save the planet – Page 88

Africa: GMO seeds introduced despite public rejection

By David Njagi

NAIROBI, May 16, 2011 (IPS) – Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, and the lack of a legal framework for these controversial products.

”Because Africans are strongly against GM foods the companies are using their economic muscle and criminal disregard for local opinion to gain a foothold and get the farmers ‘hooked’.‘

Click here, or on the graphic, for full resolution.

Africa: policy on genetically modified organisms (GMO) and genetically engineered (GE) foods. The Cartagena protocol on biosafety, a supplement to the convention on biological diversity, has strong support in Africa, with a majority of the countries as signatories. In addition, several countries have, in the past, rejected aid (especially unmilled grains) in food imports with concerns for national biosafety. South Africa is so far the only country that is seeing wide-spread use of genetically modified crops.

In Kenya The Sygenta Foundation has triumphed with a novel scheme to insure farmers crops. The Syngenta Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation attached to the Syngenta Company that researches and produces GM seeds. The foundation is involved in the “Safe Biotechnology Management” (SABIMA) project aimed at promoting GM technology among small-scale farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

The Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) regards the scheme as part of seed-manufacturing multinational companies’ renewed appetite to use Kenya as a testing ground for GMOs by offering seeds to farmers.
“We suspected that a lot of GM seed, particularly for maize, was being imported from South Africa either as contaminated maize or plain GMOs,” recalls Kamau of KBioC. “We went to the key maize-growing regions and did random sampling. We bought the seed and found it was laced with GM strains.”Controls on seed imports are often slack or lacking.”So even if Kenya has not commercialised GMOs, it is likely that farmers are planting GM seed without their knowledge,” says Kamau.

Despite rejection everywhere but South Africa, Dr. Margaret Karembu, of a pro GMO company, predicts that 10 African countries will have adopted the technology before 2015

Amazonia: Dinho, Claudio and Maria murdered!.Forest criminals to be amnestied!

SLAUGHTERING THE AMAZON.. With the new Forest Law and amnesty for Forest crimes the ranchers and loggers are taking their opportunity by terrorist murders. Their business is the destruction of the Amazon, now with more impunity, to satisfy the demands of criminal capitalist transnationals like Burger King and MacDonalds.

Adelino Ramos was killed for openly confronting the beef and timber mafia. Shot to death by cowardly bastards at his street stall while selling his forest produce.

He was a famous ex leader of the Movimiento Campesino Corumbiara and had survived a fascist massacre a decade ago. Un motociclista lo mató a tiros en Rondonia, norte del país.

Just 3 days before they got José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva, shooting her first and cutting off her ears. Claudio and Maria were outspoken forest defenders and cultivated Amazon produce.

At the time of murder Adelino, or ‘Dinho’, was busy setting up a camp for people displaced by the wholesale massacre of the forest. He had been repeatedly threatened and recently denounced the escalating forest destruction in Acre, Amazonas y Rondonia states.

El debate sobre la explotación del Amazonas ha tomado gran vuelo en Brasil después de que en una semana se siguieran dos noticias contradictorias: la publicación de un alarmante aumento de los niveles de deforestación, y la aprobación en la noche del martes, por aplastante mayoría en el parlamento, de una reforma del Código Forestal brasileño que establece una amnistía general para todos aquellos que incurrieron en delitos contra la vegetación hasta 2008.

In just a few days we have the news of a seven fold increase in deforestation, the disgraceful passing of the new Forest Law (see other posts) by fascist landlords allied with greedy corrupt politicians, companies, and media, the go ahead and 1st contracts for the Belo Monte dam, and the signing of deals to let BP, of all companies, exploit the ultra deep oil bonanza near Rio.

International resistance has failed miserably despite the best efforts of Avaaz and Greenpeace. Resistance needs to be informed and intelligent, or it plays into the hands of nationalists who argue that ‘rich parasitic 1st Worlders have no right to lecture us after decimating their own forests, etc’.

Amazonía: Adelino Claudio y Maria matado!..amnestía para destructores!

Adelino, Claudio y Maria

”Con la amnestía para crimenes contra la selva los terroristas rancheros y maderistas ven su oportunidad de hacer dinero con la destrucción de la Amazonia para satisfacer la demanda de los criminales corporaciónes internacionales, como Burger King y MacDonalds.”

Adelino fue asesinado cuando estaba vendiendo verduras de su producción por enfrentar a la mafia maderera en la Amazonia de Brasil. Era dirigente del Movimiento Campesino Corumbiara y se llamaba Adelino Ramos. Un motociclista lo mató a tiros en Rondonia, norte del país.

Tres días antes fueron ejecutados José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva y su esposa, Maria do Espírito Santo da Silva, en el municipio de Nova Ipixuna. También eran dirigentes comunitarios y peleaban contra la tala ilegal en el estado de Pará. La presidenta Dilma Rousseff mandó a investigar el hecho.

líder campesino superviviente de una masacre es asesinado en el Amazonas

Adelino Ramos había denunciado recientemente a explotadores ilegales de madera

EFE – Sao Paulo – 28/05/2011 .El líder campesino Adelino Ramos, conocido como Dinho, uno de los supervivientes en 1995 de la masacre de Corumbiará, fue asesinado ayer en el estado de Roraima y se convirtió en la tercera víctima por conflictos de tierras esta semana en la Amazonía brasileña.
Dinho, que sobrevivió a la matanza en la que 12 campesinos, entre ellos varios niños, murieron a manos de presuntos paramilitares, fue asesinado cuando vendía verduras de sus cultivos en el barrio de Vista Alegre do Abuna, en Porto Velho, capital del Estado de Rondonia, según la organización católica Pastoral de la Tierra. La organización detalló en un comunicado que Dinho fue asesinado a balazos por pistoleros que viajaban en una motocicleta.
El líder campesino, presidente del Movimiento Campesino de Corumbiará, había denunciado ecientemente a explotadores ilegales de madera en los estados de Acre, Amazonas y Rondonia y pedía la instalación de un campamento para campesinos desplazados. “Dinho venía siendo amenazado hace años y en julio del año pasado denunció otra vez amenazas contra su vida”, apuntó la Pastoral.

El martes, en el también amazónico estado de Pará, fue asesinado a balazos el matrimonio compuesto por José Claudio Ribeiro da Silva y María do Espírito Santo, reconocidos ambientalistas de la región y exlíderes del Movimiento de los Trabajadores Rurales Sin Tierra.

Peru: Indigenous anti mine protestors hold Puno city

Customs warehouse in Puno on fire after it was attacked overnight

20,000 Aymaras occupy Puno

Thousands of angry indigenous protesters have taken over the city centre of Puno in south-eastern Peru.

Looters have taken advantage of the unrest and ransacked offices and shops as the police retreated.

Cars and buildings were torched on Thursday night when protesters went on the rampage, demanding an end to a Canadian silver mining project.

The indigenous Aymara activists say the mining company will pollute their ancestral lands.

The protesters have blocked the main roads into the city.

Border crossing still closed

A customs office was set ablaze on Friday and several other buildings are still smouldering after being torched in the night.

The demonstrators have threatened to continue the disruption until the government revokes the mining concessions for the Canadian Bear Creek mining company.

The activists say the mining corporation will contaminate nearby Lake Titicaca, decimating the fish stocks.

However, the firm denies it will harm the environment and wants to begin production next year.

The unrest in Puno comes two weeks before the 5 June presidential run-off election.

The indigenous activists say they will try to stop the polls from going ahead in Puno if their demands have not been met.

A Dark Day for Brazil’s Amazon Jungle

Dark Day for Brazil’s Amazon Jungle
By Fabiana Frayssinet

José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espírito Santo, murdered Tuesday May 24 in Pará.

Credit:CNS Bélem

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 25, 2011 (IPS) – The same day that the lower house of the Brazilian Congress approved a reform of the forestry code that would make it easier to clear land in the Amazon jungle for agriculture, a husband and wife team of activists who spent years fighting illegal deforestation in the rainforest were murdered.

After several delays, the revised forest code was approved by the Chamber of Deputies late Tuesday, by a vote of 410 to 63, with one abstention.

Introduced by Communist Party lawmaker Aldo Rebelo, the reform of the 1965 forestry code is, in the view of environmentalists, the first major defeat for President Dilma Rousseff, as the parties allied with her left-wing Workers’ Party did not vote in a bloc with it on this question.

“This vote represents the biggest setback to Brazil’s environmental legislation in decades,” Raul Silva Telles do Valle, assistant coordinator of the Socioenvironmental Institute, told IPS.

“It’s a law that looks to the past, not the future,” WWF-Brazil’s conservation director Carlos Alberto de Mattos Scaramuzza told IPS.

conrtinued

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55788

Brazil: Forest Law passed by fascist landlords..Amazon defenders killed.

Câmara aprova Código Florestal

The Folha de Sao Paolo reports the passing of the forest law, pushed through today by powerful extreme right landlords, headed oddly by populist communist Aldo.-

No details of final version given .

No mention of the amnesty for previous forest crimes which, imposed by the fascist landlords, now make ALL LAWS in the Amazon a laughing stock, and have caused a 6 fold increase already in the criminal destruction of our world heritage.

The influential Folha da Sao Paolo also fails to mention the murder of the pro Amazon activist José Claudio Ribeira da Silva and his wife Maria, at least on their front pages of the digital edition , even though the police have attributed it to the loggers mafia, especially as their ears were cut off. Another terrorist murder, but one which will be celebrated by mining, logging and ranching companies.

This goes together with the signing of contracts for BP to extract deep sea oil, and the go ahead for the Belo Monte dam.

aybe the terrorists were celebrating the coming Forest Law.

MÁRCIO FALCÃO
LARISSA GUIMARÃES
DE BRASÍLIA

Após semanas de embate, negociações e troca de acusações, a Câmara dos Deputados aprovou ontem o texto da reforma do Código Florestal com alterações que significaram uma derrota para o governo.

Uma emenda aprovada por 273 votos a 182 rachou a base do governo levando os principais partidos governistas, PT e PMDB, para lados opostos. O texto da emenda consolida a manutenção de atividades agrícolas nas APPs (áreas de preservação permanente), autoriza os Estados a participarem da regularização ambiental e deixa claro a anistia para os desmates ocorridos até junho de 2008.