Tagged: indigenous peoples

VIDEO: Bolivia Became The First Latin American Country With No McDonalds

bolivia mcdonalds

“Fast-food represents the complete opposite of what Bolivians consider a meal should be. To be a good meal, food has to have be prepared with love, dedication, certain hygiene standards and proper cook time.” –El Polvorin blog

After 14 years in Bolivia and many campaigns and promos to generate sales fast food juggernaut McDonalds was forced to pack up and leave the Latin American nation. They served Bolivians their last burgers Continue reading →

Native American Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier On Thanksgiving

no-thanks-no-giving

You can celebrate whatever you want. An excuse to get together with friends and family is a good thing, I guess depending on your friends and family. If you chose not to celebrate or fast in protest that’s also fine. If you think everyone else is having a great time with lost of food today except you you’re wrong about that. I just wanted to share this today. You can have food for your belly but food for thought is also great. Continue reading →

A Green Reality Check


Manifest Destiny: An Allegorical Painting by John Gast 1872

It’s one thing to need a reality check and another to want one.

Ideas of sustainability, of what can make human life last on this planet, at times, will readily fall on deaf ears in a country whose creation myth is completely at odds with those concepts. On stolen land, with genocidal dreams, the work of building a country was as much on the backs of a stolen people as on the so called continent of North America. Continue reading →

A New Contract With The Planet


A Bolivian Guarani native woman at the Cochabamba Conference

On April 22, the 40th Earth Day, in Cochabamba, Bolivia the nation’s president Evo Morales organized an alternative to the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Accord. People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth was forged. There were 25,000 Bolivian climate activists, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and celebrities, more than 15,000 indigenous people and thousands of grass roots groups from over 100 countries in attendance. Read more about it HERE

Topics discussed included local agriculture, the rights of indigenous people, halting climate change and social reconstruction.

They site imperialism and specifically capitalism as the major cause of our warming planet. On May 7th Morales took this new contract with the planet to the United Nations. This is some of what those in attendance put forward as a better approach to the issue of climate change. Do you think you could agree to some of this? Continue reading →

The Alaska Purchase: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Photo Credit: Travel Alaska, Native girl with puppies

Years ago Alaska “belonged” to Russia then the United States “bought” it from Russia for $7.2 million on this day, March 30, in 1867. Initially the purchase wasn’t received well. Critics of President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State William H. Seward called the largely unexplored territory “Seward’s folly,” “Seward’s icebox,” and Andrew Johnson’s “polar bear garden”. My favorite is the polar bear garden one!

I guess the joke was on them because there was gold in them thar hills and oil and plenty of pipelineable land! Those are all good things, way better than nature and indigenous peoples. Continue reading →

21st Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill


Photo Credit: AP Photo

On this day in 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled over 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound, Alaska. I’ve seen varying estimates of how much oil was spilled, but I have read most estimates are low balled and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were.

I know I can’t forget the images of the oil soaked animals and the massive cleanup required. The effects of this man made disaster were so devastating oil is still trapped in Alaska’s gravel beaches 21 years later.

Only in recent years did Exxon begin to pay Continue reading →

Thanksgiving Is The New Pre-Christmas

charlie-brown-thanksgiving

It’s Thanksgiving again and I suppose now is a good time to contemplate the meaning of Thanksgiving. In school we were told European pilgrims were fleeing religious persecution in Europe and came to North America. Ill equipped for life in the New World they soon needed help and the indigenous peoples living here helped them out and basically saved their lives.

The pilgrims were so filled with gratitude they killed their new friends and tried to destroy their way of life. So the original Thanksgiving was about gratitude. Then it became about family and killing turkeys (out of gratitude?) oh yeah and football.

Now if we are being honest we should admit Thanksgiving is the new pre Christmas. Who cares about Thanksgiving Thursday when it’s all about Black Friday?

How could we forget about the genocidal roots of this “holiday”?

Here’s a video I’d like to share with you about anti immigrant sentiment in celebration of Columbus Day, which to me was always Thanksgiving’s twin. The sentiment is still the same and so is the celebration. Nothing says American like anti immigrant sentiments, even during the holidays. Enjoy.

“Robert Erickson” Speech to MN Tea Party Against Amnesty

I am grateful for my readers, including the special reader that sent this to me.

Forget Saving The Planet, Save Yourself

earth-day

In a conversation with my dad, we’ll call him Mr. Toussaint, he told me global warming would be a problem the Earth would fix itself. “The Earth didn’t start these problems,” I replied. “These problems are man-made or human-made and therefore should be human solved.” He respectfully disagreed and I, maybe disrespectfully, disregarded his position as being that of a man of a certain age.

More recently I heard a speech from Continue reading →

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