I can’t believe how long it has been since I’ve last blogged on here. Going to rectify that this weekend and begin using this again. Lots has happened since my last entry and it feels like we need to catch up my friends and I need to share

Erika

I am enclosing his letter in its entirety below…. let’s get ready to rumble, for I can hardly imagine the church is not going not going to go to arms over this.
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Tommy,

As you know, for ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego. Their public sponsorship of Proposition 8, a hate-filled legislation that succeeded in taking away the civil rights of gay and lesbian citizens of California – rights that were granted them by the Supreme Court of our state – shames us.

I called and wrote and implored you, as the official spokesman of the church, to condemn their actions. I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated.

In that first conversation, back at the end of October of last year, you told me you were horrified, that you would get to the bottom of it and “heads would roll.” You promised action. Ten months passed. No action was forthcoming. The best you offered was a weak and carefully worded press release, which praised the church’s human rights record and took no responsibility. Even that, you decided not to publish.

The church’s refusal to denounce the actions of these bigots, hypocrites and homophobes is cowardly. I can think of no other word.  Silence is consent, Tommy. I refuse to consent.

I joined the Church of Scientology thirty-five years ago. During my twenties and early thirties I studied and received a great deal of counseling. While I have not been an active member for many years, I found much of what I learned to be very helpful, and I still apply it in my daily life. I have never pretended to be the best Scientologist, but I openly and vigorously defended the church whenever it was criticized, as I railed against the kind of intolerance that I believed was directed against it. I had my disagreements, but I dealt with them internally. I saw the organization – with all its warts, growing pains and problems – as an underdog. And I have always had a thing for underdogs.

But I reached a point several weeks ago where I no longer knew what to think. You had allowed our name to be allied with the worst elements of the Christian Right. In order to contain a potential “PR flap” you allowed our sponsorship of Proposition 8 to stand. Despite all the church’s words about promoting freedom and human rights, its name is now in the public record alongside those who promote bigotry and intolerance, homophobia and fear.

The fact that the Mormon Church drew all the fire, that no one noticed, doesn’t matter. I noticed. And I felt sick. I wondered how the church could, in good conscience, through the action of a few and then the inaction of its leadership, support a bill that strips a group of its civil rights.

This was my state of mind when I was online doing research and chanced upon an interview clip with you on CNN. The interview lasted maybe ten minutes – it was just you and the newscaster. And in it I saw you deny the church’s policy of disconnection. You said straight-out there was no such policy, that it did not exist.

I was shocked. We all know this policy exists. I didn’t have to search for verification – I didn’t have to look any further than my own home.

You might recall that my wife was ordered to disconnect from her parents because of something absolutely trivial they supposedly did twenty-five years ago when they resigned from the church. This is a lovely retired couple, never said a negative word about Scientology to me or anyone else I know – hardly raving maniacs or enemies of the church. In fact it was they who introduced my wife to Scientology.

Although it caused her terrible personal pain, my wife broke off all contact with them. I refused to do so. I’ve never been good at following orders, especially when I find them morally reprehensible.

For a year and a half, despite her protestations, my wife did not speak to her parents and they had limited access to their grandchild. It was a terrible time.

That’s not ancient history, Tommy. It was a year ago.

And you could laugh at the question as if it was a joke? You could publicly state that it doesn’t exist?

To see you lie so easily, I am afraid I had to ask myself: what else are you lying about?

And that is when I read the recent articles in the St. Petersburg Times.  They left me dumbstruck and horrified.

These were not the claims made by “outsiders” looking to dig up dirt against us. These accusations were made by top international executives who had devoted most of their lives to the church. Say what you will about them now, these were staunch defenders of the church, including Mike Rinder, the church’s official spokesman for 20 years!

Tommy, if only a fraction of these accusations are true, we are talking about serious, indefensible human and civil rights violations. It is still hard for me to believe.  But given how many former top-level executives have said these things are true, it is hard to believe it is all lies.

“…the same face that denied the policy of disconnection”

And when I pictured you assuring me that it is all lies, that this is nothing but an unfounded and vicious attack by a group of disgruntled employees, I am afraid that I saw the same face that looked in the camera and denied the policy of disconnection. I heard the same voice that professed outrage at our support of Proposition 8, who promised to correct it, and did nothing.

I carefully read all of your rebuttals, I watched every video where you presented the church’s position, I listened to all your arguments – ever word. I wish I could tell you that they rang true. But they didn’t.

I was left feeling outraged, and frankly, more than a little stupid.

And though it may seem small by comparison, I was truly disturbed to see you provide private details from confessionals to the press in an attempt to embarrass and discredit the executives who spoke out. A priest would go to jail before revealing secrets from the confessional, no matter what the cost to himself or his church. That’s the kind of integrity I thought we had, but obviously the standard in this church is far lower – the public relations representative can reveal secrets to the press if the management feels justified. You even felt free to publish secrets from the confessional in Freedom Magazine – you just stopped short of labeling them as such, probably because you knew Scientologists would be horrified, knowing you so easily broke a sacred vow of trust with your parishioners.

How dare you use private information in order to label someone an “adulteress?” You took Amy Scobee’s most intimate admissions about her sexual life and passed them onto the press and then smeared them all over the pages your newsletter! I do not know the woman, but no matter what she said or did, this is the woman who joined the Sea Org at 16! She ran the entire celebrity center network, and was a loyal senior executive of the church for what, 20 years? You want to rebut her accusations, do it, and do it in the strongest terms possible – but that kind of character assassination is unconscionable.

So, I am now painfully aware that you might see this an attack and just as easily use things I have confessed over the years to smear my name. Well, luckily I have never held myself up to be anyone’s role model.

The great majority of Scientologists I know are good people who are genuinely interested in improving conditions on this planet and helping others. I have to believe that if they knew what I now know, they too would be horrified. But I know how easy it was for me to defend our organization and dismiss our critics, without ever truly looking at what was being said; I did it for thirty-five years. And so, after writing this letter, I am fully aware that some of my friends may choose to no longer associate with me, or in some cases work with me. I will always take their calls, as I always took yours. However, I have finally come to the conclusion that I can no longer be a part of this group. Frankly, I had to look no further than your refusal to denounce the church’s anti-gay stance, and the indefensible actions, and inactions, of those who condone this behavior within the organization. I am only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.

Sincerely,

Paul Haggis

Ps. I’ve attached our email correspondence.  At some point it became evident that you did not value my concerns about the church’s tacit support of an amendment that violated the civil rights of so many of our citizens. Perhaps if you had done a little more research on me, the church’s senior management wouldn’t have dismissed those concerns quite so cavalierly. While I am no great believer in resumes and awards, this is what you would have discovered:

* Founder, Artists For Peace and Justice,
- sponsoring schools, an orphanage and a children’s hospital in the slums of Haiti
* Co-Founder, BrandAid Foundation and BrandAid Project
- marketing the work of artisans from the poorest countries in the world,
* Board Member, Office of The Americas
- supporting peace and justice initiatives around the world
* Board Member, Center For The Advancement of Non-Violence
* Member and active supporter, Amnesty International
* Member, President’s Council, Defenders of Wildlife
* Member and fundraiser, Environment California and CalPirg
* Member and Award Recipient, American Civil Liberties Union
* Member and supporter, Death Penalty Focus
* Member and supporter, Equality For All
* Fundraiser, NPH (Our Little Brothers) – for the children of the slums of Haiti
* Member, Citizens Commission on Human Rights
* Patron with Honors, IAS
And formerly:
* Trustee, Religious Freedom Trust
* Board Member and fundraiser, Hollywood Education and Literacy Project
* Board Member and fundraiser, For The Arts, For Every Child
– supporting art and music in public schools
* Board Member and fundraiser, The Christic Institute
- supporting Human Rights in Central America
* Founding Board Member, Earth Communication Office
* Working Board Member, Environmental Media Association
* Fundraiser, El Rescate – Human Rights for El Salvador
* Fundraiser, PAVA – Aid and Human Rights in Guatemala

Awards for outspoken support of Civil and Human Rights:

* Valentine Davies Award – Writers Guild of America
“for bringing honor and dignity to writers everywhere”
*Bill of Rights Award – American Civil Liberties Union
*Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award – Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
*Peace & Justice Award – Office of the Americas, presented by Daniel Ellsberg
*Signis Award, Venezia, World Catholic Association
*ALMA Award – National Council of Latino Civil Rights
*Ethel Levitt Award for Humanitarian Service – Levitt & Quinn
*Prism Award – Entertainment Industries Council
*Humanitas Prize (2) – Humanitas
*Legacy Award, for Artistic and Humanitarian Achievement
*Environmental Media Award – EMA
*EMA Green Seal Award – EMA
*Image Award – NAACP
*Creative Integrity Award – Multicultural Motion Picture Association
*EDGE Awards (2) – Entertainment Industries Council
*Artistic Freedom Award – City of West Hollywood
*Catholics in Media Award – Catholics in Media Associates

And many dozens of fundraisers and salons at our home on behalf of Human and Civil Rights, the Environment, the Peace Movement, Education, Justice and Equality.

I have an ex that I cared for very much but whom I treated horribly and to whom I lied to, among other things. I won’t excuse my behavior, there are no excuses. I felt I had reasons to back then, reasons that I can see now were nothing but my own excuses to justify doing so. I wanted the “happily ever after” with him but didn’t (or didn’t want to) see that all the crap that I was doing would guarantee that I never had that with him. What I wanted, I ended up destroying. After our breakup he tried to reach out to me and at least be friends. Being the stupid girl I was, I rejected all his efforts. You see I was hurt, although I had no reason to be, and that put me on the defensive. I will also admit that because I was hurt, I set out to intentionally hurt him at the time. Once again, no excuses since there are none to be had. I wasted a big part of his life and know that I hurt him terribly. This is not something I am proud of.

Consider this my public apology and admittance of guilt. I hurt you J without having reason to do so. I don’t hate you. I never did and never could. You were there for me when I needed you. You wiped my tears when I cried and held me when I needed comforting. You took care of me when no one else would. You were everything any girl could (and does) want and I didn’t appreciate what I had in you/with you. You gave me so much and I threw it back in your face. I didn’t deserve you then and never will. You deserved someone far better than me. I can’t take back what I did but know that I regret it all. I don’t wish I had never met you and if given the chance, I would never erase my memories of you, and us.

I know that we spent a lifetime together and you will always be a part of my life, my heart. A part of me. I will always love and treasure our memories together. I still think of you when I go someplace we used to hang out (which are many) and know that when I go back to New York, you will be everywhere. Know that you always cross my mind and that I still wake up reaching out for you. I wish you all the happiness in the world J. Please take care of yourself, for I would truly hate to hear that something has happened to you.

I will always love you.

~Erika

Right now we have been told that the fire will not be contained until September 18, meaning sadly enough, that more homes might be lost. My favorite haunt, Mount Wilson, has no hopes of being saved and now its just a matter of when it goes up in flames. Vital television, radio and communications center are in danger of being destroyed which would really disrupt and disable tv, radio and cell services.
Here are a couple of pictures from the fire and this is what I have been seeing from my home since this all started.

I read an article just now that made me sick to my stomach… I have seen many things so it takes something truly horrible to get to me.

According to MSNBC a San Antonio mother dismembered and ate parts of her 3 1/2 week old baby.  Otty Sanchez claims that the devil made her do it. Police Chief, William McManus, said that the scene was so gruesome that he could not really speak about it and that everyone on the scene was shocked and could barely speak.

They found the baby  dismembered in the bedroom with three of his toes chewed off, his face torn away, his head severed and his brains ripped out. When the cops showed up to the house they found the woman sitting on a couch screaming “I killed my baby!” with a wound to her chest and her throat partially slashed. She ate the babies brain and some of his body parts before stabbing herself.

The woman is being charged with capital murder for the death of her son. She was treated at the hospital and is being held on a million dollar bail.

The murder of the baby happened a week after his father moved out of the home. There were other people in the home (the woman’s sister and her other 2 children, ages 5 & 7) that were unharmed.

The woman’s aunt said that her niece had been in and out of a psychiatric ward and that a hospital called several months ago to check up on her. She also said that her niece didn’t mean to do it because she was not in her right mind.

That leads me and the writer of the article to assume that she will use postpartum depression and/or some form of psychosis as her defense. The article writer mentions 2 other mothers that are well recognized for committing henious crimes against their children. Andrea Yates who drowned her 5 children in her house back in 2001 because Satan was inside her and she had to save her children from hell. And Dena Schlosser who sliced off her 10 month old daughter’s arms, killing her, in order to give her to God. Both women were found not guilty by reason of insanity.

This really makes me point out a few things:

1) Religion is a bitch!! Sanchez killed her baby because the devil made her do it. Yates had the devil inside her and she was saving her kids from hell and Schlosser killed her baby to give her to God…… damn I will stick to being Wiccan thank you very much if this is what comes out of religion!

2) We have to obtain licenses to drive a  car and to own a pet… but anyone can have a kid?!?! I’m sorry but when I read shit like this it makes me wonder why we don’t consider making women take classes and pass a test before having kids.

3) We should make those that want to ban abortions read these articles and meet abused children. That would be a nice wakeup call.

4) This is going to bring me some backlash but: should we not give the state the power to sterilize insane women in the hopes that it would stop the Yates’, Sanchez’s and Schlosser’s of the world??

5) How old was the sister that was in the house when this murder occurred? The baby must have screamed as he was being cut up, did no one hear him?

6) If her family and the baby’s father knew that she was not right in her mind, as she was in and out of the looney bin, why the hell did they not monitor her? Why would they leave a woman like her alone with 3 children since the sister is obviously either young or good for nothing?! and most importantly, why did they not make sure she was getting the help she needed?!?!?!

7) I hope that the baby died quickly so that he did not suffer much

Outside the scene of the horrible murder

Amazon Acquisitions

How awesome is this? All credit goes to MeetTheBoss for creating this visualization (better quality image available when you click on the picture), but it was too good not to share it with you.

It’s a visual representation of Amazon’s acquisitions and investments from 1998 until its most recent purchase of Zappos for a reported $928 million.

The image shows the giant Internet retailer was extremely active in 1999 and 2001 and significantly scaled back investments and buy-outs after the dotcom bubble burst, but has been picking up the pace, particularly since last year.

Who will be next on the map?

From Erika: too bad we can’t get discounts from all these places as IMDb employees

80 dogs in all were found throughout the 2 story house, with one found even in the stove. There were 3 female Chihuahuas who had recent litters of puppies.

Dog rescued the in-home puppy raid

Now look, I watch a lot of shows on Animal Planet and have seen their version on “Cops” where the SPCA is called out to rescue animals in need. Sometimes they will walk into something like this and the person guilty did it just because in their minds they were taking care of the animals. Misguided and stupid but at least their intentions were noble, in a way. This woman did it for the profit. So in my mind she is nothing but a cold-blooded bitch. I can guarantee you that most of these dogs will not be suitable for adoption and will be uethenized. Through no fault of their own, these poor dogs find themselves in this horrible situation where the most probable outcome will have them facing a needle that will end their lives.

Please people, if you have a pet make sure that it is spayed or neutered. If you find an animal, please make sure that you can take care of it before you take it in. If you have your allowed maximum number of pets then please try to find other alternatives for the care of the animal. I knew a woman that loved rescuing cats, that was her thing, but it became an issue when she started “collecting” these animals. I have rescued many animals in my day (as of 2 days ago, I am now the proud owner of a bearded lizard that needed a new home) but I take these animals in knowing that I will be finding them new homes. All I am saying is if you can’t take care of an animal then don’t assume responsibility of one and if you have your 4 allowed pets then please don’t take anymore in. Sometimes although we think we are helping an animal by taking it in, we are doing more damage than good.

In you live in Monmouth County and would like a pet, please find out about rescuing one of these guys as soon as they are adoptable.

15. White Bread Demon

“Bread is swell, but what I’m really excited about is eating jelly made from the blood of the innocent!”

White Bread Demon

14. French Suicide Sausage
It’s enough to make you want to eat Kosher forever.

French Suicide Sausage

13. A Girl Around The House

It’s nice to have a girl around the house… especially if you are a psychopath serial killer who makes women into rugs!

A Girl Around The House

12. Chubby

Who needs self-esteem when you can have a free fashion book for chubbies? Also, proving that advertising weight representation has always been screwed up, the girl pictured is totally not chubby.

Chubby

11. Christmas Weapons

The family that guns together, has funs together.

Christmas Weapons

10. Eye patch. Shirt. Baby Tiger

Sexy?

Eye patch. Shirt. Baby Tiger

9. Chase & Sandborn Spanking

She totally deserves it. Seriously, what kind of woman doesn’t “store test” for fresher coffee?

Chase & Sandborn Spanking

8. Fry’s Chocolate Nightmare

Nothing wants to make consumers buy chocolate more than 5 faces of a sickly kid looking 5 different shades of miserable.

Fry's Chocolate Nightmare

7. Root Beer Baby!

Mama, please DO NOT give your baby another glass of Root Beer. It is clearly doing something horrible to him. He is terrifying.

Root Beer Baby!

6. Locked Out

You better wash out your privates with Lysol, or your husband will install cartoon locks on the door.

Locked Out

5. Pears Soap Disaster

“Pears Soap- now with such a soothing lather, you won’t notice that your baby has gotten into a horrible accident!”

Pears Soap Disaster

4. Postage Meter Murder

“Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” This is a truly important question and makes us want to buy a new postage meter.

Postage Meter Murder

3. Shave Yourself

The old man baby’s gonna sing karaoke into a razor! Hooray!

Shave Yourself

2. Baby Soft

JonBenét Ramsey, eat your heart out. (Too soon?) This ad makes us want to scream, gouge out our eyes and then barf.

Baby Soft

1. Chocolate Poulain

Drink that cocoa, or this clown will murder you in your sleep.

Chocolate Poulain

Posted on Retrocomedy.com, Weirdomatic, Livejournal & the fabulous Plan 59!

This loophole only came to light when the investigation of a 16 year old runaway girl working at Cheaters Gentlemen’s Club brought it forward. When they tried to put the club’s owner in jail they found out they couldn’t because of this law. While the law states that “anybody who employs a person under the age of 18 for prostitution whoring or any other lewd or indecent act can be thrown in prison” it seems that the term “lewd or indecent” is subjective and therefore makes it very difficult to send anyone to jail since it doesn’t stop a girl from stripping.

As you can imagine this has upset many and officials are hard at work at changing ordinances to prevent this from happening again.

I understand that some people were complaining because they felt this was unfair towards the girls. One argument was that this is an honest way for some of these young girls to support themselves without needing to commit a crime. While I can understand that to some extent, I can’t agree. As a mother of 2 almost teenage daughters, I would kill either one of them if they thought this was the only way in which they could support themselves.

What are you opinions on this?

Peru’s ‘Cold War’ Against Indigenous Peoples

The recent conflict in the Peruvian Amazon is only the most violent symptom of an ongoing cold war being waged by President Alan García and his ruling Aprista party against indigenous groups. Besides a racist propaganda campaign and violent repression, the government has tried highly suspect legal mechanisms to disarticulate indigenous power.

Government propaganda is aimed at pushing a free market economic development model with a strong focus on trade and natural resource exploitation. García has issued a series of decrees required by the U.S.-Peru free trade agreement (FTA) to open up the Amazon to exploration and exploitation of its natural resources. A recent study shows García’s initiative projects to concession off blocs covering up to 72 percent of Peru’s Amazon to oil and gas companies.

In the process, the García administration has placed its free market ideology on a collision course with collective indigenous land and natural resource rights, which are protected under international law. But the plan backfired amid the government’s response to opposition and its brutal repression of indigenous protestors. A recent poll found that 92 percent of Peruvians support the indigenous cause against the Amazon decrees.

The most despised of García’s decrees were repealed. But the government has nonetheless continued a low-intensity conflict against Peru’s indigenous groups. For García, a central tactic has involved trying to associate indigenous groups with Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales. In a recent statement, clearly alluding to his left-leaning rivals, García said, “Peru is living a cold war against foreign leaders.”

But even before the violence broke out in the Amazon, the real cold war was the one being waged by García against Peru’s indigenous peoples. The battle in the Amazon was the violent culmination of months of government harassment and low-intensity conflict. Despite stirring up intense opposition, García seems intent on pushing forward with his unpopular agenda.

The Propaganda War

Even prior to the formal implementation of the FTA with the United States last February, García was already laying down the foundation for his cold war. In October 2007, he penned an opinion piece titled “El syndrome del perro del hortelano,” or the syndrome of the barnyard dog, for the Lima-based daily El Comercio. The title compares those advocating for the protection of the Amazon’s resources to a barnyard dog growling over food that it does not eat but will not let others have. Besides insinuating a racist comparison between indigenous peoples and dogs, García blamed his opponents – singling out indigenous – for standing in the way of Peru’s development via foreign capital.

Map of Aidesep-affiliated communities. Click for larger version.

Since Peru’s congress ratified the FTA, García has twice faced off against Amazon indigenous groups over the natural resources in their territories. On both occasions – in August 2008 and the recent uprising in June – García’s decrees sparked large public protests principally led by the Association for the Development of the Peruvian Amazon (Aidesep), Peru’s largest national organization of Amazonian indigenous communities. The President responded to both protests by suspending constitutional guarantees in the restive provinces and the mass deployment of security forces to the regions.

García also made statements intended to frighten Peruvians who have only recently begun to recover from twenty years of political violence. He evoked images of dangerous armed insurgents in an attempt to paint indigenous protests as part of a larger plot to destabilize the country. He resorted to the language of Peru’s brutal civil war in which 75,000 people lost their lives by absurdly blaming the protests on “international communism.”

A police general even blamed indigenous protestors for firing on a helicopter, an act that in reality occurred hundreds of miles of away in an incident with drug-funded Shining Path guerrillas, according to Ideele Magazine. The deliberate confusion of the two events was a clear attempt to draw correlations between the indigenous protests and the armed group that terrorized Peru for so many years.

‘The Communist Threat’

The García administration made outlandish accusations that the main opposition party and the Bolivian and Venezuelan governments were behind the protests. And in an apparent attempt to weaken political opposition, one government-aligned leader of the Congressional Ethics Committee stated her intention to investigate whether sufficient evidence existed to take action against opposition legislators with ties to Alberto Pizango, Aidesep’s President. The indigenous leader was recently forced to flee Peru after the government filed sedition and rebellion charges against him for the violence in Bagua, which was the epicenter of the most recent mobilizations.

García has portrayed the protests as part of a communist plot initiated by Venezuela and Bolivia, but he has publicly admitted to having no evidence for the accusation. Prime Minister Yehude Simon, who has been a key figure of the government’s propaganda campaign, echoed the baseless charges. (Amid public pressure, Simon has since been replaced.) For Simon, it was all part of a vast conspiracy in which Bolivia and Venezuela were trying to weaken Peru’s hydrocarbons industry in an effort to boost their own.

García has backed these accusations with actions. His administration recently launched an investigation into Aidesep by the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI). The President modified APCI’s authority through a much-criticized 2006 statute that greatly enhanced governmental controls over the operations of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This is the second time Aidesep is being investigated by the APCI.

The Legal Machinations

APCI’s mandate includes monitoring NGO projects and activities to ensure that they are in line with the government’s own development goals – in the case of the García administration, free trade and the exploitation of natural resources. As part of this process, the agency requires NGOs receiving international funding and certain state benefits to register with the agency. The law also introduced new enforcement measures that allowed the agency to fine NGOs and even revoke their legal status, barring them from receiving outside funds for non-compliance with ACPI registration and government development directives. In a September 2007 opinion, a Peruvian high court declared parts of the law unconstitutional, but many of the stipulations introduced by García remain.

The timing of the investigations and statements made by APCI officials indicate strong political motivations. The first APCI investigation was launched in August 2008 during intense negotiations between indigenous protestors and the government. At that time, APCI executive director Carlos Pando advised NGOs to abstain from involving themselves in social conflicts because that went against the nature of their work. He expressed being concerned about the influence that certain NGOs had over indigenous communities by providing them with false information that often led them to protest government actions. He also warned them that these activities could lead to the cancellation of NGO’s legal status. By the end of August, however, Congress repealed the controversial decrees and the APCI investigation concluded without result.

The second investigation was announced in May 2009 in the middle of the 60-day standoff in the Amazon. Its announcement sparked widespread condemnation by human rights groups angered by its apparent arbitrariness. Critics of the move noted that APCI was strictly barred from using its fiscal authority to threaten the daily workings of an NGO. They also asserted that the second APCI investigation appeared to violate governmental assurances of objectivity made during an October 2008 thematic hearing on the subject held at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C.

At the same time, the administration was trying to portray indigenous peoples as a threat to the country’s national security, García again labeled indigenous protesters as simple people who failed to understand the true purpose of the decrees opening up the jungle for resource extraction. He asserted that contrary to harming indigenous lands, the decrees were designed to actually protect the Amazon from coca producers, contamination from illegal mining and illegal logging. These assertions were repeated in proclamations published by Peruvian embassies abroad, likely in an attempt to quell the huge global recrimination of his government’s actions.

Local Media Complicity

The national Peruvian media, often accused of representing the interests of the politically and economically powerful, eagerly supported the racist stereotyping of indigenous peoples. Indigenous were routinely portrayed as uneducated or ill prepared and therefore not qualified to participate in any national debate over the future of their country.

A particularly egregious example was a front-page photo of indigenous congresswoman Hilaria Supa, a representative from Cuzco, that appeared in the April 17, 2009, edition of the Peruvian daily El Correo. The photo, published in the middle of the Spring protests, shows a close-up of her handwritten notes that were obviously presented to ridicule the native Quechua speaking congresswoman for her Spanish writing abilities.

The accompanying articles insinuated that congresswoman Supa’s limited Spanish skills were evidence of her lack of preparation for high office, something she only achieved, said the newspaper, because of racial politics. The articles attacking Supa’s credibility did not stop there. They also referenced her previous stands against the García administration’s aggressive free trade policies as examples of her “poor” work as a congresswoman. García echoed these same sentiments when he referred to indigenous protesters as “second-class citizens” who dared to block Peru’s progress.

García’s Utter Failure

Despite all his efforts, García appears to have lost yet another battle in this long cold war against indigenous groups. Once again, the Peruvian Congress has decided to repeal the controversial Amazon decrees – an action García now states he supports in the name of national unity. But the cold war continues and could possibly intensify into open battle, as happened the last time the government provoked the indigenous to protest.

In late June, a congressional committee approved a bill that amends the APCI statute to again allow for broad governmental regulation of NGOs. The new bill allows for the agency to regulate funding from private foreign sources. The law also expressly prohibits NGOs from making any kind of statement that could incite violence – an incredibly broad standard that could be used to criminalize NGOs as well as impose limits on their right to the freedom of expression and association.

Rolando Souza, a congressional ally of disgraced and jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, used the Bagua violence as an example of why the government should monitor the foreign financing of local groups. Congressman Souza singled out Aidesep as the principle reason for the legislative action. Still, those making such arguments have not presented a shred of evidence to support the claim of any foreign involvement.

Meanwhile, a June poll found that García’s approval rating has sunk to a meager 21 percent. Broad sections of Peruvian society continue to take to the streets in protest of the García administration’s policies. In Cuzco campesinos recently declared a general strike to protest the granting of mining concessions totaling 70 percent of their province. Protestors were also demanding the enactment of a new Water Resources Law that declares water a national resource with its usage regulated by the state. Again, the government sent in troops to remove the protestors, resulting in the death of a campesino.

The government also continues to face the repercussions of the events that occurred in Bagua. On July 10, the Peruvian Ombusdman’s Office announced its investigation into the disappearance of Lewis Wassum, a member of an Amazon indigenous community. Wassum was last seen in a photograph published June 8 that showed him being led into a police station in handcuffs. The government and indigenous leaders have also agreed to initiate an investigation into the events in Bagua.

The question remains as to whether or not García will continue his cold war against the country’s indigenous peoples. But one thing seems certain: His administration has refused to back down on its goal of extracting resources from the Amazon, whatever the consequences. Less than two weeks after the Bagua violence, which some rights groups have called the Amazon’s Tiananmen, the government gave a green light to a French oil company to begin drilling for oil in an area of the Amazon inhabited by uncontacted indigenous groups.

Stephen Corry, the director of Survival International, which advocates for indigenous rights worldwide, said, “Anyone who hoped that the dreadful violence of the past few weeks might have made Peru’s government act with a bit more sensitivity towards the indigenous people of the Amazon will be really dismayed at this news.”

Corry continued, “The timing couldn’t be worse – the government is trying to present a more friendly image in public, but as far as the oil companies are concerned, it looks like business as usual.”