Trapped miners suffer from overweight

Due to loads of work lately, this has been a story largely overlooked by me. Since August 5, 33 miners have been trapped in the San José copper and gold mine in Chile. On August 18, the authorities managed to establish contact with the trapped miners and showed a note saying 'all 33 are ok'.

Apparently it's gonna be a big fuzz to get them out, as it might take up to three or four months before they could dig an escape shaft. The chilean president Pinera already stated the trapped will have to spend their national holiday - September, 18 - inside the mine, and plans have been made for the Chilean and Bolivian president to meet in November to have a joint meeting talking with the miners (one of them is Bolivian).

Have to dig into it later on today, but wanted to share with you already the following CNN coverage, commenting the request on behalf of the chilean authorities for NASA to send a psychologist and a nutritionist:

Also, according to medical records, there are at least nine miners who would be too overweight to fit through the proposed shaft to rescue them, Manalich said.

The miners are believed to have lost about 8 kg (17 pounds) so far during their time in the mine, and officials expect that the overweight miners will be able to be rescued by the time the shaft is completed.

"Believe me, they will lose weight," Manalich said.

Gudynas: The agony and failure of the extractive development model

It's been a while since my last post, I admit. Life has been pretty hectic and surprisingly beautiful at the same time. I'll try to write some stuff down the coming weeks, and randomly post some interesting stuff. In that series - Eduardo Gudynas, from the Centre for Latin American Social Ecology (CLAES) talking about the agony and failure of the extractive development model:

Argentinian actors say no to open pit and nuclear mining

Conciencia Solidaria, an ngo from mineral resources (and multinational mining companies) rich Córdoba, realised a telling clip with a bunch of Argentinian actors explaining the dangers of open pit and nuclear mining. Particularly interesting are their references to the use of toxic chemicals such as cyanide, which has recently been banned by a European Parliament resolution, and the use of water that goes along with these kind of mining projects. The purpose of this clip (in Spanish) - other than awareness raising, obviously - is to have people sign a petition against mass scale open-pit and nuclear mining in Argentina. I've been told the media in Argentina refuse to put in on their air waves... ¡El agua y la vida no se negocian!

Peru is truly making progress

I just read an article that criticised a governmental publicity clip on how "a small group of radical extremists have declared a war on employment and development in Peru out of political and ideological reasons, a war full of lies. All these people want to do is block national and foreign investment. These anti-systemic actors oppose the great benefits derived from processing our natural resources and modernising our infrastructure, in order to maintain the great inequalities that justify this war on employment and development. Warning! SOS! No one should stranglehold Peru!"

As the clip clearly shows, the small group of extremists are the affected communities protesting against the government for it to respect their rights and not to sell out the country. And, lest we forget, the object of reference also includes a set of subversive ngo people and rebellion inciting foreign priests.

The main weakness of the Gardner's Dog rhetoric [el perro del hortelano] is that it all depends who's perspective your interpreting it...

Beats me how you get out of this polarised debate.

World Cup commentaries: Peru is making progress

Although I'm not a big fan of watching football on a screen, the World Cup is an exception. On the watch for nice samba football and spectacular goals, I do enjoy the games, the enthusiasm that surrounds the event and the sudden surge in nationalism that goes with it.

I'm definitely not your football expert, nor the greatest of all commentators. I was quite happy with the commentaries I got on the Belgian tv channels - filling in the boring passes with random anecdotes on the players' stats, where they've been playing for the last ten years, their average number of goals per season, injuries and whatever else you can come up with.

Not so here in Peru. Whenever a team manages to cross the line in the middle of the field in a somewhat organised attacking kind of way, they start raising their voice as if they were about to score the most unbelievable goal of the WC, even though they're so not close to scoring anything. And when they do score, you can plug your ears for a minute or two to overcome the tremendous GOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL GOAL GOAL GOAL (ctd.)!!!!!!!

Those niceties aside, another curious phenomenon takes place when the commentator becomes an advertisement reader. While you're watching the game, hearing names pass by as they're eternally passing the ball to one another, all of a sudden the same voice starts promoting the tv channel you're watching ('the WC channel' - el canál del mundiál), a construction firm or whoever else is an 'official' WC sponsor. These announcements interchange with the tv programme of the night, including a brief summary of a popular soap. To make it even weirder, they also make publicity for the government (propa...ganda?) with statements such as 'With a three-fold increase of the regional governments' budget, Peru is making progress!'. 'El Perú Avanza' just so happens to be the slogan of the government's ruling party...