News
October 18, 2007
SLASH/BURN
Pipeline Through Paradise: Big Oil's Plan to Tap the Arctic
It's estimated that one quarter of the world's
untapped oil and gas reserves lie in the Arctic. And while politicians bicker
loud and long over Iraqi oil, and oil executives lay plans for bringing natural
gas and oil from West Africa, most know that the Arctic is the real prize in
the ongoing international struggle to control dwindling energy resources. That's
especially true now, as global warming causes Arctic ice to melt, exposing virgin
territory and even, perhaps, opening for shipping the fabled Northwest Passage,
which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
>go
to blog
October 2, 2007
BURMA
"More than ten National League for Democracy
people's parliament representatives and at least 137 party members have so far
been arrested in connection with recent protests in Burma, said NLD spokesperson
U Nyan Win yesterday."
>
Democratic Voice of Burma
Where are Myanmar's Monks? >
link
Eyewitness Accounts from Burma
A troop of lone-tein (riot police comprised of paid thugs) protected by
the military trucks, raided the monastery with 200 studying monks. They systematically
ordered all the monks to line up and banged and crushed each one's head against
the brick wall of the monastery. One by one, the peaceful, non resisting monks,
fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Then, they tore off the red robes and
threw them all in the military trucks (like rice bags) and took the bodies away.
>
more
September 12, 2007
Religion: New Video >
watch
July 23, 2007
SLASH/BURN
Oil and Other Raw Materials
AFRICA
Trade between Africa and China is growing and now rivals that between
African countries and the US and EU, reports Michael Deibert in an IPS dispatch.
The last century’s colonial interests by European powers is fast being
replaced by China in its aggressive search for raw materials, especially oil.
Africa is rich in a number of raw materials from copper bauxite, diamonds, platinum,
chrome, manganese, silver and gold. The growing worldwide consumer market in
cut flowers has found a base in Kenya.
>
latest entry
July
10, 2007
SLASH/BURN
OIL
Arctic Play
Last week Shell announced it would send a fleet of ships into the Beaufort
Sea to launch an oil drilling program. It is speculated that beneath the Beaufort
Sea lie 8 billion barrels of oil and 30 trillion cubic feet of gas. The drilling
is to take place 30 miles off the Alaskan coast, where despite protests from
local communities the US Minerals Management Service OK’d the project.
>
more in blog
June 19, 2007
SLASH/BURN
OIL, LNG
Caribbean
As one of the world’s largest net oil exporters in the world,
and the largest in the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela’s oil politics makes
waves in tiny countries desperate for affordable energy. Caribbean islands,
along with the U.S., China, South America, and Europe, covet Venezuela’s
estimated 79.7 billion barrels of conventional oil reserves. The slice of the
pie, depending on who is sharing, is either growing or getting smaller.
>
more
June 11, 2007
SLASH/BURN
NATURAL GAS
Trinidad
LNG Route Security after JFK
WASHINGTON—The four men charged with planning to blow up JFK airport
come from Guyana with one of them from Trinidad-Tobago. The plot was in a fairly
early stage, but even so, it drew the attention of anti terrorist officials
away from the Middle East and Africa to the Caribbean. Trinidad is a crucial
center for the US energy supply, and the island has a history of harboring small,
fundamentalist Muslim groups who ally themselves with AlQaeda and other militants.
>
read blog
June 6, 2007
SLASH/BURN
OIL
IRAQ
The Iraqi government’s plans to privatize the oil industry took another
step forward today(Wednesday) with the issuance of an arrest warrant for striking
oil worker union leaders. The unions oppose plans to divide up the former nationalized
industry and leasing out the huge oil fields to foreign companies, including
the major international oil firms.
>
read blog
June 5, 2007
Let Them Eat Remittances
The United States takes what it needs from
Mexico—and leaves it to poor immigrant workers to send home the foreign
aid.
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2006 there were some 12 million undocumented
immigrants in the United States. (Other estimates run as high as 20 million).
About three-quarters of these are from Latin America, and 56 percent are from
Mexico alone. Mexico has exported more of its work force than any other nation.
The Migration Policy Institute estimated that nearly one in ten people born
in Mexico, and 15 percent of Mexico’s workforce, now lives in the United
States (legally or illegally).
>
continued in blog
