ECUADOR: Avatar Downfall a Blow for Indigenous Communities http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50610

The U.S. oil company's manipulative strategies have included attempting to block the extension of preferential tariffs in the United States for Ecuador's trade goods, as the former Ecuadorean foreign minister, Fander Falconi, confirmed in January. According to Falconi, in 2009 Chevron's lobby against the renewal of preferential tariffs for Ecuador was "one of the strongest and fiercest that Ecuadorean foreign policy has ever faced." 

By hiring law firms and expert negotiators and engaging in intense action on the diplomatic front, the Ecuadorean authorities managed to neutralise Chevron's political and diplomatic influence in Washington, Falconi said before leaving the post of foreign minister. The import tariffs he referred to are granted by the United States for hundreds of products from Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, in exchange for cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking. Bolivia was also a beneficiary of the scheme until it was excluded last year. 

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Dominga: an unknown victim of EU "free" trade agreement   http://gizzacroggy.blogspot.com/2010/03/dominga-unknown-victim-of-eu-free-trade.html

News is just coming out that in the EU “free” trade negotiatons with Colombia, the first victims are to be the small scale milk and cheese producers. The Andean price band, a system that stops the price going too low or too high, will be elimiated and Colombian milk will have to compete with subsidised milk arriving from Europe. This will have an effect on 450,000 milk producers 

“Thousands of small milk producers, that are not able to access loans nor do they have leverage in high government, will suffer from an avanlanche of 5500 tonnes of powdered milk, 2310 tonnes in cheese and 1100 tonnes of other milk products those arrival in the country will increase by 10% annually until this vital part of the peasant economy disappears. Is this not about the human rights of thousands of peasant families?”[1]

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The march of neoliberalism http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20100326270600400.htm

THE strategy underlying Budget 2010-11 is eerily reminiscent of that of Margaret Thatcher. In pushing her “market-fundamentalist” agenda against the working class and the trade unions, Thatcher had enlisted the support of the affluent middle class. She had wooed the yuppies and the city slickers of London’s financial district, and to this end given direct tax concessions to the middle class, even while jacking up indirect taxes on the poor and the working people in the midst of a raging inflation.

Neoliberalism is clearly resuming its stalled march, adopting a Thatcherite strategy for doing so. But the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government miscalculates by ignoring the fact that, unlike in Thatcher’s Britain, the affluent middle class it is wooing is a minuscule segment of our society, while those squeezed by neoliberalism, the workers, peasants, agricultural labourers, and petty producers, constitute its overwhelming majority.

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CIA Waterboarding Guidlines  http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/09/waterboarding_for_dummies/index.html

Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.

They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

“This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing,” said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. “The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.’ It just sounds like lunacy,” he said. “This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine.”

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PERU: Suspension of Mining Operation Merely a Placebo http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50608

Although the Peruvian government reported that it had suspended the exploration activities of the Afrodita mining company in the country's northern Amazon jungle region to avoid further protests by local indigenous people, officials took no actual steps to bring the firm's work to a halt.For the Awajun people, the hill in the Cordillera del Cóndor where Afrodita has cleared four hectares of jungle represents Kumpanan or "powerful hill", considered to be the father of lightning and the owner of air and water, according to the Lima newspaper La República. 

The Awajun (also known as Aguaruna) are the biggest native ethnic group in Peru's Amazon region and have a reputation as fierce warriors. Their leaders have denounced that Afrodita pays soldiers from military barracks in the area to guard the company's operations, rather than protecting the local population. The Awajun also reported a year ago that the El Tambo military post was used as a base of operations by the company.

At that time, the tension was at its peak, because local native anti-mine protesters had taken several mine workers hostage after they entered Awajun territory without permission from the local communities. The hostages were released unharmed after a few days. For now, the government's announcement of a suspension of operations would appear to be merely a pain-killer or even a placebo, because the central problem remains unsolved: Afrodita will be able to continue operating as soon as it takes care of the pending bureaucratic steps

comment-also see...Peru: Relocating Entire Villages for Mines, Dams http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2384-peru-relocating-entire-villages-for-mines-dams  Peru: No Justice for Indians in Amazon Massacre http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2372-peru-no-justice-for-indians-in-amazon-massacre-    .Police in Peru massacre Indian protesters-1/2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLvClIx6g-U  Peruvian Police Accused of Massacring Indigenous Protesters http://www.democracynow.org/2009/6/8/peruvian_police_accused_of_massacring_indigenous Peru - Massacre at Bagua http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article1697    US,Canadian,Brittish Corporations...get the fuck out!!!