http://www.alternet.org/story/46015/
The 2006 You Didn't Hear About
(edited )


* Black Mesa Coal shut down its mine on indigenous land in Arizona.

* Labor leader Evo Morales, as president of 
Bolivia, made good on his campaign promises to 
nationalize energy resources and negotiated 
contracts giving the impoverished nation far 
higher percentages of profits from natural-gas 
extraction.

* Achuar people of the Peru-Ecuador rainforest 
blockaded a major oil producer and forced it and 
the Peruvian government to implement 
environmental reforms.

* The Nigerian courts ordered Shell Corporation 
to pay $1.5 billion to the Ijaw people of the 
Niger Delta, who had been fighting the oil 
company for compensation for environmental 
devastation since 2000.

* In Botswana, the ¡San people, called the 
Bushmen, won the court case over their eviction 
from their homeland and the decision restored 
their right to live, hunt, and travel on their 
ancestral lands.

* Congress banned all new oil, gas, and mineral 
drilling leases on the Rocky Mountain Front 
region of Montana.

* The October defeat of attempts to privatize and 
jack up usage fees on the Internet, despite $200 
million in corporate spending on the issue.  A 
new grassroots movement defeated the telecom 
industry's attempt to take over this major new 
zone of global communication for its own profit 
... Net neutrality matters.

* Five central Asian nations -- Kazakhstan, 
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and 
Turkmenistan -- signed a treaty foreswearing 
nuclear weapons anywhere on their considerable 
territory in September, further upsetting the 
Bush Administration which hoped to reserve the 
option of siting a few nukes there.

* Ecuador canceled a contract with Occidental Petroleum.

* Wal-Mart met with major setbacks, starting with 
an ever-increasing bad image around the world, 
thanks to activist exposes.  Domestic sales 
slumped in the U.S.; South Korean sales were so 
dismal that Wal-Mart sold its 16 stores to a 
Koran discount chain; the world's largest 
corporation also announced that it would pull out 
of Germany.

* The European Union struck a blow against the 
reign of the corporations when it adapted the 
Reach Regulation, a set of laws that essentially 
implements the precautionary principle: 
corporations will have to prove that their 
chemicals are safe, rather than requiring 
government agencies to prove they are dangerous.

* Austria banned Monsanto's genetically 
engineered canola and genetically engineered 
corn; Romania banned genetically engineered soy.

* The passage of the Global Warming Solutions Act 
in California is a landmark in states doing what 
the federales refuse to do: address the obscenely 
disproportionate American contribution to climate 
change.

The power of small activist groups, citizens, indigenous tribes, MATTERS.