Global Justice Ecology Project teams up with KPFK’s Sojourner Truth show for weekly Earth Minutes every Tuesday and Earth Watch interviews every Thursday.
Category Archives: Political Repression
KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Minute: First Nation challenging Shell tar sands expansion denied hearing in Canadian Supreme Court, vows to join Idle No More direct action campaign
Comments Off on KPFK Sojourner Truth Earth Minute: First Nation challenging Shell tar sands expansion denied hearing in Canadian Supreme Court, vows to join Idle No More direct action campaign
Filed under Climate Change, Climate Justice, Corporate Globalization, Earth Minute, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Political Repression, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Tar Sands
Audio: “Green is Green” interview with animal rights activist Josh Harper
By Roxanne Amico, April 11, 2013. Source: Spiritmorph Studio
Click here to listen to this installment of “Rad Rox the Roots”: An audio series sowing narrative seeds to cultivate a future of justice & sustainability; a series sharing voices & visions of people with a deep critique of the current culture: What’s at stake in the battles we are fighting; the forces we are up against; and what we can do about it together.
Today’s segment is titled, “Green is Green”, and it’s an interview with Josh Harper, the anarchist from Oregon who was one of the SHAC (Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty) 7. SHAC was an international animal rights campaign initiated in the Pacific Northwest in the 2000’s, with the intention to shut down a UK research organization called Huntington Life Sciences, infamous for their testing of harmful medical and other substances on 10’s of 1,000’s of animals every year.
Josh spoke at Burning Books in Buffalo NY on the 28th of Feb., 2013, and Radio Roxanne had a chance to meet up with him in a café, where we talked about how people of conscience resist the power of the state and its corporate sponsors. We talked about his call for “Revolution Before It’s Too Late” (title of his talk in Feb.), about his identity as an activist, his influences, his mistakes, and what he learned.
Comments Off on Audio: “Green is Green” interview with animal rights activist Josh Harper
Filed under Actions / Protest, Independent Media, Political Repression
2012 Top ten articles on Climate Connections
Note: The following are the top ten articles from Climate Connections from 2012, based on the number of views each story received. Several articles were written by GJEP, or were sent to Climate Connections by the original authors. They are posted in reverse order, from number 10 through number 1. Our blog received a record 270,000 visitors in 2012 from over 200 countries.
Please subscribe to Climate Connections, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter.
Happy New Year,
-The GJEP Team
10. Three responses to Bill McKibben’s new article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” (July 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, Rachel Smolker of BiofuelWatch, and Keith Brunner, GJEP Communications Associate
Bill McKibben, in his new Rolling Stone article, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math” does an effective job at summarizing the hard and theoretical numbers that warn us of the devastating impacts of continuing to burn the Earth’s remaining fossil fuel reserves–yet it somehow falls short of its stated goal to help mobilize a new movement for climate action. Continue reading here
9. Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities (September 24)
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director of GJEP, and Orin Langelle, GJEP Board Chair
During an interview we conducted last week in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor gave us a long description of research she had conducted into a major military cover up of the use of U.S. citizens as test subjects for military experiments related to the Cold War.
Continue reading
Comments Off on 2012 Top ten articles on Climate Connections
Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Green Economy, Greenwashing, Indigenous Peoples, Industrial agriculture, Nuclear power, Oil, Political Repression, Posts from Anne Petermann, Rio+20, Tar Sands
On Not Attending the UN Climate Conference in Doha
By Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
Christina Figueres, Executive Director of the UNFCCC at the Durban Climate COP in 2011. Photo: Langelle/GJEP
For the first time since 2004, Global Justice Ecology Project did not sent any representatives to the annual UN Climate Conference (COP). There were numerous reasons for this decision, one of which was a letter sent to us by Ms. Christina Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change) “suspending” three Global Justice Ecology Project activists from participating in Doha. The list includes Lindsey Gillies, Keith Brunner and me–Global Justice Ecology Project’s “Head of Delegation.” We were officially banned from participating in any of the UNFCCC negotiating sessions in 2012 as well as any future sessions unless we sign a document agreeing to their terms to abide by their special “code of conduct” for observers. Right.
Our crime? Direct action. Unpermitted, disobedient direct action in both Cancun and Durban designed to highlight the mounting repression against non-corporate observers. (We also worked for over a year to help organize the amazing Reclaim Power action and Peoples’ Assembly at COP 15 in Copenhagen, which exposed the ineffectiveness of the UNFCCC and called for people to take their power back–though the letter did not mention that).
Over the years we have watched the UNFCCC become more and more like the World Trade Organization that we and many anti-corporate globalization organizations rose up against in the latter 1990s and early 2000s.
MO senators and congressman ask army to provide answers on Cold War-era human testing experiments in St. Louis
Note: Since Monday, 24 September, when we published the article Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority on our Climate Connections blog, it has become one of the most read articles since the blog’s debut in 2009. GJEP also worked with the Institute for Public Accuracy, on their press release Exposed: Secret Cold War Inhalation Experiments on Poor, Minority Communities in St. Louis; Possible Radiological Testing, as well as The Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Los Angeles and other media to help make sure that more people are informed of the secret testing.
Our prelude to Monday’s Climate Connections article stated: In a story that is breaking right now, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist in St. Louis. MO (US), has introduced evidence that “secret military tests conducted during the Cold War targeted poor and minority communities for exposure to what is likely radiological material.”The following is an update on the cover-up.
–The GJEP Team
Compiled by Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann
U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., and Roy Blunt, R-Mo are calling for an investigation into the secret testing on humans during the Cold War.
After hearing that Senator Blunt and Senator McCaskill are asking for an investigation related to the 1953-1954 and 1963-1965 open-air military/USPHS tests, which focused on the DeSoto Carr, Pruitt-Igoe and other affected areas, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor told us, “any real and legitimate investigation will include public comment and participation from former residents in the affected areas. Their voices have not been heard. It would be very inappropriate for government agencies- some of which designed these tests- to conduct an investigation without availing themselves of the first-hand experiences of those residents who were directly affected.”
Select quotes from yesterday’s online St. Louis Beacon:
“Given the nature of these experiments, it’s not surprising that Missouri citizens still have questions and concerns about what exactly occurred and if there may have been any negative health effects,” McCaskill said in a statement.
“The National Research Council recommended that additional studies should be conducted and it’s my goal to find out whether or not they were.”
In a statement, Blunt said, “The idea that thousands of Missourians were unwillingly exposed to harmful materials in order to determine their health effects is absolutely shocking. It should come as no surprise that these individuals and their families are demanding answers of government officials.”
In his letter, Blunt asked the Army to report on the specific areas exposed to the spraying, the health impact of exposure to the chemical compounds, and whether there was indeed a radioactive component to the testing in Missouri.
U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, whose congressional district includes some of the affected parts of the city, said Thursday that “it’s time for the Army to come clean and tell us the truth.”
“The Army has never revealed the full story about this outrageous and irresponsible Cold War testing in the midst of our community,” Clay said in a statement to the Beacon. “It’s unclear if the recommended follow-up testing was ever conducted, and if any long-term health risks exist.”
Comments Off on MO senators and congressman ask army to provide answers on Cold War-era human testing experiments in St. Louis
Filed under Political Repression
Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities
In a story that is breaking right now, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor, a sociologist in St. Louis. MO (US), has introduced evidence that “secret military tests conducted during the Cold War targeted poor and minority communities for exposure to what is likely radiological material.”
In an article yesterday, commenting on Dr. Martino-Taylor’s research, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said: “Relying heavily on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Martino-Taylor identifies connections between participants in St. Louis testing and scientists who took part in wartime efforts to build the atomic bomb.”
GJEP’s Board Chair Orin Langelle and Executive Director, Anne Petermann interviewed Dr. Martino-Taylor while they were in St. Louis, last week.
–The GJEP Team
By Orin Langelle and Anne Petermann
During an interview we conducted last week in St. Louis, MO, Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor gave us a long description of research she had conducted into a major military cover up of the use of U.S. citizens as test subjects for military experiments related to the Cold War.
Dr. Martino-Taylor told us that specifically, her research identifies a coalition of medical researchers that grew out of the Manhattan Project, which she refers to as the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition. This coalition conducted various secret radiological tests around the nation. The group was involved in previously known “injection” and “ingestion” human-subject studies that exposed unwitting victims to radioactive material such as plutonium and strontium-90. Dr. Martino-Taylor’s research demonstrates that St. Louis open-air dispersion studies carried out in the 1950s and 1960s are likely the realization of this group’s intention to conduct an inhalation study of radiological material in an urban area.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch further said Sunday: “Martino-Taylor was a skilled researcher before working toward her doctorate, investigating cases for a St. Louis law firm. The facts she assembled on the military project and conclusions she reached go well beyond anything published earlier.”
Dr. Martino-Taylor told us, “ This new research also reveals that a powdered substance used in the St. Louis tests sometimes identified in military documents, was in part, produced by U.S. Radium. U.S. Radium is the company infamous for exposure of workers to fatal doses of radioactivity resulting from the use of radioactive zinc sulfide powdered paint. Many of these workers died from systemic illnesses caused by inhalation of radium dust at U.S. Radium.”
Moreover, there is evidence that the material that was sprayed in St. Louis contained particles of such a size as to result in maximum absorption deep into the lungs.
During the tests, St. Louis residents were told by officials and through media reports that the government was testing a “smoke screen” that might protect the city from aerial observation during attack. Documents show that the St. Louis tests targeted what was characterized by officials as “a densely populated slum district.” Census data further shows that areas targeted for spraying included a high percentage of young children, poor, and minority residents. Areas of the tests included the Desoto-Carr area and the famous Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project, a dense series of high-rise buildings comprised of a majority black population where 70% children were under the age of twelve.
Additional evidence also strongly suggests radiological components to the tests that the Army conducted in St. Louis.
KMOX (CBS) radio reported this morning: Martino-Taylor says some of the key players in the cover-up were also members of the Manhattan Atomic Bomb Project and involved in other radiological testing across the United States at the time. “This was against all military guidelines of the day, against all ethical guidelines, against all international codes such as the Nuremberg Code.”
Dr. Lisa Martino-Taylor first publicly presented her findings at the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology Social Justice and Democratization in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Forum ran from August 1-4, 2012.
She will be presenting this research for the first time in the U.S. Tuesday, September 25th at a colloquium at St. Louis Community College in St. Louis, MO.
For access to Dr. Martino-Taylor’s doctorate dissertation:
The Manhattan-Rochester Coalition, research on the health effects of radioactive materials, and tests on vulnerable populations without consent in St. Louis, 1945–1970 – University of Missouri – Columbia, 2011
Comments Off on Breaking News: Secret US military testing of radiological materials on poor and minority communities
Filed under Climate Change, Political Repression, Women
August Photo of the Month: Arrest at the Republican National Convention
Woman is arrested during police raid on the steps of the New York Public Library during the Republican National Convention in 2004. The police arrested 75 people, including protesters, several bystanders and library patrons. The police attack was prompted by two young activists who were holding a banner. Photo: Langelle (2004)
Below, read the report on the arrests from the American Libraries Association, September 3, 2004
Protesters Arrested on New York Public Library Steps Some 75 protesters were arrested August 31 in front of the New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue amid demonstrations taking place during the Republican National Convention.As about 200 people gathered on the steps of the library for a march to Madison Square Garden, two young women tried to hold up a banner when police pinned them to the ground and a scuffle erupted between officers and demonstrators.
Protesters Arrested on New York Public Library Steps Some 75 protesters were arrested August 31 in front of the New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library on Fifth Avenue amid demonstrations taking place during the Republican National Convention.As about 200 people gathered on the steps of the library for a march to Madison Square Garden, two young women tried to hold up a banner when police pinned them to the ground and a scuffle erupted between officers and demonstrators.
Cyndy Bruce, 26, of Chicago said in the September 1 Long Island (N.Y.) Newsday, “The officer said you can’t hang it but you can hold it. As soon as they held it up, the officers swarmed in. They incited this violence. Not us.” Newsday reported that police moved the protesters away from the library and wrapped the whole block in orange netting.
NYPL Public Relations Manager Carolyn Oyama told American Libraries that no library employees were involved in the protest and that no demonstrators came inside the library. She said that the event only lasted about 45 minutes and that “the egress from the library was not affected.”
Also in New York City, library workers and students from a group called Radical Reference protested September 1 outside the New York Historical Society as First Lady Laura Bush arrived to have lunch with Republican delegates, according to the online anarchist blog Infoshop News.
The group of eight librarians and their friends were initially forced by police to stay on the sidewalk across the street from the society’s back entrance. Later the protesters made their way to the front of the building where another group of demonstrators was already in place.Signs displayed by the group included “Books Not Bombs,” “Laura, Stand Up against the Patriot Act,” and “Another Hysterical Librarian against Bush.” No arrests were made.
————————————————————————————–
Also check out past Photos of the Month posted on GJEP’s website, or Langelle’s photo essays posted on GJEP’s Climate Connections blog.
Comments Off on August Photo of the Month: Arrest at the Republican National Convention
Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Political Repression
Direct Action for Climate Justice: Confronting False Solutions to Climate Change
by Anne Petermann, Executive Director, Global Justice Ecology Project
23 August, 2012, Source: Daily Kos
Climate justice involves taking real and just action to address the root causes of the climate crisis, and transforming the system that is driving it. Direct action has a rich history of achieving the unthinkable, of changing “the impossible.” It is defined as action to directly shut down the point of production. In the case of climate change, it would be action to shut down the point of destruction. With the climate crisis worsening exponentially with every passing day, shutting down the point of destruction is critical.
It was with this in mind that the direct action training camp was organized. Coincidentally, it came just two weeks after the 36th Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers in Burlington, Vermont. A major focus of that conference was energy. Vermont, which has an image of pristine greenness, relies on dangerous and dirty energy sources. This includes its aging Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant; hydroelectricity from massive dams on Indigenous Peoples’ lands in northern Quebec; and large-scale biomass electricity, which dumps more pollution into the air than coal.
Although these various mega-projects do not rely on fossil fuels as the main source of their energy, they are still “false solutions.” They cause vast ecological and social destruction and can worsen the climate crisis. Their primary function, in fact, has nothing to do with the climate. It is to maintain business as usual. While the climate crisis demands a radical re-think of how we live on and with the Earth, a fundamental changing of the system, “false solutions” are specifically designed to prevent real change. They enable the Global Elite–“the 1%” –to maintain their power and profits in the face of mounting social and ecological crises.
Activists disrupt the Northeast Governors’ Conference cruise in protest of Hydro-Quebec. Photo: Will Bennington
Hydro-Quebec plans to build a series of new mega-dams on First Nations land in northern Quebec. They will drown forests, pollute fresh water, and displace villages and release huge amounts of methane–a greenhouse gas 35 times more potent than CO2.
In response, a delegation of Innu people came to the Governors’ Conference to raise awareness about and protest these new mega-dams. When the Innu delegation tried to enter the Governors’ Conference to speak with the decision-makers, however, they were refused entry.
The Governors’ Conference was emblematic of the unjust system that must be changed if we are to successfully address the climate crisis. A group of privileged white males sat down to make decisions that would irrevocably impact the lives of First Nations peoples in Canada, as well as rural communities throughout the region.
Continue reading
Comments Off on Direct Action for Climate Justice: Confronting False Solutions to Climate Change
Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Climate Justice, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, Energy, Events, False Solutions to Climate Change, Indigenous Peoples, Land Grabs, Political Repression, Pollution, Rights, Resilience, and Restoration, Solutions, UNFCCC
