We are here. Arguably, we will see peak oil, peak water, peak biodiversity, peak everything. We *can* see the debacle, and we *can* afford to do something about it. The debate is: what?
International peacekeepers remained relatively dormant and gridlocked this year, and Syria is in the thick of civil war, now.
The internet was shut down yesterday; it is believed the government did it to stymie rebel group communications. I have no idea how long this will last. The Guardian article i've linked to also suggests that nearby airlines are ceasing inbound flights.
I am told that this is one of the last videos to surface on YouTube before the communications were cut, published November 29th. I believe it depicts Damascus---- the city is in ruin, and men are gathering in the streets to gather the injured children and other civilians from the rubble scattered everywhere around them. It is devastating footage, and one can bet that its tragedy is mirrored in many other videos that won't be uploaded any time soon.
WARNING: INCREDIBLY GRAPHIC
May the violence end its tyranny over the people, May peace come soon.
This is a re-post from Mother Nature Network, demonstrating the potential to make clean, high-efficiency synthetic petroleum, through a process that is rather different from the synthetic crude we're facing here in the USA--- from an irreparably devastating tar sands extraction process wrecking large areas of wild habitat to play around in the sand with big dump-trucks and create toxic tailing-ponds that are leaking by the millions-of-gallons-a-day into the local waterways that provided fish and fresh-water to the indigenous people downstream for generations. It's a vast understatement to say these people have been marginalized and their land polluted.
While Alberta, Canada continues clear cutting a forest the size of Britain, a British scientist is meanwhile working to bring his brilliant work to an industrial scale by 2015, to address the dire need to meet energy needs without exacerbating the climate crisis.
Can you see all the un-met potential we are bypassing by choosing to rely on "bigger is better" dirty fuel mega-corporations for our solutions, in the name of energy "independence" and "security"?
It's folly. Their bottom line is nothing but profit. Revolutionary clean technologies will be filed away under "uneconomical".
There are cheaper, cleaner, better fuel solutions all around us--- in our McDonald's grease, in our AIR for crying out loud---but America, and much of the world beside us, is in too big of a hurried petrol-political Chinese checkers game to see any of it.
To Ms. Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC,
And,
To the participants and attendees of "The 18th session of the Conference of the Parties" (COP18) and "The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change" (UNFCCC)) in Doha, Qatar:
An appeal aimed at electrifying 600 schools, in poor, rural areas of the least developed countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with solar power.
As a sign of good will! We the undersigned, heartily appeal to you to endorse the goal of our petition, which is aimed at electrifying 600 schools in poor, rural areas of Africa, Asia and Latin America, with solar power. Our cost estimation for 600 units of the 30kw/h Off Grid Solar PV System, is about 30 million dollars.
We explain, herewith, our motives to launch this petition as follows:
First, climate change aggravates the already dire living conditions of the people in these areas and manifests itself as a catastrophe, which we believe should be dealt with accordingly. In other words, direct, drastic measures should be taken, and should not be entrusted to routine national develepment schemes.
Second, we believe, electrifying schools in these areas would serve as a starting point for a holistic approach to address crucial issues such as, health care (e.g. solar water pasteurization; portable solar units for midwives), combating illiteracy, food security through trickle irrigation, and a work-based route to teach skills in the field of solar and renewable energy.
Furthermore, we cherish the hope, that these schools will serve as "contact points" for these communities and thus connect them with their fellow humans all over the world. In this way, a new channel would be created through which solidarity activites, assistance, and participation from individuals, NGOs and other organizations can flow.
Third, for overseeing the implementation of this initiative, we suggest a body composed of representatives from UN organizations (UNICEF, WHO, UNESCO, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food), as well as representatives from NGOs and Civil Society Organizations, in order to guarantee direct, transparent, and fair impelmentation. This body, acting as "legal representative", should set a name and a bank account for the program.
What better Chrismas and New Year greeting card, could we send to these communities?
Thank you, we remain humbly and sincerely at your service, YOUR NAME HERE
Gasland was a documentary released in the summer of 2010 that showed amazing footage of many, many, many people lighting their faucets' tap water on fire. Fox's take on the situation is that this was linked to the increased use of industrial hydro-fracturing practices in the natural gas industry.
It seems this video is a follow-up: the debate, the science, the lobbied cover-up since then.
Turns out the industry also occasionally and very-recently-in-Pennsylvania dumps chemicals and known carcinogens straight into the water. And then paints some gas rig pink to celebrate the fight against breast cancer...
All this right as New York gets hit by Sandy and threatened to get fracked to hell.
Check out this GREAT NEWS from Ric O'Barry--- the man behind the training of many-a Flipper dolphin, and the spearheading of the fantastic documentary, "The Cove". Working hard daily to stop dolphin killings funded by humans' food and entertainment consumption, Ric is the head of the Dolphin Project, monitoring the cove in Taiji, Japan, where the killings take place.
This weekend, more than 70 people, predominantly from Japan, held the first ever public protest against these government-backed practices. With little cultural history of public protesting it's not easy to stand up and say your peace in Japan, and these activists were very brave to do so.
Photos by Save Japan Dolphins volunteer Cove Monitor Yoav Ben-Shushan
A little over a month ago, I had the real pleasure and honor of meeting Janine Boneparth and helping her get to a medical care center after her involvement with the second mass-action of the Tar Sands Blockade, an organization launched in a sustained non-violent direct action campaign to stop the Keystone XL. Why? Because while it is barely ever stated in press or politics, the "keystone" to this pipeline's market purpose is to carry oil sands dilbit (i.e. tar sands) from a "carbon bomb" development project on previously-forested, indigenous lands in Alberta, Canada--------- all the way across America to refinery communities in the Gulf of Mexico that already suffer high rates of severe health problems linked to petro-pollution. Let's not get into the "What if it spills?" quite yet.
Janine volunteered to be arrested in the fight against these climate and social injustices. A veteran peace activist, and member of Code Pink, Janine is most "known" in a media sense of the word for her dashing attempt to put Karl Rove into a civilian arrest for treason. She also has got quite a bit of environmentalist street-cred, having worked for years in Africa with Wangari Maathai-- the first African woman and the first environmentalist to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Her luck with crooks and handcuffs has not quite improved, though. Janine was attempting to lock down to a piece of heavy machinery on the Keystone XL easement in Winnsboro, TX-- not too far from where the Tar Sands Blockade has had a tree-sit blockade up for more than two months now.
I say "blockade", but the reality of it is that TransCanada/Keystone has used many methods to gain privilege to bulldoze exactly around it, as forced and quickly as possible. This includes hiring a slew of off-duty local cops to work as "private security" to patrol the easement by daylight, campfire, flashlight and flood-light. All the while without identification and with the aid of their government-issued equipment and authority. Corporate/cop collusion is highly questionable, though of course they've already told the press otherwise. I'd start talking about TransCanada's "legal" bullying, but I really can't.
*****
IMPORTANT SIDE-NOTE: If you're wondering "Isn't the KXL still waiting approval by Obama? Why is this happening?"--- it's because TransCanada's subsidiary company, "Keystone", has made the, in my opinion slippery, move of re-classifying this as the "Gulf Coast Expansion Project" (with a side-wink from Obama ;) to bypass the still-pending State Department approval... even though the pipe still has "Keystone XL" stamped right on it.
*****
In Janine's involvement, a man in a typical construction outfit, claiming to be a cop, jumped at her and wrestled with her in an attempt to stop her from tying in to her lock-down device.
She was determined to stop construction on this disguised tar sands development project for at least a morning, and kept trying to lock down because there were no obvious indicators that this man twisting her arm forcefully wasn't more than a bluffing and aggressive construction worker.
However, she was not able to accomplish her objective, and after a long wait and conversation with the private-security as more cops came, Janine walked away with the local sheriffs en route to the county jail, frustrated and covered in mud.
We first met upon her release from jail.
Bruises and swelling were already forming, and Janine was clearly in pain. It was a few hours before she was able to make it to an open health clinic. The doctor was absolutely appalled by the state of her arm, and he called in others at the clinic to see it because he just couldn't believe this had been done by a policeman.
The doctor determined that no bones were broken, but Janine's rotator cuff had been strained. Her wrist was also quite painful. I tried my best to photo-document how her bruises looked by the following night:
no breakage, but a lot of pain and a sizable bruise
bruising throughout this whole left side of her hand
Police responses in other counties in the weeks following Janine's encounter include:
Using cherry-pickers to remove two additional tree-sits further south, attempting to impose the costs of the cherry-picker on the protestors in trumped up felony charges, withholding personal property, shaking and cutting support lines for occupied tree-sit platforms, using flood lights to wait out subsequently stranded tree-sitters, arresting the Green Party presidential candidate for bringing food and halloween treats to the Winnsboro tree-sitters, using pepper spray on the skin and eyes of people locked down to machines, pepper spraying with little warning into the faces of protesters attempting to block the path of a truck carrying a cherry-picker --- the driver would not stop until he hit one protester and almost dragged him under the truck ---, and strip-searching and aggressively handling protesters after their arrests.
It's an ugly, aggressive picture. Meanwhile, Keystone's contract workers continue to bulldoze a landowner's biofuel crops in the name of "crude oil" and "energy independence". The pipe will soon be in the ground, tracing smugly around the Winnsboro tree-sit blockade, but the non-violent direct action will continue all along the pipe route for this "Gulf Expansion Project"--- until it is stopped or every motivated individual in its way is stopped. I don't know what else to say besides: it's a matter of peace, love and justice.
