WHAT IS ECOCIDE, AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

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UNEXAMINED TRADITIONS & THE CAPITALIST WAY OF LIFE HAVE BROUGHT US TO THIS PRECIPICE


Above Photo: The co-founder of the Canadian chapter of Stop Ecocide, Jamie Hunter (front right), with other protesters at the Fairy Creek blockade this summer. Jamie Hunter.


Jamie Hunter has just returned from defying a court injunction to protect old-growth forest in Fairy Creek and is going to Glasgow next month to push for a major change to international law that would provide another tool against environmental degradation.

The 21-year-old from Nelson, B.C., sees the actions as two fronts of the same battle to confront forces otherwise damaging the planet and imperiling its inhabitants.

“To me, Stop Ecocide is a really tangible solution,” said the co-founder of its Canadian chapter. “Obviously, it’s not the only solution, but it’s a big piece of the puzzle because it really says that causing this damage to the environment is not OK.”

Stop Ecocide is a global movement involving international criminal lawyers, Indigenous advisers, researchers, and diplomats working to add ecocide as a crime considered by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

That would mean adding the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems to a shortlist of the most serious and heinous crimes the world seeks to collectively judge — genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the more recently added crimes of aggression.

As Hunter sees it, creating the crime of ecocide would draw a line in the sand and present leaders such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro with a timeline to get on the right side, and also send a strong signal to corporate executives about their ultimate culpability.

“There would be a point at which the world would see that it seemed inevitable, that this is the direction it is going to go in, and that would be when industry will start to shift,” said Hunter, who leads youth organizing for the group in Canada. “It turns those activities into things they can’t really contemplate.”

It would also require signatories to create national laws that take such a shift into account,

Any such international update would require national laws to follow, and to that end, the NDP’s Leah Gazan put forward a private member’s bill in February 2020. Bill C-232, which sits at first reading, seeks a legal right for “all Canadians to a safe, clean, and healthy environment.”

The young activist Hunter says it might be a five-year process from here at best; the ICC meets annually in December and supporters would want to feel confident they could get two-thirds of its members to agree to the proposal.

One of the first countries to talk about presenting it was Vanuatu. “It’s literally in danger of being entirely underwater when the sea levels rise,” Hunter points out, while France, Belgium, and Finland are among other backers.

International criminal lawyers, Indigenous advisers, researchers, and diplomats around the world are working to make ecocide — the mass damage and destruction of ecosystems — a crime in the eyes of the International Criminal Court. #Ecocide

Hunter, who has been involved with the Fridays For Future youth street protest groups as well as environmental civil disobedience, says he expects large protests against COP26, with groups planning mass marches the day after it ends, in anticipation of disappointment.

The climate change conference — also known as COP, short for Conference of the Parties — has brought the globe together since 1995. The talks gather policy-makers, scientists, environmental activists, climate experts, and news media from the 197 member countries of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to set and work towards global climate goals. This year, COP26 will take place at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.

“It’s unfortunate that we have that expectation, but given what we’ve seen previously, it’s not surprising,” he said.

While he wants to see “real commitments to action from world leaders,” he also acknowledges that “probably won’t happen.”

“There’s always excuses, there’s always some reason not to act, there’s always something which needs to be done first, there’s always something that is more important to look at,” he said.


Foreseen! A Celebrities Led Movement To Halt USA Nuclear War Preparations

USA Congress plans to spend a $1.5 trillion on improved nuclear weapons! [1]
“If We Don’t End War, War Will End US,” [2]


Nuclear-armed sub: just one of these machines can kill and devastate more people and nature than all wars combined preceding its existence.


by jay janson
Twenty years after the end of the Cold War there are at least 23,000 nuclear warheads still in existence, with a combined blast capacity equivalent to 150,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. and Russia together have over 22,000, and France, the UK, China, India, Pakistan and Israel around 1,000 between them.

Nearly half of all warheads are still operationally deployed, and the U.S. and Russia each have over 2,000 weapons on dangerously high alert, ready to be launched immediately – within a decision window of just 4-8 minutes for each president – in the event of perceived attack.

The command and control systems of the Cold War years were repeatedly strained by mistakes and false alarms. With more nuclear-armed states now, and more system vulnerabilities, the near miracle of no nuclear exchange cannot continue in perpetuity [3]

Imploring All Celebrities Everywhere To Speak Out and Lead Humanity in Demanding USA Halt Nuclear War Planning

The ‘Taking a Knee’ phenomenon proves celebrities have extraordinary power to influence public protest against government caused suffering and injustice.

One sports celebrity’s protest against murderous racist injustice in America was copied and spread effectively around the world. It helped galvanize public protest against police homicide of African-Americans in the United States and sparked protest and public opinion against racism in other countries as well.

Celebrity power to influence indicates a higher level of citizen responsibility to speak out.

Celebrities Have Spoken Out During ‘Black Lives Matter’ Protests

Public Unawareness of Media Manipulation Regarding Nuclear War  [4]

Both before the First World War and before the Second World War, the world public basically simply watched the arms build up and other preparations for war. This lackadaisical blandly interested public attitude seems to be present again. In America and Europe criminally insane investors in war are free to openly race forward with the inventing and manufacturing of ever new and novel high-tech weapons of mass destruction, while planning and propagandizing a need for war. From time to time, spokespersons for their political, media and military lackeys discuss their prerogatives for war as if the rest of us didn’t matter.

Urgently Needed a Movement to Combat Media and Politicians Promotion of War with China and Russia
“All Wars Are Fought For Money,” Socrates (467 BC)

The business tycoons of America, who intentionally made a Second World War and the multi-nation Holocaust possible by head over heels investing in, and joint venturing with a poor and disarmed Nazi Germany helping to build Hitler’s Wehrmacht up to the world’s number one military force in five years are thus responsible for all that human suffering in astronomic amount. These investors in high-tech weapons of mass destruction, who now openly plan, prepare and promote  a third World War, are not thought of as demonic and criminally insane for their knowing full well the nuclear war constantly being planned, just as the regime change wars prepared and fostered in the past would bring great horror and pain, death and destruction, as all wars do.

Investors in War, Along With Planners and Promotors of War, Must Be Recognized As Criminally Insane

A better goal for an ‘Occupy Wall Street!’ movement in the USA would be to Declare Investors in War Insane! Halt the Nuclear Arms Race!
Stop the Nuclear Missile Targeting of Russian, Chinese and US Cities

Given what we know about the expected deadly effect nuclear war would have on the planet and all life on Earth, it would seem that a good amount of people everywhere would have come to realize the horrific danger to themselves, their loved ones, all fellow human beings, even animals and plants.

There should be millions of concerned citizens throughout the world demanding that Americans respect the rest of us and our planetary home, and end all plans and preparations for nuclear war, and explain why a war with Russia and China is even contemplated.

Quite a few American celebrities have publicly protested US wars in the past, but failed to stop wars.[5]

This time the stakes include the lives of all of us everywhere.
A few popular celebrities could stir up a wave of public condemnation of the US government investing in, and preparing nuclear war that could end life on Earth.

'Public ignorance and apathy is a concern for survival of the specie,' warned former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, in his forward to nuclear physicist Micho Kaku's To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans. The authors of this book, both university physicists, document how the nuclear policy of the U.S.A. has not been one of deterrence as publicly stated, but rather has been one of threatening the use of nuclear weapons. Though Kaku’s book was first published in 1986, the policy it described has been widely documented elsewhere over and over again, ever since right up to today. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who, after his experience in President Johnson’s Vietnam War cabinet had spent half a century defending nations and individuals attacked by the Western colonial capitalist military powers, wrote that public ignorance and apathy is "as much a concern for survival of the specie as the unthinkable power to destroy the world wielded by a few men in a mindless manner.”

“No Nation or Individual Can Be Permitted to Possess the Power to Destroy the World,” [6]

Ramsey Clark Described His [USA] Government As Humanity’s Ever More Threatening and Treacherous Enemy and His Warning Is More Valid that Ever.

"The consistent underlying psychology of the United States, which has held the lead in nuclear war capability and capacity throughout these 40 [now 76] years, should be understandable to anyone who has ever known a violent neighborhood bully. The government of Americans means to have its way through the use and threatened to use of superior force. It will lie. It will deceive. It will kill. It will escalate the threat and use of force to the highest level it dares. It will bluff, dangerous as that can be. It will do whatever is must to dominate. It does this in the face of the fact that its very preparation for a nuclear war may destroy all life. American war planners busily devised strategies for crippling the Soviet Union with revealing names like BROILER, FROLIC, SIZZLE, SHAKEDOWN, DROPSHOT, and VULTURE. The number of Soviet targets to be destroyed grew in number from 20 cities in December 1945 to 200 cities in 1949 and to 3261 total targets by 1957. The number of times the use of nuclear weapons has been contemplated by Americans is unbearable.88888

What is to be said of leaders with the mental acuity and moral perceptions revealed by these disclosed words and deeds? They are at best enemies of life without understanding. Psychologically, they disconnect all feeling for the beauty of the planet -- a rose, an impala in motion, a baby's hand, a Confucian analect, a Bach cantata, a parable of Jesus, pilgrims bathing in the Ganges, a crowd watching a soccer game in Rio, the subway in Moscow, the skyline in Manhattan. They cannot think or feel about the human meaning of what they do.8888

A single Trident II submarine can inflict more death than all prior wars in history. Twenty-four missiles, launched while submerged, each with seventeen independently targeted, maneuverable nuclear warheads five times more powerful than the atom bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, can travel 5,000 nautical miles to strike within 300 feet of 408 predetermined targets. Nuclear winter might follow even if no other weapons are used.88888

No nation or individual can be permitted to possess the power to destroy the world. An imperative need is for an informed and active public struggling for its right to survive.” (Ramsey Clark in his Forward to “To Win a Nuclear War” 1986 [88888

Presidential power to push a button on humanity will be challenged!

An Example of US Military Willingness to Follow Criminal Orders !

The US Pacific Fleet commander said he would launch a nuclear strike against China next week if President Donald Trump [had] ordered it. Every member of the US military had sworn an oath to obey the president as the commander in chief, Swift said yesterday. Admiral Scott Swift was addressing an Australian National University security conference following a US- Australian military exercise off the Australian coast. The drills were monitored by a Chinese intelligence-gathering ship off northeast Australia. The biennial exercise involved 36 warships including the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, 220 aircraft and 33,000 military personnel.(Associated Press 7/28/2017)

Submarines, Major Weapons of War Euphemistically Referred to Otherwise

Prime Minister Johnson of the United Kingdom Announcing the Creation of AUKUS:

“AUKUS is born — a new enhanced trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.  AUKUS: a partnership where our technology, our scientists, our industry, our defense forces are all working together to deliver a safer and more secure region that ultimately benefits all. The first major initiative of AUKUS will be to deliver a nuclear-powered submarine fleet for Australia.”

Celebrities will make the rest of us aware of such dangerous evasive foolishness!

British PM Claims the Right to be the First to Launch Nuclear Weapons

Formation of AUKUS comes almost on the heels of the British launch of a costly nuclear Trident submarine and the UK prime minister announcing a British right to be the first to launch nuclear missiles.[7]

Celebrities will demand an explanation and reversal!

How Much War Devotion Can Society’s High Achievers in Their Respective Fields Put Up With in Silence When the Fate of Everyone’s Children Hangs in the Balance?

In the name of all that is holy and the many millions of innocent men, women and children in Third World countries butchered by Americans and Europeans in uniform using high-tech weaponry, let celebrities take on the source of all this genocidal mayhem, namely, the wealthy and powerful investors in war headquartered mainly on Wall Street in New York City’s port area. America’s atrocity wars, apart from the money made from the war itself, are meant to maintain American investments high profitability. Martin Luther King Jr. pointed this out in 1967 one year before he received a bullet to his head.

Though King, in his world shaking sermon condemning his government’s wars, even gave the history of US funding the French attempt at reconquest of Vietnam, very few celebrities spoke out in agreement with his condemnation of the Vietnam War.

Most celebrity athletes philosophers, inventors, composers, physicians, artists, singers, musicians, educators, actors, movie producing moguls, comedians, billionaires, university presidents, etc. remained silent while Martin Luther King was vilified by US media even though the body counting slaughter of the poor Buddhist farmers of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia by the great and wealthy and high-tech army, navy and air force of the great United States of America was a blatant example of grossly criminal and unfair colonial genocide.

But times have changed with the awesome calamity of climate change looming. American Celebrities who speak out now will still face being called unpatriotic but will be joined and defended by citizens concerned about lethal and catastrophic war blow back consequences.

Celebrities Will Be Able to Expose Politicians and Media War Nuclear War Talk as Inhumane! But Where To Start?

An obvious first step in the US would be to seek to decouple the Democratic and Republican parties from the deep state investors in war represented by CIA controlled mainstream media.

Two Gang DeMockracy?

End War Investors Deep State Dictatorship! Make political parties Illegal by making any transactions of money, dues, contributions, promises of money or arrangements of any kind of payments of valuables used as currency illegal and inappropriate for public office holders or candidacy for public office.

Though it be expected that factions within deliberating bodies of elected officials such as legislatures, cabinets and courts are bound to arise naturally, a faction of officials organizing themselves into some permanent grouping of public officials shall be deemed inappropriate to unrestricted democratic governance and illegal.

In nonpartisan elections, each candidate for office would be eligible based on her or his own merits rather than as a member of a political party.

The US Congress has independent Senators who are not connected nor beholden to political parties. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine are not pressured like the Dems and Republican congressmen are to vote to fund wars and preparation for nuclear war.

How many hundreds of millions voters cast their ballot for the candidate’s party affiliation rather than the merits of the particular candidate?

Imagine if it were a crime for an elected or appointed government official to contribute dues, money, collateral or gifts to political organizations.

Imagine:
- a Congress of Senators and Representatives Representing Their Constituents —no Party Affiliation Allowed by Law!
- laws against contributing money to, or receiving money from a political party
Would such a Congress be voting for investing in forever wars all around the world and ever more dangerous novel nuclear weapons that endanger the very life of the planet and its inhabitants.

Famous celebrities throughout the world in the fields of sports, stage and screen, clergy, music, art, science, medicine, education, including university presidents, politicians and retired military, have an obligation for their power to influence public opinion and action to speak out against this nuclear madness and the criminal insanity of permanent war, and this writer feels sure they will begin to speak out very soon …

                     …hopefully before an accidental or intentional powerful nuclear explosion is detonated.

JAY JANSON, Resident Historian, Distinguished Collaborator

Endnotes
1. Union of Concerned Scientists
2. H.G. Wells
3. By the UN International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament]
[ycsg.yale.edu/sites/...EliminatingNuclearThreats.pdf
ELIMINATING NUCLEAR THREATS A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers Synopsis: a comprehensive action agenda
4. Because of America’s still formidable grip over international media, Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A.
December 26, 1977, New York Times
5. Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Charlie Chaplin, Jane Fonda, Malcolm X, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Eartha Kitt, Harry Belafonte, James Cromwell, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Humphrey Bogart, Edward G Robinson, Martin Sheen, Joan Baez, Sean Penn, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Michael Moore, Phil Donahue, Tim Robbins, Susan Sarandon, Rosie O Donnel, Sally Field, Tim Robbins, Marlin Brando, Ramsey Clark just to name a few.
6. Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark
7. Britain Threatens Humanity with Nuclear Winter Extinction Without Explaining Why It Foresees War, May 8, 2021, Greanville Post
https://www.greanvillepost.com/2021/05/08/britain-threatens-humanity-with-nuclear-winter-extinction-without-explaining-why-it-foresees-war-2/


Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before leaving, please join us in a moment of compassion and reflection.

The wheels of business and human food compulsion are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Globally, the human tyranny over animals takes over a trillion creatures each year, a truly mind-boggling figure. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer any need for this senseless suffering that is also killing the planet. Meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. Please re-examine your habits in this regard.


The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of  The Greanville Post. However, we do think they are important enough to be transmitted to a wider audience. 

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