Another Green World

2 Jun 2010

Reports of Israel brutalisation from flotilla activists

just had this

Reports of Mistreatment

Reports of detained activists being mistreated by the Israeli authorities have already been emerging from those released earlier today and yesterday.

The Guardian contains first hand accounts of the Israeli attack, and of activists being deprived of food, water and sleep while in captivity

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/02/gaza-flotilla-activists-deported-jordan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/02/gaza-flotilla-raid-gunfire-ship-blood

Al Jazeera contains reports activists being attacked with plastic bullets, beatings and electric shocks

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/2010/06/20106193546785656.html

'Killing someone is just because they have different beliefs?'

Eighty Ahmadiyya Muslims were killed in an attack by Sunni extremists, probably the Pakistan Taliban, last week.

The Ahmadiyya believe that a new prophet appeared and because of this have suffered much persecution.

Sunni extremists have also attacked Christians and Shi'a Muslims in Pakistan and in other parts of the world. In fact I have just seen news of Shias killed today in Pakistan.

To find out more about the Ahmadiyya faith take a look at their website or of course wiki.

Ahmadiyya (Urdu: احمدِیہ) is a religious movement founded towards the end of the 19th century and originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908). Ghulam Ahmad was an important religious figure who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as predicted in the traditions of various world religions and bring about the final triumph of Islam as per Islamic prophecy. He claimed that he was the Mujaddid (divine reformer) of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah (“Second Coming of Christ”) and Mahdi awaited by Muslims.[166][167][168][169][170] Ahmadi emphasis lay in the belief that Islam is the final law for humanity as revealed to Muhammad and the necessity of restoring to it its true essence and pristine form, which had been lost through the centuries. Thus, Ahmadis view themselves as leading the revival and peaceful propagation of Islam.[171] The Ahmadis were among the earliest Muslim communities to arrive in Britain and other Western countries.[171] Ahmadis are considered to be non-Muslims by many mainstream Muslims. They have been formally declared as non-Muslims by Pakistan

In Islam traditionally during all peoples of the book were tolerated in stark contrast to historical Christian attitudes , sad that some people use Islam as an excuse for intolerance and the most horrible violence...as the video above notes the Pakistan state discriminates against Ahmadiyya Islam.

It is often forgotten that Islam, Judaism and Christianity share the same Old Testament...

Pocahontas actress protests against Obama's meeting with killer

No blood for oil

'Dead indigenous Mr President?' 'Its the American way and how we have built our prosperity, I am glad that it is now the way of Alan Garcia'.

is what Obama might have said when he met the butcher of Bagua yesterday.

Actress and activist Q’orianka Kilcher and her mother Siaska were detained after protesting against Peru’s president Alan Garcia who met with president Barack Obama at the White House. Photo by Carlos A. Quiroz, June 1st, 2010.

'Thank you to those who supported and attended the protest against Alan Garcia for his crimes against Indigenous peoples of Peru, at the White House.'

Last year on June 5th World Environment Day over a hundred indigenous people protested against the destruction of the Amazon in Peru were massacred at the Devils curve near Bagua.

Their organisation Aidesep had been using non violent direct action to stop Alan Garcia selling the Amazon to oil companies.

It makes me very sad that so few greens now about their brave struggle. If you care about climate change you should make defending them your number one priority, Q’orianka Kilcher has done this....moving mountains to support them.

A lot of green action is bullshit, stopping the Amazon being destroyed is not, the people who defend it with success face imprisoment, persecution and death. Those who execute them are feted by the most powerfull man on our planet.

Please follow her on twitter and regularly look at Aidesep's website.

Aidesep's site is in Spanish but if you only read English look at Carlos's blog which is bilingual and has lots of resources and information.

Obama apparently loves human rights abusers if they keep supplying the USA with oil, this is what he said to Alan Garcia

'"Peru I think has been an extraordinary success story over the last several years. We’ve seen not only the solidification of a thriving democracy, but also an extraordinary economic success story," Obama said. "And even last year in the midst of a very tough global recession, we saw that Peru was able to remain resilient."

'Dead indigenous Mr President?' 'Its the American way and how we have built our prosperity, I am glad that it is now the way of Alan Garcia', Obama might have answered.

National demonstation against Gaza peace flotilla attack this saturday

Had this from Palestine Solidarity

Emergency National Demonstration Saturday 5th June

The world has looked on aghast as more and more details emerge of the violent attack by the Israeli Government on the unarmed flotilla of boats carrying essential medical supplies to the besieged people of Gaza. Tens of people have been killed and scores more injured.

Those who survived the brutal attack have been illegally imprisoned, without access to legal representatives.

To show our outrage at the brutal and illegal actions of the Israeli Government, PSC along with CND, Stop the War, British Muslim Initiative, Friends of Al-Aqsa and Viva Palestina have called an emergency demonstration on Saturday 5th June.

The march will start from Downing Street at 1.30 pm and head to the Israeli Embassy in Kensington where there will be a rally.

We are asking all members and supporters to come to this demonstration and show the Israeli Government that the people of UK will not tolerate their brutality any longer.

1 Jun 2010

Green Gone Wrong: Why most environmental solutions are based on lies.

Faced with the unprecendented threat of climate change, the contemporary world has turned to a solution that is all too prosaic—consumerism. The answer, we are told, is to “go green,” to buy organic food or even a new “clean” car. In a follow-up to her bestselling and acclaimed book Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage, Heather Rogers travels from Paraguay to Indonesia, via the Hudson Valley, Detroit and London, to explore the rapid expansion of environmental production and consumption.

We are, Rogers argues, coming to rely on consumerism as the solution to the very problems it has helped to cause. Green Gone Wrong is an appeal to the reader to respond rationally to the current environmental crisis. It asks: What choices and structural forces led us to this perilous place? This book is founded on the belief that we have the capacity to find solutions that are not mere palliatives, but ways of engaging with how we live and what kind of world we want to live in.

'So do you want hope or do you want false hope...there are all these commodities that say we are fixing it,'

Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution. Verso 2010 by Heather Rogers.

Heather Rogers has researched and written a superb book. I sometimes think even in the Green Party we are so busy with our politics, we forget to look at the politics of ecology....we should not forget and 'Green Gone Wrong' is a powerful reminder of what is often forgotten.

Heather has produced a new 'No Logo', like Naomi Klein, she visits the people involved and finds out how otherwise abstract notions have a real effect on real people at the grassroots. She looked at BedZed in Britain, an ecological community, talked to 'green' car producers in GM and investigated biofuel production in Indonesia and 'organic' production in Paraguay.

In Indonesia, Dyak people who live in the rainforests have seen their land stolen for oil palm production. Heather talked to Dyaks who were on trial for 'stealing' oil palm seeds. They had simply picked up discard seeds on land that was taken from them.

They are being made extinct, their lives and communities under severe threat. Palm oil is sweeping away the rainforests and accelerating climate change, yet this is seen as a green solution.

Regulations are ignored and those who actually are 'green' are being driven out of existence by a green solution, in the video above Heather explains their story.

Unless we respect the planet and construct an economy that puts nature first, we will fast destroy our society in just the same way the society of the Dyaks and other indigenous is under threat.

Green Gone Wrong shows how solutions like biofuels that seem green are amazing destructive.

Heather looks at some green solutions that do work but argues we can't just shop our way to green and regulation often fails, more profound change based on justice is essential.

I wish though she had gone to Peru to meet the indigenous of the Wampis and the Awajun and their friends who have successfully fought attempts to steal their rainforest land. Or it would have been great if she had looked at the success of people like Roberto Perez in introducting permaculture in Cuba....may be she could write a third book on these visionary people entitled 'Green gone right'.

Nonetheless if you care about climate change and social justice i.e. real green politics, please read this book and spread the word, in a sea of greenwash, Heather Rogers has constructed a little island of genuine green.

You can buy it from Verso here

Her previous book on rubbish Gone Tomorrow is also extremely interesting and important.

You can catch up with Heather who will be speaking about her book at the end of June in Britain

Location: ICA, Cinema 1, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Date & Time: June 30, 2010 - 6:30 pm

Tickets here