The so-called Monsanto Protection Act signed into law earlier this year caused such an outrage that people around the world are planning to protest the biotech company later this month. Now a United States Senator is expected to try and repeal that law after mounting pressure . The notorious ‘Monsanto Protection Act’ rider stuffed into the non-related Senate spending bill...
In historic breakthrough, Mass. Sen. Elizabeth Warren offers bill to force the Federal Reserve to finance student loans at 0.75% with no cost to taxpayers; measure embodies principles needed for US economic recovery from current depression. I urge a major all points mobilization in support of Sen Elizabeth Warren's Bank on Students bill mandating that the Federal Reserve provide...
Ladies of New York , you are free to walk bare-breasted through the city! New York City's 34,000 police officers have been instructed that, should they encounter a woman in public who is shirtless but obeying the law, they should not arrest her. This is a good step towards gender parity in public spaces. This decision means that breast exposure is not considered public lewdness...
SEATTLE, Wash. - March Against Monsanto has announced that on May 25, tens of thousands of activists around the world will “ March Against Monsanto .” Currently, marches are being planned on six continents, in 36 countries, totaling events in over 250 cities, and in the US, events are slated to occur simultaneously at 11 a.m. Pacific in 47 states. Tami Monroe Canal, lead...
Above. Workers from the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) chant slogans during a May Day rally at Seoul City Hall Plaza in central Seoul May 1, 2013. Thousands of workers who took part in the rally asked for an extensive revision of the labor law and demanded that the government provide temporary workers employment stability by converting their status to full-time workers...
How to reduce one’s Carbon Footprint! The choice facing humanity is described in stark terms in a prize-winning book on environment called ‘Collapse’. In this book, the author Jared Diamond describes that one way or another, the world’s environmental problems will get resolved within a generation. “The only question is whether they will be resolved in...
Yesterday, after 21 months in federal custody, climate activist Tim DeChristopher approached the pulpit at his church in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a free man. The First Unitarian congregation rose in uproarious applause, tears streaming down more than a few faces. “It’s good to be home,” DeChristopher told the crowd. During his sermon, he said that he had never expected to...
It got so hot in Australia in January that the weather service had to add two new colors to its charts . A few weeks later, at the other end of the planet, new data from the CryoSat-2 satellite showed 80 percent of Arctic sea ice has disappeared. We're not breaking records anymore; we're breaking the planet. In 50 years, no one will care about the fiscal cliff or the Euro crisis...
(1)Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know something. What you know, you can't explain. But you feel it. You've felt it your entire life. That there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there. Like a splinter in your mind - driving you mad. It is this feeling that has brought you to me. Do you know what I'm...
There are over 7 billion people on this planet; (1,2) * 3 billion are living below the poverty line (less than $2US a day) * 1 billion are starving * 1% of the population own 40% of global assets * The richest 10% of individuals account for 85% of the world’s total assets * An estimated 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. That’s one child every 3...
Have you ever had a dream that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? The Matrix Just imagine having no choice but to undergo a mental and spiritual reconfiguration process, having to update your internal belief and operational faculties due to being privy to new...
People are waking up. They're getting involved. They're saying, "Not another day! This is where I mark the line." Their desire to change the world is turning from simple wishful thinking on Monday mornings into tangible action. The thoughts they used to have only occasionally about their relationship to the rest of the world now occurs to them all the time. They're...
A team of three passionate environmental filmmakers recently returned from the Amazon and Choco´ rainforests of Ecuador, beginning their journey to make a documentary featuring the best ways to save tropical rainforests. During the month of February, Earth Soul Productions is turning to Kickstarter, a "crowd-funding" website, to raise funds to cover the expenses of documenting...
‘Mindless, violent thugs, hell-bent on sowing chaos.’ That’s the kind of press anarchists often get. Uri Gordon provides a more sympathetic take on a growing yet still little understood political movement. I must have been eight or nine years old when I first heard the a-word. I don’t remember the context, but I do remember asking my mother what...
Dear Progressives, With President Obama’s second term underway and huge decisions looming on Capitol Hill, consider this statement from Howard Zinn: “When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.”
If the dynamic of a diverse safe space in which people dismantle oppressions through conflict resolution is at the root of Occupy's transformative potential, then perhaps there's not a distinct formula that can be reproduced, but simply spread - a culture - that people can choose to adopt. Occupy Sandy has been lauded as more American than FEMA. Strike Debt, an Occupy offshoot...
October 2012, Notre dames des Landes, France -- Chris leans forward, her long fingers play with the dial of the car radio “I’m trying to find 107.7 FM“ … a burst of Classical music, a fragment of cheesy pop. “ Ah! Here we go! I think I’ve got it?” The plastic pitch of a corporate jingle pierces the speakers: “Radio Vinci Autoroute: This is the...
Idle No More is an indigenous peoples movement born in Canada. Their mission is described as follows: Idle No More calls on all people to join in a revolution which honors and fulfills Indigenous sovereignty which protects the land and water. Colonization continues through attacks to Indigenous rights and damage to the land and water. We must repair these violations, live the spirit...
It was more sophisticated than we had imagined: new documents show that the violent crackdown on Occupy last fall – so mystifying at the time – was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI , the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters...
Ted Trainer is one of the wisest, boldest, and most dedicated advocates of The Simpler Way. In 2010 he published a book called, The Transition to a Sustainable and Just World , and I have to say that it is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. If you only have time to read one more book in your life, consider reading this one. It speaks directly to our global situation and...
It looks like the Japanese whaling fleet is ready to rumble. They fired their opening shot today by having the United States 9 th District Court issue an injunction against Sea Shepherd and Captain Paul Watson, specifically. The court order was a single page e-mail granting the injunction despite the fact that the preliminary injunction was denied in February 2012 by Judge Richard Jones...
You know it's true. Otherwise, why does everyone cringe when you say the word? Why has attendance at your discussion group meetings fallen to an all-time low? Why has the oppressed masses not come to its senses and joined you in your fight for world liberation? Perhaps, after years of struggling to educate them about their victimhood, you have come to blame them for their condition. They...
Sea Shepherd Makes Bid to China to Survey Diaoyu Islands to Protect Indigenous Marine Wildlife Japanese fishermen driving a pod of Risso's dolphins off the coast of Taiji Photo: Sea Shepherd It would be a tragedy to marine life to allow Japan to continue to control the Senkaku Diaoyu Tiaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. In light of the ongoing slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan and...
Something Fishy Continues in Costa Rica and Germany Commentary by Captain Alex Cornelissen Sea Shepherd crew approaches the Varadero Photo: Sea Shepherd Last Friday we were informed of a decision that gives irrefutable evidence that the case against Captain Paul Watson is political. Since Captain Watson’s arrest in Germany, our legal defense team has been working tirelessly...
For the past eight years the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society (SSCS) led by Captain Paul Watson has prosecuted its anti-whaling campaigns in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary near Antarctica and disrupted the annual Japanese whaling hunt. This year another ship is being added to the expanding Sea Shepherd fleet, the SSS Sam Simon , named after The Simpsons co-creator whose...
Israeli abattoir abuse questions Australia's live export system Video of Australian cattle being abused at an Israeli abattoir has prompted questions of our live export system given the abattoir was given the all clear in an audit for an Australian exporter two months before the video was taken. Transcript CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Shocking new video of cattle being abused at an...
Stop Biofuelling Deforestation: How your fuel bills are subsidising deforestation - and what you can do about it! Demand for agricultural land is at the heart of the mass destruction of the world's forests. The main cause of forest loss in Indonesia, and the greatest threat to the continued survival of orangutans in the wild, is the conversion of forests to oil palm plantations...
HOME > JUSTICE AT WALMART END DEATHTRAPS FOR WALMART WORKERS Hold Walmart Accountable for Inferno in Bangladesh BREAKING NEWS!! NEW EVIDEN
If Mohandas Gandhi were a typical North American activist these days, he would probably be wearing a three-piece suit and working in a plush office with his law degree prominently displayed. He would have little time to lead protests, since every other week would be spent meeting with donors – and those power lunches would hardly go well with fasting. He would be careful to avoid salt...
On October seventeenth (O17), a group of about 10 occupiers gathered outside 15 Central Park West , the address of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s multi-million dollar condo. Occupy Goldman Sachs was born . In the model of sleepful protests, they set up camp across from the building’s main gate. They brought sleeping bags, signs, food, cameras...and have not left the area...
The global Occupy movement is much more than an economic or political movement. Occupy is a consciousness-expanding phenomenon. The same people who mocked us before Occupy started, and said that there would never be a non-violent civil disobedience movement throughout the US, are now the same people saying that Occupy was a once in a lifetime or generational event. What these people fail to...
Tuesday, 20th November 1900 GMT European Parliament votes to protect WikiLeaks. In a landmark decision today the European Parliament initiated the drafting of legislation that would stop the arbitrary banking blockades against WikiLeaks and other organizations facing economic censorship. This is an important signal from the European lawmakers.
Yesterday's ideas about curbing the ultra-rich's power remain just as relevant as ever. Our contemporary billionaires, most Americans would agree, are exploiting our labor and polluting our politics. Can we shrink our super rich down to a less powerful — and more democratic — size? Of course we can. We Americans, after all, have already done that before. Between 1900 and the...
' One woe doth tread upon another's heel, So fast they follow ". That radical green pressure group PriceWaterhouseCoopers warns that even if the present rate of global decarbonisation were to double, we would still be on course for 6C of warming by the end of the century. Confining the rise to 2C requires a sixfold reduction in carbon intensity: far beyond the scope of current policies. A...
When the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this week began taking military action in the Gaza strip against Hamas ( as the IDF announced on Twitter ), Anonymous declared its own war as part of #OpIsrael . Among the casualties are thousands of email addresses and passwords, hundreds of Israeli Web sites, government-owned as well as privately owned pages, as well as databases belonging to Bank...
In a massive blow to multinational agribiz corporations such as Monsanto , Bayer, and Dow, Peru has officially passed a law banning genetically modified ingredients anywhere within the country for a full decade before coming up for another review. Peru’s Plenary Session of the Congress made the decision 3 years after the decree was written despite previous governmental pushes for GM...
A new initiative is re-energising the Occupy movement. Called the Rolling Jubilee , it is a plan to use money from donations to buy distressed consumer debt from lenders at a marked down price, just as debt collection agencies normally would. But instead of hounding debtors for payments, it will simply cancel the debts. The hope is that the liberated debtors will themselves contribute to...
Yes, election night was a heck of a party and it’s great that the really bad guys lost. Karl Rove and his reactionary ilk were defeated by a new American majority that is younger, more tolerant, rainbow colored and multilingual and one in which women now trump the depressing ignorance of so many older white men. But morning in America already feels too much like a hangover. The house is...
The city has been shut down. Bridges and subways and airports are closed. There is no school, no shopping, no work. The stock exchange is shuttered. The circuits of capital are disrupted indefinitely. A state of emergency--but not the sort we had hoped for on May Day. This is not a General Strike but a Climate Strike. The banks are lined with barricades. But they are not there to...
In the week Barack Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he ordered bombing attacks on Yemen, killing a reported 63 people, 28 of them children. When Obama recently announced he supported same-sex marriage, American planes had not long blown 14 Afghan civilians to bits. In both cases, the mass murder was barely news. What mattered were the cynical vacuities of a political celebrity...
It was a dreary late- September morning in the East Texas woods outside of Winnsboro, chill and drizzly. Everything was wet or damp except for the spirits of four young people sitting in a tree stand. They were perched 30 feet above the path of the Keystone XL pipeline, slated to carry very heavy and very toxic Canadian tar sands bitumen from Cushing, Okla., to refineries in Houston. The...
Progressive hero Daniel Ellsberg wrote a statement, published on numerous sites, urging Obama-disaffected left/liberal/progressives who live in swing states to vote for Obama's reelection. He declares it "urgently important" for Romney to be defeated. Despite this plea, Ellsberg takes offense at being seen as "supporting Obama.” “I lose no opportunity publicly,&rdquo...
It is urgently important to prevent a Republican administration under Romney/Ryan from taking office in January 2013. The election is now just weeks away, and I want to urge those whose values are generally in line with mine -- progressives, especially activists -- to make this goal one of your priorities during this period. Romney and Obama exchange fingers in Tuesday night's debate...
BREAKING UPDATE 5:15PM: According to blockaders on the ground, several arrests have been made at the Tree Blockade. We are awaiting details but it has been confirmed two tree-sitters have been arrested. Monday I was arrested at the site of Tar Sands Blockade’s tree blockade in Winnsboro, TX. Though some people attend an action of that size with the intention of being arrested...
Today Leah Plante will again appear before a federal grand jury in Seattle, Washington, for the third time, and refuse to testify about her political beliefs and political associations. It is likely that she will be imprisoned for her principled stance against what she calls a witch hunt against local anarchists. The grand jury is investigating anarchists in the Northwest, following FBI and...
Community, faith and labor organizations mobilized this afternoon for a rally and civil disobedience action in support of thirty-eight workers on strike at a Walmart warehouse in Elwood, Illinois. They marched down to this distribution center, and, at least thirteen clergy and community leaders sat down and blocked an entrance to the center to prevent goods from arriving or leaving the...
I think they should spend five or ten minutes on it -- seeing if there’s a point in taking part in the carefully orchestrated electoral extravaganza." Recently, on the Matthew Filipowicz Show, I had the privilege of speaking to Professor Noam Chomsky at his MIT office. We discussed many aspects of activism including how he felt activists and progressives should approach...
Did you ever stop to consider that the wild and hairy anarchists of the Earth First! Movement are really just a bunch of death cult Illuminati in cahoots with big government, Time magazine, the Shriners and um, aliens and lizard people and shit? Yeah, we didn’t either. But now, after watching this video “Earth First! Death Cult” from Infowars.com, an Alex Jones...
“Democracy has been kidnapped. On 25 September we are going to save it.” ~Occupy Congress Everything you see in the video was organized through social media. A few facts: Tens of thousands of protesters Unemployment in Spain is nearly 25% At least 1,300 police were on hand to handle the protest Leaders of protests outside of parliament can be jailed up to one year...
Editors Note: This document was loosely translated from Spanish, so you can expect the translation will be a bit off in parts Manifesto #25s surround the Congress We, ordinary people are fed up to live with the consequences of a system conditioned by and forced to adapt itself to the markets, which is in every respect insupportable, and has led us to be victims of a large scale...