Plenty has been written about the Royal Bank of Scotland chief's appearance at a UK Treasury Select Committee hearing this week and his acknowledgement that his parents wouldn't approve of his almost £10 million bonus package.
'If you ask my mother and father about my pay, they'd say it was too high,' Stephen Hester was quoted as saying in The Times.
Who else wouldn't approve? Try dozens of indigenous communities in Canada whose land and lives are being devastated by an RBS-financed project described by one Greenpeace campaigner as 'the biggest global warming crime ever seen'.
This is the 'tar sands', or 'oil sands', project in Alberta in which the RBS, according to the Rainforest Action Network, has invested more than £8 billion. None of the UK's national broadsheets managed to mention this.
To hear about the effects of the tar sands project, here is someone, Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, from the region being devastated: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/29/tarsands-oil-rbs-canada
As Eriel points out, UK taxpayers must bear some responsibility for the 'tar sands' project because 84% of the RBS is now owned by the state. For the guilty, 'look no further than the mirror,' she says.
Almost £10 million for overseeing the 'biggest global warming crime ever'? When the Head of the Select Committee told Hester 'the sheer size of your package seems to be out of synch with what is happening out there', he was more right than he knew.
For more information see: http://blog.newint.org/editors/2009/12/22/head-in-the-sand/
9 Jan 2010
'So very true. Thank you.'
The world's largest Native American news source, Indian Country Today (ICT), published my poem 'They came' back in July. One ICT reader's response was: 'So very true. Thank you.'
'They came' condemns our silence to speak out against the genocide of indigenous people around the world over the last 500 years.
To date, it has been published in a number of countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, India, Peru, Spain, the US and the UK.
To read the poem see: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/50046577.html
'They came' condemns our silence to speak out against the genocide of indigenous people around the world over the last 500 years.
To date, it has been published in a number of countries: Argentina, Chile, Colombia, India, Peru, Spain, the US and the UK.
To read the poem see: http://www.indiancountrytoday.com/archive/50046577.html
30 Nov 2009
Here comes the pesticide
'Civilization', 'progress', 'development', 'modernity'. . . These are all concepts and practices that have been used and abused to justify removing indigenous people from their land.
The reason? More often than not, it has been to access and exploit the natural resources on or under indigenous territory. These resources include gold, silver, rubber, oil, gas, timber, water etc.
But how do you remove people from their land if they refuse to go? Over the years, governments, companies and others, or those doing their dirty work, have found all kinds of ways:
- imprison them
- beat them
- torture them
- rape them
- hold them to gunpoint
- kill them
- bomb their homes
- destroy their crops
- poison their rivers
- spread diseases among them
And the latest? Or rather, the latest to attract the mainstream media's attention? Buzz them with light aircraft and spray pesticide.
That has just happened in Paraguay. The Ava Guarani have been sprayed with pesticide after refusing to leave their land - wanted by Brazilians to grow soya.
'An aeroplane arrived and sprayed directly above their homes with what are believed to be pesticides normally used on soya crops,' said Amnesty International.
According to reports, more than 200 people were affected: nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, and loss of consciousness.
See this CNN story for more details: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/10/paraguay.pesticide.attack/index.html#cnnSTCText
The reason? More often than not, it has been to access and exploit the natural resources on or under indigenous territory. These resources include gold, silver, rubber, oil, gas, timber, water etc.
But how do you remove people from their land if they refuse to go? Over the years, governments, companies and others, or those doing their dirty work, have found all kinds of ways:
- imprison them
- beat them
- torture them
- rape them
- hold them to gunpoint
- kill them
- bomb their homes
- destroy their crops
- poison their rivers
- spread diseases among them
And the latest? Or rather, the latest to attract the mainstream media's attention? Buzz them with light aircraft and spray pesticide.
That has just happened in Paraguay. The Ava Guarani have been sprayed with pesticide after refusing to leave their land - wanted by Brazilians to grow soya.
'An aeroplane arrived and sprayed directly above their homes with what are believed to be pesticides normally used on soya crops,' said Amnesty International.
According to reports, more than 200 people were affected: nausea, diarrhoea, vomiting, and loss of consciousness.
See this CNN story for more details: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/americas/11/10/paraguay.pesticide.attack/index.html#cnnSTCText
24 Nov 2009
WANTED: Ray Hunt, in person, in the Amazon
Published at Intercontinental Cry:
http://intercontinentalcry.org/wanted-ray-hunt-in-person-in-the-amazon/
http://intercontinentalcry.org/wanted-ray-hunt-in-person-in-the-amazon/
9 Nov 2009
When not shooting the 'natives' is not acceptable
Ansel Adams's photographs of Yosemite National Park are well-known: striking, ethereal prints of streams, rock-faces, flowers, waterfalls, and trees.
But there's something missing from these photos. Or rather, someone.
I mean the people who called Yosemite home. The people who had lived there for at least 4000 years. The indigenous Miwok.
Adams deliberately avoiding photographing them, even though they were rarely out of his sight when he was in Yosemite valley and he knew they had lived there for a long, long time. The reason? According to a new book by American journalist Mark Dowie, called Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, it was because he didn't think they belonged there. For Adams, Yosemite should be a 'pristine', unspoilt 'wilderness': no room for any people.
Why does this matter? Principally because this view of 'wilderness' has led to at least 5 million, and probably millions more, indigenous people around the world being driven off their land to make way for parks and reserves in the name of 'conservation'. Ergo: 'conservation refugees.'
How could this have happened? According to Dowie, Adams's view of 'wilderness', a 'fiction' he 'fed' by shooting Yosemite in the way he did, was shared by many American conservationists and later exported globally so there are now 110,000 'protected areas' worldwide.
Time and time again, people lost their land and homes. Sometimes it was to conserve 'megafauna' like lions, tigers and gorillas. Sometimes conservation served as an excuse for other, more nefarious reasons.
Some of these 'protected areas' are very famous. Yosemite is just one. The Serengeti and Maasai Mara national parks, on traditional Maasai land, are others.
The last Miwok left Yosemite in 1969, but the evictions started 100 years before that. Their crops were destroyed. 'Paramilitary' forces shot at and killed them.
'So few of us know what 'had to be done',' writes Dowie, with heavy irony, 'to create the national parks and wildlife refuges we truly believe are ours to enjoy.'
The irony is important. One of Dowie's central arguments is that the conservationists laboured under a misapprehension: saving the 'megafauna' did not, and still does not, require removing the people who live in the 'wilderness' with them.
Worse, Dowie writes, it is still happening today. It is still 'having to be done.' Let's make sure that if we visit a park we're not increasing the number of the world's refugees, or no one's being shot so we can shoot our own photos, like Adams, with no one in them.
But there's something missing from these photos. Or rather, someone.
I mean the people who called Yosemite home. The people who had lived there for at least 4000 years. The indigenous Miwok.
Adams deliberately avoiding photographing them, even though they were rarely out of his sight when he was in Yosemite valley and he knew they had lived there for a long, long time. The reason? According to a new book by American journalist Mark Dowie, called Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples, it was because he didn't think they belonged there. For Adams, Yosemite should be a 'pristine', unspoilt 'wilderness': no room for any people.
Why does this matter? Principally because this view of 'wilderness' has led to at least 5 million, and probably millions more, indigenous people around the world being driven off their land to make way for parks and reserves in the name of 'conservation'. Ergo: 'conservation refugees.'
How could this have happened? According to Dowie, Adams's view of 'wilderness', a 'fiction' he 'fed' by shooting Yosemite in the way he did, was shared by many American conservationists and later exported globally so there are now 110,000 'protected areas' worldwide.
Time and time again, people lost their land and homes. Sometimes it was to conserve 'megafauna' like lions, tigers and gorillas. Sometimes conservation served as an excuse for other, more nefarious reasons.
Some of these 'protected areas' are very famous. Yosemite is just one. The Serengeti and Maasai Mara national parks, on traditional Maasai land, are others.
The last Miwok left Yosemite in 1969, but the evictions started 100 years before that. Their crops were destroyed. 'Paramilitary' forces shot at and killed them.
'So few of us know what 'had to be done',' writes Dowie, with heavy irony, 'to create the national parks and wildlife refuges we truly believe are ours to enjoy.'
The irony is important. One of Dowie's central arguments is that the conservationists laboured under a misapprehension: saving the 'megafauna' did not, and still does not, require removing the people who live in the 'wilderness' with them.
Worse, Dowie writes, it is still happening today. It is still 'having to be done.' Let's make sure that if we visit a park we're not increasing the number of the world's refugees, or no one's being shot so we can shoot our own photos, like Adams, with no one in them.
28 Jul 2009
'When Dead Aid is Dead Fashionable'
Did anyone happen to see Tatler's June edition, page 49? It was the usual Tatler spread: people standing around and smiling at the camera, looking very pleased with themselves, many of them with hands clamped around large tumblers of white wine. This was the 'Party Scene' feature.
You could be forgiven for thinking they were celebrating something. Lord de Rothschild's birthday? A minor royal's engagement? A polo match? Something, anything, to do with Cartier? Actually, the publication of a book called 'Dead Aid', by Zambian Dambisa Moyo.
I doubt I'm the only one who thinks there's something rather outrageous about all these people getting together like this to mark the publication of a book which has such a devastating message - if all they're going to do is smile and say cheese. Or eat plenty of it.
The book's thesis is simple. Aid to Africa isn't working. Aid to Africa is actually Making Things Worse. It's making Africans poorer, it's slowing economic growth.
Just how much aid are we talking about here? $300 billion since 1970.
That makes the title of this feature, 'Money talks', particularly difficult to take. The point is, money doesn't always talk. At least, not in the way you want it to.
I understand the book is needed. And I understand the book needs to be promoted. But if these people are going to do no more than smile for Tatler, if they don't seriously engage with the issue and work to find legitimate ways of improving the lives of people in African countries, then all they're doing is using the book, using African poverty, using aid's failure, to promote themselves.
It's not enough just to have your photo taken.
So what are you doing about African aid, Mr Jamie Allsopp?
What are you doing, Mr Lucas Wurfbain?
What are you doing, Miss Josephine Daniel? Mrs Dorian Prosdocimi?
You could be forgiven for thinking they were celebrating something. Lord de Rothschild's birthday? A minor royal's engagement? A polo match? Something, anything, to do with Cartier? Actually, the publication of a book called 'Dead Aid', by Zambian Dambisa Moyo.
I doubt I'm the only one who thinks there's something rather outrageous about all these people getting together like this to mark the publication of a book which has such a devastating message - if all they're going to do is smile and say cheese. Or eat plenty of it.
The book's thesis is simple. Aid to Africa isn't working. Aid to Africa is actually Making Things Worse. It's making Africans poorer, it's slowing economic growth.
Just how much aid are we talking about here? $300 billion since 1970.
That makes the title of this feature, 'Money talks', particularly difficult to take. The point is, money doesn't always talk. At least, not in the way you want it to.
I understand the book is needed. And I understand the book needs to be promoted. But if these people are going to do no more than smile for Tatler, if they don't seriously engage with the issue and work to find legitimate ways of improving the lives of people in African countries, then all they're doing is using the book, using African poverty, using aid's failure, to promote themselves.
It's not enough just to have your photo taken.
So what are you doing about African aid, Mr Jamie Allsopp?
What are you doing, Mr Lucas Wurfbain?
What are you doing, Miss Josephine Daniel? Mrs Dorian Prosdocimi?
10 Jul 2009
Un llamamiento a la reflexión y a la acción!
'Vinieron'
Primero vinieron por la tierra de los indígenas,
dijeron que estaba vacía y la robaron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestras leyes lo promovieron.
Luego vinieron por el subsuelo de los indígenas,
dijeron que era rico y lo explotaron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra economía lo necesitaba.
Luego vinieron por la cultura de los indígenas,
dijeron que era primitiva y la destruyeron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra propia cultura lo confirmo.
Por último, vinieron por los indígenas mismos,
dijeron que no eran seres reales y los mataron,
pero nosotros seguimos callados porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra ciencia lo demostro.
¡Ya basta!
¡Ahora queremos denunciarlo!
James Pliny 2009
N.B:
Este poema se centra en el fracaso de la denuncia del genocidio indígena alrededor del mundo en los últimos 500 años.
Lo publico ahora porque quiero marcar los trágicos sucesos en junio en Amazonas en el norte del Perú.
'Vinieron' es una adaptación de un poema, con mismo título, del pastor alemán Martin Niemoller.
Primero vinieron por la tierra de los indígenas,
dijeron que estaba vacía y la robaron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestras leyes lo promovieron.
Luego vinieron por el subsuelo de los indígenas,
dijeron que era rico y lo explotaron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra economía lo necesitaba.
Luego vinieron por la cultura de los indígenas,
dijeron que era primitiva y la destruyeron,
pero no lo denunciamos porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra propia cultura lo confirmo.
Por último, vinieron por los indígenas mismos,
dijeron que no eran seres reales y los mataron,
pero nosotros seguimos callados porque no eramos indígenas,
y nuestra ciencia lo demostro.
¡Ya basta!
¡Ahora queremos denunciarlo!
James Pliny 2009
N.B:
Este poema se centra en el fracaso de la denuncia del genocidio indígena alrededor del mundo en los últimos 500 años.
Lo publico ahora porque quiero marcar los trágicos sucesos en junio en Amazonas en el norte del Perú.
'Vinieron' es una adaptación de un poema, con mismo título, del pastor alemán Martin Niemoller.
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