Mar. 02, 2012
MARMATO, COLOMBIA -- The preparations for the evening Mass on Jan. 15 in the Church of Santa Barbara in Marmato, a mountainside mining village in central Colombia, were ordinary in every detail but one. Shortly before the service began, the village priest, Fr. Carlos Valencia, threaded his way through a tangle of horses and donkey carts into the town square at the wheel of a battered jeep. As he arrived, the bell in the church tower rang out. Inside the brick church, candles were lit as people from the village -- many dressed in colorful handmade clothes, decorative ponchos and heavy leather boots -- gathered beneath rows of brightly glazed ceramic statues of the Virgin and saints. As Valencia commenced the Mass, the only thing out of the ordinary was the presence behind the altar of a bishop from the United States.
The service was well-attended: With only 700 inhabitants, Marmato is a tight-knit place, and the Catholic church has played a vital role ever since the village was founded when Spanish soldiers spotted gold here in 1540. But even though Valencia welcomed the American bishop --Thomas Gumbleton, who retired after more than 40 years as auxiliary bishop of Detroit -- he offered no explanation for his unusual presence. Perhaps he assumed the villagers had no need for an explanation: In Marmato lately, thanks to a series of highly disruptive conflicts with foreign gold companies who say Marmato sits on gold worth $10 billion at current prices, unexpected events have become commonplace. Some of these surprises have been extremely unwelcome: Just last September, the congregation of Santa Barbara was shocked to learn that Valencia’s predecessor, 36-year-old Fr. José Reinel Restrepo, had been assassinated. And that, as every villager in the church could easily guess, was undoubtedly why the American bishop was in town.
http://ncronline.org/news/global/colombian-gold-mining-village-fights-stay-put
“Rebel Farmers” Feed Cows Condemned To Death After Fukushima
March 11, 2012 will be the
one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster. Almost a year ago, nearly 20,000 people in northeastern Japan died in a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that led to multiple meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. To say that public confidence in the country’s nuclear program has fallen is an understatement. Just on Saturday, the week before the one-year anniversary, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda said that the government “shared the blame” for the disaster and that government officials had indeed been “blinded by a false belief in the country’s technological infallibility” and “too steeped in a safety myth.”
The massive accident turned 930 square miles of land into a “no go zone” and displaced 80,000 residents living within 20 kilometers of the Fukushima district from their homes.
“Rebel Farmers” Feed Contaminated Livestock They Were Ordered to Slaughter
69-year-old Yukio Yamamoto is one of ten farmers from Namie, which is within the “no go zone,” who is defying government orders to euthanize his 36 black-haired wagyu cows. The cows — once prized for their high-quality beef; each was once worth $10,000 — ingested radioactive caesium and Yamamoto was supposed to kill them by lethal injection. In an interview with the
Guardian, Yamamoto discussed getting a permit to enter the zone to feed his animalion. Says Yamamoto about the six-hour trip he now routinely makes:
“I left like everyone else after 11 March, “I couldn’t stop worrying about my cows, so I started coming back in every other day to feed them.”…
“Straight after the disaster, my cows had nothing to eat or drink … many of them starved to death right where they were tethered.I had to decide whether to leave the ones still alive or keep them healthy, even though we were separated.”
But Yamamoto, who is very likely the last of generations of his family to raise wagyu cows, has not received any feed from the Japanese government. Private donors, including farmers in Australia, have provided him with food for his cows.
“Eventually the feed will run out, and the government has said it will kill every last cow. But that is something I can’t allow to happen. “I could never kill these cows. They are like members of my family.”
Read more:
http://www.care2.com/causes/rebel-farmers-feed-cows-condemned-to-death-after-fukushima.html#ixzz1oMIEi63e
