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dc rising tide: Action at the Department of Interior!

Sit-in at Dept. of Interior Demanding Phase Out of Fossil Fuels

Residents from Gulf Coast, Appalachia and interior West join students and climate justice activists in calling for more action on extractive industry.

Washington D.C.—Hundreds of climate activists marched to the Department of the Interior’s headquarters today, with twenty people committing civil disobedience inside, calling for the abolition of offshore oil drilling, coal mining and tar sands extraction. Reclaim Power led hundreds from Lafayette Park to the agency’s headquarters in Washington D.C. the same day after Powershift, a mass youth climate conference, ended and 2 days before the one year anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil Disaster.

via dc rising tide: Action at the Department of Interior!.

Isn’t This How Hitler Started?

by L. S. Carbonell On January 30, 1933, German President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor. Hitler quickly pushed Hindenburg aside and eliminated the non-Nazis in his coalition government. The regime used excessive military spending to ease unemployment and create prosperity……….

……..Governor Scott Walker is planning to introduce a bill into his highly co-operative legislature to give him virtually unlimited power to take over a local government. Michigan’s Gov. Rick Snyder already has that power. The trigger for the take-over would be Walker’s personal opinion that a locality is financially unfit. Since his budget cuts over $1 billion from local governments and forbids the raising of local taxes, he has created the circumstances by which he could seize every locality in the state, dismiss the local…………. continued

via The Woman Rebel “No Gods, No Masters”: Isn’t This How Hitler Started?.

McDonald’s: Taxing Americans for 56 Years – Infoshop News

McDonald’s: Taxing Americans for 56 Years

by Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D., Executive Director, Center for Science in the Public Interest

April 15, 2011

“April 15” fills many Americans with anxiety as tax returns become due (though this year Uncle Sam has given us until April 18). I recently remembered that April 15 has another grim association: the opening, 56 years ago, of Ray Kroc’s first McDonald’s franchise in Des Plaines, Ill. (Now is as good a time as any to disclose that my organization has hauled Ronald McDonald to court to try to stop the predatory practice of using toys to lure children to disease-promoting Happy Meals.)

With the possible exception of Coca-Cola (itself a McDonald’s menu mainstay), I can’t think of another food company that has had such an enormous impact on the way we eat and the way we farm. Yes, thanks to McDonald’s, one can eat out quite cheaply. And it’s hard to be dismissive of that achievement in a time of high unemployment and high income disparity. But that low price obscures the financial toll exacted on Americans by McDonald’s and McDonald’s imitators in terms of the costs associated with treating obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other conditions. So in that way, fast food restaurants have been taxing us for the past half-century-plus: We now spend more than $270 billion each year on heart disease alone.

via McDonald’s: Taxing Americans for 56 Years – Infoshop News.

FRACKING ‘worse than coal’ for climate

The new kid on the energy block, shale gas, may be worse in climate change terms than coal, a study concludes.

Drawn from rock through a controversial “fracking” process, some hail the gas as a “stepping stone” to a low-carbon future and a route to energy security.

But US researchers found that shale gas wells leak substantial amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

This makes its climate impact worse than conventional gas, they say – and probably worse than coal as well.

via BBC News – Shale gas ‘worse than coal’ for climate.

Protest for anarchist prisoners on Hunger Strike –

Hundreds of people protested against the arrest of ten anarchists by the Chilean state on terrorism charges. Despite being a peaceful protest, police dealt with the demonstration with considerable force.

Protesters dressed as clowns hold a banner from an overhead road sign during a protest in Santiago over the detention of 10 anarchists on terrorism charges.

Un exagerado actuar policial se vió este Lunes en el centro de Santiago luego de que un grupo de jovenes protestara en Vicuña Mackena exigiendo la liberación de los 10 anarquistas presos acusados de terrorismo por el Estado Chileno.

Los manifestantes cortaron el transito de Vicuña Mackena unos minutos mientras 5 de sus compañeros treparon a la señalética, se encadenaron y colgaron un letrero en el que se leía “Fin al montaje caso bombas, libertad a los presos politicos, Fin a la ley antiterrorista.”

Un amplio contingente policial detuvo selectivamente a los manifestantes luego de que estos se dispersaran y ocultaran entre la multitud que observaba los acontecimientos. La violencia utilizada disgustó a los peatones que pasaban por el lugar que se unieron a los gritos de protesta.

Luego de las detenciones se esperó cerca de 1 hora que llegara el GOPE (Grupo de Operaciones Especiales) para poder bajar a los 5 jóvenes encadenados, quienes no pararon de gritar consignas en apoyo a sus compañeros presos y en contra de la polémica ley antiterrorista.

El montaje caso bombas comenzó luego de una serie de ataques que sufrieron distintos bancos de la capital. Luego de años de “investigación” fueron detenidos en Agosto del año pasado 14 anarquistas que fueron culpados por los ataques, 4 de ellos fueron liberados, pero 10 fueron encerrados en la carcel de alta seguridad acusados de terrorismo y con nulos derechos humanos. Luego de 6 meses de recolección de pruebas aún no era posible encontrar nada que demostrara la culpabilidad de los jóvenes y comenzaron una huelga de hambre que ya se extiende por 50 días.

Tags Civil Rights, Demonstration, Community, Human Rights, Strike, Our world, Politics, Society

via Protest in support of anarchist prisoners on Hunger Strike – Santiago | Demotix.com.