Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Rapa Nui d?j? vu
#1
<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.economist.com/world/americas/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14587314&source=hptextfeature'>Link on Economist</a>

Quote:STEPPING off the plane, tourists are welcomed to Easter Island with a garland of flowers. They find themselves on a tiny dot in the Pacific Ocean, 3,700km (2,300 miles) west of Chile, to which the island belongs, and 2,000km east of Pitcairn Island. All around are the white-flecked waves of the Pacific. ?What perfect peace,? exclaimed Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian explorer and author when he arrived in the mid-1950s.

He might not say so today. Some 70,000 visitors now arrive each year, up from just 14,000 in the mid-1990s. Apart from the island?s utter remoteness, what attracts the tourists are the moai, the mysterious giant stone statues erected by the ancestors of the indigenous Rapa Nui people. They are testament to a complex society of up to 20,000 people which later shrank to a shadow as a result of calamitous environmental stress and deforestation, a cautionary tale narrated in ?Collapse?, a book by Jared Diamond, a polymath at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Today Easter Island once again faces environmental threats. Food comes from Chile, either by ship or on the seven weekly flights from Santiago (there are also two from Tahiti). The visitors ?all pull the chain,? Luz Zasso, the mayoress, notes acidly. The absence of a sewage system is threatening the cleanliness of the island?s underground water sources. But it would be hard to install one without damaging archaeological sites. Electricity comes from diesel-powered generators. Power cuts are frequent. Rubbish is piling up.
The Rapa Nui Parliament, a radical group that split from the Council of Elders, is calling for independence. Its supporters blocked the airport?s runway for two days in August. It wants to expel Chileans, even those who have lived much of their life on the island, unless they have a longstanding relationship with a Rapa Nui or are the parent of a child with Rapa Nui blood. The group also dreams of ditching Chile?s peso and forming a Polynesian currency union, including Australia and New Zealand.

... why would Aussie/NZ want to join such a currency union?


Quote:

5 hours ago Mavenu hm. I guess I shouldn't point out that Max Barry's not even from America, but is an Australian?

4 hours ago NationStates Moderators When did actual facts or logic have anything to do with idiot spammers?

 

Change comes not when some group of radical seizes power, that’s just a shift at the top. It comes when Mr. And Mrs. Ordinary make a stand. When the cake shop owner and teacher and the bearer boy come together and say, ‘They are not afraid,’ anymore.


Monica Whitlock – BBC “From our own Correspondent”

Nov 7/05 – in reference to actions in Uzbekistan, May 2005.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)