River given human rights

SUBHEAD: A New Zealand river has Human Rights. Now will modern law come to its senses?

By David Korten on 7 July 2017 for Yes Magazine -
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/a-new-zealand-river-has-human-rights-now-will-modern-law-come-to-its-senses-20170707)


Image above: Maori men paddle the river in traditional craft. Photo  by Hagan Hopkins. From original article.

Humanity is slowly reawakening to the simple logic that Mother Earth’s rights must come first.

Our system of law has the rights issue exactly backward. But humanity is slowly reawakening to the simple logic that Mother Earth’s rights must come before human rights.

It was a stunning breakthrough in a rights issue that could be a crucial step toward ensuring a human future. In March, New Zealand passed the Te Awa Tupua Bill making New Zealand’s Whanganui River the first river in the world to hold the same legal rights, responsibilities, and liabilities as a human person. For the Maori people, it was the culmination of a 140-year struggle to gain recognition of the river as an ancestor of the tribe.

The victory quickly had a major consequence far beyond New Zealand’s borders.

Only two weeks later, citing the New Zealand law as precedent, a court in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand gave the Ganges River and its main tributary, the Yamuna River, the status of living human entities. Henceforth, polluting or damaging these rivers will be a legal equivalent to harming a person.

I learned of New Zealand’s breakthrough from my longtime friend and colleague Shannon Biggs, executive director of Movement Rights and co-founder of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature.

Biggs and her Movement Rights co-founder, Pennie Opal Plant, traveled to New Zealand last November as guests of the Maori to learn and share with the world the lessons of their historic victory. Biggs further elaborates those lessons in her report published in Earth Island Journal.

Humanity is slowly reawakening to the essential truth that nature—the living Earth—is the source of human existence and is essential to our nurture. It is simple logic that the needs of Mother Earth must come before ours.

That, in turn, implies that Earth’s rights must come even before human rights.
This logic has sweeping implications for a modern system of law that gives corporations more rights than people and nature no rights at all. Just as our human existence depends on the health and well-being of a living Earth, the existence of corporations depends on the health and well-being of human society.

So at its foundation, modern law has the rights issue exactly backward.

Significant as New Zealand’s action is, it represents only a first step in an essential rethinking and restructuring of a system of law crafted by the rulers of an Imperial Civilization to secure their own power and privilege.

In our transition from Imperial Civilization to Ecological Civilization, we have much to learn from indigenous people as humanity’s elders—keepers of our human memory of a time when we saw ourselves clearly as part of nature.

Earth cared for us, and we cared for her. We organized around the rivers, forests, and prairies. We depended on them for our means of living. We honored them as our ancestors. This was a time when no one had yet invented an exclusive claim or right to own, destroy, or sell a portion of nature’s territory in disregard of the present or future needs of others.

Living in balance with nature came easily when our dependence was self-evident. Now that, despite our technological sophistication, we have reached and exceeded the limits of Earth’s capacity, shouldn’t our dependence once again be self-evident?

Perhaps the anomalies created by giving a river the rights and liabilities of a living person will force us to rethink and revise the foundational principles of modern law. What is the river’s liability to a person whose lands it floods or the swimmer it drowns? How are the seemingly intractable conflicts between legally proclaimed territorial rights of nature, humans, and corporations to be resolved?

My thanks to the Maori people who persevered to compel us all to address these essential questions.
The system is ill-suited to the needs of an Ecological Civilization that is expected to meet the needs of all in a balanced, co-productive relationship with a living Earth.



.

The World at 1°C — March ‘17

SUBHEAD: People need to see the upside of climate-friendly policies leading to useful work and health.


By Staff on 31 March 2017 for Demand Climate Justice -
(https://medium.com/@DemandClimateJustice/the-world-at-1c-march-2017-15ada0bb5ba6)


Image above: The Bogus Creek Fire burns in Alaska, 2015. Photo Credit: US Department of Agriculture. From original article.

“We are at the crossroads now: We either say: this thing is too big for us, this task cannot be done. Then we will be transformed by nature, because we will end up with a planet warming by 4, 5, 6 or even 12 degrees. It would be the end of the world as we know it, and I have all the evidence. Or we say: We’re doing the transformation ourselves.” — Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, climate scientist, Postdam Institute.

The Global Threat
One of the many facets of humanity threatened by climate change is language itself, our ability to construct narrative to make sense of the world around us. How does a collection of words capture what confounds the limits of human imagination? How do you thread together a story about the unweaving of life?

These are questions we struggle to answer every day, but the bitter, impossibly incomplete summary we have right now is:

• We are killing each other. 
• We are extinguishing the conditions necessary for the dignified survival of the human species.

The changes being unleashed, as well as the changes we are failing to make — the blind spots we are continuing to hold — are relegating lands and lives to the abyss.

This month has brought into better clarity the incomprehensible numeracy of the scars we are carving into the planet. The rates of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are close to breaching the 410 ppm threshold. The last time levels were this high was the Pliocene Epoch, 3 million years ago.

This matters because during the Pliocene, sea levels were between 15–25 meters higher than today. The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide was consistently above 400 ppm was 16 million years ago during the Miocene, or about 25 million years ago during the early Oligocene, when the Earth was unrecognisable compared to anything homo sapiens have ever experienced.

The Arctic today has record low ice levels: in late winter it has about as much ice as it had midsummer 35 years ago. This is deeply worrying, as previous research has shown that Arctic ice melt could catalyze uncontrollable climate change.

New research has lent further weight to the claim that global warming is going to alter the jet stream, making it weaker and more prolonged — the result of which is that weather patterns may persist for longer, driving extreme droughts, heat waves, and storms. In fact, analysis shows that a “human fingerprint” can now be found over nearly all extreme weather events.

Such rapid changes are exacting a profound psychic toll the world over. Iowan farmer Matthew Russell, whose family has tended to their land for five generations, recounts:

“Psychologically, in the last few years, there’s a lot of anxiety that I don’t remember having 10 years ago. In the last three or four years, there’s this tremendous anxiety around the weather because windows of time for quality crop growth are very narrow.”

The World Meteorological Organisation’s State of the Climate report for 2016 shows a planet heading into “truly uncharted territory”, defined by tumbling temperature records, heatwaves, and glacial melting. Jeffrey Kargel, a glaciologist at the University of Arizona commented:

“Earth is a planet in upheaval due to human-caused changes in the atmosphere. In general, drastically changing conditions do not help civilisation, which thrives on stability.”

Ensuring that stability will be no easy feat. Scientists have come up with a daunting roadmap for meeting the Paris Agreement goals, and achieving decarbonisation by 2050: global CO2 emissions will need to halve every decade. Net emissions from land use (agriculture, forestry) will have to dive to zero.

Carbon dioxide removal technologies — those that suck carbon from the atmosphere — will need to scale up massively to the extent that they will have to pull 5 gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere (double what soil and trees do already).

We are nowhere near this level of action; instead, we’re seeing the highest rates of CO2 growth on record. The human and non-human cost of all this is harrowing.

Species in every ecosystem are being affected by increasing temperatures and shifting precipitation patterns. Marine animals are moving towards the poles at the average rate of 72 kilometres a decade.

A new study has shown that India’s dwindling groundwater is tied to variable monsoon precipitation, linked to climate change. The result has been the worst drought in a century across Southern India, where dozens of farmers have committed suicide following crop losses and financial difficulties in wake of the drought, and communities have been forced to eat rats due to food shortages.

“This is not a crime against humanity. This is a crime by humanity. We have sentenced to death the largest living structure on the planet: the Great Barrier Reef. The sentence is being carried out slowly and painfully before our eyes.”

To make matters even worse, the reef was further devastated by a powerful cyclone, which turned parts of the reef into an “underwater wasteland”.

New data is sharpening scientific fears that the Middle East and North Africa risks becoming uninhabitable in a few decades, as the availability of fresh water has fallen by two-thirds over the past 40 years. This research comes as evidence signals that nutrition and food security levels in the region have deteriorated sharply over the last six years.

In Zimbabwe, floods have caused a spike in malaria cases. In Russia, scientists have identified 7000 large gas bubbles across the Yamal and Gydan peninsulas that are about to explode. The air already emanating from these bubbles includes 20 times more carbon dioxide and 200 times more methane than nearby air.

This phenomenon is being linked to climate change, as permafrost across Siberia is rapidly melting, releasing a build-up of methane and greenhouse gases.

In Brazil, five years after the country adopted a new Forest Code, deforestation is now 60% higher. The Amazon is facing a vicious cycle of drought and forest loss, with irreparable damage being wrought by deforestation in Paraguay’s Chaco region, yet the Brazilian government is continuing to hand it over to mining and agribusiness.

Other governments maintain this suicidal ideology as well, with the Australian government changing Native Title law to make it easier for mining companies to secure access to land.

In the US, Trump’s effort to “Make America Dirty Again” continues at full place, as even the minimal climate change regulation introduced by Obama as part of his “legacy” are rapidly being rolled back.

However, the Trump administration is not just content with attacking environmental law, it is also attacking the very basis of reality, scrubbing climate science itself from the public domain. Already, 8 major oil and gas projects are in the works in the United States

While the US’ great rival China may be reducing coal use at home, it is boosting it abroad, kickstarting a new coal boom in Pakistan. Veteran environmentalist William Laurance wrote, 

“Across the globe, on nearly every continent, China is involved in a dizzying variety of resource extraction, energy, agricultural, and infrastructure projects — roads, railroads, hydropower dams, mines — that are wreaking unprecedented damage to ecosystems and biodiversity. This onslaught will likely be made easier by the Trump administration’s anti-environmental tack and growing disengagement internationally.”

 Dirty development affects China profoundly, with some of its most precious rivers being polluted to astonishing levels — threatening local livelihoods which depend on tourism.

March was a month of dramatic drought and deluge. Peru and Namibia suffered the worst floods in recent memory. In Peru, more than half the country declared a state of emergency. 100 bridges and 11,000 homes have collapsed, 78 people have died, 20 have disappeared, and 263 are wounded.

The poorest have been the worst hit, with entire slums washed away. These events take place just months after Peru experienced severe drought and record wildfires. Peru’s floods and torrential rains followed spikes of ocean surface temperature off the Peruvian coast earlier in March. The floods afflicting Peru raise alarm bells for the rest of the region.


Image above: Water distribution during 2011 Somalian drought. Photo credit Oxfam. From original article.

On the other side of the world in East Africa, drought continues, with international aid officials saying they are facing one of the biggest humanitarian disasters since World War II.

We are now likely to face an unprecedented situation: four simultaneous famines happening in four countries. Countless lives are at stake, with an estimated 20 million people — including 1.4 million children — already suffering from malnutrition. Though famine is a consequence of politics and economics, scientists have in this case identified climate change as partly responsible.

Without significant efforts, the drought shows little sign of relenting. Researchers are predicting a 3rd “poor or failed crop growing season for Eastern Kenya and Somalia” for March — May. This poor cropping forecast is linked to reduced rainfall, which in turn is partially driven by sea-surface temperatures in the western Pacific and central Pacific.

However, research into climate change impacts in Africa remains stinted by unconscious biases which mean that certain countries are favored as case studies far more than others in what is known as “the streetlight effect.”

Meanwhile in Asia water politics are near “boiling point”, as prolonged water scarcity increases the risk of cascading conflicts between countries and communities. In Bangladesh, over eight million people are losing access to freshwater as climate change makes rivers too saline for farming. Even Europe is thirsty and parched: 80% of Spain risks becoming a desert this century.

The problem is global: in the Argentine province of Salta temperatures surpassed 40C, fuelling water scarcity and killing 26 people in 23 days. Cape Town is also experiencing tremendous drought.

A UNICEF report has warned than 1 in 4 children around the world will face extreme water scarcity by 2040. This scarcity will bring greater environmental vulnerability to children; currently, a fourth of all deaths of children under five are due to environmental risks such as air pollution and unclean water.

Extreme weather has wiped out an enormous Australian mangrove forest stretching over 1000 kilometres. For a rich country like Australia, such weather events are traumatic shocks. For poorer countries, they are crippling: Dominica is still struggling to recover from the effects of Tropical Storm Erika (2015). When the storm hit, the country’s Prime Minister warned that it would take the country’s development back by twenty years.

For some places, even a slow recovery from the impacts of global warming won’t be an option. In Bangladesh, the shrinking Sagar Island in the Sundarbans is struggling to stay afloat. In Costa Rica, some coastal towns are looking at the prospect of being wiped out by sea level rise in the near future.

Worldwide, this will lead to a massive displacement and relocation of peoples. Already 1.3 million people have been relocated away from their coastal homes as part of “managed retreat” programmes. This month, the entire community Colombian municpality of Murindó will now have to be relocated after torrential rains.

The evidence of today’s impacts supports the claims that there is an urgent and growing need to improve climate finance, and to make the world economy carbon-free by 2050, at the latest.

Victories, Solutions and Hope

In spite of the visceral despair, hope always holds up the horizon. Whether we are talking about the proud resistance struggles of communities around the world, or about people enacting their own solutions, one thing that has to be said is that there are many people around the world who are not going to see it be destroyed without a fight.

For example, community activists in Western Australia have finally won their campaign to stop construction of a road which would have eliminated the Beeliar wetlands sacred to the Noongar people, with the latest state election.

On the other side of the country, over a dozen groups have banded together to stop the Adani coal mine, while in the Northern Territory aboriginal peoples are blocking a monster gas pipeline from passing through their lands.

A First Nations Renewable Energy Alliance has formed to tackle energy poverty and dirty energy — something which First Nations groups in Canada have also done. The state of Victoria passed a permanent ban on fracking.

In China the government has banned commercial logging in natural forests, and will replace 90% of coal power with clean energy in Hebei province, while in Liberia, citizens are putting pressure on lawmakers to pass a land rights act. In India, the government is aiming for 100% electric vehicles by 2030.

In Europe, eminent universities such as King’s College London and the University of Bristol have agreed to divest from fossil fuels. City leaders such as Stockholm mayor Karin Wanngård are driving forward potent agendas rooted in sustainability. Cities, less beholden to fossil fuel interests, are at the forefront of ambitious climate policies.

European companies are planning to build an “energy island” in the North Sea, that will provide affordable wind power to tens of millions. In Germany, an old coal mine is being converted into a giant storage system for excess solar and wind energy. In Canada, an old hard-rock mine is now British Columbia’s largest solar farm.

From the United States to South Africa to the Netherlands, climate justice battles are increasingly being fought and won in court.

Manipuri women are demanding recognition for their role as peacebuilders and nature protectors. Macedonian groups are resisting destructive copper mining in the south-east of the country, while Croatian movements organized a major Critical Mass action in Zagreb to demand an just transition away from fossil fuels.

Shuar communities in Ecuador are continuing to resist a Chinese copper mining project. Indigenous communities in the Brazilian Cinta Larga are continuing to challenge diamond mining.

The Kichwa people of Sarayaku remain a beacon of hope for the world in their fierce resistance against oil drilling in their ancestral homelands. In Guyana, Wai-Wai communities are using mobile technology to protect their lands and forests.

In a landslide electoral victory, residents of the central Colombian town of Cajamarca voted down the world’s largest open-pit gold mining project: la Colosa. It was a triumph of the needs of life over luxury, as 45% of global gold is used for gold bars and 47% for jewellery.

This victory also exemplifies the growing use of municipal referenda to oppose extractive projects across the Americas. In El Salvador, several local referenda against mining projects have brought forward a national bill that would ban mining for metals in the country.

The bill has been passed with overwhelming congressional support, a historic victory. In another victory, the World Bank exited the controversial Angostura goldmine project in Colombia’s Santurban moorlands.

In the northern Argentine province of Jujuy, communities have marched for over a week to protest and visibilize their struggle against mining. Communities in Southern Mexico are stepping up to protect the disappearing forests of the Lacandon jungle, and in Baja, California, movements have been successful in stopping the Los Cardones open cast mining project. In Panama, flooded Ngäbe communities are continuing to fight the Barro Blanco dam.

From redesigning money to better reflect different degrees of value, to climate-smart agriculture in the Caribbean, to use ancient Nubian low-carbon construction techniques, improving forest management, there is no shortage of solutions. Or of areas to implement them.

According to studies by Google, almost 90 per cent of US rooftops are suitable for solar power.

However it is not just limiting climate change that requires urgent attention — building capacity to deal with it is also crucial, which is why it is important that the Jamaican government has approved major projects to improve the country’s resilience and adaptation to climate change.

The very way in which modern civilization relates to nature seems to be changing: the high court of the Indian state of Uttarakhand declared the Ganga and Yamuna rivers to be living entities, giving them legal rights. In New Zealand, after 140 years of negotiation, a Māori tribe won legal recognition for Whanganui river, meaning it must be treated as a living entity.

Even in the seemingly hopeless United States of America, there are some good news stories: the state of Maryland banned fracking, and on the Hudson river small towns are fighting Big Oil.

Movements are building their power by reframing environmental solutions as mechanisms that can make a short-term and long-term difference to people’s lives us. As Kumar Venkat writes,

“We must steer the debate towards how climate change mitigation can provide tangible co-benefits in other domains. People need to see the upside of climate-friendly policies, while knowing that any costs will be shared broadly by society. Among the issues that matter…on a daily basis, health and employment should be front and center while tackling climate change.”

Obituaries & Recognition
Cruelly, many environment and land defenders — many indigenous and many women — remain at risk for their noble actions.

This month in Mexico journalist Miroslava Breach — who covered illegal logging and killing in Indigenous territories — was murdered.

In Colombia, social leaders from Congreso de los Pueblos, which is heavily involved in agrarian action, were detained by the army while agroecologist and human rights defender Ruth Alicia Lopez Guisao was shot dead by two unidentified gunmen in Medellín. Brazilian land rights defender Waldomiro Costa Pereira was also murdered.

This month also marked the first anniversary of the murder of Berta Cáceres — we remember her gracious spirit, dignity and force.

Elsewhere in Latin America the risks are also high: in Guatemala, human rights defenders have denounced attacks by large dam operators, while in Honduras Suyapa Martínez of the Centro de Estudios de la Mujer was subject to judicial harassment by the company Desarrollo Energético S.A. which stands accused of the murder of Berta Cáceres.

The violence inflicted on such brave activists should inspire us to hold up, support, and be inspired by those people around us who are fighting the good fights.

Some good souls we wanted to highlight this month include:

Alicia Cawiya, an Indigenous activist prepared to defy the powerful to save Ecuador’s Yasuní rainforest; 

Ridhima Pandey, a 9-year old in India who is bringing a plea to the National Green Tribunal alleging inaction on climate change;

Sergei Kechimov, an Indigenous Khanty reindeer herder in Siberia who is confronting oil giants; and

Antonio Vicente, an 84-year old Brazilian who has planted 50,000 trees over the past 40 years in an attempt to fight deforestation. To them and the countless others fighting to make the world a better place to live, we give our sincerest thanks.

And to all of you we say: hold on to your hope. We are only as big as the challenge we choose to take on.
.

See film "Answering the Call"

SUBHEAD: Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice hosts activist and filmmaker John Witeck.

By Sandy Herndon on 21 December 2016 for Island Breath -
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/12/see-answering-call.html)


Image above: A young John Witeck and friend at the University of Hawaii in the 1960's. Still frame from trailer below.

WHAT:
Watch "Answering the Call" , a film about his experiences with Civil Rights suppression in Selma AL in  and a Q & A about his current work in Hawaii.  The evenings events will open with civil rights era social justice songs by Blu Dux and Friends. The events are free.

WHEN: 
January 15th  2017 From  3:00 pm to 6:00 pm

WHERE:
Lihue Neighborhood Center, 3353 Eono Street
Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii 96766

WHY:
As relevant today as it was in the '60's, suppression of people's voting and other civil rights continues to be a source of dishonor to our "Democratic Society". This film and the Q & A afterward, offers an opportunity to better understand our role in taking back our power.

SPONSOR: 
Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice hosts activist film maker John Witeck.

CONTACT:
If you need further information
Sandy Herndon
phone: 808-320-3878
email: 2da1wahine@gmail.com


Image above: Current John Witeck in an interview from the movie "Answering the Call". Still frame from trailer below.

BACKGROUND:
John Witeck was called to Selma, in 1963 by Dr. Martin Luther King to promote voter registration of suppressed African Americans. He will speak at Lihue Neighborhood Center on Sunday Jan. 15 at 3PM. The documentary film "Answering the Call" portraying Mr. Witeck's sometimes chilling experiences in Selma will be shown.

Mr. Witeck was inspired to become involved in the greater movement for social change. In 1967 he enrolled in the East-West Center graduate program on O`ahu, and heeding Dr. King's words became a draft resister and anti-war activist. He joined in local causes, among them the Hawaiians' struggle against evictions in Kalama Valley and elsewhere.

He is a founder of University of Hawaii Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Labor Community Alliance and Hawaii Peoples Fund. Mr. Witeck served as Business Agent for United Public Workers for 25 years, and he is a retiree of HEA Bargaining Unit Thirteen.Today he instructs at Honolulu Community College and is vice president of Hoa` O Makaha (Makaha Farm).


Video above: Trailer for "Answering the Call". From (https://youtu.be/GSyD8tlIz28).

.

UN Experts to US, "Stop DAPL Now"

SUBHEAD: "The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations," says UN special rapporteur.

By Andrea Germanos on 26 September 2016 for Common Dreams -
(http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/09/25/un-experts-united-states-stop-dapl-now)


Image above: Photo of NoDAPL demonstration by John Duffy. From original article.

Backing up the Standing Rock Sioux and its allies, a United Nations expert has called on the United States to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Echoing pipeline opponents' concerns, the statement from the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, cited the pipeline's threats to drinking water and sacred sites. She also admonished the U.S. for failing to protect protesters' rights and failing to properly consult with communities affected by the fossil fuel infrastructure.

"The tribe was denied access to information and excluded from consultations at the planning stage of the project, and environmental assessments failed to disclose the presence and proximity of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation," Tauli-Corpuz stated Thursday—just two days after Standing Rock Chairman Dave Archambault II urged the UN Human Rights Council to help the tribe stop the pipeline.

Informed consent from those affected—and abiding by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples—is essential, she said, "particularly in connection with extractive resource industries."

Responding to the crackdown on pipeline protesters, she said, "The U.S. authorities should fully protect and facilitate the right to freedom of peaceful assembly of indigenous peoples, which plays a key role in empowering their ability to claim other rights."

According to Tom Goldtooth, the director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, "The UN Expert got it right."

"What the U.S. calls consultation is not consultation but a statement telling people what they're doing after millions of dollars have been invested, painting Indigenous Peoples as spoilers. The right of free, prior, and informed consent begins prior to the planning process, not when their bulldozers are at your doorstep."

Tauli-Corpuz's statement was endorsed by seven other UN experts, including Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Léo Heller; Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, John H. Knox; and Special Rapporteur on cultural rights, Karima Bennoune.

The pipeline, slated to snake a 1,172-mile path across four states from the Bakken fields of North Dakota to a hub in Illinois, has faced months of building resistance.

Given the continued protests—and legal hurdles—"the way forward won't be simple" for the pipeline company, the Bismark Tribune reports this weekend.

And if it is ultimately halted, that'd be good news for pipeline opponents and proponents alike, according to Jacob Johns, a Spokane, Wash. resident and member of the An akimel O'Othm (Gile River Pima) and Hopi tribes.

"We're out there protesting on behalf of the people who were for the pipeline," he said to KXLY. "They don't realize we're out there fighting for each other, we are humanity trying to heal itself and save itself."

See also:
Ea O Ka Aina: No DAPL solidarity grows 9/21/16
Ea O Ka Aina: This is how we should be living 9/16/16
Ea O Ka Aina: 'Natural Capital' replacing 'Nature' 9/14/16
Ea O Ka Aina: The Big Difference at Standing Rock 9/13/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Jill Stein joins Standing Rock Sioux 9/10/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Pipeline temporarily halted 9/6/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Native Americans attacked with dogs 9/5/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Mni Wiconi! Water is Life! 9/3/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Sioux can stop the Pipeline 8/28/16
Ea O Ka Aina: Officials cut water to Sioux 8/23/16 

.

"Where to Invade Next" on Kauai

SUBHEAD: Three free showings on Kauai, April 22nd, 28th, and 30th, of Michael Moore's latest.

By Sandra Herndon on 12 April 2016 for Island Breath -  
(http://islandbreath.blogspot.com/2016/04/where-to-invade-next-on-kauai.html)


Image above: Michael Moore looking for a new place to plant Old Glory. Still from video below.

WHERE AND WHEN:
 Three free movie showings on Kauai:

Hanalei Community Center
(Hale Halawai near the Green Church)
Friday April 22nd at 7:00 pm.

Lihue Public Library
(4344 Hardy Street)
Thursday April 28th, 7:00 pm

Koloa Neighborhood Center
(3461B Weliweli Road),
Saturday, April 30, 6:30 pm

WHAT:
"Where to Invade Next", a film by Michael Moore and his most dangerous comedy.

SPONSORED BY:
Kauai Alliance for Peace and Social Justice, with generous support from Kauai friends of Michael to purchase screening rights.  Donations will be accepted. Call (808) 320-3878 for more information.
To learn what the USA can learn from other nations, Michael Moore playfully "invades" them to see what they have to offer.

 Just in time for election season, America's favorite political provocateur, Michael Moore, is back with his new film, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT. Honored by festivals and critics groups alike, WHERE TO INVADE NEXT is an expansive, hilarious, and subversive comedy in which the Academy Award®-winning director confronts the most pressing issues facing America today and finds solutions in the most unlikely places. The creator of FAHRENHEIT 9/11 and BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE has returned with an epic movie that’s unlike anything he has done before—an eye-opening call to arms to capture the American Dream and restore it in, of all places, America.

REVIEWS:

Provacative, hilariously Funny....Moore's latest film is his most bold and most sophisticated.  Instead of pointing out our flaws, he imagines our possibilities. And instead of wallowing in fear and panic, he offers practical ideas for productive change. Sophia A McClennen in Salon

"Funny, but also serious as a heart attack."
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly

"Impassioned, Mr. Moore's most far-reaching film.
Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"Moore has made an act of guerrilla humanity."
Owen Gleiberman, BBC

Video above: Trailer for ""Where to Invade". From (https://youtu.be/tFgewMnZdQc).
.

Israeli Settlements Are Illegal

SUBHEAD: United Nations' report calls for Israel to immediately stop further illegal settlement construction.

By John Heilprin on 31 January 2013 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/31/un-panel-israeli-settlements-illegal_n_2589394.html)


Image above: Israeli settlements, such as this West Bank Jewish settlement of Beitar Ilit is precluding possibility of two state solution. From (http://www.salon.com/2009/11/05/settlements/).

The United Nations' first report on Israel's overall settlement policy describes it as a "creeping annexation" of territory that clearly violates the human rights of Palestinians, and calls for Israel to immediately stop further such construction.

The report's conclusions, revealed Thursday, are not legally binding, but they further inflame tensions between the U.N. Human Rights Council and Israel, and between Israel and the Palestinians. Israeli officials immediately denounced the report, while Palestinians pointed to it as "proof of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing" and its desire to undermine the possibility of a Palestinian state.

The Palestinians also hinted that they could use the report as a basis for legal action toward a war crimes prosecution.

In its report to the 47-nation council, a panel of investigators said Israel is violating international humanitarian law under the Fourth Geneva Convention, one of the treaties that establish the ground rules for what is considered humane during wartime.

This was the first thematic report on Israel's settlements with an historical look at the government's policy since 1967, U.N. officials said. Previous U.N. reports have taken a look at Israeli settlement policy only through the lens of a specific event, such as the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip, when Israel launched an offensive in response to months of rocket fire by the ruling Hamas militant group.

The Israeli government persists in building settlements in occupied territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank, "despite all the pertinent United Nations resolutions declaring that the existence of the settlements is illegal and calling for their cessation," the report said.

The settlements are "a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," the report concludes.

More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements that dot the West Bank and ring east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem, with its Palestinian population, immediately after capturing the territory from Jordan in 1967 and has built housing developments for Jews there, but the annexation has not been recognized internationally.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry accused the council of taking a systematically one-sided and biased approach towards Israel, with the report being merely "another unfortunate reminder" of that bias.

"The only way to resolve all pending issues between Israel and the Palestinians, including the settlements issue, is through direct negotiations without pre-conditions," the ministry said. "Counterproductive measures – such as the report before us – will only hamper efforts to find a sustainable solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict."

French judge Christine Chanet, who led the panel, said Israel never cooperated with the probe, which the council ordered last March.

Because it was not authorized to investigate within Israel, Chanet said, the panel had to travel to Jordan to interview more than 50 people who spoke of the impact of the settlements, such as violence by Jewish settlers, confiscation of land and damage to olive trees that help support Palestinian families. The report also references legal opinions, other reports and a number of articles in the Israeli press.

Another panel member, Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir, said the settlements "seriously impinge on the self-determination of the Palestinian people," an offense under international humanitarian law.

At a news conference, Chanet called the report "a kind of weapon for the Palestinians" if they want to take their grievances before The Hague-based International Criminal Court.

The Palestine Liberation Organization appeared to suggest it might seek such action, in a statement that called the report's legal framework a clear indictment of Israeli policy and practice.

"All the Israeli settlement activities are illegal and considered to be war crimes according to the International Criminal Court's Rome Statute as well as the Fourth Geneva Convention. This means that Israel is liable to prosecution," said PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi. The settlements, she added, are "clearly a form of forced transfer and a proof of Israel's policy of ethnic cleansing."

In November, the U.N. General Assembly recognized a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in a vote that was largely symbolic but infuriated Israel. In December, the Palestinians accused Israel of planning more "war crimes" by expanding settlements.

The Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council was set up in 2006 to replace a 60-year-old commission that was widely discredited as a forum dominated by nations with poor rights records. The United States finally joined the council in 2009, and U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said earlier this month that while all countries should appear for their review "we also consistently registered our opposition to the council's consistent anti-Israel bias."

Earlier this week, Israel became the first nation to skip a review of its human rights record by the council without giving a reason. Diplomats agreed to postpone their review until later this year based on Israel's request for a deferral.

The council, which could have proceeded with the review or canceled it, said its agreement to defer would set precedent for how to deal with any future cases of "non-cooperation."

All 193 U.N.-member nations are required to submit to such a review every four years, and council diplomats said they worried that if a nation were let off the hook that could undermine the process.
.

Idle No More rises

SUBHEAD: The indigenous leadership of Idle No More rises to defend ancestral lands—and the plane.

By Bill McKibbon on 16 January 2013 for Yes! Magazine -
(http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/idle-no-more-rises-to-defend-ancestral-lands-and-fight-climate-change-bill-mckibben)


Image above: Graphic poster designed for  Idle No More stating "Indigenous Rights Revolution" and "Unified and standing together for indigenous sovereignty!" From (http://ejfood.blogspot.com/2012/12/idle-no-more-movement-grows-urgent-call.html).

I don't claim to know exactly what's going on with #IdleNoMore, the surging movement of indigenous activists that started late last year in Canada and is now spreading across the continent—much of the action, from hunger strikes to road and rail blockades, is in scattered and remote places, and even as people around the world plan for solidarity actions on Friday, the press has done a poor job of bringing it into focus.

But I sense that it's every bit as important as the Occupy movement that transfixed the world a year ago; it feels like it wells up from the same kind of long-postponed and deeply felt passion that powered the Arab Spring. And I know firsthand that many of its organizers are among the most committed and skilled activists I've ever come across.

In fact, if Occupy's weakness was that it lacked roots (it had to take over public places, after all, which proved hard to hold on to), this new movement's great strength is that its roots go back farther than history. More than any other people on this continent, Native Americans know what exploitation and colonization are all about, and so it's natural that at a moment of great need they're leading the resistance to the most profound corporatization we've ever seen. I mean, we've just come off the hottest year ever in America, the year when we broke the Arctic ice cap; the ocean is 30 percent more acidic than it was when I was born.

Thanks to the same fossil fuel industry that's ripping apart aboriginal lands, we're at the very end of our rope as a species; it's time, finally, to listen to the people we've spent the last five centuries shunting to one side.

A tradition of defending the land
Eighteen months ago, when we at the climate campaign 350.org started organizing against the Keystone XL Pipeline, the very first allies we came across were from the Indigenous Environmental Network—people like Tom Goldtooth and Clayton Thomas-Muller. They'd been working for years to alert people to the scale of the devastation in Alberta's tar sands belt, where native lands had been wrecked and poisoned by the immense scale of the push to mine "the dirtiest energy on earth." And they quickly introduced me to many more—heroes like Melina Laboucan-Massimo, a member of the Cree Nation who was traveling the world explaining exactly what was going on.

When, in late summer 2011, we held what turned into the biggest civil disobedience action in 30 years in the United States, the most overrepresented group were indigenous North Americans—in percentage terms they outnumbered even the hardy band of Guilty Liberals like me. And what organizers! Heather Milton-Lightning, night after night training new waves of arrestees; Gitz Crazyboy of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, absolutely on fire as he described the land he could no longer hunt and fish.

In the year since, the highlights of incessant campaigning have been visits to Canada, always to see native leaders in firm command of the fight—Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus in Yellowknife, or Chief Reuben George along the coast of British Columbia. Young and powerful voices like Caleb Behn, from the province's interior; old and steady leaders in one nation after another. I've never met Chief Theresa Spence, the Attawapiskat leader whose hunger strike has been the galvanizing center of #IdleNoMore, but I have no doubt she's cut of the same cloth.

The stakes couldn't be higher, for Canada and for the world. Much of this uprising began when Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper rammed through Parliament Bill C-45, an omnibus bill gutting environmental reviews and protections. He had no choice but to do so if he wanted to keep developing Canada's tar sands, because there's no way to mine and pipe that sludgy crude without fouling lakes and rivers. (Indeed, a study released a few days ago made clear that carcinogens had now found their way into myriad surrounding lakes). And so, among other things, the omnibus bill simply declared that almost every river, stream and lake in the country was now exempt from federal environmental oversight.

Canada's environmental community protested in all the normal ways—but they had no more luck than, say, America's anti-war community in the run up to Iraq. There's trillions of dollars of oil locked up in Alberta's tarsands, and Harper's fossil-fuel backers won't be denied.

First Nations rush to stop climate chang
eBut there's a stumbling block they hadn't counted on, and that was the resurgent power of the aboriginal nations. Some Canadian tribes have signed treaties with the British Crown, and others haven't, but none have ceded their lands and all feel their inherent rights are endangered by Harper's power grab. They are, legally and morally, all that stand in the way of Canada's total exploitation of its vast energy and mineral resources, including the tar sands, the world's second largest pool of carbon. NASA's James Hansen has explained that burning that bitumen on top of everything else we're combusting will mean it's "game over for the climate." Which means, in turn, that Canada's First Nations are in some sense standing guard over the planet.

And, luckily, the sentiment is spreading south. Tribal nations in the U.S., though sometimes with less legal power than their Canadian brethren, are equally effective organizers—later this month, for instance, an international gathering of indigenous peoples and a wide-ranging list of allies on the Yankton Sioux territory in South Dakota may help galvanize continued opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would help wreck those tar sands by carrying the oil south (often across reservations) to the Gulf of Mexico. American leaders like Winona LaDuke of the White Earth Indian Reservation have joined in the fight with a vengeance, drawing the connections between local exploitation and global climate change.

Corporations and governments have often discounted the power of native communities—because they were poor and scattered in distant places, they could be ignored or bought off. But in fact their lands contain much of the continent's hydrocarbon wealth—and, happily, much of its wind, solar and geo-thermal resources, as well. The choices that Native people make over the next few years will be crucial to the planet's future—and #IdleNoMore is an awfully good sign that the people who have spent the longest in this place are now rising artfully and forcefully to its defense.

.

Orcas held as slaves

SOURCE: Don Oystryk (doystryk@sasktel.net) SUBHEAD: For the first time a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights. By Staff on 7 Februaey 2012 for the Associated Press - (http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/02/07/killer-whale-lawsuit.html) Image above: Killer whale Tilikum, right, watches as SeaWorld Orlando trainers take a break during a training session at the theme park's Shamu Stadium in Orlando. Fromoriginal article.

A federal judge for the first time in U.S. history heard arguments Monday in a case that could determine whether animals enjoy the same constitutional protection against slavery as human beings.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller called the hearing in San Diego after Sea World asked the court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that names five orcas as plaintiffs in the case.

PETA claims the captured killer whales are treated like slaves for being forced to live in tanks and perform daily at its parks in San Diego, Calif., and Orlando, Fla.

"This case is on the next frontier of civil rights," said PETA's attorney Jeffrey Kerr, representing the five orcas.

Sea World's attorney Theodore Shaw called the lawsuit a waste of the court's time and resources. He said it defies common sense and goes against 125 years of case law applied to the U.S. Constitution's 13th amendment that prohibits slavery between humans.

"With all due respect, the court does not have the authority to even consider this question," Shaw said, adding later: "Neither orcas nor any other animal were included in the 'We the people' ... when the constitution was adopted."

Miller listened to both sides for an hour before announcing that he would take the case under advisement and issue his ruling at a later date. The judge raised doubts a court can allow animals to be plaintiffs in a lawsuit, and he questioned how far the implications of a favourable ruling could reach, pointing out the military's use of dolphins and scientists' experiments on whales in the wild.

Kerr acknowledged PETA faces an uphill battle but he said he was hopeful after Monday's hearing.

"This is an historic day," Kerr said. "For the first time in our nation's history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human. By any definition these orcas have been enslaved here."

The issue is not about whether the animals have been subjected to abuse, the defense said. If the court were to grant orcas constitutional rights, Shaw warned the ruling would have profound implications that could impact everything from the way the U.S. government uses dogs to sniff out bombs and drugs to how zoos and aquariums operate.

"We're talking about hell unleashed," he said.

PETA said a ruling in its favour would only help to protect the orcas in the entertainment industry and other cases involving animals would have to be decided on their own merits.

Kerr said Sea World employees are in violation of the 13th amendment because their conduct is enslaving an intelligent, highly social species that suffers from its confinements in ways similar to what humans would experience.

Brushing animals off as property is the same argument that was used against African-Americans and women before their constitutional rights were protected, PETA says.

Shaw pointed out that argument does not translate because both women and African-Americans are people for which the Constitution was written to protect.

Miller did not specify when he would issue his ruling.

.

End Corporate Personhood!

SUBHEAD: The Occupy movement agrees on a vital point - corporations are not people and don't have human rights. By Ted Becker on 30 September 2011 for The Last Lost Empire - (http://last-lost-empire.com/blog/?p=1318) Image above: "These are people - These are not!" poster. From original artticle. It’s been a long time coming, but now it’s begun… and it’s not merely coincidental to the numerous and growing “Occupy” movements against Wall Street and the global banks who are bankrupting America and much of the rest of the world. The goal of both grass roots movements is the same: defeat the corporate state that has emerged in America under the disguise of “representative democracy,” which in the early 21st Century is a government that represents only giant corporations and their interests.

So, without further ado, I introduce the readers and viewers of “The Last Lost Empire” to Move to Amend – whose motto, “End Corporate Rule: Legalize Democracy”, I applaud.

This website (http://movetoamend.org) has a lot of information as to how individuals can get involved in this movement and how to organize locally. It is a rich resource, badly needed, long in coming to fruition. It needs to network with the “Occupy” movement and vice versa. (The official Occupy Wall Street website is https://occupywallst.org/) Anyone who is familiar with the book that this website and blog represent realizes that I have been wondering for some time now why America has tolerated having corporations treated as human beings and being given the sacred rights bestowed upon Black Americans by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yes, that’s what Amendments 13, 14, 15 are all about and why they are, together, called The Civil War Amendments.

So, when The Preamble to the United States Constitution starts off with “We, the people of the United States of America”—do you think the Founders meant global corporations? Of course not. And when the 14th amendment said that no state shall deny “any person the equal protection of the law”—do you think they meant a corporation—WHICH IS CREATED AND LIMITED BY THE LAWS OF ANY STATE. How can something created by a state legislature be a person? Only God and combining a human egg with human sperm creates people. Who could ever come up with such a crazy idea?

The answer is easy. Only the Supreme Court of the United States could come up with such a crazy idea.

As I have described in detail in the book—and anyone who wants to know knows—The U.S. Supreme Court—the ultimate bastion of oligarchy and plutocracy under the American form of government—made several major decisions leading to this malfunction of democracy in America. The latest is the infamous Citizens United case where they gave corporations the power, as people, to completely control all federal elections by swamping the electoral system with corporate money.

Below is a great YouTube…very short…that despite its seemingly over-the-top approach to the subject—is actually exactly right. Corporations, as I’ve said many times, are The Frankenstein Monster of American Politics…and they are out to strangle the very states that created them and the country of their birth.

---

Move to Amend

From email distributed 25 October 2011 for Move to Amend - (info@MovetoAmend.org)

n January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions.

The national campaign to Abolish Corporate Personhood and Defend Democracy. Sign the Petition: http://MoveToAmend.org/motion-to-amend

We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

• Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
• Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our vote and participation count.
• Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions by global, national, and state governments.

Following a weekend of global action in support of the 99%, and much to the chagrin of the global banking industry headquartered on Wall Street, last Monday marked the one-month anniversary of Occupy Wall Street. While pols and pundits complain that the occupiers have no coherent message, the handmade signs protesters carry tell a different story:

• Corporations are not people
• I can’t afford a lobbyist. We are the 99%
• Stand up against corporate greed
• People over profits
• Kill corporations, not people
• Corporations are not people until Texas executes one

In response to a flood of requests for materials to distribute at local Occupy events, we are printing up signs that you and your friends can carry and distribute at an occupation, rally, or protest near you. Will you help us raise $3000 to print and distribute these signs? These occupations and protests provide us with an opportunity to reach thousands of non-partisan Americans and to learn exactly what they can do to end corporate personhood. Each union-printed, paperboard sign measures 12” x 18” and clearly states the solution—END CORPORATE PERSONHOOD! Click here to support Move to Amend and help us spread these signs far and wide. CONTACT: Move to Amend P.O. Box 260217 Madison, WI 53726-0217 website: www.movetoamend.org email: info@MovetoAmend.org .