Farmers Beat Back Police In Battle Over Pollution

[drool_n_yank]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/12/AR2005061201531.html?sub=AR

For Chinese, Peasant Revolt Is Rare Victory
Farmers Beat Back Police In Battle Over Pollution

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, June 13, 2005; Page A01

By the time dawn broke, up to 20,000 peasants from the half-dozen villages that make up Huaxi township had responded to the alarm, participants recounted, and they were in no mood to bow to authority. For four years, they had been complaining that industrial pollution was poisoning the land, stunting the crops and fouling the water in their fertile valley
A pitched battle erupted that soggy morning between enraged farmers and badly outnumbered police. By the end of the day, high-ranking officials had fled in their black sedans and hundreds of policemen had scattered in panic while farmers destroyed their vehicles. It was a rare triumph for the peasants, rising up against the all-powerful Communist Party government.

[humus]

1. wendell berry quote

Along with all the rest of the world's people, we have inherited
ancient instructions for the stewardship and good husbandry of the
earth, with clear warnings, now significantly verified, of the
disasters
that will (and already do) attend our failure. We have responded by
continuing our elaborately rationalized destructions. But bad
precedent
is no excuse for bad behavior. The Bush attitude toward the natural
(God-given) world is sacrilegious and wildly uneconomic.

[mom cat]

4. Thanks for the quote and welcome to DU

:hi:

[xxqqqzme]

2. but what happened the day after?

n/t

[lonestarnot]

3. Woohooo power to the people!

[brainshrub]

5. Read between the lines.

These peasants are fighting against being poisoned by western corporations.

[Coventina]

6. These people are "dead men walking"

The Chinese gov't is going to come back with a vengeance.

It ain't gonna be pretty.

[BiggJawn]

7. 180 degrees from here....

Here in the "Heartland", guess who the biggest polluters are?

Yep. "Agri-Business"...Fertilizer and pig shit run-offs fouling the creeks, Pesticide "blow-over", fuel spills, the STINK from the large-scale chicken and pig operations...

The puke-stink from AE Staley's 2 plants here...(they do something with corn)