The Gospel according to Lace.

A'Muse Media

Videos | Press Releases

The New Raping of the Forest

February 1, 2007

I just returned from a gathering at the Artery with Peruvian indigienous people. I learned a LOT. I thought I knew what was happening, but I didn't know squat. For just a handful of years, people have been dying because American (Texan... Houston) oil companies have gone in to drill for oil, promising these people "progress." These people have been living their way of life, this beautiful symbiotic symphony of existence, for centuries. Our modern American oil companies have gone in and promised them progress in exchange for their very lives.

They believed us. Since 2001, oil companies around the world have been buying out the rainforests. Yeah, America isn't the only culprit. Nope. China has a lotta stock in this one. They're hungry for power. Hungry for oil. Why not?  We made them that way. We set the example. We did a damned good job, didn't we.

I am so pissed off. Of course the oil companies aren't going to tell us this. The media didn't have much clue except those who actually gave a damn, and even those articles that were published weren't front-page news. And now the lungs of our earth, the very heart and soul of our health, are diminishing. We slowed the "progress" of the clear cutting and implemented sustainable ways of harvesting the parts of trees and plants of the rainforest that show promise for the cure for disease, but this is a Goliath that will be difficult to overcome.

Already, in just a year and a half, oil companies have gone in and raped many communities, small villages and tribal areas, so fiercely and completely that it will take decades and perhaps over a century to recover. The oil companies promise a thorough clean-up. They merely covered their area, usually about 10 kilometers in diameter, with a few inches of clay. Stepping on this clay is to sink to about waste deep in crude oil muck. This crap gets into the water, the plants, kills every living thing it touches. The people of these lands didn't know what they were doing until it was too late.

They drank the water.  They bathed their children in the water. They ate the fish. It was all contaminated and now they are contaminated. Their children have open pustules on their skin, face, necks, everywhere. You can imagine what is happening to the inside of their bodies.

Do you think they ever wanted "progress?" What the hell are they going to do with new shoes? Jackets?  Gold earrings? They have lived this beautiful life in this beautiful place until we destroyed it, and them.

What are you going to do?

http://www.amazonwatch.org/

http://www.eduweb.com/amazon.html

http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/

http://www.chevrontoxico.com/

http://greenplanetfilms.org/product_info.php?products_id=83