| Monday, June 13, 2005 |  |
| Anti-Coca-Cola Abusing Water Rights and Poluting Village in India | 5 comments |
 13 Jun 2005 @ 22:52Bottom line. Water is the most valuable natural resource (beside air). Whoever controls water rights controls the people. Petroleum use is an issue but I don't see it as the primary resource. It is a distraction, slight of hand to styeer public attention away from the birthright of clean and abundant water supplies. 500 Anti-Coca-Cola Demonstrators Arrested in India PLACHIMADA, India, June 9, 2005 (ENS) - Hundreds of community residents and supporters marched to the Coca-Cola factory gates in Plachimada, Kerala on Wednesday to demand that the plant be permanently shut down. The protesters were met by a large cordon of police officers, and about 500 people were arrested. Police beat a woman protester, who was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment, eyewitnesses said. All protesters were released by the end of the day. The protests, organized by the Coca-Cola Virudha Samara Samiti (Anti Coca-Cola Struggle Committee) and the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, comes two days after the local village council, under pressure from the Kerala High Court, conditionally renewed Coca-Cola's license for three months. The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada, Kerala was the scene of a demonstration Wednesday. (Photo courtesy Coca-Cola India) The Coca-Cola bottling plant in Plachimada has remained closed since March 2004 because the local village council has refused to renew Coca-Cola's license to operate, citing the company for causing severe water shortages to the community. On June 5, the local village council renewed Coca-Cola's license for three months and with 13 conditions. This move follows the April 8 decision of Kerala High Court which permitted Coca-Cola to extract up to 500,000 liters of water per day from the common groundwater resource at its Plachimada facility. The High Court decided that Coca-Cola could extract the groundwater since there is no law regulating groundwater extraction for such purpose in India. "In the absence of such a law, it makes it difficult to protect natural resources from such predatory behavior by private companies," said indigenous people's rights activist C.R. Bijoy. "This issue is about much more than the extraction of water by Coca-Cola itself," said Bijoy. "The issue is about who has the fundamental decision making power over the use of natural resources, and it is about the survival of the people." Plachimada women walking to obtain water for their families. (Photo courtesy India Resource Center) But the company today rejected the three-month conditional licence issued by the Plachimada village council, describing it as a violation of the High Court order. The "Hindu" newspaper reports that in a letter to the council on Wednesday, the company said that, "the grant of licence for a period of three months is arbitrary and in violation of High Court order of April 7, 2005 and as further clarified on June 1, 2005." The company said the council's limited permit and 13 conditions were issued "in total disregard of the Rule of Law and also the judicial determination." The Anti Coca-Cola Struggle Committee and the Plachimada Solidarity Committee have vowed not to allow the company to re-open its plant in Plachimada. "The people of Kerala will not allow the factory to reopen," said R. Ajayan, convener of the Plachimada Solidarity Committee. "Coca-Cola must respect the wish of the community, and the community does not want the plant to restart." The community in Plachimada has been experiencing severe water shortages after Coca-Cola started operations in the area, and the remaining groundwater as well as soil has been polluted as a result of Coca-Cola's bottling operations, the protesters say. The company was distributing its solid waste to farmers in the area as fertilizer, until it was found to contain high levels of lead and cadmium, the protesters said. Coca-Cola India denies this charge and says the waste distribution has been stopped and all unused bio-solids have been recovered from the farmers. The bio-solids are stored at the Plachimada plant "pending agreement with the local authorities on their disposal," the company said. Protests against Coca-Cola are not limited to Plachimada. Here, more than 1,500 people marched against Coca-Cola in Mehdiganj, near Varanasi, November 24, 2004. (Photo by Amit Srivastava courtesy India Resource Center) "Allegations that The Coca-Cola Company is exploiting groundwater in India are without any scientific basis and are also not supported either by the government authorities who regulate our water use in India, academics, or the local communities in which our plants are located," the company says. "We believe the allegations are motivated more by an anti-globalization agenda, rather than by those with genuine environmental concerns," the company says on its website. The India Resource Center, which supports the Plachimada Solidarity Committee, makes no secret of the fact that it is against globalization. "India Resource Center is a project of Global Resistance," the organization says. "Global Resistance works to strengthen the movement against corporate globalization by supporting and linking local, grassroots struggles against globalization around the world. Our goal is to ensure that those most impacted by globalization are engaged in and at the forefront of the movement against corporate globalization." The company says that its water use in Plachimada does not deprive the community of water. "Within approximately five kilometers of the Kerala plant, for example, there are about 200 open shallow wells. Coca-Cola uses only two open shallow wells within the plant. In the same area there are nearly 150 bore wells. There are only six bore wells within our plant and the Coca-Cola plant uses no more than three bore wells at any one time." But the community of Plachimada has been engaged in a three year battle to hold the Coca-Cola company accountable, and local and international support for the campaign continues to grow rapidly, organizers say. In addition to seeking the permanent closure of the plant, the protesters are demanding that "the Coca-Cola company accept the authority and jurisdiction of the village council, and stop challenging the village council." The Supreme Court of India is set to hear an appeal from the village council shortly, and the Coca-Cola company has not decided whether it will reopen the plant, according to media reports. The organizers of Wednesday's protest have indicated that they will increase the pressure on the company locally to ensure that it cannot re-open. More > |
| BREAST IS STILL BEST, EVEN IF IT IS DAD'S | 0 comments |
| 13 Jun 2005 @ 22:39 BREAST IS STILL BEST, EVEN IF IT IS DAD'S By Alexandra Frean Times Online June 13, 2005 A man's nipples are perfectly suited to soothing a crying baby until it can be fed, according to a report on fatherhood. It names the Aka Pygmies, a hunter-gatherer tribe from the northern Congo, as the best fathers. When the mother is not available, the father calms his baby by giving him or her a nipple to suck. Aka Pygmy men do more in the way of childcare than fathers in any other society, according to the FatherWorld report, published today by Fathers Direct, a British charity. Aka fathers may hold their baby close to their bodies for a couple of hours at a time, according to Barry Hewlett, an American anthropologist who has studied the tribe for more than 20 years. On average, Aka fathers hold or are within reach of their infants 47 per cent of the time. They beat Swedish fathers, who are number one in the developed world, and who, on average, do 45 per cent of parental childcare. British fathers are the fourth-most involved in the West, and do a third of parental childcare, according to the report, which is based on a review of existing research literature. Caroline Flint, the former president of the Royal College of Midwives, said that she had come across many examples of men in Britain ³suckling² their babies, even though it might not be something they talked about very much. She said: ³It¹s not a case of the man saying to the baby, ŒHere you are, have my booby¹, but usually of the baby snuffling along the father¹s chest, finding the nipple and sucking. The men are usually very surprised, but the babies seem content.² Sebastian Kraemer, a child psychiatrist at the Whittington Hospital in London, said: ³It is possible that in prehistoric societies this was a normal way of fathering.² He said that it would be wrong to assume from the past 10,000 years of history that our prevailing model of mother-based childcare was the right one. Of 156 cultures studied for the report, only 20 per cent were found to promote men¹s close relationships with infants, with only 5 per cent doing the same for a father¹s involvement with young children. The report estimates that fathers worldwide contribute between a quarter and a third as much time as women to childcare, but it notes that active fathering is on the increase. In Britain the amount of time that fathers spend with their children has risen by eight times in the past 30 years. Michael Lamb, professor of psychology at Cambridge University and a world expert on fatherhood, said: ³Internationally, over the past 20 years, we have seen fathers who live with their children spending more time with them and doing more diverse activities, not just in Britain but in every known society.² |
| Our Favorite Old Songs | 0 comments |
| 13 Jun 2005 @ 05:00 For all of you who are feeling a little older and missing those great old tunes, there is good news. Some of your old favorites have re-released their great hits with new lyrics to accommodate their aging audience. Some examples: Herman's Hermits--"Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Walker" The Rolling Stones--"You Can't Always Pee When You Want" Credence Clearwater Revival--"Bad Prune Rising" Marvin Gaye-- "I Heard It Through the Grape Nuts" The Who--"Talkin' 'Bout My Medication" The Troggs--"Bald Thing" Carly Simon--"You're So Varicose Vein" The Bee Gees--"How Can You Mend a Broken Hip" Roberta Flack--"The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face" Johnny Nash--"I Can't See Clearly Now" The Temptations--"Papa Got a Kidney Stone" ABBA--"Denture Queen" Leo Sayer--"You Make Me Feel Like Napping" Commodores--"Once, Twice, Three Trips to the Bathroom" Procol Harem--"A Whiter Shade of Hair" The Beatles--"I Get By with a Little Help From Depends" <>Chicago--"Does anyone know what year it is?" <> The Sweet--"Bathroom Blitz" <> Neil Diamond--"Cherry Maalox" <> Maria Mudaur--"Midnight at the Old Folks Home" |