land – CounterVortex

Planet Watch

COP16 adopts agreement on indigenous peoples

Meeting in Cali, Colombia, the 16th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16) adopted several agreements regarding an expanded role for indigenous peoples in biodiversity preservation efforts. A new agreement on Article 8J of the Convention aims to enhance the place of indigenous knowledge and participation in crafting the Global Biodiversity Framework. Delegates agreed to establish a “subsidiary body” under Article 8J to include indigenous peoples in future decisions on nature conservation, and oblige private corporations to share the benefits of research when tapping genetic resources under the stewardship of indigenous communities. (Photo: UN Biodiversity via Flickr)

Africa

New atrocities by RSF reported in Sudan’s Gezira

Brutal attacks by the Rapid Support Forces on villages and towns in Sudan’s Gezira state, south of Khartoum, have displaced around 120,000 people over the past two weeks, resembling the kind of violence used by the paramilitary group in the Darfur region beginning last year. The attacks were triggered by the defection to the army of the RSF’s top commander in Gezira, Abu Aqla Kayka; villages under his control were reportedly targeted. The UN said the attacks left at least 124 people dead and resulted in more than 27 women and girls being raped, though these numbers are likely a massive undercount given survivor testimonies, activist reports, and videos that show rows of bodies wrapped in shrouds. The attacks are among the worst to take place in Gezira since the RSF took over the state in December 2023. The state is considered the country’s breadbasket, but farmers have been forced to flee and cropland has been deliberately burnt. (Map: Sudan War Monitor)

Oceania

New Zealand: plan to redefine founding document advances

The New Zealand government revealed its plans to move forward with drafting a controversial bill that would redefine the nation’s founding document, te Tiriti o Waitangi/the Treaty of Waitangi, despite official advice from the Ministry of Justice opposing the policy. If enacted, the Treaty Principles Bill would replace the existing principles of the Treaty, first established by New Zealand’s parliament in the Treaty of Waitangi Act 1975. Te Tiriti o Waitangi, signed in 1840 between the British Crown and Māori indigenous people, extended to the Crown a limited power of kāwanatanga (governance) over New Zealand’s quickly expanding British settler population while guaranteeing the Māori tino rangatiratanga (ultimate power and authority) over their lands, their villages and all their treasured possessions. Scholar Luke Fitzmaurice-Brown charges that the Treaty Principles Bill “will radically change the legal and constitutional status of te Tiriti o Waitangi, essentially erasing it.” (Photo: Waitangi Day celebrations, Feb. 6, 2006, at Waitangi, Paihia. Via Wikimedia Commons)

Southeast Asia

Cambodia: citizens detained for protesting mega-project

At least 94 people have been arbitrarily arrested in Cambodia since late July for expressing public criticism of the Cambodia-Laos-Vietnam Development Triangle Area (CLV-DTA), Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International said in a joint statement. The human rights organizations believe at least 59 of those arrested have been unlawfully detained by Cambodian authorities, and called for all charges in these cases to be immediately dropped. The Khmer Movement for Democracy states that the CLV-DTA would serve “as cover for further illegal deforestation, land evictions, and exploitation of resources for foreign gain.” (Map: PCL)

East Asia

Nuclear power and the struggle in Guangdong

In Episode 240 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses China’s hubristic plans for massive expansion of its nuclear power sector—and notes that some of the new plants are slated for the southern province of Guangdong, which in recent years has seen repeated outbursts of protest over land-grabs and industrial pollution as well as wildcat labor actions (and was, in fact, the site of a nuclear accident in 2021). China’s expropriated peasant class has been left behind by the breakneck industrialization of the past decades, and may prove a source of resistance to the new thrust of nuclear development that would further accelerate it—despite the current crackdown on dissent. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via ResearchGate)

North America

Podcast: Tim Walz and the struggle in Minnesota

In Episode 238 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg takes stock of the Democratic ticket’s new vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and the role he played as Minnesota governor in two of the major activist struggles in the North Star State over the past years—the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising, which began in Minneapolis; and the fight against Line 3, which delivers Canadian shale oil to US markets, and imperils the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabe indigenous people. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Stop Line 3)

Watching the Shadows

From Baghdad to Bialystok —to Pico-Robertson

In Episode 232 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines the politics of the ugly dust-up between pro-Palestinian protesters and local Jewish residents in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Pico-Robertson—and notes the anniversary of June 1941 anti-Jewish pogroms in Bialystok, Poland, and Baghdad, Iraq. Propagandistic and distorted portrayals of the LA protest as mere arbitrary anti-Semitism ignore the fact that the targeted synagogue was hosting a real estate event promoting sale of lands to create “Anglo neighborhoods” in Israel, and probably in the occupied West Bank (which would be a clear violation of international law). On the other hand, insensitivity to (or ignorance of) the historical context(and contemporary context) that makes an angry protest outside a synagogue an inevitably problematic “optic” only abets the propaganda. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: The Great Synagogue of Bialystok before it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. Via Jewish Historical Institute)

Mexico

‘Blood avocados’ in the news amid Michoacán violence

The US Department of Agriculture suspended inspections of avocados in the Mexican state of Michoacán due to security concerns, halting the top source of US imports. The move was taken after two agents of the USDA’s Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) were accosted during a protest in the town of Paracho, beaten and briefly detained. Michoacán is Mexico’s heartland of avocado production, but the trade has been notoriously co-opted by the local warring drug cartels to launder narco-profits, leading to charges of “blood avocados” in the violence-torn state. (Map: Google)

Africa

Podcast: a cannabis coup in the Congo?

The attempted coup d’etat in the Democratic Republic of the Congo may or may not have been assisted by the CIA, but one of the Americans arrested in the affair is named as a “cannabis entrepreneur“—pointing to the possibility of legal cannabis playing the same destructive role in Central Africa that bananas have played in Central America. Yet while corporate power sees a lucrative new cash crop, lives (and especially Black lives) are still being ruined by cannabis prohibition in the United States. In Episode 228 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg argues that the old anarchist slogan “Neither your war nor your peace” can be updated as “Neither your prohibition nor your legalization!” Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map: CIA)

Planet Watch

Protect indigenous rights in biodiversity framework

Amnesty International cautioned against potential threats to indigenous peoples’ rights in the monitoring process for progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework. The organization emphasized the imperative for states to engage in consultations with indigenous communities and secure their “free, prior, and informed consent” in conservation projects, in line with the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The statement warned against “fortress conservation” methods in which original inhabitants are forcibly evicted from protected areas. (Photo of Wajãpi indigenous people in Brazil via Mongabay)

Planet Watch

World peasant movements mobilize for UNDROP

The world organization for land-rooted peasant farmers, Vía Campesina, launched an international campaign for full approval of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants & Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), and for implementation of policies in line with its principles. Several events were held around the world marking the International Day of Peasant Struggle. El Salvador was one of the first countries to commit to ratifying UNDROP after it was adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018. However, Vía Campesina affiliates in the Central American nation accused the government of pursuing policies contrary to its spirit, noting that in the years since then, there has been a reduction in cultivated areas of maize and beans, with a loss of at least 10,000 hectares of maize. (Image: Vía Campesina)

Palestine

UN condemns increase in West Bank settlement

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk released a statement condemning Israel’s latest expansion of settlements in the West Bank as well as the marked increase in “illegal” Israeli settlements over the last year, along with increasing extremist settler violence against Palestinians residing in the territory. Türk stated: “The West Bank is already in crisis. Yet, settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian State.” (Photo: delayed gratification via New Jewish Resistance)