[41] in Discussion of MIT-community interests
Sun 4/22 Chomsky on Colombia, Uwa resistance(Sun) (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aimee L Smith)
Thu Apr 19 16:36:01 2001
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Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 16:30:20 -0400
From: Aimee L Smith <alsmith@MIT.EDU>
As Michael Moore once said, if it were all about profit, why doesn't GM
sell crack-cocaine? A 2 ton car brings in about 5 grand, but 2 tons of
crack and you are looking at at least a million bucks there...
Anyhow, Chomsky tends to be a good anti-dote to the "free" market
missionaries and mythologizers of our times.
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ACT-MA Peace Events in Massachusetts
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Sunday, April 22, 2001 - 7PM MIT BUILDING 10 -250
NOAM CHOMSKY Joins ROBERTO PEREZ, PRESIDENT of the U'WA in a Forum on
FREE TRADE, PLAN COLOMBIA, OIL and INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE
Sponsored by MIT Social Justice Colaborative, Sangam Environmental
Initiatives, AID-Boston, Boston Earth Action Network, Pugwash, and
Tonantzin, Boston area Leonard Peltier Support Group and the Council
for Native American Solidarity. Funds provided by Kelly-Douglas Fund.
World reknown intellectual and writer Professor Noam Chomsky will
join on Earth Day to speak on the effects of globalization,
militarization and US foreign policy in Latin America on the
indigenous and nonindigenous peoples of Colombia.
For thousands of years, the U'wa - a peaceful indigenous community of
5,000 people - have lived in the cloudforests of northeast Colombia,
protecting their land and culture from outside encroachment. Now, an
oil project slated for their land by Occidental Petroleum and
condemned by environmental and human rights groups around the world,
puts the survival of the U'wa and their sacred land in jeopardy.
Two days after Plan Colombia was passed by congress, the U'wa
homeland became heavily militarized with over 2,000 soldiers. The
U'wa warn that unless the project is cancelled, it will only bring
further violence, environmental and cultural destruction, oil spills
from guerrilla bombings and deforestation from new access roads.
Plan Colombia, supported largely by the lobbying efforts of
Occidental Petroleum and three major weapons manufacturers in the
northeast - General Dynamics, Sikorsky Aircraft and Textron are
profiting at the expense of Colombians, such as the U'wa. The U'wa
have been calling on US citizens to help in ending military
intervention in Colombia and to pressure the administration to send
humanitarian aid.
Colombia is now preparing itself for inclusion into the Free Trade
area of the Americas, an extension of NAFTA to the entire Western
Hemisphere. FTAA will accelarate environmental destruction and the
loss of indigenous and non indigenous lands. By revoking indigenous
communal land structure, Colombia will be able to enter the FTAA and
ensure foreign investor rights, not human rights.
For more information please contact the Boston Earth Action Network
617-787-3556 localseed@earthlink.net
forwarded for Kim Foster <localseed@earthlink.net>
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