RAVE: A David Called Maria

A diminutive Quechua lady in a remote part of Ecuador has become the David in a mammoth struggle between her community and the Goliath that is Chevron, in what has become one of the biggest environmental stories in recent years.

Maria Aguinda has no legal background and doesn't even speak the official language of her country, Spanish. But what she has been is at the forefront of a momentous class action suit by her community in Orellana province against Chevron for the years of environmental pollution and devastation to the surrounding rain forest by big oil polluter, Texaco, which was bought out by Chevron in 2001.

The case is known as Aguinda vs Chevron. A poor indigenous woman in a remote part of a poor South American country takes on one of the biggest, richest multinationals in the world, Big Oil itself. This is about as David-versus-Goliath as it gets.

Texaco operated in the area between 1964 and 1990 and created an environmental holocaust with its lax and sub-standard oil drilling techniques. Billions of gallons of crude oil were dumped into the rainforest and surrounding areas. Marshes are clogged with oil, rivers are dead, local fisheries have all but died out, and local communities have suffered huge rates of cancer and other health ailments.

Says Maria Aguinda, "When Texaco came we never thought they would leave behind such damage, never. Then it began to drill a well and set up burn pits." "It changed our life: hunting, fishing, and other food, it's all finished."

Last week an Ecuadorian court slapped Chevron with a fine of $9.5-billion, one of the largest ever awarded in an environmental lawsuit anywhere in the world.

Even so, Maria's community claims that at least $27-billion or more will be needed to allow for proper restitution from the resulting and devastating environmental and health impacts from the crude oil pollution.

Disappointed in the outcome she may be, and the environmental devastation in her area may continue, but Maria Aguinda has nevertheless accomplished that which so few of us would even dare to dream of doing. She is the epitome of believing in one's cause, for fighting for what is right, however long that may take, for not allowing the powers that be to get away with what is nothing less than murder.

The words of Mark Twain seem very apt here:

                                 

                             It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare. 

 Thank goodness then for Maria Aguinda.

It Says It All...

Further to my last post about the shocking income disparities in the United States (and, no doubt, in most countries), I felt compelled to post the statement below I came across a few days ago online.

It says it all...

RANT: The 'Income Gap' is the Bloody Grand Canyon

Today I came across some of the most eye-opening charts and stats that I have in a long time. Courtesy of the website Mother Jones, which continues to be one of the very best progressive news reporting sites online, it outlines just how HUGE the income gap has become in the United States.



The data is from the very best and most reliable sources - and it is scary in offering proof positive that the adage 'the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer' is real - very real.

The link to this brilliant article, entitled "It's the Inequality, Stupid" is at http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

I just had to include some of them here in my blog. Again, all courtesy of Mother Jones.

The first shows just how much of the national US income 'pie' the very richest, i.e. the top 1% richest, gobble up:



Thereby proving that:


How Wall Street and corporate CEOs continue to get richer and (filthy) richer:




And explaining just why the US Congress is so damn cosy with Wall Street:



And perhaps most shockingly of all, if that's at all possible:



And Americans continue to be completely oblivious to just how MASSIVE the income gap is in their own country:



It's beyond shocking. It's outrageous, and makes me so angry. I've always known about the huge income gap in the United States, but it's still quite something to see it so graphically. It's the old classic - one knows something, but it's until one sees it with one's eyes, that the full extent thereof becomes so horribly real.

And these inequalities are probably as bad if not even worse in the majority of countries around the world. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia, India, the Philippines, and a host of other countries, including in the developed world (the UK, anyone?), immediately come to mind.

As well as South Africa, of course. Trust me, this is one country with a ruling kleptocracy that rivals the very best kleptocracies parading behind the guise of a 'free, democratic capitalist state' in the world.

This is not an American thing. It's a global thing. And it affects most of us, the 'other' 90%...

It's an indictment of our time, an indictment on what raw casino capitalism has become. When will its time be up?

Do you get my point?

RANT: Goat Poo In International Banking

Oh boy, those financial terrorists are at it again.

The latest to come out of the ongoing lawsuits by JP Morgan Chase against Barclays bank and the failed financial giant, Lehman Brothers, is the stuff of high comedy.

Once again, this came to my attention after seeing an episode of the Keiser Report with the simply brilliant Max Keiser on Russia Today. Hail, Max!

It turns out that JP Morgan says it has evidence in the form of e-mails that Lehman employees at the time of the 2008 collapse referred to their bank's assets as "toxic waste" and even "goat poo'. Yip, goat poo.

And that Barclays bank, involved in buying out the failed Lehman Brothers, knew fully well about this and saved themselves from having to buy this goat poo.

Courtesy of julieluongo.wordpress.com

Poor goats - such lovely animals; as if they deserve their excrement to be compared to the excrement that are international investment bankers.

So now JP Morgan Chase is doing that which corporations, and especially financial powerhouses (read: thieves), do best: they're suing the crap out of one of their competitors. Or should that be suing the goat poo out of them?

As if JP Morgan Chase were so lily white in their own role in the financial terrorism that has crippled the global economy since 2008 and continues to do so...

They're all full of poo - goat or otherwise, and all these banks and financial terrorists deserve each other. To the hilt.

Do you get my point?

RANT: People of Libya, Give Gaddafi What He Wants

This is a man who has clung on to power for over 40 years....mercilessly.

This is a man whom Ronald Reagan (or someone of a similar neo-conservative ilk) once called the 'Mad Dog of the Desert'. Who knew I would one day agree with something said by Reagan or a Reaganite.

This is a man who has brought in foreign mercenaries to indiscriminately kill people in the streets and in their very homes, because his own army refuses to do it for him.

This is a man who says he will kill each and every person who has dared to speak up against him.

This is a man whose son, the prince-in-waiting, wagged his finger on TV and scolded his people for the uprising, warning darkly of civil war and other such atrocities. 

This is a man who has referred to Libyan protesters, his own people, please note, as "cockroaches".

This is a man who uses the word "cockroaches" against his own citizens - the chilling same language used by the Hutu leaders in the genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda back in 1994.

This is a man who has said and done things in the face of an uprising that not even Hosni Mubarak did.

This is a man who is out of control because he no longer is in control.

This is not a man - this is a contemptible tyrant, just another corrupt and megalomaniacal turd masquerading as a leader in a region that is now clamouring for better...much better.

Muammar Gaddafi has warned his people (as if they cared now) that he will 'fight to his very death' before relinquishing power.

People of Libya, please grant this bastard his wish.

Do you get my point?

RANT OR RAVE? Egypt's D-Day

Today is Egypt's own 'D-Day' or 'Day of Departure' - day of departure, that is, for Hosni Mubarak, or Hosni the Hated as I like to call him. He's certainly hated by most of his people, whatever his so-called 'supporters' clashing with anti-Mubarak demonstrators might suggest otherwize.



Every regime has its supporters - it's the gross tragedy that is human nature. That doesn't make the regime any more credible, nor the opposition thereto any less so. 

So what am I to feel about this 'D-Day'? Am I to rave about it or rant about it?

It should be a day of epic proportions in which the Dictator on the Nile finally gets the message and slinks away into the eternal sunset. That is cause to rave, that is cause for celebration.

But it could get violent, very violent.

Hosni Mubarak is one of the most oppressive dictators still around. He has shown he wants to leave on his terms. If he succeeds in getting his way, what will those terms be?

The police and security forces are clearly his henchman. But what of the army? Their inactions in the first few days of the uprising were lauded by many for the 'restraint' and 'maturity' thereof.

Hmmmm....

I never trust armies, even when they are 'on the side of the people'. I'm funny that way.

My suspicions of the Egyptian army were confirmed when they allowed pro-Mubarak 'supporters' to run amok and create mayhem and cause death and injury in Tahrir Square two nights ago and again yesterday.

What is the Egyptian army playing at? It's hedging its bets, that's what.

If the Egyptian people believe they have a 'friend' in their powerful army, they better think again.

So my only hope is that the sheer force of the anti-Mubarak marches today will sweep all before them, and usher in the dramatic change the country so clearly needs.

May the Egyptian be able to kick that decrepit, desperate dictator all the way out of Egypt.

Godspeed, brave people of Egypt.

I may be an atheist, but that is my prayer for today.

Do you get my point?

On A Lighter Note: The World Through A Child's Eyes

I came across these fantastic illustrations today. Or rather, I stumbled upon them using Stumble Upon, fast becoming the best way to distract myself when I'm online.

The illustrations are courtesy of of Pierette Diaz at the site http://friqt.com/worldchil.html, which has more similar pics.

We've all been children with fevered imaginations, which is what makes these two images so priceless:

OBSERVATION: Mubarak Ponders...

Here's a caption for the pic of Mubarak below, as he ponders to himself:

"Hmmmm, where do I go? 

Saudi Arabia?

Dubai?

I'm sure Israel will take me..."

RANT: Mubarak, Your Remaining Best Friend Is...Netanyahu

Hosni Mubarak has very few friends left. The events of yesterday in Cairo have left him with even fewer, as thousands of his 'supporters' went on a rampage against anti-government protesters in Cairo, particularly in and around what has become the revolution's symbolic epicentre, Tahrir Square.

Funny how after over a week of peaceful demonstrations and no visible Mubarak supporters there are suddenly thousands of them throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at the anti-Mubarak throngs. And this just a day or so after Mubarak's 'promise' to leave by September was downright (and rightly) rejected by the demonstrators. Funny that.

He is even willing to see his own people descend into possible civil war just to save his sorry ass. Talk about a desperate, pathetic man.

The Arab world has been ominously quiet about events in Egypt. Hardly surprising when one considers how many Arab leaders must be freaking out that the Tunisia and Egypt contagion spreads into their own oppressed states. Iran has come out in vocal, public support of the demonstrators. Clever Iran. 

Even more telling is how Mubarak has lost what was the tepid, very cautious support of the United States since this broke last week. This from a nation who had propped him up all these years and who once saw him as a vital bulwark against heaven-knows-what in the region. That's gone. Today the US State Department was quoted as stating that there needed to be a 'peaceful transition of power in Egypt' and, more tellingly, that it needed to be 'now'. The key word is now, Mubarak. That's state-speak for 'get-the-hell-out-of-office-because-you-can-no-longer-count-on-us-for-support.' 

With friends like that, who the hell needs enemies, right? Oh, divine justice.  

So, who does Hosni the Hated have left now? Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, that's who.




Netanyahu has been the only leader who has stated that Mubarak out of power will somehow mean the collapse of Egypt and great danger to the Middle East. What a pile of rubbish. No, Israel, all you are is poep scared that the cosy and compliant buffer you had in the dictator Mubarak will now be gone. Israel needs a divided, undemocratic and oppressed Arab world around it. It justifies how 'democratic' Tel Aviv claims it is and how 'necessary' Israel is as a bastion of 'Western values and democracy' in a sea of Muslim and anti-West fanaticism.  

Israel sure as hell doesn't need a bunch of more democratic Arab states surrounding it that no longer wish to kiss America's ass on the Israel-Palestine issue. How will it be able to justify being an apartheid state?

Yeah, when you're a dictator and the whole world is turning against you, including the imperial power itself, then all you have left is the support of an oppressive, schizophrenic little apartheid state. That figures.

Mubarak and Netanyahu make absolute sense as firm (and very scared) friends against a rising tide of change and nascent democracy in the Middle East.

You deserve one another, you bastards.

Do you get my point?

RANT & RAVE: Mubarak - You Speak, They Speak

Hosni Mubarak clings onto power in Egypt like a gigantic, decrepit leech. 



Courtesy of Kerry Waghorn - http://www.kerrywaghorn.com/

 After a week of protests unprecedented in Egyptian history, the man has the nerve to go on state TV last night and declare that he'll leave when it suits him, i.e. only in September. And he further insults the protesters by claiming that the protests have been manipulated by 'political forces' with their 'own agendas'.

No kidding, mister. The 'political forces' are people sick and tired of you, and their 'agenda' is kick you the hell out of power. It's really that simple.

Bloody bastard just won't let go - that's what you get when you have a ruthless dictator who's been in power for way too long, always with the support of the United States, Israel and other western countries. Talk about backing the wrong horse...

The people clearly want him gone, gone, gone.

There have been some placards with unequivocal messages (sic) for Mubarak during the protests, including:

Mubarak is a coward

and

Mubarak theres the door

One man even resorted to telling him in a host of languages where to go (see below):



And my personal favourite from a few days ago:

Mubarak you must leave
Then I go home
The end

Priceless.