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It has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only similarity between Iraq and events in the jungles of northern Peru over the last few weeks has been the mismatch of force. On one side have been the police armed with automatic weapons, teargas, helicopter gunships and armoured cars. On the other are several thousand Awajun and Wambis Indians, many of them in war paint and armed with bows and arrows and spears.
Natives set up a road block at the entrance of the Amazonian town of Yurimaguas, northern Peru. "For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
In some of the worst violence seen in Peru in 20 years, the Indians this week warned Latin America what could happen if companies are given free access to the Amazonian forests to exploit an estimated 6bn barrels of oil and take as much timber they like. After months of peaceful protests, the police were ordered to use force to remove a road bock near Bagua Grande.
In the fights that followed, at least 50 Indians and nine police officers were killed, with hundreds more wounded or arrested. The indigenous rights group Survival International described it as "Peru's Tiananmen Square".
"For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said Servando Puerta, one of the protest leaders. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."
Yesterday, as riot police broke up more demonstrations in Lima and a curfew was imposed on many Peruvian Amazonian towns, President Garcia backed down in the face of condemnation of the massacre. He suspended – but only for three months – the laws that would allow the forest to be exploited. No one doubts the clashes will continue.
Peru is just one of many countries now in open conflict with its indigenous people over natural resources. Barely reported in the international press, there have been major protests around mines, oil, logging and mineral exploitation in Africa, Latin America, Asia and North America. Hydro electric dams, biofuel plantations as well as coal, copper, gold and bauxite mines are all at the centre of major land rights disputes.
A massive military force continued this week to raid communities opposed to oil companies' presence on the Niger delta. The delta, which provides 90% of Nigeria's foreign earnings, has always been volatile, but guns have flooded in and security has deteriorated. In the last month a military taskforce has been sent in and helicopter gunships have shelled villages suspected of harbouring militia. Thousands of people have fled. Activists from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta have responded by killing 12 soldiers and this week set fire to a Chevron oil facility. Yesterday seven more civilians were shot by the military.
The escalation of violence came in the week that Shell agreed to pay £9.7m to ethnic Ogoni families – whose homeland is in the delta – who had led a peaceful uprising against it and other oil companies in the 1990s, and who had taken the company to court in New York accusing it of complicity in writer Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995.
Meanwhile in West Papua, Indonesian forces protecting some of the world's largest mines have been accused of human rights violations. Hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in the last few years in clashes between the army and people with bows and arrows.
"An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses.
end of excerptIt has been called the world's second "oil war", but the only... more
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The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of all civilian nuclear sites and their activities in the United States.The government accidentally posted on the Internet a list of all civilian nuclear... more
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Researchers have long touted the potential of embryonic stem cells in treating an array of illnesses because of their unique ability to morph into any tissue in the body. Scientists say the stem cells could eventually lead to therapies for Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injuries and diabetes.Researchers have long touted the potential of embryonic stem cells in treating an... more
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(Full BBC News Article: http://linkbee.com/PirateBay)
A court in Sweden has jailed four men behind The Pirate Bay (TPB), the world's most high-profile file-sharing website, in a landmark case.
Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of breaking copyright law and were sentenced to a year in jail.
They were also ordered to pay $4.5m (£3m) in damages.
Record companies welcomed the verdict but...(Continue Reading: http://linkbee.com/PirateBay)(Full BBC News Article: http://linkbee.com/PirateBay)
A court in Sweden has jailed... more
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Viper7
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added this
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3 years ago
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US border guards in San Diego display guns seized on the Mexican border, 1 April
Mexico says the lifting of a US assault rifle ban in 2004 fuelled the gun trade
Mexico's ambassador to the US has urged America to stop the flow of guns and cash that pass into his country, fuelling the country's drug wars.
Arturo Sarukhan said US money and weapons provided the drug cartels with the means to "corrupt, bribe and kill".
President Barack Obama is due to visit Mexico later this week.
More than 6,000 people died last year in Mexico in drug-related violence and Mexico believes 90% of the weapons used by drug cartels come from the US.
US gun lobby groups dispute the figure.
Assault weapon call
In an interview with CBS's Face The Nation programme, Mr Sarukhan said the lifting of a US ban on military-style assault weapons in 2004 had been a crucial factor.
"There is a direct correlation between the expiration of the assault weapons ban and our seizures of assault weapons," he said.
"We cannot determine how Congress and the administration will move on this.
"What we will say is that... reinstating the ban... could have a profound impact on the number and the calibre of the weapons going down to Mexico."
But any move to reinstate that ban would be fiercely fought by gun lobby groups in the United States.
One in four Americans legally own some type of gun and gun ownership is deeply rooted in American culture.US border guards in San Diego display guns seized on the Mexican border, 1 April... more
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Onaiza, Saud Arabia — Sheikh Habib Al-Habib rejected the appeal of the mother of an 8-year-old girl who was given by agreement to a 47-year-old man to be his wife.Onaiza, Saud Arabia — Sheikh Habib Al-Habib rejected the appeal of the mother of... more
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We all see beauty in objects, such as the symmetry and sleekness of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, or the the powerful history in the once-standing Berlin Wall.
For one woman, the intense feeling that inanimate objects can inspire goes much deeper and becomes something more like true love.
"The Berlin Wall is a masterpiece. I can feel how much he yearns to be loved," Erika Eiffel said.
Her love of the Eiffel Tower is somewhat recent, and two years ago the San Francisco woman had a commitment ceremony and changed her name to reflect the bond.
Eiffel, 36, is part of a small group of people across the world who call themselves "objectum sexuals" where their intimate life revolves around objects, not people. The objects can range from a home computer to a set of drums or a national monument, anything they can feel a connection to. It may sound strange to most of us, but it's very real to them.
"We feel an innate connection to objects. It comes perfectly normal to us to connect on various levels, emotional, spiritual and also physical for some," Eiffel said.
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I am quite fond of my lap top, yet I am afraid of commitment. Gateway, my love, can you forgive me?
(This story is wack! I found it via Perez Hilton on Twitter, which is even more wack! Peace)We all see beauty in objects, such as the symmetry and sleekness of the Eiffel Tower... more
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Thanks to President Obama, the real cost of war, our men and women who have died defended our nation, our way of life, with their very own lives can once again be honored on America's airwaves. The media can once again show images of the coffins of our dead soldiers on America's televisions. This media censorship has gone on for entirely too long. It has been a tool used to keep average Americans desensitized to the tragedy surrounding the loss of our men and women in uniform who valiantly gave their lives to protect our freedoms; to keep them from being outraged from seeing the loss with their own eyes, and kept from any motivations that might cause them to demand an end to the war.
Excerpt from the article....
The media was permitted on Sunday to cover the arrival of a U.S. soldier's coffin at the Pentagon's main mortuary in Delaware late for the first time in 18 years.
A flag-draped coffin bearing the remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers arrived at Dover Air Force Base. Myers, 30, of Hopewell, Virginia, was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday by an improvised explosive device, the Pentagon said.
The administration of President Barack Obama relaxed a Pentagon ban on media coverage of returning U.S. war dead in February, giving grieving families the choice of whether to allow cameras at the solemn arrival ceremony.
The ban was imposed in 1991 during the first Gulf War with some exceptions, including the return of Navy seamen killed during the attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in October 2000 that killed 17.
Former President George W. Bush imposed a stricter ban during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, sparking criticism that the federal government was hiding the human cost of its military operations.
End of excerpt.... more at the link above.
Do you think that this ban has helped or hindered American democracy? What effect do you think lifting the ban will have on American's perception of the war? Do you think it is respectful to show the coffins of the dead soldiers?Thanks to President Obama, the real cost of war, our men and women who have died... more
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jubal
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3 years ago
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ATLANTA - Traces of a chemical used in rocket fuel were found in samples of powdered baby formula, and could exceed what's considered a safe dose for adults if mixed with water also contaminated with the ingredient, a government study has found.
The study by scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked for the chemical, perchlorate, in different brands of powdered baby formula. It was published last month, but the Environmental Working Group issued a press release Thursday drawing attention to it.
The chemical has turned up in several cities' drinking water supplies. It can occur naturally, but most perchlorate contamination has been tied to defense and aerospace sites.
Now they're going too far.. who knows how long this has been going on.....ATLANTA - Traces of a chemical used in rocket fuel were found in samples of powdered... more
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A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.
That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the... more
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Nadya Suleman, the mother of fourteen children including recent octuplets, has set up a website to receive donations. The site, thenadyasulemanfamily.com, includes pictures of all eight octuplets as well as an address for receiving 'items.'Nadya Suleman, the mother of fourteen children including recent octuplets, has set up... more
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Antarctica is getting warmer rather than cooling as widely believed, according to a study of satellite and weather records for Antarctica published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature (subscription or payment required to read full text). Antarctica, which contains 90 percent of the world's ice and would raise world sea levels if it thaws, showed that freezing temperatures had risen by about 0.5 Celsius (0.8 Fahrenheit) since the 1950s. Eric Steig of the University of Washington, lead author of the study:
The thing you hear all the time is that Antarctica is cooling and that's not the case... (The average temperature rise was) very comparable to the global average.
And this gives skeptics of man-made global warming one less arrow in their quivers to back their view that global warming is a myth.
Antarctica's ice contains enough frozen water to raise world sea levels by 57 meters (187 ft), so even a tiny amount of melting could threaten Pacific island states or coastal cities from Beijing to London.
Click pic for Reuters videoAntarctica is getting warmer rather than cooling as widely believed, according to a... more
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