Articles of interest

We had been posting articles on our website but have decided to feature them on our blog. We'll be posting the article links with brief excerpts from the articles.

Journey toward reconciliation The past flows into the present
6/27
WINONA, MINN. -- The big boats are coming back. But so are the people who were here before them. And for the first time, they will share the spotlight.
In an extraordinary confluence of troubled history and romantic myth, this city of 27,000 on the Mississippi River is preparing to welcome an anniversary flotilla of riverboats while at the same time attempting to find reconciliation with the Indian tribe that was displaced by the civilization that sent the original flotilla 150 years ago.full article

Board votes to rename Squaw Flat
Published June 27, 2004
By BROOK REINHARD
Squaw Flat is no more.
From now on, it's Switchback Flat.

The Oregon Geographic Names Board on Saturday approved a request by the Klamath Tribes to change the name of spot found on Forest Service land about 16 miles northeast of Klamath Falls.

Cleo Atchley, an elder with the Klamath Tribes, has been pressing for the change for some time. Squaw Flat Road, which is near Squaw Flat, runs through her property.full article

Why I fought the law
LARRY DUDLEY HIIBEL
June 26,
A lot of people want to know why I went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court rather than give my name to a policeman. "What's so important about that?" they ask. "What's the big principle at stake?" And last week, when the Supreme Court ruled against me, maybe some thought I was foolish to have done it. But I still think I did the right thing and that there were some issues that had to be decided.
full article

Terrorism wears many faces
6/27
Seattle Post
But I wonder again about that definition -- and how far the rule of law extends.

Consider the debate about Muslim Uighurs from China's northwest Xinjiang region....China defines several Uighur organizations as terrorists

Amnesty International says China used terrorism as a brand for prohibiting future dissent. Amnesty says while there have been isolated incidents of violence -- and even terrorism -- most of the groups on China's list reflect only political dissent.full article

Mexican judge releases two jailed Indian antilogging activists
June 25, 2004
By Associated Press
MEXICO CITY — A judge this week released two Indian antilogging activists, jailed for more than a year in northern Mexico, after federal authorities announced that police in the case had committed abuses.

Isidro Baldenegro and Hermenegildo Rivas walked away from a prison in the border state of Chihuahua a little more than a week after Mexican Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha announced that charges of illegal arms and marijuana possession would be dropped.
full article

Mexican Farmers Demand End to Imported GE Corn from US
Jun 22
Puebla, Mexico, (Prensa Latina) Mexican farm and indigenous
organizations, supported by Greenpeace, demand that US, Canadian and
Mexican ecology ministers release a report on genetically modified corn
or end imports to Mexico.

The US refusal to make the report on Corn and Biodiversity in Mexico
public is the first time that a promised report has not been presented
at the North American Environmental Cooperation Commission, now meeting
in Puebla, Mexico for its 11th session, La Jornada daily informed
Tuesday full article

Indigenous Resistance to Globalization
June 26
Tony Solo
Likewise, serious human rights abuses in Vicente Fox's Mexico also go mostly unreported. An overwhelmingly peaceful recent demonstration in Guadalajara outside the meeting between European and Latin American leaders was violently dispersed after provocations by a small number of aggressive protestors well infiltrated by government provocateurs. Hundreds of bystanders and peaceful demonstrators were rounded up, severely beaten and in many cases tortured during their subsequent detention.4

In Chiapas, indigenous leaders continue to be assassinated and indigenous communities displaced and attacked. On June 7th indigenous leader Vazquez Alvaro was murdered by gunmen believed to be in the pay of local landowners. While Mexico has denounced Cuba for its human rights abuses, Amnesty International had this to report about Mexico “In May the UN Committee against Torture published its report on a five-year investigation into torture in Mexico. The report stated that incidents of torture "are not exceptional situations or occasional violations committed by a few police officers but that, on the contrary, the police commonly use torture and resort to it systematically as another method of criminal investigation".full article