Mankind as a society has been in a strangle hold of Big Oil since Rockefeller's Standard Oil empire in the late 1800's. Indigenous peoples all over the world from the middle east and Africa to South America have tried and failed at incalculable costs (financial, environmental and humanitarian) to stop this Goliath. Using every under handed and lecherous method available from insider trading and exploiting natural disasters to purchasing corrupt governments and then privatizing that country's military for their own personal guerrilla security, Corporations and especially Big Oil have been and continue to be absolutely diabolical in doing anything and everything they choose in order to show a profit. (For further details check out The Tyranny of Oil a book by Antonia Juhasz or you can catch a brief preview of her book in last Thursdays column).

The Tyranny of Oil

That's the big picture but on a smaller scale... I've just witnessed what may prove to be a big part of the solution. I've just finished watching a documentary film entitled, Crude. It is about an international court case between the people of Ecuador and Chevron. Some thirty thousand people have filed a class action suit against one of the largest corporations in the world to the tune of 27 billion dollars. This is making Chevron very nervous. So nervous in fact that the corporation went to the Supreme Court of The United States in an attempt to have the footage in this film surrendered.

Chevron didn't want this case to go to court but they couldn't stop it. So they thought they could at least avoid the bad publicity if they had the trial moved to Ecuador. The people involved in the Ecuador peoples defence wisely documented the whole ugly story so that nothing would be lost on the international stage. This is a disaster that dwarfs the Exxon Valdez on a number of levels including the toll it has taken on the tribes of people who have lived in what used to be the tropical paradise known as Ecuador.

I purchased a copy of the film through their Web site: (www.amazonwatch.org) and I have been invited by Amazon Watch to hold a public screening to help raise funds and awareness to continue their battle. So I've appealed to The Creekside Theatre to donate a few hours of theatre time with which to have a public screening. Hopefully that will be happening some time in the near future.

If you want to help out then you can do the same thing. Go to the Amazon Watch web site and purchase a copy and then show it to everyone who will watch. If the people of Ecuador win their case it will set a precedent against big oil. We will be telling them that they do not own us. We, the people who consume their product will tell them that what they are doing is the poorest, most retched model of globalization and we will shut them down if they keep it up. But that won't happen if you do nothing, so do something. Take the bus (Kelowna Transit will give you a discount if you buy your pass through your place of business and you'll get a tax deduction as well), bike, walk, car pool. Educate yourself: Go to the Amazonwatch site and buy the movie Crude, go to your local book store and get a copy of Tyranny of Oil by Antonia Juhasz. It's time for David to take as stand. To heck with Goliath!