Katie Halper interviews musician Roger Waters and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger.

By Nagui on October 23, 2021

Get ready for Katie Halper’s epic interview with legends and true heroes of the world. Musician Roger Waters and human rights lawyer Steven Donziger talk about the struggle of the indigenous people of Ecuador against Chevron and the persecution suffered by Donziger who has been under house arrest with an ankle bracelet for almost two years.

Katie talks with Steve Donziger who is being severely punished for successfully suing Chevron for poisoning the Ecuadorian Amazon and the indigenous people who live there. Katie also talks with musician and activist Roger Waters from Pink Floyd about why this case is so unprecedented and so important.

For those of you who are not familiar with this story, Donziger has been involved in a lengthy legal battle against Chevron over pollution they have caused in the Amazon rainforest. He advised a team of lawyers who represented over 30 thousand farmers and indigenous Ecuadorians and who have won a multi-billion-dollar settlement against Chevron due to their environmental damage and health effects caused by oil drilling.

Chevron has not only refused to pay the settlement but is mounting a retaliation campaign against Donziger and has since then filed a lawsuit against him in NYC. As a result, Donziger was disbarred from practicing in New York in 2018. Presiding Judge Louis Kaplan has ordered Donziger to surrender his laptop and cellphone, which he has refused to do. He has since then fined Donziger with a contempt of court charge and has placed him under house arrest for two years and counting. Following his house arrest in August 2019, Donziger was found guilty in July 2021, and he is now facing the possibility of a 6-month jail sentence.

Roger and Steven are heroes of the people fighting against of corporate greed. You are going to love Roger for his passion for justice and Steve for his extremely brilliant expose of corporate belligerence and callous wickedness. It’s horrible that an attorney who is protecting innocent people has to end up under house arrest while those who protect human trash are rarely if ever persecuted.

Donziger’s story deserves to be heard around the globe and a world of thanks for Roger Waters to stick by his side in his struggle for justice. Donziger’s case is very similar to Assange’s case; an overreach of corporate and government power bent on keeping their wicked wrongdoings out of the public spotlight.

The Donziger Chevron case is a perfect illustration of how governments work with big companies to fill their pockets and use the law to their advantage. It brings to mind a famous quote by Benito Mussolini; “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Echoing El Ducce’s famous quote here is what Roger Waters had to say about this heinous miscarriage of justice; “It’s exactly the same story. It’s how governments and big businesses connive with each other to ignore the rule of law in order to further their aim. So, their aims are to fill the pockets of the oligarchs (and shareholders) with money at the expense of the ordinary people of the world who are dying as we speak.”

Chris Hedges wrote an incredible article about this case that appeared on Scheerpost.com exactly a week after this post was published so I am including it here. This article about the corporate executioners is like a handbook that should be passed around, everybody should be discussing it, everybody should be using it to bring attention to this awful miscarriage of justice. It is called: The Anonymous Executioners of the Corporate State – Imprisoning the David to Chevron’s Goliath is the latest outrage by a US judiciary now engineered to always favor the interests of capital, by Chris Hedges. READ IT HERE

Roger Waters & Steven Donziger vs. Chevron with Katie Halper

The Persecution of Steve Donziger: Roger Waters and Steve Donziger

Roger Waters on Ecuador and Steven Donziger’s fight for justice with Vijay Prashad

Musician Roger Waters and Vijay Prashad of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research talk about the struggles of the indigenous people of Ecuador against Chevron’s Lago Agrio oil field and the persecution of attorney Steven Donziger who fought their case. They also reflect on the struggles of people like Donziger, Julian Assange and others who strive for a better world against those for whom power and profit are more important than anything else.