Heartland Institute Compares Belief in Global Warming to Mass Murder
Leo Hickman reports in the Guardian:
It really is hard to know where to begin with this one. But let’s start with: “What on earth were they thinking?”
The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based rightwing thinktank notorious for promoting climate scepticism, has launched quite possibly one of the most ill-judged poster campaigns in the history of ill-judged poster campaigns.
I’ll let its own press release for its upcoming conference explain, as there’s simply no need to finesse it further:
Billboards in Chicago paid for by The Heartland Institute point out that some of the world’s most notorious criminals say they “still believe in global warming” – and ask viewers if they do, too…The billboard series features Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber; Charles Manson, a mass murderer; and Fidel Castro, a tyrant. Other global warming alarmists who may appear on future billboards include Osama bin Laden and James J. Lee (who took hostages inside the headquarters of…
“Stop Fucking With the Soy”: Anti-Monsanto Activist Faced Anonymous Death Threats
Lucia Graves writes at the Huffington Post:
For 13 years Sofia Gatica has organized opposition to the aerial spraying of agrochemicals that threaten human health and the environment in Argentina — and for almost as long, she and her children have faced physical threats from anonymous agents.
Gatica, who lives in a working-class neighborhood of 6,000 in central Argentina surrounded by soy fields, began organizing against Monsanto after she noticed a disturbingly high rate of cancer and birth defects in her community. Her own 3-day-old daughter died of kidney failure in 1999, and a neighbor had a baby die of the same uncommon birth defect.
“I started seeing children with mouth covers, mothers with scarves wrapped around their heads to cover their baldness, due to chemotherapy,” she told Grist in an interview, explaining what inspired her to co-found Mothers of Ituzaingó. The efforts of those half-dozen mothers, who began going from door to door…
Provocateur Unmasked: The FBI’s Cleveland Bridge Bomb Plot Informant
Via Common Dreams:
The attorney of one of the five men charged in connection with an alleged plot to blow up a northeast Ohio bridge has revealed the identity of the provocateur/informant hired by the FBI to infiltrate Occupy Cleveland.
John Pyle, the Cleveland attorney representing suspect Brandon Baxter, said that the informant working with the group was Shaquille Azir, 39.
A federal grand jury issued three-count indictments against the five self-proclaimed anarchists. All five face identical charges: one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction to destroy property used in interstate commerce, one count of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction to destroy property used in interstate commerce and one count of attempted use of an explosive device to damage or destroy real property used in interstate commerce. The maximum punishment is life in prison.
The FBI affidavit can be read here.
A Handy Guide To Crowd-Control Weapons
Assuming you made it through May Day without injuries, Vice UK has a preview of the most common weapons coming soon to a riot near you:
We spoke to buddies of ours in Germany, Egypt and Israel/Palestine to get the lowdown on the weapons that British police may soon be using to pour cold water on your righteous and burning fury.
The backbone in every self-respecting riot control arsenal, tear gas, makes you cry like a baby and stops you from breathing effectively so that you think you’re going to die. Advertised as non-lethal, Sarit Michaeli, spokeswoman from the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, claims otherwise: “Vulnerable people, like the elderly, children and people with respiratory problems, can be hurt and killed by tear gas.”
[Regarding rubber bullets], “Calling them rubber bullets is quite ridiculous,” says Sarit. “They’re not made of rubber, they’re metal covered with rubber or plastic. If you’re far away enough…
A Photographic Recap Of May Day In NYC
Impose Magazine’s Gretchen Robinette has a very thorough photo treatment of yesterday’s May Day activities in lower and mid-Manhattan. Parks and major thoroughfares such as Broadway north of Union Square were filled with protesters and celebrators who were busy marching and listening to lectures, teach-ins, and musical performances, culminating in a 5:30pm march to Wall Street. In the process, familiar spaces around the city were completely transformed, at least for a little while.
“Cognitive Infiltration” of Conspiracy Groups: White House Official Cass Sunstein Confronted (Video)
Via We Are Change:
“I may agree with some of the things I’ve written, but I’m not exactly sure. I’m just going to do what my boss wants me to do.” —Cass Sunstein
In a rare public appearance, Obama administration official Cass Sunstein gave a lecture at NYU Law School, prompting Luke Rudkowski of We Are Change to attend. Watch as Luke confronts Sunstein multiple times on an academic paper he co-authored back in 2008 entitled “Conspiracy Theories” in which he called for cognitive infiltration of conspiracy groups by the government.
What Is Money, How Is It Created, And What Are The Consequences?
When money drives almost all activity on the planet, it’s essential that we understand it. Yet simple questions often get overlooked, questions like: Where does money come from? Who creates it? Who decides how it gets used? And what does this mean for the millions of ordinary people who suffer when the monetary, and financial system, breaks down? We have yet to see an election fought on these grounds and as political philosopher John Gray, commented, “We’re not moving to a world in which crises will never happen or will happen less and less. We are in a world in which they happen several times during a given human lifetime and I think that will continue to be the case”
People are waking up to this fact: the Occupy movement and the European indignados have erupted as a response to the current status quo. The media and ‘myth makers’, however, have found it much to easy to pigeonhole these movements into a “spiritual malaise” that provides no meaning or direction for our modern world. This is the response expected from a dominant neo-conservative economical world. This ever-adaptive financial system has been as such for centuries and those who can control it see no reason to steer a course elsewhere. Indeed the economics of emancipation can impart to us an interesting insight to the cyclical and prevailing nature of this economic paradigm…
Blind Chinese Activist Escapes House Arrest
He slipped past 100 security guards, scaled a wall and swam across a river to freedom. Reports Olivia Katrandjian on ABC News:
The U.S. State Department is being tight-lipped on the whereabouts of blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who escaped house arrest last week, but the organization that helped him escape says he’s in the hands of U.S. diplomats.
Chen, a 40-year-old human rights activist who has campaigned for disabled rights and against forced abortions, scaled a wall and slipped past around 100 security guards surrounding his house. Bob Fu, the founder and president of ChinaAid, which aided Chen in his getaway, called the escape an “extraordinary adventure.”
“He walked for hours from his own home in the middle of the night. He was wounded, wet, covered in mud. He swam across a river,” Fu told ABC News. Chen was picked up by supporters and driven to Beijing on April 23. Several friends…
Banks Cooperating With Each Other and Police to Track Occupy Protesters
Max Abelson reports in the San Francisco Chronicle:
The world’s biggest banks are working with one another and police to gather intelligence as protesters try to rejuvenate the Occupy Wall Street movement with May demonstrations, industry security consultants aid.
Among 99 protest targets in midtown Manhattan on Tuesday are JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America offices, said Marisa Holmes, a member of Occupy’s May Day planning committee.
Events are scheduled in more than 115 cities, including an effort to shut down the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, where Wells Fargo investors relied on police to get past protests at their annual meeting this week. “Our goal is to kick off the spring offensive and go directly to where the financial elite play and plan,” she said.
After evictions and arrests from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to London that began last year, the movement against income inequality and corporate abuse will regain strength, said Brian…
Always Appreciate The Stranger Who Is There For You
Via We Are Change:
Last year while I was traveling through Europe blindly, not knowing a single person or where I would stay, amazing strangers opened up their homes and lives to me in beautiful acts of kindness. The most memorable of strangers was French activist and We Are Change Paris member Joel Boujassy.
“National Geographic”-Type Expose on NYPD’s Finest: “The Lombardo”
Via We Are Change:
The main objective of this piece is to hopefully make you and also Officer Lombardo laugh. To only make him aware of his actions and hopefully ease tensions next time he is at Occupy Wall Street. We mean no harm against Lombardo and don’t condone any hateful actions or remarks.
Narration by Matt of We Are Change
Drones for Domestic Surveillance (Video)
Via RT America:
In January of 2012, the US Congress passed legislation that will open up the US sky to unmanned drones. The robotic aircraft will be used for military and police operations and will add to America’s current arsenal of around 7,000 drones. According to some accounts, peaceful protest might be a reason that feds would deploy the unmanned craft. There are currently 300 active drone permits in the US, but will that soon swell out of control? Amie Stepanovich, a member of the National Security Council for EPIC, joins us for more.
“If I Wanted America to Fail” (Video)
Pretty clever move from Americans for Limited Government to premiere this campaign on Earth Day and claim Twitter suspended their account:
Are You ‘Spring Training’ For May Day?
Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.When the World’s Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life—not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.—Walter Crane, The Workers’ Maypole (1894)
When you hear the term “spring training,” most of us think baseball, but, this year, it has a different context because the Occupy Movement has appropriated the term to describe educating and preparing activists for nationwide protests and a hoped for General Strike slated for May Day 2012, this May 1st.
The idea of “spring” may be more connected to the “Arab Spring,” a time of revolt than the season we’ve entered.
Can this relatively new movement pull off an ambitious General Strike to shut down a city like New York? In many ways, the success of this tactic…
From Kettles To Courtrooms: Authorities’ Backlash Against Protest
Via Red Pepper, Nina Power on the ominous crackdown on our right to protest:
For every uprising, protest and political action there is an unequal and oppressive reaction. 2011 may have been ‘the year of the protester’, as even mainstream magazines such as Time acknowledged, but it also saw severe policing tactics, serious criminal charges and heavy sentences for those taking part in demos and other direct actions.
The past few months have seen students and other protesters charged with major offences – particularly ‘violent disorder’, which carries with it a maximum five-year sentence. Many people, often in their teens and early twenties, have faced crown court trials and been sent to jail for the flimsiest of reasons – throwing a lightweight placard stick, for example – and their lives have been seriously compromised by the stress and humiliation of a trial and the shock of prison. At the same time, policing…
Occupy Protesters Attempt To Crash Wells Fargo Shareholder Meeting in San Francisco
The police are ready for this. Good luck. Reports the AP via the Washington Post:
Police were guarding the entrance to the annual meeting of Wells Fargo shareholders on Tuesday as protesters associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement geared up to crash the gathering.
Dozens of officers were stationed around the Merchant’s Exchange Building in the city’s Financial District in advance of the 1 p.m. meeting. Bank stockholders were asked to show certificates or other proof of ownership before being corralled past gates erected in front of the doors.
Many of the early arrivals represented community groups from across the country that purchased Wells Fargo stock so they would have a say in the bank’s practices.
Shareholder Mark Richmond, a 59-year-old Portland member of the group We Are Oregon, said he hoped he could voice his concerns specifically about predatory lending and home foreclosures. He said he expected some raucousness inside and outside the meeting.
Quebec Students Protest Against Austerity
Karen Seidman and Kevin Dougherty write on the Montreal Gazette:
Attempts to have any kind of normalcy on the campus of the Universite de Montreal in the wake of an ongoing student strike completely unravelled on Wednesday after the administration was forced to retreat on its efforts to provide classes in striking departments for students who don’t support the boycott.
Tensions were high not just at U de M, but on many Quebec campuses, where there were clashes as students resisted hardline tactics to try to force them back to class during the tenth week of their protest over tuition increases of $1,625 over five years.
Injunctions taken by university administrations backfired as students found increasingly violent and disruptive ways to ensure campus activities could not resume, such as broken windows, vandalized art work and fire alarms going off during exams at U de M.
And, as many different groups involved in the dispute…
The Reality That ‘KONY 2012′ Missed
Very compelling read from Jakob Schiller on WIRED’s Raw File below. (Also, worth reading this Washington Post article if you have not come across it):
The video calling for a national campaign to raise awareness about Joseph Kony, the International Criminal Court’s #1 most-wanted warlord, has been viewed more than 100 million times since it was published on March 5. The day of action it calls for is tomorrow, April 20. While most people agree that Kony should be brought to justice for his crimes against the Ugandan people and children, the video has come under criticism for oversimplifications that could actually do harm to the people it aims to help.
For photographer Glenna Gordon, the inaccuracies were particularly shocking because she had spent two years in Uganda as a stringer for the Associated Press and knew that the facts on the ground were much different than what was portrayed. Not only is Kony no…
Portland Man Strips Naked To Protest TSA Search
Reports Cheryl Calm on KING 5 News:
Frequent flying businessman John Brennan set off an explosives wand at Portland International Airport Tuesday and stripped naked to show TSA screeners he was not carrying a bomb.
John Brennan stripped off his clothes at the TSA security station and stood there naked, as waiting passengers and their families looked on, took photos or looked away.
Brennan said as he left jail Tuesday night that removing all his clothes was not premeditated. The frequent traveler who had heard of many TSA issues while on prior business travels was just fed up as he set off the detector at PDX.
“And the machine went off, and I asked what it was and he said ‘nitrates’ which I know from Oklahoma City is one of the explosive ingredients,” said Brennan, “and I was not interested in being hassled so I took off my clothes to show them I was not carrying any explosives.”
