Word: rubber
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Chico Mendes, the Brazilian organizer who was assassinated in 1988 by ranchers for trying to preserve the Amazon forests for small-scale rubber tappers, remains the best known of the ecomartyrs, but his case is far from unique. In many countries, crusaders bring down the wrath of private interest groups, government agencies and even fellow citizens, and endure abuse ranging from intimidation and arrests to beatings and murder. "It's not at all unusual to have someone threatened or harassed in some way," says Pat Costner, director of toxics research for Greenpeace U.S.A. "It happens more often than...
Many activists contend that they are on freely circulating "hit lists." Gumercindo Rodrigues, an adviser to Mendes' National Council of Rubber Tappers, is recovering from two gunshot wounds he suffered last September. Gumercindo was shot on a main street in Rio Branco, the Acre state capital. One shot in the back at point-blank range came from a police officer. Press accounts have also implicated Camilo Yunes Junior, a lumber baron, in the shooting. Yunes denies any involvement. No charges have been filed in what the courts have dismissed as a crime of passion because Gumercindo was involved with...
...another incident last September, Antonio Batista de Macedo, who has been organizing Indians and rural workers into cooperatives and trade unions in western Acre, escaped death only when an assassin's gun failed to fire. Last December, Joao Bosco dos Santos Freire, who had been mobilizing rubber tappers in Tarauaca, Acre, was ambushed and killed, allegedly by the son of a landowner, who has not been charged. In January the president of the Tarauaca rural workers union was almost killed when two gunmen invaded his home...
...disinter dear Uncle Sam. I can just see that eccentric old geezer striding out into the daylight again, rolling up his sleeves and getting down to work -- feeding the hungry, healing the sick, scrubbing the environment, giving us an infrastructure that isn't made out of balsa wood and rubber cement. So free Uncle Sam and take my money! I wouldn't mind paying taxes -- to a government...
...Kimball had some trouble throwing' off the rug, which had a raised rubber," Haskell said. "As for BU, good pitching always beats good hitting and that's basically the ballgame...