Oil companies ‘should withdraw’ as Peru ‘faces its Tiananmen’ (Survival Intl)

[struggle4progress]

8 June 2009

Survival International today called on all oil companies operating in the Peruvian Amazon to suspend operations as the country comes to terms with the worst political violence since the Shining Path insurgency in the 1980s.

The companies include Anglo-French Perenco (a major gas supplier to the UK), Argentina’s PlusPetrol, Canada’s Petrolifera, Spain’s Repsol, Brazil’s Petrobras and many others.

Violent clashes on Friday between Amazon Indians blockading roads and rivers, and police and army units intent on breaking up the protests have left dozens of Indians, and at least 23 policemen, dead.

The Indians have been protesting for two months against a series of laws which open up their communal rainforests to oil and gas companies. In the last few years more than 70% of the Amazon has been parcelled out to oil and gas companies for exploration, and a series of large-scale finds threaten to transform much of the Indians’ virgin forests. Similar schemes in neighbouring Ecuador have had a devastating effect on the rainforest, and led to chronic pollution and ill-health amongst the Indians who live there ...

http://www.survival-international.org/news/4640

[struggle4progress]

1. Forests Of Peruvian Amazon Stained With Blood

uesday, 9 June 2009, 2:31 pm
Press Release: COICA
Green Forests Of Peruvian Amazon Stained With Blood
Bonn, June 8, 2009

The Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin - COICA - is outraged over the recent events in the cities of Jaen, Bagua Chica, and Bagua Grande in Peru.

We express our profound rejection of the repressive methods used by the Peruvian Government, which are criminal and undemocratic. Since last May, the government has declared a state of emergency and repression in several districts of the Amazon in response to a strike called by Peruvian indigenous organizations demanding the legal and legitimate respect of their territories, and respect of their rights, which have been violated by a dozen of legislative decrees that promote the entry of multinational companies into Amazonian lands to the detriment of local indigenous communities.
SEARCH NZ JOBS

We condemn the killing of more than 30 indigenous brothers (Awajun and Wampis) and dozens wounded, including farmers, mestizos, and whites attacked for their solidarity with indigenous peoples.

We accuse the government of Alan García of political manipulation and authoritarianism given the Constitution Committee of Peru's National Congress's declaration that the legislative package which provoked the strike-signifying environmental, labor, intellectual property, and biodiversity management reforms--is unconstitutional ...

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0906/S00068.htm

[struggle4progress]

2. PERU: ‘Police Are Throwing Bodies in the River,’ Say Native Protesters

PERU: ‘Police Are Throwing Bodies in the River,’ Say Native Protesters
By Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Jun 8 (IPS) - There are conflicting reports on a violent incident in Peru’s Amazon jungle region in which both police officers and indigenous protesters were killed.

The authorities, who describe last Friday’s incident as a "clash" between the police and protesters manning a roadblock, say 22 policemen and nine civilians were killed.

But leaders of the two-month roadblock say at least 40 indigenous people, including three children, were killed and that the authorities are covering up the massacre by throwing bodies in the river.

And foreign activists on the scene in the town of Bagua, in the northern province of Amazonas, report that the police opened fire early in the morning on the unarmed protesters, some of whom were still sleeping, and deliberately mowed them down as they held up their arms or attempted to flee ...

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47142

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. It was nice to not see US oil companies at the top of that list.

Though it did say there were "many more"...

[Judi Lynn]

7. I saw the Hunt Oil Company from Texas is there, only a short time ago.

From SourceWatch:

Hunt Oil Company
From SourceWatch

The privately-held Hunt Oil Company—"one of the big money Texas donors behind the Bush family political empire"<1>—and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) announced September 8, 2007, that "they've signed a production-sharing contract for petroleum exploration in northern Iraq, the first such deal since the Kurds passed their own oil and gas law in August.

~snip~
Hunt Oil's operations in Peru
According to a November, 2005 article in Salon,

"Among Hunt's biggest projects is the controversial $2.6 billion Camisea liquefied natural gas project in Peru, which will soon begin delivering gas to markets on the West Coast of the U.S."<8>
Amazon Watch has this to say about the project:

"Peru's Camisea Gas Project is arguably the most damaging project in the Amazon Basin at the time of writing. Located in the remote Lower Urubamba Basin in the south-eastern Peruvian Amazon, the $1.6 billion project includes two pipelines to the Peruvian coast, cutting through an Amazon biodiversity hotspot described by scientists as "the last place on earth" to drill for fossil fuels... In the first 18 months after it became operational in August 2004, the Camisea pipeline, which runs from the Amazon, over the Andes, to the Pacific Coast, has ruptured four times, with at least three major spills. This appalling record is highly unusual for such a pipeline and comes despite repeated assurances from the downstream consortium and the Inter-American Development Bank that no such problems would occur. According to a February 2006 independent report by non-profit engineering consultancy E-Tech International, the pipeline was constructed by unqualified and untrained welders using corroded piping and rushing to avoid onerous late completion fees that would have totalled $90 million."<9><10>
The frequent spills led Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines and the country's energy regulator to conduct an emergency technical review of the pipeline in December 2005. And indigenous groups responded to the spills by blockading the Urubamba River.<11>

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hunt_Oil_Company

The owner of the company was H. L. Hunt, an astonishingly rabid, fanatical right-winger. His son Lamar Hunt owned the Kansas City Chiefs football team (which was originally the Dallas Texans) until his recent death.

Two other Hunt sons:

The Hunt Brothers and the Silver Bubble
Brian Trumbore
President/Editor, StocksandNews.com

In 1973, the Hunt family of Texas, possibly the richest family in America at the time, decided to buy precious metals as a hedge against inflation. Gold could not be held by private citizens at that time, so the Hunts began to buy silver in enormous quantity.

In 1979 the sons of patriarch H.L. Hunt, Nelson Bunker and William Herbert, together with some wealthy Arabs, formed a silver pool. In a short period of time they had amassed more than 200 million ounces of silver, equivalent to half the world's deliverable supply.

When the Hunt's had begun accumulating silver back in 1973 the price was in the $1.95 / ounce range. Early in '79, the price was about $5. Late '79 / early '80 the price was in the $50's, peaking at $54.

Once the silver market was cornered, outsiders joined the chase but a combination of changed trading rules on the New York Metals Market (COMEX) and the intervention of the Federal Reserve put an end to the game. The price began to slide, culminating in a 50% one-day decline on March 27, 1980 as the price plummeted from $21.62 to $10.80.

The collapse of the silver market meant countless losses for speculators. The Hunt brothers declared bankruptcy. By 1987 their liabilities had grown to nearly $2.5 billion against assets of $1.5 billion. In August of 1988 the Hunts were convicted of conspiring to manipulate the market.

One other experience in the silver bubble worth noting, according to author Edward Chancellor ("Devil Take the Hindmost"), is the experience of an official at the Peruvian Ministry of Commerce, employed to hedge his country's silver production, who lost $80 million by illicitly selling silver short. Said Chancellor, "Although a relatively small sum for a sovereign nation, it was an omen: the 'rogue trader' had appeared on the modern financial scene."

More:
http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/2000/hunt_bros.html

[EFerrari]

4. K&R

[G_j]

5. this is very serious,

as the lands and peoples disappear.

[EFerrari]

6. I completely missed the fact that there is a warrant out for Pizango

and that he is now in hiding.

[Hannah Bell]

8. kr: difference: no film of peru protests on the 6 pm news with stirring commentary about freedom.

the only freedom that matters is the freedom to be part of empire.

[truedelphi]

9. There ws stirring commentary from NBC, ABC and CBS about Chiappas

Some fifteen years ago.

Citibank squashed it.

One reason we were forced into the Bailout was that the banks own the media - indirectly through the ads they constantly have on.

So we keep the banks afloat, so they get to control the news, so we get to keep the banks afloat, and --

Meanwhile when the poorest people on earth revolt, we don't hear about it through the M$M.

I guess you could say we are getting our money's worth?

:shrug: