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But why is the Nick Fury tag so sad though?
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Gold, silver, and copper mining in Haiti - who will benefit? -
reinventionoftheprintingpress:
Haiti might be “poorest country in the Americas,” but it is also sitting on a gold mine. New Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe says he’s banking on the wealth in Haiti’s northern mountains to lift the country out of poverty, but if history is any guide, the mining of gold, silver and copper hidden in the hills will mostly benefit foreign shareholders as it scars and pollutes an already denuded and fragile landscape.While a handful of farmers earn $5 a day building mining roads, and while journalists talk up one or two drilling sites, quietly and carefully a Canadian company, Eurasian Minerals, has been buying up licenses – 53, to be exact – and cutting backroom deals, perhaps with the assistance of a high-ranking former minister now on the payroll.
The deals are so good for the mining companies, and so bad for Haiti, that the head of Haiti’s state mining agency recently denounced them in an exclusive interview with Haiti Grassroots Watch (HGW), calling on his government to either right the wrongs or “leave the minerals underground and let future generations exploit them.”
“Mines are part of the public property of the state; they are for the population,” said geologist Dieuseul Anglade, who was then head of the Bureau of Mines and Energy (BME). “They aren’t the property of the people in power, or even the landowner.”
Eurasian and Newmont Mining, its partner and the world’s Number 2 gold producer, are also drilling illegally in one area – La Miel, in the northeast – in collusion with certain government officials.
Haitian law differs from many other countries. It is more bureaucratic, but it also insures a modicum of protection up front. In order to drill – even for exploration – companies must get a mining convention signed by the prime minister and all the ministers. This convention sets the terms for any eventual mine.
Eurasian and Newmont are currently waiting for final approval of a new convention that covers a huge amount of territory – about 1,350 square kilometers of land. But the convention has not yet been signed, partly because for most of the past 12 months, Haiti has been without a prime minister.
“We are ready to drill,” Newmont’s Daven Mashburn said about the La Miel region in late 2011. “Because the government of Haiti doesn’t really care… we can’t advance our licenses, and that means people can’t get jobs.”
But the new government does care. Not long after that interview, the licenses did advance, although not in a legal manner.
“The government gave them a kind of ‘waiver’ while they are waiting for the convention to be signed,” explained Ronald Baudin, Haiti’s former Finance Minister (2009-2011, prior to that he was Director General of the ministry), who oversaw negotiations with Eurasian while serving in the powerful position. “The government is conscious of what damage they are doing to the company. They have camps all over the country, with important logistics, and they are blocked because the convention can’t be signed.”
Baudin, who left office when the new government of President Michel Martelly took over in 2011, is now a paid consultant to the Eurasian-Newmont partnership – called “Newmont Ventures.”
(via ayiman)
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Dear Tumblr:
Is there a way I can search my likes? If not, can there be a way?
Also, is there a way to search for more than one tag at a time? Thank you!
Sincerely,
Someone who needs to stop usling tumblr as a search engine
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Knowing Coves: Hi, I'm a native woman. -
What’s that? No honey, the fact that the okimâwastotin (that headdress worn by clueless hipster girls all the time) is generally reserved for males in Plains cultures is not sexist or patriarchal. You can stop trying to ‘save us from sexism’ thanks.
In fact, we were centuries ahead of you in the gender equality department. There are of course a great diversity of socio-political traditions in our various nations, but one thing comes through loud and clear…our women held positions of power. Not merely over hearth and home, but politically as well. In some nations, women run the roost, and this without denigrating or subjugating men (in case you were worried).
Centuries of racist and sexist interference by European powers has taken its toll. We do indeed face sexism in our communities, to an extent unthinkable before Contact. It is sadly the case that the oppressed often internalise their oppressor, and the oppressor for us has always been racist, and sexist.
To combat this, we look to our traditions, which are egalitarian. Where men and women are respected and venerated. We do not fumble towards equality as sameness, as so many settler feminists insist we should (in our context only, as they often recognise this is a ridiculous approach otherwise). We revive equity. We acknowledge different gender roles, and recognise that the female is not subservient in our cultures.
When we discuss ‘women’s power’ and ‘women’s roles’, you hear echoes of your history. But your history is not ours. Our history speaks proudly of the strength of our women and our men. Gender roles were not created in our societies to elevate men and turn women into chattel.
You settler women have much to overcome. Your history is fraught with inequality and abuses. I am sorry that you come from such twisted traditions.
Do not attempt to transplant your historical circumstances into our Nations. You have no idea what the headdress means in our cultures. To claim that the restrictions on who can wear it are ‘sexist’ merely highlights this ignorance…your inability to see outside your own cultural norms, outside your own sad, sexist cultural history.
Colonisers always believe they have the right to define reality, particularly for those they have colonised. What kind of feminist are you, when you take part in these inequalities of power, and proclaim for us the meaning of our own symbols and traditions?
In case you’re not sure, it makes you a racist feminist.
Thank you for that. Good stuff, and it corroborates what I learned when I was studying Wudang from a Lakota martial arts teacher in Long Island (I know, a Chinese guy learning kung fu from a Native teacher sounds funny, but these things happen; he had spent years studying with a distinguished teacher in China, so I wanted to learn from him and I also got some Lakota education as a bonus).
People who have been reading me for a while are already familiar with this but for the new folks, I wrote a few years ago about the Haudenosaunee origins of (white) US feminism:
Haudenosaunee women led lives that must have shocked and confused many of their European American contemporaries, who often found themselves trapped in isolated lives of drudgery and servitude. […] Haudenosaunee women enjoyed tremendous stature in their society. They were leaders of their extended clans. They farmed their own fields in communal groups. […] They were guaranteed custody over all their children and owned everything in their homes except for their husband’s weapons, horse, and sacred implements; even when a husband brought home game from the hunt, it became the woman’s possession; she decided how to dispense it and she collected the money from the hide. Haudenosaunee women appointed male chiefs to manage the state, and if a chief did not properly serve his people, women could vote to impeach him and remove him from office. […]
Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage — three of the principal architects of 19th century US feminism — all had personal contacts with Haudenosaunee women. Indeed, Lucretia Mott, a key organizer of the historic convention [at Seneca Falls], actually spent time in the Seneca community of Cattaraugus in June of 1848, one month before the convention. There, she saw women leading spiritual ceremonies, and she watched women exercising equal power in political discussion and decision-making as the Seneca nation ratified changes to its governmental structure.
guerrilla mama medicine: President Obama didn't make you a coward -
I need folks to define precedence for me?
What did you think the Presidency is? What it does. What wanting that means?What you though Barack Obama was gonna do there in.
When you want that power , that KIND of power with that intellect?
You know what kind of decisions you are gonna make.
You WANT to make those decisions.
I find this usually view of President Obama as some kind of babe in the woods or pulled by polls milquetoast Infuriating and disrepectful at the same time.
Infuriating because , really you in America? No matter how you got here what you feel about or DO WITH IT? You are operating in a river, on a land, in an atmosphere of blood , drone killings, successful genocide and international battle.
Don’t be so fucking base disingenuous to pretend this is new or a ” shocking Obama turnaround”. This is your clean water, you cheap food, your clean air, you generally assured international travel. You get that on a DAILY if not MINUTE BY MINUTE body count. And that you would only now think it mattered cause fit goes against what you thought about your political god …
is disgusting. Collateral damage isn’t just when we drop the bombs but when we pretend they aren’t dropping or it’s not that serious.
Drones aren’t new, never ending warfare is not new, continual military presence fifty some off years after a conflict ( HELLO OKINAWA) . That’s the stuff that keeps this bad boy running . That it’s not as hidden or secretive is the new bit
I’ve already said I love this man like family , but if you paid any attention besides the shiny ability to feel real progressive about what electing him meant. He has ALWAYS been ready, studied , willing and able to use ANY and ALL facets of his office to push forth his vision , while dazzling folks from actually paying attention to what it is.
It APALLS me that folks would rather think President Obama is some lost lamb or lying deviant or spineless wonder than a man taking a good hard look t the landscape and making choices .
Whether he sleeps easy or hard doesn’t matter. And trust me whether you sleep easy or hard doesn’t matter to the people you helped hose over tomorrow.
It’s SMART, it’s charm and cunning and charisma. You fell for it, I fell for it , but for the most part
He never lied. Don’t try and pretend he did , or he wasn’t who he was to justify that. That he’s not TALKING about it apologetically or bringing it up as something he has to defend?
Is because he has guessed
CORRECTLY
that most of Americans, your friends , neighbors, YOU , ME and all our families .
Won’t care.
That’s realness.That’s intersectionality. That’s privilege and resource in action. That’s what the real shit is , when you hold things together that are opposites, irreconcilable and abhorrent to you on one level and beneficial on another.
That’s not easy. That’s not cut and dry.
That’s the power.When I go in a voting booth and I pull Obama ( if I do ) I am telling someone somewhere UNEQUIVOCALY that in the decision between me and themI chose me. When the chips are down if the push is a shove … I make a choice that puts my comforts, fears and imaginings about choice and safety above you.and if they HATE me for it . If they hate my privileged American self for be willing to make that choice , for having the OPTION to make that choice.. they have EVERY DAMN RIGHT TO. The very least , LEAST I can do is stop trying to pretend my moral outrage holds even a will’o the wisp as much weight as their MORTAL fear.IF i want to improve things , work on em, guide things to a better way I better find a way to let that be the glory and the goal.Because asking for ANYTHING ELSE is narcissism on the highest level and to try and blame my ignorance of that or my choice to stay happily uninformed on my belief that it could be solved by ONE MANis cowardiceand I promise you we had that before he was even THINKING about a Presidency.i have been saying this for years. whenever anyone asks why i didnt vote for obama, my answer is, because i listened to what he said he was going to do.
and that is what he did. not everything, but it was clear from the beginning, especially in foreign affairs, what his vision was. clear.
and folks at the time of the last election were saying things like, oh he’s just saying that to get elected, but once he gets in the office…
nope. thats not how the world works.
and i love seeing this black man as president. like i love the image. i love that the first person my daughter will remember being president was black.
but look, he made it clear that he wanted to keep the american empire. and to do that, he said, during the election, that he would focus on targeted killings and drone attacks rather than a prolonged wars, aka iraq, because the us image globally would be shinier. and liberals applauded him for it and wrote how this was a much better idea.
he knew. and we knew. and we were okay with that. and a whole bunch of folk voted for that, and that was their choice. in order to keep an empire, we have to be at war.
and what i find interesting is that i am hearing more and more in news outside of the us, of people talking about the drones. the real civilian casualty count must be getting pretty high, and that is going to have folks in a lot of different areas of the world, looking at this new and improved image of the us empire and saying that the king aint wearing no clothes again.
we will see…
Viki and Bridal Mask, a match made in heaven.