Am I My Brother's Keeper? McCain, Peabody Western Coal Company & the Dineh-Navajo

The Black Mesa region in Arizona, USA is home to the indigenous communities of the Dineh (Navajo) and Hopi peoples. This region also contains major deposits of coal which are being extracted by North America's largest strip mining operation. The coal mines have had a major impact on families in the region. Local water sources have been poisoned, resulting in the death of livestock. Homes near the mines suffer from blasting damage. The coal dust is pervasive, as well as smoke from frequent fires in the stockpiles. Not coincidentally, the people in the area have an unusually high incidence of kidney and respiratory disease.

The Dineh (otherwise known as Navajo) were stripped of all land title and forced to relocate. Their land was turned over to the coal companies without making any provisions to protect the burial or sacred sites that would be destroyed by the mines. People whose lives were based in their deep spiritual and life-giving relationship with the land were relocated into cities, often without compensation, forbidden to return to the land that their families had occupied for generations. People became homeless with significant increases in alcoholism, suicide, family break up, emotional abuse and death.
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"The forcible relocation of over 10,000 Navajo people is a tragedy of genocide and injustice that will be a blot on the conscience of this country for many generations."

-- Leon Berger, Executive Director, Navajo-Hopi Indian Relocation Commission upon resignation.

"I feel that in relocating these elderly people, we are as bad as the Nazis that ran the concentration camps in World War II."

-- Roger Lewis, federally appointed Relocation Commissioner upon resignation

"I believe that the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi people that followed from the passage in 1974 of Public Law 93-531 is a major violation of these people's human rights. Indeed this forced relocation of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past 40 years."

-- Thayer Scudder, Professor of Anthropology, California Institute of Technology in a letter to Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

GENOCIDE committed against a gentle people: the Di'neh (Arizona Navaho)...against a beautiful Indian Holy Land: The Black Mesa... the Navaho's "Jerusalem" or "Mecca". Horrifying brutality orchestrated by a cruel, indifferent Senator: John McCain, and business interests from Massachusetts.

Illicitly secured Mining interests on the way to building the Peabody Group (the world's largest coal company), committing RAPE of the LAND for dirty COAL energy: dirty campaigns financed through street names in Nevada; improper Energy Bills meant to deprive the Navaho of their land for it's coal; dirty bills signed into law casually by Bill Clinton, Carter and Ford... McCain, supported by Senators Kennedy and Kerry from Massachusetts, and Senator Rockefeller from West Virginia coal mining country, profits through massive business gained by McCain's Wife and her Alcoholic Beverage Distribution business along with vast street name campaign contributions from the very Nevada casinos who stand to gain the most from the Coal stolen from the Indians: money that fuels McCain's campaign chest the excess of which he can pocket after every Campaign ends.

Horrific BIA thuggery, abuses by the very organization supposedly given to protect them: stolen trust money, casual government and corporate indifference. Thousands of native elders died, many were forced to relocate to Nuclear Spill sites, where double the national average birth defect rate is found among newborns... Who's behind these horrifying events? Press blackouts issued by Rockefeller/Kenney interests at Peabody since 1987 have prevented the American Public from learning of the enormous international hue and cry for justice regarding the deprivation of Human and Civil Rights being committed by McCain, his fellow Senators Kerry and Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Peabody Western, against the Di'neh Navaho in Arizona.

Native American Grandmothers at BIg Mountain resist relocation

(Public Law 93-531 as amended in 1996 (Partition), 1999 (Settlement), 2001 (Enforcement of Resettlement) and 2005 (Expansion of Resettlement) by bills introduced by Senator McCain - has led to the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Hon Abdeltalif Amor's condemnation of human rights violations inside the US, over the stripping of rights and forced resettlement of these gentle and deeply spiritual band of Dineh-Navajo Indians from Arizona, swept off of lands they'd owned since 1500 A.D. so that Peabody Western Coal could mine the Coal from beneath their farmlands and tap their wells to slurry pipe it to a power station in Nevada).

ACSA study reveals that after assembling a team of "pro-Peabody Western Coal" Indians and obtaining a false "Hopi-Navajo" Tribal Counsel designation by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for these paid Tribal representatives, in the period 1974-1996, Senator McCain was able to get large bands of the Dineh-Navajo relocated off their lands, so that Peabody Western could mine the coal under their farms at nominal expense. Common Cause has suggested McCain was indirectly compensated by street name cash contributions to his Federal Election Fund during three Presidential runs, and through family business with Las Vegas Casinos who benefited from the coal driven power he supplied.

Originally Posted by sammi jo

Unrestrained capitalism and civilized human conduct do not coexist well, by default (and definition). The former almost always wins in a battle (especially when the public are not aware of such disputes, as is often the case), perhaps because of humanity's built in flawed nature? There is so much of this kind of crap going on, not just here either. But I don't need to tell you that...

As an afterthought, if I was a major stockholder in the mining company, I would probably be equally guilty in similar complicity, if I was making a ton of cash from it. I would like to think that I would come down on the compassionate side;would that be a case of denial on my part, and I would reject it because my own comfort zone is invaded because of it? Scary thoughts indeed.

Originally Posted by sslarson

Do you care to explain how the forcible and coercive actions of the government and government officials acting in their official governmental roles is the same thing as "unrestrained capitalism"?

Sure it was a business entity that used the government to take (or get away with) these actions (including the trespass onto people's private property and persons). But that's not true free-market capitalism. This example is much closer to fascism than free-market capitalism.

Capitalism is merely a word that is used to describe what occurs when private property and freedom are protected rather than stolen or trespassed by force and people are free to enter into voluntary exchange of private property rights.

Originally Posted by sslarson

Sounds about right.

The question is how close the U.S. has come to this description.

In this era of technological leaps and increasing globalization, Chiquita (NYSE: CQB) has helped keep the notion of "banana republics" alive.

On Monday, Chiquita admitted in federal court that between 1997 and 2004, it paid off Colombian terrorist groups in order to protect the operations of its former Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, sold for $43.5 million in June 2004. As part of a plea deal, the company must pay a $25 million fine, subject to sentencing June 1.

Prosecutors contend that Chiquita paid $1.7 million during this period to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as AUC, and designated by the U.S. as a terrorist group in September 2001. Other paramilitary groups the company paid allegedly include the National Liberation Army and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Chiquita claims it needed to make the payments to ensure its employees' safety. Between 2001 and 2004, Banadex was the company's most profitable unit.

Yesterday, Moody's (NYSE: MCO) reaffirmed the company's credit ratings, pronouncing the firm's outlook stable despite the plea deal. That's not surprising, since Chiquita recorded a reserve for the full amount of the fine in 2006 in anticipation of an agreement.

While the fine will not affect the company's ability to do business, one hopes that it will change the way Chiquita operates. To its credit, in 2003 the company voluntarily informed the U.S. Department of Justice of its payments. However, the plea deal does not identify the senior executives who approved the payments, nor whether they remain employed with the company. In fact, Colombia announced that it may seek those executives' extradition.

The Enquirer's "abject surrender," as The New York Times calls it, is staggering. Based on assertions from Chiquita that reporter Mike Gallagher had illegally obtained internal Chiquita voice mails, the paper has renounced the entire series. It published front-page, above-the-fold apologies to Chiquita June 28, June 30 and July 1. It fired Gallagher and placed the complete blame for the fiasco on him. And it agreed to pay Chiquita in excess of $10 million to settle potential legal claims against the paper and its parent company, Gannett Co.

What's just as staggering are the crucial unanswered questions. How can The Enquirer
renounce the entire series of articles, many of which were based on first-hand reporting at Costa Rican and Honduran banana plantations and had nothing to do with the stolen voice mails?

Are those stories not true anymore? What does the $10 million figure represent? Are there other components to the settlement such as Gannett stock and the transfer of Gannett's part ownership in the Cincinnati Reds to Chiquita Chief Executive Officer Carl Lindner? And how can Gallagher's superiors, including Editor Larry Beaupre and Publisher Harry Whipple, escape responsibility for the actions of an employee who was doing his job?

...

In other words, never mind. Never mind a year's worth of reporting about Chiquita's allegedly unsavory business practices in Central America. Never mind about allegedly unsafe working conditions on Chiquita banana plantations. Never mind that the Colombian government has launched an investigation into Chiquita employees' alleged bribes of customs agents in that country. And never mind that Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who visited Chiquita farms in Honduras, called the company "an evil institution for exploiting the poor."

All of the above allegations were contained in The Enquirer's May 3 special section or
additional stories published over the following two weeks. None, except for the long stories on Chiquita's overall business practices, relied on internal voice mails for their facts. Yet all have been renounced by Enquirer management.

"Workers sprayed in the fields," a May 3 story with a dateline of Cocobola Farm, northeastern Costa Rica, contained this passage: "As two Enquirer reporters witnessed, on recently sprayed farms the air is heavy with a stifling chemical stench. Breathing is difficult and the pesticide residue covers everything."

Are we now to believe this scene never happened and that Chiquita doesn't spray pesticides on its farm workers?

Another May 3 story, "Villagers fear brutal guards," carrying a dateline of San Alejo
Plantation, Honduras, featured an interview with a young man who'd been shot by plantation security guards working for a Chiquita subsidiary company: "Lisandro Juarez, 15, showed the Enquirer the huge scars where the bullet entered and exited his back, passing just an inch from his spine."

How can this exchange be renounced by Enquirer management? Should we tell Juarez that his scar doesn't really exist now?

Besides removing the series from the paper's Web site, www.enquirer.com, The Enquirer has also removed any trace of it from its Web archives. A casual look through various search engines such as Yahoo! and Excite turned up numerous references to the paper's Web version of the Chiquita series, but every time a link to the series' individual articles was clicked on, only The Enquirer's official apology appeared.

Originally Posted by Flat Stanley

Unrestricted capitalism destroys everything in its path not strong enough to fight it off. It drove the murder of Native Americans, the enslavement of Africans and the near enslavement of Chinese. The list goes on.

Those on the right are very good at dismissing evils because they are the result of "capitalism". Capitalism is almost as sacred as "the troops". Interestingly, the illegal immigration issue so dear to the right is a direct effect of "capitalism"

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Anti-McCain thread, part deux.

....awaiting next installment.

The Keating Five (or Keating Five Scandal) refers to a Congressional scandal related to the collapse of most of the Savings and Loan institutions in the United States in the late 1980s.

Let the spin begin...

McCain survived the political scandal by, in part, becoming friendly with the political press;[100] with his blunt manner, he became a frequent guest on television news shows, especially once the 1991 Gulf War began and his military and POW experience became in demand.[100] McCain began campaigning against lobbyist money in politics from then on. His 1992 re-election campaign found his opposition split between Democratic community and civil rights activist Claire Sargent and impeached and removed former Governor Evan Mecham running as an independent.[100] Although Mecham garnered some hard-core conservative support, Sargent's campaign never gathered momentum and the Keating Five affair did not dominate discussion.[100][101] McCain again won handily,[100] getting 56 percent of the vote to Sargent's 32 percent and Mecham's 11 percent.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

I'm sorry...was the man proven to have done something illegal? I noticed how you left out this part:


OMG! He's a corrupt piece of shit!

Originally Posted by SDW2001

I challenge your statement's veracity. "Serious ethical and humanitarian problems?" These are the words of an anti-McCain zealot.

I doubt almost anyone outside of your ilk would agree, whether or not he/she plans on voting for him. This is a losing battle tactic for Dems. Trying to assassinate McCain's character is going to backfire and backfire huge. In fact, it will hand the election to him. The Dems will come off as inexperienced, angry little children, angry for revenge at the SBVT for what happened in 2004. Going after McCain on humanitarian grounds will be the same. His character, his war record and his support of "humanitarian" causes are no-nos for Dems. Instead, they need to try and paint him as Washington Establishment, tied-at-the-hop with George Bush, too pro-war, antiquated, etc.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

Obama cannot debate McCain on his record. Obama needs to avoid talk of records and experience, especially when the issue is national security. Mccain will make Obama look like a 12 year old boy on these matters. He'll come off as the wise grandfather figure who has both experience war and those that wage it. Obama will come off as the cute kid with big ideas and bigger ears.

No, Obama needs to continue to do what he has been doing: Talking about Change™ and The 21st Century™. The only way he can use McCain's record is to paint him as part of the Washington Establishment.

Originally Posted by SDW2001

I'm not ridiculing him.

Mccain will make Obama look like a 12 year old boy on these matters. He'll come off as the wise grandfather figure who has both experience war and those that wage it. Obama will come off as the cute kid with big ideas and bigger ears.

I disagree with him and don't feel he should be President.

Well, we'll see if McCain goes off. He doesn't speak from the hip as much as Michele Obama, apparently!

I disagree they are quagmires and I disagree we are not safer for having removed both Saddam Hussein and the Taliban from power.