TYT: Actor James Cromwell Blasts Oil Police Thugs and Corporate Media

This is another clip from The Young Turks about the protests against the oil pipeline at Standing Rock. In this piece, James Cromwell, the Hollywood actor, talks to The Turks’ Jordan Cheriton about how the thuggish behaviour of the rozzers at Standing Rock and the way the protests have been completely ignored by the mainstream corporate media shows the racism against Native Americans. When there are demonstrations elsewhere, the cops react decently. They arrest people, but don’t usually attack or maltreat them. Here it’s different. And this shows the racism against Native Americans. He also notes that when there are protests and riots in the east, the mainstream media are there. But they’re not covering this protest, with the exception of The Young Turks, because they’re really controlled by the oil companies and the bottom line of not doing anything that would upset their sponsors. The only way to be informed in this country [America] is by people looking it up on YouTube. The clip ends with another Native American chant, which I believe must be in the Sioux language, against the pipeline.

Cromwell’s appeared in a number of Hollywood blockbusters. I remember him from Star Trek: First Contact and Deep Impact. He’s not the first big name Hollywood actor, who’s lent their voice to Native protests. Marlon Brando also did so in the 1970s, when he joined one of the peoples on the West Coast defending their fishing rights against another company. Cromwell is also right about people turning to the internet to see what’s really going on. This applies to both left and right, though sometimes people from radically opposed parts of the political spectrum look at the same news sources. I was talking the other day to someone, who clearly viewed themselves as a supporter of small government, who also watched RT as well as Fox News.

The mainstream media and the Beeb in particular are complaining about the way their ability to shape the political consensus is breaking down. They moan that it is making people more polarised in their opinions through people of different political views watching only the news channels that share their opinions. But the underlying problem is not addressed or even acknowledged. The mainstream media has a very pronounced corporate bias. Cromwell describes how it works in America. Over here in Britain, where we supposedly have the impartial BBC, the Corporation is still biased. Books and studies have been published, most recently by Cardiff, Edinburgh and Glasgow universities, showing that the Beeb is very much biased towards the establishment. They are far more likely to interview Conservative MPs and managing directors than Labour MPs and trade unionists, and when they do, they are far more likely to accept automatically the views of the Tories and businessmen as being true. And I’ve quoted Barry and Saville Kushner, the authors of Who Needs the Cuts?, how they were constantly infuriated by the Corporation’s automatic assumption that cuts were necessary and the way BBC announcers and reporters shouted down Labour leaders and politicians, who dared to contradict them. And the other year Mike reported how the Beeb was very definitely not reporting on the massive demonstration against its bias that was occurring on its very doorstep. It did report it online, but definitely not as an item on the television.

If people are abandoning mainstream media, it’s because that media is flagrantly biased. It therefore deserves to lose viewers until it corrects this.

TYT: Water Protector Urges Bernie Sanders to Come to Standing Rock

In this clip, The Young Turks journalist Jordan Cheriton, who’s been reporting on the Standing Rock protests against the oil companies’ efforts to drive a pipeline through Sioux treaty land, interviews Oscar Salazar, one of the water protectors. Salazar’s wearing a jumpsuit and clothing covered with Bernie Sanders’ face. He’s a big fan of Bernie Sanders, because of the way Sanders has stood up and talked about the issues facing Native Americans. He makes the point that when Sanders did so, he was thought crazy by the media. Sanders has been an outspoken critic of the oil company and the pipeline, and has supported the protestors and water protectors. Salazar states that such supported is needed because of the way indigenous Americans have been and are being treated, and the way the Native community has much to teach other Americans about living in harmony with the environment. At Cheriton’s urging, he looks into the camera, and asks the Congressman to come to Standing Rock to see for himself what is going on, and states that the protestors are not going to back down and the demonstration will continue.

The clip shows some of Sanders’ tweets supporting the water protectors, and footage of the protestors in the river being blocked and sprayed by the police goons to stop them going on to the island on which the tribe’s dead are buried. The clip ends with the Native chant about the protests against the pipeline.

Sandi Toksvig’s Public Schoolgirl Feminism and Support for Theresa May and Hillary Clinton

Sandi Toksvig, the comedienne, author, and host of Radio 4’s News Quiz in this week’s Radio Times. She is, apparently, due to take over from Stephen Fry as the host on QI. She and her partner also took time off the other year to launch the Women’s Equality party, and this is one of the topics covered in the interview. She particularly discusses her support for Hillary Clinton and, on this side of the Atlantic, Theresa May.

I have had very mixed feelings about Toksvig for a very long time. I’m not taking issue with her feminism – far from it. Women aren’t given the same status and opportunities as men, and there is widespread agreement that this is an issue that demands to be tackled. Moreover, while she is a lesbian feminist, she’s not the stereotypical misandrist. She makes it very clear in her general demeanour that she doesn’t hate men. She has a son, whom it is very clear she dearly loves, and indeed, she also talks about how her party has the support of many ‘wonderful men’.

On the other hand, I gave up listening to the News Quiz years ago for the same reason I stopped watching Stephen Fry on QI: I got heartily sick of the more or less constant sneering about religion every single week. And it is her endorsement of the above two politicians that I take issue with now.

Toksvig states that she believes that Theresa May is the right person for the job of Prime Minister. She claims that she was not responsible for the current economic crisis the country is in. She makes the point that the men, who were responsible all stabbed each other in the back, and then swam off as quickly as their blood loss would allow. it’s a lurid metaphor, but accurate for the way Boris, Gove and Cameron all betrayed each other over Brexit. She then goes on to state how she is not one of those people, who are immediately opposed to something because it’s Tory. Then she went on to talk about her support for Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps this shows my own narrow political views and prejudice, but it’s at this point that I gave up. Whatever their other merits, Theresa May and Hillary Clinton aren’t the right people for the job. Theresa May is a Tory, and she shares all the Thatcherite, neoliberal, corporatist views and policies of his male predecessors. This involves further cuts and privatisation, the dismantlement of the welfare state and the privatisation of the NHS. These are hurting, and in many cases killing, the poorest, most vulnerable sections of our society.

Ditto for Hillary Clinton. With Bill, she has also participated and backed government cuts on what little America has of welfare support. The anti-drug laws she introduced were devised by the right with the specific intention of targeting and incarcerating Blacks. She has also shown herself every bit as bloodthirsty and hawkish as her male colleagues, backing the Iraq invasion, and deliberately re-defining the coup in Honduras so that Obama’s regime could continue giving military aid to the military dictatorship running the country. This is a Fascist regime, that is imprisoning and murdering leftists, trade unionists and indigenous activists. She has also publicly endorsed and cosied up to Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s foreign policy advisor, who’s responsible for a whole raft of coups and genocides from South America to Asia. Among other horrors, Nixon and Kissinger backed General Pinochet’s Fascist coup in Chile, gave the nod and armaments to Pakistan’s massacre of about 3 million people or so in Bangladesh during their war of independence, and was responsible for the mass bombing of Vietnam and Cambodia in the Vietnam War. While Kissinger certainly didn’t back the Khmer Rouge, his bombing of Cambodia created the condition that thrust Pol Pot and his murderers to power. And there are others. Many, many others. Kissinger has been publicly told what he is – a war criminal – at demonstrations and protests by people like the young women from Code Pink, who disrupted a Democratic rally at which he was speaking. But this is the man Shrillary has publicly endorsed, who appears at her rallies to show his support for her, and with whom she and her husband have stayed.

Trump, of course, is certainly no better than Hillary. He’s a lecherous, sleazy, racist buffoon, who could easily bring America to the brink of a nuclear war. Clinton, by contrast, is a clever, calculating businesswoman, with a long record of public service. She is also a murderous butcher, outright Neocon, and could well bring to the point of nuclear war.

These are not the right people for the job. The right man for the job in the Democrat party was Bernie Sanders, who wanted to expand America’s welfare network and give the country the single-payer healthcare system over half of its people want, and which Hillary Clinton and her corporate backers vehemently oppose. He was stabbed in the back by a corrupt political establishment in the Democrat party led by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, just as Jeremy Corbyn was stabbed in the back, and is stabbed in the back, by a corrupt Blairite clique in the Labour party.

With Bernie gone, the best woman to run the country is Green Party leader Dr. Jill Stein. Not only is she an environmental activist, while both Trump and Clinton either deny climate change and environmental damage outright, or minimise the legislation against it on behalf of their corporate backers, but she’s also very involved in women’s and children’s health issues. She has also made it very clear that she backs a single-payer healthcare system, because America needs it. And like Bernie Sanders, she’s also shown an interest and solidarity with America’s indigenous peoples. Sanders would turn up on reservations to talk to First Nation communities about how their conditions could be improved, and the issues that matter to them. He did so when no, or very few other politicians did so. A few weeks ago, Jill Stein turned up to give her backing to the Sioux peoples in their campaign against the Dakota Pipeline, which threatens to destroy the water quality and the ecology of part of their tribal lands.

The fact that Toksvig backs these two shows the flaws and dangers in her brand of feminism. She wants women in power, and while that’s a noble aspiration in itself, it’s here coupled with an attitude that wants them in power, regardless of their personal suitability for the task. It’s a case of ‘my gender, right or wrong’.

On the other hand, there is also the possibility that the very qualities which make Theresa May and Shrillary Clinton absolutely repugnant candidates to anyone else with a sense of decency, are precisely those that appeal to Toksvig. Toksvig is an ex-public schoolgirl from a very elevated background. Privately educated, she’s the daughter of the Danish ambassador. Thus, despite some of the left-wing noises she made on the News Quiz with Jeremy Hardy and Francis Wheen, she’s very establishment. And from this is appears that she holds the very middle-class views the establishment wants everyone to hold: accept the wonders of privatisation, despite the fact that privatised services are rubbish and don’t work. Accept the privatisation of the health service and destruction of the welfare state, which will leave you faced with grinding poverty and a real danger of starvation, as well as sick, and receiving expensive, substandard treatment for your ailments. But the one per cent who run the big businesses want their tax cuts, and while it’s terrible for you, it’s what they want. And they make the rules, and are the only people that count. The rest of us don’t.

And so Toksvig is quite happy to back May and Shrillary, as they’re rich, establishment girls like herself, and they want to clear the way for further rich and establishment women in power. While at the same time keeping women from the lower and lower middle classes down, along with the rest of their class. And I’m sure that all the women in the countries America has invaded in the past few years, like Iraq, and those of the countries in the next war she starts will be terribly consoled when the bombs are raining down on them , and killing their daughters and sons, husbands, mothers and fathers, that the glass ceiling has been breached and there’s now a woman in the Oval Office. And all with the support of Sandi Toksvig and other media figures at the Beeb.

Because regardless of gender, it’s all about what the establishment wants.

North Dakota Oil Pipeline: Company Destroys Native Burial Sites

If true, this is pure barbarism. I blogged earlier this week about protests by Native Americans about the North Dakota Access Pipeline, which is intended to carry oil through the lands of the Standing Rock Sioux people. The tribe are opposing it, as they fear that the pipeline will lead to the pollution of their water supply and the destruction of their lands and its ecosystem. In this piece from Democracy Now!, the anchor Amy Goodson speaks to the tribe’s lawyer, Jan Hasselman, from the chambers Earthjustice, and the tribe’s chairman Dave Archambault.

The oil company has tried a number of tactics to try to close down and disrupt the protests. They local sheriff and officials have pulled cellphone access over the area, to stop citizens uploading videos of the protests to the internet. They’ve also attacked the protesters with dogs and pepper spray. There’s video footage of the bites some of the protesters received from one of the animals, with blood dripping from the muzzle of a Doberman Pinscher. The oil company has also tried to destroy the ancient burials on the site, which Mr Hasselman was hoping to use as part of his case against the development.

Mr Hasselman and a team of archaeologists surveyed the site to show that there were Native American archaeological remains, some of them very rare, in the area which was scheduled for digging. These included the burials. They submitted these to the court in the hope that the judge would therefore rule that digging could not go ahead under the relevant legislation protecting ancient monuments in America and desecrating burial sites. The reverse happened. The company took the information, and used it as a guide to the location of the remains. They then sent the bulldozers in to destroy them. They did so in front of the protesters, and when they moved to protect the monuments, the security guards set the dogs on them and attacked them with mace.

Here’s the report.

This is outrageous on so many levels. It’s disgusting when anyone’s graves are desecrated. It is particularly outrageous when it’s deliberately done by a multimillion, if not multibillion dollar company against an impoverished community in a deliberate attempt to destroy their past for corporate profit. I have a postgraduate qualification in Archaeology from Bristol University. When I was on the course, a number of the other students I met were archaeologists from the other side of the Atlantic – America and Canada. Several of them had worked studying ancient First Nation American and Canadian remains. One young woman had designed a heritage park for one of the local peoples in southeast America. Another young man had also worked in Canada, prospecting ahead of the oil companies on the Canadian prairie for palaeoindian remains. And another young woman had been part of an expedition to the Canadian arctic to study Inuit monuments.

There is a wealth of fascinating archaeology from the indigenous American and Canadian cultures, which archaeologists have recovered and from which they are still learning. This archaeology is often not fully appreciated, even by the local people, to whom it really belongs, as for years the American and Canadian governments and some religious organisations, Such as the Roman Catholic missions in the American South West, did their level best to destroy the indigenous culture. In Canada, this was most notoriously through the government boarding schools, which were designed to isolate Native children from their ancestral culture and inculcate in them the culture, including clothing and language, of the White majority. The same policy was adopted in Australia against the Aboriginal people. As a result, some First Nation peoples tragically have only a very hazy idea of their traditional culture and the meaning of the monuments their ancestors created and left behind. I believe such a policy today of trying to destroy the Native people’s ancestral way of life would count as genocide under international human rights legislation.

Because of the historic injustice against these communities, excavation of these sites is extremely sensitive and, in Canada, they’re very strongly protected. The lad, who worked on the prairie informed me that he was working to make sure that there were no ancient Indian artifacts around before the oil companies moved in to extract oil from the shale geology of the area. If just one flint arrowhead was found, the area was a protected site and no development could go ahead. He also told me of some of the ceremonies that had to be carried out, and in which the archaeologists conducting the excavation, had to take part according to tribal religion. The archaeologists exploring ancient Sioux burial grounds, for example, had to be ‘smudged’ by the tribe’s shaman. ‘Smudging’ is something like Christian exorcism, but also rather different. The excavators and investigators, including those just handling the remains and writing up the notes, had to be anointed on their wrists and neck with buffalo grease by the local shaman for as long as the excavation lasted. This obviously made washing and personal cleanliness difficult, but it had to be done. The archaeologists were after all investigating another people’s culture, and so had to respect it.

Because archaeological remains are scarcer in America and Canada, because of the sparser population before the European conquest, excavations are carried out with a greater thoroughness than in Britain and Europe. They may take longer, and are done in finer detail than is frequently possible across the Atlantic.

Now it seems remains of immense cultural, spiritual and personal value to Sioux people, as well as of inestimable scientific value to archaeologists, has been destroyed for no reason other than to spite the protesters and their supporters, and prevent proper investigation by the courts. Several of the faculty at Bristol uni were members of, or had personal connections to, the World Heritage Organisation. Archaeologists, like other academics, travel all over the world to excavate and teach. So you can bet that scholars across the world have heard of this attack through their organisations, colleagues and students. And they aren’t going to be impressed.

Sioux Nation Honours Native American Protestor Against North Dakota Pipeline

This is another interesting video from The Young Turks’ reporter, Jordan Cheriton. In it, he covers a ceremony by the Rosebud Sioux tribe to honour one of their members, Happy American Horse, for his courage in protesting against the North Dakota Pipeline. This is an oil pipeline being tunnelled through the tribe’s territory, which threatens to pollute their water. As the chief in this simple ceremony points out, water is life, and ecology is important to Native American spirituality and identity. Mr American Horse is awarded an eagle feather, the traditional Plains Indian mark of a courageous act. The guy chained himself to one of the digging machines and stayed there to stop them digging, despite his understandable fear and calls from the workers to start it up, and so kill or injure him. Also present at the ceremony is Black American activist, who leads a chant of the words of one of the great Black American civil rights leaders, and a Black Jamaican. This last man, who describes himself as from the land of Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley, also unveils the Jamaican flag to honour Mr Horse’s courage. Marcus Garvey was one of the pioneers of Black emancipation in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was his belief that there would be a Black messiah from Ethiopia that laid the foundations for Rastafarianism. There are also a couple of White Green activists present, as well as Cheriton, who also add his words of encouragement.

I’m reblogging this as, although it’s very much an American protest, it’s part of the same struggle that’s going on over here as well in the campaigns against fracking. Quite often, those companies despoiling the awesome beauty of the American countryside are the same people wrecking the awesome beauty of the British environment, and poisoning our water like they’re poisoning those of the poor, the marginalised, and ordinary Americans over the other side of the Atlantic. These are the same companies supported by the Republicans, Shrillary Clinton and the Tories over here.

The coverage of the ceremony is another example of the way YouTube and the internet is transforming politics. Yeah, there’s a lot of rubbish and craziness on there, but it also allows activists to see, talk to and be informed about activism by ordinary people right across the planet. It’s why YouTube has now got frightened of this power, and is issuing stupid restrictive guidelines in case it puts off advertisers. It’s why the Tories want to censor the Net, all under the guise of protecting the vulnerable from Paedophiles, of course.

But at it’s best, the technology does help to fulfil Reith’s dream of bring nations and people’s together. ‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation’ is the quote from the Bible that’s written above the BBC’s entrance. This is also part of it.

Trump, Muslim Registration and the Genocide of the Native Americans

Body of the Sioux Chief Big Foot, killed at the Battle of Wounded Knee in the Indian Wars

I’ve blogged many times about the way Trump’s call for the registration of Muslims and a ban on their entering America has alarmed anti-racist activists and liberals because of the way it strongly resembles the Nazi persecution of the Jews. It’s why Jewish Americans organised protests against the Tousled T*sser in 17 American cities. But there’s another aspect to it that speaks directly some of the very worst atrocities in American history: the genocide of the American First Nations.

Back in the 1990s I can remember there was a programme about the maltreatment of the Amerindians on one of the terrestrial channels over here. It’s over 20 years since I’ve seen it, so I can’t remember the exact details. What I do remember is that laws were passed demanding the forcible registration of Amerindians as part of a eugenics measure to destroy them and their culture. I think it was part of a policy in which some Amerindian families were persecuted by the authorities and their children removed from their care to stop them being raised in a ‘backward’ cultural environment.

It was roughly the same kind of treatment that was inflicted on Aboriginal Australians from the 1920s onwards under the ‘White Australia’ policy. This saw attempts to suppress traditional Aboriginal culture and languages through the cultural indoctrination of their children in boarding schools. And children of mixed White and Aboriginal heritage were also forcibly removed from the care of the Aboriginal families. This result in the ‘Lost Generation’. Those mixed race children that were removed have been traumatised as result. Years ago, the author of the classic book on Australia’s history, the Fatal Shore, interviewed a young mixed-race Aboriginal woman, who’d been a victory of this policy. She was performing her own, one-woman play at Sydney Opera House on the way this horrendous policy had left her and her people emotionally and culturally scarred.

And the effect has been exactly the same for Native Americans. One of the women I knew at College when I was studying for my first degree was an American exchange student of mixed White and Amerindian heritage. Her Amerindian parents had been taken away from theirs under this policy, and understandably she was not a fan. She wasn’t bitterly distrustful of Whites, as some could have been, and she was proud of her Native American heritage. But it had definitely left a scar.

The documentary about the Amerindian’s registration and cultural victimisation also showed a group of German re-enactors, who recreated the Wild West. Apparently, Wild West groups were big in Deutschland at the time. They weren’t particularly small over here. Dad worked with a man, who was part of one. One of the re-enactors interviewed played the part of one of the Amerindians. He was extremely unimpressed with any state forcing an ethnic minority to register. As he spoke, the camera focussed on a serial number tattooed on his wrist.

It was a chilling detail, which showed just why the man was so opposed to such treatment. He had very good reason to be. He was obviously Jewish, and had somehow managed to survive the Holocaust. Under Nazi law, all Jewish boys had to be given the name ‘Israel’, and Jewish girls ‘Sarah’. They also had serial numbers tattooed on their arms and wrists to identify them.

This gives you some idea why the Jews in particular were deeply concerned and outraged at Trump’s plans for Muslims. And I’ve absolutely no doubt that for many Native Americans, this is just more of the same of the White Man’s persecution.

Trump’s a vicious, atavistic Nazi. He’s got to be stopped before we’re back to General Sheridan and the line, ‘The only good Indian’s a dead one.’

Secular Talk on VICE Movie about Coal Pollution Navajo Nation

A few days ago I reblogged a meme about the horrendous pollution of the Navajo reservation by the local coal mining operation. Unlike the much better publicised pollution of the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, this is not so nearly well known. In this piece from Secular Talk last year, Kyle Kulinski discusses the trailer of a new documentary by the VICE news network reporting on this scandal. This details the pollution caused by the Four Corners coal mining plant. The video includes a clip from the movie, Cursed by Coal, in which the interviewer talks to a Navajo man about the pollution in his country. Arsenic and mercury as well as coal dust are pumped into the atmosphere and pollute the land after being dumped in pits. These pits are unlined, so the pollutants seep into the water system. High levels of these contaminants have been found in the Chaco river.

Kulinski puts this into historical perspective of the long history of abuse of the Native American – the Indian Removal Act, the genocides, the Trail of Tears. But everything’s supposed to be all right now, because the Amerindians have casinos. ‘For once,’ he says, ‘can’t we just treat the Indian properly?’

He also points out that this is part of the general corruption caused by the influence of industry in politics. The air quality in poor areas has been shown to be massively worse than in the rich areas. Why? Because the polluting industries are located there, because the rich obviously don’t want them on their door step. And so it’s poor, coloured populations that get hurt from pollution.

I’ve already said that the Hanson Trust, based in Britain, was responsible for the pollution of the Sioux Reservation through its cement factory on their land. And you can bet that these same people will be lining up to trash Britain’s Green and Pleasant land when fracking gets going.

Meme on the Poisoning of Navajo Land by Mining Corporations

The big environmental news in America over the past few weeks is the massive poisoning of the local water supply in Flint, Michigan. This has been going on for years, and the water is seriously contaminated with lead, even in the local hospitals. The authorities did absolutely nothing, and continued to ignore the problem despite coverage from the local press. After about a year, the story’s managed to get through to the national American media, and it’s became a major scandal.

This is another scandal involving the poisoning of a people’s water supply, but it’s one that hasn’t made the news yet. It’s the contamination of the water supply of the Navajo First Nation by abandoned uranium and coal mines. The meme states that 75 per cent of all abandoned uranium mines are on tribal lands, which might indicate that other Native American peoples are affected.

Now this is very much an American issue, but it’s also part of what’s happening globally. Way back in the 1980s the Telegraph over here was moaning about how environmentalists weren’t letting the uranium mining corporations dig out the fuel from Aboriginal tribal lands in Oz. I’ve got a feeling there’s still a scandal and controversy going on about it, which centres around proper payment for the Aboriginal owners and clean-up operations afterwards. I have a feeling – though I don’t know – that the same is being done to the Aboriginals Down Under. Their land is being trashed, and not cleaned up afterwards.

And I have a horrible feeling that some of those corporate vultures involved may be British, or will want to come to Britain to do the same thing to our Green and Pleasant Land. If they aren’t doing it already, thanks to Bliar and Cameron. One of the companies that poisoned another Amerindian people’s land decades ago certainly was. Way back in the 1980s the Hanson Trust was in the Sunday Express. It was being sued by the Sioux, because their cement works was polluting their reservation. And this didn’t surprise me at all.

Lord Hanson was an asset-stripper, who bought up other companies, only to strip them and sell them off at a profit, before going on to carve up the next one. He was the Thatcherite dream. And he did it to W.H. and H.O. Wills in Bristol. Wills were a booze and cigarettes combine. They had several tobacco factories in Bristol, one of which was a huge construction that was used as a location in the Tom Baker Dr Who story, ‘The Sunmakers’. They also owned Courage’s brewery in the centre of the city. These both went their separate ways when Hanson got hold of them.

And he also tried to get his mitts, Maxwell-like, on the company’s pension fund. However, he found the pensioners’ lawyers were too good for him, and ended up selling the company off a few years later. Although that kind of corporate theft is associated with Robert Maxwell’s looting of the Mirror pension fund, the legislation that allowed it was Tory. It was passed by one Margaret Thatcher. You could also tell how grotty the Hanson Trust was because they also launched a PR campaign on TV. This bent your ear about how many times the plastic chairs they made would go around the world, if you lined them up one by one. It ended with the slogan ‘A company from over here, doing rather well over there’. ‘Over there’ meaning America. Well, God help our American cousins. Ben Elton recognised what they were and sent them up as the archetypal nasty corporation in his stand-up tour, Motorvation.

It doesn’t matter what colour the ordinary man or woman’s skin is to these vultures, whether your White, Black, Asian, Amerindian, whatever – companies like the Hanson Trust just loot, pollute and move on. They’re everywhere, and we need to stand up to them, no matter where in the world they’re operating. Because if the do it to one of us, they’ll do it to all of us.

If you want to see the original, it’s on the over 18 Tumblr site, 1000 Natural shocks at http://greybeard55.tumblr.com/image/138997619025.

Beyond the affect on the Navajo people’s own health, and the global politics of the situation, there’s also the issue of the destruction of the ancient heritage of the American people as a whole. The Navajo reservation contains some of the most stunning and beautiful scenery in the US. The sand paintings made by the tribal shamans during their healing ceremonies are highly regarded by art connoisseurs. And the area possesses some of the most enigmatic and fascinating indigenous American archaeology in the US. From the 12th to 14th centuries AD the area was the centre of several highly developed civilisations. They built brick fortress cities high up in caves in the canyon walls, and a system of irrigation canals. They also had a peculiar system of roads. These appear to have been cut straight through the landscape, like the Romans. They also made them double, so that there was a pair of roads running parallel to the same destination. No-one quite understands why, though it’s thought that there might be some ideological or religious reason for it. I also think that, like many of the other Native American civilisations in the South West, they had extensive trade contacts with Mexico and the great civilisations there, such as the Aztecs. But it’s another mystery how those trade systems operated. Mesoamerican goods and motifs appear in the remains of the peoples of the Southwestern US, but they don’t appear in the material record of the peoples in between. What was going on? Why not? How were these items traded, and why?

And the history of the area also bears witness to the devastation caused by climate change. Many of the civilisations in what is now the Navajo reservation vanished in the 14th century as drought finally dried up their water supplies, and they were forced to move out of the area. Their cities and crops were abandoned. Now there’s a lesson relevant to today, and the contemporary crisis surrounding climate change and global warming.

There are still many unanswered questions, and vital lessons to be learned from the Navajo and similar peoples. The poisoning of them, and the destruction of their land are an attack both on their people and civilisation, and that of the wider American people. And needless to say, they and the people of Flint, deserve better.