American Greed: A Corrupt Corporation is Destroying This Native American Sacred Site

American Greed: A Corrupt Corporation is Destroying This Native American Sacred Site

By Max Wilbert/Protect Thacker Pass

A criminal slips a police officer a handful of bills and walks free. A businessman buys a politician with a briefcase full of cash. We often think of bribery and corruption in these blatant terms, and as something that happens in poor countries, elsewhere.

But corruption often looks different.

In the United States, where I live, corruption is common. It’s also mostly legal.

In fact, dirty money has become part of the political fabric of our nation. It has become normalized, institutionalized, and even regulated. And yet, the effects of this corruption are just as insidious and destructive as blatant payoffs. Corruption is a rot in our political system, and it is spreading.

This article is about American corruption, but the story will be told by looking at one particular Canadian mining company called Lithium Americas, which is working in the United States through a wholly-owned U.S.-based subsidiary, Lithium Nevada Corporation.

For two and a half years, I’ve been fighting Lithium Nevada to stop them from destroying Thacker Pass — a biodiversity hotspot and Native American sacred site known Peehee Mu’huh in the Paiute language that is in northern Nevada, just shy of the Oregon border. Lithium Nevada, as you have probably guessed, wants to turn this place into an open-pit lithium mine.

This is a special place. Thacker Pass is home to dwindling sage-grouse, Pronghorn, mule deer, and golden eagles. It’s a migratory corridor and climate change refuge. It’s the watershed for local communities, and the site of two massacres of Paiute people, including one on September 12, 1865 in which US Army soldiers killed between 30 and 50 men, women, children, and elders in a surprise attack at dawn. It’s been recognized by the Federal Government as a “Traditional Cultural District,” a landscape of outstanding importance to Native American history and cultural identity.

And right now, as you read this, it is being destroyed by a corrupt corporation and a corrupt government. Bulldozers are rolling and centuries-old sagebrush, millennia-old artifacts, and the lives of precious desert creatures are being crushed under metal treads.

How is this possible? How, in a democracy where people have the right to protest, to speak out, to comment, to petition, to file lawsuits, how is it possible to have such a miscarriage of justice? And more broadly, how is it possible that our governmental system is failing to address the ecological catastrophe we are facing: the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth?

Part of the answer is corruption, which we can break down into five categories: lobbying, writing laws, the revolving door, campaign contributions, and community bribery. Let’s look at each in turn, using Lithium Americas and Thacker Pass as an example.

Lobbying: How Corporations Gain Disproportionate Access

Lobbying is based on a simple principle: that government officials should listen to their constituents.

Transparency International defines lobbying as “Any activity carried out to influence a government or institution’s policies and decisions in favor of a specific cause or outcome.”

“Even when allowed by law,” they say, “these acts can become distortive [harmful to democracy and justice] if disproportionate levels of influence exist — by companies, associations, organizations and individuals.”

Today’s lobbying is not the simple practice of people talking to their elected officials. Instead, it’s a tightly regulated $3.73 billion industry dominated by political insiders and major corporations, rife with corrupt “revolving doors,” and matched by at least $3-4 billion in “shadow lobbying” that isn’t regulated or disclosed to the public in any way.

The regulation of lobbying is essential to its proper functioning as a method of corruption. As Ben Price, National Organizing Director at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, puts it, “regulation is not so much a way to curb corruption, but more to the point, regulations legalize the corruption by defining the limits to it that will be disallowed.”

“In doing so,” he continues, “the principle effect of regulations is to shield bribery from legal liability by legalizing enough of it to serve the purpose of the corporate legislative influencers.”

Like advertising, corporations use lobbying because it works.

Studies have found that spending more money on lobbying and campaign contributions results in direct reductions in federal taxes, state taxes, and more federal contracts. One analysis looking at only the nation’s 200 most “politically active” corporations found they spent $58 billion on lobbying the federal government and “campaign contributions”[i] between 2007 and 2012, but received $4.4 trillion in federal subsidies, contracts, and other support during the same time period. That’s a 7,580% return on investment.

Another study found even bigger returns: “on average, for every dollar spent on influencing politics, the nation’s most politically active corporations received $760 from the government” — a 76,000% payout.

Corporations are Writing Our Laws

Corporations use lobbyists because their wealth allows them disproportionate access to the government, meaning that they can build relationships with politicians and staffers, influence policy, share ideas, and even draft legislation. They can also bribe judges, as the recent Clarence Thomas corruption scandal shows. But it goes further. As one report in NPR notes, “It’s taken for granted that lobbyists influence legislation. But perhaps less obvious is that they often write the actual bills — even word for word.”

Our laws are being written by corporations.

And this isn’t just a federal problem. A 2019 USA Today investigation found more than 10,000 bills introduced to legislatures in all 50 states over an 8-year period were “almost entirely copied from bills written by special interests.” The report also notes that their investigation detected these bills using automated techniques, and “the real number is probably far higher.”

Our politicians rarely write laws. Instead, corporations and lobbyists write laws; congress sells the laws to the public; then lobbyists pay their congresspeople in campaign contributions, Super PAC funding, and revolving-door job opportunities – topics we will look at next.

The Revolving Door

Another way that corruption has become endemic inside the government of the United States is through what’s known as the “revolving door.”

The revolving door refers to the common practice of corporate employees quitting their jobs and going to work in the government, and vice versa. It’s quite common for government employees and elected officials to quit or end their terms and immediately get jobs in the industries they were supposedly regulating.

Why, you might ask? Money. As one headline reads, “when a congressman becomes a lobbyist, he gets a 1,452% raise (on average).

This is a sort of “retroactive bribery” where government officials do what corporations want, then get paid off afterwards. And it’s completely legal.

Occasionally there will be stories of lobbyists who stray into outright bribery — Jack Abramoff, notably — but these stories are rare, not because corruption is uncommon, but because you don’t really need to break the law as a corporation: you wrote the laws. And you did it deliberately to make your bribery and influence campaigns legal.

As of 2016, about half of retiring senators and a third of retiring House Representatives register as lobbyists to collect their checks. This is equally common among Democrats and Republicans.

Lithium Nevada Corporation’s Lobbying Activities (the ones we know about)

Lithium Nevada has spent at least $310,000 on Federal lobbying since 2016, via a lobbying company called Harbinger Strategies.

Harbinger is “a leading federal government and political affairs firm” that was founded by and employs former high-level Republican congressional aides and political operatives. They have been listed as among the top lobbyists in Washington D.C. and made a total of $10.9 million in 2021 from a client list which includes the airline industry, major banks and investment firms, mining companies, biotech, the military-industrial complex, Facebook, electric utilities, General Electric, and the oil and gas industry.

“We leverage our experience as former senior staff to the Congressional Leadership and the Executive Branch to position clients for a seat at the decision-making table,” they write on their website. They continue: “[Harbinger is] founded on the belief that every client deserves partner-level legislative expertise” — a “boutique model” — that they use “for one simple reason: it gets results.”

In the state of Nevada, Lithium Nevada Corporation has hired at least 4 lobbyists since 2017 from two businesses: Argentum Partners, “a full-service strategic communications firm… with a hungry, energetic, and experienced team of lobbyists,” and Ferrato Corporation, “a full service bi-partisan public affairs firm.”

Notably, Lithium Nevada’s Argentum lobbyists included Mike Draper, who “helmed the media relations and public affairs for the planning, permitting, construction and opening of the Ruby Pipeline, the largest natural gas pipeline in North America.” The Ruby Pipeline was fought vehemently by environmentalists and Tribes in 2009 and 2010.

Campaign Contributions

Another technique of legalized corruption is “campaign contributions,” also known as donations to politicians.

Many countries in the world place strict limits on the amount of money that people can donate to political candidates, or even have political campaigns funded by the government, removing the influence of money almost entirely. The United States is not one of those countries.

Elected officials in the United States are desperate for money. The average U.S. senator has to rase $14,000 a day just to stay in office — and that’s once they’re already elected. This is true for both Democrats and Republicans, which is why corporations, both directly and through their lobbyists and employees, tend to play both sides by donating to both political parties.

For example, Jonathan Evans, CEO of Lithium Americas Corporation, donated at least $10,250 to political candidates between 2021 and 2022 including Catherine Cortez Mastow (Democratic Senator from Nevada) and Mark Amodei (Nevada’s Republican Governor). George Ireland, Board President of Lithium Americas, has donated at least $19,800 to candidates since 2011, including $500 to the Trump campaign and $6,600 to John Hickenlooper. Data from OpenSecrets.org shows that 7 other Lithium Americas employees, Board members, and associated parties gave at least another $10,819 to political candidates between 2018 and 2022.

These amounts don’t include the MUCH larger political contributions given by employees and family members of Harbinger Strategies, who gave $392,842 to political candidates in the 2020 election cycle alone.

Many of these people donated up to the legal limit, implying that if the limit were higher, they would give more money — and perhaps that they would seek ways to circumvent contribution limits via so-called “Super PACs” and other dark money techniques.

Keep in mind that less than 1.5% of Americans donate more than $200 to political candidates or parties in any given year. This is the domain of the wealthy.

The Payoff

Lithium Americas money is well-spent.

In what appears to be a quid pro quo for their lobbying and campaign contributions, Lithium Americas Corporation has been granted a total of $8,637,357 in tax abatements from the State of Nevada, including a partial sales tax abatement worth $5 million, a $3.3 million property tax abatement and about $225,000 in payroll tax abatements. That money is unavailable for schools, healthcare, social services, small business assistance, environmental programs, etc.

From the Federal Government, Lithium Americas has received a loan from the Department of Energy’s “Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program” (ATVM) which is likely to cover “up to 75% of the Thacker Pass’ total capital costs for construction.”

This loan program offers highly favorable terms that amount to a significant subsidy of as much as $3 billion USD.

Based on a very conservative estimate for Lithium Americas Corporation lobbying and employee campaign contribution of, say, $400,000, they’re looking at a return on investment of 2,100% — and that’s before including the massive financial value of the ATVM loan.

Community-Level Bribery

Corruption in politics is often matched with corruption at a local level.

Lithium Americas’ plans to destroy Thacker Pass have created serious community opposition among farmers and ranchers from the rural areas closest to Thacker Pass, among local citizens in the nearby town of Winnemucca, among environmental groups concerned about impacts to wildlife, plants, air, and water, and among Native American tribes concerned about their sacred and culturally important sites, animals, and medicines.

The response has been predictable. Anti-mining activist Joan Kuyek’s book Unearthing Justice: How to Protect Your Community From The Mining Industry describes the myths repeated incessantly by Lithium Americas and almost every mining company:

  • “The mine will create hundreds of jobs and enrich governments.”
  • The mine can make community members rich and solve all of their social and economic problems.”
  • “Modern engineering will ensure that the mine doesn’t damage the water, air, or the wildlife.”

When these myths are exposed as false, they resort to legalized bribery. At Thacker Pass, that takes the form of Lithium Americas Corporation paying for a new school for the community of Orovada, and signing an agreement with one local Tribal Councilwoman for construction of a cultural center. One tribal member, my friend Shelley Harjo, wrote in response: “A few promised buildings and a cultural center do not supersede the responsibility we have to our ancestors before us nor our obligation to our unborn after.” Another Tribal leader in the region says of the mining companies, “They take advantage of our poverty.”

That poverty gives the mining companies serious leverage. Among community members at Fort McDermitt, rumors of bribery are common.

Lithium Americas’ Involvement in Human Rights Abuses Overseas

Lithium Americas has deep business links and personnel overlaps with Chinese state-owned mining corporation Ganfeng Lithium (the largest lithium company in the world). In fact, Ganfeng and Lithium Americas are co-owners of an Argentinian lithium mining company known as Minera Exar.

The Minera Exar mining project is located in the Andean highlands in the so-called “lithium triangle,” an arid region near the borders of Chile and Bolivia. Over the years that Minera Exar has been active in the region, they — like other lithium mining companies in the area — have come under criticism for serious environmental and human rights abuses.

The Washington Post, exploring these abuses, wrote that:

“Mining companies have for years been extracting billions of dollars of lithium from the Atacama region… But the impoverished Atacamas have seen little of the riches… one lithium company, a joint Canadian-Chilean venture named Minera Exar, struck deals with six aboriginal communities for a new mine here. The operation is expected to generate about $250 million a year in sales while each community will receive an annual payment — ranging from $9,000 to about $60,000 — for extensive surface and water rights.

The exposé continues:

“Yolanda Cruz, one of the leaders of the village in Argentina, said she signed the [community benefits agreement with Minera Exar] but now regrets it. At the time she valued the opportunity to create jobs for her village. But she now worries, ‘we are going to be left with nothing.’ she said. ‘The thing is the companies are lying to us —that’s the reality. And we sometimes just keep our mouths shut,’ she said. ‘We don’t say anything and then we are the affected ones when the time goes by.’”

Meanwhile, Ganfeng Lithium recently announced plans to mine for battery metals in the Xinjiang region of China, where the Chinese Government has detained and imprisoned Uyghyrs and other Muslim groups in forced labor and indoctrination camps.

Waste of Government Funds

We are being told the main goal of lithium mining at Thacker Pass is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is another lie, a new type of corporate greenwashing which is becoming increasingly common. In fact, many analyses actually find that the emissions reductions from switching to electric vehicles are relatively minor.

Producing a single electric car releases greenhouse gas emissions—about 9 tons on average. This average is rising as the size of electric cars is going up substantially. The more electric cars are produced, the more greenhouse gases are released. And so while EVs reduce emissions compared to gasoline vehicles, bigger EVs don’t reduce them much. Analysis from the Center For Interdisciplinary Environmental Justice says that electrification of cars in the United States will reduce national emissions by only 6 percent.

Further, producing lithium at Thacker Pass would require 700,000 tons per year of oil refining byproducts — sulfur, perhaps largely sourced from the Alberta Tar sands. While Thacker Pass receives billions in subsidies from the government, carbon emissions are continuing to rise.

Environmental activist Paul Hawken, as another example, doesn’t put electric cars in his top 10 climate solutions. In fact, it’s number 24 on his list, with almost ten times less impact than reducing food waste, nearly six times less impact than eliminating the use of refrigerants which are powerful greenhouse gases, and behind solutions like tropical rainforest restoration (about 5 times as effective at reducing emissions as is switching to EVs) and peatland protection (more than twice as effective).

Corruption and waste go hand-in-hand. The data makes it clear that if reducing greenhouse gases is your goal, subsidizing the Thacker Pass lithium mine is not a good use of government funds.  It’s wasteful.

If you actually want to allocate government funds to effectively halt global warming, giving money to extractive industries is the exact wrong thing to do.

Instead, start with women’s rights, educating girls, and making contraception and family planning widely available. Start with economic relocalization initiatives. Start with insulating homes properly, which may have the biggest immediate carbon impact per dollar spent. Start with demand-reduction initiatives.

Stop wasting taxpayer money on subsidies to Earth-destroying corporations, and start taking actions that really matter.

The Banality of Evil

Lithium Americas’ corruption reminds me of what political philosopher Hannah Arendt called “The Banality of Evil.” Writing of Otto Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer who was one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, Arendt explains that Eichmann felt no guilt; indeed, he never even considered that what he was doing might be wrong: “He did his ‘duty’…; he not only obeyed ‘orders’, he also obeyed the ‘law’.”

As one article states, “[Eichmann] performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his ‘thoughtlessness’, a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann ‘never realised what he was doing’ due to an ‘inability… to think from the standpoint of somebody else’. Lacking this particular cognitive ability, he ‘commit crimes under circumstances that made it well-nigh impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong’.”

Lithium Americas is not killing people en masse, nor are they even among the “worst” mining companies. They may even be acting completely within the boundaries of the law.  And yet they are complicit in cultural genocide, in ecological destruction for personal gain, and in what may be an even bigger crime against the future: greenwashing their destruction as positive and thus creating more financial and political incentives for more of this madness.

They believe that what they are doing is right and they are “following the rules.”

What Now?

The corruption at Thacker Pass is not unique. Lobbying, campaign contributions, greenwashing, and community bribery is common in the United States and across much of the world. I believe there is likely much more corruption that we are not aware of. Perhaps there really are briefcases full of cash being exchanged. We can only speculate. And, this article has not even begun to discuss the government complicity in lawbreaking, corruption, and ethical violations at Thacker Pass — a story that is, in some ways, even more sordid.

All of which is part of why academic analyses of the United States tend to show “economic-elite domination” rather than true electoral democracy or pluralism. The wealthy are running our country (and indeed, the world) Our government is corrupt, corporations are running rampant, and our world is being destroyed.

For many, the situation we find ourselves in is paralyzing. What can do in the face of this?

When I first came out to begin protecting Thacker Pass and setup a protest camp on the planned mine site in the depths of winter 2021, I had no illusions. I knew that the courts weren’t likely to save us. Remember, the laws were written by corporations. I knew that public commenting wasn’t going to work; the regulations are written to favor corporate interests. I knew that the government wasn’t going to help, since the politicians are mostly bought and paid for. I even knew that standard methods of protest would likely be ineffective, given the repression tactics and divide-and-conquer strategies that have been honed over centuries by corporations and colonizers.

As a society, we find ourselves in the midst of the 6th mass extinction event, a global climate catastrophe, and seemingly terminal overshoot. And as an environmental movement, despite our brave and inspired action, it has not been enough.

That’s why, for many years, I have been calling for an ecological revolution — a fundamental transformation of society — and organizing to make it happen.

Whether you agree that this is needed or not, we can all agree that what we are doing isn’t working. I don’t have all the answers. But what I do know is that it’s time to go further.


This article was originally published on Earth Day 2023. Since then, there have been developments in Thacker Pass. Direct action has been able to halt mine construction for the moment. Read more about it here.

Featured image: Resistance in Thacker Pass by Max Wilbert

Eden’s Last Chance: Earth Day 2023 Film [Press Release]

Eden’s Last Chance: Earth Day 2023 Film [Press Release]

Editor’s Note: Celebrate this Earth’s Day with Eden’s Last Chance. We congratulate Joshua on the completion of his film, and hope that it will encourage more people to get involved in the environmental movement. View more of our coverage on Fairy Creek here.


TEENAGER’S RELEASE OF 2023 EARTH DAY FILM CHALLENGES OUR FUTURE

Amazon will be releasing Eden’s Last Chance – One Teenager’s Journey into the Environmental Movement, before Earth Day 2023 on April 18th. Winner of an Impact Docs award, the full length documentary is 19-year-old Joshua Wright’s first film. Known as a champion of British Columbia’s defense of Fairy Creek’s old growth forests, his aim is to mobilize citizens to take immediate action on the ecological crisis.

“If this is the end of the world, then what do we do? That is the question I wanted to answer with this film” says Wright, the young producer, director, second cinematographer, and editor.

In 2018, Wright dropped out of grade nine when he learned of scientists’ dire warnings that the planet had 12 years to address global warming before passing the 1.5C mark. He would be 27 years old when that milestone was reached. So at 14, Wright picked up a camera and dedicated the next three years seeking an answer to his existential question.

Academic studies and white papers became part of his self-schooling curriculum. He followed climate change experts and was determined to find every new energy project that would further add to an already fragile ecological balance. Wright has become an outspoken climate activist, criticized by corporations seeking to hide their impacts.

While filming in Australia, Wright explored the damage coal has done to communities including the $16B Adani Carmichael coal mine, and the coral die off of the Great Barrier Reef. He documented the destruction of the world’s largest intact temperate rainforest in the Tongass Rainforest of Southeast Alaska and forest defenders protecting Mattole Valley in California’s Humboldt County. More than 15 leading authors and scientists from Europe, Australia, and the US were interviewed for the film.

“Climate change is only half the story,” says Wright, referring to destructive industries. “We as a society are ignoring the reality that civilization itself is the route of the ecological crisis, and that saving the planet does not mean electric cars, it means a radical transformation in the way we live, and the centering of the more-than-human world our society ignores.”

The bootstrapped crew included Joshua at the helm with his uncle, Andrew Wright as first cinematographer and second editor. Wright’s father, Chris Wright, acted as executive producer, and second cinematographer, as well as managing the group’s travel.

Wright refuses to give into despair, choosing instead to work to motivate others into action.

“Do something—do anything,” he says. “Don’t be a bystander in the death of the living world.”

The trailer for Eden’s Last Chance is posted on edenslastchance.com and the press kit is found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uvsmPNrO3hFcHs7_8bF3DlRqQTswq9jdUVuBYcU7Lbg/edit?usp=sharing

Media Contacts

Joshua Wright, Filmmaker
jawrighter@gmail.com
360-989-8067

Valerie Elliott, Media Relations
iD2 Communications
elliott@iD2.ca

Featured image by Megan ✌🏼 on Unsplash

The Destruction of Thacker Pass Has Begun

The Destruction of Thacker Pass Has Begun

Editor’s Note: Over the past two years, we have brought you news about the fight for Thacker Pass, and how destruction will affect the indigenous people and the natural community. The destruction of Thacker Pass has already begun. Despite that, those who were fighting against the ecocide have not stopped. This is a call for action to support them in any way that you can.


On March 23, U.S. District Court Judge Miranda M. Du ruled against the tribes — the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, and the Burns Paiute Tribe — who argued that the Bureau of Land Management violated several laws when it permitted Lithium Americas on Jan. 15, 2021 to mine Thacker Pass. The tribes also alleged that the permission violates their access to historically and culturally significant sites. 

The region is considered sacred by the tribes, who call it Peehee Mu’huh, or Rotten Moon in the Paiute language, because in 1865 the U.S. Federal Cavalry killed more than 30 men, women and children and then left their bodies to rot. 

 

The full-scale destruction of Thacker Pass, Peehee Mu’huh, this sacred and wild place, has begun. This video was submitted to us anonymously several days ago.

As you read this, life and biodiversity is being bulldozed and destroyed. Ancient artifacts and the remains of ancestors are being crushed into dust. Water is being poisoned and the once-clean air is being fouled with toxic fumes.

And yet, despair is only for those who see the end beyond all shadow of a doubt. We do not.

This fight is not over. There are still court cases ongoing. Residents are rising up. Protesters are gathering. In times of darkness it is most important to look deep into your heart and walk with your head held high.

Never forget, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, that “Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice, and… when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.”

#ProtectThackerPass #ProtectPeeheeMuhuh #LoyaltyToLandAndLife

Support our ongoing legal efforts to protect Thacker Pass by donating here.

More you can do to help; https://www.protectthackerpass.org/take-action/

Banner from ProtectThackerPass.org


MY ECO LIST
Previously published in The POET (UK)
By David Sparenberg

This is not lifeless Saturn
or Jupiter, the Moon, Venus, or Mars.
Because a neighboring planet is
named for a Roman goddess
does not mean that
women originate there as if from
an unearthly temple of extraterrestrial love.
Because another is named
for a Roman god
does not prove that men are
hard wired and destined for war.

Here is Earth.
Earth is a Life Place.
We live here, only, always
within a context of
others also living.

Learn again
to live appropriately with
realities
of the changing Earth.
Clear your head
(if you cannot
blow your mind) open your heart
reintroduce your suffering
soul to the intricate
complexities of creation.
Initiate relationships.

Buy less, yes.
Possess less, use less.
Embrace
the Prosperity of Appreciation.
Do not regret
what you give up
rejoice instead
in who you save.

Defend diversity.
Cultivate maturity.
Renounce violence.
One imminent need is
to democratize our
ability to respond to
realities and
discern difference between
false and genuine needs.

Another imminent necessity
is to advance “mustard seeding.”
Transition from the solitude of awakening
into a solidarity of commitment. Note
that instead of transcendence
I am favoring imminence and
the dynamic constancy
of transitional movement.
An ancient modality.
Don’t let the garden you
cultivate become overly tame!

Magic of the here and now
is participatory art and natural science.
Magic of the metamorphic
empowers dreams and reverent
dread as well as excitation
of awe-inspiring wonder.

Make choices
that are Acts of Beauty
choices for seven generations.
Embody delight. Be amorous
with circles. Consciously, conscientiously
joyously: evolve! evolve! evolve!

Attend
a Council of All Beings.
Think
like a mountain or
at least your favorite
tree. Envy
pollen dusted
busy working bees.
Sing with whales. Whales
are profound singers!

Events: FiLiA 2022 and Global Extraction Film Festival 2022

Events: FiLiA 2022 and Global Extraction Film Festival 2022

Editor’s note: Neither of the events are being organized by DGR. We stand in solidarity with both of these and encourage our readers to get involved in these if possible.


FiLiA 2022

FiLiA is a UK-based women-led volunteer women-only organization. It runs the largest annual grassroots conference in Europe, with the aims of a) building sisterhood and solidarity, b) amplifying the voices of women, particularly those less often heard or purposefully silenced, and c) defending women’s human rights. Every year since 2013, the FiLiA conference is organized in a different part of UK and brings women together in listening to and building relationship with other women. Women share their experiences with patriarchy and their efforts to tackle the challenges they have faced.

This year the event is being held in Cardiff, Wales from October 22 to October 24. Find more information for the speakers this year. Listen to the spokeswoman for FiLiA talk about the conference in an interview.

Note: You need to register for the event.

#FiLiA2022


film

Global Extraction Film Festival (GEFF) 2022

The Global Extraction Film Festival (GEFF) 2022 will be streamed worldwide for free from October 26-30, 2022. The third edition of this online festival will present 250+ documentaries and urgent shorts from 50+ countries highlighting the destructive impacts of extractive industries. Founded in 2020 by Jamaican environmental filmmaker and activist Esther Figueroa (]Vagabond Media) and postcolonial film scholar-practitioner Emiel Martens (University of Amsterdam, Caribbean Creativity), GEFF aims to bring attention to the destructive impacts of extractive industries and to highlight communities across the world who are bravely defending against annihilation while creating livable futures.

GEFF2022 features 6 programs with over 250 documentaries and urgent shorts from over 50 countries, with a wide range of compelling topics that people around the world need to think about. Where, how and by whom is the food we eat, water we drink, clothes we wear, materials in our technology, the energy that powers our lives produced and transported? What are we to do with the billions of tons of waste we create daily? What is our relationship to other species and all life on the planet? Extraction and extractivism have caused the anthropocene, the climate crisis is real and cannot be wished away or solved by magical technologies based on extraction.

#GlobalExtractionAction #GEFF2022

Featured Image by Alex Motoc on Unsplash


 

The truth is
It is not enough to know the truth.
It is not enough to accept the truth,
to embrace the truth, to be saved by the truth.
It is not even enough to cling to the truth
when no one else will.
The truth rails at being trapped
in the blood flooded chambers
of the human heart.
She detests being chained within
the hard, bony walls of thick human skulls.
The truth is a restless being.
Broken bodies, shattered souls,
and the willful ignorance
that break and shatter them
make her scream
and boil the fuel from her spleen
until she liquefies like natural gas
looking for just one match
to explode and burn all the lies down.
She will not be denied.
Banish her from your thoughts
and she will microwave your mind
until the molecules you use as excuses
vibrate with nuclear radiation
and all that’s left of your self-respect
is a billowing mushroom cloud.
It’s not that the truth doesn’t want to be used.
She does. She wants your heart
to burn like a furnace. She wants you
to shovel her like coal
into the engines driving your axles.
She doesn’t care if you object
to the industrial metaphors, if you cringe
at being compared to common appliances.
She doesn’t care because the truth is
your blood runs full of plastic,
mother’s milk is now carcinogenic,
and when you spend more time
with machines than trees, the stars,
or your own warm lover,
it’s hard to distinguish between machines
and those who serve them.
So the truth demands more.
She demands more than recognition,
more than acceptance,
more than the smugness that comes
with telling everyone what the truth is.
She demands more. She demands the truth.
And the truth is,
the truth is action

Will Falk is a writer, lawyer, and environmental activist. The natural world speaks and Will’s work is how he listens. He believes the ongoing destruction of the natural world is the most pressing issue confronting us today. For Will, writing is a tool to be used in resistance. https://www.facebook.com/willfalk35

Ecocide in Greece

Ecocide in Greece

Editor’s Note: DGR does not support solar and wind “alternatives”. They are not alternatives to the energy and ecological crisis, but rather a part of it.. They do not “replace” natural gas and fossil fuels, not only because the so called renewable energy are not as potent an energy source as fossil fuel, but also because they rely on fossil fuel for basic operation. They contribute to the abuse, exploitation and plunder of nature. There are mountains of resources to support this. More dangerously, they lead us to false solutions, putting our much needed revolutionary energies into projects which only contribute to the problem. We are firmly opposed to these technologies.

The value of this article lies in exposing how these “green” technologies are being introduced in reality. Despite the bright green lies in this article, it is important to gain understanding on how these technologies are wrecking havoc across the globe. The beauty of nature is defended strongly in this article. The “violent mechanization of [the] daily view of the natural world” is acknowledged to be a deep concern, indeed it is “extremely disturbing”. In the spirit of solidarity and internationalism, we call for coalitions to ask important questions on these “green” and “alternative” technologies, and to continue the ecological resistance to protect the wild.


 

My Greek friends in the large island of Euboea and Boeotia (Central Greece) are telling me — and the world — that a “hurricane” of solar and wind technologies are wrecking their lives and the countryside.

I am all for solar and wind alternatives to the Earth-warming fossil fuels. The faster they replace dangerous petroleum, natural gas, and coal, the better. The world is in real danger from anthropogenic climate chaos. Climate nemesis is hanging over the planet like the sword of Damokles.

Nevertheless, Greece has been abusing solar and wind energy. Instead of placing solar panels on the roofs of houses and buildings, the local Greek municipal governments and the Ministry of the Environment are licensing private companies to install solar panel arrays on archaeological sites, wetlands, valleys, and mountains.

The situation with wind turbines, some of which are gigantic and 200 meters tall, is worse. Private companies flatten mountain tops, clear cut forests, dig up valleys and mountain sides for the construction of large cement foundations for their monster wind turbines. They act like the ruthless coal companies in Kentucky and West Virginia.

Euboea

In Central Euboea, there’s an exquisite wetland named Kolobrextis. This wetland supports a number of threatened and endangered species. It is close to an archaeological site. And yet both the archaeological service and the Ministry of the Environment permitted the installation of numerous solar panels in the region of Kolobrextis. Local citizens appealed these illegal decisions, but without success.

They said:

“We consider the wetland our natural inheritance, which cannot be sacrificed on the altar of the interests and profits of a corrupt and unethical market.”

On July 17, 2022, Evi Sarantea, an artist and environmentalist from Euboea, sent the following letter to her friends:

“[Government authorities licensing windfarms] intend to destroy the last dense fir forest left in Central Evia [Euboea]… They already destroyed Southern Evia. They authorized the placement of more than 800 wind turbines in an extensive archaeological site. Some of those wind turbines were about 185 meters tall. And this happened after Northern Evia was incinerated last year. Don’t let this HUBRIS win. ALL the Municipalities and 150 agencies of the island [of Euboea] are 100 percent opposed to the installation of these monsters – with a life span of only 20 years. They will irreversibly and tragically destroy the ecosystem and the formation of the soil which is several tens of millions of years old.”

Boeotia

Boeotia is a prosperous region with rich mythology and history. Its poleis (city-states) Orchomenos and Thebes date from the Bronze Age. Thebes gave Greece god Dionysos and the superhero Herakles and the great lyric poet Pindar.

In July 2022, however, citizens in Central Greece spoke about widespread vandalism and ecological and cultural destruction of mountains sacred in Bronze Age Greece and classical times: Parnassos, Helicon, Cithaeron, and Parnetha.

Hesiod, born in Ascra, a village of Boeotia and second poet only to Homer, was inspired to write his epics on the birth of the gods and rural life by the Muses, goddesses of learning. The inspiration took place on Mt. Helicon.

Sowing wind turbines

And now, in 2022, more than three thousand years after Hesiod, the Greek government serving its debt masters in the European Union and the United States, especially Germany, is blowing up sacred nature in order to dig the giant wind towers from Germany very deeply into fertile land and mountains.

This fast-paced degrading of archaeological sites, and destruction of the natural world in Greece (mountains, forests, wetlands, and land) is socking the Greek people. They don’t know or suspect the reasons behind the vandalism. The government is promising cheap energy prices for their cooperation. But the prices of energy keep increasing.

The citizens are accusing their government of corruption. It allows profiteers and an immoral and unchecked market to undermine and destroy the natural world. This new ugly mechanical and shining solar icons will be throwing people in doubt about climate change and the means of fighting it. They will remember petroleum and coal with nostalgia and pleasure. In essence, this unchecked and nature-deforming energy development will be giving a bad name to solar and wind energy.

The citizens of Boeotia mentioned “the permitting of 38 large wind and solar parks consisting of hundreds of wind turbines and thousands of solar panels.”

Spoiling beauty – and much more

This prospect of the violent mechanization of their daily view of the natural world is extremely disturbing. The citizens of Boeotia complain that,

“Probably all the mountains and forests of Boeotia are slated for attacks from the energy industry. This would transform the natural world beyond recognition. Beekeeping would be abandoned; cattle raising outside of animal farms would also come to an end; cultivating the land for food, tourism, and relaxation in the countryside will be undermined, and eventually abandoned. Trees, bushes, wild animals, and birds are in immediate danger. Wind turbines on the top of mountains will decimate eagles, falcons, and other birds of prey, already under stress of extinction.”

This unnecessary tragedy adds considerably to the unhappiness and debt misery of the Greeks. They are bound to see the finger of Germany behind this onslaught on their few surviving pleasures: walking to the woods in the mountains and forests and valleys; seeing the rare birds of wetlands; and paying their respects to the quiet and beauty spread above the ruins in archaeological sites.

Stop this madness

My advice to the Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis would be to break with the humiliations of the debt. Stop paying the illegal  and odious debt. Return to the drachma. And reindustrialize your country. Stop using the German wind behemoths. Build your own wind-electricity generating machines to fit the country’s ecological and climate needs. Indeed, design and build all technologies at home.

Greece used to worship the Sun god Helios and Aiolos, the god of the winds. Yes, Greece needs to stop using fossil fuels, but it also needs to use solar panels only on the rooftops of houses and buildings. And should there be a need for windfarms, always plan and act in the context of ecology, biodiversity, and culture. If the windfarms cannot be used without harm, forget about them. Don’t use them in Greece.

 

Evaggelos Vallianatos is a historian and environmental strategist, who worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years. He is the author of seven books, including the latest book, The Antikythera Mechanism.


 

Ship of Stars
they abducted the stars
got masses of people
to believe in separate Gods
this went on and on
for millennia
till masses of people
forgot that the star-beings
are pulsating with lights
how the stars literally
guide us, birds at night,
us in our dreams, astral travel
forgetting the star-beings,
masses of people
became mis-guided
embroiled in dis-asters
dis- and ster-
“away from the stars”
if i could find a statistic
that shows dis-asters have increased
in modern times as the masses became less
aware of, conscious of, less guided by the stars
i would footnote that
so instead
you’ll have to step outside or
look out a window or
find the lights within
and then you’ll remember
who star-beings are
           and
what star-beings do
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a verbiage experiencer, in other words, he’s into etymology, writes about his experiences and to encourage people to learn from direct experiences, not just head knowledge; you know, actions and feelings speak louder than words. He’s also a publisher and enjoys gardening, talking, listening, looking… His recent book is Moving Through The Empty Gate Forest: inside looking out. Find out more at his website: www.allbook-books.com