My Broken Heart

Somebody broke my heart, and it had to work overtime to heal itself. I received this diagnosis last week: hypertension (high blood pressure).

Peony Season

There is a tradition in my friend`s family that cuts the first blooms of peonies of the year to put them on the graves of the dearly departed.

I`ve thought of doing this for my mother, especially that most of my peonies come from her own garden.

But if she saw me do it, she would probably say "Silly girl! Just enjoy them while you can, in your own garden, and do so in my name if you must. Peony season goes by quickly soon enough."

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

Photo: Martin Rubli

You Don't Bring Me Flowers

Neil Diamond

You don't bring me flowers
You don't sing me love songs
You hardly talk to me anymore
When I come through the door at the end of the day

I remember when
You couldn't wait to love me
Used to hate to leave me
Now after lovin' me late at night
When it's good for you, babe
And you're feeling alright
Well, you just roll over
And you turn out the light

And you don't bring me flowers anymore
It used to be so natural (Used to be)
To talk about forever
But used-to-be's don't count anymore
They just lay on the floor 'til we sweep them away

And baby, I remember
All the things you taught me
I learned how to laugh
And I learned how to cry
Well I learned how to love
And I learned how to lie
So you'd think I could learn
How to tell you goodbye

You don't bring me flowers anymore
Well, you'd think I could learn
How to tell you goodbye
You don't sing to me
And you don't sing me love songs
You don't bring me flowers anymore

PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL

PERMANENT PEOPLES’ TRIBUNAL

Founder: LELIO BASSO (ITALY)

President: PHILIPPE TEXIER (FRANCE)

Vicepresidents:

LUIZA ERUNDINA DE SOUSA (BRASIL)

JAVIER GIRALDO MORENO (COLOMBIA) HELEN JARVIS (AUSTRALIA)

NELLO ROSSI (ITALY)

Secretary General:

GIANNI TOGNONI (ITALY)

Session on Human Rights, Fracking and Climate change (14-18 May 2018)

2018 06 04: PRELIMINARY STATEMENT

General Secretariat:

VIA DELLA DOGANA VECCHIA 5 - 00186 ROME - TEL:0039 0668801468
E-mail:ppt@permanentpeoplestribunal.org
www.permanentpeoplestribunal.org

The PPT is an international, fully independent organization established in 1979 as an opinion
Tribunal having as its primary statute the Universal Declaration of Peoples’ Rights (Algiers,
1976). The main aim of the PPT is to contribute to the struggle of peoples for their
self-determination and the prevention, assessment, judgment and reparation of their fundamental
rights, whenever international institutions do not fulfil their responsibilities to ensure the full
respect of obligatory duties of justice by public or private actors.

Over five days, from 14 to 18 May, 2018, the PPT heard testimony and received other evidence
relating to fracking and its impact on climate change, human rights and the rights of nature.
Included were very substantial reports from four pre-PPT Citizens’ Tribunals that had gathered
scientific, technical, social, cultural and experiential testimony from many community
organizations, experts and individual citizens. The PPT also received other such evidence from
individuals, experts and NGOs on the negative impact of fracking on the environment, people’s lives
and on their communities.

Given the overwhelming volume and comprehensiveness of the evidence received and the need to
consider all of this carefully, the panel of ten jurors will necessarily take several months to
formulate a precise and comprehensive Opinion, including recommendations.

Because the matters considered by the PPT are of great significance and public concern around the
globe, especially to those affected negatively by the fracking industry, and generally speaking by
the expansion of the fossil fuel extractive frontier, with all its consequences on the climate
crisis, on the environment and on peoples’ rights, by industry role players themselves, and
governments across the world insofar as they have responsibilities to abide by laws and to protect
the public, human rights and the environment, this Preliminary Statement is issued now for public
discussion and action to abate the negative effects of fracking.

The dramatic impacts of the Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction technologies on people, the
environment and the climate were elaborately documented to the PPT, including a comprehensive
exposition of facts and related oral, visual, juridical and cultural evidence which clearly
established beyond any reasonable doubt the reality of violations of the rights of humans and of
nature, and a significant contribution to climate change. Such findings require the urgent
ascertainment and attribution of responsibilities as well as of the measures which must be
undertaken to avoid an irreversible worsening of the situation; and to bring about changes in
practices, policies of reparation for injuries suffered, and rehabilitation of environmental
destruction including the contribution of fracking to climate change.

What has become clear is that fracking is, with important but limited exceptions, an ongoing and
expanding reality that affects both the rights of nature as well as the rights of individuals and
communities in all the countries which were considered by the PPT, with specifically dramatic
consequences on indigenous peoples. This is just a sample of impacts and consequences suffered
elsewhere where fossil fuel exploration and extraction (including of non conventional fuels such as
tar sands as well as shale gas and shale oil) continues unabated. The many practices of resistance,
research and of resilience by people and their communities that have been presented to the PPT
underline that the violations of rights are generally planned and implemented intentionally, as
well as being hidden when possible and denied when exposed. Also, the frequent absence of
appropriate juridical-normative terms of reference is not recognised by governments as a vacuum to
be urgently corrected, thus providing corporations an excuse to operate within a regime of
impunity.

The scenario of rights violations and impunity, often resulting from regulatory capture, that
fracking presents appears as an exemplary model of the broader geopolicies and strategies of states
and powerful corporations that have imposed a tragic hierarchy of values across the world, which
has resulted in the rights of people and the rights of nature being subjugated to the financial
interests of states and corporations. A sort of systemic crime architecture.

The Advisory Opinion of the PPT will be oriented to provide proposals that are not merely
descriptive by answering the four main questions which have guided the preparation and
implementation of this Session. The Opinion will also explore, evaluate and make findings on the
responsibilities for the multiple abuses of rights violations and the roles that many actors play
in this respect. The Tribunal will, in addition, focus on:

- the possible ways of strengthening the role of local communities and indigenous peoples which
must be further recognized as the main subjects of inviolable rights including that of
self-determination;

- the necessary evolution of existing international, national, and local juridical institutions,
concepts and laws which could ensure an innovative role of the guarantors of the rights of affected
and threatened human communities and of nature;

- the promotion of broader and more effective networks of community and political actors capable
of transforming the many but fragmented and dispersed experiences of resistance and resilience into
a true transversal “people”, fighting for the combined respect and promotion of the fundamental
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the more recent Universal Declaration of the Rights of
Mother Earth.

It is then the Interim Opinion of the PPT that:

The evidence we have considered is consistent internally, almost without exception. It is also
consistent with the external evidence to which the Tribunal was referred, i.e. the results reached,
discussed and analysed in hundreds of independent reports and refereed research publications.

The evidence clearly demonstrates that the processes of fracking contribute substantially to
anthropogenic harm, including climate change and global warming, and involve massive violations of
a range of substantive and procedural human rights and the rights of nature. Thus the industry has
failed to fulfil its legal and moral obligations.

The evidence also shows that governments have, in general, failed in their
responsibility to regulate the industry so as to protect people, communities and nature. In
addition, they have failed to act promptly and effectively to the dangers of climate change that
fracking represents.

Finally, this particular Session of the PPT has been an experiment of collaboration and
communication. It has sought to overcome the economic constraint of limited resources which impede
what should be a permanent, timely exercise of assessing, monitoring, preventing and transforming
the universe of violations which occur in the present global scenarios, where the decisions on
policies which go against the fundamental rights of nature and of human communities are taken,
imposed and directed centrally by those who have unlimited resources.

The experiment has been a resounding success, with the inevitable but instructive limitations,
thanks to the commitment of an organising group which deserves the recognition and gratitude not
only of the PPT, but of all those who can now transform this experiment into a flexible and
powerful tool which could allow the struggles of the communities of the world to become more
globally and more timely known, shared and effective.

Panel or the judges:
Alberto Acosta Espinosa
Lilia América Albert Palacios
Andrés Barreda
Upendra Baxi
Gill H. Boehringer Maria Fernanda Campa Louis Kotzé
Larry Lohmann Francesco Martone Antoni Pigrau Solé

PPT General Secretariat:

Simona Fraudatario
Gianni Tognoni

Link: http://permanentpeoplestribunal.org/?lang=en