Archive
Archive for April, 2009
Peru Dispatches
April 24th, 2009
These are Ashaninka Indians from the remote village of Tenkarini in the Peruvian Amazon Basin, roughly midway between the eastern ridge of the Andes and Brazil. The woman on the left is Noemi, the village shamen, who led an Ayahuasca ceremony in which I participated and wrote about for Killing the Buddha. My New Republic piece about the local threat posed by illegal loggers and, increasingly, oil and gas development, can be found here. Many thanks to the Cool Earth Foundation and Tropicana for sponsoring my trip.
Tea Parties & Astro Turf
April 21st, 2009
I was recently on Grit TV with Laura Flanders discussing the Tea Party I attended in Morristown, New Jersey, as well as the Alternet article I wrote with my old Moscow colleagues Mark Ames and Yasha Levine. There was another Tea Party later that night in downtown Manhattan, but I didn’t have it in me to attend another one of these things, which are part GOP convention floor, part Minutemen rally.
Ireland Dispatch
April 10th, 2009
I have a new piece up at The Nation concerning a land-use conflict in remote northwest Ireland. Royal Dutch Shell wants to build a raw-gas pipeline and refinery. The small coastal community effected wants Shell to process the gas offshore. The elements and dynamics of the story are familiar enough, but the tenacity with which the locals have been fighting this one for a decade is truly inspiring. The activists have suffered prison, police beatings, and constant electronic surveillance since they began their resistance in 2000. They are some of the toughest bastards you will ever meet, in the best possible way.
Photo by Andrew Beardsworth.
