Seeing is Believing Earthworks: Community Empowerment against fracking pollution and climate change.

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see also: It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.. HERE:https://wp.me/pIJl9-e8w

Texas & New Mexico communities & experts urge COP25 to defuse Permian’s carbon bomb…

Impacted residents travel to Madrid to highlight that planned infrastructure to process & export Permian oil & gas would guarantee catastrophic climate change

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Optical gas imaging picture of pollution above regular still image.
[Top] Optical gas imaging by Earthworks reveals normally invisible air pollution from an unlit flare. [Bottom] A regular still image taken at the same time and place shows what you see with the naked eye.

Madrid, Dec 4 — Today at an official COP25 side event Texas and New Mexico residents — impacted by the extraction of Permian Basin oil & gas, and by planned infrastructure to transport, process and export it — informed delegates and other attendees that catastrophic climate change is inevitable unless the Permian infrastructure expansion is stopped.

“The Permian Basin is an oil and gas carbon bomb that’s exploding, and it’s happening right now. If we can’t defuse it, the world cannot avoid catastrophic

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climate change. Major oil companies are trying to lock in decades more oil and gas demand by building infrastructure from the Permian to the Texas Gulf Coast to transport, process and export the world’s largest current oil & gas play,” said Earthworks’ Energy Campaigner Ethan Buckner.

Between 2018 and 2050, production of new U.S. oil and gas reserves could unlock 120 billion metric tons of new carbon pollution. Meanwhile the U.S. — thanks to Permian production — just marked its first month as a net exporter since records have been kept. If production and expansion are not curtailed, U.S. oil and gas expansion will impede the rest of the world’s ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable phase out of oil and gas production.

Although communities across the region are bearing the brunt of impacts from oil, gas and petrochemical development, those most at risk from the Permian expansion are those already the most impacted by social and environmental injustice. And on Texas’ Gulf Coast — where the oil & gas is processed and exported — they’re suffering twice: from the operations’ toxic pollution, and from intensified climate change.

“I live less than two miles from the Ship Channel in the East End of Houston, TX. My dad was a United Steelworker who died of cancer in 2016, and I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that same year. So I’m well aware that workers and fenceline communities are paying with their health the price of daily exposure to toxic pollution from oil and gas infrastructure,” said Ana

Image result for Ana Parras, Co-Executive Director Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.

No One Should Have to Breathe These Chemicals – AnaParras of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios). HOUSTON — While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters

Continue reading “Seeing is Believing Earthworks: Community Empowerment against fracking pollution and climate change.”

Violence Is Sometimes the Answer against Legalised State Atrocities

Violence Is Sometimes the Answer

“I want to make it clear, however, although I am deeply opposed to war, I am not advocating appeasement. It is often necessary to take a strong stand to counter unjust aggression. For instance, it is plain to all of us that the Second World War was entirely justified. It “saved civilization” from the tyranny of Nazi Germany, as Winston Churchill so aptly put it.

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But we can only judge whether or not a conflict was vindicated on moral grounds with hindsight. For example, we can now see during the Cold War, the principle of nuclear deterrence had a certain value. Nevertheless, it is very difficult to assess such matters with any degree of accuracy. War is violence and violence is unpredictable. Therefore, it is better to avoid it if possible, and never to presume we know beforehand whether the outcome of a particular war will be beneficial or not.”

~ Tenzin Gyatso 14th Dalai Lama The Reality of War

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Banksy highlights plight faced by homeless at Christmas

Masculinity is Fine and Dandy.. but under Patriarchy can be TOXIC and Hateful

It’s not about ‘toxic masculinity’ or ‘healthy masculinity,’ it’s about masculinity under patriarchy

Shared with thanks from Feminist Current . illustrations and twits added

Positive traits and behaviour are accessible to and should be embraced by everyone, whether male or female. “Healthy masculinity” is really just healthy humanity.

Increased attention on men’s violence against women has focused attention on not only rape and sexual harassment but also on the cultural support system for such behavior. While only a small fraction of men violate the law, lots of men engage in less blatant forms of aggressive and coercive behavior that injure and undermine women, and even more men are bystanders who fail to challenge other men’s abuse.

This conversation often revolves around a critique of “toxic masculinity” and the search for a “healthy masculinity,” which does bring needed attention to these forms of abuse. But we should be wary of the way those phrases can limit our understanding and reinforce patriarchy.

I propose we replace “toxic masculinity” with “masculinity in patriarchy,” to focus attention on the system out of which problems arise.

An environmental analogy helps: Too often we only think about toxic chemicals when we have to clean up spills and leaks, responses that obviously are necessary. But just as important is challenging an industrial worldview that embraces the use of those toxic substances, along with critiquing the economic system that makes toxic contamination inevitable. The same goes for the patriarchal worldview.

Some may think patriarchy is an out-of-date term, but it’s an accurate description of societies based on institutionalized male dominance — which is virtually all the world, including the United States.

Patriarchal societies change over time and vary depending on culture, but when we recognize “it’s still a man’s world,” we simply are acknowledging that patriarchy remains entrenched.

Continue reading “Masculinity is Fine and Dandy.. but under Patriarchy can be TOXIC and Hateful”

COP25: Police stop “Toxic Tour” of Banks + exposé of Banco Santander criminals

Police Halt Activist-Led “Toxic Tour” of Spain’s “Dirtiest” Corporate Polluters Sponsoring COP25

Watch Show on Democracy Now Madrid Climate Corporate Power Donate

see below EXPOSÉ: Santander and hypocrisy with climate change

In Spain, the country’s biggest fossil fuel polluters are also some of the most generous sponsors for this year’s U.N. climate talks. On Saturday, we joined activists on a “toxic tour” of Madrid from the Madrid stock exchange to Santander Bank. Activists explained that when Spanish President Pedro Sánchez announced that Spain would host COP25, he went to IBEX 35 — the 35 biggest listed companies in the Spanish stock exchange — offering them a 90% tax break on a $2 million sponsorship. Advocates say that these same companies “have deep and dirty links to the fossil fuel industry.” But midway through, the police shut down the tour, threatening fines of over 3,000 euros if the peaceful tour did not disperse. Climate justice campaigner for Friends of the Earth International Héctor de Prado says he was shocked and “ashamed” by the attempts by police to halt the tour. “It is not normal,” he says.

El Cambio Climático en España: impacto y consecuencias


Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we broadcast live from the U.N. climate summit, known as COP25, here in Madrid, Spain. We turn now to the fossil fuel polluters that are sponsoring this year’s climate talks. On Saturday, activists took us on what they called a “toxic tour” of Madrid, from the Madrid stock exchange to Santander Bank to the world-famous Prado Museum. But midway through, the police shut it down. This is Pascoe Sabido of Corporate Europe Observatory, or CEO, but begun with Lise Masson of BankTrack.

LISE MASSON: So, welcome to the toxic tour. So, inside COP25, the negotiations are supposed to be tackling the climate crisis. But they’re completely failing, and they have been for 25 years because of the influence of big polluters. The same companies who are causing the crisis are derailing the talks and the real solutions in order to protect their business models. Some of these biggest polluters or even sponsoring the COP, and we’ll be paying a visit to some of them today. The first stop is, in fact, here at la Bolsa, Madrid’s stock exchange.

Crazed with Greed the Capitalist Corporations promote MORE OIL AND COAL burning and prospecting. While irreversible climate chaos begins to take hold and the money system begins to collapse, they DENY climate change and hide in their tax havens. But as General Strikes and Rebellions threaten to sweep out corrupt politicians… Maybe those Climate Criminals will in the future be hunted down and prosecuted like Nazi criminals, one by one.

Continue reading “COP25: Police stop “Toxic Tour” of Banks + exposé of Banco Santander criminals”

Comrade Malik: Environmental Disasters In Texas are not a Hoax!

see also #

I Choose Anarchism - Comrade Keith Malik Washington

 see also: I Choose Anarchism: Comrade Keith Malik Washington

 

 

Via Earthjustice: More than 2,291 chemical fires, explosions, or toxic releases occurred from 2004 to 2013, causing deaths and injuries and also forcing some half a million fence line communities and first responders to suffer toxic exposure or shelter-in-place. By early 2016, facilities had reported an additional 458 releases to EPA, though the agency expected those numbers to increase as more reports came in.

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FTP's avatarFight Toxic Prisons

In the early morning hours of November 27th, 2019 there was a huge explosion at a chemical plant located in Port Natchez, Texas just a few miles from USP Beaumont where I am currently housed. The plant which is operated by TPC Group Sustained  a large amount of structural damage and approximately four people were injured. Over 50,000 people were evacuated in the surrounding area and officials warned all those who were downwind from the plant.

This incident came only days after the Trump Administration relaxed regulations which instructed chemical plants like the one in Port Natchez to conduct thorough inspections of their chemical processing facilities. The Trump administration has defined itself as an enemy to the Environment and a Friend to Capitalist Oppressors. 

In Southeast Texas these industrial chemical plants continue to spew toxic chemicals into the air. The main part of the regulations which are no longer being…

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The Huge Potential of Agriculture to Slow Climate Change

Baher Kamal's avatarHUMAN WRONGS WATCH

Human Wrongs Watch

4 December 2019 (UN Environment)* — Soil’s contribution to climate change, through the oxidation of soil carbon, is important, and soils—and thus agriculture—can play a major role in mitigating climate change.

niña-onuPhoto by Neil Palmer, CIAT

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