Thursday, February 7, 2008

South Americans Empowered by Technology


Can't get enough of those South American power to the people via technology news stories. An email blast from NYC's Mean Red hipped me to this one. It's the continuation to where John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hit Man left off, with strategies to use global techniques to fight back against corporate global domination. In Ecuador the Shuar tribe is getting loked to fight off the oil companies sequestering of tribal lands and demolition of the rain forest. A nonprofit out of Virgina has equipped the tribes-people with GPS devices to successfully map the forest. The devices aid them in "territorial vigilance" - they chart and deleniate boundaries to assert their interests. In other words they have lawyers and the shit is written out and documented so they can prove they own the land when the bulldozers show up illegally.

Next I read about Facebook bringing about global protest against guerrilla terrorist group The Farc in Colombia:

The protesters waved flags and wore T-shirts with the slogan: "No more kidnapping, no more lies, no more deaths, no more Farc." Some estimates put the number of people protesting in Bogota at between 500,000 and two million. The protest was started less than a month ago on the social networking website Facebook by a 33-year-old engineer, Oscar Morales, from his home in Barranquilla on Colombia's Caribbean coast. Over 250,000 Facebook users signed on, and the movement was taken up by newspapers and radio and television stations across the country...BBC News

When government fails, Google Earth and social media prevail. I'm hoping Bay Area techies work on Superfriends powers next - like Wonder Twin rings available at Radioshack.

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