Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalNavajo “Water Lady” Provides Water to 250 Reservation Families a Month
Navajo “Water Lady” Provides Water to 250 Reservation Families a Month
by Tod Perry
September 7, 2015 at 12:20
In the Navajo Nation, 100 miles west of Albuquerque, New Mexico there’s a woman affectionately known as “The Water Lady.” Every month, Darlene Arviso drives to 250 homes and provides them with fresh, clean water. The average resident of the Navajo Nation uses seven gallons a day, compared the 100 used by the average U.S. resident. In an area where 40% of families are without running water, Arviso fills their buckets, jars, plastic barrels, and other containers on her monthly visit.
In an area where unemployment is as high as 70%, Arviso’s work sheds light on the terrible inequity faced by many living on U.S. reservations. For those without running water, the closest tap is a 100-mile-long round trip to the St. Bonaventure Indian Mission in Thoreau, New Mexico. Further complicating the issue is many don’t have cars. According to the mission’s office manager, Cindy Howe, “If they don’t have any water, they don’t have any water. Sometimes I get so frustrated. Why can’t people get water?” That’s why Arviso’s work is crucial for many families.
Every day, Arviso loads up her bright yellow tanker truck and delivers water across the reservation. “When I see her coming I’m like, ‘Yes! Yes! water’,” said a resident. Arviso was born and raised on the reservation and during her work hours she drives another large, yellow vehicle, a school bus. Arviso’s daily deliveries can be made more difficult if the reservation’s dirt roads become wet and muddy after rain or snow. “Darlene Arviso is a living saint,” said George McGraw, founder of DIGDEEP a non-profit that helps provide water to third-world countries.
- Video -
http://magazine.good.is/articles/water-lady-is-a-saint
US embassy urged Clinton to hold back on praising Uribe during 2010 visit
Source: Colombia Reports
US embassy urged Clinton to hold back on praising Uribe during 2010 visit
Posted by Grace Brown on Sep 7, 2015
The United States’ embassy in Bogota warned former State Secretary Hillary Clinton ahead of a 2010 visit to Colombia to “avoid effusive praise for President Alvaro Uribe” because of the latter’s implication in mayor human rights abuses.
The email, dated June 3 2010 and originating from the office of Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA), was forwarded by Ambassador William Brownfield, now Assistant Secretary of State for Narcotics Affairs and Law Enforcement, and sent to Clinton’s then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, prior to flying to Colombia on a state visit.
. . .
However, the email advised, this recognition should avoid “repeating the tone of Defense Secretary [Robert] Gates’ April visit, in which he called Uribe a ‘great hero’ and failed even to mention any concerns.” Among those concerns were mounting accusations of mass human rights violations that happened under Uribe’s watch.
The email highlighted the possible scale of the “false positives” scandal, in which Colombia’s US-backed military murdered thousands of innocent civilians and dressed them in guerrilla clothing in order to inflate body counts and receive bonuses.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/us-embassy-urged-clinton-to-hold-back-on-praising-uribe-during-2010-visit/
A Revolutionary New Coalition Stands for Community Rights in Colorado
A Revolutionary New Coalition Stands for Community Rights in Colorado
Saturday, 05 September 2015 00:00
By Simon Davis-Cohen, This Changes Everything | Interview
In Colorado, local governments cannot raise the minimum wage, pass rent control laws, or ban fracking. A system of state "preemption"—a favorite tool of the fossil fuel industry—stands in their way.
Local activists have long been outspoken about this legal barrier to keeping fossil fuels in the ground. Now, a coalition embodying a range of economic and environmental justice fights is coming together to directly challenge the basis for state preemption: On August 17, a statewide initiative was launched by Coloradans for Community Rights to do just that. It may be the first time that anti-extraction and workers' rights movements have allied behind a concrete political tactic in modern US history.
The "Colorado Community Rights Amendment," which needs some 99,000 signatures to qualify for the 2016 ballot, disrupts preemption by granting local governments a constitutional right to raise state standards—empowering them to boost the minimum wage, bolster environmental protections, and strengthen tenant rights, for example. It would recognize the authority of local governments "to enact local laws that protect health, safety and welfare by recognizing or establishing rights of natural persons, their local communities and nature." (A similar community rights initiative was proposed in 2014, but did not collect enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.)
Crucially, the proposed amendment also elevates local lawmaking above "competing rights, powers, privileges, immunities, or duties of corporations." This means that if a local law conflicts with a corporations' constitutional "right," the local law would prevail—in direct contradiction to our current legal structure, which allows corporations to sue local, state, and federal governments that restrict property rights. The amendment doesn't read like a manifesto, but it could be revolutionary.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/32607-a-revolutionary-new-coalition-stands-for-community-rights-in-colorado
Eduardo Galeano Connected the Dots Between Colonialism, Capitalism and Racism
Eduardo Galeano Connected the Dots Between Colonialism, Capitalism and Racism
Sunday, 06 September 2015 00:00
By Mark Karlin, Truthout | Book Review
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It is estimated more than eight million men have died over the centuries mining silver for European colonizers at the Cerro
Rico mine in Bolivia.It is estimated more than eight million men have died over the centuries mining silver for European
colonizers at the Cerro Rico mine in Bolivia. (Photo: Attraction Voyages Bolivie / Flickr)
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One of the brilliant gifts of Eduardo Galeano's Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillaging of a Continent is that it stops historically in the 1970s, yet provides a knowledge base with which to understand the contemporary evolution of the relationship between colonialism, capitalism and racism.
Sara Bernard, a journalist for Grist, recently interviewed Melina Laboucan-Massimo, an activist member of the indigenous First Nations in Canada. Laboucan-Massimo spoke of the severe challenges facing First Nations because of the historical and current political forces that control them and their environment:
"The systems of patriarchy, capitalism, colonization, and imperialism are based on a system of power and dominance," Laboucan-Massimo said, "When you have these types of systems governing the way a society lives, that's how people are being treated on the ground."
Although speaking of the Eurocentric domination of Canada's indigenous population - and certainly applicable to the conquest and ongoing relationship with US indigenous peoples - her words also accurately describe the relation of European powers (and more recently the United States) to South and Central America.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/32667-eduardo-galeano-connected-the-dots-between-colonialism-capitalism-and-racism
Chart: Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever
Chart: Almost Every Obama Conspiracy Theory Ever
Fake birth certificates, ghostwriters, teleprompters, a teenage trip to Mars, and more of the most paranoid and bizarro Obama conspiracy theories out there.
By Asawin Suebsaeng and Dave Gilson / Illustrations by Steve Brodner
Barack Obama's presidency has been an inspiration to many Americans—especially nutjobs. Ever since the first-black-president-to-be appeared on the national political stage, a cottage industry of conservative conspiracy theorists has churned out bizarro, paranoid, and just plain racist effluvia—some of which has trickled into the political mainstream. Below, we've charted some of the Obama-baiters best (i.e., worst) work. (Scroll down for more detailed descriptions of the conspiracy theories in the diagram.)
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The Conspiracy Theories
Disclaimer: It should go without saying that none of these are true. Follow links at your own risk.
Obama is a secret Muslim: This one began right after he took the stage at the 2004 Democratic convention, with chain emails alleging his "true" religious affiliation. The rumor soon found its way onto the popular conservative online forum Free Republic, and took on a whole new life in the years to come. Related: Obama secretly speaks Arabic, attended a madrassa as a kid in Indonesia, referred to "my Muslim faith" in an interview, and was sworn in on a Koran.
Obama is bringing 100 million Muslims to America: Avi Lipkin and his PR outfit Special Guests claimed to have evidence of a scheme to bring roughly 100 million Muslims from the Middle East into the United States, converting the country into an Islamic nation by the end of Obama's second term and making it easier to obliterate Israel.
Obama once aided the mujahideen: Harlem pastor and professional race-baiter James David Manning contended that in his younger days, Obama went undercover as a CIA agent to facilitate the transfer of cash and weapons to the Afghan mujahideen in the '80s, thereby aiding what would become the Taliban.
More:
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/chart-obama-conspiracy-theories
Utah event honors Joe Hill, hero to many, murderer to others
Source: Associated Press
Utah event honors Joe Hill, hero to many, murderer to others
Brady Mccombs, Associated Press
Updated 4:57 pm, Saturday, September 5, 2015
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill is revered by many as a hero and martyr. To others, Hill was a murderer who gunned down a Salt Lake City grocer and his son and got what he deserved when he was executed by firing squad in 1915.
. . .
"He started the struggle that we still fight today," said Dale Cox, president of the AFL-CIO in Utah. "What he worked on and what he died for is workers' rights. That's what his whole life was centered around."
. . .
Hill became the lead suspect in the 1914 double murder because he was treated by doctors the same night for a gunshot wound to the chest. Prosecutors used that as evidence linking him to the killings. Hill reportedly told doctors that he was shot by a jealous friend in a quarrel over a woman, but he didn't present that alibi at trial.
Lori Taylor, a historian and one of the organizers of Saturday's concert, said new evidence uncovered by author William Adler in a book published in 2011 cements Hill's innocence. Hill was assumed to be guilty because police of that era considered members of the Industrial Workers of the World union to be radical criminals, Taylor said. No motive was given by police.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/us/article/Utah-honors-Joe-Hill-hero-to-many-murderer-6487040.php
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Joe Hill[/center]
Searching for the 'Disappeared' in Medellín's Most Notorious Slum
Searching for the 'Disappeared' in Medellín's Most Notorious Slum
BY AQ Online | July 28, 2015
Mass grave excavation sheds light on Colombia's 'disappeared'
On Monday, a team of Colombian officials began an excavation of what some believe may be the "world’s largest urban mass grave" in La Escombrera, a landfill in Medellín's Comuna 13 slum. As many as 300 people are thought to have been buried there between 1999 and 2004, a period when the surrounding neighborhood was plagued by violence among paramilitary groups, leftist guerrillas and drug traffickers. Many in the city hope the excavation will uncover the remains of missing loved ones, a small portion of the thousands of men, women and children who have “disappeared” during Colombia's five-decade long internal conflict.
Forced disappearances are not unknown to Latin America, and have served as a means of creating fear and stifling opposition in civilian populations at various times in the region's history, perhaps most notably in Argentina during that country's "Dirty War." But nowhere has the tactic been more prevalent than in Colombia. Since the beginning of Colombia's internal conflict, more than 60,000 people have disappeared, a number that continues to grow. Few disappearance cases are thoroughly investigated, and fewer still are successfully prosecuted, making closure for victims' families hard to come by.
"The truth is buried there. We haven't had any help from the state until now,” said Luz Elena Galeano, a wife of a disappeared in Medellín, in an interview with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We've been fighting to get justice and find out the truth."
The Colombian government has taken steps to combat forced disappearances through legislation, including Law 589 and the Justice and Peace Law, but progress has been slow. Observers hope the move to excavate La Escombrera will mark a shift in the government's approach to investigating disappearance cases.
More:
http://www.americasquarterly.org/content/searching-disappeared-medellins-most-notorious-slum
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Blast From the Past in Buenos Aires
September 4, 2015
Blast From the Past in Buenos Aires
by James McEnteer
Quito, Ecuador.
On a visit to Buenos Aires last month, it took a few days to register: the Beatles were everywhere. Their music poured out of cafes and record stores in Palermo and San Telmo. Posters of their faces, individually or together, appeared in store windows and on walls in various styles, from photos of their early mop top days to elaborate psychedelic images of their later, bushier incarnations.
Like all great music, the best of the Beatles brings back the spirit of the era in which it originated, even as it offers fresh pleasures in the present moment. From “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to “Norwegian Wood,” to “When I’m Sixty-Four” to “Let It Be,” Beatles music has traveled far and well. Evocative of long-gone times and places, their songs of innocence and experience also transcend any context, appealing to many who have never heard them before.
But why this rampant retro Beatlemania now – half a century on – in 2015 Buenos Aires? I pondered the matter as we roamed around the great city. We visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights at a former military base, where thousands of individuals were detained, tortured and murdered during the reign of the Argentine military from 1976 to 1983. Surrounded by residential and commercial areas, the horror of what happened here not long ago seems augmented by the normality – the banality – of its setting. Life went on as usual while state terrorism did its monstrous work, year after year.
The site of the current museum was one of hundreds of detention centers in Argentina where the military waged war on their leftist enemies and their sympathizers. Estimates of the “disappeared” range from twelve to thirty thousand people. Most of them were young, some only fifteen or sixteen.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/blast-from-the-past-in-buenos-aires/
Young nurse asked to adopt newborn after mom dies of Ebola
Young nurse asked to adopt newborn after mom dies of Ebola
Krista Larson, Associated Press
Published 12:17 pm, Thursday, September 3, 2015
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — The 19-year-old mother clutched her newborn son as she arrived at the Ebola holding center. The child's father was gone, and she had no family to help her. She knew she was dying.
Nurse Donnell Tholley, 25, had seen hundreds like Fatu Turay in his work at Ebola clinics around the country. He knew to keep his distance — most patients would not make it, and any emotional connection would make the work even harder.
But taken by her plight, he stopped to ask the name of her baby, who was just over a week old.
"Bobo," she replied faintly — a term of endearment that translates as "my sweet boy."
"That's not a real name, though," Tholley replied. Impulsively, he grabbed a scrap of paper, wrote down his name and phone number, and gave it to her.
More:'http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/Young-nurse-asked-to-adopt-newborn-after-mom-dies-6483097.php
Night of Broken Immigrants and Politics of Liberation Psychology
Night of Broken Immigrants and Politics of Liberation Psychology
Thursday, 03 September 2015 00:00
By Dallas Darling, Speakout | Op-Ed
Sitting across the table confined to a wheelchair, Miguel spoke fondly of El Salvador. But his fond memories turned to anguish andgrief when he spoke of Ignacio Martin-Baro, and five other Jesuit brothers assassinated by US-trained Salvadoran death squads in 1989. Martin-Baro, a Jesuit psychologist, not only mirrored the popular protests against poverty and dehumanizing institutions that had marginalized the working poor and oppressed, but developed Liberation Psychology. Accordingly, in order to experience and achieve true liberation, a critical consciousness about how political structures can oppress the human mind must be recognized andtransformed. But since Liberation Psychology was also concerned with changing the structural conditions of the oppressed andmarginalized, including demanding equal political and economic rights through redressing past injustices, the government labeled himand his work as a threat to their regime. Both were marked to be systematically eliminated.
Miquel and Martin-Baro again came to mind when two men beat a Hispanic homeless man with a metal pipe and then urinated on him. Claiming that "Donald Trump was right," in that, "all illegals and undocumented workers need to be deported in order to make America great again," the two men laughed as they walked away from their broken victim into the dark night. For being a nation ofimmigrants, and despite a sometimes dignified history of providing refuge to foreign nationals displaced by the ravages of war and the injustice of oppression or persecution, Americans have once again shifted towards viewing people arriving from other countries as being economically burdensome or incapable of contributing, even dangerous. To be certain, many have donned Trump's "deportationist" mantle in not only wanting to restrict all immigration, but in seeking ways to overturn the US Constitution and its limited protections against refugees and undocumented workers. Meanwhile, vigilante groups, like the two men, hunt and beat suspected immigrants.
Miguel was also a refugee, having arrived in the US after fleeing war-torn El Salvador. His request for asylum was met with a series of"temporary protected status" and reversals, along with irregularities and corruption in the citizenship process. Eventually, and while sharing many of the aspirations and opportunities of most other immigrants and Americans, Miguel and his wife established a small but thriving store that serviced the community. Still, they were met with suspicion, and sometimes denied the rights from unreasonable searches and seizures or proper access to the US court system. Even worse, one night Miguel's right to life was threatened when two US citizens robbed him and his wife at gunpoint. In the process, he was shot in the back, paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair. In many ways, his broken body reflects not only the United States' broken immigration policy, but its broken - even pathological - view of immigrants.
Again, Martin-Baro thought only by recognizing deep social problems from the viewpoint of the lives of the poor and oppressed or refugee and immigrant, could a psychological liberation occur, collectively establishing a just and peaceful society. For this to occur, Americans must understand how globalization increased the disparities in wealth between nations. In addition, US wars, the flow ofarms and foreign policies-like backing brutal dictators-created social instability abroad while driving many to migrate. Indeed, the long flow of colonization across North America, and then the empire-building in many parts of the world, produced counter-colonization[1], where immigrants are forced to migrate to the very imperialist nations that became rich from either internally displacing people or militarily occupying other countries while benefiting from an influx of cheap labor, resources and uneven trade agreements. In effect, the real "anchor babies" and "chained immigration" were Americans, including their corporate fascist policiesand foreign wars.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/speakout/item/32643-night-of-broken-immigrants-and-politics-of-liberation-psychology
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