On the Nature of Things | Forum

http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0615-rio2 ... otest.html

In an symbolic protest of the giant Belo Monte Dam, Friday morning some 300 locals dug a channel in an earthen dam that blocks a portion of the Xingu River and serves as the first step for the controversial hydroelectric project, reports Amazon Watch.

Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0615-rio2 ... z1y0Et9Ya2

Oh FFS...

anderson wrote:Oh FFS...

You're against people fighting for their ancestral homeland against the march of Progress? Or you are incensed that they are destroying the lives of these peoples without consideration?

Which side are you for genuflect saking?

Progress comes and will come. Electrification is progress. In a country like Brazil, hydro is the most no-brainer choice imaginable for power development. These folks may not get that yet, but it is.
My perspective is that this is like protesting gravity. Every river valley there is some people's "ancestral home," just as probably every valley on earth is someone's ancestral homeland. If you take it too seriously it never ends and everyone ends up living in the trees dying of preventable diseases. I suppose it is a natural human reaction what they are doing, and they can do their song and dance, but in the end it is a pointless exercise. The stream moves on with you or without you.

anderson wrote:Progress comes and will come. Electrification is progress. In a country like Brazil, hydro is the most no-brainer choice imaginable for power development. These folks may not get that yet, but it is.

It's not a matter of 'not getting it'. It's a matter of, "My home is being put under water."

My perspective is that this is like protesting gravity. Every river valley there is some people's "ancestral home," just as probably every valley on earth is someone's ancestral homeland. If you take it too seriously it never ends and everyone ends up living in the trees dying of preventable diseases. I suppose it is a natural human reaction what they are doing, and they can do their song and dance, but in the end it is a pointless exercise. The stream moves on with you or without you.

Sure. But I have sympathy for them, and it's an interesting cause. Not my issue obviously, but worth noting.

anderson wrote:Progress comes and will come. Electrification is progress. In a country like Brazil, hydro is the most no-brainer choice imaginable for power development. These folks may not get that yet, but it is.
My perspective is that this is like protesting gravity. Every river valley there is some people's "ancestral home," just as probably every valley on earth is someone's ancestral homeland. If you take it too seriously it never ends and everyone ends up living in the trees dying of preventable diseases. I suppose it is a natural human reaction what they are doing, and they can do their song and dance, but in the end it is a pointless exercise. The stream moves on with you or without you.

Remember my part about the "Just because one is enticed by such prospects doesn't mean one has to be blinded by it" ?

Yeah, I remember. Off the mark then, off the mark by another factor of magnitude yet now.
Protesting a power dam in a developing nation is stupid. I'm sure the government is compensating and relocating these people. I can sympathize with the quaint, old fashioned romantic connection of a person and their family to one particular ancestral clod of earth over all others, but what to say. If you want to develop a country and its people, these sorts of things need to happen.

anderson wrote:Yeah, I remember. Off the mark then, off the mark by another factor of magnitude yet now.
Protesting a power dam in a developing nation is stupid. I'm sure the government is compensating and relocating these people. I can sympathize with the quaint, old fashioned romantic connection of a person and their family to one particular ancestral clod of earth over all others, but what to say. If you want to develop a country and its people, these sorts of things need to happen.

It's also yet another great cash extortion opportunity for the Greenpeace type of NGOs.

Very bourgeois way of looking at it anderson. These people cannot be compensated. Losing one's ancestral homeland isn't like losing your cul de sac to an on ramp. Though regardless of circumstances, compensation is never a reasonable value. When you get compensates for your home when an on ramp comes, it is fair market value based on the value post on ramp announcement.

It isn't stupid to protest the loss of your home so that people in a city somewhere far away can have electricity.

Is it stupid of me to want to protest hydrfracking because it threatens NYC's water supply?

Enki wrote:Very bourgeois way of looking at it anderson. . . .

Are you using "bourgeois" as a derogatory term?

Enki wrote: . . .

Is it stupid of me to want to protest hydrfracking because it threatens NYC's water supply?

How does it do that?

Bourgeois? Quite the opposite. I support the physical economic development of the people of Brazil. Personally, I think it's pretty bourgeois elitist for educated, wealthy liberal environmentalists in America who couldn't do without electricity for 5 minutes protesting about developments in a poorer country that would give others the same technological infrastructure they take for granted. And all because of some Romantic Roussean "noble savage" sentimentality. About as bourgeois as it gets.

Is it stupid for you to protest fraccing in upstate New York?
Well, if you just a priori assume that it is harmful to water supplies, then I guess it would be internally logically consistent for you to protest.
Given the relative lack of scientific evidence to support that assumption, and given that it makes little geologic sense how fraccing miles underground would affect water supplies located within a few hundred yards of the surface however, it wouldn't make much sense to protest it, no.

The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

anderson wrote:

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

Well considering that they don't have electricity yet........

anderson wrote:. . the quaint, old fashioned romantic connection of a person and their family to one particular ancestral clod of earth over all others, but what to say. If you want to develop a country and its people, these sorts of things need to happen.

We get this kind of sentimentalist nonsense all the time up here. Nor does it have anything to do with people being displaced or traditional lifestyles disappearing. It's about one's perspective on the future.

Hoosiernorm wrote:

anderson wrote:

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

Well considering that they don't have electricity yet........

if they had electricity, they could get Dick Cheney to bid blowing up that levy.....

Hoosiernorm wrote:

anderson wrote:

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

Well considering that they don't have electricity yet........

Ha! One of those annoying catch 22's life throws at you. Modern technology makes Luddite advocacy so much more effective.

anderson wrote:

Hoosiernorm wrote:

anderson wrote:

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

Well considering that they don't have electricity yet........

Ha! One of those annoying catch 22's life throws at you. Modern technology makes Luddite advocacy so much more effective.

Amen brother. Especially from a distance of 500 miles or more.....

As long as I am comfortable....... I can advocate ______ for THEM way over there. No skin off my nose......

Fascinating to see how many viewpoints a single picture can generate.
How do we know that those opposing electricity are not racists? Are they giving up usage of electricity in their own lives?
Are they premptively preventing future economic or military or resource competition from those who desire modernization?
Do the people on the dam represent the 1% or the 42% or the 99% of the locals?
Would real oppressors airdrop shovels or dynamite or ipods to those dam people?

New heartfelt motto: "SAVE THE DAM PEOPLE!!!!!"

Simple Minded wrote:

anderson wrote:

Hoosiernorm wrote:

anderson wrote:

Enki wrote:The protestors who dug that trench are the people who are being displaced.

The website however is operated by American environmentalists though.

Well considering that they don't have electricity yet........

Ha! One of those annoying catch 22's life throws at you. Modern technology makes Luddite advocacy so much more effective.

Amen brother. Especially from a distance of 500 miles or more.....

As long as I am comfortable....... I can advocate ______ for THEM way over there. No skin off my nose......

Fascinating to see how many viewpoints a single picture can generate.
How do we know that those opposing electricity are not racists? Are they giving up usage of electricity in their own lives?
Are they premptively preventing future economic or military or resource competition from those who desire modernization?
Do the people on the dam represent the 1% or the 42% or the 99% of the locals?
Would real oppressors airdrop shovels or dynamite or ipods to those dam people?

New heartfelt motto: "SAVE THE DAM PEOPLE!!!!!"

Thank you Very Much for your post, Simple Minded.

Recalling Hiero's Journey.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_E ... ro_Desteen

New heartfelt motto: "SAVE THE DAM PEOPLE!!!!!"

Here they are.........



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