UN Admits Its Climate Change Program Threatens Indigenous Peoples

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

This is a press release brought here on the request of Earth Peoples. It notes that, business as usual, the United Nations have produced a report that condemns the actions that they nevertheless will take:

September 24, 2008, New York, NY — On the third day of the General Assembly’s 63rd Session United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Prime Minister of Norway launched the United Nations REDD program, a collaboration of FAO, UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank.

The inclusion of forests in the carbon market, or REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) has caused anxiety, protest and outrage throughout the world since it was created at the failed climate change negotiations in Bali and funded by the World Bank.

An estimated 60 million indigenous peoples are completely dependent on forests and are considered the most threatened by REDD. Therefore, indigenous leaders are among its most prominent critics. The International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change declared that: ‘…REDD will steal our land. States and carbon traders will take control over our forests.’

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Don Vicente Mamallacta: A Kichwa Shaman

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Don Mamallacta Vicente is a yachak in his 80s. Yachak is the Kichwa word for shaman or natural healer. Another term often used in the region is curandero or ayahuasquero.

His healing powers and energies are from a different time and age and he here (Sat 14 Jun 2008) speaks about his extraordinary life as a shaman, – including paddling for a year, leaving behind a wife on the border only to find her married to another shaman, who was out to kill him, upon returning from collecting salt on the Marañon river, deep in the Peruvian jungle, far away; then finding a new wife and altogether fathering ten children and healing many peoples lives throughout his own.

There are three parts:

(Don Vicente – Speaking of his life: Part I)

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The Misleading Guardian and the end of the Amazon: A New Ecuadorian Constitution?

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“.

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Neo-Conservative Pro Bono for Palin: what a twat!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Pop singer and celebrity-industrial complex charity twat, Bono of U2, has made a bad name for himself in radical grass roots circles by undermining any efforts that could bring substantial change and a “Good” name for himself in the public by doing so and by making it look like “something is being done”.

Now he meets with Sarah Palin, so that the world can see that she understands global politrix well – and what better credentials than Bono? He is capitalism’s unfettered expansion poster boy:

Twat

Twat

Here with some of his mates:

…. and what’s he up to next? Now that the job’s done (discrediting social movements and sucking up to the centre-left/right elite) he moves on to lend support to dodgy neo-conservatism, to show that Palin is in tune with, what, the youth?, which is exactly the kind of celebrity-industrial support that the neo-cons don’t get much of, even Hollywood despises the medieval war mongers of the Republican party. Maybe he will bring a Mars Bar with Mick Jagger in mind, or a Clintonian cigar. May you have fun together.


VLC 0.9.2: apt-get install vlc in Ubuntu Hardy 8.04

Thursday, September 18, 2008

The best player for videos of all kinds – the one and only, VLC:

VLC media player 0.9.2 Grishenko release.

The VideoLAN Team is pleased to announce the release of VLC media player 0.9.2 – Grishenko.

Resulting of 2 years of development, it features many new functionalities, including a new interface for xxxxxx and Linux. A comprehensive list of new features can be found on our our wiki or by reading the release notes.

To install it in (K/X/Y/Z)Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 follow these simple, but concise instructions. It solves various issues in Hardy’s Pulseaudio system and the player is a lot more user friendly.


Can ayahuasca heal the crisis of capitalism?

Friday, September 12, 2008

Ayahuasca is going global“, said a prominent psychedelic researcher recently, and it is also going mainstream as part of journeying across the planet. In the Californian TV series “Weeds” the leading act, Marie-Louise Parker’s character, Nancy Botwin, drinks ayahuasca under rather suspect circumstances with the leader of a drug-, guns- and human- trafficking Mexican mafia, who is also the mayor of Tijuana for added comic value. The ceremony is led by a young shaman who is told by the spirit of the medicinal brew not to give it to Nancy; she is not ready for it, so to speak, but he uses the words “I should not give it to her” and the gangster boss says “that’s alright, I’ll give it to her then”. Not off to a good start, but then again what do those shamans know about what a mobster’s girlfriend needs?

Watch the ayahuasca sequence here:

There are various issues at play here. Firstly, the most obvious one of the slightly forced drinking where the strong male insists that the little girl drinks despite warnings by the learned practitioner. That, however, is not so bad, – perhaps he knew better..

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Why I am not an activist, or how magic presents itself as the only viable solution.

Friday, September 5, 2008

A good friend just sent me a link to a very interesting read. It sums up quite a few things on my own mind and puts into perspective what I perceive to be crucial issues for the reactionary Left in general and activists in particular. A kind of anarchist magic – and that is probably the only viable solution for substantial change in the world we live in.

It is published in Red Room with the title “GETTING BEYOND THE NARRATIVES: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ACTIVIST COMMUNITY” and was originally just a commentary written to two friends, but it is a lot more than that – which is why it is circulating in cyberspace and why I have chosen to reproduce it here: it deserves wide attention!

A very good read. Enjoy!

===================

GETTING BEYOND THE NARRATIVES: AN OPEN LETTER TO THE ACTIVIST COMMUNITY
August 22, 2005

This essay began life as an open letter to two activist friends discussing a book edited by David Solnit, “Globalize Liberation” (SF: City Lights Book, 2004). It ended up in circulation among the activist community in the US, and was published several times on the internet. I have left it in its original form, as I think this adds more than it subtracts. — JMG

James asked me for my thoughts on “Globalize Liberation,” and I hope neither of you will mind a lengthy, even labored, response. The book is extremely thought-provoking in its strengths and weaknesses alike, and it’s given me an opportunity to rethink many of the assumptions I’ve had about social change and the potential shape of the future. Since I come to these issues from a somewhat unusual perspective — the perspective of a practicing mage and initiate of several magical orders — I recognize that the ideas “Globalize Liberation” evoked in me are perhaps a little different from those common in the progressive community. Thus I’ve chosen to explain those ideas here at some length.

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(WARNING!) Google shows its anti-social Fakebook-like side: what’s yours is theirs to use forever after!

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

WARNING: The Big Bad Google has released a web browser – and it is very fast reviews are telling us, but don’t start using it too fast, better read the license and face(book) the consequences:

11. Content license from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above license.

More at TapTheHive.

See also the similar theft by Facebook:

When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site. By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose, commercial, advertising, or otherwise, on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.”

The enclosure of knowledge is progressing strongly, fast and the thought police is coming for you any minute.


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