Vandals Deface, Erase Indian Rock Art in Washington State

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YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) — Here’s the rub: The rock of ages may not be.

The Yakima Valley is blessed with a strikingly rich palette of cultural heritage, a legacy of rock art left as many as a thousand years ago.

That legacy is under siege.

Read more at Reznet

Ecuador: Mining, debt and indigenous struggles

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On November 17, thousands of indigenous and environmental activists rallied across Ecuador in protest against the introduction of a new mining law by the government of President Rafael Correa.

The protests, organised largely by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE — Ecuador’s largest indigenous federation), marked the beginning of a week of protests by social, environmental and indigenous movements against the potentially environmentally destructive consequences of a number of proposed new laws — including laws relating to mining, water and the introduction of large-scale shrimp farming.

Ecuador’s weak economy is heavily dependent upon mineral extraction — especially oil — and this has had a catastrophic effect on the environment and communities in affected areas.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/776/40019

Families for a nuclear future

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Families For a Nuclear Free Future (FFANFF) is a recently formed community group of families in Alice Springs with a united voice against the exploration and mining of uranium.

FFANFF formed to protest against the granting of an exploration license for the Angela Pamela uranium prospect, 20 kilometres from the town centre. We are committed to ensuring a safe and sustainable future for our children and community, and oppose the exploration and drilling of uranium at the Angela deposit and the perpetuation of the nuclear fuel cycle around the world.

We do not want to be part of a “nuclear” family. How about a “solar” family, a community gathered under the sun, related to each other by the air we breathe, the ground we walk on and the precious artesian water that we rely on for our survival?

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/776/40021

Native blood: the truth behind the myth of `Thanksgiving Day’

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In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 exiles. The original native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 per cent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.

The Europeans landed and built their colony called “the Plymouth Plantation” near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived–he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists’ language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the settlers not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.

http://links.org.au/node/753

Mass Indigenous Protest In Defense of Water Caps Week of Mobilizations in Ecuador

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Over 10,000 indigenous people from hundreds of Ecuador’s Northern Sierra (highlands) communities gathered to present the native movement’s proposed Water Law. Protesters chanted, “Water is not for sale, it is to be defended,” as speakers excoriated President Rafael Correa’s draft Water Law, saying that it could lead to privatization and pollution by mining companies.

The protest was organized by the Confederation of Peoples of the Kichwa Nationality (Ecuaranari), the Sierra regional block of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE). Marches left from the North, South and West to converge on the Pan-American Highway, blocking the country’s central artery for over six hours.

The march also showed the indigenous movement’s capacity to mobilize large numbers of people, a sign that the CONAIE is recovering from past internal divisions and political defeats. Correa has regularly insulted indigenous leaders and anti-mining activists, claiming that they do not represent a real political base. But indigenous people at
Wednesday’s protest were passionate about defending their access to clean water.

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1591/49/

The Pakistan Test

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Barack Obama’s most difficult international test in the next year will very likely be here in Pakistan. A country with 170 million people and up to 60 nuclear weapons may be collapsing.

Reporting in Pakistan is scarier than it has ever been. The major city of Peshawar is now controlled in part by the Taliban, and this month alone in the area an American aid worker was shot dead, an Iranian diplomat kidnapped, a Japanese journalist shot and American humvees stolen from a NATO convoy to Afghanistan.

I’ve been coming to Pakistan for 26 years, ever since I hid on the tops of buses to sneak into tribal areas as a backpacking university student, and I’ve never found Pakistanis so gloomy. Some worry that militants, nurtured by illiteracy and a failed education system, will overrun the country or that the nation will break apart. I’m not quite that pessimistic, but it’s very likely that the next major terror attack in the West is being planned by extremists here in Pakistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/opinion/23kristof.html?_r=1&em=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1227460056-iz7mthBlVVzcXhUbvsXzzg

MOSCOW URGES THE UNITED NATIONS MEMBER-NATIONS TO PREVENT THE ARMS RACE IN OUTER SPACE

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Moscow urges the United Nations member-states to join the moratorium on deploying arms in outer space, says Russia’s ambassador to the UN Vitaly Churkin in an address to the UN Security Council. The high-ranking Russian diplomat called for preventing efforts to draw humanity into another upward spiral of the arms race to a quality new technological level.

The UN General Assembly has on Russia’s initiative for several years now been adopting resolutions to prevent the arms race from spreading to outer space. This year it was only the US delegate who voted against a resolution to that end for the US ABM defence programme is known to provide, among other things, for deploying ABM system elements in outer space. This actually means that Washington sees space as a potential operations theatre, says the head of a strategic research centre Alexander Savelyev and elaborates.

It is only to be deplored, Alexander Savelyev says, that as the United States takes care of its own security, it ignores the fact that deploying armaments both on land and at sea, and possibly in outer space undermines other countries’ security. The United States action can only be described as unilateral and undermining international and strategic stability, action that could eventually result in another stage of the arms race. Before it is too late, one should seriously consider ways to prevent the arms race from being extended to outer space. It remains to be hoped that the new US Administration will take a more responsible stand on the problem.

http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=eng&q=35437&cid=58&p=22.11.2008