DEMOCRACY NOW!

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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Monday, July 12, 2010

Bilin Journal - In Village, Palestinians See Model for Their Cause - NYTimes.com

Bilin Journal - In Village, Palestinians See Model for Their Cause - NYTimes.com
"The Palestinian village of Bilin lost half its land to the settlement of Modiin Illit and the barrier and took its complaint to Israel’s highest court. Two years ago, the court handed it an unusual victory. It ordered the settlement to stop building its new neighborhood and ordered the Israeli military to move the route of the barrier back toward Israel, thereby returning about half the lost land to the village.'The villagers danced in the street,' recalled Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli lawyer who worked on the case for the village. 'Unfortunately, it has been two years since the decision, and the wall has not moved.' "

Friday, July 02, 2010


-Photo by SoulVision

Never Let Me Go.

the wind lofts me
from the yellow dying heart
of the Mother.

three sisters together
in the air
with memory only of clinging

now that we are naked
& aloft without pod or soil
keep us close

silky strands that bind us must
never pull apart lest terra incognita
smother me in strangeness all alone

but forces are cleaving us
even as the sun dries my tears
and I let go

and fall into strangeness and rebirth.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

Louisiana renews request for mental health funding from BP | NOLA.com


Louisiana renews request for mental health funding from BP | NOLA.com
[Louisiana DHHS Director] Levine's letter explained his concerns over an "emerging behavioral health crisis" -- Louisiana Spirit counselors embedded in the impacted communities have already begun to report increased anxiety, depression, and alcohol consumption in their patients, an observation that community-based organizations have corroborated.

The reminds me of what happened after the Exxon-Valdez disaster. The EVOS Spill Fund was set up as a Trust and the Trustees consisted of scientists, academics and agency bureaucrats. A shadow team of industry lawyers vetted each request, initially denying them until the Trustees themselves got "whipped into shape" and became an effective filter for projects. They did not allow "indirect impact" funding, for example, and preferred projects with strict metrics. So the EVOS Trust became a fund for very narrow biological studies that really benefited the industry--the kinds of studies that the industry would be required to do in connection with "Findings of Facts" related to its impact on biological species. Meanwhile, the human and community toll on Natives and Fishers mounted. All of those issues were regarded as "indirect" or "secondary" impacts from the spill. As a result: the Eyak language program that had begun prior to the spill, was swept away by all the attention in the villages with the immediate consequences of so-called "clean-up" and fisheries recovery. The last Eyak speaker died in 2006.