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THE VIOLENCE OF EXTRACTIVISM

Mega-Dam Project Now a Site of Heightened Conflict in Post-War Colombia

by Jeff Abbott, Toward Freedom

Colombia’s 52-year-long war came to an end in September 2016, when the government and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) signed the historic peace accords. The peace process has been slow, and the newly signed accords have faced steep challenges in being implemented. Colombia’s left has now confronted new threats, including targeted assassinations by paramilitaries, and criminalization for defense of land and the environment.

The 400-megawatt El Quimbo dam sits on the Magdalena River, in the southern province of Huila. Construction began in 2010, but the plans date back to 1995, when companies began to look upon the region as an area for development. The dam is owned by Italian energy giant Enel, but it was constructed with investments made from Spanish company Emgesa and Colombia energy company Energía Bogotá. It is the first privately funded hydro development project in the country.

The project came online in December 2014. Today, communities are demanding the closure of the dam due to the impacts on the region.

SYRIA’S KURDISH CONTRADICTION

by Bill Weinberg, Los Angeles Review of Books

A strange paradox of the vertiginous world situation is that a radical left movement strongly influenced by anarchism is being massively backed by the Pentagon in the war for northern Syria. This movement, in fact, is now the United States’ closest partner among the indigenous forces in the Syrian war.

The Kurds of northern Syria call the region Rojava (sunset or west in their tongue), and since 2012 have had their own autonomous zone. Two years later, the celebrated battle of Kobani opened as this town within the autonomous zone was besieged by the self-declared “Islamic State” (ISIS). Kurdish women fighters with a consciously feminist ideology driving back the ultra-reactionary ISIS became a global meme.

The US, after initially writing off Kobani, started aiding the Kurdish fighters as they began to turn the tide, against all expectations. Warplanes were sent in their support, and the pact between the Pentagon and the revolutionary Kurds was forged. US military advisors were embedded in their militia. Kurdish-led forces are now fighting to take the ISIS de facto capital Raqqa in a Pentagon-directed campaign backed by US air-strikes.

AFTER GUARI LANKESH

Standing for the Human Rights of Journalists in India

by Nava Thakuria, CounterVortex

India, touted as the world’s largest democracy, is and remains a dangerous place for working journalists irrespective of the regime in power at New Delhi or any provincial capital. The populous country witnesses the murder of around five media workers each year, an average that has not changed for decades. And few of these cases see any justice in the country’s court system. The media workers’ community in the South Asian nation now plans to observe the Oct. 2 birthday of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—a lawyer turned journalist turned India’s liberation hero—with countrywide demonstrations to demand freedom of expression and an end to the atmosphere of impunity.

The month of September saw three shocking journo-murders from different parts of India. So far, 2017 has witnessed the killing of eight journalists—to a lukewarm reaction from the authorities. It was only the murder on Sept. 5 of editor-journalist Gauri Lankesh, 56, at her home in Bangaluru (formerly Bangalore) that aroused massive protests across the country.

PANAMA: CRIMINALIZATION OF THE NGÄBE

by Tracy Barnett, Intercontinental Cry

Manolo Miranda, leader of an indigenous community recently flooded by Panama’s Barro Blanco dam, now faces up to two years in prison for causing delays and financial losses to the company that has ruined his community’s way of life.

Miranda began trial Aug. 18, together with two other leaders of the Ngäbe-Buglé who opposed the dam, regional cacique Toribio García and religious and protest leader Clementina Pérez. All three face up to two years in prison for trespassing and interfering with the “inviolability of work” for their alleged role in an encampment that blocked the entrance to the hydro dam site in May and June of 2015. Charges against two other activists who were present at the encampment, Oscar Sogandares and Carmen Tedman, have been provisionally dismissed.

CUBA VERDE REVISITED

Will Island’s Ecological Solutions Survive Economic Opening?

by Bill Weinberg, Earth Island Journal

Bicycle-taxi driver Yeral García has a keen sense of the events on the world historical stage that led to him pedaling me around Old Havana.

“In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia cut back subsidized oil to Cuba,” he told me while deftly maneuvering through the traffic. “The country was paralyzed. Those were terrible years. But the government began importing bicycles.”

Indicating the pedal-cab he was assiduously working as he spoke, he added, “That’s where this came from.”

But these taxis, while plentiful on the streets of Havana, are lone survivors of that era. Although universally called bici-taxis, they are actually tricycles—retrofitted work-trikes initially imported from China to carry loads around the city during that interval of crisis and scarcity referred to officially as Cuba’s “Special Period.”

DISMANTLING POWER

Zapatista Presidential Candidate’s Vision to Transform Mexico from Below

by Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom

The Zapatistas and National Indigenous Congress (CNI) held an assembly in May in which they chose María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, a Nahua indigenous healer, as their spokesperson and presidential candidate for the 2018 elections in Mexico.

Patricio’s candidacy and radical vision for Mexico challenges conventional politics and marks a new phase for the Zapatista and indigenous struggle in the country. The 57-year-old traditional Nahua doctor and mother of three from western Mexico is the first indigenous woman to run for the presidency in Mexico.

Patricio joined the struggles related to the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in 1996, when she was involved in the formation of the CNI, a network of indigenous communities in the country. She began helping out sick members of her community with herbal remedies when she was 20-years-old. Her skills as a healer were passed down to her from elders in the community, and are based on a close relationship with the local ecosystem.

A FEMINIST FUTURE FOR FREE KURDISTAN

Interview with Houzan Mahmoud

by Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Conatus News

Houzan Mahmoud is the co-founder of the Kurdish Culture Project (or the Culture Project) and the valued partner of Conatus News in the Conference on Defending Progressivism. She is a women’s rights activist, campaigner and defender, and a feminist. In this wide-ranging and exclusive interview, Mahmoud discusses the Kurds, Iraq, women’s rights, and more.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You are a women’s rights activist, feminist, and an anti-war activist. You were born in Iraqi Kurdistan. What were the moments of political awakening for you?

Houzan Mahmoud: One of the things I’ll never forget is the break-out of war between Iraq and Iran. I was only six-years-old at the time. Iraq’s bloody dictator Saddam Hussein coming to political power in 1979 changed our lives in Kurdistan and Iraq forever. Being Kurdish poses all sorts of problems as it is, and living under the fascist regime of Saddam made things incredibly hard for my family. Prior to Saddam coming to power, my brothers took up arms during late 70’s against Iraq’s regime, I was too little to remember the particulars. However, what I do know is that from 1973 to 1991 I grew up and lived under one of the most horrendous regimes in modern history.

THE GAZA SIEGE AT TEN

Reaching a Humanitarian and Political Breaking Point

by Chloe Benoist, Ma’an News Agency

BETHLEHEM — As the Gaza Strip marked the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s siege of the small Palestinian enclave on June 15, the humanitarian situation has continued to alarm rights groups, which have denounced the “inhuman conditions unparalleled in the modern world.”

Gaza, which has often been compared to an “open air prison” for its 1.9 million inhabitants crowded into 365 square kilometers, has suffered from a decade of isolation and deprivation, made all the worse by three devastating Israeli military operations, and persistent intra-Palestinian political strife.

The recent decision by the Palestinian Authority (PA) to request that Israel reduce its supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip has made many fear that the situation in Gaza could soon reach a political and humanitarian breaking point with unforetold consequences.

I FOUGHT IN LIBYA

Please Don’t Call Us Terrorists

by Belal Younis, Middle East Eye

I fought in Libya against the oppressor Muammar Gaddafi. I think what I and others did was for a worthy cause. It certainly was not terrorism.

For 41 years, Libyans were forced to live under Gaddafi’s police state where human rights abuses were routine.

Student demonstrations were put down violently, security forces rounded up academics and lawyers, and political opponents were arrested and sometimes disappeared, if not gruesomely publicly executed for trumped up charges.

In 1980 Gaddafi introduced a policy of extrajudicial executions of political opponents across the world whom he called “stray dogs.” And according to Human Rights Watch in 1996 up to 1,200 out of 1,700 prisoners were shot dead in cold blood by security forces in a span of two days.

Then, when on 15 February 2011, a group of locals turned out for a peaceful demonstration, and received bullets in return, we knew that we had no choice but to fight.

HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS

Did Trump Commit Them?

by Marjorie Cohn, Jurist

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has responded to the crescendo of outrage by appointing former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” and “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” as well as any other matters within the scope of the Department of Justice (DOJ) regulation on special counsel appointments.

“In my capacity as acting attorney general I determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” Rosenstein stated.

“My decision is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. I have made no such determination. What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command,” Rosenstein added.

Independent counsel Kenneth Starr thought he had “substantial and credible” evidence against President Bill Clinton in 1998. Starr turned over the results of his investigation to the House of Representatives, who then initiated impeachment proceedings.

As evidence of President Donald Trump’s malfeasance emerges, the old adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime may once again prove true.

SYRIA’S NONVIOLENT FIGHTERS

Key to Ending the War

by Maria J. Stephan, Waging Nonviolence

Debates over the morality, legality and strategic efficacy of US missile strikes in Syria will dominate the news for the foreseeable future. It is understandable why so many people, notably many Syrians, would want to see a regime that has repeatedly targeted its population with sarin and chlorine gas, barrel bombs and starvation tactics, be punished for its actions. The Syrians I know feel alone and abandoned by the world. They have seen the United States and its Western and Arab allies undertake massive diplomatic and military action targeting the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS, while regime-sponsored violence has been responsible for a vast majority of the close to 500,000 civilian deaths in Syria since 2011.

No matter where one stands on the issue of military intervention—and there are legitimate reasons to doubt the effectiveness of air power to deter or erode Assad’s killing machine—it should be possible to agree on one thing: There will be no end to the civil war in Syria without the sustained and active participation of Syrian activists, peacebuilders and humanitarians inside the country, in the surrounding region, and dispersed in the diaspora.

SERVING THE ‘NATIONAL INTEREST’?

Tribal Rights and Federal Obligations from Dakota Access to Keystone XL

by Monte Mills, Jurist

On March 23, Thomas A. Shannon, Jr., the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, determined (PDF) that issuing a permit to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline (KXL) “would serve the national interest.” In doing so, Under Secretary Shannon admitted that, from an environmental justice perspective, the 875 miles of the KXL traversing portions of Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, “could…disproportionally affect[ ]” Indian tribes in the region “should an oil release occur.”

The State Department’s national interest determination relied upon environmental reviews completed in 2014, but the legal, cultural, and social protests brought last year by the Standing Rock Sioux and other tribes to the Dakota Access Pipeline prompted a distinct shift in the world’s consciousness of tribal rights. Although the water protectors have been evicted from their camps and oil can now flow beneath Lake Oahe, Standing Rock’s legal challenge to the pipeline is yet to be resolved. As lawsuits over the State Department’s KXL decision begin to mount, the pending outcome of Standing Rock’s case may give tribes new grounds on which to challenge the State Department’s decision by properly protecting tribal treaty rights and the federal government’s trust responsibility to tribes.