Mayan People’s Movement Defeats Monsanto Law in Guatemala

Mayan People’s Movement Defeats Monsanto Law in Guatemala
Written by Christin Sandberg
Thursday, 11 September 2014 11:23

All photos by Josue Navarro

GUATEMALA - On September 4th, after ten days of widespread street protests against the biotech giant Monsanto’s expansion into Guatemalan territory, groups of indigenous people joined by social movements, trade unions and farmer and women’s organizations won a victory when congress finally repealed the legislation that had been approved in June.

The demonstrations were concentrated outside the Congress and Constitutional Court in Guatemala City during more than a week, and coincided with several Mayan communities and organizations defending food sovereignty through court injunctions in order to stop the Congress and the President, Otto Perez Molina, from letting the new law on protection of plant varieties, known as the “Monsanto Law”, take effect.

On September 2, the Mayan communities of Sololá, a mountainous region 125 kilometers west from the capital, took to the streets and blocked several main roads. At this time a list of how individual congressmen had voted on the approval of the legislation in June was circulating.

When Congress convened on September 4, Mayan people were waiting outside for a response in favor of their movement, demanding a complete cancellation of the law –something very rarely seen in Guatemala. But this time they proved not to have marched in vain. After some battles between the presidential Patriotic Party (PP) and the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party (LIDER), the Congress finally decided not to review the legislation, but cancel it ...

More here: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/guatemala-archives-33/5042-mayan-peoples-movement-defeats-monsanto-law-in-guatemala

Contigency Plans: Reagan’s FEMA Administrator Giuffrida

Contingency Plans
by Matthew Cunningham-Cook
In a never-before-released thesis, Reagan’s FEMA administrator advocates the potential internment of millions of blacks in concentration camps.

“[Giuffrida's] views really aren’t that offensive, despite what some of the articles on the web have said,” says the US Army War College spokeswoman, an officer of lieutenant colonel rank, unsolicited, over the phone.

I had asked for a copy of former FEMA administrator Louis Giuffrida‘s 1970 thesis, “National Survival—Racial Imperative.” My request for the paper via Interlibrary Loan had been denied. I had called every number I could find to figure out why.

“[The thesis] is actually against racial prejudice,” the spokeswoman continued. “It just is trying to figure out, that when the system breaks down, like Ferguson, what the Army’s response should be.”

I hadn’t mentioned Ferguson.

After filing a FOIA request, I finally got my hands on the thesis. Giuffrida’s paper, written at the US Army War College, is a pseudophilosophical, historical analysis of the origins of racial prejudice that then offers a proposal: the establishment of concentration camps to imprison potentially millions of black Americans in the event of a revolutionary uprising in the United States ...

More here: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/contingency-plans/

Jesus was a Marxist

Reza Aslan Blasts 'Prosperity Gospel' Preachers: Jesus Was 'As Close To Marxism As It Gets'
HuffPost Live | By Ryan Buxton

Posted: 09/08/2014 6:10 pm EDT Updated: 09/08/2014 6:59 pm EDT

Religious scholar Reza Aslan has news for "prosperity preachers" like Joel Osteen and T.D. Jakes: Jesus was pretty much a Marxist.

Aslan spoke out against the message of Osteen and Jakes, who he called "charlatans" at the 2014 Indian Summer Festival, where Aslan expressed his viewpoint bluntly: "The argument of the prosperity gospel, if I can put it flippantly, is that Jesus wants you to drive a Bentley."

During a conversation with HuffPost Live's Marc Lamont Hill on Monday, Aslan explained that the prosperity gospel -- which recently got Victoria Osteen into hot water for its message that God wants his followers to prosper in life, including financially -- takes the Bible's metaphor about "what you give will be returned to you tenfold" and interprets it literally. That doesn't sit well with Aslan, whose book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth explores the historical roots of Jesus as a revolutionary figure.

"If there's one thing you can really zero in on when it comes to Jesus' preachings -- I mean the historical Jesus -- was his absolute hatred of wealth," Aslan said. "This wasn't a man who was neutral about it. Jesus wasn't about equality. His preaching wasn't that the rich and the poor should meet in the middle. That's not what he preached. What he preached was that those who have wealth, that wealth will be taken away. Those who are poor, they shall be the inheritors of the earth."

More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/reza-aslan-jesus-marxist_n_5786932.html

Happy Labor Day from the Socialist Progressives Group -