Friday, September 11, 2009
A press release by Survival International:
“An article implying Peruvian Indians should be bombed with napalm has been named by human rights organisation Survival International as the ‘most racist article’ published in the last year by the mainstream media.
The article was published in the Peruvian national newspaper Correo. It calls indigenous people ‘savages’, ‘Palaeolithic’ and ‘primitive’; says that their languages have no more than eighty words; and declares that, in the protests that have recently engulfed much of Peru’s Amazon, they were manipulated by ‘communist excrement’.
‘For those of you who still think of these ‘ethnic groups’ as ‘good’, ‘naïve’ and ‘pure’, I will remind you that it was these same people who perfected the art of shrinking the heads of their enemies and wearing them on the belts holding up their loincloths. If the ‘natives’ didn’t shrink the heads of the policemen they killed (in the recent protests) and eat their remains, it was only because there wasn’t time.’
The article also attacks three indigenous congresswomen, ridiculing their names and referring to them as the ‘three starlets in the parliamentary sewers’. Its response to the indigenous protests against the exploitation of natural resources on their land is: ‘Get f****d, loincloths and all’. The penultimate sentence is: ‘I don’t know what keeps the president from providing the air force with all the napalm necessary.’
The ‘most racist article of the year’ award is part of Survival’s ‘Stamp it Out’ campaign which aims to challenge racist descriptions of indigenous peoples in the world’s media. The winner receives a certificate inscribed with a quotation from Lakota Sioux author Luther Standing Bear: ‘All the years of calling the Indian a savage has never made him one.’
Stamp it Out is supported by eminent journalists such as the BBC’s World Affairs correspondent John Simpson, George Monbiot, John Vidal, and best-selling authors Tim Butcher and Simon Garfield.
Survival’s director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘This article makes depressing reading for anyone who thinks newspapers should educate and inform their readers. We hope the publicity this award receives will make the paper think twice before printing such offensive rubbish again.’
Read an English translation of the article
For more information and images please contact Miriam Ross:
(+44) (0)20 7687 8734 or (+44) (0)7504543367
mr@survival-international.org
Leave a Comment » | Amazonia, Peru, South America, capitalism is murder, dark forces | Tagged: amazon, indigenous struggle, napalm, Peru, protest, racism, uprising | Permalink
Posted by colono
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Today the world’s media carry the story of the Peruvian Congress having suspended the destructive decrees that caused a non-violent, yet forceful uprising by indigenous peoples organising to defend the Amazon from the oil and gas industry. It is not a victory – merely one less defeat! The forest continues to be destroyed. Drilling, pumping, spilling roads building and Christian conquest of hearts, souls and minds through concerted violence, repression, manipulation, false promises (“Jesus will buy you a fridge and a car”) and disrespect for the inhabitants of what was once the world’s largest (rain) forest, but which is now better described as a region threatened by destruction, deforestation, desertification, in brief, death. However, at least, for now the attempt to accelerate further the destruction has been pushed back, but not stopped. The struggle continues…..
June 11, 2009
World Briefing | The Americas
Peru: Decrees to Open Jungle Area to Investment Are Suspended
By SIMON ROMERO
Congress temporarily suspended two decrees issued by President Alan García that had helped set off recent protests by indigenous groups fearful of large oil and logging investments in the Peruvian Amazon. The decrees would open vast jungle areas to investment and allow companies to bypass indigenous communities to get permits for projects. The protests resulted in repression by security forces and apparent reprisals by Indians last week that left dozens dead.
See also: Top name brands implicated in Amazon destruction, New Greenpeace report shows how the cattle industry in Brazil is feeding demand for raw resources and “Slaughtering the Amazon”
1 Comment | Amazonia, Direct Action, News, Peru, Road Protest, capitalism is murder, colonisation, dark forces, ecological justice, people power, rain forest | Tagged: amazon, amazonia por la vida, News, not a victory, Peru, Peruvian Congress, Politics, repression | Permalink
Posted by colono
Friday, May 8, 2009
The colonos blog has been following the plans and projects for commodity corridors – corredores – in South America unfolding under the IIRSA banner for several years now. IIRSA is a central element in the collaboration between Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Lula (Brasil), Chavez (Venezuela) and Evo Morales (Bolivia) and the rest of South American in the Great Plan to turn the entire continent into an industrial production site. Soon, as sad as it is, one of the key nodes in this network of destruction will be completed: the Interoceanic Highway, connecting the coast of Peru and the coast of Brasil:
Peru: Destructive Amazonian highway near completion
David T. Rowlands
2 May 2009
The nightmarish prospect of a scarred Amazonian jungle reeking of diesel fumes from end to end, as heavy-laden trucks thunder by in round-the-clock convoys, is fast becoming a reality.
Since 2000, teams of road builders have been cutting a vicious swathe of destruction through vast stretches of rainforest in the Peruvian province of Madre de Dios. This is done in the name of “free trade” and neoliberal “development”.
Scheduled for completion in 2010, the Interoceanic Highway will link up with Brazil’s existing Amazonian road network. This will create a coast-to-coast trucking route for Brazilian-based agribusiness exporting soy and other primary products to China via Peru’s Pacific ports.
Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Amazonia, South America, capitalism is murder, indigenous movements, latin american integration | Tagged: amazon, destruction, environmental destruction, IIRSA, Interoceanic Highway, Peru, soy industry | Permalink
Posted by colono
Friday, March 20, 2009
The WWF – the ones with the Panda logo – have published a report on the details about “saving” the Amazon rain forest by putting a price tag on every thing, – sorry, assets is probably a better term-, that the rain forest possesses.
The report – Pita Verweij, Marieke Schouten, Pieter van Beukering, Jorge Triana, Kim van der Leeuw and Sebastiaan Hess. Keeping the Amazon forests standing: a matter of values, WWF-Netherlands 2009 – is presented here by Mongobay.
This bizarre fashion of price tagging everything starts with the realisation that the market mechanisms have failed the environment, which is a pretty good observation, but then proceeds to suggest that the very same paradigm of thinking – the economistic, capitalistic reductionist line of thinking – should simply also be applied to “the environment”, since it provides humans with valuable “ecosystems services“. If it is not tagged with a price, why care for it?
While this whole business, as it were, sounds rather disturbing (Can two wrongs make a right? Can a problem be solved from within the paradigm it was created? Einstein famously answered the latter question, of course), the report has some very good bits – it is a very comprehensive report that deserves wider attention, but the price tagging horror really does not appeal very much – at all – to colonos or any of the people we have worked with in the forest. Essentially, it sounds like a lose-lose scenario: either lose the forest or sell it to the highest bidder? And bidding is low these days of financial collapse, so one could hardly imagine worse timing for the publication of this report.
Interestingly, it has a pretty good section on IIRSA, which has been covered again and again here, but the section does not include reference to the Manta-Manaus/Manaos corridor. This goes to show just how big the “biggest infrastructure project in history” is: an otherwise detailed and comprehensive report does not need to list the Manta-Manaus corridor in order to show just how much of a horror show that IIRSA is threatening to be:
Read the rest of this entry »
8 Comments | Amazonia, Anti-capitalism, Ecuador, Politics, South America | Tagged: amazon, ecosystems services, horror show, IIRSA, sian sullivan, wwf | Permalink
Posted by colono
Thursday, March 12, 2009
In yesterday’s Guardian there is yet “another hard-luck story that you’re gonna hear”:
“Chris Jones, who led the research, told the conference: “A temperature rise of anything over 1C commits you to some future loss of Amazon forest. Even the commonly quoted 2C target already commits us to 20-40% loss. On any kind of pragmatic timescale, I think we should see loss of the Amazon forest as irreversible.” Peter Cox, professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter, said the effects would be felt around the world. “Ecologically it would be a catastrophe and it would be taking a huge chance with our own climate. The tropics are drivers of the world’s weather systems and killing the Amazon is likely to change them forever. We don’t know exactly what would happen but we could expect more extreme weather.”
Massive Amazon loss would also amplify global warming “significantly” he said. “Destroying the Amazon would also turn what is a significant carbon sink into a significant source.”"
Just a few days ago new results came out about the loss of arctic ice showing once again that predictions are continuously shown to be way too conservative – positive feedback loops are upon us:
“Amazon dieback is one of the key positive feedbacks brought about by global warming. These are typically runaway processes in which global temperature rises lead to further releases of CO², which in turn brings about more global warming. In the Amazon this happens on a more localised scale but the result, increased forest death, also releases carbon into the atmosphere.
Experts predict that higher worldwide temperatures will reduce rainfall in the Amazon region, which will cause widespread local drought. With less water and tree growth, “homegrown” rainfall produced by the forest will reduce as well, as it depends on water passed into the atmosphere above the forests by the trees. The cycle continues, with even less rain causing more drought, and so on.
With no water, the root systems collapse and the trees fall over. The parched forest becomes tinderbox dry and more susceptible to fire, which can spread to destroy the still-healthy patches of forest.
Other positive feedback effects expected by scientists, are releases of carbon stored in frozen arctic ecosystems and an increase in the sun’s energy absorbed by the planet as ice melts.”
As already mentioned above, new results from the ice front have arrived and the predictions for an ice free Arctic summer is not far in the future:
“The year “2013 is starting to look as though it is a lot more reasonable as a prediction. But each year we’ve been wrong — each year we’re finding that it’s a little bit faster than expected,” he told Reuters.
The Arctic is warming at twice the rate of the rest of the world and the sea ice cover shrank to a record low in 2007 before growing slightly in 2008.
In 2004 a major international panel forecast the cover could vanish by 2100. Last December, some experts said the summer ice could go in the next 10 or 20 years.
If the ice cover disappears, it could have major consequences. Shipping companies are already musing about short cuts through the Arctic, which also contains enormous reserves of oil and natural gas.”
It’s not looking good.
Leave a Comment » | Amazonia, climate change, dark forces | Tagged: amazon, arctic summer, climate change, disaster, ice free arctic, News | Permalink
Posted by colono
Friday, October 31, 2008
Leave a Comment » | Amazonia, Rain Forest Flowers, Rio Napo, rain forest | Tagged: amazon, Amazonia, dark times, flower, photo, rain forest flower, smile | Permalink
Posted by colono
Saturday, September 27, 2008
“Being in favour of the Ecuadorian constitution, then, is to sentence the Amazon to death, notwithstanding any little points they have thrown in here and there to make environmentalists jump and cheer with laughter.”
It is circulating on many global civil society mailing lists, Ecuadorian politrix are once again on everyone’s lips. “A new law of nature“, writes The Guardian, “Ecuador [tomorrow, Sunday, Sep 28] votes on giving legal rights to rivers, forests and air. Is this the end of damaging development? The world is watching.“
What people marvel at is the inclusion of something in the order of “respect for Pachamama”, so to speak: “Ecuador’s tropical forests, islands, rivers and air similar legal rights to those normally granted to humans“.
“Una nueva Constitución y una nueva decepción“
Although it has some interesting aspects to it (that can give jobs to lawyers and environmental rights experts), including this new right for pachamama, the new Ecuadorian constitution that is put to the vote tomorrow [September 28, 2008], is principally speaking the most decisively industrialist, progressivist constitution ever written, because it defines a very specific and environmentally destructive trajectory for the Ecuadorian economy, including article 321, which affirms that the capitalist owners of the means of production can sleep tightly and secure forever after:
“Articulo 321: El Estado reconoce y garantiza el derecho a la propiedad en sus formas publica, privada, comunitaria, estatal, asociativa, cooperativa y mixta“.
Read the rest of this entry »
4 Comments | Amazonia, Capitalism, Ecuador, Environmentalism, Globalisation, Green Politics, Politics, South America, grass-roots | Tagged: amazon, constitutent assembly, correa, correa's spin, corridors, death of the amazon, deception, Ecuador, ecuador's constitutional vote, environmental rights, IIRSA, News, pachamama, Politics, spin | Permalink
Posted by colono
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Writes Mongobay: Up to a quarter of global carbon emissions are caused by deforestation. That means that in the next five years deforestation around the world will release more CO2 into the atmosphere than all aircraft from the Wright Brothers’ first flight until at least 2025.
And then consider the very interesting report the Amazon Institute for Environmental Research (Instituto de Pesquisa Ambiental da Amazônia—IPAM), the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC), and the Federal University of Minas Gerais (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais—UFMG – from before the current global food crisis – then go figure:
The Amazon in a Changing Climate: Large-Scale Reductions of Carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Impoverishment – Authors: D. Nepstad (WHRC, IPAM), P. Moutinho (IPAM, WHRC), B. Soares-Filho (UFMG) Graphics: P. Lefebvre, M. Ernst, B. Soares-Filho, D. Nepstad Translation (to Portuguese): G. Carvalho For more information: dnepstad@whrc.org, moutinho@ipam.org.br, britaldo@csr.ufmg.br, www.ipam.org.br, www.whrc.org, www.csr.ufmg.br/simamazonia/
and check the recent (follow-up) interview with Daniel Nepstad who has a good analysis, but whose belief in the effectiveness of such market based ploys as the REDD initiative (see the next entry) leaves much to be desired……
TAKE RADICAL ACTION NOW
– don’t hold your breath, if we wait for capitalism to reform itself, we will suffocate
Read the rest of this entry »
1 Comment | Amazonia, Anti-capitalism, Capitalism, Environmentalism, Globalisation, Green Politics, Politics, South America, grass-roots | Tagged: amazon, Amazonia, amazonia por la vida, climate change, daniel nepstad, deforestation, wood hole research center | Permalink
Posted by colono
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Ecuador to buy Brazilian warplanes, reports Ecuador Rising, so now we know for sure: let Brasil (and the Chinese, of course) take the oil out of the Amazon, repress the indigenous people who try to protect their land from severe contamination, and receive war machines in return – that is Correa’s anti-environmental neo-socialism in a nutshell. As if the world needed more of that sort of thing!?!?!?!?!?!
====================
PressTV, Wed, 30 Apr 2008
Brazil’s Defense Minister Nelson Jobim has said that Ecuador would buy 24 warplanes made by Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer.
“It’s a done deal,” Jobim told Reuters during a visit to Ecuador’s capital Quito when asked if Ecuador had agreed to buy the turboprop Super Tucano planes.
Earlier, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa said he planned to strengthen country’s air force to protect its border with Colombia after the country bombed a leftist rebel camp inside Ecuador.
Jobim did not say how much Ecuador will spend for the planes, but local media speculates it could cost more than $200 million.
“I don’t know the price… the purchase details were arranged by the Ecuadorian government and Embraer directly,” Jobim concluded.
3 Comments | Amazonia, Capitalism, Ecuador, Globalisation, Politics, South America | Tagged: amazon, correa, correa's war, destroying the rain forest | Permalink
Posted by colono