…the war against the earth and its defenders goes on.
Photo: StarMetro Vancouver
Currently one of the most vital front lines is on Wet’suwet’en First Nation land in “British Columbia,” Canada. Wet’suwet’en defenders stand in the way of a zombie pipeline due to transport toxic liquid natural gas over their land to ocean tankers. The land defenders are under siege by Canada’s national government and its police. This whole abominable project is owned and paid for by the people of Canada, and promoted by the authorities – in our name.
The Wet’suwet’en defenders are putting their lives on the line, for the earth and for all of us. Most of us can’t be there with them. But whoever and wherever we are, we still have other capacities, including our voices. Let’s use them well.
Al Quds. Jerusalem. Yerushalayim. It is all of these, and it is bleeding.
President Trump performing at the western wall, Jerusalem
This week the US regime announced it would move its Israel embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In so doing it becomes the first country in the world to buy the Zionist claim that Jerusalem is the ‘real’ capital of Israel, and to break the long-held international and UN consensus that Jerusalem cannot be the capital of Israel because it is illegally occupied.
No matter. In return for enough cash and votes in the US, the people who run that imperial country simply gave away Jerusalem to the Israeli regime.
Of course it was never theirs to give. Neither was Palestine when the former imperial power, Britain, gave it away 100 years ago to the Zionist movement.
In a 1917 letter to Lord Rothschild, a British Zionist leader, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour declared: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” And so it was done, at the stroke of an imperial pen.
This week’s equivalent assault by the US can only produce more of the same ‘benefits’ the British favour has been dispensing since 1917. More lies, more ignorance, more hypocrisy, more hatred, more repression, more suffering, more violence, more death.
From western regimes, historically biased and/or fearful of the Israel lobby, the best we can expect are a few meek murmurings of ‘cause for concern,’ but no meaningful opposition. As usual that will have to come from the rest of us.
Here I offer impressions gleaned from my own travels in Palestine-Israel. These generated a book, Our Way to Fight, about courageous Palestinians and Israelis fighting for a just peace in the battered land that many call holy. From those same travels also emerged Deus Vult/God wills it, a short, pungent history of Jerusalem before, during and since the Crusades.
That article follows below. A few fragments:
…Archeological findings suggest human habitation here for at least fifty centuries. Some linguists believe the name Jerusalem, or Yerushalayim in contemporary Hebrew, was derived from the Jebusite (a tribe of Canaan) Ur-Shalem, which translates loosely as ‘City of Peace.’ The Arabic name for the city, Al-Quds, means “the holy.” The faithful of three religions consider it holy, with the result that peace here has tended to be rather elusive. By one historian’s count, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, captured and recaptured 44 times….
…..The European invasion known as The First Crusade occurred in the last decade of the 11th century. It was sparked by Pope Urban II in 1095 with a series of ferocious sermons across Catholic Europe, in which he denounced Muslims – or Saracens, as they were called at the time, a term that evoked both contempt and fear – as pagans, rapists, defilers of Christian holy places, and all in all “a race absolutely alien to God.” At the launch of this vicious campaign for an invasion of Jerusalem, it is reported that a great roar went up from the assembled crowd: Deus vult! God wills it!
An estimated army of 40 – 60,000 volunteers started out on the long march from Europe to Palestine. Along the way, many Jews were massacred by the Christian zealots. Probably now the victims would be called collateral damage. Also enroute, many foot-soldiers died from hunger, disease or in battle, and many defected. Some 12 – 15,000 survivors reached Jerusalem in early June, in the roasting heat of deep summer, to besiege the thick-walled, well-defended city. At about midday on July 15, 1099, the Crusaders managed to break through a section of the northern wall east of Herod’s Gate, a short walk from the present-day Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
According to Crusader eye-witness reports, within two days nearly all the Muslims in the city were killed. The Jews, who had lived at peace with their Muslim neighbours, sought refuge in their synagogue; the Crusaders burned them alive. Fulcher, a chaplain and chronicler from Chartres, wrote thus of the Christian invaders’ motives: “They desired that this place, so long contaminated by the superstition of pagan inhabitants, should be cleansed from their contagion.” Several reports describe a triumphal procession of nobles and clergy to the Holy Sepulchre, through streets that ran with blood – some said as deep as the ankle, some the knee. Deus vult! the Crusaders chanted along the way. God wills it.
Mind you, human rights tend to be honoured a lot more on paper than in practice. So it will be with river rights. Rivers, lakes, oceans and their defenders will continue to face countless challenges and battles. But at least now two rivers have some legal rights to defend.
Meanwhile in the USA, rivers have no more rights than do sewers or highways, both of which purposes they serve. In sharp contrast, corporations in the USA won long ago the same legal rights as individual citizens, which they deploy to commit horrible crimes against humanity and nature, including the poisoning of rivers, lakes and oceans. Of course, unlike actual human persons, corporations regularly get away with murder.
In Canada the picture isn’t much better. The late Conservative regime decimated environmental protections for all but 159 lakes and rivers in this country, leaving more than 31,000 lakes and 2.25 million rivers wide open to destruction. Breaking election promises to reverse their predecessors’ crimes against nature, instead the current Liberal regime is deferring to corporate pressure to maintain the status quo.
In such a grim context, the hard-won court decisions in New Zealand and India represent a huge step forward, rare signs that we can act sanely and respectfully in relation to the natural world, our life support system.
Against impossible odds: Ecuadoreans’ Legal Fight Against Chevron Continues in Canada.
Texaco/Chevron vs Ecuador. Photo: La Hora.
On South America’s teleSur, journalist Joe Emersberger interviews lawyer Stephen Donziger on a crucial case with huge implications for us all.
Donziger: “The fact top law firms around the world are helping the Ecuadorean villagers is terrifying to Chevron and the fossil fuel industry and completely changes the risk calculus of oil drilling in delicate ecosystems. These firms normally represent the oil industry; now they are representing groups fighting that industry. That’s never happened before.”
True, this couldn’t happen without the lawyers. But before, during and after the courts have their say, again and again it’s people who live on the land and water under siege that have to hold the front line. Against Dakota Access, Enbridge, Line 9, Kinder Morgan, Energy East and all the other petro-invaders.
If our planet is to remain livable, these are the first people we should thank, and support.
In Saskatchewan’s second major oil spill, crews are still trying to identify where the rupture occurred in a tangle of pipelines from the Alberta tar sands that cross this land. Oil Pipeline Spills 53,000 Gallons on First Nations Land.
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada
Meanwhile, in Washington DC President Trump has just re-opened the door to the infamous Keystone XL pipeline, which his predecessor had temporarily blocked. The new president also promised to accelerate construction of bitterly fought Dakota Access Pipeline.
In Ottawa, the Liberal government recently rubber-stamped two dangerously invasive pipelines in Canada: Kinder Morgan’s line to the Pacific coast and Enbridge’s expansion of Line 3 to the U.S. midwest.
Prime Minister Trudeau also welcomed the Keystone decision. “I’ve been on the record for many years supporting it,” he said in Calgary. “We know we can get our resources to market more safely and responsibly while meeting our climate-change goals.”
Soon the world’s dirtiest oil will flow more abundantly than ever from the Alberta tar sands.
We are told by the oil cabal, its collaborators in government and big media that Canadians need it. But notice where it’s going: to the Pacific Ocean and to the USA, in both cases for sale far, far away. It will leave behind: mountains of broken promises to First Nations and the rest of us, a moonscape in northern Alberta, toxic spills and explosions along the routes, and countless tons of life-destroying greenhouse gas. Hidden somewhere in there, we are told, is a fair bargain.
In Alberta, Premier Rachel Notley welcomed all three pipelines. At the same time, her NDP government reneged on a promise to charge oil companies higher provincial royalties for the oil they plunder. “It is not the time to reach out and make a big money grab,” she told reporters, “because that is just not going to help Albertans.”
Ah. But then soon after and with no apparent shame Notley said, “We’re at the point now where the Alberta economy needs to be enjoying the benefits of a higher return for our oil and gas… That is definitely something that will happen as a result of the Keystone.”
With Liberals and social democrats like these running things, who needs a Trump?
Across Canada, the US and planet earth, our only home, the battle goes on.
Michael Riordon 