THE BIGGEST CLIMATE TRIAL OF THE YEAR WAS A CHEVRON-FUELED ‘CHARADE’

By Dharna Noor, Gizmodo

May 22, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/the-biggest-climate-trial-of-the-year-was-a-chevron-fueled-charade/




After a week of proceedings, the criminal trial for attorney Steven Donziger—who won a multibillion-dollar case against Chevron over pollution in the Amazon rainforest—wrapped up on Monday. In his estimation, the trial was a “charade.” And yet he was relatively pleased with the outcome.

“Given that we stood no chance to win the actual trial, the proceeding could not be better for us,” he said.

Donziger led a case against Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Indigenous people and peasant farmers from the Ecuadorian Amazon. In 2013, he won a $9.5 billion judgment against the energy giant, marking the largest human rights and environmental court judgment in history. Chevron refused to pay and instead put all its energy into going after Donziger in court in what is one of the most outlandish cases to wend its way through the courts in recent memory. Donziger has been under house arrest for going on 22 months, a judge with an industry-friendly record has been handpicked to preside over the proceedings, and the prosecuting lawyer worked until recently at a private law firm with ties to Chevron.

The trial, which began on May 10, focused on misdemeanor charges of criminal contempt against Donziger for disobeying court orders, the charge that landed him in home detention. Specifically, Donziger refused to hand over his laptop, cell phone, and other electronic devices when the court ordered him to so back in 2019. He said doing so would violate his legal clients’ privacy.

If found guilty, Donziger could face up to six months of prison time. He and his lawyers have no doubt he’ll be convicted.

“No justice will be done here,” Martin Garbus, an attorney representing Donziger, said in the courtroom on the first day of the trial.

The criminal charges against Donziger are unusual, as they were brought by a private prosecutor, Rita Glavin, who until March was a partner at the law firm Seward and Kissel. Last year, Seward and Kissel admitted that they’d represented Chevron as a client as recently as 2018, confirming Donziger’s lawyer’s suspicions and posing a glaring conflict of interest. U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, who presided over a 2012 RICO case against Donziger, appointed Glavin to bring the charges after public prosecutors refused to do so, a move previously unheard of in the American judiciary.

The contempt trial was overseen by Loretta Preska, the same federal judge who placed Donziger on house arrest in 2019. She was also selected to oversee the criminal case by Kaplan. Handpicking a judge for a case went against the standard process of random assignment that the court normally uses, and Preska’s role an advisor to the pro-business Federalist Society and documented history of ruling in favor of energy companies has raised concerns for Donziger’s supporters.

Paul Paz y Miño, the associate director of Amazon Watch, said that Preska has applied the rules of the court selectively. She invoked them last month in her decision to disallow the criminal trial to be broadcast on Zoom despite clear public interest. Then as the trial was beginning, Paz y Miño said, she invoked court rules when Donziger’s supporters wanted to sit in the part of court designated for journalists.

“She said the Southern District doesn’t allow people who aren’t press in the press area,” he said. “But she had no problem ignoring the rules when the case was assigned to her by Kaplan. … The hypocrisy is full on display.”

Paz y Miño said Preska’s biases only became more clear as the proceedings began. From the first day, she said that she was not interested in hearing from Donziger’s lawyers about why he refused to turn over his laptop and cell phone—namely that doing so would violate attorney-client privileges. A judge for a related trial ruled that the sanctions Kaplan placed on Donziger were not clear and should be overturned in March, but put Preska deemed all of that irrelevant.

“She said he was given an order by a federal judge, he didn’t comply, he’s held in contempt. She pretty much said everything short of ‘you’re guilty’ on the first day of the trial,” Paz y Miño said.

As the trial continued, Paz y Miño said Preska continued to conduct herself unfairly. He said she only sustained one of Donziger’s team’s objections to the proceedings, whereas she upheld all but one of the prosecution’s.

Kaplan’s role in the trial also made supporters raise their eyebrows. It’s Kaplan’s orders Donziger is being accused of disobeying, so he is the aggrieved party. Despite this, he chose the judge to preside over the case. Further, he has not recused himself from the case, so he could still be in communication with Glavin, the private lawyer prosecuting Donziger.

Donziger’s team believed the trial was so clearly unfair that they spent just 10 minutes on defense arguments on Monday. Donziger himself didn’t even testify in court.

“I just was advised by my lawyers that it would not be a good idea, and as I thought it through, it just didn’t make sense,” he said at a press conference. “It wouldn’t have moved the needle.”

Closing arguments will be submitted in writing in two weeks, and a decision is expected sometime after that. Though Donziger has no question he’ll be convicted, he said the trial could actually help him construct a solid appeal if and when he is convicted because it so clearly demonstrated the reasons that the case was unfairly biased and should be thrown out.

“This trial had already been decided and the purpose of the proceeding was to try to glom on a veneer of due process over a decision that I think was made behind closed doors by judges,” he said, noting the circumstances “seriously strengthen our appeal.”

Support for his plight is also building elsewhere. Last month, U.S. representatives including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Cori Bush, sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland asking him to review the case. Whatever the verdict, it almost certainly won’t be the end of the case.

PANEL: Jimmy Dore, Fiorella Isabel, Ron Placone, Graham Elwood & Justin Jackson

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFmxfL1GmQw

WHY ONE STATE IN INDIA IS SHOWING PROMISING SIGNS OF DEMOCRACY

By Vijay Prashad and Subin Dennis, Toward Freedom

May 22, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/why-one-state-in-india-is-showing-promising-signs-of-democracy/




Just before the state elections in Kerala, in southern India, a television channel ran a program called “The Great Political Kitchen.” The anchor went to kitchens across the state to talk to homemakers about their views on politics. In one kitchen, the anchor asked a woman about a dispute surrounding a temple in southern Kerala where the courts had ordered that women must be allowed full access to the temple premises in 2018. For the past five years, Kerala had been governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which had taken a democratic position over this issue and had supported the entry of women into this famous temple. The right wing claimed this was evidence that the LDF government was against religious freedom; such a claim would not be restricted to the majority-Hindu population but could also be extended to other minority communities in India such as Christians and Muslims. The woman told the TV anchor, “I am a devotee [of the temple], but hunger won’t go away if I cook and eat devotion. That’s all I have to say about it.”

Her response—which went viral—conveyed the mood of the recent election in Kerala, which was won by the LDF. The LDF won 99 of the 140 seats in the Kerala assembly elections; 67 of these seats were won by candidates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It was the first time since 1980 that an incumbent party or coalition had been able to win a second consecutive term in Kerala.

Most people in Kerala were uninterested in the dangerous flippancy of the right-wing politics represented by the Bharatiya Janata Party—in power at the center in India—which is keener to talk about anything other than issues that concern people’s material conditions of life such as the pandemic and its social impact on their lives. The LDF leadership, on the other hand, has been focused on the pandemic and on providing the materials necessary for relief to the people in the state during the second wave of the COVID-19 crisis that the country is witnessing presently. Mass organizations of the Left and community organizations joined the state government in efforts to take care of the people. As a result, Kerala has so far been able to tackle the pandemic crisis better than other parts of India.
Pandemic Relief

A comprehensive poll by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) and Lokniti shows that 73 percent of those polled said that they were satisfied by the performance of the state government. Led by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, the LDF government’s first term, from 2016 to 2021, was wracked by natural disasters (a cyclone in 2017 and floods in 2018 and 2019) and virus outbreaks (the Nipah virus in 2018 and the coronavirus pandemic), which have impacted lives globally. The government dealt with each of these crises in a similar fashion: through calm and scientific assessments of what had occurred, combined with announcing generous relief for the impacted people. This was true in all the calamities before the COVID-19 pandemic, especially during the 2018 floods, which were the heaviest in a century.

The CSDS-Lokniti poll shows that the electorate went to vote with the good governance of the LDF in mind. Asked about the LDF government’s performance in dealing with the pandemic, 72 percent said that it was either “good” or “very good.” A remarkable 88 percent said that they were satisfied with the food kits distributed by the government to ensure that no one went hungry during the crisis.

Contrary to the attitude of the right-wing government of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the LDF government of Kerala adopted a science-based approach to tackle the pandemic. It expanded public health care facilities to meet likely increases in the number of cases. It carried out a vigorous “Break the Chain” campaign, urging people to adopt the basic practices (social distancing, washing hands and wearing masks) that are necessary to prevent the spread of the virus. Testing and treatment for COVID-19 in Kerala’s government hospitals have been free and available to everyone who needs it.

To prevent mass suffering during the pandemic, the LDF government got the state’s **[self-government institutions](https://kerala.gov.in/local-self-government#:~:text=Director of panchayat and Director,government Institutions in the State.)**—which have been strengthened over the past few decades due to the efforts of Left governments—to cook and deliver food to those in need. The government provided food grain and grocery kits for free to every household to prevent hunger. The trade unions and mass organizations helped run these community kitchens as well as helped set up quarantine facilities and treatment centers.
Infrastructure

The right wing in Kerala has typically claimed that the Left is not equipped to build the state’s infrastructure. But this time, the right wing had no grounds to make its typical complaints. Since 2016, the state government has not only improved the basic transportation infrastructure but has also built up other kinds of infrastructure needed by the working class and the peasantry.

There is a conventional attitude that suggests infrastructure is built to promote the interests of business alone. But this is not the case in the way Kerala’s LDF government built its public infrastructure, including public housing—the government built 250,000 homes for the poor. There was a major focus on public education and public health care, both of which were enhanced, and a stronger public health care system in the state helped it to stave off the catastrophe that COVID-19 has wrought in the rest of India. For the first time in 25 years, students left private schools to return to the improved public education system. Improvements in facilities in public schools included providing sanitary pads for girls to encourage better attendance in school.

Roads, bridges, power lines, and a massive public sector internet project (Kerala Fiber Optic Network, or K-FON) to provide internet as a basic right to citizens have been a few of the key elements of the government’s infrastructure work.

Election manifestos are often not taken seriously; this is, however, not the case with the LDF government. “We have fulfilled 580 out of the 600 items in the 2016 manifesto. Now we are placing before the people a manifesto with 900 promises,” Chief Minister Vijayan said in March.
900 Promises

The pressing task for the LDF government is the same as before the election: to bring the second wave of COVID-19 infections under control. The Indian government of Prime Minister Modi has been hopeless, allowing the infection to run rampant while doing little to either build up the public health care system or to provide a proper vaccination program. In the first week of May, the seven-day average of doses of COVID-19 vaccines administered in India was 1.9 million. At this pace, it will take until February 2024 to administer two doses of the vaccine to the entire adult population of the country.

Kerala’s government is forced to buy vaccines on the open market. An important takeaway from this pandemic has been the need for the state to redouble its efforts to strengthen its public sector enterprises, such as the Kerala State Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Limited, which has been producing essential drugs at low prices for the government hospitals in the state. Kerala currently has a lockdown in place to bring down the rate of infection, which has been high due to the more contagious variants of coronavirus, including the triple-mutant Indian variant, that have been infecting people.

The CSDS-Lokniti poll showed that the working class and the poor as well as oppressed castes, including Dalits, voted overwhelmingly for the LDF; there is no doubt that their interests will play a leading role in shaping the government policy. That is why the LDF returns to power with a mandate to end absolute poverty by the formulation of micro-plans that target families who live with extreme poverty, including homelessness.

Hunger can’t be eradicated by devotion. Only social action can eradicate hunger and hopelessness.

Chris Hedges The American Empire will Collapse within a Decade or Two at Most

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83D6FxwZhJ8

SOUTH AFRICAN DOCKWORKERS REFUSE TO UNLOAD ISRAELI SHIP

By Press TV.

May 22, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/south-african-dockworkers-refuse-to-unload-israeli-ship-in-solidarity-with-palestinians/



Dockworkers In The South African Port City Of Durban Have Refused To Offload Cargo From An Israeli Ship.

A show of solidarity with Palestinians, and protest at Tel Aviv’s military aggression against the besieged Gaza Strip.

The South African Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Coalition announced on Friday that the dockworkers with the South African Transport and Allied Workers Union (SATAWU) will not discharge the cargo belonging to Israel’s Zim Integrated Shipping, following a call from the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions.




Also on Friday, the South African BDS Coalition and its partners, among them SATAWU, will stage a rally in Durban to celebrate the stalling of the Israeli vessel, the movement said.

They will also demand that the South African government-owned Transnet port company stop transportation of goods to or from the Israeli-occupied territories through South African ports.


“We do not want Israeli ships or goods in South African ports and shops,” Roshan Dadoo, a member of the South African BDS Coalition, told London-based Middle East Eye online news outlet.

She added, “We salute our dockworkers and will continue to work in struggle with them to ensure that South Africa becomes an ‘apartheid free zone’.”

Dadoo said the coalition hopes that the South African government “takes their lead from the dockworkers and immediately cuts all ties – trade, diplomatic, cultural, academic and sport – with the oppressive Israeli regime.”

The development comes just days after dockworkers in the Italian city of Livorno refused to load an arms shipment onto the Asiatic Island, another ship belonging to the Israeli company Zim.

The L’Unione Sindacale di Base (USB) trade union said in a statement that the port would not be an accomplice in the massacre of Palestinians as the cargo contained weapons and explosives that could be used to kill the Palestinian population.

A ceasefire came into force in the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Friday morning after Egypt brokered an agreement between Israel and Palestinian resistance groups to halt 11 days of conflict.

At least 232 Palestinians, including 65 children, were killed in the Israeli bombardment of the densely populated coastal enclave.

South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa has come under pressure to cut all ties with Israel following the latest Israeli aggression against Gaza.

Ramaphosa said on Monday that “we stand with the Palestinian people in their quest for self-determination, but also in their resistance against the deprivation of their human rights and the denial of their dignity,”

He noted that the sight of a group of Palestinian families forced out from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of the occupied East Jerusalem al-Quds to make way for Israeli settlements reminded him of what happened to millions of South Africans, including his own family, during the apartheid era.

“It was a pain and humiliation faced by my own family, and by many South African families. My family was forcibly moved to different parts of the country on two occasions,” Ramaphosa stated.

He said being forced from one’s home at gunpoint is a trauma not easily forgotten, which is carried across generations.

How Revolution Happens (w/ Richard Wolff)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPboHoY_DxE

THE PAST IS THE PRESENT IN PALESTINE

By Fadi O. Al-Naji, We Are Not Numbers

May 22, 2021




https://popularresistance.org/the-past-is-the-present-in-palestine/




I have received many questions from foreigners about just how the recent aggression against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, my home, started. It escalated so fast that for some who tuned in from their busy lives more recently, it all seemed a blur. What’s really critical for everyone to understand is that like all history, context matters. So, to understand events today (and what will likely happen again, in the future), you must first look back.
Context Matters

If I was going to write a magazine-length piece, I’d begin with 1947, when the United Nations passed a resolution giving 56% of what had been British-controlled Palestine to Jewish settlers so they could create Israel. (How would you feel if more than half of your country was given away, without your consent?) Predictably, the Palestinians resisted, and after the war that followed, the Jewish forced seized more land than the U.N. had given them. (Today, what is now known as the West Bank occupies only 22% of what used to be Palestine.)

In the ensuing years, there were several waves of forced displacement of Palestinians. In 1956, some of those now-homeless Palestinians moved into Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, making new homes in houses financed for them by the United Nations and the Jordanian government (which controlled the West Bank at the time). In 1967, what is known as the six-day war resulted in Israel taking over control of the West Bank, including all of Jerusalem. Five years later—almost 20 years after those Palestinian families had moved into the Sheikh Jarrah area—a number of Jewish people (called settlers because their goal is to occupy land belonging to Palestinians) filed lawsuits in an attempt to force them out of their homes so they could move in.

Thirteen Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah fought back with a counter legal challenge in 2008. When an Israeli court ruled in favor of the settlers, protests broke out—including at Islam’s third holiest site, Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. Many worshippers gathered there on Fridays during the month of Ramadan and calling for actions following the weekly prayer in solidarity with the residents of Sheikh Jarrah. Predictably, Israel reacted with force.

Thousands of Palestinians were prevented by roadblocks and checkpoints from reaching the mosque. Later Israeli forces used tear gas, stun grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets to enter the compound itself to disperse worshippers. Footage showing Palestinians being beaten, shot and arrested at such a holy site during our holiest month was more than we could bear. Our resistance fighters reacted with their rockets—pitiful things, really, compared to Israeli tanks and F-35 fighter jets.
Root Causes

In an article I published in The New Arab three years ago, I predicted that the Great Return March—weekly protests held at the time on Gaza’s eastern border with Israel—would spread across the Palestinian territories. However, although the demonstrations lasted for two years (resulting in too many deaths and limbless young men), they did not culminate in a full-blown intifada.

Still, the frustration, anger and desperation continued to simmer. The root causes of our protests remain; if anything, they are worse. That is why we once again witnessed unrest and revolt—this time among Palestinians across the occupied territories, and even inside Israel itself. Its attempts to divide us did not work. And it’s also why we will see revolt again in the future, as long as the root causes are not addressed.

One of those root causes is what is happening to the residents of Sheikh Jarrah. This is not a localized crime of displacement. It’s the latest manifestation of Israel’s systematic and institutionalized scheme of ethnic cleansing, which it has waged against the Palestinian people for years with a green light from the U.S. administration. Even prior to former U.S. President Trump’s controversial decision to move its Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Palestinian Jerusalemites have lived in daily fear of home demolitions and evictions, with no international intervention. They cannot build new homes or even add on to existing ones without a permit from the Israeli occupation authorities—which never gives them. A survey published by UNRWA found that more than 94% of Palestinian applications for home construction were rejected between 2011 and 2014. The Palestinians were allowed to build in just 13% of East Jerusalem. Furthermore, the U.N. estimated that 28-46% of Palestinian homes were at risk of demolition.

Meanwhile in Gaza, it’s quite difficult – if not impossible – for most Palestinians to obtain a permit from the Israeli occupation authorities to visit Jerusalem, even though it is only 77 kilometers (48 miles) away. Only Gazans who are older than 50 can typically obtain an eight-hour permit to visit Jerusalem to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan every year. I am not yet of that age, but I was permitted to visit Jerusalem once and deem myself rare and lucky. The Israeli occupation welcomes Europeans and Americans to Jerusalem, while the city’s indigenous people, the Palestinians living in Gaza in particular, are banned.
An Endless Cycle

The seemingly endless U.S. support legitimizes Israel’s racism. Thus, even with the ceasefire just announced, I don’t see any prospect for a permanent end to the violence and instability. The cycle will begin again at some point. What will push Israel to negotiate in good faith when it’s supported militarily and politically by the world’s superpower? Even the United Nations has limited use, when U.S. wields its veto power multiple times to protect Israel.

Almost 30 years have passed since the Oslo Accords, which were supposed to bring us self-determination. Instead, all that Palestinians have obtained are more Jewish settlements on the land that was supposed to be our state, village demolitions, land expropriations and a strangling blockade of Gaza. We can’t even export freely. Today’s Palestinian youth have inherited nothing but hopelessness, frustration and indignity.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) did its utmost to achieve meaningful peace. It agreed to negotiate, ruled out arms and even silenced Palestinian resistance fighters. It accepted UN Resolution 242 (which grants Palestinians only 22% of historic Palestine), welcomed the two-state solution and was satisfied with East Jerusalem as a future capital for a state.

What else can the Palestinians do to attain peace other than “disappear” themselves? If we try to negotiate, Israel responds that we aren’t committed to peace. If Gazans demonstrate near the border to demand our rights, we are shot at like ducks in carnival game. We even turned to international law, via the International Criminal Court, as mediators. None of it has worked. Yet, when we resist our occupiers by striking back, we are called terrorists, with no right to Israel’s privilege of self-defense.

An entire generation of youth are becoming normalized to life in an open-air prison. The United Nations predicted the Strip would be unlivable by 2020. Today, the impoverished territory is on its knees. Still, we will never stop fighting. We have no other choice.

If the United States and Israel think that normalizing relations with Arab states will weaken our national cause, they should know that this means nothing to Palestinians. The Palestinian people have learned to look only to themselves for rescue. The young Palestinians of today are brimming with rebellion. They have lost faith in the diplomatic route and are fed up with U.S. policy. Be forewarned: Nothing will contain them.