Barro Blanco petition almost at target signatures

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small_MG_4537Some household issues: Our website has suffered some serious mishap towards the end of last year. First we moved away from GoDaddy as our hosting provider, because of their support for - and then their flip-flopping about - draconian copyright protection law proposals. Furthermore, they have a take-down policy that allows just about anyone to have your website taken offline by them based on even the flimsiest copyright claims, which is a phenomenon that is unfortunately becoming all too common in the US. So, we're now hosted by Servage.net, on servers in Germany. If ever the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative comes in effect, we'll move there.

But that wasn't the end of our troubles. One way or the other, some malicious script managed to insert malicious code into our php pages almost every night - a major pain in the butt to clean up and the cause wasn't clear. We finally decided to re-install and rebuild the website from scratch, which seems to have solved the issue, at least so far.

That, in turn, resulted in messages not reaching our newsroom! This entire introduction, dear reader, serves to explain why we haven't reported earlier on a noble initiative by Mrs. Cathy White; an online petition to stop the construction of the hydroelectric dam Barro Blanco, in the Tabasare river on the border of the Ngobe Bugle comarca.

That project, of which our president Ricardo Martinelli is reportedly a shareholder, is an insult to anyone with any understanding of environmental issues and human rights, and a disaster for the people who actually live in the area. I know, because I went there to investigate for a radio documentary.

The petition has a stated goal of 28,000 signatures, and it stands now at 27,419. That's just a small part of our daily page views here on this site, so if you read this, please go here and sign. And then ask your family and friends to sign too.

This dam should not be built. A petition alone isn't gonna stop it, but it'll show the "entrepreneurs" and financiers behind it - not in the least the Dutch government owned FMO bank - that there are enough people willing to stick their neck out to prevent this train wreck from happening. The courageous Ngobe people have already shown that their willing to do the heavy lifting required to end the robbery of their resources.

One thought on “Barro Blanco petition almost at target signatures

  1. Panama and it’s People do not need “Carbon Tax Credits” which are the true purpose of these dams.

    As usual here in Panama only a very select few will profit from these so-called public funded fiasco’s!

    When a Government sells out its own people for such non-sense as the “CARBON TAX” to which the usefulness becomes negligence to its own citizens, financed by transnational foreign interests and Corporations to enhance their own monetary bottom line, bearing them over the top profits by deception without any form of regard for those they displace, which condemns them to intrinsic poverty and malnutrition for too many generations to come.

    Why not build more energy inefficient buildings which conserve nothing, just energy hoggs which strip the people of a livable cost for energy! Shopping malls and office buildings that consume over 65% of this countries electrical energy being subsidized by the Power Companies and the Government. Simple conservation, retro fitting of these malls and office buildings with double pane glazing, proper fire retardant insulation, double door type air lock main entry entrances, energy saving lights, and fixtures would help to elevate up to 25% of the energy that these inefficiently built structures consume. Until Panama wises up and starts to build and retro fits these malls and business offices buildings with energy savings in mind and support the “Green Way” it will need way too many dams, Petrol and Coal fired Power plants to keep up with that wasteful energy consumption that will change Panama into a overly polluted air and toxic waste dump!

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