Category: September 2017

The Silencing of Dissent

CHRIS HEDGES – The ruling elites, who grasp that the reigning ideology of global corporate capitalism and imperial expansion no longer has moral or intellectual credibility, have mounted a campaign to shut down the platforms given to their critics. The attacks within this campaign include blacklisting, censorship and slandering dissidents as foreign agents for Russia and purveyors of “fake news.”

Communities Prepare to Fight Fracked Gas Pipeline

PRESS RELEASE FROM ROGUE CLIMATE – Landowners, Tribes, and community groups are ready to stop the proposed Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline and Jordan Cove LNG export terminal terminal for the third time in 12 years, following yesterday’s announcement by Veresen Inc. that it has filed its permit application for the project with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

Trump at the UN: “Wrong Speech, at the Wrong Time, to the Wrong Audience”

PATRICK T. HILLER – “It was the wrong speech, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience,” Swedish foreign Minister Margot Wallström expressed about what global and U.S. audiences helplessly had to endure during President Donald Trump’s September 19, 2017 address to the United Nations General Assembly. President Trump acted like a bully, but unaware that he showed up at the wrong playground.

Anti-Pipeline Activists across the Country Unite to #StopETP

BRANDON JORDAN – The company behind the Dakota Access pipeline and many other damaging fossil fuel projects — Energy Transfer Partners — was the focus of nearly 20 actions spanning 10 U.S. states last week. The #StopETP protests, which took place on Friday and Saturday, included a flotilla on a Louisiana bayou, a blockade of pipeline construction equipment in Pennsylvania and a demonstration outside the Texas home of CEO Kelcy Warren.

10 Ways Shame & Blame Hurts Social Justice Efforts

VANISSAR TARAKALI – We have all experienced it. We have inflicted it on ourselves or others. Subtle and not-so-subtle shaming, blaming and self-righteous ostracizing undermine social justice work. But let’s say our community or social justice group decides to take these habitual shame and blame pitfalls seriously. Changing old habits is possible when we are focused and persistent. With that in mind, what can we do?

Impacts of Trump & Paxton’s Policies: “U.S. Might Not Have Enough Construction Workers to Rebuild”

PRESS RELEASE FROM AMERICA’S VOICE : TEXAS – As Hurricane Harvey’s destruction and devastation continues across Texas and Louisiana, key elected, community, and thought leaders are looking towards the next step: rebuilding. Daniel Gross of Slate reports that Trump’s harsh and un-American immigration policies may have an unintended consequence – hampering construction efforts in the aftermath of Harvey.

Mass Civil Disobedience Campaign Obstructs One of Europe’s Largest Polluters

SARA FREEMAN-WOOLPERT – Red and yellow circus tents rose over the Rhineland farmland of western Germany last weekend, as over 6,000 climate justice activists converged for a series of action days to protest coal mining in the region. This included a mass civil disobedience campaign called Ende Gelände (or Here and No Further), in which 3,000 participants illegally obstructed the coal mining infrastructure on Friday and Saturday.

Sleeping Near a Forest Fire

JENNIFER HOFMANN – It isn’t exactly the kind of situation you go looking for, pitching your tent mere miles from a forest inferno, sleeping on the ground zipped up into a sleeping bag. But it [is] exactly what is happening in America right now. On the precipice of danger, finding a way to live.

‘There must be another way’: Israeli 19-year-old Jailed for Refusing Military Service

BETHAN MCKERNAN – ‘I do not believe in building walls but building bridges,’ pacifist Noa Gur Golan says in rare case of IDF draft refusal. “When I was little, I dreamt of being an IDF war pilot,” says 19-year-old Noa Gur Golan. Now, however, the teenager is sitting in Military Prison 396 near Haifa. She’s been branded a traitor and a coward. It’s not clear when she is going to be released, because she’s being detained for refusing to do her military service with the Israel Defence Force (IDF).