Where was the global attention when Peru opened fire on protestors?

[L. Coyote]

Just saying, there seems to be a lot of imbalance in coverage of government atrocities.

In Peru, they were killing people who had shut down an oil pipeline, so no coverage!

In Iran, instability is in the interest of those who profit from oil prices rising.

[MADem]

1. Where was TWITTER? Where were the internet-savvy college kids?

That's the difference.

[ColbertWatcher]

2. I agree. I think it was the lack of technology. n/t

[Posteritatis]

14. Also the whole "push to topple a major regional power" bit (nt)

[Name removed]

3. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[billyoc]

4. No convenient boogeyman for the Bomber Libs to rattle their sabers at in Peru.

THAT'S the difference.

[aquart]

5. What is a Bomber Lib?

[billyoc]

8. Humanitarian interventionists.

[EFerrari]

9. What a great term.

lol

[billyoc]

11. Their motto is, "We feel your pain, so the Empire doesn't have to"

:evilgrin:

[EFerrari]

12. . . .

:rofl:

[aquart]

6. Are you saying we should NOT care about the people in Iran?

Did Peru rise up against the people shooting protestors? DID IT?

But in the meantime you sneer and demean everything we feel and do because...why?

[EFerrari]

17. There is no sneering or demeaning in the OP. None.

Where are you reading it?

And, fyi, when those Indians were shot and disappeared in Peru, the US-backed regime there only reported deaths of policemen and ran fake stories about the event every half hour. The vast majority of the pop had no knowledge of the event and there sure wasn't anyone up here filling them in. It was sort of amazing, in comparison with the feedback loop established so quickly between us and Iran.

[elmaji]

31. Regime?

Oh please, the Peruvian government is hardly a regime.

US backed it may be, but its a democratically elected government.

It's no more a regime that Mossadeq was in Iran in 1953, or Arbenz was in Guatemala in 1951, or Chavz in 2000.

[EFerrari]

45. Regime = govenment in power. n/t

[aquart]

49. Yeah, it was sneering.

Because it championed the cause in Peru by being dismissive of the reaction to Iran.

Well, Peru ain't the only place that is happening. You wanna talk "disappeared," then we have a really long list to discuss...Tamils anyone? What's China doing lately in Tibet? Counted the dissidents in Indonesia? Pretty much anywhere in Africa?

And then we have all that land we need to return to the American indigenous peoples for the historical disappeared.

IT ISN'T UNCOMMON FOR PEOPLE TO BE MURDERED FOR THEIR LAND. Liebensraum, the Nazis called it. You wanna stop it? Build up your war machine. If you have the money. Otherwise the killing will continue because when a nation decides to murder its own, there is damn all anyone outside can do and precious little on the inside. My family learned that the hard way. Yours?

BUT IN IRAN THEY ARE FIGHTING THAT FROM THE INSIDE. And they may win. And that is uncommon. WE didn't do it.

[L. Coyote]

39. Now I'm saying

Please read the OP.

[LooseWilly]

7. I was just reading an incredibly interesting article.

It's actually about the proposed "Iranian Bourse"... to sell oil for Euros, instead of dollars... and an analysis of how doing so could precipitate the complete collapse of the US economy.

http://news.goldseek.com/GoldSeek/1137510262.php

The article also suggests that the real reason for the Iraq war wasn't so much about securing the oil, but about stopping Saddam from selling his oil for Euros (suggesting that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was actually accurate... just a little tacky for clashing with the lies they sold as the supposed Mission).

Needless to say... if the election protests result in a delay or complete scrapping of the proposed "bourse", and assuming the info in the article is correct, then the protests and mayhem in the streets of Tehran becomes a hell of a lot more relevant to US interests. Not necessarily your interests, or his or hers... (it is relevant to me because I have family in Tehran who are virtual prisoners in their homes listening to volleys of gunshots, and general anarchy in the streets)... but, aside from us... it becomes very important that those who are in a position to decide what is to be done are as informed as possible, so that they can meddle in the affairs of the world with as much intel as possible.

(Obviously, if atrocities were a deciding factor in international news coverage... we'd see images from Darfur even when celebrities weren't there...)

[EFerrari]

10. I remember that story about Iraq. Are you saying, there was a similar

proposal for Iran to switch over, too?

And, am I wrong in thinking that you're saying that atrocities in Iran get more attention because of the mercenary interests of the United States in that country? As opposed to the just survival interests that we should be attending to when the leader of Peru okays the destruction of the Amazon?

[LooseWilly]

20. Apparently Iran was not only willing to sell oil for Euros, they were also inviting others to do so.

That's what the article says anyway. Anyone could come (presumably to Tehran) and sell oil for Euros...
I seem to remember hearing some mention of it in the coverage of an OPEC meeting some time back... but the source (probably MSNBC) seemed to find the item to be something of a punchline.

And yes, I am suggesting that atrocities in Iran get more attention because of mercenary interests of the US. I might be wrong... it is mostly just a theory that explains (in my mind anyway) why the amount of interest of the MSM seems to be directly related to the relevance of the country, in which said news item develops, to the global oil market. We don't hear very much about what happens in Zimbabwe, or Mongolia... not a whole lot about Myanmar... we hear about Darfur for a while (Sudan is an oil exporting country, but apparently exports most of its oil to China). We hear about attacks on Nigerian oil derricks. We hear all about Chavez & Venezuela. And we fixate on Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran... and even Afghanistan until a pipeline deal is made.

Meanwhile, we don't hear much about Brazilian, Peruvian, or Argentine destruction of the Amazon. I was in Mexico at the time, but I suspect the US media didn't cover the Zapatista uprisings in Chiapas in early '94 (in rebellion against NAFTA/TLC)...

I'm not justifying the difference. I'm not even sure that it's not just my imagination. It would, however, explain the difference in news coverage.

[EFerrari]

22. Thank you. I know you weren't justifying. It's been a long,

new info intensive week, so I wanted to make sure I got what you were saying.

Ironic, though, isn't it, that we're primed to hate the Iranian regime (loathesome as it really is) and not primed to hate the Peruvian regime whose potential destruction of the Amazon will hit us harder and maybe even, faster.

[L. Coyote]

40. Destroying the Amazon region to send the USA oil, feeding the Empire, justifies killing

protesters, it seems, and lying to cover it up.

In the USA, the international media and news is filtered and spun in keeping with feeding global resources to the Empire, and little else.

It is simply and near-totally Imperialistic. That is the behavior towards Iran also.

[robinlynne]

13. a million people in one instance , 2000 people in the other. could be the reason.

[EFerrari]

15. In all honestly, I think the attention differential is because the Iranian regime

came pre-hated. That's not to diminish in any way what Iran is up against, but purely as an observation about the American audience. Most of us don't know that President Garcia of Peru was a Bush lapdog or that he is a murderous criminal.

[SoCalDem]

16. The US and Latin American countries have never had much of an affinity

Perhaps it's because they never embraced "English". And perhaps it's because of the centuries of meddling we did in their "backyards". The "gringo" has always looked down on Latin America ( I grew up in a Latin American country and saw the enmity).

[shadowknows69]

18. Iran is where the oil closest to our army is.

We just wait for things to go all to shit in Iran and Pakistan and the jolly green giant marches in to save the day again.

[EFerrari]

23. Now, why did they put that oil so close to our army?

:)

TGIS, shadow.

[ProgressIn2008]

19. I was thinking about Sri Lanka earlier. No one even knows how many thousands have died

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/29/sri-lanka-civilian-deaths-un

We just don't know how many have been killed in this conflict. Which is not to say that Iranian lives aren't important and what is happening in Iran isn't important. They are and it is. I have no patience with the butchers leading Iran (any of 'em) but those protesters are putting themselves on the line -- a bravery that wasn't known in this country under years of Bush. We can't even force a damn investigation of war crimes from the current Vichy regime bent on protecting the Bush admin, for god's sake.

That being said, my assumption is that all human life must be held as equal, no matter how politically charged the borders around that human life may be. The fact that there are strategic/economic/military reasons for the scrutiny on Iran doesn't diminish a jot or a tittle from Iranian life. But it doesn't make it more important than the lives of others, either.

[NYC_SKP]

21. Oil. Nukes. Muslims. Israel. Surely you know the reasons. What about East Timor?

And any number or other places that don't play as well as Iran? :shrug:

I'm just glad that what was going to be the next US target is coming undone, hopefully.

:patriot:

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. Myamar, chiapas the list is long

Peru is just the latest

But I suspect one of the reasons was nobody tweeted about it.

This we would not know shit from shinola I suspect if it wasn't for the student protests and tweeting and other social networks. Iran, to our shame, is actually very connected... more than us. (also easier to shut down) Peru is not.

Here is a piece of trivia I googled myself... and how tight the media control of the news is.

If you, out of curiosity, go to the Iranian Red Crescent society... yes, you can go there... not other places but that one is open... you'd never know there is a small revolt in the streets.

I suspect future revolutions will require quite a bit of ... citizen activism and the web... by the way that includes the US. We will need to ahem take to the streets if we want I don't know, truly want, single payer for example.

[PretzelWarrior]

26. internet rate isn't anywhere near our rate in Iran. I just did a report on them

they are adding quite a bit, and I'm sure their connectednes is quite high in Tehran...but so is our connectedness in NYC or SF.

[Joe Chi Minh]

25. They were poor people. Where is your sense of priorities? This board

has become a disgrace. Wall-to-wall trolls.

[Joe Chi Minh]

35. Deleted by me. I'm struggling to keep out of geopolitics on here.

[Judi Lynn]

38. Oh, god. You're not kidding. Unrecog-bleeping-nizeable.

Remember the good old days when there were only a couple, usually, infesting many threads, like a couple of tag-team wrestlers.

Life was so sweet back then, back last year, and the year before, etc. Sniff. Sniff.

[cali]

27. where was the coverage when freakin' 10,000 civilians were slaughtered

in Sri Lanka in May. Do you even know about that?

[Judi Lynn]

28. What gave this massacre of Indians in Peru a filthy poignancy was the fact the FTA

with the US, initiated by _{George W. Bush} set it all in motion, and there was a slaughter by the US puppet ally of truly helpless indigenous people as Army helicopters flew overhead and shot into the protesters on the ground.

Witnesses were horrified in seeing the same helicopters pick up some of the dead, and start dropping them into the river and the canyons.

This concerned the U.S. DIRECTLY. There's no way to avoid it, although racist, pro-business fascists clearly feel that's what these exploited, abused indigenous people should expect, if they expect to continue living on the same land, in the same forests which saw their ancesters come and go.

US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
Thursday 11 June 2009

by: Tom Loudon, t r u t h o u t | Report

~snip~
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.

In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."

Credible accusations are emerging that the police are systematically disappearing civilian bodies by burning or throwing then in rivers. Right now, people in the region are preparing lists of those missing to document the large number of civilians disappeared. Amnesty International has issued a warning expressing concern for the scores of demonstrators who were detained last weekend.

More:
http://www.truthout.org/061109B

[ColbertWatcher]

29. Another reason may be ...

... because the GOP-controlled media has been pushing the "leftist" threat in Latin America?

[elmaji]

30. Maybe because there were conflicting reports

The rightwing media said one thing about the attacks, the leftwing media said another, and between the two no one (including I) know what to believe.

Peru has a long history of civil unrest, and will tend to burn tires on the streets and go on strikes for the tiniest drop of a pin. Having lived just across the border from there, protests and deaths resulting from them in Peru were not very often treated as news.

[northernlights]

32. Where were you when that happened?

Did you start threads about the uprising? If so, were they ignored? If ignored, did you re-post and re-post, until a large number of people could see them before they slipped into the ether?

The MSM didn't really push the Iran story down from the top. People pushed it up from the bottom.

Just sayin'...

[Judi Lynn]

34. The threads started here, and there were many attempts were not well attended

by anyone other than the Latin America-concerned DU'ers who happened to be here and see them when they were running.

Any quick check could provide TONS of links for you to examine.

L Coyote has been a prodigious, conscientious, generous, principled poster for a very long time.

[L. Coyote]

42. A quick search on Google would tell you

http://www.google.com/search?q=peru+"L.+Coyote"

Judi Lynn - Fri Jun-12-09 07:37 AM
Original message
Well developed article posted by L Coyote in G.D.:Up to 250 Indigenous Peruvians Killed in Bagua,
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x16184

L. Coyote - Jun-09-09 10:39 AM
MUST SEE Video: Peruvian Government Massacres Indian Protesters
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5811137

L. Coyote - Jun-11-09 04:01 PM
Up to 250 Indigenous Peruvians Killed in Bagua
http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5828690

L. Coyote Jun-10-09 04:41 AM
Response to Reply #1 - http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3915426
2. I spent years in Peru, helped free chatteled indigeous slaves and create Native land reserves in the Amazon region.

That was in the 60s/70s, when a liberal military junta was in charge (our chain of command).
Rule was by decree, so it was very easy to make changes by just making decisions.
What we accomplished to protect Native Indian tribes in the jungle is now threatened
by decrees created to assist foreign corporations and capitalists exploit oil reserves.

The current conflict is due to US free trade agreements, pushed by the Bush Junta.

----------
P.S. Unique usernames are very handy for searching.

[Judi Lynn]

33. Indifference, racism. Clowns here STILL reserve the right to regard indigenous people as far less

important than empty, egocentric, people of privilege in a hemisphere teeming with poverty, the exploited, abused, battered poor they find so "computer illiterate." Well, they WOULD be more technologically savvy if the racist plundering corporatists and their crooked puppets they install in Latin American governments hadn't blocked their chances for education, and common comforts. What COULD be worse than massive computer illiteracy? Well, most of us know what's worse than someone who's poor, ridiculed, shunned, and exploited, his/her honest hard labor stolen, disprespected throughout his/her entire life.

Peruvian Indians are being driven to desperate measures to try and save their lands which have been stolen from them for five centuries.

‘Their protests signal that the colonial era has finally drawn to a close. No longer are Amazon Indians prepared to put up with the illegal and brutal treatment which has been routine. That’s finished. This is the Amazon’s Tiananmen. If it finishes the same way, it will also end Peru’s international reputation.

‘Oil companies operating in Peru should suspend their operations until calm is restored and the Indians’ communal land rights are properly respected – only then can they negotiate as equals.’ — Stephen Corry, Director, Survival International, 8 June 2009

The Government of Peru, under the presidency of APRA’s Alan García, has taken the dangerous step of backing up its intentions to allow oil companies to occupy and devastate indigenous lands with fierce violence. Over the past few days, heavily armed police, decked out as storm troopers (they look almost identical worldwide), have gone to the Amazon to forcibly remove thousands of protesting indigenous people from a blockade they had mounted to protest and impede encroaching oil and natural gas exploration, logging, and the threat of large-scale agriculture. The protesters come from many indigenous groups, including Achuar, Arabela, Asháninka, Awajún, Huambisa, Kichwa, Matsigenka, Shawi and Wampis.

The government of García, with the support of the national Congress, decreed new laws in compliance with a U.S.-Peru trade free trade agreement. According to an AP report, García, who as a previous president had challenged international financial institutions, is now “a free-market champion who is opening vast tracts of jungle to oil exploration by companies including France’s Perenco SA, Spain’s Repsol-YPF and U.S.-based ConocoPhillips.” Survival International adds to that list Canada’s Petrolifera and Brazil’s Petrobras. According to Survival International, already 70% of the Peruvian Amazon has been auctioned off to transnational oil corporations.

At least 30 indigenous protesters have been killed, and the videos below demonstrate some of the excessive force used by the police. Undaunted and fighting back, indigenous fighters killed some 23 policemen (see the news report sympathetic to the police at the very bottom of this post), some having been allegedly abducted, disarmed, speared, and in some cases their throats were slit. Appealing to long-established Latin American racist imagery, President García has accused the indigenous protesters of “savagery” and “barbarity”.http://openanthropology.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/resisting-free-trade-racism-and-the-state-perus-amazonian-indians-fight-back/

[Deja Q]

36. Which country has nuke ambitions and is ran by a crazier government?

I did not know about Peru...

Also watch "Star Trek Insurrection" (1998) about "how few is too few"... :D

[Judi Lynn]

37. The President of Peru, who ordered this massacre, also ordered massacre

of Peruvians in his first term as President, back in the 1980's, when he also ran Peru's economy completely into the ditch.

That's filthy, it's evil, and it's crazy, and the U.S. considers Alan Garcia one fine ####ing fellow, regardless of how many helpless protesters, and unsuspecting innocent people he has ordered his military to drop where they stood.

You'd be doing yourself a real favor to start taking the initiative, paying attention, doing basic research for yourself and realizing you're NOT getting much real information from tv.

[L. Coyote]

43. The Bush Junta! The FTA with Peru was Bush's doing, Garcia is doing USA bidding.

Hands down the craziest nukular power was the Bush Junta.

Bush invaded several countries, prompting other nations to want nuclear defensive capabilities.
All the axis of evil threats did not engender a more peaceful world.

So, which country has nuke ambitions vs. which ones are subject to propaganda that they do?

[Judi Lynn]

41. Peru: eyewitness account of Amazon massacre published

Peru: eyewitness account of Amazon massacre published

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 06/20/2009 - 19:08.

The UK-based advocacy group Survival International has published an eyewitness account of the killings in the Peruvian Amazon that caused shockwaves around the world. The report contains dramatic photos by two Belgians, Marijke Deleu and Thomas Quirynen, who were caught up in the June 5 police attack on the roadblock in Bagua province and were themselves shot at.

The report, "Death at Devil's Bend: an eyewitness account" provides a dramatic narrative of the day's events, which ended with a large number of people, both police officers and indigenous protesters, dead. (The exact numbers are still unclear.) The incident has been described as "the Amazon's Tiananmen."

The photographers, now on a tour of the UK, said in a statement: "We saw people being shot before our eyes, and we were ourselves shot at. Whilst it is clear that policemen were sometimes targets, the overwhelming majority of the victims we saw were indigenous people, and other protesters who came out to support them."

Stephen Corry of Survival added: "This report shows, in shocking detail, what happens when Amazon Indians try and defend their lands. Peru's police reacted with overwhelming force and brutality. Even the president is promoting a racist reaction by calling the Indians 'savages'. This incident will be seared into the memories of Indians for decades. Only a proper inquiry, and prosecutions where appropriate, might lessen the immense damage already done. The underlying problem must also be addressed. Are oil company interests more valuable than human rights?" (Survival International, June 19)

http://www.ww4report.com/node/7466

[Kaleva]

44. As a rule, poor non-whites don't count for much

Because of the possible impact on the lifestyle of those in Western nation (reduced availability and higher cost of oil), I ran is making the news.

[Hannah Bell]

46. every regime change in iran since the 50s has been preceded by decline in oil revenues.

[Party Person]

47. Peru story didn't jibe with American "interests"

There was no way they could turn that into a dancing on the Berlin Wall in 1989 pre-packaged media event.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

48. Furthermore, anybody who claims to be "pro-business" is a hero to the

American corporate press.