A feature on Aljazeera TV this morning – @AJStream – featuring the ongoing battle for truth and justice between USA and indigenous American Indians – resonated with me in many areas.  Guests on @AJStream included three people from different indigenous tribes who have been fighting against oil pipelines through their lands, poisoning water via toxic waste leaks.

 

Jacqueline Keeler, one of the guests and a journalist, explained only sovereign states can have treaties between them and that treaty is supreme law under the American constitution.  I hadn’t realised the indigenous tribes were a sovereign state – something I don’t think is known by many outside the tribes themselves.  Therefore, the treaties drawn us and written into the constitution are supreme law.  To ignore this position is to break the Constitution, isn’t it?

 

Joye Braun  – @joyem_braun – explained the ‘fake news’ oil companies put out through marketing such as the pipeline ‘will bring jobs and prosperity locally, the oil is needed locally, and it’s safe – no leaks for the past three years’.  Joye said the truth is any jobs are temporary, no money goes into the local community – instead it goes to oil companies profits, the local community doesn’t need the oil – in fact there is an oil glut right not.  The oil is sold outside the USA and lastly, the thing that resonated the most with me, Joye explained the reason the oil companies report no leaks in the last three years is because the oil companies got the level at which they need to report leakages increased! – so there have been leaks just at a lower rate than the companies have to report.

 

This last point resonated the most with me.  The Government in the UK at start of the Coronavirus pandemic promised a set number of daily tests by a set date.  When they were clearly not going to reach their target, they included all tests posted out to people.  So it seems all figures can be ‘fudged’ which we all know but is it right to fudge the figures when peoples’ health is in danger?

 

As Joye and her peers say ‘Water is Life’ – would you be happy drinking toxic water?