Six years ago, the Courts of Ecuador issued against American oil giant Chevron a $9.5 billion judgment. This is believed to be the largest civil judgment in history. It arose out of the massive contamination of waters in the Ecuadorian jungle, referred to by local villagers as the “Chernobyl of the Amazon”. Before Ecuador’s courts issued the judgment, Chevron sold its assets in Ecuador, and thereby obliged the plaintiffs to collect on the judgment in other jurisdictions. In this report, I speak to human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who has represented the Ecuadorian plaintiffs for over two decades. Steven explains that the U.S. Courts have refused to enforce the judgment against Chevron on the basis of evidence which Chevron has fabricated through the bribery of a key witness. But the Ecuadorian plaintiffs are also seeking to enforce the judgment in Canada and Brazil, where the Courts are likely to be far less receptive to the testimony of Chevron’s star witness. My interview of Steven Donziger can be watched here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19374:US-Supreme-Court-Declines-to-Hear-Chevron-Pollution-Case
On my recent trip to Vancouver for The Real News, I interviewed Charlene Aleck about the battle against Kinder Morgan’s proposed expansion of the TransMountain tar sands pipeline. Charlene is a Granddaughter of Chief Dan George. She’s an elected Councilor for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN) and a spokesperson for the TWN Sacred Trust Initiative. As a child she played Sarah Jim on the Beachcombers. My interview of Charlene can be seen here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19372:Canadian-First-Nation-Battles-Pipeline-Expansion.
In this interview, I talk to Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University about a new study on coastal flooding that he has co-authored. The study reveals that major U.S. coastal cities like New York are woefully unprepared for the increased flooding that is likely to result from sea level rise. The interview can be seen here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19365:Coastal-Cities-Unprepared-for-Major-Floods-As-Sea-Levels-Rise
Fifty years ago, in June 1967, Israel began an occupation of Palestinian territories that has endured to this very day, and that shows no sign of ending in the foreseeable future. To commemorate this event, I travelled to Ottawa to speak to Nabil Maarouf, the head of the Palestinian delegation in Canada. This interview is in two parts. In Part 1, Mr. Maarouf and I discuss Justin Trudeau’s continuation of Stephen Harper’s extreme pro-Israel policies. In Part 2, Mr. Maarouf calls for sanctions, boycotts and criminal indictments against Israeli officials in order to bring an end to the system of apartheid that Israel has imposed on the Palestinian people.
Part 1 is here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=19329.
Part 2 is here:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=19338.
In this report for The Real News Network, I speak to indigenous rights lawyer Eugene Kung about the protection of indigenous rights under the Canadian constitution:
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:19349:In-Canada%2C-Indigenous-Groups-are-Litigating—And-Winning
Over the past several years, scientists have nearly tripled their estimates of sea level rise from global warming by 2100. In this report for The Real News, I discuss the growing threat of sea level rise to Vancouver and other coastal cities with Deborah Carlson, a lawyer with West Coast Environmental Law:
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=767&Itemid=74&jumival=19313.
