Thursday, 26 August 2010
Victory: Vedanta Mine Plan on Sacred Tribal Mountain Halted by Indian Government
The project has been delayed by four years because of the Dongria Kondh’s intense opposition locally – including the brandishing of bows and arrows – as well as from environmental and tribal rights group. Globally, a loosely coordinated campaign sought to persuade multi-national Vedanta's shareholders and financiers to distance themselves from the company. This is their magnificent victory as well – for Survival International and Amnesty International, various celebrity activists such as Bianca Jagger and Michael Palin, and numerous other loosely affiliated affinity campaigns, including most recently from Ecological Internet working with the Rainforest Information Centre.
“Yet again global people power has come to the aid of small, intact communities battling the ecosystem destroying economic growth machine. The Dongria Kondh’s amazing efforts should be placed in the context of a global people’s power movement to protect and restore ecosystems, and wrest control of land from industrial and speculative capitalism,” asserts Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet’s President.
“We are pleased to have contributed EI’s Earth Action Network’s [1] support – some 200,000 protest emails sent from nearly 100 countries [2] in a matter of weeks. I do not think it accidental that victory was achieved immediately after me and EI’s network, with John Seed and the Rainforest Information Centre, launched our protests. We got exactly what we wanted from this timely, well-organized and locally coordinated cyber protest – Ecological Internet’s specialty!”
### MORE ###
The project had been thrown into doubt last week when a government inquiry said that mining would destroy the way of life of the area's "endangered" and "primitive" people. The four-person committee also accused a local subsidiary of Vedanta of violating forest conservation and environment protection regulations. Because Niyamgiri Mountain is an important spiritual place, it had not thus far suffered the deforestation and degradation experienced by similar areas in India but contains an elephant reserve with Sambar, Leopard, Tiger, Barking Deer, various species of birds and other endangered species of wildlife. With the announcement, the area is free (for now) from the planned Vedenta bauxite mine.
Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for environment and forests, said today that the government will issue what is termed a show-cause notice and take action against Vedanta. The news sent Vedanta’s shares down almost 6%, wiping almost £300m off the value of the business. "There are very serious violations of environment act and forest right act," Ramesh told Bloomberg. "There is no emotion, no politics, no prejudice in the decision. It is purely based on a legal approach." Vedanta, which can appeal against the decision, had wanted to expand its existing refinery in the area, generating a six-fold increase in capacity.
Survival campaigner Dr Jo Woodman said: "This is a victory nobody would have believed possible. The Dongria's campaign became a litmus test of whether a small, marginalised tribe could stand up to a massive multinational company with an army of lobbyists and PR firms and the ear of government…. Incredibly, the Dongria's courage and tenacity, allied with the support of many people in India, and Survival's supporters around the world, have triumphed."
This is the second time Ecological Internet’s Earth Action Network has recently achieved major conservation successes in India. Last year, also working with John Seed and the Rainforest Information Centre, Ecological Internet was able to single-handedly achieve major Asian elephant migration corridor protections [3].
### ENDS ###
[1] Earth Action Network’s current alerts are found at http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts and you can subscribe to new alert notifications at: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/subscribe/ and on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet
[2] Action Alert: UPDATE: India's Dongria Kondh Tribal Way of Life Threatened by British/International Vedanta Mining - http://forests.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_mine
[3] Action Alert: Critical Elephant Corridor in India to be Severed - http://forests.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_elephants
This release uses information provided by the Guardian:
Vedanta mine plan halted by Indian government
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/24/vedanta-mine-plan-halted-indian-government
DISCUSS RELEASE:
http://forests.org/blog/ | http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet | http://www.twitter.com/ecointernet
“We are pleased to have contributed EI’s Earth Action Network’s [1] support – some 200,000 protest emails sent from nearly 100 countries [2] in a matter of weeks. I do not think it accidental that victory was achieved immediately after me and EI’s network, with John Seed and the Rainforest Information Centre, launched our protests. We got exactly what we wanted from this timely, well-organized and locally coordinated cyber protest – Ecological Internet’s specialty!”
### MORE ###
The project had been thrown into doubt last week when a government inquiry said that mining would destroy the way of life of the area's "endangered" and "primitive" people. The four-person committee also accused a local subsidiary of Vedanta of violating forest conservation and environment protection regulations. Because Niyamgiri Mountain is an important spiritual place, it had not thus far suffered the deforestation and degradation experienced by similar areas in India but contains an elephant reserve with Sambar, Leopard, Tiger, Barking Deer, various species of birds and other endangered species of wildlife. With the announcement, the area is free (for now) from the planned Vedenta bauxite mine.
Jairam Ramesh, India’s minister for environment and forests, said today that the government will issue what is termed a show-cause notice and take action against Vedanta. The news sent Vedanta’s shares down almost 6%, wiping almost £300m off the value of the business. "There are very serious violations of environment act and forest right act," Ramesh told Bloomberg. "There is no emotion, no politics, no prejudice in the decision. It is purely based on a legal approach." Vedanta, which can appeal against the decision, had wanted to expand its existing refinery in the area, generating a six-fold increase in capacity.
Survival campaigner Dr Jo Woodman said: "This is a victory nobody would have believed possible. The Dongria's campaign became a litmus test of whether a small, marginalised tribe could stand up to a massive multinational company with an army of lobbyists and PR firms and the ear of government…. Incredibly, the Dongria's courage and tenacity, allied with the support of many people in India, and Survival's supporters around the world, have triumphed."
This is the second time Ecological Internet’s Earth Action Network has recently achieved major conservation successes in India. Last year, also working with John Seed and the Rainforest Information Centre, Ecological Internet was able to single-handedly achieve major Asian elephant migration corridor protections [3].
### ENDS ###
[1] Earth Action Network’s current alerts are found at http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/alerts and you can subscribe to new alert notifications at: http://www.ecoearth.info/shared/subscribe/ and on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet
[2] Action Alert: UPDATE: India's Dongria Kondh Tribal Way of Life Threatened by British/International Vedanta Mining - http://forests.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_mine
[3] Action Alert: Critical Elephant Corridor in India to be Severed - http://forests.org/shared/alerts/send.aspx?id=india_elephants
This release uses information provided by the Guardian:
Vedanta mine plan halted by Indian government
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/aug/24/vedanta-mine-plan-halted-indian-government
DISCUSS RELEASE:
http://forests.org/blog/ | http://www.facebook.com/ecointernet | http://www.twitter.com/ecointernet
Time for The Conet Project Vol 2?
The output of a mysterious radio station in Russia, which has been broadcasting the same monotonous signal almost continuously for 20 years, has suddenly changed. Numbers stations are shortwave radio stations that broadcast computer-generated voices reading numbers, words, letters or Morse code. Their purpose has never been uncovered, but evidence from spy cases suggests that they're used to broadcast coded information to secret agents.
Over the past week or so, the output of one particular station that broadcasts from near Povarovo, Russia, increased dramatically. The station has a callsign of UVB-76, but is known as "The Buzzer" by its listeners because of the short, monotonous buzz tone that it normally plays 21 to 34 times per minute. It's only deviated from that signal three times previously -- briefly in 1997, 2002 and 2006.
In early August, a garbled recording of a voice speaking Russian was heard by listeners. A few days later, on 23 August at 13:35UTC, a clearer voice read out the following message twice: "UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4", before returning to its normal broadcasting.
Since then, a number of other distorted voices have appeared over the normal buzzing transmission, as well as knocks and shuffles, as if someone were moving things around inside the broadcasting room. It's believed that the transmission site has an open microphone, which occasionally picks up sounds from technicians working within the broadcast site.
Various fans of the station have begun the process of trying to decode the signal. Interpreting the numbers as co-ordinates gives a location in the middle of the Barents Sea, between Norway and Russia, where there's large scale oil and gas production, and where the Russian army plans to test anti-aircraft missiles in the near future.
Others suspect that it might be a transmission that signals the availability of another system -- like a dead man's switch, possibly even for Russia's Cold War-era Dead Hand fail-deadly system, which was to trigger ICBM launches if a nuclear strike from the United States was detected. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, it may have been repurposed.
The transmissions continue, and are being documented on the Wikipedia page for the station. If you'd like to help, it's possible to listen in yourself, as one fan has rigged up a web stream of the signal. It's currently very busy, however, so if you have difficulty tuning in, then try again later.
What are your theories for what the signal might be?
Duncan Geere @'Wired'
The disinherited
The aroma of ripe figs fills your nostrils as soon as you enter the village of Ramataniya. At the height of summer, they're overripe and the smell of fermentation is oppressive. With no one to pick it, the fruit rots on the trees. With no one to trim them, the roots and branches grow wild, cracking the black basalt walls of the nearby houses, reaching through empty window frames, and destroying stone walls in the yards.
Neglect and ruin are everywhere. The red tiles have vanished from the roofs. The floor tiles have been removed. Any belongings were confiscated or plundered decades ago. Bars still cover some windows, but the doors are gone. The occasional snake pokes out from beneath a heap of stones that were once part of a wall; birds peck at the rotting figs, and an enormous wild boar wanders skittishly down the path. Suddenly it stops and takes a look back, as if debating whether to stake a claim or run for its life. In the end, it flees.
Of the dozens of Syrian villages that were abandoned in the Golan Heights after the Six-Day War, Ramataniya is thought to be the best preserved. Apparently thanks to the brief period of Jewish settlement here in the late 19th century - and not because of its Byzantine history - it was declared an archaeological site right after the 1967 war and thereby saved from the bulldozers. But the fate of the rest of the Syrian localities in the Golan Heights was completely different: Apart from the four Druze villages at the foot of Mount Hermon, they were all destroyed, in most cases down to their very foundations.
However, the fires in recent weeks that wiped out the shrubs and weeds exposed their remains, which attest that more than 200 villages, towns and farms flourished in the Syrian-ruled Heights before the war. Many of the houses crumbled over the years due to the ravages of weather and time. Others were blasted by Israel Defense Forces troops during live-fire training exercises there. But most were wiped off the face of the earth in a systematic process of destruction that began right after Israel's occupation of the Golan.
Only the Syrian outposts and army camps there have remained largely untouched, their concrete-and-steel fortifications searing reminders of the terror waged in the Golan against Israelis, who suppress memories of the civilian life that flourished in the alleyways and homes of Ramataniya and the other villages.
The 1960 Syrian census in the Golan Heights listed Ramataniya as having 541 inhabitants; on the eve of the Six-Day War, there were 700. According to most estimates, in 1967, the population of the entire area conquered by Israel there ranged from 130,000-145,000. The data are based on the census and a calculation of natural growth.
In the first Israeli census of the Golan, conducted exactly three months after the end of the fighting, there were just 6,011 civilians living in the entire Golan region. For the most part, they lived in the four Druze villages that remain populated to this day. A minority lived in the city of Quneitra, which was returned to Syria following the Yom Kippur War. So, in less than three months, more than 120,000 people either left of their own accord - or were expelled...
Continue reading
Shay Fogelman @'Haaretz'
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
Not just junkies: the stigmatising of drug addicts
Drug addicts have a lot in common with other marginalised groups, such as sex workers, people with disabilities and asylum seekers in that many people have never met them and know very little about the realities of their lives. Where there is a void of factual information, stigma and prejudice often rush in to fill the space. This week's report from the UK drugs policy commission, Sinning and Sinned Against: the Stigmatisation of Problem Drug Users, confirms this. The report finds that many people don't like drug users and that this dislike hinders the prospects of social integration and future employment for this group.
This stigma is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of drug users and the nature of drug use. Problematic drug use often develops as a result of many and complex issues such as childhood abuse, dysfunctional family life, social exclusion and various emotional traumas. Class A drugs such as heroin and cocaine can provide a convenient form of chemical oblivion for those who want to blot out pain. Many who become addicted to these drugs are self-medicating to deal with this emotional and sometimes physical pain.
It is easy for those who have never experienced these problems to apportion the "undeserving" tag to drug users, but a failure to understand the starting point for addiction means that policies that spoon-feed attractive soundbites to Middle England about getting all addicts off drugs are unlikely to translate into successful outcomes for users.
Some people who use drugs problematically may stop using them by engaging with a variety of different treatments, such as methadone maintenance or residential rehab, while others stop without any conventional treatment because circumstances in their lives, such as the promise of getting back children previously removed by social services or a relationship with a new partner who encourages them to become drug-free, motivates them to change.
There is a huge emphasis on treatment but those who stop using drugs without treatment are not recorded in the official statistics. The statistics also don't comprehensively record those who relapse months or years after treatment – a common problem because addiction is a chronic, relapsing condition.
It's important to recognise that addiction, once it takes hold, is not logical. I used to edit a magazine for an HIV charity that did outreach work with drug users, providing clean needles and other paraphernalia. I'll never forget the woman who limped into the outreach van with a horrific abcess on her leg from repeatedly injecting into it. Drugs workers warned her that she needed to get down to A&E immediately otherwise she was in danger of losing her leg. She declined the offer of a staff member to drive her to the nearest hospital, said that her priority was not her leg but her next fix and limped away.
Many drug users are able human beings who, with the right support, can make a contribution to society. This means emotional, as well as practical, support, including housing and employment opportunities, rather than a three-line whip to "get clean or else". Treatment can help problematic drug users but without kindness, support, empathy and an absence of judgmentalism it will fail many.
People often stop using class A drugs because something or someone better comes into their lives. But for those who are leading truly wretched lives they may feel that there isn't anything better than crack and smack. The government needs to address this uncomfortable reality for which there is no quick, cheap fix and beware of coercing people into a vacuum. If they really want to help drug users, they need to look beyond drug use.
Diane Taylor @'The Guardian'
Teens Hooked on Porn
As some of you reading this might recall, in the old Disinformation TV series, I devoted the next to last episode entirely to the topic of the potential for harm that easily available Internet porn, in particular the extreme variant called “gonzo porn,” might have in store for an entire generation of (mostly) young males. The piece left the question open ended, but it was clear that neither I, nor most of the people I interviewed (including porn actresses and producers) had any hope that much good would come of adolescent males spending their free time having images of violent sex seared onto their eyeballs at the point of orgasm. And besides that, what were they learning about human sexuality at the hands of twisted psychopaths like Max Hardcore and Rob Black? That their girlfriends would like them to invite 10 of their friends over for a session of tender love-making or perhaps that shoving a girl’s head in the toilet during sex was a suave move?
Well, the verdict is starting to come in that we’re—literally—raising a generation of… wankers. An entire generation has had their sexual fantasies hijacked by this stuff. This quite good 2007 BBC documentary Teens Hooked on Porn, is a disturbing look at what’s happening to Internet porn addicted kids. The pimple-faced young men portrayed in this documentary, sad to say, are going to have no idea what to do with a real girl when they have the chance. And frankly, what girl would want anything to do with them?As you watch this, imagine their lives at 25, 40 and well beyond. It ain’t a pretty thought…
Thank you Paul Gallagher!
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