Farmer Suicides Soar in India

By P Sainath, Counterpunch

Suicide rates among Indian farmers were a chilling 47 per cent higher than they were for the rest of the population in 2011. In some of the States worst hit by the agrarian crisis, they were well over 100 per cent higher. The new Census 2011 data reveal a shrinking farmer population. And it is on this reduced base that the farm suicides now occur.

Apply the new Census totals to the suicide data of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and the results are grim. Sample: A farmer in Andhra Pradesh is three times more likely to commit suicide than anyone else in the country, excluding farmers. And twice as likely to do so when compared to non-farmers in his own State. The odds are not much better in Maharashtra, which remained the worst State for such suicides across a decade.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers Targets Wendy’s in Fair Food Campaign to Improve Wages, Conditions

Cross Posted from Democracy Now

Click here for full video

Hundreds of farm workers and their supporters are in New York City ahead of Wendy’s shareholder meeting to demand improved working conditions for those who pick its tomatoes. The fast-food giant — which has nearly 6,600 restaurants in the U.S. and around the world, ranking second only to McDonald’s — is the latest target in the Fair Food Campaign organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. So far, McDonald’s, Subway, Burger King and Taco Bell have all joined the White House-recognized social responsibility program, agreeing to pay an extra penny per pound of tomatoes to raise wages and only buy from fields where workers’ rights are respected. We speak with CIW farm worker and organizer, Gerardo Reyes-Chávez.

Oxford University Student Union Votes to Oppose Shell Investment

By Adam Vaughan, The Guardian

Oxford University’s Shell Geoscience Laboratory is funded with £5.9m from the oil company. 

Students and alumni of Oxford University will protest this afternoon at the opening of a new lab in its Earth sciences department that is funded with £5.9m from oil company Shell.

Campaigners say the partnership – which will see the climate and energy secretary, Ed Davey, attend the Shell Geoscience Laboratory’s official opening on Thursday – undermines the university’s credibility and conflicts with its work on climate change. Oxford alumni including environmental campaigner Jonathon Porritt and solar entrepreneur Jeremy Leggett yesterday called Shell “a particularly inappropriate choice of funder” in a letter published in the Guardian.

Dissent or Terror: New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide

Cross Posted from PRWatch

DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy today released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how state/regional “fusion center” personnel monitored the Occupy Wall Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012. Personnel engaged in this activity at fusion centers include employees of municipal, county and federal counter terrorism/homeland security entities. Such entities include local police departments, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (including U.S. DHS components such as the Transportation Security Administration).

The report also examines how fusion centers and other counter terrorism entities that have emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have worked to benefit numerous corporations engaged in public-private intelligence sharing partnerships.

Activists Fume at Tree Felling, Golfing Association

Cross Posted from Times of India

Dozens of locals from Golconda protested the axing of 81 trees in Naya Qila, demanding the arrest of the guilty persons and speeding up of the probe by the forest and district administration into the incident.

Locals said heritage and environment violations were unheard of in Naya Qila, until Hyderabad Golf Association’s golf course took shape. In one of the biggest-ever environmental massacres in recent times, 81 neem trees were axed to clear way for the expansion of 18-hole golf course earlier this month.

Forest officials, who began counting the felled trunks of the neem treeson May 12, initiated a probe, saying this is the third and biggest instance of tree cutting that has come to light in Naya Qila. According to them, the Archaelogical Survey of India and the Hyderabad Golf Association were the prime suspects.

Forest Deal ‘Greenmails’ the Green Groups

By Bob Brown, ABC

The Swift Parrot is flying towards extinction. Yet the forest ‘peace deal’ signed between loggers and theWilderness Society, Australian Conservation Foundationand Environment Tasmania (I am a founding member of the first and a life member of the second) threatens unprecedented penalties for forest campaigners who try to stop swift parrot nesting sites being logged.

Written into the Tasmanian Forests Agreement 2012 (pdf)(the ‘peace deal’) is a ‘durability’ clause aimed to stop future protests against logging in native forests. This month, the Legislative Council (upper house) expanded it so that either house of parliament can block the national park proclamations and other forest reservations in the agreement if there is any “substantial” forest protest against ongoing logging between now and October next year.

Amongst immediate and agreed logging plans are those to flatten three areas (called coupes) of swift parrot nesting habitat in Bruny Island’s forests.

New Laws Would Make Environmental Protest Terrorism

By Will Poter, Vice

Most people have heard of tree-sitting—a tactic environmentalists use to prevent old-growth trees from being cut down and whole forests decimated. In its heyday, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, members of groups like Earth First! climbed 100-foot-tall Redwoods and stayed there to save them. Beginning in 1997, one woman in Humboldt, California, named her tree Luna and stayed in it for two years, until enough money could be raised to prevent it from being axed. In 1998, in a Northern California old-growth forest, another treesitter named David “Gypsy” Chain was “accidentally” killed when loggers felled a tree that came crashing into the protester. He died instantly of massive head trauma.

This style of protest was also hugely successful—that is, until a series of arrests in 2005 against radical environmentalists who were labeled “terrorists.” It scared the shit out of the environmental-activist community, and folks started drifting away.

Now, there’s a vibrant national protest movement reviving those “direct action” tactics of civil disobedience again, and adding a new political savvy to the mix. They, too, have been incredibly effective. In Oregon, in the summer of 2011, one blockade took 50 cops, a backhoe, and a 125-foot-crane to remove treesitters. A few days later, activists locked themselves together in an Oregon Department of Forestry office. The group responsible, the Cascadia Forest Defenders, say they won’t stop until the Elliott State Forest is protected from clearcutting.

As a result—surprise, surprise—politicians are trying to create new laws that make tree-sits and other direct-action techniques illegal. The bills even single out the Elliott State Forest campaign by name and allow corporations to sue protesters for costing them money.

On April 29, two bills passed the Oregon House that would hit tree sitters and non-violent protesters with felonies and mandatory minimum sentences.

Disney Attempts to Own Title of Indigenous Mexican Tradition

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday with roots in indigenous Aztec traditions that honors the dead with elaborate processions, vigils, and the decoration of alters and the graves of deceased ancestors. 

On May 1, the Walt Disney company filed 10 applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the term “Dia de los Muertos” in anticipation of a yet untitled Disney-Pixar movie about the holiday.

The filing is a clear attack on the spiritual traditions of indigenous people as well as another telling example of the drive of corporate ownership over an ever expanding purse of traditional cultural resources, from plant knowledge in India to racist depictions of indigenous faces as mascots of major sports teams in the U.S.

Fortunately, following public outrage Disney has since dropped the bid — for now. 

Taking Steps towards Trans Allyship

This is a repost of an article published to the Newswire site last Saturday. It is being reposted due to it’s significance, as well as edits made per the author’s request.

By Hollis 

Many conversations have emerged in the wake of the DGR incidents at the Law and Disorder Conference. We have stood by as the DGR leaders have effectively shot themselves in the foot over an issue of trans inclusion, alienating potential allies and somehow forgetting that the earth is at stake here. We have seen virulent filth on both sides as the comment threads spiraled out of control in to violent personal attacks. Although much of this conversation, or diatribe, if you will, has taken place online, its real life implications cannot be understated. Lines have been drawn, and people have been forced to take a side. Speaking as the cis-gendered partner of a trans woman, I previously made assumptions that most of my friends saw my girlfriend’s identity as legitimate and our personal struggles against transphobia as real. I have been surprised to learn how many so-called friends have downplayed or delegitimized my feelings about this struggle, and questioned my girlfriend’s right to her identity. I have also been pleased to see real allies come out of the woodwork, with friends who had no personal investment in the issue supporting me and contributing to the dialogue. This issue has also brought to light unforseen power dynamics in my relationship, prompting me to recognize and check my cis-privilege.

Report Details Government/Corporate Surveillance of Occupy Movement

Cross Posted from Source Watch

On May 20, 2013, DBA Press and the Center for Media and Democracy 
released the results of a year-long investigation: “Dissent or Terror:
 How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, In Partnership With 
Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street.”

 The report, a distillation of thousands of pages of records obtained
 from counter terrorism/law enforcement agencies, details how
 state/regional “fusion center” personnel monitored the Occupy Wall
 Street movement over the course of 2011 and 2012.

The report also examines how fusion centers and other counter terrorism entities that 
have emerged since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 have
 worked to benefit numerous corporations engaged in public-private
 intelligence sharing partnerships. 

While the report examines many instances of fusion center monitoring
 of Occupy activists nationwide, the bulk of the report 
details how counter terrorism personnel engaged in the Arizona Counter
 Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC, commonly known as the “Arizona fusion center”) monitored and otherwise surveilled citizens active in
 Occupy Phoenix, and how this surveillance benefited a number of 
corporations and banks that were subjects of Occupy Phoenix protest 
activity.


While small glimpses into the governmental monitoring of the Occupy Wall Street movement have emerged in the past, there has not been any reporting — until now — that details the breadth and depth with which the nation’s post-September 11, 2001 counter terrorism apparatus has been applied to politically engaged citizens exercising their Constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights.

REPORT Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s ‘Counter Terrorism’ Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street

REPORT APPENDIX open records materials cited in report.

PRESS RELEASE “New Report Details How Counter Terrorism Apparatus Was Used to Monitor Occupy Movement Nationwide”

SOURCE MATERIALS almost 10,000 pages of open records materials are archived on DBA Press.

PRWATCH ARTICLE “Dissent or Terror: How Arizona’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate Interests, Turned on Occupy Phoenix”