The book Gas Amazónico “Amazon Gas ” exposes those responsible for the violation of the Rights to Life of peoples living in voluntary isolation.
by Marc Gavaldà.- The oil companies that are to exploit the Camisea Fields are operating with highly favpourable terms with questionable practices that violate the rights of native communities. The inaccessibility and lack of witnesses, combined with misleading government complicity and corporate image and community relations campaigns, allow Repsol, Petrobras, Hunt and Pluspetrol , the operating companies of lots 56,57,58 and 88, to act with a comfortable margin of impunity.
The book Gas Amazónico, a study under the Environmental Governability Program-ENGOV-which was recently published by the Icaria Editorial, provides new evidence of the misdeeds of these companies on both banks of the Urubamba River, south of the Peruvian Amazon.
There, dozens of indigenous communities, peoples Matsiguenga, Yne yami, Ashaninka and Kakinte have been entrapped to carry out an unprecedented industrialization of their territory.
“We will counterattack three corporations for their worldwide terrorism in the next six months.” So declares the eco-anarchist group “The East” near the beginning of Zal Batmanglij’s new film of the same name. With this politically tinged suspense and action film, Batmangilij seeks to break the mold of the usual formulaic summer blockbusters. The director of earlier sci-fi inflected dramas, Batmanglij appears to want to surf the frenzy of Occupy Wall Street and the Tar Sands Blockade that grabbed headlines. The film delves into questions around justice, violence, community, commitment, and ultimately asks the viewer, Which side are you on?
you can download torrent from Pirate Bay Proxy sites (mAY 2015).
This provocative film is one part espionage thriller, one part love story, and all anarchy. Batmanglij tells the story of undercover corporate spy and ex-FBI agent Sarah Moss (Brit Marling, who also gets a co-writer credit) tasked with infiltrating an eco-anarchist group called “The East.” The collective, fronted by Benji (Alexander Skarsgård) and Izzy (Ellen Page), is wanted for executing covert attacks upon major corporations.
The corporate bad guys have never looked so bad. And the depiction isn’t just caricature: the director drew the film’s corporate misdeeds from real stories of corporate crime.
From oil companies spilling billions of gallons of oil into pristine eco-systems, to a pharmaceutical giant putting bad meds on the market, to a chemical company poisoning local watersheds and children, we’re given the sense that The East’s actions are justified. A private security honcho named Sharon (Patricia Clarkson) is especially vile. When, early in her undercover operation, Sarah discovers The East will be poisoning a Big Pharma cocktail party with dirty meds, Sharon orders her to let them proceed – since the party goers aren’t her clients, she doesn’t care what happens to them.
But, for me at least, the verisimilitude breaks down when it comes to its depictions of the eco-warriors at the heart of the film. As a self-identified anarchist and activist, I just wasn’t buying it. Not that Batmanglij and Marling didn’t try to get it right. The writers spent the summer of 2009 traveling through the North American anarchist scene researching the film.
To their credit, they depict the anarchist activists as smart, strategic operators – not as dumb, naïve kids duped into some plot, the usual script for the mainstream media. While two months is enough to get a tone and feel for the North American anarchist subculture, it’s not enough to really understand the real meaning of its politics or its inhabitants. In the end, The East’s portrait of anarchists falls flat, seeping some of the movie’s punch.
Like Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle, the film depicts the activists as privileged children damaged by the system or, worse, crippled with “daddy issues” and lashing out with anger and hate. In The East a supporting character, Doc (Toby Kebbell), has dropped out of mainstream society because of the death of his sister at the hands of a pharmaceutical giant.
Benji began his rebellion after the death of his parents in a boating accident and the insult of his remaining family trying to buy off his grief with money. Izzy has such poison in her heart for her corporate executive father that she kidnaps him and his boss and forces them to jump into a lake poisoned by their company’s chemical waste. In the end (spoiler alert!), the father willingly jumps in to show his love for his estranged daughter – proving to the audience he has more compassion than his supposedly world-saving daughter. (omg who wrote this script!!)
While not as absurd as Woody Harrelson’s cop in Battle in Seattle apologizing to jailed protestor Martin Henderson after beating the shit out of him (or 2002’s Anarchist Cookbook in which anarchist Puck turns his friends into the police before taking off to marry his Republican girlfriend) the twist at the ending is pushing ridiculous. (Second spoiler alert!) Benji tries to convince Sarah to run off with him and join the resistance. While love is always a wild card, it’s difficult to believe that any anarchist would try and convince an exposed informant to run off into the sunset. Cue face to palm.
Beyond the unbelievable theatrics of the script, there’s a bigger problem with the film’s premise: Its depiction of political activism is a false choice. The film sets up two options for responding to corporate crimes: either violent counter-attack or fuzzy idealism that the system itself will make its own corrections. The filmmakers seem to have ignored (or misunderstood) the lessons from recent successful social movements. We live in a time in which Tunisians and Egyptians have thrown out dictators, Greeks and Spaniards are fighting austerity via strikes and sit-ins, and the occupation of a small park in lower Manhattan sparked a new anti-corporate consciousness in the American mainstream. (but nothing has changed, on the contrary!)
From students in Montreal stopping privatization of their schools to Bolivians kicking Bechtel out of El Alto, popular movements and mass organizing are the real game changers in today’s political system. But watching The East, you get the sense that violent counter-attack is the only way to strike back against environmental destruction and social injustice.
In the end, Sarah undergoes a radical transformation from law enforcement careerist to whistle-blower. She launches a campaign to expose the corporate criminals by turning them in to government agencies. To me, trusting in the system to function correctly seems a naïve solution to environmental problems. The reality is the revolving door between industry and government make it nearly impossible to distinguish the regulators from those they are supposed to be regulating. Also, it’s sometimes the whistle-blowers who end up being persecuted. This film seems oblivious of the fact that the government usually acts in the interests of the one-percent-ers.
Batmanglij hopes The East will be a conversation-starter not just for anarchists and radicals, but for grandmothers and ordinary summertime moviegoers. Despite my quibbles about the film, I hope he’s right. We need more pop culture offerings that can spark discussions about the resistance to business as usual.
The history of art and insurrection is encouraging. You wouldn’t have had a civil rights movement without Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance. You wouldn’t have had Students for a Democratic Society and massive anti-Vietnam War protests without Allen Ginsberg and the Beats waxing poetically about inherit flaws in the American system ten years earlier. Likewise, stories of a new vibrant environmental movement are gaining in pop culture despite the country being governed by a center-right party (Democrats) and far right party (Republicans). Whether it’s the other-wordly eco-rebellion of Avatar, the animal revolt of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the proletarian uprising of the Hunger Games, or critically acclaimed documentaries like If A Tree Falls and Gasland, the movie theater has become one of the most important places for exploring environmental politics. Those films and others prove that you can cut all the flowers, but you can’t stop the spring.
Back in the Real World…. support our heroes in prison!
Eric McDavid was arrested in January 2006 after being entrapped by a paid government informant – “Anna” – and was charged with a single count of conspiracy. Eric – who never carried out any actions and was accused of what amounts to “thought crime” – refused to cooperate with the state and took his case to trial.
After a trial fraught with errors, the jury convicted Eric. He was subsequently sentenced to almost 20 years in prison. More information on Eric’s case can be found at www.supporteric.org
Marie Mason was arrested in March 2008 after her former partner – Frank Ambrose – turned informant for the FBI. Facing a life sentence if she went to trial, Marie accepted a plea bargain in September 2008, admitting her involvement in the burning of an office connected to GMO research and the destruction of a piece of logging equipment.
At her sentencing in February the following year, she received a sentence of almost 22 years. More information on Marie’s case can be found at www.supportmariemason.org
Marie Mason and Eric McDavid share the unfortunate distinction of having the longest standing sentences of any environmental prisoners in the United States. Please join us in an international day of solidarity with Marie Mason, Eric McDavid, and other long-term anarchist prisoners on every June 11th AND ANY OTHER DAY!.
This is a time to remember our friends who are in prison – who are continuing their struggles on the inside.
Right now the lower Las Piedras is not officially protected as a national park or reserve, and we are seeing a massive influx of logging, hunting, gold mining, and drugs—which is all rapidly deteriorating the ancient forest and incredible wildlife that exists in many places there.
Watching a new video by Amazon explorer, Paul Rosolie, one feels transported into a hidden world of stalking jaguars, heavyweight tapirs, and daylight-wandering giant armadillos. This is the Amazon as one imagines it as a child: still full of wild things.
In just four weeks at a single colpa (or clay lick where mammals and birds gather) on the lower Las Piedras River, Rosolie and his team captured 30 Amazonian species on video, including seven imperiled species. However, the very spot Rosolie and his team filmed is under threat: the lower Las Piedras River is being infiltrated by loggers, miners, and farmers following the construction of the Trans-Amazon highway.Continue reading “Saving las Piedras..jaguars, tapirs, monkeys and giant armadillos”
Brasil: Cientos de miles de personas salen a las calles contra la subida de los transportes publicos y los gastos del Mundial
por Kaos. América Latina
Los sectores que vienen promoviendo protestas contra un fuerte aumento en las tarifas del transporte amenazaron el lunes con hacer movilizaciones más grandes todavía, lo que aliment temores de que se repita la brutal represión policial de los últimos días. Continue reading “Brasil: Se extiende la Rebelión Masiva/Giant Rebellion!”
June 11th began as an international day of solidarity with long-term eco-prisoner Jeff “Free” Luers in 2004. At the time, Jeff was serving 22+ years. Infuriated by the environmental devastation he saw occurring on a global scale, Jeff torched three SUVs at a car dealership in Eugene, OR.
The sentence imposed on him was meant to send a clear message to others who were angered by capitalism’s continued war on the Earth’s ecosystems – and to those who were willing to take action to put a stop to it. Jeff is, after all, not alone in his concerns about climate change, fossil fuels, pollution and genetically modified organisms.
After years of struggle, Jeff and his legal team won a reduction in his sentence and he was released from prison in December 2009. But in the years intervening Jeff’s arrest and release, the FBI had carried out a series of indictments and arrests in an attempt to devastate the radical environmental and anarchist communities. Two of the people caught up in this maelstrom of repression were Eric McDavid and Marie Mason.Continue reading “Free Eric and Marie: still jailed for resisting Ecocide”
The Free 
