Stop the #Keystone Pipeline #PDX PROTEST DATE/TIME: Nov. 6th, 2PM The Alberta Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline: “Game Over for the Planet” (Dr. James Hansen, top U.S. climatologist). The Keystone XL would take the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet from northern Alberta 1,700 miles to the Texas Gulf Coast, for export to China and worldwide. Key Facts: (see - Energy Security: Tar Sands will not Reduce Dependence on Foreign Oil - Gas prices: Keystone XL will increase gas prices for Americans—Especially Farmers - Jobs: TransCanada’s jobs projections are vastly inflated. - Safety: A rupture in the Keystone XL pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 2 million people. - Climate Change: Keystone XL is the fuse to North America’s biggest carbon bomb. ————————————– A description by Lowell Greenberg, arrested August 31 at the Tar Sands Action civil disobedience at the White House: Dr. Mission
Federal Court Rules Videotaping Police Is A First Amendment Right | PFPM The Federal Appeals Court has ruled that video recording the police in a public place is a constitutional right for all U.S. citizens. This is a great win for the freedom movement. Public officials need to be held accountable for their actions. See ruling below. Plaintiff, Appellee, v. JOHN CUNNIFFE, in his individual capacity; PETER J. Defendants, Appellants. [Hon. Before Torruella, Lipez, and Howard, Circuit Judges. Ian D. David Milton, with whom Howard Friedman, Law Offices of Howard Friedman, P.C., Sarah Wunsch, and ACLU of Massachusettswere on brief, for appellee. Anjana Samant and Center for Constitutional Rights on brief for Berkeley Copwatch, Communities United Against Police Brutality, Justice Committee, Milwaukee Police Accountability Coalition, Nodutdol for Korean Community Development, and Portland Copwatch, amici curiae. LIPEZ, Circuit Judge. After placing the suspect in handcuffs, one of the officers turned to Glik and said, “I think you have taken enough pictures.” A. 1. 2. B.
BSEE Homepage | BSEE Is Ecocide a Crime? From TIME contributor Joe Jackson: As oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig in May 2010, and then CEO Tony Hayward made his infamous statement that he wanted his life back, he likely had little fear of it being taken in a court of law. But that reality could be changing as a movement to make business executives and political leaders legally accountable for environmental destruction gains global momentum. Campaigners are calling for the introduction of a new internationalized law of ecocide – the mass destruction of ecosystems – that would be on a par with genocide and similar crimes against humanity. In late September the Hamilton Group – an NGO promoting sustainable development – staged a mock trial at the U.K.’s Supreme Court. “We took it very seriously,” says jury foreman Huw Spanner, a 51-year-old writer and editor. More from TIME: How to Clean Up the Mess “It wasn’t clear exactly where the borderlines of ecocide were,” explains Spanner.
Radley Balko: “Once a town gets a SWAT team you want to use it” Radley Balko’s new book, “Rise of the Warrior Cop,” details how America’s police forces have grown to look and behave more like soldiers than neighborly Officer Krupkes walking the beat. This new breed of police, frequently equipped with military weapons and decked out in enough armor to satisfy a storm trooper, are redefining law enforcement. How did this happen? Once you have a SWAT team the only thing to do is kick some ass. This problem defies the usual conservative vs. liberal calculus. Few of us encounter the warrior cop phenomenon. There are several levels of militarization. Beyond that, you have a military or soldier mind-set, and that, I think, goes beyond the SWAT team. So when you arm a cop like a soldier, when you dress ‘em like a soldier, when you tell ‘em to fight in a war and then send ‘em out into a neighborhood that he has no stake in and doesn’t consider himself a part of, you get a very antagonistic, us-versus-them relationship between the officer and that community.
Bureau of Reclamation Homepage UK activists surround miniature White House as pipeline protests go global | No Tar Sands Rise Up from Nancy Boulicault on Vimeo. Sunday 6th November – For immediate release Activists outside the US Embassy in London surrounded a model of the White House to protest against the proposed US Keystone XL pipeline. Holding banners that read “Obama NO!” “The Keystone XL pipeline would entrench our reliance on a particularly dirty fossil fuel which is devastating communities,” said UK Tar Sands Network campaigner Suzanne Dhaliwal. The Keystone XL pipeline has faced a raft of opposition in the US from a variety of fronts, with climate activists, farmers, First Nations and even the government of Nebraska, all coming together to persuade Obama to reject the pipeline. [3] In August and September, a series of protests outside the White House resulted in 1,253 arrests and has seen the issue flooding the media. [4] The likely environmental impacts of the pipeline have been vastly downplayed. The US pipeline decision comes at a time when the EU is also considering the future of tar sands.
Clean Energy President Embraces Dirty, Dangerous, and Expensive Future One can’t help but feel that Obama is still of a mind to go ahead and OK this dangerous and much-derided plan [the Keystone XL pipline], it is just the Obama 2012 campaign that’s agonizing over how to spin it. Back in 2008, Obama the candidate seemed to understand the threat posed by global warming, and he spoke often of moving away from carbon-heavy fuel sources like tar sands. Now, a good part of what is considered the president’s “base,” it seems, understands that the transcontinental pipeline is not only a danger to farmlands and aquifers, but also a betrayal of a campaign promise. Don’t think this is the dynamic at play? Look at recent administration boasts about such “green” initiatives as raising the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, or just read Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt in the abovementioned Reuters story: “The president has done more to wean us off of foreign oil and transition the nation to a clean energy economy than any other,” he said. Almost.