The 14-Year-Old Voice of the Climate Change Generation

When other kids were experiencing the travails of first grade, 6-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez was concerned about threats to the world’s ecosystem. Martinez, now 14, is the youth director of the nonprofit environmental organization Earth Guardians and one of the youngest people to speak on a United Nations panel.

Martinez, a resident of Boulder, Colorado, credits his worldview to the Aztec teachings of his father and the environmental activism of his mother.

In October, in his keynote address to the 2014 National Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, California, he told the assembled crowd, “In the light of a collapsing world, what better time to be born than now? Because this generation gets to rewrite history, gets to leave our mark on this earth.… We will be known as the generation, as the people on the planet, that brought forth a healthy, just, sustainable world for every generation to come. … We are the generation of change.”

In December, HBO will debut the music video “Be the Change,” by Martinez’ hip-hop group, Voice of Youth.

In These Times spoke to Martinez about how to stop climate change.

You gave your first speech at a climate change rally when you were 6. At age 12, you were among the youngest speakers at the Rio+20 United Nations Summit. How is it that you became an environmental activist?

Martinez: One factor was the indigenous teachings passed on to me by my father and ancestors: that all life is sacred and connected to each of us; that as people on earth we have a responsibility to be caretakers of the world. I also watched Leonardo DiCaprio’s documentary, The 11th Hour, when I was 6. I was devastated. I saw that my world — the world that my and future generations will be left with — is being destroyed by our lifestyles. There’s such a lack of consciousness on our planet. We’re overusing our resources to an extent that every living system on earth is dying.

Read more: http://billmoyers.com/2014/12/05/14-year-old-voice-climate-change-generation/

Local activists are paying with their life to protect their forests in Peru

Edwin Chota was killed in the forest he had fought to protect.

The Peruvian environmental activist had appealed to his government for help after receiving death threats from the illegal loggers that plagued the area around his village, deep in the Amazon rainforest. And yet, in September, he and three other prominent members of the Peruvian Ashéninka community were ambushed and shot on a jungle trail as they travelled to meet fellow activists from neighbouring Brazil. Chota’s widow journeyed six days by river to the regional capital to report their deaths.

Chota’s death is a reminder of the price that local activists in some of the world’s most remote areas are paying as they fight to defend their communities from exploitation and industrialisation. Global demand for natural resources is growing, and indigenous people are receiving little protection from those who would destroy their land, forests, and rivers. Instead, they are being murdered with impunity at an alarming rate, sometimes with the complicity of government authorities.

Peru is a prime example. It ranks fourth in the world for murders of environmental activists (after Brazil, Honduras, and the Philippines), with 57 activists in the country killed from 2002 to 2013, according to campaigners Global Witness. More than half of the country is still covered by rainforest, but those forests are being cut down at an accelerating rate to satisfy voracious international demand for timber and related products.

Sadly, this phenomenon is not confined to Peru. According to Global Witness, from 2002 to 2013, more than 900 people in 35 countries died defending the environment or fighting for the right to their land. The death toll has risen sharply in recent years. Worldwide, activists are murdered at an average rate of two per week. Given that such deaths tend to go unreported, the real number could be even higher. In only 10 cases have the perpetrators been brought to justice.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/17/environ

Online petitions

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Who do we hand our names and other information to is something we have to ask ourselves before we sign anything, I would advise.

AVAAZ, for instance, appears to have, as it has recently been claimed, links to some unsavory organizations belonging to a certain entity in the Middle East and with the possibilities of such connections one can but wonder as to how many of those groups that perpetually roll out this or that online petition they want us to put our name to are not in fact something more or have connections to something rather sinister.

Often such petitions are presented with big headlines to get people to sign when but with very little further information and without seeing both sides one should not simply add one's name to anything.

It was very much such a case when the British government, some years back, suggested to sale of some of the Forestry Commission forests to private forestry companies. The claim was that all the “state” forests were to be sold off and which would then be clear-felled for profit and left. No forestry company would ever work that way. But no one wanted to hear the counter argument.

Many petitions, whether from AVAAZ, or others, more often than not let the people that are asked to sign them know the full story behind something, I have found, but present just one side of the coin. One can thus often but wonder what traps are being set and thus my advice is: check all the facts before you sign anything and give away your data.

Furthermore, much like protest marches, demonstrations, vigils and all that stuff the question has to be as to what can or will be achieved with it. Regardless of number of signatures government can and will ignore anything at will. Democracy is but an illusion to keep the masses quiet.

The greatest concern we have to have, however, with online petitions, or any petitions where you have to give some personal information such as name, email address, and even physical address as to how such information is being used in the future and by whom. On what data base is your data and mine going to be stored and for what purpose is it going to be used?

We have to be much more discerning and instead of sitting on our backsides clicking and signing online petitions which may, or may not, be legit we should get down – up actually – to do some positive things, other than attending demonstrations, to make us feel real and connected to the things that matter.

However, most believe that they are doing good by signing such petitions and feel good after they have added their name to this or that list. “I have done something to change things” they believe. Really? Doing something to change things means actually doing something more than just signing your name and handing over certain information to the bottom of a petition. Doing something to make positive changes means getting out there and actually doing things – or even at home – and also learning from others and then teaching others too.

Clicktivism is not activism and will change nothing though it might get you onto some database the use of which we do not know. Thus, think before clicking and signing and rather look for true positive actions that will make a real change.

© 2014

Private Web spies monitor activists online for Australian police and attorney-general

God defend me from my friends – from my enemies I can defend myself

by Michael Smith

A private intelligence company has been engaged by police in Australia to secretly monitor internet and email use by activist and protest groups, according to a report.

The company was hired by Victorian Police, the Australian Federal Police and the federal Attorney-General's department to monitor and report on the internet activities of anti-war campaigners, animal rights activists, environmental campaigners, and other protest groups.

The Melbourne-based firm has for the past five years monitored websites, online chat rooms, social networking sites, email lists and bulletin boards, so says the report, and has gathered intelligence on planned protests and other activities, and even though many, if not even the majority, of those on the watch list have broken no laws.

Welcome to the fascist Dominion of Australia. Then again, it would appear that the mother country, Britain, is headed the same way, with the security services running roughshod over all civil liberties possible. Is this a sign of things to come?

This private intelligence company has also prepared threat assessments and intelligence reports for government agencies that included material from media reports, speeches, academic journals and publicly available company data, but no private correspondence, so it is claimed, was monitored.

As to the latter I would, personally, be very dubious. If they go as far as they have gone the chances are that they may have gone further still but that this is more secret than other things.

The company was not named at the request of its management for fear extremists may target the firm.

The news comes a month after Victorian police were found to have targeted community and activist groups in a long-running covert operation.

So much for the claims of freedom and liberties in Australia. If that is freedom and liberty then I would not want to see what happens should they change tack.

There is one difference between Australia and the UK and that is that in Australia it seems to be easier to find out those things that the services are up to compared to the UK. In the latter place the law and the culture of secrecy makes getting such information very difficult indeed, despite of the “Freedom of Information Act” and if they can claim that they are monitoring suspected terrorists then, well, no chance of getting info and anything that ends up leaked and then published could get one killed.

© M Smith (Veshengro), November 2008
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