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Amazon Uprising More Urgent Than Iran's: The Planet Depends on It
A Fight for the Amazon that Should Inspire the World
While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.
In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies - and, for today, they have won.
Here's the story of how it happened - and how we all need to pick up this fight. Earlier this year, Peru's right-wing President, Alan Garcia, sold the rights to explore, log and drill 70 per cent of his country's swathe of the Amazon to a slew of international oil companies. Garcia seems to see rainforest as a waste of good resources, saying of the Amazon's trees: "There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."
There was only one pesky flaw in Garcia's plan: the indigenous people who live in the Amazon. They are the first people of the Americas, subject to wave after wave of genocide since the arrival of the Conquistadors. They are weak. They have no guns. They barely have electricity. The government didn't bother to consult them: what are a bunch of Indians going to do anyway?
But the indigenous people have seen what has happened elsewhere in the Amazon when the oil companies arrive. Occidental Petroleum are facing charges in US courts of dumping an estimated nine billion barrels of toxic waste in the regions of the Amazon where they operated from 1972 to 2000. Andres Sandi Mucushua, the spiritual leader of the area known to the oil companies as Block (12A)B, said in 2007: "My people are sick and dying because of Oxy. The water in our streams is not fit to drink and we can no longer eat the fish in our rivers or the animals in our forests." The company denies liability, saying they are "aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts".
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, according to an independent report, toxic waste allegedly dumped after Chevron-Texaco's drilling has been blamed by an independent scientific investigation for 1,401 deaths, mostly of children from cancer. When the BBC investigator Greg Palast put these charges to Chevron's lawyer, he replied: "And it's the only case of cancer in the world? How many cases of children with cancer do you have in the States?... They have to prove it's our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible."
The people of the Amazon do not want to see their forests felled and their lands poisoned. And here, the need of the indigenous peoples to preserve their habitat has collided with your need to preserve your habitat. The rainforests inhale massive amounts of warming gases and keep them stored away from the atmosphere. Already, we are chopping them down so fast that it is causing 25 per cent of man-made carbon emissions every year - more than planes, trains and automobiles combined. But it is doubly destructive to cut them down to get to fossil fuels, which then cook the planet yet more. Garcia's plan was to turn the Amazon from the planet's air con into its fireplace.
Why is he doing this? He was responding to intense pressure from the US, whose new Free Trade Pact requires this "opening up", and from the International Monetary Fund, paid for by our taxes. In Peru, it has also been alleged that the ruling party, APRA, is motivated by oil bribes. Some of Garcia's associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies. The head of the parliamentary committee investigating the affair, Rep. Daniel Abugattas, says: "The government has been giving away our natural resources to the lowest bidders. This has not benefited Peru, but the administration's friends."
So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours. Using their own bodies and weapons made from wood, they blockaded the rivers and roads to stop the oil companies getting anything in or out. They captured two valves of Peru's sole pipeline between the country's gas field and the coast, which could have led to fuel-rationing. Their leaders issued a statement explaining: "We will fight together with our parents and children to take care of the forest, to save the life of the equator and the entire world."
Garcia responded by sending in the military. He declared a "state of emergency" in the Amazon, suspending almost all constitutional rights. Army helicopters opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition and stun-grenades. More than a dozen were killed. But the indigenous peoples did not run away. Even though they were risking their lives, they stood their ground. One of their leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: "The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?"
And then something extraordinary happened. The indigenous peoples won. The Peruvian Congress repealed the laws that allowed oil company drilling, by a margin of 82 votes to 12. Garcia was forced to apologise for his "serious errors and exaggerations". The protesters have celebrated and returned to their homes deep in the Amazon.
Of course, the oil companies will regroup and return - but this is an inspirational victory for the forces of sanity that will be hard to reverse.
Human beings need to make far more decisions like this: to leave fossil fuels in the ground, and to leave rainforests standing. In microcosm, this rumble in the jungle is the fight we all face now. Will we allow a small number of rich people to make a short-term profit from seizing and burning resources, at the expense of our collective ability to survive?
If this sounds like hyperbole, listen to Professor Jim Hansen, the world's leading climatologist, whose predictions have consistently turned out to be correct. He says: "Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with a sea level 75 metres higher. Coastal disasters would occur continually. The only uncertainty is the time it would take for complete ice sheet disintegration."
Of course, fossil fools will argue that the only alternative to burning up our remaining oil and gas supplies is for us all to live like the indigenous peoples in the Amazon. But next door to Peru, you can see a very different, environmentally sane model to lift up the poor emerging - if only we will grasp it.
Ecuador is a poor country with large oil resources underneath its rainforests - but its president, Rafael Correa, is offering us the opposite of Garcia's plan. He has announced that he is willing to leave his country's largest oil reserve under the soil, if the rest of the world will match the $9.2bn in revenues it would provide.
If we don't start reaching for these alternatives, we will render this month's victory in the Amazon meaningless. The Hadley Centre in Exeter, one of the most sophisticated scientific centres for studying the impacts of global warming, has warned that if we carry on belching out greenhouse gases at the current rate, the humid Amazon will dry up and burn down - and soon.
Their study earlier this year explained: "The Amazonian rainforest is likely to suffer catastrophic damage even with the lowest temperature rises forecast under climate change. Up to 40 per cent of the rainforest will be lost if temperature rises are restricted to C, which most climatologists regard as the least that can be expected by 2050. A 3C rise is likely to result in 75 per cent of the forest disappearing while a 4C rise, regarded as the most likely increase this century unless greenhouse gas emissions are slashed, will kill off 85 per cent of the forest." That would send gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere - making the world even more inhabitable.
There is something thrilling about the fight in the Amazon, yet also something shaming. These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow. The people of the Amazon have shown they are up for the fight to save our ecosystem. Are we?
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34 Comments so far
Show AllIn addition to the climate changes issue, let's not forget that many of our medications are developed from ingredients that come from the rain forests.
Also let's not forget that the Amazon rainforest communities live sustainable lifestyles. The great biodiversity of the Amazon is priceless. The abundance of the Amazon rainforest is the greatest gift any animal species could hope to base a life, culture and community upon. We envision expansive comunities in these forests, preserving 90% of the biodiversity while supporting large numbers of happy/healthy people sustainably. Kerala India is a good model, with better health/literacy statistics than the USA, on a tiny fraction of energy consumption. Europeans in America are still calling the natives Indians! This indicates they aren't even close to surrendering their doomed enterprise!
right on, johann!! thanks for the reminder. to any usans who have a telephone, call your reps and ask them to please support/co-sponsor mcgovern's (dang, but that guy's been busy trying to put the brakes on the violence machine!---why can't more 'representatives' REPRESENT PEOPLE before lobbyist profiteers???!!) attempts (HR 2404 to urge an actual exit strategy from afghanistan & also his amendment to the defense authorization bill, HR2647 as well as his amendment demanding transparency & accountability at WHINSEC, formerly known as the infamous school of the americas) to bring some sanity to the congress that passed that hideous war/imf supplemental. and stop shopping, driving and feeding the oil companies! bike to work! quit your job if it's part of the problem and find a livelihood that cooperates with nature rather than seeks to dominate/control it. viva la libertad!!!!
Important article, wrong headline.
To pit the Amazonian indigenous people's struggle for social justice and ecological integrity against the Iranian people's struggle against election fraud and a theocratic dictatorship is deeply problematic.
Johann Hari and perhaps Common Dreams should know and do better.
Noted. Agree.
I also agree; however, I would add that one cannot but help notice how widely the Iranian revolt is being publicized in the western media in comparison to other hugely significant events happening at the same time, such as the Amazonian revolt and the killer drone. It is the MSM that pits events against one another and finds some worthy of 24 hour coverage while ignoring others.
What about the "planet depends on it" part of the headline, the sea levels rising ten meters and all? No big deal? The loss of 85% of the Amazon forest - no big deal?
It may be problematic and yet in the time frame of our lives Iran still pales in the face of the Amazon's desruction which would affect the whole world including Iran.If a butterfly fall in the rainforest do we not know it?We are interconnected.Tony
"One of [the native Amazon protestors'] leaders, Davi Yanomami, said simply: 'The earth has no price. It cannot be bought, or sold or exchanged. It is very important that white people, black people and indigenous peoples fight together to save the life of the forest and the earth. If we don't fight together, what will our future be?'"
Just reading this morning's articles on various sites regarding all kinds of new insanities cooked up, implemented and offered by the predominantly male, "civilized" leadership such as secret recruitment of college/ university students to be spies under a government-funded program [& colleges & universities love new funding]; the continuing obstructions of trials of innocent prisoners who have spent years now in GITMO or Bagram or other dark holes, tortured mercilessly and until recently without recourse; the newest figures for the "necessary" weapons of mass destruction in the Pentagon budget and the various plans to use them; and over-all, the absolute illogic, unreason ... INSANITY of those whose lives are about ANTI-LIFE in their quest to secure territories and resources for their ANTI-LIFE "national ... read also 'personal, self-serving' interests."
It seems like a huge kindergarten of psychopathic children has gained the upperhand on the rest of us, and it's just a matter of time when the little darlings pull out all the stops so they can see the BIG FIREWORKS around the earth. Are we all becoming Dubya's frogs? ... Obyssmalot's frogs?
Among the characteristics of psychopaths, very intelligent to truly stupid, is the inability to project or understand the consequences of their personal fantasies or actual actions. They are totally unable to imagine walking in the other fella's mocassins. Their internalized reality is THE REALITY, and thus all advice or reason to the contrary cannot be heard.
Ever noticed the glitter in Richard Cheney's eyes when he talks about torture? He loves the idea of it and the power rush he feels. You can see it and hear it in that remorseless, well-modulated voice. Standard variety psychopath.
We are in a nightmare, and for the first time in my fairly long life, I cannot see the end of it, short of some enormous natural or human-made global calamities and emergencies that threaten ALL of our lives just like that.
The dinosaurs disappeared almost in an eye-blink of time. Explanations include a meteorite hurtling through space and hitting the earth and every natural pattern of climate and life forms were immediately affected and transformed.
But this is more like a faucet dripping, dripping, dripping a little faster everyday with all the "civilized" plumbers wearing heavy mittens and balls of "cotton, hay and rags*" stuffed in their brains and in the lower, front part of their underwear.
*The absolutely egotistical Professor Henry Higgins of "My Fair Lady," said/sang that FEMALE brains were made of "cotton, hay and rags." I would suggest since MALES have predominated in leadership positions for thousands and thousands of years, and considering the position we are in at this moment, as we teeter on the brink of self-destruction, that ol' Henry was quite mistaken about the gender, with the exception of males like Peru's Amazon rainforest resident, Davi Yanomami, who are as close to and knowledgeable about the earth as any human could be. I'll take sensibilities like his over the degrees held by the educated idiots from Harvard or Yale, et al., who "govern" us.
A feeling of sustained, but growing, RAGE is new to me. And I'm having a hard time with managing it. And there are all kinds of booby-trapped mazes and boxes with heavy lids now that activists have to negotiate for what they say or do to have any effect at all, and the lids seem to be getting heavier and the effectiveness of what is done, seems to be less and less.
And it didn't help that last evening I discovered that the newest highway department mowerman of our little rural area mowed down my just blooming hollyhocks and exotic blossoms from bulbs I planted in the Fall. Fourth year in a row even though I've transplanted and moved them back each year. This guy obviously went at the whole road with a gusto. Gone are all the blue, purple, bright yellow, white and pink wildflowers ... and my multi-colored hollyhocks to be. Left are tufts of dry grass and bald, brown patches of earth with broken and shredded stalks.
What is it with men and the powerful machines they mount? Raping and beating up the earth is their specialty it seems with lots of camaradarie as they do it. But too many now seem not to be able to see at all.
Where are we? ... I don't know anymore, and I can't even find a dream to believe in. It's the first time in my nearly 73 years. A brilliant, artistic, poet friend of mine who is 82 tells me by telephone of her months' long malaise and depression, since about mid-March. She feels the same as I do and has said the same thing --"I can't seem to find a dream anymore."
I suppose a steady and decades'-long diet of lies, hypocrisy and brutalities with no end in sight other than THE END might have something to do with it.
Drip ... Drip ... Drip ...
/cm
"Ever noticed the glitter in Richard Cheney's eyes when he talks about torture? He loves the idea of it and the power rush he feels. You can see it and hear it in that remorseless, well-modulated voice. Standard variety psychopath"
If you experience an erection for longer than four hours call your primary care physician.
Torture: The Viagra for the Rich and Deluded by a Shallow Idea of Power
Nanoo
So sorry to hear about your flowers and the blind and stupid mowerman. My estranged husband last year took up part time the new job of cutting on roadsides. He came over here to do my driveway and what the hell, I'm out there screaming at him as he cut way into my native grown hazel nut bushes. In previous winters he has purposely plowed and destroyed what was once a large area of wild roses. Then there once was my natural creek bank that he knew I wanted left alone, but with no respect for me or my property and while I was away, I returned to it bulldozed away. Men and machines, I got to tell you I've had a hard time stopping myself from sneaking around in the middle of the night with a bag of sugar. That goes for needless highway construction equipment too, as my representative is the transportation chair, so naturally lots of road work. In the meanwhile, no public trans., not one bus because we don't have money for it, meanwhile there's the money for road construction at a million plus per mile. I've shed tears for the granite blasted away and the woods bulldozed into great piles and set on fire and the people whose homes were in it's path told to, move away. Rage, I understand well.
NANOO - THANK YOU!!!
It feels better just to connect and know someone knows the feeling from similar experiences. Ah ... hazelnut bushes and roses ... and an overtly and passive aggressive male ... who typically has trouble dealing with feelings and cannot communicate with reasonable words. BAM! BAM! BAM!
About 30 years ago in 1978 in a warm, humid mid-June, the fireflies began to flit around with their lights going on and off, as they have started to do now. Up the road ... three-minute walk ... was a pine grove of trees about 50 to 80 feet tall. The ones on the bank above the road had sweeping branches, and at night thousands of blinking fireflies would cover these trees from their base to the top. Stripes of light would blink on and off and sometimes the effect was kaleisdescopic.
For a few seasons when it got dark, I would take people there, especially children, to see this spectacle of what I came to call "God's Light Show."
After the highway department bought new trucks with bigger ploughs, they chopped off the branches because "they got in the way." Traffic on this road is maybe ten to twenty cars going by in a 24-hour period.
Then the electric company "trimmed" the centers of the pine groves because the electric wire went through there when electric poles were first put in about an hundred years ago. The pine grove down to the right of the pasture was a sanctuary for me with its cool, broad stream running through it and the serene stillness of the forest. The regular "trimming" on all the pine groves, including the "Light Show" trees has left them as bare, gnarly, scarred trunks with a few denuded, misshapen branches, and growth that starts about twenty-five feet up to the top.
More then once I have fallen to my knees in absolute despair after I came home and discovered the latest effects of the "trimming," and have tried to convince the electric company to put poles on the side of the road that has no trees. "It's too expensive," their spokespeople say. Yet electric repairmen have ended up to their noses in pond water in blustery winters to repair blown-down lines because that old electric line comes out of the pine grove runs high over the pond before it enters the next pine grove. "Too expensive? ... What about the safety of the repairmen? ... It would make sense to put new poles on the side where there are no trees or fewer trees," I say. A shrug, and a customer service telephone number given to me. Very difficult to find out where the corporate offices are located now.
I keep hearing from Obama and Company about "restoring the FUNDAMENTAL VALUES of our Nation."
For the life of me I do not know what he considers FUNDAMENTAL VALUES as it seems that killing, chopping up, mowing down, blasting open, lopping off, torturing ... whether people or animals or trees in the interests of profits seem the ingrained, par-for-the-course values that our Nation stands for both at home and around the globe.
TRUTH, BEAUTY, and MINDFULNESS, COMPASSION and KINDNESS about and toward all Living Things are the FUNDAMENTAL VALUES of my understanding.
Not only would honoring and living those values make for a much more peaceful and beautiful world, but we wouldn't have to be concerned about how much more punishment the Earth can take before all of LIFE is irrevocably harmed and much of it disappears.
peace and thanks, NANOO, ... cm
Nanoo
Thank you cm for writing back and sharing your experiences. Amazing how I was just thinking about fireflies. Almost 40 years ago, their was a meadow filled with them. The night sky was filled with stars and the ground blinking off and on from their light. I brought people there too, but sadly it only lasted a couple of days but the unforgetable beauty has stayed with me.
I wrote down your definition of Fundamental Values in my journal, as it's excellent.
I can relate too, with the power line people and their tree service. I've a quarter mile of line in here and you'd think I sold them the land underneath the way they act. They have no regard for trees, as clear cut is their standard method. I've had regular battles with these men and have made them leave my property. I think this has angered them as they claim, I'm the only person that has a problem with them. Cute remarks, like we're only trying to keep the lights on for you maaa-am. The supervisior called last Jan. stating I better not interfer again or he'll cut off my power. I'm sure they'll come again and I won't back down as the young trees don't deserve to die.
There is no oil or gas in the Amazon so the US does not care.
It is reported that in Ecuador, Germany may be stepping forward to take the Government up on its plan to *leave the oil in the ground* in exchange for assistance.
IMO, part of this money should go to remediation of any areas in the region that have been stripped bare of their rain forest canopy, which are now producing carbon dioxide instead of sequestering it as biomass.
The key to this operation is the building of inexpensive "artificial trees" around the "bare spots". This would consist of small sized Vortex Ventilators (http://vortexengine.ca) which would provide enough cooling and cloud cover to create climatic conditions necessary to allow the forest to quickly re-invade the damaged area.
The abundant warm water supplies would be used to "energize" the devices and allow the necessary evaporation to occur.
Sufficient power could be easily extracted from the ventilators to cover the small pumping requirements.
While the world nervously watches the uprising in Iran, an even more important uprising has been passing unnoticed - yet its outcome will shape your fate, and mine.
Because indigenous Amazonians don't tweet? People empathise with others like them - middle class Iranians yearning to be free to live the AmeriKKKan dream... while simultaneously taking down the west's/christianity's biggest rivals in the region.
Indigenous Amazonians are "backward people", not like Joe and Susie Sixpack, and they share similarities to "Ecoterrorists" and tree huggers, *real* AmeriKKKians hate ecoterrorists.
Mr Hari I commend you for bucking the trend toward shorter and shorter media attention span and its habit of allowing very important news to slip from the public eye when another story comes along that fits more into the corporate media world's preferred discourse.
Both the story in Iran and Peru are stories about the West's ravenous hunger for natural resources and how corporations that profit mightily from capitalizing on those resources organize the public's awareness of the unrest and outright massacre that surrounds the issues of who controls those resources and profits from that control.
In Iran the people fought against a corporately controlled politic when the Ayatollahs successfully overthrew the Shah and they, and the world, have been paying ever since... with western companies still salivating at the thought that another shah could be imposed on the people there if the current regime was deposed. They have been fomenting rebellion there (which may or may not benefit the people in Iran in the long run depending upon what forces fall into control and how they fall into control should the current regime stand down) directly and indirectly ever since.
In Peru the story is more directly related to how the desire for resource profit by the richest of the rich has influenced international trade and forced poor countries into servitude to the Western resource plunder capitalists... a story as old as Columbus and the other conquistadors and explorers.
Thank you Thank you Thank you. Excelllent work!
This Johann Hari person is a classical liar.
One of his latest polemics was to falsely assert in a piece in the Huffington Post, that the emirate of Dubai banned internet access to one of his articles that gratuitously attacked the city.
In fact, this was refuted by at least two Dubai based bloggers on the net, who openly asserted the piece was freely available there.
The Amazon revolts and the uprising in Iran are both important news stories in their own respective rights, but the ( non ) credibility of this character means he may not be the best person in the world to analyse them.
What's your progress in purging the elites from Dubai?
Why would the emiratis ever do that? You have to read the article, The dark side of Dubai is probably the best critique ever written about Neoconservative economics and the excesses they produce.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Sheikh Mohammed may run the place, but he and the corporations are anything but evil dictators oppressing the masses yearning to be free. That's what makes it a great story, the "villains" are average, every day people looking for a better life.
Check out the section about Nannies, priceless.
I stand fully behind my criticisms of Hari.
A journalist who seeks to bolster his case through falsehoods by telling lies does not deserve credibility.
He lies about the Dubai authorities banning his article.
He lied about Sheikh Mohammad's picture being on every second building in Dubai. I have visited the place and I can tell you this is far from being the case.
He falsely accused a local Emirati sheikh who has a long record of advocating rights for local workers of condoning their abuse.
And his article was replete with vile epithets, including referring Dubai's pastel coloured buildings as ``vomit coloured''.
Truly British journalism at its most deplorable. Thank you for posting the link to make the point what a poor journalist he is.......I feel it proves my point more than it does yours.
I can not confirm the blocking or if the government of Dubai has declared Hari persona non grata, but the FACTS Hari stated in his original Dubai piece have been confirmed multiple times by independent sources(people) from all over the planet.
"In the depths of the Amazon rainforest, the poorest people in the world have taken on the richest people in the world to defend a part of the ecosystem none of us can live without. They had nothing but wooden spears and moral force to defeat the oil companies - and, for today, they have won."
Inspiringly good news. But oil companies, politicians, developers, miners, agribusiness interests and other polluters and destroyers are merely foul exacerbations of the overpopulation problem.
The real enemies are the religious conservatives that militate against birth control and the global business class that feeds on increasing population and poverty for cheaper labor.
You grossly overgeneralize. You and me are the enemies. If you drive a child to school, if you heat or cool a home, if you buy gifts to show your love, if you like to eat cherries and peaches in the winter, if you are typing on a keyboard watching your letters drip onto your laptop screen. It is our ordinary "needs" that are killing the earth, the poor, the undefended.
Resource depletion produced by overpopulation accelerates with the over-consumption generated by an increasingly diverse glut of cheap goods made by countries that can satisfy corporate demand for cheap labor by increasing the poor labor force with religious taboos against birth control, subjugation of women and poor education and health care.
Environmental awareness increases with overpopulation when its ravages hit home.
Your overpopulation reasoning is flawed. "religious taboos against birth control, subjugation of women and poor education and health care" are all happening here in the U.S. of A. as well (and getting progressively worse). We are not considered "overpopulated", yet we consume 25% of the world's resources.
Overconsumption and overpopulation are two different beasts. One is driven by a glut of marketing and advertising, the other by a lack of respect toward the dignity of human (and other forms)of life.
I haven't been watching Iran nervously at all. Indigineous people/tribes of the rainforest. If Jesus were there the cash register world would kill him, too, if he got in their way as the Beast of Civilization continues to devour the earth.
It's the price indigineous people have paid in many lands when the Beast of Civilization has come to them. The Book of Revelation speaks about the many Beast Kingdoms & Mystery Babylon so all of this is completely predictable.
Just another day closer of my journey being completed through this world, whatever it is?
Life is good. What an experience! It's always best to forgive.
I know you ShadowDancer. Your signatory line is hardly congruent with the previous one.
"Made love last night, wasn't good wasn't bad..."
All my food tastes like straw.
I'm never surprised or disappointed.
I'm never proud or ashamed.
I do what I am.
As you say, another day closer of my journey being completed...
I don't say life is good or bad. It is one long, strange trip. When we can no longer forgive our lives are over.
Johann Harí´s article is very important in that it epitemises the tight connection between "us" and "them": "So the indigenous peoples acted in their own self-defence, and ours". The people in the 1st world industrial countries can now identify their common interests with those of the native Amazonian peoples. In Perú this new convergence was expressed in the demonstrations in Lima and other cities of thousands of people: university students, unionised workers , waitresses, etc. in support of the Amazonians and the preservation of the forests. The world has passed a sort of tipping-point in public understanding and coordinated action. We can now see and feel the justice of the native peoples protest and understand the rationality and logic of their claims. Their future is our future.
"There are millions of hectares of timber there lying idle."
Idle? Those forests crucially supported the development of higher animal species including homo sapien.
"aware of no credible data of negative community health impacts"
But Occidental Petrol didn't try to discover any credible data of negatgive community health impacts.
"They have to prove it's our crude, [which] is absolutely impossible."
Wrongo. Chevron-Stupid has to prove its crude oil is not causing childrens' cancers.
"He was responding to intense pressure from the US"
Calling O'Bamba's Lexus-set electorate: You haven't reigned in the imperial steamroller yet with your lesser evil votes?
"Some of Garcia's associates have been caught on tape talking about how to sell off the Amazon to their cronies."
Where is the the USA, the "world's policeman", when you need him? Oh, he's printing the bribe money!!
"These people had nothing, but they stood up to the oil companies. We have everything, yet too many of us sit limp and passive, filling up our tanks with stolen oil without a thought for tomorrow."
Actually, the people of the Amazon have closer to everything and US petro-gluttons have closer to nothing.
The Peruvians would have avoided all this heartache if they had not given into fear and elected Ollanta Humala instead of that washed up has-been Garcia.