INDIA: Indigenous Groups Step Up Protests Over Mining Project http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50429When 5,000 indigenous Dongria Kondhs trekked Sunday to Niyam Dongar hill, the abode of their presiding deity Niyam Raja, and designated it as inviolate, it meant they were stepping up their resistance to a controversial alumina refinery and bauxite mine project here.
They carried out religious rituals to Niyam Raja - the sacred dispenser of law, and then put up a totem pole in the area located in Niyamgiri hills in their homeland Lanjigarh, a bauxite-rich hilly area in Kalahandi of Orissa state in eastern India. This was the latest act of defiance here against the backdrop of unrest since 1997 among communities, environmental and rights activists over the 2.13 billon U.S. dollar mining project by Vedanta Aluminium Ltd, the Indian arm of London-based Vedanta Resources Plc.
"These villages never had basic amenities like medical facilities, drinking water and properly functioning schools. The mining project will now take away even the sources of livelihood from them," explained Dadhi Pusika, leader of Niyamgiri Surakhya Samity (Nayamgiri Protection Committee) that was formed by members of affected villages. "Life is so hard. Old women and children are dying. They are living like dogs," said 45-year-old Ladha Sikaka of Lakpaddar village, referring to the impact of the alumna refinery. Six people from Rengopalli and villages near the refinery and its huge red mud pond – a receptacle of wastewater that is a mix of highly toxic alkaline chemicals and heavy metals - have died over the past year from undiagnosed respiratory ailments.
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Nicaragua's Ortega Rules out Coup http://www.insidecostarica.com/dailynews/2010/february/23/centam-10022301.htm
MANAGUA - Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, dismissed the possibility that soldiers launch a coup d'Etat in Nicaragua, as that perpetrated in Honduras last year.After closing the handover ceremony of the Army's leadership on Sunday, Ortega said there is no possibility of a coup, or soldiers going out shooting workers or the people.
The military body is comprised of men and women that come from people and its roots are strengthened in the struggles of famous patriots as Jose Dolores Estrada, Benjamin Zeledon and Augusto Cesar Sandino, Ortega stated.It was not like that in the past, Ortega noted, referring to the crimes of the National Guard, an armed body created by the US occupation troops to protect its interests and local puppets.
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Venezuela Creates Peasant Militias, Enacts Federal Government Council http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2375-venezuela-creates-peasant-militias-enacts-federal-government-council
The peasant militia will be responsible for protecting poor farmers from mercenary groups organized and financed by ranchers and wealthy landowners, Chavez explained in his weekly column, “Chavez’s Lines” on Sunday. More than 300 peasant leaders and activists have been murdered since the government introduced the Law on Land and Agricultural Development in 2001 and launched a program of agrarian reform.
Some 1,505 farms totalling 2.5 million hectares have been recovered and redistributed under the agrarian reform program. However, “The landowning oligarchy launched a violent agenda against the rescue of the commons,” Chavez said.
Manuel Heredia, president of the National Ranchers Federation responded that “As an institution, we have never sought paramilitary groups to protect us,” but he did not rule out the possibility that individual members maybe be involved in financing paramilitary groups, saying, “If one of our members is proven guilty of a crime, then they should pay for their crime.”
comment-also see...Paramilitaries displace population near Venezuela border http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/7821-paramilitaries-displace-population-near-venezuela-border.html
black eagles and los rastorjos,both rigthwing colombian paramilitaries killing scores in venezuela...
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The Iran Threat - More of the same http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/71775
"Iran has for long stated its willingness to implement the IAEA’s ‘Additional Protocol’, an entirely voluntary measure which would subject Iran’s nuclear facilities to an even more stringent and intrusive international inspection process, and which would satisfy US and EU professed demands for ‘proof’, while also permitting a multilateral consortium to adjudicate uranium enrichment within Iran – as long the international community equally recognizes Iran’s NPT-stipulated right to develop its own peaceful nuclear enrichment programme. Yet detailed proposals along these lines have been repeatedly ignored and rejected out-of-hand by both the US and the EU."
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The Second Battle of Gaza: Israel's undermining of International Law http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/71786
"We are in the midst of the second battle of Gaza, a campaign not only to refute and defame the UN’s Goldstone Report and sanitize Israel’s actions there but to change international humanitarian law in a way that protects the powerful states and their armies while removing the fundamental rights of the world’s poor and downtrodden to resist. The stakes are high."
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The Rights Of Native Peoples Against The New Chilean Government http://tiny.cc/hmcVS
It is noteworthy that many of the conflicts in the present either by demands for restitution of ancestral lands, or of resistance to the imposition of private investment projects such as forestry, pulp, hydropower, salmon, mining , among others, that affect many lives, they face precisely a direct and frontal masks without consultation, in a direct and frontal, with the representative who will assume the new government.
The Cabinet to be elected President Sebastián Piñera are up today, representatives of major business sectors and associations of landowners of colonial origin, where many communities continue claims, therefore, too, is in his hands the choice of exacerbate tensions and increase the path of violations; Or, to give a full solution to the ongoing conflicts, with respect for human rights and comply fully with international norms and standards on Indigenous Rights and the Environment.
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Chavez: Colombian paramilitaries plot Venezuela coup http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8330-colombian-paras-want-to-overthrow-venezuela-chavez.html
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claims that political opponents within his nation are supporting Colombian paramilitaries in a plot to take down his socialist government.Chavez, on his television program, called on the Venezuelan public to fight against those opposed to his government."Mayors and governors come along and they support paramilitarism in Colombia. CIA operatives bring Colombian paramilitaries here and plant them in the police, on the land, in drug trafficking. They are mafia," Chavez declared.
comment-also see...Hitman says $25m offered 'for killing Chavez' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGprwzQ5UoU
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Ten years later, little justice in the El Salado massacre http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/8350-ten-years-later-little-justice-in-the-el-salado-massacre.html
Residents of the northern Colombian town of El Salado on Monday marked the tenth anniversary of a paramilitary massacre that left more than 100 dead. So far, no more than 15 of the 450 perpetrators have been convicted.Not a single paramilitary leader has been sentenced either.The inhabitants of the town commemorated the grim milestone with a church liturgy, a photographic exhibition with pictures of those killed, and the reopening of a local school.
The massacre began on February 16, 2000, when members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) entered the town of El Salado and began murdering the people who lived there. The AUC had suspected many of the townspeople of being members and supporters of left-wing guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), one of the AUC's biggest enemies. Victims were taken from their homes by the paramilitaries and dragged to a local football field, where they were publicly tortured before being hung, beaten, stabbed, and shot to death.
Former paramilitary chief Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias "Jorge 40," and currently extradited to the United States on drug trafficking charges, has said that the slaughter was ordered by the now-deceased former AUC leader Carlos Castaño. "Jorge 40" has also said that various AUC bigwigs such as the notorious and extradited Salvatore Mancuso and former Colombian military members were present at the time of the attacks. According to a report released last year by the National Commission of Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR), the attacks were meant to serve as an example for other alleged guerrilla sympathizers.
comment-also see...RIGTHWING PARAMILITARISM in COLOMBIA 1 URIBE AUC killers COLOMBIA VIDEO TRANSLATED IN ENGLISH PART 1 http://www.jahu.net/videos/video/jAABv-PfTtk/
Uribe is a warcriminal http://uribewarcriminal.blogspot.com/
El Salado, 10 years later http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1395
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Harvard Fellow Calls For Genocidal Measure To Curb Palestinian Births http://www.politicaltheatrics.net/2010/02/harvard-fellow-calls-for-genocidal-measure-to-curb-palestinian-births/
A fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Martin Kramer, has called for “the West” to take measures to curb the births of Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition of a call for genocide.Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel’s Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog (”Superfluous young men,” 7 February 2010). -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUDIO-Never ending Another leader killed in Guatemala http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Never-ending
But interpreting genocide as a matter exclusively of the past by not considering its footprint will only conceal the current crimes, which continue a long story of abuses.Unfortunately, the press releases of the social organizations are more common each day. At the end of last week the Front of Resistance in Defense of Natural Resources of Malacatan (FRENA) reported the murder of leader Octavio Roblero, member of the organization and opposer to the installation of a hydroelectric dam in the south west of San Marcos department.
Meanwhile, but still linked to the abuses of extractive industries, a few days ago Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre published that the health authorities of Guatemala ordered an investigation to determine whether the skin problems affecting three communities in San Marcos are linked with the mining activity. One of the companies under scrutiny is Montana Exploradora, owner of Marlin mine, which operates in that region of the country. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AUDIO-Dark Blue Violent eviction of communities http://www.radiomundoreal.fm/Dark-Blue
Violent eviction of communities in Montes Azules, Chiapas to give way to monoculture plantations and tourist projects.Under the pretext of “reforesting” the area and setting private tourist resorts in Montes Azules, in the Mexican state of Chiapas, there have been evictions of local communities in January.State and federal police officers, army troops, government authorities and cameramen and journalists participated in the operation. They arrived in helicopters and burned down their houses in several parts of Ocosingo municipality.
The villages affected by this Mexican state policy are 6 de Octubre, San Gregorio, Nuevo San Gregorio, Ranchería Corozal, Suspiro, Buen Samaritano and Laguna San Pedro y Salvador Allende. Several of the villages that have been evicted are bases of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN).La Jornada newspaper reported on January 31 that the communities are accusing the government of lying, for burning down indigenous houses, while the papers talk about resettlement of Zapatista activists of Laguna San Pedro, whose houses were destroyed, the co-op store was robbed and they damaged fruit trees, corn, beans, clothes and work tools.
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Bolivian President Evo Morales Visits Mexico City http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2010/02/bolivian-president-evo-morales-visits-mexico-city
Evo Morales, Latin America's first indigenous president, visited Mexico City on Sunday evening on his way to a Rio Group summit in Cancun. Morales argued that workers and indigenous peoples throughout America can unite around the common issues of dignity, sovereignty, the recuperation of natural resources, and against the privatization of public services.
Later in the evening Morales offered a press conference in the Sevilla Palace hotel on Paseo de la Reforma. There, he stressed the importance of creating a new Organization of American States that does not include the United States. He said that he will present this proposal at the upcoming Rio Group summit in Cancun. Morales asked those gathered at the press conference, "How far can we get with empire or without empire? In my experience, it's better without empire."
comment-for thsoe who can speak spanish this is a''gem''so here...EVO MORALES EN MÉXICO: SABIDURÍA INDÍGENA(indigenous wisdom)...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itaE0mTKDro
some of the key points were,the acomplishments of past and the gradual progress thats being met by the mundo(world) latino and indigneous in order to achieve another world,one with the ''empire'',also states that the days of the vende patrias(traitors who sell country for money''are coming to an end in region.The days of colonialism are finished,and they will shed blood like their ancestors to make sure of it.
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Ecological destruction in the age of neoliberalism http://constellationdefiant.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/ecological-destruction-in-the-age-of-neoliberalism/
Loren Goldner offers an explanation of neoliberalism that includes an ecological dimension. he describes the form of ecological devastation during the present era as part of the need for what he calls “looting,” or primitive accumulation. currently, the claims to wealth by the capitalists exceed the actual amount of wealth in the world.
so, along with wages and public infrastructure, the environment is being looted to make up for that lack of real wealth.Goldner argues that this is a contraction of social reproduction, which means that capitalism is cannibalizing its means to expand its ability to create real wealth. instead of real wealth, the stock market and other speculative financial measures create what Goldner calls “fictitious capital.”
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The new McCarthyism in Israel :: Human rights groups face crackdown http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/71749
"According to the legislation, human-rights groups will have to satisfy a long list of new conditions. They include: registering as political bodies; submitting ID numbers and addresses for all activists; providing detailed accounts of all donations from overseas and the purposes to which they will be put; and declaring the support of foreign countries every time an activist makes a speech or the organisation stages an event."
The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say.In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions.
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Hugo Chavez demands Queen return Falkland Islands to Argentina http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/falklandislands/7293985/Hugo-Chavez-demands-Queen-return-Falkland-Islands-to-Argentina.html
The outspoken Mr Chavez used his weekly television and radio show Alo Presidente to rally Latin America behind the cause of his Argentine counterpart Cristina Kirchner by making a direct appeal to Buckingham Palace. "Look, England, how long are you going to be in Las Malvinas? Queen of England, I'm talking to you," said Mr Chavez.
"The time for empires are over, haven't you noticed? Return the Malvinas to the Argentine people." Still addressing the Queen, he went on: "The English are still threatening Argentina. Things have changed. We are no longer in 1982. If conflict breaks out, be sure Argentina will not be alone like it was back then." He described British control of the islands in the South Atlantic as "anti-historic and irrational" and asked "why the English speak of democracy but still have a Queen".
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Largest Ergenekon probe touches all untouchables http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-202334-largest-ergenekon-probe-touches-all-untouchables.html
Eleven retired generals and several retired colonels were detained yesterday as part of the investigation into the Sledgehammer and Cage alleged coup plots, devised by military members of Ergenekon, a clandestine gang charged with plotting to overthrow the government. At least 50 people were detained, a majority of them retired and active duty military officers.
The Sledgehammer plan, revealed in January by a Turkish newspaper, was more than simply an outline of a plan to kill or injure various bureaucrats, journalists and the government. It included a plot to bomb one of İstanbul’s largest mosques during Friday prayer and a subplot named Oraj (Thunderstorm) that called for the deliberate downing of a Turkish jet to trigger problems with Greece, which the conspirators hoped would give the army the upper hand in politics as the public would feel threatened by a foreign enemy.
comment-also see...Pasts of detained commanders give clues to coup involvement http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-202335-pasts-of-detained-commanders-give-clues-to-coup-involvement.html
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Over 40 Turkish commanders held over coup plot http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jM--29Igllo2P3-HxvEzYBvvxoDg
Turkish police Monday detained more than 40 people, including former air force and navy chiefs, in connection with an alleged military plot against the Islamist-rooted government, officials and media reports said.The police swoop came amid rising tensions between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) -- the moderate offshoot of a banned Islamist movement -- and its secularist opponents."This morning our security forces began a detention process," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a news conference during an official visit to Spain.
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The Chemist's War http://www.slate.com/id/2245188/?GT1=38001
The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition with deadly consequences.Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.
Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.
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RAW: Israeli Troops 'Attack' A Sunday Mass With Tear Gas & Concussion Grenades At Beit Sahour City http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=556_1266846639
"Israeli troops fired tear gas and concussion grenades on Sunday midday at a Mass held by residents of Beit Sahour city, southern West Bank. Residents from Beit Sahour along with international supporters gathered at the evacuated military base of Ush Grhab east of the city. People held banners demanding the halt of the Israeli renewed work at the site and called for the end of settlement activity around their city."
Israel To Claim Ibrahimi Mosque, Bilal Mosque, As Historic Jewish Sites http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=58022
Bethlehem will be holding a general strike on Tuesday to protest the Israeli government’s decision to annex the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron and the Bilal Mosque to the so-called ‘Historic Jewish Sites” as part of the Israeli “Heritage Trail”.The strike will include private, governmental and UNRWA schools, in addition to the trade sector.
The committee stated that the Israeli decision to consider the Bilal Mosque and the Ibrahimi Mosque at part of the so-called Jewish Heritage Trail is yet another violation and aggression against the national and historic rights of the Palestinian people, their lands and their holy sites, similar to the violations against holy sites in East Jerusalem, and the Arabs in the city.
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