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.

Source: http://www.indymedia.org/en/2006/05/839813.shtml