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For Immediate Release
September, 10 2013, 11:57am EDT
Contact:
Jennifer Ungemach, (52)1.415.151.8253, jenn@viaorganica.org (MX), Katherine Paul, 207.653.3090, katherine@organicconsumers.org (U.S.)
Organic Consumers Sponsors Water Tribunal in Mexico
International Court to Examine Human Rights Violations Related to Devastation of Mexico’s Water Resources
SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, Guanajuato, Mexico
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA), https://organicconsumers.org/, through its San Miguel-based Via Organica Project, https://viaorganica.org/, will support a water tribunal in Mexico to examine human rights violations related to the exploitation and contamination of Mexico's water resources.
The OCA supports the presentation of complaints before the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT), an international ethical court, which will hear 10 water-related cases, including one involving people who suffer from health problems caused by fluoride and arsenic poisoning.
"The number of people in Mexico suffering from health problems related to toxic levels of fluoride and arsenic in Mexico's contaminated water sources will only increase if the problem is not addresses," said Ronnie Cummins, international director of the OCA. "In Guanajuato, this contamination is a direct consequence of the over-exploitation of aquifers, primarily by agribusiness which in the northern part of the state uses about 85 percent of the groundwater to irrigate commercial crops that are exported to the U.S. Some water sources already register fluoride at over 10 times the Mexican norm," Cummins said.
On Sept. 20-21, 2013, the PPT anticipates hearing 10 cases. The hearings will begin at 9 a.m. in the Mezquite Salon, Km 11 of the highway to Dolores Hidalgo. The international press and the public are invited to attend the hearings.
One of the most wide-reaching cases will be brought by the Coalition in Defense of the Independence Basin (CODECIN), a group made up of 12 organizations. CODECIN will present a complaint on behalf of persons in seven municipalities, including the international tourist destination of San Miguel de Allende. CODECIN will represent people who suffer from fluoride and arsenic poisoning caused by contaminated groundwater in the Independence Aquifer.
The PPT also will hear cases involving the over-exploitation and contamination of aquifers in the Coahuila-Durango region, known as Comarca Lagunera, as well as in the states of Michoacan and Puebla. A special case of groundwater contamination - the unique cenotes found only in the Yucatan peninsula - will be showcased.
A panel of judges selected for their moral authority and professional standing will hear the cases and will issue verdicts on September 21, in the Santuario de Atotonilco. Confirmed judges include Juan Jose Consejo (Director, Instituto de la Naturaleza y la Sociedad de Oaxaca), Narciso Barrera (Union of Concerned Scientists), Laura Carlsen (Director, Americas Program, Center for International Policy), Martha Banuelos (Metropolitan Autonomous University), Patricia Avila (National Autonomous University of Mexico), and Felipe Macias (University of Guanajuato).
About Mexico's water contamination
River pollution severely affects many Mexican communities. In one dramatic example, a child died from arsenic poisoning after falling into the Rio Santiago River, which receives effluviums from Guadalajara. In another example, a massive oil spill in the Rio Coatzacoalcos in Veracruz was never properly cleaned up. As a result, the Rio Atoyac is now heavily contaminated by waste from factories, open-air landfills and industrialized chicken and pig farms.
While estimates of the current affected population are uncertain, recent studies show that at least 53 communities in the northern part of Guanajuato suffer from the health consequences of consuming groundwater that entered the aquifer between 10,000-35,000 years ago. Due to the age of the water, it contains unusually high levels of dissolved fluoride, arsenic and other minerals in increasingly high concentrations. At the current rate of extraction, the struggle to access water, especially in rural communities, will only worsen. "As the groundwater levels continue to drop, the contamination of the water in the region is projected to increase, affecting both rural and urban areas alike."
About the Permanent People's Tribunal
The Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PTT) is an international ethical Tribunal founded in 1979 to examine and issue judgments on human rights violations. Tribunal hearings have taken place in various countries including Tibet, Argentina, Eritrea, El Salvador, the Philippines, Afghanistan, East Timor, Guatemala and India. The Mexico Chapter began in 2011 under the rubric of "Free Trade, Violence, Impunity and Peoples' Rights." It focuses on various themes, including immigration, environmental devastation and GMO corn, among others. The National Assembly of Environmentally Affected Groups (ANNA) is the coordinator for all the environmental cases presented to the Tribunal in Mexico.
The Tribunal works to involve communities, non-governmental organizations and specialists in the investigation of these issues; to raise public awareness and provide in-depth information; and to encourage broad participation in the resolution of problems. Though Tribunal decisions are not legally binding, they may generate official proceedings or a government response based on their research, testimony and findings.
For more information: codecin2010@yahoo.com; cel: (52) 1.415.124.4308
https://www.tppmexico.org; audiencia.ambiental.tpp@gmail.com
https://www.afectadosambientales.org; webanaa@afectadosambientales.org
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) is an online and grassroots 501(c)3 nonprofit public interest organization, and the only organization in the U.S. focused exclusively on promoting the views and interests of the nation's estimated 50 million consumers of organically and socially responsibly produced food and other products. OCA educates and advocates on behalf of organic consumers, engages consumers in marketplace pressure campaigns, and works to advance sound food and farming policy through grassroots lobbying. We address crucial issues around food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, corporate accountability, Fair Trade, environmental sustainability, including pesticide use, and other food- and agriculture-related topics.
LATEST NEWS
Seth Harp Speaks on New York Times Spiking US Foreign Policy Interview With Ross Douthat
"I think the US is only the latest in a very long history of military empires," he told Common Dreams. "This is a perspective to which New York Times readers are rarely exposed."
Feb 09, 2026
Investigative journalist Seth Harp has accused the New York Times of burying his interview with a prominent opinion columnist. He told Common Dreams that the paper is trying to silence his forceful critiques of US foreign policy.
In a post on social media Thursday, Harp blasted Ross Douthat, a conservative opinion columnist for the paper, after learning that a conversation the two had recorded last month had been cut.
“Ross Douthat challenged me to a debate on foreign policy,” Harp wrote. “We recorded a 90-minute segment for his show, Interesting Times, on January 15, 2026. But I defeated him so decisively that he refuses to air the footage. What an absolute coward.”
According to Douthat, the conversation between the two was “pegged to the Delta Force raid in Venezuela,” referring to President Donald Trump’s operation last month, which overthrew the South American nation’s president, Nicolás Maduro.
Though Trump himself has plainly stated that his goal was to forcibly open the nation’s vast oil reserves to be taken over by US corporations, the administration has papered over this nakedly imperialist justification with dubious claims that Maduro was at the helm of a multinational narcotics trafficking ring. Maduro has pleaded not guilty to related charges in US court.
This was where, Douthat said, Harp’s perspective was relevant. His recent Times bestselling book, The Fort Bragg Cartel, examines the long history of the US Army Special Forces’ own history of international drug trafficking, which culminated in a series of unsolved murders at the titular Army installation in North Carolina.
The day after US forces bombed Caracas in the January operation, which is estimated to have killed as many as 83 people—including dozens of civilians—Harp posted a photo of one of the Delta Force commanders who played a key role in the attack. For this, he was subpoenaed by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which accused him of “leaking classified intel” and “doxing” the official, even though the information was already publicly available.
According to Harp, the conversation was cordial at first but became prickly when the two began to discuss the recent attack on Venezuela.
"Again and again he tried to box me in with some kind of gotcha," Harp said. "For example, he sprung on me that I'd called Nicolás Maduro the 'rightful' president of Venezuela, and tried to make the discussion about the last election in Venezuela and abuses by the government security forces there."
"I replied that Maduro was the rightful president of Venezuela simply because he became president through Venezuela's own internal political processes, and that the US has no right to dictate to other countries who their leaders should be," he said. "Douthat had no response to that and appeared visibly thrown off balance. It was as if he had never encountered a real anti-imperialist critique of US foreign policy and was only prepared to deal with some weak sauce humanitarian liberal critique, which I'm not about."
Harp said the discussion also encompassed many other foreign policy topics, including “Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the war in Ukraine, the post-9/11 wars, and American military interventions since 1945 more broadly.”
He added that the pair “also discussed the methods by which these interventions were accomplished, specifically the use of large conventional armies versus special forces and proxies,” and that they “talked a lot about China and Russia, too.”
“I served in the military and have spent my entire adult life thinking and writing about these issues,” said Harp, an Army veteran. “My basic argument was that the United States has been so violent and aggressive since World War II that it has not only destabilized the entire world but also destroyed our own country from the inside, materially and politically.”
“Ross’ basic point of view was that while the US has done terrible things and killed millions of people in recent years, the world is a better place as a result of American hegemony,” Harp continued. “But his grasp on historical facts was so weak that he was unable to make a strong argument.”
“He frequently became confused and contradicted or reversed himself,” Harp explained. “Frustrated at his own befuddlement, he blew up and said: ‘We get it. You think the United States is uniquely evil.’”
Within days of the interview, Harp expressed fears that the Times might decide not to release it. On January 20, five days after his sit-down with Douthat, he wrote to one of his editors.
“I was somewhat surprised that Ross wasn’t better prepared to defend his point of view,” he said, according to a message he made available on social media. “They may decide to spike it; we’ll see.”
About three weeks after the conversation and after weeks of silence from the Times, Harp received a text message from one of the show’s producers, who told him, “We aren’t going to be able to make it work.”
“We were kind of pummeled by the news cycle in the last six weeks and are going to pivot away from this story,” the producer explained in the text message exchange.
“I had canceled a vacation to do the show in studio,” Harp told Common Dreams. “Twice they changed the date on me, so I was kept waiting for two weeks. Then, after they spiked the episode, they didn’t even bother to inform me. I didn’t learn about it until three weeks later, when I reached out to the producer. At that point, I asked for Ross’ email address so that I could speak to him about it directly and in private. The producer refused to put me in touch.”
Harp responded to the message, calling it “unbelievable cowardice on Ross’ part and a giant waste of my time.” He said he was going to “make it known what actually happened: Ross challenged me to a debate on foreign policy, got crushed, and doesn’t have the intellectual or journalistic integrity to air the footage.”
He later posted the text exchange to social media. He told Common Dreams he chose to go public because he “felt deeply offended by [The Times'] complete disrespect for my time and lack of professional courtesy.”
hey @DouthatNYT, release the debate ya coward https://t.co/2eMysOn4nn
— Nathan J Robinson (@NathanJRobinson) February 6, 2026
ross douthat has no time for a foreign policy discussion with seth harp but loads of time for this misogynistic culture war slop… https://t.co/ZIZDqTy8Kc pic.twitter.com/SaCkE3OMkV
— Erin Overbey (@erinoverbey) February 7, 2026
Harp's publication of the messages on social media resulted in a wave of backlash from others in the media, who accused Douthat of cowardice and the Times of burying the interview to protect him from embarrassment.
On Thursday, Douthat issued a response on social media.
Though the debate was recorded less than two weeks after Trump’s raid, he said the interview “had missed the ideal spot in the news cycle” for a conversation about Venezuela. He also said the interview, which he wanted to keep narrowly focused on Harp’s reporting about drug-dealing in the Special Forces, “became unmoored from Mr. Harp’s specific reporting in a way that undermined the first half of our conversation.”
“Interesting Times is a show where I try to give a lot of space to the guest’s perspective while posing challenging questions, creating episodes where the audience gets the best version of an idea or worldview that they might not have understood before,” Douthat continued.
Harp called this justification “hogwash,” pointing out that three of the most recent episodes of his show address such timely issues as the end of Roe v. Wade, questions about public trust after the Covid-19 pandemic, and church attendance statistics among young men.
“Anyone can look at your recent episodes and see that a debate between us on the US military and foreign policy would have been far more timely and relevant to the news cycle than any of them,” Harp wrote.
Douthat, one of the many Times columnists who enthusiastically supported the Bush administration’s War in Iraq more than two decades ago, has often given his platform to unapologetic supporters of US foreign military interventions.
The first interview he published after Trump’s Venezuela operation was a conversation titled “A Defense of US Intervention in Venezuela,” in which he hosted the notorious war hawk Elliott Abrams, who served as special envoy to Venezuela during Trump’s first term.
The neoconservative policy adviser, who’d previously worked for Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. During that time, he championed US support for anti-communist death squads and dictators across Latin America and was later convicted for his participation in the Iran-Contra affair.
Douthat largely agreed with Abrams on the moral justifications for regime change in Venezuela, though he questioned the operation’s effectiveness in bringing about democracy.
Harp said that during their conversation weeks later, he disputed Douthat’s “sarcastic outburst,” accusing him of portraying America as a unique evil.
“I don’t think the US is unique or evil,” he told Common Dreams. “I don’t think in those sorts of religious terms. Rather, I think the US is only the latest in a very long history of military empires, but that its marriage to extractive capitalism makes it exceptionally violent, unstable, and short-lived.”
“This is a perspective to which New York Times readers are rarely exposed,” he went on. “It was an interesting and entertaining discussion all around, and no doubt would have garnered far more views than anything else that Ross has published recently. Sadly, Ross’ ego was a little battered.”
“I had tried to go easy on him as an interlocutor, not pointing out, for example, that I personally fought in the Iraq War while he merely promoted it in the pages of the National Review, even though both of us were of military age in the early 2000s,” he said. “I had kept it all above the belt and never attacked him personally. But I had laid bare the shallowness and inconsistency of his views on foreign policy.”
“Another pundit or host would have had the intellectual and journalistic integrity to publish the interview anyway,” he said. “Not Ross.”
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Bar Complaint Filed Against Prosecutor Who Petitioned for Raid of Journalist's Home
"When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences," reads a filing.
Feb 09, 2026
Soon after the FBI raided Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson's home in Virginia last month, the Freedom of the Press Foundation said it suspected that the Trump administration was either "ignoring or distorting" federal law when it allowed the search and seizure of Natanson's electronic devices to go forward.
On Monday, the organization said that recently unsealed court documents had proven its suspicions were correct as it filed a formal disciplinary complaint against the federal prosecutor who signed the search warrant application: Assistant Attorney General Gordon Kromberg had failed to disclose to the magistrate judge who approved the warrant the Privacy Protection Act of 1980, which strictly limit search warrants for journalists' work products and materials.
That allegation led the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) to file a disciplinary complaint with the Virginia State Bar on Friday.
By not alerting Judge William B. Porter to the law, Kromberg "appears to have violated an ethical rule that requires lawyers to reveal relevant legal authority to the court, even if it undermines their arguments," said FPF.
Seth Stein, the chief of advocacy for FPF, filed the complaint nearly a month after the FBI executed the search warrant at Natanson's home and seized several devices.
The raid was completed as part of an Espionage Act investigation into Aurelio Perez-Lugones, a government contractor who's accused of leaking classified information to Natanson. The journalist has extensively covered the experiences of people in the federal workforce in the past year, as the Trump administration has fired or pushed out more than 350,000 employees.
The Privacy Protection Act prohibits searches of a journalist's materials unless there is probable cause to believe that the reporter themself has committed a crime related to their work materials. The law stipulates that the mere possession of materials by a journalist cannot trigger that exception unless the materials are child sexual abuse imagery or national security secrets.
As the New York Times reported last week, "It is disputed whether it is constitutionally permissible to apply the Espionage Act to ordinary news gathering activities by people without security clearances."
Prosecutors have never charged a traditional reporter with violating the Espionage Act for news gathering activities. The Department of Justice alarmed First Amendment advocates during President Donald Trump's first administration when it charged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange under the Espionage Act for publishing classified files; Assange later struck a plea deal so the constitutionality of his charges were not tested in court.
Stein emphasized in the filing that Kromberg's omission of the Privacy Protection Act "could not have been a mere oversight—the warrant in question was, predictably, a subject of national news, given that raids of journalists’ homes during investigations of alleged leaks by government personnel are, according to experts, unprecedented."
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else."
"Under the Department of Justice’s own policies," reads the filing, "the search should have been discussed with and authorized by the highest levels of the DOJ, including the attorney general."
Several legal experts who specialize in ethics told the Times last week that if Kromberg knew about the Privacy Protection Act and didn't alert Porter that the search could violate the law, he violate an ethical statute called Rule 3.3, “Candor Toward the Tribunal."
New York University professor emeritus Stephen Gillers told the Times that Kromberg was required “to disclose the Privacy Protection Act because it is ‘controlling,’ which means the judge was required to consider it in his ruling on the government’s request, and because the act’s provisions are ‘adverse,’ which means its requirements could have the effect of denying the government’s request.”
Stein said in a statement that Kromberg and the federal government "omitted a federal law that should have prohibited the raid of Hannah Natanson’s home when applying for a search warrant."
Natanson and the Post filed a lawsuit demanding the return of her electronic devices and data, arguing that under the Privacy Protection Act, it is illegal for the government to review her reporting work that is unrelated to the investigation into Perez-Lugones.
In the filing on Friday, Stein warned that in addition to harming Natanson's ability to complete her work, the FBI has jeopardized the confidentiality of her sources, and "journalists and whistleblowers across the country are sure to think twice about drawing the ire of the current administration" in light of the reporter's ordeal.
"Disciplinary bodies cannot look the other way and ignore misconduct that threatens the First Amendment, particularly from an administration with a long history of misleading judges and everyone else," said Stein on Monday. "When prosecutors abuse their power to facilitate efforts to silence reporting and intimidate news sources, disciplinary authorities must hold them accountable and impose real consequences.”
FPF called on the Virginia State Bar to take "appropriate disciplinary action, up to and including disbarment," against Kromberg.
The bar, said the group, should "expedite disciplinary proceedings due to the dire consequences for First Amendment freedoms if illegal newsroom raids and seizures of journalists’ work product are allowed to go unchecked."
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Trump-Heckling Auto Worker Keeps His Job and Faces No Discipline: UAW
"That's a union brother who spoke up," said UAW president Shawn Fain. "He put his constitutional rights to work. He put his union rights to work."
Feb 09, 2026
TJ Sabula, the auto worker who called President Donald Trump a “pedophile protector" last month, is reportedly keeping his job.
According to a report from the Detroit News, United Auto Workers (UAW) vice president Laura Dickerson said on Monday that Sabula is not getting fired from his job at a Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and he will not face any discipline for his heckling of the president.
Dickerson, who discussed Sabula's case at the UAW's annual Community Action Program conference in Washington, DC, also took a shot at Trump for giving Sabula the middle finger while appearing to mouth or yell “fuck you” back at the auto worker.
"In that moment, we saw what the president really thinks about working people," Dickerson said. "As UAW members, we speak truth to power. We don't just protect rights, we exercise them."
UAW president Shawn Fain also took time during the conference to offer appreciation for Sabula, the Detroit News reported.
"That's a union brother who spoke up," said Fain. "He put his constitutional rights to work. He put his union rights to work."
Sabula, who said he decided to called Trump a "pedophile protecter" for his attempts to block the release of files related to late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had been suspended from his job after the incident took place.
Critics of the president quickly rushed to Sabula's aid, however, as two separate GoFundMe campaigns aimed at raising money for the auto worker raked in a total of over $800,000.
In an interview published last month by the Washington Post, Sabula said he had “no regrets whatsoever” about yelling at the president, even though it led to his suspension.
“I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” Sabula told the Post. “And today I think I did that.”
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