Press Action

Friday, July 30, 2010

Open the Cages Conference 2010

Mark your calendar for an evening of music, speakers, vegan food and fun! Open the Cages Alliance presents a conference and benefit for animal and earth liberation prisoners! There will be a silent auction and a raffle, and this event will benefit activists imprisoned for fighting for animals and our planet.

Performers will include Masakari, Peregrine and “Aware and Outraged” Ron Kipling Williams. Speakers will include Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry, Darius Fullmer from the SHAC 7 (and Sea Shepherd crew), Will Potter of GreenIsTheNewRed.com, the Black and Green Network co-founder Kevin Tucker, and author Dara Lovitz. Dara will be signing and selling copies of her book Muzzling A Movement.

When: Saturday August 14, 4 p.m.-10 p.m.

Where: St. Stephens Church, 1525 Newton Street NW (corner of 16th and Newton), Washington, DC

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Comments (0) | Posted on 07/30.

WikiLeaks vs. The Death Machine

It’s a very strange and maddening world in which two men responsible for the deaths of thousands of people can cast blame on others for leaking information about their vicious actions. Yesterday, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, made comments to the news media about WikiLeaks’ release of information related to the U.S. assault on Afghanistan. When Mullen said WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and WikiLeaks’ source for the documents “might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” I assume the press corps covering the press event burst into wild laughter over such an absurd and obscene comment. But I’ve watched some video of the comments by Mullen and Gates, and I couldn’t detect any gasps or guffaws coming from the media contingent.

What happened yesterday at the Pentagon would be comparable to former BP CEO Tony Hayward holding a press conference following the blowout of the Gulf of Mexico well, as the gallons of oil were gushing forth, and then proclaiming the real environmental villains are the motorists who let gasoline spill when topping off their tanks at their local service station. Actually, that’s a bad analogy because motorists should avoid spillage when filling up, and, actually, should eschew driving cars altogether. What WikiLeaks and its source(s) did is heroic. There’s nothing heroic about letting gasoline spill on your shoes when pumping gas.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 07/30.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Animal Liberation and the Threat of a Good Example

Review of Muzzling A Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money & Politics on Animal Activism by Dara Lovitz (Lantern Books, 174 pages, 2010).

You have the right to free
speech as long as you’re not
dumb enough to actually try it.

The Clash, “Know Your Rights”

The animal liberation movement is feeling the sting of its own success. Corporations and their guardians in government got annoyed when animal advocates started making waves in the 1990s that touched the bottom line of the animal exploitation industry.

Annoyance evolved into anger in the decade that followed. The government’s preoccupation with the animal liberation movement became a full-fledged crackdown. To its credit, the movement hasn’t gone into hibernation. The government’s unconditional support for the animal exploitation industry may in fact spawn a more determined yet shrewd animal liberation movement.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 07/25.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Dennis Kucinich Calls for Reconciliation with Nature

Rep. Dennis Kucinich gave a keynote speech last Friday at the Animal Rights 2010 national conference with a message you’ll never hear from another member of Congress. In fact, his comments on our economic system were so quintessentially radical that you’re unlikely to hear the same words spoken by most pundits on the Left or even many people sympathetic to the cause of nonhuman animals and the environment.

Dennis Kucinich on animals, the environment and economic transformation from Press Action on Vimeo.

“The central challenge of our times is to effect a reconciliation with nature,” Kucinich told the audience gathered in a hotel ballroom in Alexandria Va. What is Kucinich’s solution? This is where it gets exciting.

Kucinich, who is vegan, called for an economic transformation away from exploitation of the earth and animals. “The schism between mankind and the natural world has become so pronounced in the 20th and 21st centuries,” he said, citing endless mining, the destruction of natural habitats, broad-based animal experimentation and other pernicious activities that emerged in conjunction with the industrial age.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 07/19.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Self Defense for Radicals: Collective Soul + Activist Heart

By Mickey Z.

In his book, Climate Wars: The Fight for Survival as the World Overheats, author Gwynne Dyer presents a series of scenarios that could potentially play out (soon) as climate change advances, e.g. several million dying in cyclones and floods in Bangladesh, the US building a mined fence to stop “climate refugees” from the South, tens of millions of Chinese dead in droughts…and then things get truly catastrophic.

Such so-called “gloom and doom” is often greeted with either denial or mockery but staring dead-on into the reality we’ve all helped create is the first step in the following outline for personal, intellectual, and global self-defense.

1. Accept our role

* We’re not victims (remember: victims are helpless) but we are volunteers. Due to our compliance and/or silence and/or inaction, we’ve played a role in bringing our culture to the brink of social, economic, and environmental collapse.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 07/14.

Monday, June 14, 2010

When Will Direct Action Blossom?

By Mickey Z.

Anais Nin sez: “There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

I think of her words when I consider this question: How much more are we willing to tolerate before we take direct action? For those of you scoring at home, here is just a small taste of what we’re already enduring without any serious fuss:

§ Epidemics of preventable diseases: cancer, heart disease, diabetes, etc.

§ Poisoning of our air, water, and food (including breast milk)

§ Global warming, climate change, disappearing honeybees, destruction of the rain forest, topsoil depletion, ocean acidification, overfishing, etc.

§ One-third of Americans are uninsured or underinsured in terms of health care

§ More than half of the world’s top 100 economies are not nations; they’re corporations

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Comments (0) | Posted on 06/14.

No Accident: BP, Murder and the Gulf of Mexico

By Derrick Jensen

The murder of the Gulf of Mexico by BP shouldn’t surprise us. It is precisely what industrial capitalism does. Years ago I wrote of the catastrophe in Bhopal: when you intentionally fabricate bulk industrial chemicals, many of which are toxic, it should not qualify as an accident when some of these chemicals kill people. Likewise, the spill in the Gulf should not be considered an accident. There are 10,000 oil spills per year. Oil has devastated the Amazon. It has devastated the Niger Delta. It has devastated the Gulf of Mexico.

Likewise, after the catastrophe at Bhopal, it was discovered that there was no antidote for the poison. One advocate for the victims noted sensibly: “No one should be allowed to make poisons for which there is no antidote.” The same is true for the other destructive activities of this culture.

And corporations will not voluntarily rein themselves in. Limited liability corporations exist in order to limit liability. Their function is to privatize profits and to externalize costs.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 06/14.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

James Howard Kunstler on NYC's Newest Skyscrapers

Inspired by David Owen’s book Green Metropolis, James Howard Kunstler examines the idea of Manhattan as a “green” city. Kunstler believes that, during his lifetime, New York has never been in as good shape as it is now. But he also thinks it will never be in as good shape again. Financial and energy problems in the future may turn our newest skyscrapers into one-generation buildings, outlandish monuments built during the twilight of an empire. “This stuff has hubris written all over it,” he says. Of all the boroughs, Kunstler thinks Brooklyn may fare the best because of its higher quality urban fabric.

Aside from architecture, Kunstler addresses his second favorite topic: energy. For example, he argues shale gas, the “rescue remedy du jour,” won’t save the US from fossil fuel depletion, despite industry forecasts of an almost endless supply of natural gas from the mega-shale plays: Barnett, Haynesville and Marcellus as well as shale plays in northeastern British Columbia.

Click here to listen to KunstlerCast #85.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 06/03.

Monday, May 31, 2010

Murder on the High Seas

Protesting Israel’s Massacre of Activists on the High Seas from Press Action on Vimeo.

Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on May 31, 2010, to protest Israel’s lethal attack earlier in the day on a ship carrying activists and humanitarian goods to Gaza.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/31.

Israel Acting Like a 'Caged Animal'

Hundreds of people gathered in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., on May, 31, 2010, to protest Israel’s lethal attack earlier in the day on a ship carrying activists and humanitarian goods to the Gaza Strip. Josh Ruebner, national advocacy director of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, spoke to Press Action about Israel’s intentions and how the atrocity could impact Israel’s standing in the world community.

Josh Ruebner on Israel’s Growing Desperation from Press Action on Vimeo.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/31.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Delusions of Density

“The green metropolis concept is a contradiction in terms, because mega-cities like New York are hypertrophic—they have become too big to operate efficiently in a post-carbon world.” – James Howard Kunstler

New York City is the most successful model for environmental sustainability and is the “greenist” community in the United States, writes David Owen in his book Green Metropolis, which was published by Penguin Group in 2009. The high concentrations of people living in Manhattan forces them to use less energy, he writes. Suburbia and small towns in rural America, not densely populated cities such as New York and Boston, are the real culprits in wreaking havoc on the environment, according to the The New Yorker contributor.

But where are these tightly packed urban centers supposed to get the resources—food, energy, raw materials—to sustain themselves? Does Manhattan have the space and soil to grow all of its own food? What about raw materials? Is there enough iron ore to be mined in Manhattan or enough materials to make the concrete required to sustain the infrastructure in such a metropolis?

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/30.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

The Truth about Immigration

By Mickey Z.

Everything negative you’ve heard about immigration is true. In fact, all the election cycle talk about lazy parasites pouring over borders to leech off another nation’s resources doesn’t go far enough in explaining the gravity of this ongoing crisis. Scream it from the mountaintops (or at least on your blog): Immigrants are destroying any and all hope of for planetary survival. Illegal aliens are Public Enemy #1. Foreigners are terrorists.

If you don’t believe me, just ask any sweatshop worker in, say, Vietnam...

The perfidious colonizers I refer to, of course, are the insatiable transnational corporations setting up camp all across the Third World. Whether it be Nike, The Gap, Wal-Mart, or any other taxpayer-subsidized bloodsucker, these crafty illegal aliens can’t be stopped by constructing a mere wall. They travel with impunity...on the wings of government subvention and cunning, relentless propaganda. Thanks to decades of conditioning, even the victims of these soulless migrants will voluntarily pay for the right to wear a shirt bearing their corporate logo.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/18.

Monday, May 03, 2010

Devastation without Representation

Who will represent the thousands, probably millions, of marine mammals, fish and birds in the Gulf of Mexico region who will die at the hands of BP plc? Who will represent the plant life in the marshes and wetlands along the coast?

Not President Obama. Not any U.S. lawmakers. Not the environmental establishment. They’re too busy worrying about how the massive oil spill will harm the Gulf Coast region’s economy.

During a May 2 address, Obama said the oil spill “could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.” There was no reflection on the spill’s creation of a massive killing field in the Gulf. No call for a national mobilization to prevent the mass slaughter.

It always comes back to how the premeditated killing of non-humans will undermine the well-being and comfort of humans.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/03.

Rigged for Ecological Failure

Review of Green Gone Wrong: How Our Economy Is Undermining the Environmental Revolution by Heather Rogers (Scribner, 272 pages, 2010).

“There’s this idea that you can just switch from fossil fuels to renewables. But you can’t because there’s not enough of a supply from renewables. That means we simply must consume less.” – Bill Dunster, architect and designer of Beddington Zero Energy Development, a housing development in London

In her new book, Green Gone Wrong, journalist and author Heather Rogers examines the forces that are thwarting the adoption of saner environmental policies. Rogers takes the reader on a journey into a world where auto makers have avoided and undermined greener technologies. Another chapter explains how unfavorable government policies and factory farms are the prime reasons the people who produce more ecologically benign food will likely go extinct. She also highlights an abomination hatched by global leaders and the environmental establishment: carbon offsets.

Green Gone Wrong isn’t all about the environmental mischief of governments, corporations and non-governmental organizations. As part of her research, Rogers visited the rare place—Freiburg, Germany—where good sense appears to be holding its own against the social forces that preach constant growth and ever-increasing consumption, which by their very nature are unsustainable.

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Comments (0) | Posted on 05/03.

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Imagine If Our President Wasn't a Nobel Peace Prize Winner

Author and historian William Blum spoke May 1, 2010, on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, as well as Nobel Peace Prize winner President Barack Obama simultaneously waging five wars: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Blum participated in the “Forum on U.S. Policy in Latin America: Economics, Human Rights, and Media Complicity” at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington in Arlington, Va.

Other panelists included moderator Ramon Daubon, principal of the Esquel Group; Mario Lopez-Garelli, staff attorney for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an independent organ of the Organization of American States; and Kevin Young, contributor to Media Accuracy on Latin America, an arm of the North American Congress on Latin America and a graduate student at State University of New York at Stony Brook.