Most of your articles and information are very reliable and appreciated for what they are. This time, however, it is a mix of good research (Chellis's article) and a bit of exaggeration (your friend of a friend memo.) Chellis's article was published several months ago after she did a very thorough job of discovering the facts and assembling the story in an
engaging way. She definitely understands the political dynamics here in Bolivia, especially the role of racial identity in the process. I am glad you have circulated it. It is important that the Evo fans around the world
understand that, like Obama, his promises and his actions are far removed from each other.
• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.
Jakarta’s urban gardening scene got started with a simple tweet: “Who wants to start urban farming?” After that first Twitter message in November 2010, the group known as Jakarta Berkebun secured a plot in the city’s north and harvested a crop of morning glories (a common ingredient in many dishes here).
Click on Image to Enlarge
Jakarta lacks green space, but unused land abounds. Jakarta Berkebun aims to transform empty lots that often fill with rubbish into training grounds for urban youths to learn about growing food. For Milly Ratudian, an architect who leads the group, urban farming is a a response to skyrocketing food prices despite the nation’s abundant fertile crop land.
See the below [December 2010] article from our old friend, Chellis Glendinning, now living in Bolivia, that she did on the administration's recent anti-eco projects, and the following sent from a friend of a friend also living there now.
Sad to hear the other side of the story…JAS
“Need to tell you that this is all bull. Mr. Morales turns out to play to the international audience (you) — while at home he's got something else going on: industrial development up the kazoo, dams many times bigger than Hoover, nuclear power plants, uranium mining, lithium mining, new oil wells, pipelines through indigenous lands, new highways that tribes are fighting. Every time the people rise up against his plans — which happens constantly now (a friend just lost his eye to the police in the streets) — the administration dismisses them saying they are in the hands of the capitalists or are trying to tear down the state. Plus, public opinion has been cut via new laws that minimize the voice of journalists with heavy fines and perhaps closing papers, radio stations, etc. if
convicted. It is commonly said that EM says one thing but does the other.
“So, here at ground level, we don't take this law very seriously. It's nice, a nice collection of words. Sorry to tell you this. Non-democractic socialism, it turns out, is no picnic.
“The challenge begins now, as the people were too afraid to protest for the last years due to the assault by the right. But that's not a threat just now, so the people are rising up. It's a whole new ballgame at this point.
No one knows what will happen. Today's news is that El Evo liberated a bunch more millions to spend on further industrialization!”
SAN FRANCISCO — Inside a darkened theater a viewer floats in a redwood forest displayed with Imax-like clarity on a cavernous overhead screen.
The hovering sensation gives way to vertigo as the camera dives deeper into the forest, approaches a branch of a giant redwood tree, and then plunges first into a single leaf and then into an individual cell. Inside the cell the scene is evocative of the 1966 science fiction movie “Fantastic Voyage,” in which Lilliputian humans in a minuscule capsule take a medical journey through a human body.
There is an important difference — “Life: A Cosmic Journey,” a multimedia presentation now showing at the new Morrison Planetarium here at the California Academy of Sciences, relies not just on computer animation techniques, but on a wealth of digitized scientific data as well.
Last night the Taliban brazenly tunneled into a major prison in Kandahar and broke out 504 prisoners, including 106 Taliban fighters, according to Al Arabiya.
The 1,050-meter tunnel went from a nearby house into the political wing of the prison.
The Taliban told Al Arabiya it had buses waiting at the end of the tunnel to transport prisoners to Taliban safehouses.
This is the second biggest jailbreak in Afghanistan, after militants blew up the front gates to free around 1,000 prisoners in 2008.
