News of Interest for 2/05/07

Industry is the enemy for barricaded India farmers
Not everyone wants development, it turns out.

"Salim, she says, was trying to defend the family's land, earmarked by India's communist state government of West Bengal for a chemicals hub in a low-tax Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

'"I lost my son, I can't do anything about that, but I can save my land -- even if I have to sacrifice two more of my sons," she said, sitting in the midst of a crowd of angry villagers, a veil half pulled over her face.

"'We want to live by farming, we don't want development.'

"Deep trenches have been dug in every road leading into Nandigram. Every few meters (yards), a barricade of rocks, logs or bricks blocks the way, while knots of angry men keep a wary eye on intruders. Police and government officials dare not enter.

"Six people have been killed and more than 50 injured in weeks of protests since a leaked government document revealed plans to seize 19,000 acres of fertile land on the banks of the Haldi and Hooghly rivers, home to 38 villages and 100,000 people.

"This is just one of several hundred SEZs the Indian government wants to set up across the country in a bid to lure foreign investment and close the gap with China's booming manufacturing sector.

"The problem, in a country of 1.1 billion people, is where to build the factories. Many farmers are unwilling to give up their land for cash, arguing that it brings them security, status and employment -- as well as being all they have ever known."

Top secret army cell breaks terrorists

"Deep inside the heart of the "Green Zone", the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG), and it has proved to be one of the Coalition's most effective and deadly weapons in the fight against terror."

Immigrants' DNA to flood U.S. database
It starts with immigrants, but white Americans are fooling themselves if they think this leads anywhere but towards the eventual tracking and databasing of every person in this country.

"The U.S. Justice Department is finishing rules to allow a vast expansion of its DNA gathering to include samples from most people arrested or detained by the federal authorities, officials said.

"The move would affect hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants each year.

"Congress authorized the new DNA sampling in a little-noticed amendment to a renewal in January 2006 of the Violence Against Women Act, which protects and assists victims of sexual crimes. The amendment permits DNA collecting from anyone under criminal arrest by the federal authorities and also from illegal immigrants detained by federal agents — by far the largest group to be affected by the new law."