BP Sued in Ecuadorian Court For Violating Rights of Nature

Democracy Now! reports that a coalition of environmentalists have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in Ecuador against the oil giant BP for violating Ecuador’s constitution which recognizes "the rights of Nature" across the globe. Plaintiffs include Nnimmo Bassey, the president of Friends of the Earth International and the Indian scientist Vandana Shiva.

"This morning we filed in the constitutional court of Ecuador this lawsuit defending the rights of nature in particular the right of the Gulf of Mexico and the sea which has been violated by the BP oil spill," Vandana Shiva said. "We see this as a test case of the rights of nature enshrined in the constitution of Ecuador—it’s about universal jurisdiction beyond the boundaries of Ecuador because nature has rights everywhere."

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Who's in the oil industry's pocket?

A rundown on political bribery by the oil and gas industry from Power Without Petroleum, on Facebook here.

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Move to Amend profiled on WBAI's "Ecologic" as part of BP/Deepwater disaster coverage

Update: Download or listen to the archived show here--scroll down, and it's at the top of the list.

Riki Ott will be on Pacifica Radio tomorrow (Tuesday) from 11 a.m. to 12 noon, on "Ecologic," hosted by David Occhiuto. The discussion will start off with geologist Chris Landau, then move to Riki and a discussion of the BP oil disaster and Move To Amend. Journalist Heather Rogers will also be on the show. You can listen in on WBAI's website, and find out more details on the broadcast here.

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Time for a corporate death penalty

Bruce Dixon writes, "There are more than 40 federal offenses for which the death penalty can be applied to human beings, most of them connected to homicide of one kind or another. But countless homicides committed by the artificial persons we call corporations go unpunished every day. Apparently “personal responsibility” applies only to humans who are not operating behind the legal shield of corporate personhood."

by Bruce A. Dixon. Posted June 9 on Black Agenda Report

Over the last hundred or so years, corporations have gained many of the rights previously accorded only to human beings.  Corporations have the right to buy and sell anything or anyone that can be bought or sold.  Corporations have claimed the right to lie in their advertising and PR as "free speech,"  along with the right to help us mere humans choose our judges and elected officials with unlimited amounts of cash, including anonymous cash.  Corporations have been awarded the right to patent genetic sequences of diseases and to monopolize their cures, as well as patent rights to living plants and animals not of their invention.  A whole type of new anti-pollution regulation called "cap and trade" actually enshrines a corporate right to pollute and establishes exchanges upon which speculators can bid, trade and capture rents for those alleged rights.  And unlike a working person, who has no right to next month's let alone next year's wages, legal scholars working for corporations have devised and popularized something they call the "regulatory takings" doctrine, under which corporations may claim and recover from the government rights to profits they might have made in years to come.  And let's not even talk about trillions in corporate welfare for banks, military contractors, Wal-Mart and others.

While many argue that corporations have too many rights as it is, this might be a good time to extend them at least one more right we humans have kept for ourselves until now; the right to be put to death for serious crimes.  Right now federal statutes alone offer individuals more than 40 different ways to earn the death penalty, including kidnapping, treason, aircraft hijacking, espionage and many varieties of murder, conspiracy, threatening murder and some drug crimes.  Individual states offer the death penalty for a host of similar offenses.

Putting bad corporate actors down the way we do rabid dogs and serial killers is not a new or even a radical idea.  Corporations are created by the charters of individual states, so states DO have the power to revoke them.  Early in this country's history, corporate charters used to limit a company's existence to a set number of years, to confine their operations to manufacturing a certain item, building a specific road or canal and prohibit them from changing ownership, dumping or concealing their assets or engaging in other kinds of business.  These are legal powers that our governments have not used in a long, long time, but which it's high time to reclaim.

Homicidal profit-seeking on the part of corporations has become an everyday fact of modern life.  Whether it's employers cutting health and safety corners, marketers pushing unsafe drugs, food and products of all kinds, or the deadly industrial fouling of the planet's air, soil, oceans and climate we are living in the midst of a corporate crime wave of murderous and epic proportions.  If we value human life, it only makes sense to treat corporate serial killers like, well, corporate serial killers, to confiscate their ill-gotten assets, to revoke their corporate charters and sentence the artificial personae of corporate malefactors to death.  If corporations are legal persons, it's time to enforce some personal responsibility upon them with a corporate death penalty.

After we accomplish that, it will be time to think about extending a little of that personal responsibility to the actual humans who operate behind the legal shield of the corporations.  But right now, as the saying goes, a corporation can't even get arrested in this country, which, come to think of it is still another right we humans ought to bestow upon them.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor of Black Agenda Report. This article is also available as a podcast on the BAR website; follow the link in the heading.

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Gulf shrimper arrested for pouring oil on herself in Senate energy hearing, protesting Sen. Murkowski's refusal to make BP pay

(from the press release by action organizers Code Pink)
Diane Wilson, a fourth generation shrimper from the Gulf, poured oil on herself at todays Senate Energy Committee hearing to protest Senator Lisa Murkowski's refusal to make BP pay for the disaster that has devastating Wilson's shrimping community. Republican Lisa Murkowski, ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee, blocked the bill that would have lifted the oil companies' liability cap (the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act). Wilson was removed from the hearing and arrested.

Wilson traveled from Texas, where her livelihood and those of her fellow shrimpers has been ruined. She had this to say:

My name is Diane Wilson. I am a fourth generation shrimper from the Gulf. With this BP disaster, I am seeing the destruction of my community and I am outraged. I am also seeing elected representatives like Senator Lisa Murkowski blocking BP from being legally responsible to pay for this catastrophe. She stopped the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act and wants to keep the liability cap at a pitiful $75 million. This is outrageous. How dare she side with big oil over the American people who have been so devastated by this manmade disaster.

"We want people to call Senator Murkowskis office and tell her to stop supporting big oil and support a healthy environment and American livelihoods instead," said CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, who was with Wilson at the hearing. "Our members from across the country have sent Murkowski thousands of emails already. We also want the Senator to call for Diane Wilson to be exonerated. BP CEO Tony Hayward should be in jail, not a distraught shrimper!"

Wilson has been working for decades fighting the polluting of the Gulf. She wrote the book An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters, and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas detailing her years long fight against oil and chemical companies in her community. She went on to say, "I have seen the oil and chemical companies destroying our air, water, our wildlife--and the government going along with it. Politicians like Murkowski take campaign money from big oil and then get in bed with the same oil and chemical corporations. This must stop. Enough is enough."

Wilson is also a co-founder of the organization CODEPINK Women for Peace. She was in front of BP HQ in Houston, Texas two weeks ago to protest the oilspill and draw attention to BPs legacy of negligence. Read her most recent article, "The BP oil gusher is just the latest in a long line of assaults on the Gulf of Mexico," published on Grist.org.

For more info contact Medea Benjamin/CODEPINK at medea@globalexchange.org or call 415-235-6517.

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Oil toxicity in the gulf--Riki Ott discusses the potential for a public health disaster

Riki Ott of Ultimate Civics and Move To Amend speaks to Rachel Maddow about the toxicity of oil and the possibility of a public health disaster in the Gulf and the so-far inadequate information being provided by government to the people in the areas affected by the spill.

Good stuff at the beginning on the possible effect of oil on wetlands and the cluelessness of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour re oil exposure.

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Coast Guard working for BP too?

It was so brief that Katie Couric moved on to the turtles, but on May 18, Kelly Cobiella and a CBS news team were turned back from filming along a Louisiana beach and threatened with arrest by a Coast Guard patrol saying they were following BP's orders.

Video here.

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