Description of Resource Rebels.
Native peoples throughout the globe are facing extinction due to the greed of
mining and oil companies. As the energy crisis intensifies, their plight sounds
the alarm to all those concerned about the prospect of global warming, genocide,
and preventable eco-disasters. Resource Rebels traces the development
of multiracial transnational movements in the US, Asia, Africa and Latin America
that are countering resource extraction and providing direction for environmentalists
and anticapitalists alike.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Introduction
A World Out of Balance
1
Scouring the Globe
2
Big Oil, the Environment and Human Rights
3
West Papua: The Freeport/Rio Campaign
4
A Multiracial Anti-Mining Movement
5
Silencing the Voice of the People: How Mining Companies Subvert Local Opposition
6
The Military, Trade and Strategies for Sustainability
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Excerpt
Introduction: A World Out of Balance
Roberto
Pérez, chief of the U’wa tribe of Colombia, paid a surprise visit to the
San Francisco headquarters of the Sanford C. Bernstein investment firm in December
2000. The purpose of the visit was to deliver a letter demanding that Bernstein,
a large shareholder in Occidental Petroleum, stop profiting from the destruction
of U’wa lands and culture, and sell its stock in the company. Since 1992,
the 5,000-members of the U’wa Nation have been organizing to prevent Occidental
from drilling on sacred U’wa land. Representing the strength of the U’wa’s
international support, representatives from the Rainforest Action Network and
Amazon Watch, two of the many environmental groups that have worked to help
the U’wa, accompanied Roberto Perez to the Bernstein headquarters.
This
encounter between the U’wa and the investment community signals a major
shift in public perceptions of threatened native cultures in modern society.
Up until recently, the tendency in the mass media has been to stereotype native
people as fighting a losing battle against the onslaught of industrial civilization.
But after two decades of organizing local, national, regional, and international
alliances, assisted...
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Praise
“[A]
most valuable addition to the activist literature that links native studies
and international and environmental politics together. More generally it is
a damning indictment of the contemporary global economy, a work that deserves
a wide readership.”
—Simon Dalby, Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism
“A
detailed and informative account of modern day genocide that reveals the dark
side of the global economic system.…A compelling argument that the price
of our oil is not paid at the pump but with the lives of indigenous people.”
—Janet Lloyd, Z Magazine
“Gedicks
helps us to understand how these struggles have taken place, why, and what we
can do in the future.”
—Winona LaDuke
“Gedicks'
first book, New Resource Wars, graphically
mapped the dramatic rise of native-led resistance to extractive corporations.
Now he brings his incisive analysis to bear on the consequences of globalization.”
—Roger Moody
“For
anyone whose knowledge on the way that mining and oil corporations operate isn't
full as it might be, this book is an excellent introduction, placing the people
who are affected by mineral extraction firmly at the centre of things.”
—Pippa Gallop, Corporate
Watch MagazineRead more
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