Category: Uncategorized

Gulf Emergency Summit

Saturday June 19

Doors open 10:00 am

First Unitarian Universalist Church, New Orleans

5212 South Claiborne Avenue

Join Cindy Sheehan, John Clark, Larry Everest, and Gulf region activists, independent of the government and BP in making an ACTION plan. The People Must Act to STOP the Gulf Catastrophe!

The BP oil blowout is an environmental catastrophe, bringing great peril to marine and wildlife in the Gulf and threatening ecosystems of the planet. The spill is still out of control and spreading. It jeopardizes communities and livelihoods.

The government and BP have proven unable and unwilling to stop the disaster, protect the Gulf,or even tell the truth.

The people must come together now to stop this nightmare.

Millions are sick at heart and looking for ways to act. Many individuals and groups have spoken out, offered suggestions, volunteered to help, protested.

BP and the government – pursuing their own interests – have ignored people’s ideas, blocked public participation, suppressed and
harassed scientists, and prevented people on the Gulf from taking initiative to keep oil away from shore. This must not continue.

A broad, determined, and powerful “peoples’ response” is urgently needed – to get thetruth out, to protect the shores and oceans and deal with the ecological impacts, while exploring deeper causes and solutions.

The Emergency Summit will bring together scientists, people from fishing communities, environmental activists, progressives, radicals and revolutionaries, artists, intellectuals and all who want to halt this horror.

There will be testimony on the true scope and impact of the disaster and on what can be done to protect ecosystems, wildlife, and people. We’ll thrash out ways for people to act now – on different fronts and in different ways – and to galvanize many, many more, across the Gulf and beyond. The world is watching. We must not allow the Gulf and oceans to be devastated. Our mission is nothing less than stopping this catastrophe.

Draft Demands:

1. Stop oil drilling in the Gulf

2. The government and entire oil industry must allocate all necessary resources to stop the spill and clean up the devastation. Full support, including by compensation, must be given to efforts by people to save the Gulf.

3. No punishment to those taking independent initiative; no gag orders on people hired, contracted, or who volunteer.

4. Full mobilization of scientists and engineers. Release scientific and technical data to the public; no more lying and covering up. Full and open scientific evaluation of emergency measures like the use of dispersants. Fund all necessary scientific and medical research.

5. Full compensation for all losing livelihood and income from the disaster.

6. Provide necessary medical services to those suffering health effects of the spill. Protect the health of and provide necessary equipment for everyone involved in clean up operations. Full disclosure of medical and scientific studies about the effects of the oil disaster.

Some of the hundreds of endorsers:

William Quigley, Loyola University; Legal Dir., Center for Constitutional Rights*

Michael G. Hadfield, Marine Biologist, University of Hawaii*

Larry Everest, author Oil, Power & Empire, Revolution newspaper

John Pearse, Prof. Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz*

Eloise Williams, Lower Algiers Environmental Committee, New Orleans

Elizabeth Cook, Women United for Social Justice, New Orleans

Andy Washington, Civil Rights Activist, New Orleans

Survivors Village, New Orleans

Ben Gordon, Pax Cristi, New Orleans

Debra Sweet, Director, World Can’t Wait

Sharon Jasper, public housing activist, New Orleans

C3-Hands Off Iberville, New Orleans

George Mahdi, Social Worker, New Orleans

Endesha Juakeli, housing activist, New Orleans

Randy Poindexter, New Orleans

Rebecca Austen, New Orleans

Gilda & Sain Reed, New Orleans

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report

Dahr Jamail, journalist

Mark J. Davis, Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law & Policy

Raymond Lotta, Revolution contributor, environment, socialist sustainable development

Everyone’s voice, ideas and energy are needed. If you can’t come, contact the Summit for next steps. Endorse the Summit & you’ll be contacted about the ACTION plan

By David Swanson

Way back in January, the ocean was still ocean, oil still oil, and combining the two had not yet occurred to us. The Conch Republic, the Florida Keys, was — in retrospect — a secure and pristine paradise.

The danger was of sunburn, not of crude oil on your skin or toxic chemicals in the air you breathed.

While I was there with my family, we enjoyed the sand, sun, and sea. But we wanted to see more pelicans. We wanted to see lots of pelicans.

So we went to the Florida Keys Wild Bird Center.

Well, it turns out that pelicans know what time it is. And if someone hands out buckets of fish on the shore at the same time every day, any pelican in the greater metropolitan area is going to be there right on time.

And that’s what they do there on Tavernier Key. They know the pelicans. They tag them. They doctor injured ones. And, if they want to check on how they’re doing, all it takes is several buckets of fish and predictable timing.

The pelicans didn’t have everything perfect, even pre-oil. The effects on the weather of our burning of oil we’re hitting the pelicans hard before the oil itself hit the water. These birds require a finely calibrated climate. They migrate from the U.S. gulf coast to the Keys with the seasons. And they need fish, fresh, healthy fish, and lots of it.

When the weather goes freaky with unusually cold or hot or dry periods, and when fish die, the pelicans are in danger too. We just didn’t know how good they had it before BP-USA dipped them and their world in oil.

At lunchtime, hundreds of pelicans show up with one thing on their minds.

If you watch CNN you’ll see heartwarming stories of how purchasing the proper brand of dishwashing soap at your local supermarket will contribute to the work of washing the pelicans off before dipping them back in the oil to die. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is horseshit.

The ocean is filling up with oil, which kills the fish, which kills the pelicans, and which — with a few more steps — kills all of us. The pelicans are canaries in this coalmine, and they are expiring.

There will be no more human enjoyment of the pelicans if this continues, and no more pelican enjoyment of anything at all. They will be gone, along with the world they lived in.

This does not strike me as yet another ho-hum project for the president to create a commission on or the oil baron primarily responsible to be annoyed by when he’s not yachting in another ocean. This is the worst damage we have yet imposed on the earth, an ongoing explosion of black liquid death pumping into paradise, and we’re taking it all pretty coolly.

Oh, but what can we do?

What would the pelicans do? When they want something, they don’t hesitate. If you don’t toss them the fish fast enough, they grab your legs. If that doesn’t work, they try to knock the bucket over. These are birds on a mission to survive. We’re on a mission to nap.

What should we be doing? Not yachting. Not golfing. Not deferring as people to our government or as Congress to a president or as that president to the criminals responsible.

There should be an all-out night-and-day effort to stop this oil gusher. The national guard should be brought home to guard the nation. The trillions of dollars being put into wars for oil should be reinvested (ending the wars) into a war against the oil we do not want and cannot survive, and into an all-out crusade to create a renewable energy economy.

The oil should be claimed by our nation, and our nation should seize the assets of the company responsible.

The state of Delaware should decharter the US branch of BP.

BP and the government regulators who did not regulate it should be prosecuted.

The military and the rest of the government should end all contracts with BP.

All offshore drilling should be banned.

All restrictions on journalists in the Gulf of Mexico should be lifted.

Corporations should be denied their dangerous status of possessing the privileges of people with none of the responsibilities.

If anyone should be given the protections afforded flesh and blood people, it is the pelicans.

* * * * * *

David Swanson is the author of the new book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town.

To receive updates from After Downing Street register here.

In a perfect world the health insurance industry would be liquidated overnight, replaced by a universal care fund, aka single payer. But until last week, the reason for abolition wasn’t so clearly phrased by the insurance industry itself. Now they say it plain: “You can’t make us cover Tiny Tim.”

If the insurance industry wants to boast that it can cut Tiny Tim out of its future, then it should expect the righteous judgment that falls upon the head of each and every Scroogelike creature–a lonesome and cold gravestone. Nor should we forget to pick their corporate pockets thoroughly as we ready their legacies for the burial that their recent history so richly deserves.

For a day or two anyway, Washington danced enthusiastically with the profiteering managers of our health care economy. And from a distance it looked like a partnership that had half a chance. Then the creeps started whispering little things in Washington’s ear.

But situations like this are what elbows are made for, and it would be interesting to see who would vote against a little old law of one sentence only. “Any insurance company who refuses to cover a child will forfeit all of its assets immediately to the US Treasury.”

Oh, and “God bless us all, every one!”–gm

On the Mexico side of the international boundary, the Rio Grande has historically been called the Rio Bravo. In this appeal, we refer to this 1885-mile long international river as the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo.

The watershed of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo covers eight states in our two countries. In the United States, that would include Colorado, New Mexico,and Texas. In Mexico the watershed includes Durango, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas.

For their agricultural, industrial, commercial,and residential existence, millions of US citizens and millions of Mexican citizens have historically relied on the natural hydrological flows of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo and its tributaries, from its headwaters in the Colorado Rockies all the way to its mouth as it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Due to drought, just a few years ago, the waters of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo dried up before it could reach the Gulf.

In this era of global climate change, the likelihood of more drought seems imminent. In this past year Texas just came out of a period of the worst drought on record. Yet, new threats are looming on the horizon for the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, especially on the Texas-Mexico portion of the river.

The Mexico side of the border is the fastest growing region in Mexico. Similarly, the Texas side of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is the fastest growing region in the United States. Such growth will continue to put a lot of added pressure on the waters of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, both in the terms of consumption as well as contamination.

As it is, according to American Rivers, the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is one of the most endangered rivers in North America. According the World Wildlife Fund, the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is the seventh most endangered river in the world.

The newest endangerment to the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo is upon us. This threat is somewhat stealth, as it is under the radar of most state, federal and international agencies and organizations. For over a century, the State of Texas has regulated its waters based on the archaic “rule of capture,” or “right of capture.” Essentially, the biggest pump and pumper owns the water that can be extracted.

Based on this “rule”, an application has been made by a private party to extract 47,000 acre feet per year out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed. An acre foot is equal to roughly 326,000 gallons of water.

The application is from Clayton Williams, Jr.’s Fort Stockton Holdings to the Middle Pecos County Groundwater Conservation District (MPGCD). The application proposes to extract 41,000,000 gallons of water a day, or about 15,000,000,000 gallons of water per year–for 30 plus years–out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed.

If approved, the permit would allow 45,000,000,000,000 gallons of water to be taken out of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed as a result of this one application alone. Others will follow. The preliminary hearing will be held this coming Tuesday, April 20, 2010, in Fort Stockton. The final decision will be rendered on May 18, 2010.

With all this in mind, the Rio Grande International Study Center (RGISC), a non-profit organization based at the Laredo Community College on the banks of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo, along with our sister organization in Mexico, el Centro Internacional del los Estudios del Rio Bravo (CIER), has allied with the City of Fort Stockton.

We are also allying with not only the citizens of Pecos County but also the millions of citizens of the international community who reside within and depend upon the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo for their existence. On their behalf, we are appealing to US Congressmen to help us prevent such an unprecedented action that would be taken without adequate science.

We request that Congressmen please utilize your office and position of authority to call for a moratorium on any extraction of waters from the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed. Approval of such extraction of billions of gallons of water a year should NOT be granted.

There is a need for time, time for an adequate hydrological study to be performed that would reveal what impact such a diversion away from the international watershed would have. Our concern is that there is insufficient science that would show the impact on the natural hydrological cycle of the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed, on which millions of bi-national citizens downriver depend.

Under the 1944 Treaty with Mexico, the waters of Fort Stockton and Pecos County, Texas, are within the geographical boundaries of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). Never before has a massive amount of water been extracted and transferred out of the watershed and IBWC boundaries. This is a precedent-setting case. How would this impact the spirit and intent of the 1944 treaty?

The City of Fort Stockton is a small community of some 7,500 population. The total population of Pecos County is about 20,000. Alone, they are hard-pressed to handle the magnitude of this challenge. The residents there already have a historic natural spring, Comanche Springs, that is dried up most of the year due to high impact pumping of the aquifer for irrigation by the same businessman who now wishes to export water out of the watershed to Midland, Texas, for profit.

Find below a resolution drafted by the City Council of the City of Fort Stockton. Together , the City Council and RGISC appeal to you to intervene and prevent, this dangerous hydrological precedent. If this permit is allowed, others will follow. Diverting Rio Grande-Rio Bravo waters away from almost ten million inhabitants within the IBWC boundaries would be to divert water away from the fastest growing region in our two countries that already depends on this river.

This action is being done for one entity’s profit. It is also being done so that other areas outside the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed region could experience economic growth. That such an action would jeopardize the growth along the border seems discriminatory against those who live on the US-Mexico border.

We are also writing the IBWC, the Council on Environmental Quality-Office of the White House, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior, US Fish and Wildlife, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Texas Water Development Board, and Texas Parks and Wildlife.

We are writing all the members of Congress who have border districts. We are writing the Governor of the State of Texas as well as all the members of our Texas Legislature that represent the border.

In Mexico, we are writing the Comision Internacional de los Limites y Agua, Comision Nacional del Agua, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturals, and the governors of the five states within the Rio Grande-Rio Bravo watershed.

Editor’s Note: Article adapted from letter to Congressman Cuellar from Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr., Executive Director of the Rio Grande International Study Center–gm

RESOLUTION NO. 1O-111R

A RESOLUTION BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF FORT STOCKTON JOINING FORCES WITH THE RIO GRANDE INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER IN ITS PLEA FOR A MORATORIUM & INTERVENTION TO PREVENT WATER FROM BEING TRANSPORTED, EXPORTED OR PUMPED FROM THE PECOS RIVER AND RIO GRANDE RIVER WATERSHEDS & REQUESTING THAT A HYDROLOGICAL STUDY BE PERFORMED OF THE SUBTERRANEAN WATER FLOWS OF THE EDWARDS-TRINITY AQUIFER TO DETERMINE WHAT UNFORESEEN ADVERSE IMPACTS COULD OCCUR ON THE FLOW OF WATER INTO THE INTERNATIONAL BODY WATER OF WHICH MILLIONS OF INHABITANTS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DEPEND ON FOR EXISTENCE.

WHEREAS, The Pecos River is an integral part of the Rio Grande watershed, which is an
international body of water under the 1944 treaty between the United States and Mexico; and

WHEREAS, Downriver from the mouth of the Pecos River in confluence with the Rio Grande is
an internatio
nal comm
unity of some 6-10 million inhabitants that solely rely on the Rio Grande as
a source of existence; residential, commercial, industrial and agricultural usage; and

WHEREAS, Pecos County is confronted with an enterprise that is attempting to extract
approximately 15 billion gallons of water per year from the Pecos watershed under the Texas “rule
of capture”; and

WHEREAS, If successful, that would become a precedent for other water marketing enterprises;
and

WHEREAS, The Rio Grande International Study Center is a non-profit organization with the
stewardship of protecting the Rio Grande watershed; and

WHEREAS, The board of directors of the RGISC has voted unanimously to support Fort
Stockton in attempting to protect the Pecos River watershed; and

WHEREAS, RGISC and the City of Fort Stockton will jointly submit correspondence to the
International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), Environmental Protection Agency,
Comision Internacional de los Lirnites y Agua (CILA), CONAGUA (Comision Nacional del
Agua), SEMARNAT (Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturals), Texas Water
Development Board (TWDB), Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), along with
the four Congressional representatives from Texas bordering Mexico; Congressman Silvestre
Reyes (Dist. 16), Congressman Ciro Rodriguez (Dist. 23), Congressman Henry Cuellar (Dist. 28)
and Congressman Solomon Ortiz (Dist. 27); and

WHEREAS, A request will be sought for a moratorium and an intervention regarding plans to
transfer, export or pump water out of, along with the protection of, the Pecos River and Rio
Grande River watersheds until additional hydrological studies of the subterranean water flows of
the Edwards-Trinity aquifer can be made to determine what unforeseen adverse impacts could
occur on the flow of water into the international body water of which millions of inhabitants in the
international community depend on for existence; and

WHEREAS, Input will also be solicited from the Texas Parks and Wildlife, National Parks
Service, US Fish and Wildlife, as well as other local, state, national and international organizations
and agencies; and

WHEREAS, A joint press conference will be held to inform the media about our request for
intervention; and

– – NOW THEREFFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE FORT STOCKTON CITY COUNCIL,
THAT IT HEREBY ENDORSES:
JOINING FORCES WITH THE RIO GRANDE
INTERNATIONAL STUDY CENTER IN ITS PLEA FOR A
MORATORIUM & INTERVENTION TO PREVENT WATER
FROM BEING TRANSPORTED, EXPORTED OR PUMPED
FROM THE PECOS RIVER AND RIO GRANDE RIVER
WATERSHEDS & REQUESTING THAT A HYDROLOGICAL
STUDY BE PERFORMED OF THE SUBTERRANEAN WATER
FLOWS OF THE EDWARDS-TRINITY AQUIFER TO
DETERMINE WHAT UNFORESEEN ADVERSE IMPACTS
COULD OCCUR ON THE FLOW OF WATER INTO THE
INTKRNATIONAL BODY WATER OF WIllCR MILLIONS OF
INHAB1.TA.””I!TS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
DEPEND ON FOR EXISTENCE.

PASSED AND APPRGYED by the Fort Stockton City Council on this 23rd day of February,
2010.