Brenda Norrell: Censorship of Indigenous Issues Increases TUCSON, Arizona, U.S. The Zapatistas arrived from Chiapas, near the Arizona border last week. However, those without Internet access probably didn’t hear the news. The Zapatistas and the Indigenous struggle to protect the land, water and air, are among the most censored issues. Vanishing from the news pages are the struggles of Indigenous fighting dirty coal power plants, oil drilling in the Arctic, hazardous waste dumps and nuclear testing. In Canada, the news of a draft counterinsurgency manual which named Mohawks with international terrorists, called for the military to carry out ambushes and assassinations. Canada is now following the same genocidal blueprint designed by the U.S. School of the Americas which led to the rape, murder and torture of Indigenous in Central and South America for decades. The SOA’s manual was made public. The new censorship comes as activists and Indians are increasingly denied visas and passports by the United States government. With pressure from the Bush administration, and advertising and politicians increasingly controlling the news media in the United States, real news and real freedom is vanishing. Co-opted, the news media has become much like Congress, pretending to be servants of the people, while in reality being controlled and compromised by self-serving personal, financial and political interests. In the United States, American Indian news is often no more than a press release written by the spin doctor of an elected official or an exploitive industry. When it says “staff reports,” the article is most likely a press release written by a paid public relations official. The mainstream media wire services are seldom an improvement. Most wire services avoid comments from individual American Indians, relying instead on the statements of corporations and politicians. Few, if any, wire services have staff reporters living on Indian Nations. When Houston Councilman Michael Berry, who serves as mayor pro tem, recently insulted American Indians on the radio, it would have probably gone unnoticed nationwide if the American Indian Genocide Museum in Houston did not take action. http://www.aigenom.com The information was posted on the “Censored” blog, and http://www.indianz.com then published the information. Next, AP wrote an article, along with dozens of national newspapers and magazines. However, while radio host Don Imus was removed from the radio airwaves after his insults of black women, Berry remains on the air in Houston. On Saturday, April 21, Pueblos and other Indians from the Southwest will protest a statue of the Conquistador Onate, known as the “Butcher,” to Pueblos, in El Paso. On Sunday, April 22, in Sonora, Mexico, the Zapatistas and Comandantes return from the Cucapa fishing rights camp in Baja, Mexico, to announce the details of the Indigenous International Conference to be held in northwest Mexico in the fall of 2007. It will be interesting to see which newspapers publish articles on these two events. It will be more interesting to see which news media actually sends a news reporter to find out the truth at the events, rather than taking the easy way out and relying on wire service reports. Read more of the censored Indigenous issues at: CENSORED http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com Brenda Norrell Human Rights Editor U.N. OBSERVER & International Report Please also see: Brenda Norrell: Zapatista Marcos to United Nation; Listen to Indigenous Peoples http://www.unobserver.com/index.php?pagina=layout4.php&id=3369&blz=1