Roger Waters Tours Amazon's “Rainforest Chernobyl”; Chevron Tried To Stop Him

Photo caption from activist Steven Donziger @SDonziger:

5 hours ago

Roger Waters crossing the Rio Aguarico in Ecuador’s Amazon after touring ⁦@Chevron⁩’s waste pits. Chevron tried to block his trip by denying a flight permit to land in Lago Agrio. Roger is a hero to the people of Ecuador. #RogerWatersVSChevron #chevronEcuador

From @RogerWaters on Instagram: 

• "So happy to be in beautiful Ecuador, spent yesterday visiting the wonderfully hospitable indigenous people. I am deeply moved by their predicament in the face of Chevron corporations’ deadly pollution of their rainforest home..."

  
  

"It's a desperate situation but we, activists around the world, are very proud of the Ecuadorian people, fighting Chevron in the way that you are, and we will help you as much as we can, until the fight is won... Much love to all of you..."

Roger Waters, líder de Pink Floyd visitó la zona de contaminación petrolera en Lago Agrio atribuida a Chevron y dijo: “he visto muchas evidencias sobre el desastre tóxico que ha dejado aquí, no necesito ir más allá a ver, porque yo he seguido este caso por muchos años”. pic.twitter.com/tBfZlHiOgE

— ANA MARÍA CAÑIZARES (@anniecanizares) November 19, 2018

(UPDATE): At the press conference the following day (Tuesday, November 20, 2018)...

@SDonziger: Roger Waters speaking to a packed press conference in Quito this morning. Calls Chevron “despicable” for its misconduct in historic legal case. #RogerWatersVSChevron #ChevronEcuador

@SDonziger: Roger Waters in Ecuador: “The law must serve us all, not just the Chevron’s of the world.” #RogerWatersVSChevron

@SDonziger: Roger Waters in Ecuador with two Amazon leaders, Rafael Pandam (to Roger’s right) and Carlos Nihua. Roger’s necklace was given by Pandam on behalf of the Shuar people. It has a tiger’s tooth to symbolize strength. #RogerWatersVSChevron ⁦@rogerwaters⁩ ⁦@AmazonWatch⁩

The crown worn by @rogerwaters in the photo was a gift from the Wuaorani people of Ecuador. Cesar Nihua explained it is given to young warriors who protect Indigenous territory from invasions by oil companies. #RogerWatersVSChevron @KarenHinton @SLAPPtaskforce

ThisSmallPlanet.com thanks Steven Donziger and his colleagues for their activism in the Amazon and for the photos and quotes above. 

Musician Roger Waters In Ecuador To Support Amazon Peoples Who Won Landmark Judgment Against Chevron

Submitted by:Amazon Defense Coalition - FDA

Categories:Activism, Environment

Posted: Nov 19, 2018 – 10:44 AM EST

Legendary musician Roger Waters is in Ecuador to help local Indigenous and farmer communities force Chevron to clean up its 1,000 toxic waste pits, such as the one pictured.

NEW YORK, Nov. 19 /CSRwire/ -  Roger Waters, the founder of Pink Floyd currently touring Latin America to sold-out stadiums, is arriving in Ecuador today to bear witness to Chevron’s “Amazon Chernobyl” disaster and to support Indigenous peoples and farmer communities who are fighting to force the oil giant to pay a landmark $12 billion liability to be used to clean up the world’s worst environmental disaster. 

“I am honored to come to Ecuador to see the environmental damage firsthand and to listen to my brothers and sisters in the Amazon who have taken on a true corporate monster in Chevron,” said Waters, who recently won a humanitarian award from the city of Buenos Aries. (See here.) “Chevron must clean up the disaster it caused in Ecuador and do so immediately. Chevron shareholders must recognize this is a humanitarian disaster and act to hold Chevron management accountable for its toxic dumping and attempts to evade court judgments.

“I am also here to support my friend Steven Donziger, the American lawyer for the Ecuadorians whom the company has targeted with a demonization campaign designed to intimidate supporters and leave the Ecuadorians without legal counsel,” Waters added. “I stand by Steven and all human rights defenders in Ecuador and around the world who get attacked by large corporations who commit wrongdoing.”

Carmen Cartuche, the President of the Amazon Defense Coalition (the group hosting Waters), said: “We are honored and privileged to be hosting legendary artist and musician Roger Waters on our ancestral lands. Mr. Waters not only has been an inspiration to millions of people around the world, but to those of us in Ecuador he has been a supporter for many years and we are deeply grateful for his solidarity. We look forward to telling Roger the truth about Chevron’s ongoing destruction of the environment and about the company’s crimes and fraud committed on our sacred lands.”

Waters was the creative force and principal lyricist for Pink Floyd from 1968 to 1983 in one of the most successfully runs of a rock band in history. With Waters as the driving force, Pink Floyd produced the famed Dark Side of the Moon (1973) and The Wall (1979), among other successful albums. Touring later as a solo artist, Waters later broke the record for the highest grossing tour in history for his spectacular Wall Live tour in 2010. 

In Ecuador, Waters will visit in an area of the Amazon rainforest mired in a humanitarian crisis. Chevron’s operational area in Ecuador – roughly the size of Rhode Island and comprising 400 production sites – is poisoned with life-threatening toxins and cancer rates have skyrocketed, claiming hundreds and possibly thousands of lives. One noted academic predicts 10,000 people in the area will die of cancer in the coming years because of Chevron’s failure to clean up its pollution. Several community leaders in the area have succumbed to cancer recently, including legendary nurse Rosa Moreno.

Waters will visit the Ecuadorian town of Lago Agrio, which means “Sour Lake” in English. Located on Indigenous Cofan territory, Lago Agrio was built by Chevron’s predecessor company Texaco in the 1970s and named after its headquarters in Texas.  The Cofan, once a thriving band of 15,000 people, have been completely displaced by Chevron’s oil production with their traditional culture of hunting and fishing largely decimated. Chevron’s first well in Ecuador -- known as Lago 1 -- was built on Cofan territory and caused extensive pollution to a nearby farm and stream, according to court documents.

Waters has been a longtime supporter of the five Indigenous groups and 80 farmer communities in Ecuador who originally brought the pollution case in 1993 in U.S. courts. Chevron later shifted the case to Ecuador, but then lost a trial there based on 64,000 chemical sampling results, extensive witness testimony, and 105 expert evidentiary reports. The Ecuador verdict has been affirmed by four layers of courts in the country and 17 separate appellate judges. (See this summary of the evidence against Chevron.)

Last year, while on tour in Canada, Waters attended court proceedings in Toronto to support the Ecuadorians in their attempt to seize Chevron assets to force compliance with the Ecuador court judgment. Chevron has an estimated $15 billion worth of assets in Canada, where it has come under sharp criticism for using its local subsidiary as a vehicle to send billions of dollars of annual payments to foreign governments as part of an apparent tax avoidance scheme. (See this summary of Chevron’s tax avoidance.)

Last week, Waters spoke to an academic conference in Alberta on Indigenous rights and the environment that focused in part on the litigation against Chevron. The pollution case – the first to result in a large environmental judgment against a U.S. oil company out of Latin America -- was filed 25 years ago this month in U.S. federal court in New York before Chevron moved it to Ecuador. 

When the evidence mounted in the Ecuador trial, Chevron sold its assets and threatened the Indigenous groups with a “lifetime of litigation” if they persisted. Chevron also hired 60 law firms to fight the Indigenous groups and launched an avowed “demonization” campaign targeting their lawyers. Donziger, a sole practitioner and graduate of Harvard Law School, has borne the brunt of Chevron’s attacks. 

In the meantime, Chevron has suffered significant legal setbacks. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously in 2015 that the Ecuadorian communities could try to seize Chevron assets in that country, denying a Chevron jurisdictional challenge. The Ecuadorians also have won two unanimous decisions from the Ontario Court of Appeal denying other Chevron attempts to block the case. (See here for background on the Canada litigation.)

At the conference in Alberta two weeks ago, Waters criticized Chevron for what he called the “despicable” treatment of the Ecuadorian communities and their lawyers. 

“We cannot allow Chevron to destroy Steven Donziger and 60,000 people in Ecuador,” Waters said. He later described the case against Chevron “as a matter of life and death for thousands of people” and said Chevron’s “ad hominem attacks against the Ecuadorians and Steven Donziger are utterly despicable.” Waters received a standing ovation after he talked, which took place via Skype from Santiago, Chile. (See here for studies documenting high cancer rates where Chevron operated.)

Chevron’s troubles from its Ecuador liability also have produced consternation in the financial markets.

Thirty-six Chevron institutional shareholders recently sent a letter to Chevron CEO Michael Wirth criticizing his mishandling of the litigation and asking that he explore a settlement. In the meantime, two shareholder resolutions relating to Wirth’s mishandling of the case received overwhelming support at the company’s 2018 annual meeting. (See here.)

For the last several months, Waters has been touring in Latin America while playing to large audiences in stadiums in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aries, Montevideo, Santiago, and Lima. He plays in Bogota on Wednesday night before closing his 18-month world tour in Costa Rica and Mexico. He previously played several cities in the United States, Canada, Europe, Russia, Australia and New Zealand.

You also might be interested in...

Jared Kushner's Observer Takes Two Cheap Shots At Anti-Trump Rocker Roger Waters - Misses Both Times

Behind Byrdmania – an archive piece from 1965 by Derek Taylor, PR Wizard for The Beatles & Byrds

Derek Taylor

Wed 15 Jul 2015 12.06 EDTLast modified on Wed 31 May 2017 11.55 EDT

Shares

515

Comments

1

 ‘Rain grey town’ … from left, Roger McGuinn, Chris Hillman, Mike Clarke, Gene Clark and David Crosby on the London trip in 1965 that inspired the song Eight Miles High. Photograph: Victor Blackman/Getty Images

The Byrds happened. Suddenly, with little enough warning for any of us. For me, it started a couple of days after I arrived in Hollywood in February, when a cameraman I had met on the Beatles’ tour sauntered into my then uncluttered office and dropped a couple of pictures casually on my desk. “There’s a group here you may like to look at,” he said. “They’re called the Byrds. They may be lousy for all I know.”

I had come to California to work as a press agent. I had two clients – both rock groups. One was Paul Revere & the Raiders, the other the Beau Brummels. All long-haired. So here was a third. Nothing was known about them. They hadn’t performed together in public as a group. They hadn’t released a record. They weren’t good looking. And they had no money at all. Very promising.

In this week’s Rock’s Backpages, to mark 50 years since the Byrds released Mr Tambourine Man, here’s a feature by the late, great Derek Taylor, originally published in Melody Maker on 17 July 1965

However, I called their manager and he came into the office. His name was Jim Dickson, a roly-poly man, prematurely bald, who had been an A&R man for folk singers. He had a kind smile and gentle eyes and he looked honest. Which is something in Hollywood. He too, was broke. But, he said the Byrds were pretty good and Columbia Records had recorded them with a number called Mr Tambourine Man. He had a copy of it and he played it to me. Bob Dylan, he explained, had written the song and had approved the Byrds’ version. I said, “I think it’s a hit.” And he said, “We think so too.” They were due to make their first public appearance for $10 each at Ciro’s, a large, unfashionable nightclub on Sunset Strip.

Difficulties

It was the haunt of Errol Flynn and Humphrey Bogart in their brawling prime, and of Van Johnson and Cary Grant and a thousand glamorous ghosts. So I went to see the Byrds. They had unimaginable mechanical difficulties – amplifier breakdown, inadequate microphones. Collectively, they had never faced an audience and they were shy, ill at ease and not at all a unit. Yet something was happening on stage. It was something over and above normal rock experience.

FacebookTwitterPinterest

I offered to represent them for a few dollars a week just for the hell of it. But manager Dickson and his partner, Eddie Tickner, a slim cautious man who used to work for the US army audit department, said: “Stick around and keep smiling, but we can’t afford to pay anything yet.” I stuck around and stuck out and offered to take a percentage of the group’s income. Finally, Tickner and Dickson agreed and I was in.

Mr Tambourine Man was released in America in April. Radio Station KRLA in Los Angeles liked it and the city’s Beatlemaniac disc jockey, Dave Hull, decided to pick it as his Tip for a Hit.

I went into print in the station’s newspaper to forecast it as a nationwide No 1. Five weeks later, it had bounded in leaps of 30 places to the top of all the national charts – Cash Box, Billboard, Record World, plus hundreds of local lists. By the end of June, the Byrds were the pop music talking point of America.

They were featured on the front cover of all the trade newspapers. Their fan club members were numbered in thousands. And both sides of their second American release, All I Really Want to Do and I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better, are, at this moment, climbing rapidly to replace Mr Tambourine Man at the top.

Packed

Sign up for the Sleeve Notes email: music news, bold reviews and unexpected extras

Read more

Abroad, Mr Tambourine Man was also one of the records of the year. It went into the Australian and Canadian top five, and after a rush-release in Britain it climbed into the coveted English charts.

The Byrds returned to Ciro’s, and for the first time in years packed the place. There were queues up and down Sunset Strip of desperate teenagers clamouring to get in.

The dancefloor was a madhouse. A hardcore of Byrd followers – wayward painters, disinherited sons and heirs, bearded sculptors, misty-eyed nymphs and assorted oddballs – suddenly taught Hollywood to dance again. This was no Shake, Watusi or Frog session. It was an exercise in “Byrdmania”. A frenetic extension of the talents of five quite exceptional pop musicians.

None of the Byrds is easy to get to know. In this – as in many other respects – they resemble the Beatles.

FacebookTwitterPinterest

 The Byrds: left to right, Chris Hillman, Dave Crosby, Mike Clark, Roger McGuinn and Gene Clark. Photograph: Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORB

They are all intelligent, cool, acutely aware of the follies, extravagance and hypocrisy in show business. But because they had willingly abandoned their separate impoverished careers in the less remunerative branches of the industry, they plunged into the hurly-burly of the contemporary rock scene. Though they had only seven weeks’ experience, they were hired for all seven of the southern California Rolling Stones concerts in May.

Fashionable

They were booked for a huge prestigious charity show at LA’s Shrine Auditorium, and were the hit of the night in a $100,000 rock’n’roll show at the Hollywood Bowl. Also – and America is not without its social strata – they became fashionable.

The Byrds were booked by Henry Fonda’s daughter Jane for her Independence Day celebrations in Malibu. At the party were Lauren Bacall, Steve McQueen, George Cukor, Sidney Poitier, Diahann Carroll, Roddy McDowall, Mia Farrow and Warren Beatty. Adding international flavour, among the British guests were Peter Finch, James Fox, Ian Bannen, David McCallum and Jill Ireland. France was represented by Louis Jourdan, Roger Vadim and Leslie Caron.

The Byrds’ diligent management – with all the enterprise and zest of an Epstein – secured them appearances on every American television show from Hullabaloo to Shindig. The only gap in the Byrds’ TV scene is The Ed Sullivan Show. That follows this autumn. Columbia Records – grateful to the Byrds for the label’s first No 1 since January 1963 – paid all expenses for an appearance at the company’s convention in Miami. And the Willard Alexander Agency – bookers of Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, no less – filled every night in July with coast-to-coast dates.

© Derek Taylor, 1965  Published on TheGuardian.com

Cool, New Song by The Vaccines: "All My Friends Are Falling In Love" (Video)

Listen to/download 'All My Friends Are Falling In Love': http://vacn.es/AMFAFIL?IQid=YT

Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood Paints Bob Dylan Like A Rolling Stone

Eric Bogle: "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

When I was a young man I carried my pack
And I lived the free life of a rover
From the Murrays green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over

Then in nineteen fifteen my country said Son
It's time to stop rambling 'cause there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we sailed away from the quay
And amidst all the tears and the shouts and the cheers
We sailed off to Gallipoli

How well I remember that terrible day
How the blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter

Johnny Turk he was ready, he primed himself well
He chased us with bullets, he rained us with shells
And in five minutes flat he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia

But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again

Now those that were left, well we tried to survive
In a mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
But around me the corpses piled higher

Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over tit
And when I woke up in my hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
Never knew there were worse things than dying

For no more I'll go waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs two legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

So they collected the cripples, the wounded, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla

And as our ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where my legs used to be
And thank Christ there was nobody waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
As they carried us down the gangway
But nobody cheered, they just stood and stared
Then turned all their faces away

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory

And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And their ghosts may be heard as you pass the Billabong
Who'll come-a-waltzing Matilda with me?

"You Showed Me" by Gene Clark & Roger McGuinn, Performance by Jakob Dylan & Cat Power

"You Showed Me" was written by Gene Clark & Roger McGuinn (The Byrds), popularized by The Turtles, and performed here by Jakob Dylan & Cat Power.

Kanye West also sampled a version of "You Showed Me" here...

First Release of "Dear Friend" Demo: Paul McCartney's Answer To "How Do You Sleep?"

Paul McCartney has shared (for the first time) the home demo for the song "Dear Friend", his response to "How Do You Sleep?", Lennon's blistering 1971 attack on Macca (with George Harrison on slide guitar):

Video: John & George Record Anti-Paul Slam "How Do You Sleep?"; New "Imagine" Boxset

The finished studio version of "Dear Friend" appeared on the 1971 Paul McCartney & Wings album Wild Life. The demo will appear on a remastered reissue with bonus material that's due to be released in December 2018. 

Wild Life was McCartney's third post-Beatles album; the first credited to "Wings".

[Verse 1]

Dear friend, what's the time?
Is this really the borderline?
Does it really mean so much to you?
Are you afraid, or is it true?

Dear friend, throw the wine
I'm in love with a friend of mine
Really truly, young and newly wed
Are you a fool, or is it true?

Are you afraid, or is it true?

Cool, New Video: The Lemon Twigs, "Never in My Arms, Always in My Heart"