http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38067Apologies for chopping this up, trying to meet the spirit of copyright. You need to read the whole thing, you really do.
COLOMBIA-ECUADOR: 'There Are No Plants or Animals Left'
By Constanza Vieira
Credit: Acción Ecológica
BOGOTA, Jun 6 (IPS) - A new U.S. government report acknowledges that coca crops expanded last year in Colombia, despite the heavy herbicide spraying carried out under Plan Colombia, which has been loudly protested by neighbouring Ecuador for causing damages to human and animal health and food crops in border areas.
(snip)
The umbrella group's first study found that a large number of animals, mainly fish, had died. No one has specifically studied the impact of the spraying in rivers and other water sources. "All of the campesinos (peasant farmers) mentioned that a large number of pregnant farm animals had miscarried," said Maldonado.
(snip)
Meanwhile, "among the Colombian population what we found was an extremely high level of depression. The people knew it was the state that was doing this to them, and as a result there was no chance of turning to any official body for help, so they felt abandoned and neglected, and felt the need to leave the area," said Maldonado.
(snip)
But two years later, when they were once again asked to make drawings about the spraying, "the children began to show the bloodshed. What stood out in the drawings were the shooting and armed clashes. There was a major military presence, airplanes that practically filled the entire sheet of paper," he described.
In 2006, when the children were asked to draw a family, "we were absolutely shocked and shaken," said Maldonado.
"First of all, they stopped using colours. They abandoned colour. And second, they stopped drawing mouths. They no longer drew smiles. The only thing they put in were big open eyes, but no ears or mouths. That is a reflection of the children's inability to express what is happening," he said.
(snip)
One little boy, Diego Gonzaga, from the village of El Cóndor near the San Miguel River that marks the border, painted a pig lying upside down, and wrote: "My piggy died. I loved him very much. I was going to buy my uniform to go to school. I ask whoever sees and reads what is in my drawing to help me to be able to finish primary school. There are no plants or animals left."
Next to the San Miguel River is a warning sign that reads: "River polluted by Plan Colombia".
I ask you, what right do we have to do this? People may say we have to stop drugs coming into this country because drugs hurt OUR youth. But how does that give us the right to poison someone else's ground and hurt someone else's children?
GOD DAMN IT WHAT GIVES US THE RIGHT?
And
now they want to do it in Afghanistan, to the opium crop...because for some reason we can't buy up the opium to use in our hospitals for people in pain...instead we will put more people in pain... and we will say we are "fighting terrorism."
Even if it somehow would stop drug abuse in our cities and somehow reduce the risk to US of terrorism...
WHAT GIVES US THE RIGHT?
Please tell me, because I sure as hell don't know.
edited to add link to Afghanistan story
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