By Nadia Prupis for Common Dreams – Police descended on water protectors in North Dakota on Wednesday, as images on social media showed a dramatic standoff along a creek that borders a construction site for the long-opposed Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Jordan Chariton, a political reporter with The Young Turks network, posted this video dispatch after covering events just east of the main camp, where Standing Rock Sioux tribal members and their allies were set upon by law enforcement officers in full military gear
By Whitney Webb for True Activist – Once again, the repression of those against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) is heating up, with 127 activists arrested in North Dakota over the weekend. However, North Dakota isn’t the only place where protests over the Dakota Access pipeline are coming to a head. In Iowa, farmers have had their land seized by the company behind the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, through the use of eminent domain.
By Nika Knight for Common Dreams – Amnesty InternationalJose Angel Flores, president of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguan Valley, or MUCA, had been under police protection since March, teleSUR reported, after the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights ordered the Honduran state to protect him from death threats in 2014. Former MUCA president Johnny Rivas, who hosts a radio show on the local station Radio Progreso,blamed “death squads chasing peasant families fighting for land rights” for the murder.
By Nika Knight for Common Dreams – An environmental official well-known for his aggressive enforcement of deforestation laws in his city in the Brazilian Amazon was gunned down in front of his family late Thursday, city officials reported Friday. Two men shot the official, Luiz Araujo, seven times as he drove up to his home, local police told the Associated Press. “[T]wo men fled on a motorcycle without taking anything, leading to speculation that they were paid assassins,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
By Bob Stuart for The News Virginian – STUARTS DRAFT — Corn planted on Stuarts Draft land in June to show opposition to the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was harvested Friday. The sacred corn — called “seeds of resistance” — rests on land that is part of the proposed path of the 600-mile natural gas pipeline. The pipeline path includes about 55 miles of Augusta County. Joining area groups opposed to the pipeline were Jane Kleeb, president of Bold Alliance, and Wes Mekasi Horinek of Bold Alliance.
By Anastassiya Miller for Waging Nonviolence – On October 12, a hearing against two prominent activists began in Atyrau, the oil capital of Kazakhstan. Max Bokaev and Talgat Ayan were arrested just after the first major rally against an unpopular land reform on April 24. The reforms would have increased the number of years that foreigners are allowed to rent agricultural land from 10 to 25 years, and enabled land to be sold or leased at auctions.
By Berkley Carmine and Liza Minno for Waging Nonviolence – A month after President Obama told the Army Corps of Engineers to pause construction on the Dakota Access oil pipeline, the Standing Rock Sioux and those supporting them still find themselves in a dire struggle to protect their water and land. With winter approaching, the 300 tribes that are now represented at the Camp of the Sacred Stone in North Dakota are preparing for a lengthy battle.
By Alejandra Gaitan Barrera and Fionuala Cregan for IC Magazine – Ever since the incursion of rampant neoliberalism in Chile and Argentina in the 1970s and 1980s, the Mapuche territory or Wallmapu, located south of the Bio Bio River, has been subjected to immeasurable domination and constant exploitation at the hands of a diverse range of foreign and national economic interests. Megaprojects like hydroelectric dams, mining operations, oil extraction and forestry plantations embody some of the main threats to Mapuche self-determination and autonomy.
By Hannibal Rhoades for IC – In a landmark move that adds wind to the sails of indigenous struggles to protect sacred lands everywhere, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has passed a resolution declaring that all protected areas and the sacred lands of Indigenous Peoples should be ‘No-Go Areas’ for destructive industrial activities like mining, dam-building and logging.
By Staff of Liberation – Dennis Banks, Anishinaabe, born on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation and famed co-founder of American Indian Movement in 1968, is running for Vice President of the United States together with presidential candidate Gloria La Riva. He and La Riva are the candidates of the Peace and Freedom Party in California, and on the ballot in New Mexico, Colorado and Iowa for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. La Riva is on the ballot with Eugene Puryear in Washington State, New Jersey, Florida, Vermont and Louisiana.
By Fionuala Cregan for Truthout – “They are afraid more people and more communities are going to rise up, because we have shown others what is possible,” said Mirta Curruhuinca, a Mapuche woman from the Indigenous area of Lof Cushamen in Argentina. “And if more people rise up and recover their lands, there will be no way to stop them.” The Mapuche have begun to reshape history by moving back onto the Patagonian land in the Chubut Province of Argentina that has been part of their ancestral history for more than 1,400 years.
By Staff of Tele Sur – The deal means the peasant organizations, which have been holding actions for two weeks, will suspend further protests. The government of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced Sunday that it had reached a deal with striking peasants and that any further protest action would be suspended. The deal obliges the government to sit down and formally negotiate with the campesino movement.
By Staff of RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service – Security forces have detained hundreds of journalists, activists, and demonstrators in various Kazakh cities amid a call by the opposition for nationwide demonstrations against changes to Kazakhstan’s Land Code. Dozens of reporters were detained in the capital, Astana, as well as in Almaty, Qaraghandy, Oral, Shymkent, and the western city of Atyrau in the government crackdown.
By Staff of Tele Sur – Latin America’s largest social movement has promised a new wave of farm occupations in Brazil following President Dilma Rousseff’s suspension to stand trial in the Senate, an official with the Landless Workers Movement (MST) said. The movement, a long-time ally of Rousseff’s Workers Party which says it has two million members across Brazil, will target “idle” farm land owned by members of the interim government and its backers, MST spokeswoman Marina do Santos said Tuesday.
By Staff of The Real News Network – Joaquin Piñero of the MST talks about the latest round of repression against the movement and how it is connected to the current political crisis in Brazil.
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