Debate: Strategy And Tactics In The Environmental Movement

Climate & Capitalism published a statement by Chris Williams, an EcoSocialist, about strategies and tactics in the environmental movement. Then they published a response from Sasha Ross of Earth First! Journal, with a response from Williams. It is a healthy debate for a very important part of the resistance movement — the environmental justice movement. We want to share it and encourage you to participate. Chris Williams, a frequent contributor to Climate & Capitalism, is the author of Ecology and Socialism: Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis (Haymarket, 2011). He is chair of the Science Department at Packer Collegiate Institute and adjunct professor of Chemistry and Physical Science at Pace University. Sasha Ross is a member of the Earth First! Journal Collective and editor of the forthcoming anthology Grabbing Back (AK Press 2014). He questions Williams’ focus on the anti-pipeline movement, and argues for a bioregional approach that will build local communities of resistance. -more-

A Video Tour Of The Problems At Fukushima

The Planned Risky Repair of Fukushima Scheduled for This November Could Create Radiation Disaster Equal To 85 Chernobyls This is a 20 minute video about all the really intense details and current challenges of each and every reactor at the Fukushima site. Each week Fairewinds receives many questions about the ongoing tragedy unfolding in Japan as a result of the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Join us as Fairewinds’ Chief Engineer Arnie Gundersen highlights the many problems facing Japan as he takes you on a tour of the Fukushima Daiichi site by combining satellite video, animated graphics and photos to create a comprehensive and easy to follow video tour. -more-

Radiation In Drinking Water Rising Due To Fracking

The New York Times has published an explosive article in its Sundayedition that features unreleased government documents that show levels of radiation in drinking water in some places are significantly higher than previously recognized due to drilling for natural gas. Treehugger readers know that the natural gas drilling technique, known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is under increased scrutiny, including in the Oscar-nominated GasLand, and citizens and regulators are increasingly concernedthat fracking is extremely dangerous. Fracking involves using a highly-pressurized mixture of sand, water and chemicals to blast away rock to release natural gas hidden deep under the earth’s surface. Millions of gallons of water can be used at a site, and the NY Times has found EPA documents that say this water cannot be made safe at treatment centers. Despite this, radioactive wastewater is going back in to waterways, and thus into the taps of unsuspecting people. -more-

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TIME So Obviously Hides The Truth On Iran

TIME magazine had a bizarre timeline describing US-Iran relations. TIME focuses on the trivial while ignoring the big US caused conflicts between the US and Iran You learn a lot about the corporate media when they try to give you a history lesson–since what’s left unmentioned can say so much. In the October 7 issue of Time magazine–the one with the headline “Iran’s Dubious Charms” on the cover–a long piece about Iran includes the graphic pictured to the right. Now, anyone who might want to understand US/Iran relations is not going to find out very much from this. It’s not easy to summarize a half century or more of history, but the items selected here are more than a little curious. -more-

Herman Wallace: ‘Angola Three’ Inmate Dies Days After Release From Solitary

“A 71-year-old man who spent more than four decades in solitary confinement in Louisiana has died, less than a week after a judge freed him and granted him a new trial. Herman Wallace’s attorneys said he died Friday at a supporter’s home in New Orleans. Wallace had been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer and stopped receiving treatment. US district Judge Brian Jackson had ordered Wallace released from the Louisiana state penitentiary at Angola on Tuesdayafter granting him a new trial. Jackson ruled women were unconstitutionally excluded from the grand jury that indicted Wallace in the stabbing death of a 23-year-old prison guard, Brent Miller” -more-

The 5th Annual Black Panther Party Film Festival

The 5th Annual Black Panther Party Film Festival: Proceeds from our film festival are used to supply commissary for Political PrisonersOctober 3rd-5th, 2013 Maysles Cinema 343 Lenox Ave New York, New York 10027 cinema@mayslesinstitute.org Suggested $10 donation at the door for all screenings. WE WANT freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails. Films include: Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, In My Own Words, Hard Time and Herman’s House. -more-

California Residents Call for ‘No Drone Zone’ in Their County

Some Nevada County, California citizens are taking domestic drone matters into their own hands and have drafted a local initiative banning drones from public use and requiring search warrants for law enforcement use. The County Counsel for Nevada County opposes the proposed initiative claiming citizens have no “jurisdiction” to pass such law since the FAA “governs all airspace” and the issue is preempted by federal law. County Counsel has commenced legal proceedings and has stopped the initiative process at this time. -more-

Greenwald: Journalism Should Expose The Lying Of The Powerful

In this interview on BBC, journalist Glenn Greenwald describes the job of journalist as to “prevent people in power from lying to the people over whom they are ruling.”  He sees the job of journalists as to “shine a light” on what government is really doing to inform the people who live in democracies. In a healthy democracy the people need to know about what the government is doing to monitor the activities of citizens. And, the more people in power abuse their power, the more they need accountability and transparency. The documents released show a broad dragnet surveillance effort by the UK and US governments of innocent citizens not involved in terrorism. Greenwald says he is in regular contact with his source, Edward Snowden. Greenwald and the Guardian has done a better job of keeping control of the NSA and UK’s GCHQ spying documents than the spy agencies have done. BBC Newsnight interviews journalist Glenn Greenwald on Edward Snowden, the PRISM revelations and mass surveillance. He repeatedly warns the journalist that she should not assume that what the government tells her is true.  The interview took place on October 3, 2013. -more-

Stop Enefit! No Oil Shale Campout: Oct 25-27

We with the Utah Tar Sands Resistance aren’t all about tar sands, you know. Eastern Utah has become a sacrifice zone for the Western United States in terms of destructive, toxic fuel extraction, and we’re standing up to say “No!” to extreme energies in the Uintah Basin–and that includes oil shale. Enefit, an Estonian government-owned company with some half-baked ideas about mining for oil shale in Eastern Utah (in order to produce Kerogen), is bringing the usual lines about “ minimizing land disturbance,” “ reclamation” of the land, and their “commitment to environmental stewardship.” -more-

A New Ecosocialist Movement?

In the face of the climate crisis, a coalition is developing between a traditionally fractious American Left, the Green Party USA and other left groups in a Green-Red “ecological solidarity” that bears watching in the coming months. This was surrounded with a crew of hundreds of socialists of differing stripes, Green Party members, Occupy LA-ers, unionists, aging and teenage ecosocialists, and even more than a few former Democrats, all in numbers and with an energy and earnestness that one veteran activist with personal experience going back to the 1960s told me he had not seen in LA in years. In the old courtrooms-turned-political workshops, instead of 1960’s-era petty misdemeanor and traffic trials, conference attendees weighed topics of the utmost seriousness: How can we save humanity from the seemingly inexorable suicide train of looming climate catastrophe? -more-

Anyone Could Do Jaime Dimon’s Job

This video exposes the corruption of Wall Street and the corporate mass media that covers it. Matt Taibbi and Sam Seder give their play-by-play commentary of CNBC’s  interview with Alex Pareene and why anybody could do Jamie Dimon’s job. The video exposes the incompetence of the CNBC hosts who do not seem to understand the breadth of crimes committed by JPMorgan under the leadership of Jaime Dimon, nor do they seem to be aware that Dimon was part of the cabal that collapsed the US economy with his bank, along with other too-big-to-fail banks requiring massive bailouts from the US Department of Treasury and Federal Reserve.  Indeed, the Fed continues its ongoing bailout of the big banks with $1 trillion in virtually no-interest loans to the banks at part of Qualitative Easing to prop the banks up.  The guest, Alex Pareene, and the commentators Taibbi and Seder, make the point that anyone could do the job as well as Dimon — get free money from the Fed, loan it to others, including the United States government at interest rates that create an immediate profit.  The video exposes the fraud of Wall Street bankers and the fraud of corporate mass media. -more-

Video Documenting Police Protest Tactics

In this ten minute video, Paul Henri-Sullivan documents NYPD tactics in crowd control.  He follows an OWS protest with his camera focused on the police. He sees how the police white shirts direct arrests as the protest gains momentum in order to weaken the protest.  The police consistently tell the crowd to keep moving and get out of the streets, but than at the direction of a white shirt, police go into the crowd and arrest people, often at the specific direction of the who to arrest.  They will often throw the person to the ground so that it becomes a spectacle arrest, one that other protesters can see in order to intimidate them, or to draw other protesters out to un-arrest the person so they can also be arrested.  Consistently targeted are men wearing dark clothes and a bandanna.  Sometimes it seems the police commanders have specific people in mind or, perhaps, know specific people due to police infiltration.  Sullivan continues to film until he finds himself under arrest as well.  As often happens, it is a minor charge that gets the protester off the street and then months later the charges are dropped. -more-

Palestinian Garden Of Tear Gas Grenades

Bilin has become a symbol of Palestinian protests against Israeli policies in the West Bank. The village’s struggle to regain land taken by the barrier was the subject of “Five Broken Cameras,” a documentary nominated for an Oscar last year. Palestinians say the barrier, which cuts into the West Bank, amounts to a land grab. Israel says it’s needed to keep Palestinian attackers out. The Bilin garden commemorates Bassem Abu Rahmeh, a protest leader who was killed in 2009 when a tear gas grenade struck him in the chest during a demonstration. Bassem’s sister, Jawaher, died nearly two years later, a day after a weekly protest during which villagers said she inhaled Israeli tear gas. -more-

Pentagon Spent $5 Billion on Weapons on the Eve of the Shutdown

The Pentagon pumped billions of dollars into contractors’ bank accounts on the eve of the U.S. government’s shutdown that saw 400,000 Defense Department employees furloughed. All told, the Pentagon awarded 94 contracts yesterday evening on its annual end-of-the-fiscal-year spending spree, spending more than five billion dollars on everything from robot submarines to Finnish hand grenades and a radar base mounted on an offshore oil platform. To put things in perspective, the Pentagon gave out only 14 contracts onSeptember 3, the first workday of the month. Here are some of the more interesting purchases from Monday’s dollar-dump. -more-

Enough of This McJobs Economy

So why do most big retailers and fast-food chains insist on a bad-jobs or “low road” model? There are a few reasons. MIT’s Ton argues that labor costs are a large, controllable expense, and retailers generally view them as a “cost-driver” rather than a “sales-driver.” Store-level managers are pressured by higher-ups to control labor costs as a percentage of weekly or monthly sales. And because store managers have no control over sales (or merchandise mix, store layout, prices, etc.) they respond to pressure from above by cutting employment or forcing workers to work off-the-clock when sales dip. Another factor is financialization—the increasing dominance of finance in the economy. Firms feel a lot of pressure from Wall Street to be a Walmart and not a Costco. As Gerald Davis has argued, the rise of finance and the dominance of “shareholder value” rhetoric have resulted in an emphasis on short-term profits that register in increased share prices and big CEO bonuses. Perhaps the main reason why companies refuse to invest in creating good jobs is that they can. -more-

US Indicts Suspected Anonymous Members For Leading 2010 “Operation Payback”

Back in 2010, “Operation Payback” involved a series of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against anti-piracy websites as a way to protest what some members of Anonymous viewed as an overly greedy intellectual property industry. The attack was later revived in early 2011. On Thursday, 13 men were indicted (PDF) in federal court in Virginia on one count of Conspiracy to Intentionally Cause Damage to a Protected Computer. They are accused of using the well-knownLow-Orbit Ion Cannon application to conduct DDoS attacks on the Recording Industry Association of America, the Motion Picture Association of America, the United States Copyright Office of the Library of Congress, Visa, MasterCard, and Bank of America. -more-

Worldwide Demand For UN Takeover At Fukushima

The much-hyped “nuclear renaissance” has turned into a global rout. In the face of massive grassroots opposition and the falling price of renewable energy and natural gas, operating reactors are shutting and proposed new ones are being cancelled. This lessens the radioactive burden on the planet. But it makes the aging reactor fleet ever more dangerous. A crumbling industry with diminished resources and a disappearing workforce cannot safely caretake the decrepit, deteriorating 400-odd commercial reactors still licensed to operate worldwide. All of which pales before the crisis at Fukushima. Since the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the six-reactor Daichi site has plunged into lethal chaos. -more-

Pressure From Activists, Permanent Ban On Fracking

For the second year in a row, something that the city administration originally did not want to happen became a reality, thanks to the efforts of citizens to gather and submit legal petitions to the government. Last year, citizens fought for and won the right to elect their own school board members in a close vote after submitting a petition to force the issue onto the ballot. Earlier this year, disappointed activists mounted a campaign to force the City Council to ban dangerous gas drilling known as “fracking,” a step they were unwilling to take earlier this year. After months of residents speaking out in support of the ban at council meetings, the council attempted to put the matter to rest by adopting a nonbinding resolution that seemed to support fracking more than previous stances taken by the Council. -more-

Fossil Fuel Army Versus Planet: Battle Lines Drawn On Climate Change

Those who keep claiming that climate change is a “hoax” need to become aware that the conspiracy they describe is growing in strength and numbers. Only a concerted effort – more than a Murdoch media blitz or a House Committee hearing – will be sufficient to defeat the growing consensus. Just consider: While the over 97% of climate scientists who have concluded that human greenhouse gas emissions are warming our planet are vulnerable to attacks and threats, other groups will not be as easily intimidated. The Pentagon is a formidable opponent that’s reconfiguring its global presence to take climate change into account. All too many of its generals and admirals are cautioning us about the national security implications of a warmer planet. They refer to climate change as a “threat multiplier” and “accelerant of instability” – not good news for those who’ve relegated it to the status of a hoax. -more-