has anyone else received this email?
Dear friends who care about our earth.
Judge for yourself if you want to take action.
In the Valle de San Felix, the purest water in Chile runs from 2
rivers,
fed
by 2 glaciers.
Water is a most precious resource, and wars will be fought for it.
Indigenous farmers use the water, there is no
unemployment, and they provide the second largest source of income
for the
area.
Under the glaciers has been found a huge deposit of gold, silver and
other
minerals. To get at these, it would be necessary to break, to destroy
the
glaciers - something never conceived of in the history of the world -
and
to
make 2 huge holes, each as big as a whole mountain, one for
extraction and
one for the mine's rubbish tip.
The project is called PASCUA LAMA. The company is called Barrick
Gold.
The operation is planned by a multi-national company, one of whose
members
is George Bush Senior.
The Chilean Government has approved the project to start this year,
2006.
The only reason it hasn't started yet is because the farmers have got
a
temporary stay of execution.
If they destroy the glaciers, they will not just
destroy the source of specially pure water, but they will permanently
contaminate the 2 rivers so they will never again be fit for human or
animal
consumption because of the use of cyanide and sulphuric acid in the
extraction process.
Every last gramme of gold will go abroad to the
multinational company and not one will be left with the people whose
land
it
is. They will only be left with the poisoned water and the resulting
illnesses.
The farmers have been fighting a long time for their land, but have
been
forbidden to make a TV appeal by a ban from the Ministry of the
Interior.
Their only hope now of putting brakes on this project is to get help
from
international justice.
The world must know what is happening in Chile.
The only place to start changing the world is from here.
We ask you to circulate this message amongst your friends in the
following
way.
Please copy this text, paste it into a new email adding your name and
send
it to everyone in your address book.
Please will the 100th person to receive and sign the petition send it
to
noapascualama@yahoo.ca to
be forwarded to the Chilean government.
No to Pascua Lama Open-cast mine in the Andean
Cordillera on the Chilean-Argentine frontier.
We ask the Chilean Government not to authorize the Pascua Lama
project to
protect the whole of 3 glaciers, the purity of the water of the San
Felix
Valley and El Transito, the quality of the agricultural land of the
region
of Atacama, the
quality of life of the Diaguita people and of the whole population of
the
region.
Signature, City, Country
1/ Easter Bunny, BunnyHole, Bunnytown
I haven't got the email but it appears to be true enough;
"The petition is not now valid in that the e-mail address supplied is no longer collecting or forwarding copies. The Pascua Lama project remains an issue of ongoing concern, however, and interested parties can find updated information on the subject (and a list of government and business officials to contact) at the Mining Watch Canada web site."
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/pascualama.asp
Mining Watch Canada - http://www.miningwatch.ca/index.php?/Barrick/Pascua_Lama_approved