Jailed for protecting MotherEarth

Press Release By

Mike Bruised Head: Member – Kainai Lethbridge Environmental Watch (KLEW)

Sunday September 11, 2011

It is a sad day when women are jailed then charged for protecting “Mother Earth”. On Friday September 9, 2011 three Blood Indian Women who are all members of the Blood Tribe were arrested and handcuffed for peacefully protesting at a hydraulic fracturing (fracking) exploration site on the Blood Reserve in southern Alberta.

The three women are Lois Frank, Jill Crop Eared Wolf and Elle- Mia Tail Feathers and the supporters were not informed of what the chargers were on until the early morning of Saturday September 10, 2011 at 7 a.m. Blood Tribe Chief Charles Weasel Head directed the charges levied on the women. They were charged with Intimidation under the Canadian Criminal Code Section 423, subsection 1. (g). The intimidation stems from the women protesting in a peaceful manner standing on tribal land protesting against Murphy Oil Company vehicles. The three women supposedly were confronting a huge semi truck with a driver twice the size of them. The other aspect of the charge directs that the women are not to be close to the drill site.

Intimidation?!

In a Canadian Press Release on Sunday September 11, 2011 it quoted “Blood Tribe Police Chief Lee Boyd says negotiations are underway between the band council and Murphy Oil so that protests at the site can occur legally”.

This statement is puzzling after tribal sources indicate that Chief Charles Weasel Head may acted independently with out full consultation with other members of council to lay the charges. The other aspect to the above news quote is why would any First Nations Chief and Council in Canada need to negotiate with oil companies regarding peaceful protests as it related to laying charges, aren’t chief and councils the ultimate tribal governments. One can interpret the quote as the chief asking for permission from the oil companies to withdraw the chares against the three women from the Blood Reserve. This is setting precedent on Indian Reserves in Canada, where outside corporations and in this case Murphy Oil to be allowed to start dictating and forcing First Nation Chief and Councils to lay chares against their band members. Are we turning into a “Corporate Reserve”?

Stop Polluting Our Environment and Water

Many tribal members have used the term “dictatorship” on the chief and some members of council. It has been reported by Band Members in the past year that they have been warned not to get involved or speak out against the two companies, Murphy Oil and Bowood who have been granted 300 hundred sections of tribal land for drilling purposes without any referendum or consultation with the tribal members prior to entering the massive land agreements. They have been further threatened if they do speak out they will be relieved of the jobs.

 This is a sad time in Blood Tribe or “Kainai” history. The chief has awoken a sleeping giant that will not go back to sleep. The three courages and honorable women will be tried at the Cardston, Alberta courthouse on Monday September 19, 2011.

Blood Tribe Members Call for Moratorium on Hydro Fracking

Blood Tribe Members Call for Moratorium on Hydro Fracking

By Mar 11, 2011

5,000 kilometres away from the Whycocomagh Reserve in Cape Breton–where members of the Waycobah Nation are speaking out against hydro fracking–members of the Blood Tribe have started calling for a moratorium on the controversial extraction process within their own reserve in southern Alberta.

In late 2010, Kainaiwa Resources Inc. (KRI), a company that’s solely owned by the Blood Tribe, quietly signed off on a deal with the Calgary-based junior mining company Bowood Energy and the U.S. company Murphy Oil.

“The deal netted the Blood Tribe at least $50 Million and potentially more revenue in the future,” says Protect Blood Land, a new grassroots effort led by concerned Blood members, including the Blood/Sámi student and activist, Maija Tailfeathers.

In exchange for the $50 Million, Bowood Energy and Murphy Oil gained a five-year lease to roughly 129, 280 acres, almost half of the Blood’s reserve, for oil and gas exploration. During that time, the two companies will be allowed to use hydro fracking on no fewer than 16 drill sites on the reserve.

Murphy Oil (red) and Bowood Energy (brown) concessions

Hydro fracking (also known as hydraulic fracturing or just simply “fracking”) is a process in which hundreds of toxic chemicals and millions of litres of drinkable water are “injected” at high pressure into underground rock formations. The process shatters the rock like a broken windshield, creating pathways for the companies to draw out any oil and gas deposits within the rock.

Read the rest here

Petition for Blood Tribe members and Oldman Watershed residents:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42112.html

A second petition has also been set up for anyone else that wishes to stand in solidarity with all Blood members opposed to Fracking on their land.

Petition for Individuals who are NOT tribe members nor living in the region:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42138.html

For more information, please visit http://protectbloodland.ca

International Day of Action Against the Tar Sands

 

Want to get involved in the biggest international event in support of shutting down the tar sands in history? Need to find an event on June 18th in your area? Check out our events list!

http://stoptarsands.yolasite.com/2011-events-list.php

Edmonton to Participate in International Day of Action Against the Tar Sands with Event at Alberta Legislature

 

Edmonton – On June 17th Alberta residents and representatives from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, and  Dene Suline will create a visual on the Legislature steps to visually show how we have choices for our economic future – a tar sands future that will continue to devastate the land and trample treaty rights or a green future that respects the land and the original stewards of it. The visual is part of the International Day of Action Against the Tar Sands that will see anti-tar sands events being held in over 11 Canadian cities, 25 cities in the United States, in addition to events in Europe and countries as far away as New Zealand.

 

Who:              Alberta residents and representatives from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Dene Suline, Greenpeace Canada and Sierra Club Prairie.

What:             Creative Visual and Petition Delivery.

When:                        Friday, June 17th – 11:00 a.m.

Where:           Alberta Legislature Building – front steps.

The Province is trying to impose a controversial and inadequate land use plan for the Lower Athabasca region (LARP). The plan has received widespread condemnation from First Nation and environmental groups and will be one of the topics addressed at the rally.

 

For more information, please contact:

Mike Hudema, Greenpeace Climate and Energy campaigner at 780-504-5601

Dustin Johnson, Tarsands campaigner Sierra Club Prairie at 587-588-5890

 

Deep Green Resistance

Cost of Doing Business

 

Why Deep Green Resistance

Deep Green Resistance is a plan of action for anyone determined to fight for this planet—and win.”

 IF for not other reason this would the greatest reason for supporting and joining the DGR movement.

Winning is the only option there is. Losing means no Earth. Without her there is no life, none, zero, zip.

Most of the movements, environmental groups and climate action groups, except Indigenous ones that are based on their traditional values, pay at best lip service to the idea that Earth is a living being.

DGR takes “Earth is a living being” as a given and goes on to says that every living being’s life is as valuable to them as our lives are to us.

DGR recognizes that Earth is being raped and abused by this industrial civilized culture and that this must be stopped.

Apparently though some people who refer to themselves as anarchist have decided that DGR is a threat to them or their freedoms or some part the of what they would call their moral make up.

And the fact Earth is being rape and murdered in front us is really secondary or even tertiary to their concerns.

One of the concerns is that of authoritarianism and the fact that one needs to sign a statement of principles and a code conduct.  

Having read theses (any one can read them here code of conduct, statement of principles ) there is nothing here I find threatening to my well being or personhood. They are conduct codes put in place at every conference I have gone to on the environment and climate with the exception of recognizing the fact that non-Indigenous are on stolen land which is an addition I fully support.

Quite frankly if you are not will to commit to not raping and abusing other living being and treat Earth, humans and non-humans with respect I really do not want you in any group  in which I belong .

The vitriolic attacks on DGR by these so called anarchist, their abusive and slanderous attacks on the promoters of DGR especially Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith have to me proven that in fact the folks at DGR are correct, a code of conduct is necessary, especially to weed out those who only pay lip service to the idea of respecting others.

No one has to join DGR. Having gone to a number of DGR workshops I find to whole comment(s) about authoritarianism baffling and completely unfounded in fact.

I do not assume the authority to tell people how to judge anarchist whose history dates back to the 1860′s. Their actions speak for themselves.

I do ask people grant DGR, who by the way has just started, the same respect; to judge it by the actions of the various local DGR groups growing across the land.

It is really time that we get serious.

No listen… It is time we get serious

No… no… listen… it is time we get serious

There is a disease that is presently worshiped by the dominant culture the wihtikow disease (wétiko as some know it) I have written of it, Derrick Jensen writes extensively about it in Songs of the Dead and Jack Forbes, the originator of the concept explains it in great detail in Columbus and other Cannibals . It has infected almost everyone in the world, only the most remote of communities have not been.

This disease must, if we are to have any viable future, must be eradicated. At one time there were very severe penalties for greed and selfishness now they are hailed and wise actions. We must fight it in ourselves and all around us.

DGR is a process and movement in that direction.

We do not have time for the organic or amazing revelations to come into being because the disease does not allow it. The disease keeps the greed to the forefront of the minds of the zombies making them afraid to be free humans again.

To love Earth, our bodies and all being we share life with, is like water to one with rabies for the wihtikowak (wétikos).

This is not an easy path, as the rabid dog attacks of self proclaimed anarchists and other groups has proven. The wihtikowak will hates us and despise us and worst.

We will need to be strong and compassionate for and with ourselves. We need to support one another. It is very very important.
To me DGR give us all this opportunity together come as community or if you do not wish to join DGR then work together in common cause to protect Earth and stop the culture of the wihtikowak.

The line “resist as if your life depend on it “ is not a metaphor.  Resist as if your beloved’s life depends on it. Resist as if someone going to shoot your beloved right now.

The dominant culture as you all know is about death, about greed and about hate.

Your mother is being raped! Are you going to attack the one who told you or are you going to stop the rape?

In Songs of the Dead Derrick talks about choosing between life or death

I choose Life.

DGR movement is one way to choosing Life.

_____________________________________________

 END:CIV

Watch the movie (better yet buy the movie) get involved

Polly Higgins; Ecocide is a Crime Against Peace

Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.

Radio Against Global Ecocide

Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.

I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.

And a special hello to all those working to stop Ecocide!

Polly Higgins grew up near Loch Lomond on the west coast of Scotland and spent her childhood holidays in the Highlands. Her time with the Austrian artist and ecologist Hundertwasser in the late 1980’s taught her that nature is not an inert thing but a community of living beings; her years spent inside London courts representing individuals and corporations on discrimination cases brought her to the conclusion that the planet was also being treated unfairly, in particular by damaging corporate activity – but that nothing was being done to stop the abuse

Her book is called Eradicating Ecocide

There is nothing ethical about ecocide

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10 Ecocide Hotspots

(from This is Ecocide)
Remapping the world to understand what is ecocide and who the ecological debtors are demonstrates the enormous extent of the destruction already taking place. Here is a sample selection of 10 examples of ecocidal damage, destruction or loss taking place today. Please feel free to add your own suggestions below.

1. Alberta Tar Sands

 Referred to as the most damaging project on the planet, it ranks top of the list. Known as ‘dirty oil’ due to it’s excessively damaging outcomes, if proposed expansion proceeds, tar sand extraction will result in the loss of vast tracts of boreal forest and muskeg peat bogs of a territory the size of England. Read more at Tar Sands Network.

2. The North Pacific Gyre

An island of garbage: A swirling island of 100m tonnes of plastic bits and bottle tops, spins clockwise from Hawaii to Japan. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, it is estimated to be the size of Texas.

3. The Niger Delta

An area the size of Ireland is scarred by polluted rivers, air and land due to oil extraction.  Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest oil-producing nation, but with some of the worst records for ecosystem destruction and devastation. Between 1976 and 1998, over 2.5 million barrels of oil have been spilt into the Delta environment (Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska was only a mere 257,000 barrels). Fifty years of oil extraction in the Niger delta has left its deep scars. Oil companies operated here for decades with very little environmental supervision and the delta, notoriously beset by conflict and poverty, has been steadily pushed towards ecological disaster. Villagers struggle to live off land and water poisoned by years of oil spills, and crops fail under the acid rain caused by gas flares.

4. The Dongria Kondh

The ’sacred’ Niyamgiri mountain (Niyamgiri means ‘The Mountains of Law’) in India is threatened with imminent ecocide if Vedanta Resources, a British company, proceeds with it’s plans to dig an open-pit bauxite mine. The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and and threaten the livelihoods of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area. Vedanta denies allegations that the planned mine would violate the rights of thousands of people.

5. Lusi mud volcano, Indonesia

Lusi started to erupt in East Java, Indonesia, on May 29th 2006. It has displaced around 30,000 people from their homes and swamped 12 villages.  At a recent conference, scientists voted that gas exploration well, Banjar-Panji-1, which was being drilled by oil and gas company called Lapindo Brantas, was the cause. Lusi is still spewing huge volumes of boiling mud over the surrounding area.

6. Bingham Canyon copper mine

This mine has been in production since 1906, so far stretching over an area 0.75 miles (1.2 km) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres (7.7 km²). It has the dubious distinction of being named the world’s largest man-made excavation.

7. Toxic dumping by Chevron Texaco in Ecuador

Thousands of residents near the company’s former oil fields, alleges Texaco Chevron, dumped roughly 18.5 billion gallons of oil-laden water into unlined pits, estuaries and rivers during its operations in Ecuador’s Oriente between 1971 and 1992. Now, with Ecuador’s recent Bill of Nature’s Right’s which has changed the legal status of nature from being simply property to being a right-bearing entity, justice may just be seen to be done for people and planet. See: Chevrontoxico

8.  Tianying, Anhui Province, China

Lead smelters and processing plants in the Tianying area and heavy metals from battery recycling factories pollute the atmosphere and environment on a daily basis. 140,000 people in the Tianying area are affected, though the spread of heavy metals is distributed throughout Anhui province. Voted one of the dirty 30 by the Blacksmith Institute. See: worstpolluted.org

9. The Amazon

The one everyone knows about: razing of the Amazonian Rainforest, a key stabiliser of the global climate system, by logging, mining, crop planting and beef production. Currently resulting in destruction, damage and loss of a territory the size of France. Almost 60% of the region’s forests could be wiped out or severely damaged by 2030

10. Selling off British Forests

The government intends to sell off our publicly owned forests to private organisations and foreign companies and are proposing a tailor made bill that will allow them to do so.

Our forests are our nation’s most important natural treasure and we are fundamentally opposed to selling our forests to the highest bidder. Once they are sold, they are gone forever. Read more and join the campaign at Save our Forests.

and Save England’s Forests

See full photos of the top 10 ecocide hotspots at The Guardian

Gail Dines – Stop Porn Culture!

Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.

Radio Against Global Ecocide

Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.

I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.

And a special hello to all those working to stop porn culture!

Dr. Gail Dines is a professor of sociology and women’s studies at Wheelock College in Boston, an internationally acclaimed speaker and author, and a feminist activist. Her writing and lectures focus on the hypersexualization of the culture and the ways that porn images filter down into mainstream pop culture. Gail’s work on media and pornography has appeared in academic journals, magazines such as Time and Newsweek, and newspapers across the country. She is a frequent guest on radio and television and is a recipient of the Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights.

Her latest book is Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality.

Gail is a founding member of Stop Porn Culture – an educational and activist group made up of academics, anti-violence experts, community organizers and anyone who is concerned about the increasing pornification of the culture.

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Listen Sister by Leela Gilday

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Calling All Warriors by Leela Gilday

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Support Leela Gilday by purchasing her CD here

Pornography Is A Left Issue

by Gail Dines and Robert Jensen; December 06, 2005

Anti-pornography feminists get used to insults from the left. Over and over we are told that we’re anti-sex, prudish, simplistic, politically naïve, diversionary, and narrow-minded. The cruder critics do not hesitate to suggest that the cure for these ailments lies in, how shall we say, a robust sexual experience.

In addition to the slurs, we constantly face a question: Why do we “waste” our time on the pornography issue? Since we are anti-capitalist and anti-empire leftists as well as feminists, shouldn’t we focus on the many political, economic, and ecological crises (war, poverty, global warming, etc.)? Why would we spend part of our intellectual and organizing energies over the past two decades pursuing the feminist critique of pornography and the sexual exploitation industry?

The answer is simple: We are anti-pornography precisely because we are leftists as well as feminists.

As leftists, we reject the sexism and racism that saturates contemporary mass-marketed pornography. As leftists, we reject the capitalist commodification of one of the most basic aspects of our humanity. As leftists, we reject corporate domination of media and culture. Anti-pornography feminists are not asking the left to accept a new way of looking at the world but instead are arguing for consistency in analysis and application of principles.

It has always seemed strange to us that so many on the left consistently refuse to engage in a sustained and thoughtful critique of pornography. All this is particularly unfortunate at a time when the left is flailing to find traction with the public; a critique of pornography, grounded in a radical feminist and left analysis that counters right-wing moralizing, could be part of an effective organizing strategy. Full article here

The anti-feminist politics behind the pornography that “empowers” women

posted on ZNet and Atlantic Free Press, February 2, 2008.

by Gail Dines and Robert Jensen

Pornography’s supporters often claim that critics don’t pay enough attention to the wide range of sexually explicit images available today, especially the material that is said to be empowering for women.

But after a few minutes on the floor of the sex-saturated Adult Entertainment Expo, the pornographers’ annual trade show in Las Vegas, such pro-pornography claims start to seem pretty silly.

The 2008 AEE drove home the reality that while there are indeed differences in the level of overt woman-hating in the pornography for sale in the United States, that industry is at its core about (1) the control of women (2) to facilitate the presentation of women (3) for male consumption (4) in the pursuit of profit. Our interaction with the makers of the latest popular example of “female-centered” pornography provided a first-hand reminder that the industry’s hallowed commitment to free speech and feminist empowerment is more public-relations posturing than principled positions.

The company making one of the biggest splashes on the convention floor this year was Abbywinters.com, an Australian website that bills itself as offering “real, passionate, unscripted” sexual activity by “happy, healthy, regular girls in their normal environments.” The company markets its female masturbation and girl/girl videos as “an endless bounty of gasping sex, stunning beauty and friendly faces” featuring women with “no makeup, no fake boobs, no airbrushing.”

Call it the down-under girl-next-door market niche.

Of course not all pornography consumers are interested in the softer-edged material that Abbywinters.com sells, but it’s popular enough that the company signed a distribution deal with Wicked Pictures, one of the top production companies in the United States, according to an industry insider working for Abbywinters.com. And based on the size of the crowds that the Abbywinters.com booth was drawing, this market niche appears to be holding its own.

At the booth, Abbywinters.com “girls” (in porno-speak, there are no women; females of any age are called girls) were chatting amiably with the fans (even p laying chess with some of them, to show that the girls are smart as well as sexy) and being openly affectionate with each other. Instead of the caricatured porn star look (impossibly high heels, over-the-top makeup, and surgically enhanced bodies), these women really did look like ordinary people.

In interviews with several of them, a familiar story of empowerment emerged — we are comfortable with our bodies, confident in our sexuality, proud to be taking control of how we are represented, etc. We responded with questions that reflected our feminist critique of pornography, which sparked interesting responses regarding their feelings about their work and our assessment of the industry. We asked the women to explain how the interests of women (or men, for that matter) were advanced by selling images mostly used by men as a masturbation facilitator. How did that improve the lot of women in the world? Each of the conversations ended with an agree-to-disagree parting, and we went off to other parts of the convention. Full article here

Stephanie McMillan – The system can not be permitted to kill the planet.

Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.

Radio Against Global Ecocide

Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.

I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.

And a special hello to all those organizing to stop the insanity of the dominant culture.

Today on the show Stephanie McMillan.  Stephanie is an award winning Cartoonist, Author and Organizer. She best known for her political cartoons Minimum Security and CodeGreen.  She is co-author and illustrator of As the World Burns – 50 Way to Stay in Denial and illustrator of Mischief in The Forest. She is also in the movie END:CIV

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Passengers by thefilthypoliticians

Dahlia Wasfi Speaks by thefilthypoliticians

From Overthrowing the Profit System to Not for Profit
The rise of NGOs and the decline of mass movements

The past forty years have seen an explosion in the growth of NGOs. The World Bank estimates that nearly 15% of all overseas development aid is now channeled through NGOs. At the same time, we have seen a precipitous decline in mass social movements.

One Stuggle South Florida is hosting a discussion on the rise of the NGO and the fall of mass movements. Our hope is to foster an inter-organizational dialogue to raise awareness of the NGO trap and how together we can rebuild mass movements for justice, social change, and popular power.

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT OF CONVERSATION

Oct. 20, 2010

Participants: Victoria Guinea Pig, Kranti and Javier

Kranti: I’m willing to do *anything* to save the planet. But nothing works. The system keeps winning.

Victoria Guinea Pig: Failure is not an option. The system can not be permitted to kill the planet. You must stop it.

Kranti: But everything we try to do is ineffective.

Victoria Guinea Pig: Well. To be effective, you start with a goal. You have that already: save the planet. What is your overall strategy?

(Kranti and Javier look at each other, blankly).

Victoria Guinea Pig: How do you think the planet can be saved?

Kranti: By smashing capitalism. Duh.

Victoria Guinea Pig: How do you think you can defeat a whole global economic system? A system with a monopoly on laws, police, armies, wealth, productive capacity, as well as cultural and political institutions?

Kranti: Um… we keep attacking it from all sides until it falls to its knees, cries like a baby and surrenders?

Javier: All by ourselves? We can’t do it alone, Kranti.

Kranti: Plenty of people all over the world are doing it. Look at MEND. They’re small but managed to force a 40% reduction in oil production in Nigeria. Look at the Greek anarchists. The revolution in Nepal. The Naxalites in India. Look at… um. There are a lot we don’t even know about.

Javier: But in the US there are too few. To attack from within the center of the Empire, we need some kind of movement here. Without at least some public support, we’re toast.

Kranti: Let someone else organize it. I hate working with people. Everyone’s stupid! They think politicians will listen to them. They think it makes a difference if they drive a hybrid car or use Sierra Club-endorsed bleach. They believe we’ll invent magical technology that will use no energy, sequester CO2 and bring everyone extinct back to life while still keeping all the air conditioners running. I don’t want to waste my time with the ideologically challenged.

Victoria Guinea Pig: People are not stupid. Propaganda has brainwashed them. After armed forces, culture and information are two of the system’s most effective weapons. People’s thinking is shaped by whatever system they live under.

Javier: We could start a study group…

Kranti: Please don’t ask me to embark on a long-term educational campaign. The planet doesn’t have time. Also: booor-ing!

Read more here

‘We Need to Stop This Culture Before It Kills the Planet’

A Conversation With Derrick Jensen

By Mickey Z.

Worst of all, there’s nothing unique about the past 24 hours. It’s business as usual, a daily reality—and no amount of CFL bulbs, recycled toilet paper, or Sierra Club donations will change it even a tiny bit.

As you do your best to convince yourself of the vast chasm between the two wings of America’s single corporate party, I suggest you listen carefully to hear if even one of the politicians mentions any of the following:

  • Every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic
  • Eighty-one tons of mercury is emitted into the atmosphere each year as a result of electric power generation
  • Every second, 10,000 gallons of gasoline are burned in the US
  • Each year, Americans use 2.2 billion pounds of pesticides
  • Ninety percent of the large fish in the ocean and 80 percent of the world’s forests are gone
  • Every two seconds, a human being starves to death

This is just a minute sampling, folks, and sorry, but your hybrid ain’t helping. That reusable shopping bag you bring to the market has zero impact. Your home composting kit is not gonna start a revolution.

As you begin reading this interview, take a look at the nearest clock. Now, dig this: Since yesterday at the same exact time, 200,000 acres of rainforest have been destroyed, over 100 plant and animal species have gone extinct, 13 million tons of toxic chemicals were released across the globe, and 29,158 children under the age of five died from preventable causes. Read the rest here

Derrick Jensen; The Power of Narratives

Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.

Radio Against Global Ecocide

Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.

I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.

And a special hello to all those confronting the insanity of the dominant culture.

Today on the show Derrick Jensen. Derrick is the well known author of Endgame I & II, Culture of Make Believe, What We Leave Behind Lives Less Value and at least 12 other books that look honestly and unflinchingly at the dominant culture and its insane destruction of our home, planet earth. This is the second time Derrick has been on the show. This time we talk about the stories the culture is tell us over and over and what stories help and hurt resistance.

If you are like me, you often want to know the books that Derrick talks about in any interview, more in depth.

Here is a list of the books Derrick mentions plus some influential books that have helped him reach many of his conclusions

In the interview:

R. D. Laing – The Politics of Experience

John Livingston – Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation

Richard Slotkin – Gunfighter Nation

Howard Zinn – A People’s History of the United States

Amy Tan - The Kitchen God’s Wife

Some of the Books/Narratives that have influenced Derrick

Neil Evernden -  The Natural Alien

Susan Griffin -  Woman and Nature

Jane Caputi – The Age of Sex Crime

Andrea Dworkin – Life and Death

Jack Forbes – Columbus and Other Cannibals

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The Tyranny of Entitlement

I’M CONTINUALLY stunned by how many seemingly sane people believe you can have infinite economic growth on a finite planet. Perpetual economic growth and its cousin, limitless technological expansion, are beliefs so deeply held by so many in this culture that they often go entirely unquestioned. Even more disturbing is the fact that these beliefs are somehow seen as the ultimate definition of what it is to be human: perpetual economic growth and limitless technological expansion are what we do.

Some of those who believe in perpetual growth are out-and-out nut jobs, like the economist and former White House advisor Julian Simon, who said, “We have in our hands now—actually in our libraries-—the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years.” And showing that, when it comes to U.S. economic policies, insanity is never out of season, are yet more nut jobs, like Lawrence Summers, who has served as chief economist at the World Bank, U.S. secretary of the treasury, president of Harvard, and as President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council, and who said, “There are no . . . limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind at any time in the foreseeable future. . . . The idea that we should put limits on growth because of some natural limit is a profound error.” Read the rest of the article here

Fertile Ground – A Community of Resistance part 2

Hello and Welcome to R.A.G.E.

Radio Against Global Ecocide

Coming to you from occupied Amiskwacîwâskahikan.

I am your Host Seymour Lyphe.

And a special hello to all those building Communities of Resistance.

This is a special Fertile Ground show. Some of the Fertile Ground people talk about community what is means to them and some ways it may look.

Cameron, Dillon and Max share their thoughts about community and its importance.

“…these are ways of life. If activism and social change are not part of the general space you live in and the air you breathe I don’t think you are going to make much change.” -  Cameron

Full Show

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Interview Only

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The End of Civilization

from pulse berlin

a discussion with radical writer and environmentalist Derrick Jensen
interview by Andrea Hiott
Available languages: English

The United States of America was once “the Saudi Arabia of the world” when it came to oil production: in other words, the majority of the world once purchased its oil from the States. Now those vast resources have been depleted. Many other places around the world have also peaked. In Baku, Azerbaijan, miles of machine carcasses clutter the landscape – oil from here once powered the Allies (especially the Russians) towards defeating Germany in World War Two, and now the well is dry. Less than sixty years ago, the British found oil in the North Sea. According to Colin Campbell, an oil geologist and consultant to the world’s top oil companies, Britain will become a net importer of oil within the year, and its oil will be used up by 2020. Read the full article here

Fight Our Common Enemy: Global Industrial Capitalism

Global capitalism is the economic system that dominates the planet. It runs on the exploitation of human labor to turn the living world into dead commodities, for the profit of a few. The small, powerful minority who own the means of production enforce their dominance through their control over political and cultural institutions, and their monopoly on force. They create a situation of dependency – forcing us to work for them to obtain basic needs like food and shelter. They annihilate those who resist or refuse to assimilate.

This system values profit over life itself. It has been built on land theft and destruction, genocide, slavery, deforestation and imperialist wars. It commits numberless atrocities as a matter of routine daily functioning. It kills 2.4 million children worldwide under age 5 each year by withholding adequate nutrition. It kills 100,000 people annually in the US by denying decent health care. More than 54% of the US discretionary budget is spent on perpetrating imperialist aggression, and recent casualties include more than a million civilians in Iraq, and more than 46,000 American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Aside from outright murder, the economic and psychological violence wrought upon the world’s inhabitants is so extensive and comprehensive that it’s effectively all-encompassing.

The system is killing the entire planet, the basis for all life. It’s converted 98% of old growth forests into lumber. 80% of rivers worldwide no longer support life. 94% of the large fish in the oceans are gone. Phytoplankton, the tiny plants that produce half of the oxygen we breathe, have declined by 40% since 1950. 120 species per day become extinct.

Industries produce 400 million tons of hazardous waste every year. Recently, the water in 89% of US cities tested has been found to contain the carcinogen hexavalent chromium. To feed capitalism’s insatiable need for economic expansion, increasingly dangerous methods of energy extraction are being perpetrated: deep sea drilling, oil extraction from tar sands, fracking. No matter the consequences, no matter what the majority of people may want, those in power insist on (and enforce) their non-negotiable right to poison the land, water and air in pursuit of maximum profit. Read the full article here