infrastructure to provide television, internet, and telephone services.

By Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- In the new Southern Border Rights Campaign, the Alianza Indigena Sin Fronteras/Indigenous Alliance Without Borders, is working toward national guidelines to ensure border rights for Indigenous Peoples in their homelands, from California to Texas.

by Brenda Norrell

TUCSON -- Activist Ward Churchill will speak at a benefit for the traditional O'odham resisting oppression and abuse by US Border Patrol agents and protesting the construction of the US/Mexico border wall in their traditional homeland.
Ofelia Rivas, founder of the O'odham VOICE against the Wall, said funds raised at the benefit will support the struggles of the O'odham living on both sides of the border, on O'odham lands in southern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.
Rivas points out that the US border wall construction has resulted in the unearthing of O'odham ancestors, in violation of spiritual laws and federal laws. The wall is now a barrier to annual sacred pilgrimages of the O'odham.
"The wall has destroyed the sacred resting places of our ancestors and has closed our ceremonial routes," Rivas said.

Federal Agents Take Them By Force to Power Stations with Problems

by Patricia Muñoz and Fabiola Martinez, La Jornada

Workers "are being kidnapped" by federal forces in order to force them to "cooperate" with the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) in power stations that have problems providing electricity to customers, denounced the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME).

"The federal government's disgrace and desperation has become intolerable, and our patience is wearing thin" because the Federal Police (PF) and the Military go to workers' homes to "detain them and force them to work in order to confront the widespread power outages that the CFE engineers have been completely incapable of resolving," said SME spokesman Fernando Amezcua.

America's reliance on military strength to solve what it perceives as personal conflicts has meant that other avenues of approach have not been tested enough, for example: the ideological one. A lot of lip-service is paid to ideas that are vague enough such as 'liberty' or 'self-determination' but it is understood that usually is reserved for Americans, aside from what the terms may mean or not mean. As soon as the subject shifts to anyone on the outside, then they are not deserving of the same rights as Americans, by default.

Calderon Uses 6,000 Federal Agents to Fire Over 44,000 Luz y Fuerza Workers


Mexican Electrical Workers Union members protest the summary firing of 44,000 members. Photo: La Jornada

In the middle of the night last Saturday, President Felipe Calderon sent six thousand soldiers and militarized Federal Police to take over state power company Luz y Fuerza installations in Mexico City and the states of Mexico, Puebla, Morelos, and Hidalgo.  Immediately following the takeover, Calderon issued an executive order closing Luz y Fuerza.  Because no law or decree can go into effect until it is published in the federal government's Official Diary of the Federation, the government published the executive order in a special edition of the Official Diary of the Federation to coincide with the military and police raids that closed Luz y Fuerza.

Government Uses the Explosions Against Leftist Strongholds on University Campuses

Throughout the month of September, over ten bombs were placed in banks, a car dealership, a luxury clothing store, a small police station, and an animal testing laboratory in Mexico City and the states of Guanajuato, Nayarit, and Jalisco.  Most exploded; no injuries were reported. 

By Brenda Norrell

The amazing part of the one-sided news coverage of the so-called Hopi Tribal Council ban on environmentalists, which the Navajo president supported, is how few news reporters were even aware of the large number of Hopi and Navajo environmental organizations and individual activists.
The majority of reporters failed to even contact Hopi and Navajo environmentalists, people actually defending the land (with every dime that they have.)

When longtime Navajo activist John Redhouse speaks of the hate crimes against American Indians in northwest New Mexico, he knows what he is talking about. He has lived it.

Redhouse, who has lived with the racism in the Navajo bordertown of Farmington, N.M., writes about the recent hate crimes by non-Indians against homeless Indians in Grants. Redhouse said the recent racially motivated beatings began after Mount Taylor was designated as a Traditional Cultural Property.

The Security Situation has Worsened, and Mexicans are Desperate for Policy Change... Any Policy Change

by Sabina Berman, Proceso

All debate ends when the first gunshots are fired. When the boots of the first battalion hit a city's streets, a forced silence falls over the civilians.  A fearful silence that entails two hopes:

First: God willing, the best will win the war and it will be quick.  Second: Whoever wins, let it be quick.

This is a universal effect of war that expectedly occurred in Mexico three years ago, when the current administration sent the Mexican Military to the cities, defying the very definition of war.

By Brenda Norrell

Internet radio offers a new vehicle for the struggles and victories of Indigenous Peoples. The rise in popularity is an indicator of a new demand in news. The Zapatistas and border rights are among the most downloaded audios at Censored News Blog Radio. The rise in listeners shows that people are not only depending on Internet radio more, but it is providing a way to hear the voices of people censored by the mainstream media.

Zapatistas' Subcomandante Marcos' talk has been the number one download at Censored News since he spoke at Digna Rabia. Ben Carnes, fasting for Leonard Peltier, is now the second most frequently downloaded audio.

Western Shoshone, Tohono O'odham, Akimel O'otham and Yaqui, speaking on the Yucca Mountain dump, land rights, prisoner abuse, border rights, racism and Border Patrol abuses, are collectively the most in demand topics.

Here's the top downloads at Censored News, recorded with Earthcycles, www.earthcycles.net, always free:

Federal investigator claims he faced retaliation for failing to play ball with a cover-up

What can best be described as a bombshell revelation has surfaced in a long-running state-secrets case filed by a former DEA agent, Richard Horn, against past high-level employees of the CIA and State Department.

A court pleading filed in the litigation indicates that a former supervisory agent with the State Department Inspector General’s Office (OIG) has agreed to testify under oath that an investigative report he prepared in the Horn matter “was rewritten without his knowledge or permission, and his signature forged, and his intended conclusions changed.”

Updated Oct. 4, 2009

Vernon Masayesva, Hopi, reveals that the Hopi Tribal Council has been taken over by a pro-Peabody Coal faction. Further, Masayesva reveals that the Hopi Tribal Council hired Tina May, former senior editor at the Arizona Republic, as its press officer. Now, the Arizona Republic is publishing one-sided, biased press release coverage by May.

Already this week, the Associated Press' dark and biased coverage was revealed in "Lazy journalists are the darlings of the corporations."
AP published press releases of politicians and corporations in its coverage of the Hopi Tribal Council's ban on environmentalists, with support from Navajo President Joe Shirley, Jr. AP insulted environmentalists without interviewing the Hopi and Navajo environmental organizations and Hopis and Navajos living on the land.
Peabody Coal's use of a tribal attorney to carry out its dirty work is the same tactic Peabody Coal used originally to seize Black Mesa for coal mining, by way of attorney John Boyden, who worked for Peabody and the Hopi Tribe.
Please read this week's full statements by Hopis and Navajos at http://www.bsnorrell.blogspot.com

By Brenda Norrell

When the Hopi Tribal Council banned "environmentalists," and Navajo President Joe Shirley, Jr., agreed, Navajos and Hopis defending the land were first shocked and appalled. Galvanized by the attack, Navajo and Hopi defenders of the land and cultural ways responded.

Republican U.S. Representative's former press secretary helping to write the script

GOP lawmakers Jim DeMint, Aaron Schock, Peter Roskam and Doug Lamborn aren’t the only extremist grandstanders openly flaunting their disrespect for the Logan Act and contempt for President Obama by trekking to Honduras to play dice with a dictator.

por Organización Campesina Emiliano Zapata (OCEZ)

“Luchamos por obtener un pedazo de tierra para trabajar y sostener a nuestros hijos”

La organización campesina Emiliano zapata OCEZ REGION CARRANZA denunciamos lo siguiente:

Nuestra organización campesina históricamente se ha caracterizado por enarbolar la lucha social en defensa de los mas necesitados, de los que menos tienen, desde tiempo atrás hemos consolidado básicamente nuestra lucha por obtener un pedazo de tierra para trabajar y sostener a nuestros hijos, impulsando la creación de programas de atención social en beneficio de los grupos de campesinos que conforman nuestra organización; en este caminar desde tiempo atrás hemos estado juntos por la misma necesidad y hemos coincidido por buscar formas y mecanismos de solución ante los tres niveles de gobierno que impulsan el desarrollo y la gobernalidad en nuestra estado y en la región.

Dutch publication Elsevier reported that the Dutch vice-consul in Tegucigalpa and family of the Honorary Consul, Ms. C.M. Klück-Baas, has been reprimanded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry for signing a letter by Dutch citizens to the Foreign Minister in support of the military coup.

Armchair journalists and the lessons of McCarthyism
By Brenda Norrell

Lazy journalists are great friends of the corporations. They are known as "armchair journalists" because they sit in comfort and rewrite press releases from politicians and corporations. To spice it up a bit, they dial a few numbers, get a few comments and call it a news story.

By Brenda Norrell

When the news was released that the Hopi Tribal Council had banned environmentalists today, it was a sure sign that Hopi struggling to defend the land, along with their colleagues, were making progress against coal mining and power plants on sacred lands.

Alph H. Secakuku, Sipalulovi council representative from Second Mesa, released the following statement. Secakuku says Hopi are the best environmentalists, despite the current political coup:

Comments by Alph H. Secakuku, Sipaulovi Council Representative, Village of Sipaulovi, Second Mesa, AZ, Hopiland: