Ecuador's tribes declare 'national mobilization' against oil and mining

[peoli]

Source: The Ecologist

Ecuador is facing an unprecedented confrontation between a 'progressive' left-leaning government and a national coalition of indigenous peoples determined to stop vast oil and mining projects taking place on their community land and villages.

Ecuador's umbrella organization representing the country's Tribal Nations, CONAIE, has declared a National Mobilization to oppose a wave of oil and mining projects that threaten tribal territories across the country.

The declaration comes in the wake of increasing hostility by Ecuador's government against the indigenous people resisting large scale resource extraction on their ancenstral lands. The government has announced a 'national security alert'.

At present more than 200 Tribal National leaders are under investigation for terrorism - relating to the growing popular resistance to polluted water and environmental destruction arising from extractive industries.

Read more: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2408847/ecuadors_tribes_declare_national_mobilization_against_oil_and_mining.html

[valerief]

1. Wonder how soon we'll get the MSM drumbeat Ecuador is a rogue state with WMDs. nt

[MoreGOPoop]

2. K & R

They're going to need outside support.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. Power to the People! nt

[bvar22]

4. I wish them well,

....and wish the American people had as much courage.

Many Latin American Countries were able to wrest their government from the hands of their Oligarchs through near bloodless Ballot Box Revolutions.
They have given us the Blue Print.
All we lack is the will.

[font size=3]"The worst enemy of humanity is U.S. capitalism. That is what provokes uprisings like our own, a rebellion against a system, against a neoliberal model, which is the representation of a savage capitalism. If the entire world doesn't acknowledge this reality, that nation states are not providing even minimally for health, education and nourishment, then each day the most fundamental human rights are being violated."[/font]
----Bolivian Reform President Evo Morales

That may sound Radical, but it really isn't.
FDR said much the same thing in 1944 with his Economic Bill of Rights.\



Spread the WORD.
VIVA Democracy!
I pray we get some here soon!

[Zorro]

5. Correa is awarding mining and other concessions to Chinese companies

Don't see how the Morales statement fits, unless it's an attempt to blame the US for a self-inflicted internal conflict.

The Chinese embrace savage capitalism. Morales isn't particularly observant if he doesn't likewise recognize and condemn them.

[DeSwiss]

6. Thanks Obama.

K&R

[Peace Patriot]

7. As a young person, I became involved in the gubernatorial campaign of Edmund G. Brown, Sr.

(Jerry Brown's father) in California. Brown Sr. was very pro-labor and very progressive, and was running for re-election. Little did I know, then, that, during the Brown Sr. administration, the very worst assault on California's native redwood forest was occurring, and that the legacy of that administration would mean, basically, the end of the redwood forest ecosystem, accomplished during that period and in the subsequent decades because of decisions in that period. The year was 1960. I lived in southern California and simply had no environmental consciousness at the time, and no idea what was happening in northern California in the redwood forest.

Brown Sr. was pro-environmental exploitation, but with the wealth shared around. He was pro-jobs. He was pro-worker. He was pro-workers' rights. He was a champion of the poor.

All of these things are true of Rafael Correa, the current president of Ecuador. Pro-jobs, pro-labor, pro-poor people. He has said, about the conflict with the Indigenous, that Ecuador's mineral wealth belongs to all Ecuadorans, not just the Indigenous, and that all should benefit from this natural wealth. When they re-wrote their constitution in Ecuador, Correa opposed giving the Indigenous a veto over mining projects, though he approved the provision which gives them consultation rights.

Something very similar was done during the Brown Sr. era. The California Forest Practice Act was passed, giving the public the right to see the details of logging plans and to comment on them before they are approved. This, however, turned out to be a cruel joke. You can comment all you want, and even sue the bastards; it makes no difference. The uber-wealthy now own the politicians, the courts, the agencies. The redwood forest is now reduced to about 5% of its range, almost all of the giant trees are gone, and all of its critical species are in decline or gone.

Edmund G. Brown, Sr., was certainly not alone in permitting this to happen. Think of the corporate media and how it kept me--and so many others--ignorant of the destruction of the redwood forest. Think of the other labor politicians involved. (One of the ironies of that era is that the Republicans were the environmentalists!) Think of the Sierra Club--building up its donor base and ambitions, and playing power games in Sacramento--with the phony Forest Practice Act, that pulled a cosmetic veil over the final destruction of this vast forest.

The Earth is in so much peril that jobs and wealth become not exactly meaningless but certainly secondary. The redwood forest was a particularly strong element of Earth's ecology, for staving off global warming. Those gigantic trees were huge carbon sinks! All gone.

This is a tragic problem--not one to be treated as a political football, with stupid, screaming arguments--or efforts, as we see above, to dis a Leftist political leader because he faces the same dilemma that Edmund G. Brown, Sr., faced, so long ago. Correa is trying to balance all interests, and benefit the poor majority, by exploiting Ecuador's rich natural resources. Most Ecuadorans can no more go back to an Indigenous lifestyle than we can here. We are trapped in modernity. Hugo Chavez, and now Nicholas Maduro, face a similar dilemma--Venezuela's dependence on oil. And these leaders--Correa, Chavez, Maduro, Morales and others--are certainly fully aware of the peril to Mother Earth (something that I doubt that Edmund G. Brown, Sr., was very aware of--certainly not the extent of it). What should they do?

Correa tried to get rich countries to donate funds to Ecuador, to avert mining in these areas--but, of course, the rich countries just want to be in on the profits, and want to take all the profits. They certainly don't want to prevent mining in Ecuador or anywhere. It was perhaps a Quixotic proposal--but still, it was a just one, and it laid out the problem. Ecuador's people are very poor--after decades of rank exploitation and looting by the rich, including vast pollution and destruction of the rainforest by the likes of Chevron-Texaco. If our democracy was working right, we should be taxing these multinationals severely and using the funds to preserve areas of the Earth like the Ecuadoran rainforest. What is a small, poverty-stricken, historically ravaged country to do? It is a tragedy --with all of our new consciousness of the peril to the Earth--that Ecuador is back in 1960, still struggling over this same problem: how to feed people and given them a good life without destroying the Earth?