An Image from the Future: A Review of “The East”

The East playing a little game of “spin the bottle.”

[Warning: Spoiler Alert]

By Scott Parkin

True Blood’s Eric Northman and Juno lead a state-smashing anarchist collective seeking justice against corporate crime lords?

All I can say is “where do I sign up?”

True Blood’s Alexander Skarsgard and Ellen Page star in director Zal Batmanglij’s new film “The East.” It’s a provocative new film trying to undermine the usual parade of boring formulaic summer crapola and start a conversation in the wake of popular movement frenzy from Occupy Wall Street to the Tar Sands Blockade. I saw it at a special screening in Berkeley with Batmanglij doing a question and answer at the end of movie for a rowdy crowd of  lefties.

I love movies and I love anarchists. So the tale that Batmanglij and co-writer (and the film’s lead) Brit Marling weaves is one part love story, one part espionage thriller and all anarchy. They tell the story of undercover corporate spy and ex-FBI agent Sarah Moss tasked with infiltrating an anarchist group, “the East,” wanted for executing covert attacks upon major corporations. Shot in an amazing 27 days in Baton Rouge, the film delves into questions around justice, violence, community, commitment, and ultimately…which side are you on?

Batmanglij and Marling spent the summer of 2009 traveling through the North American anarchist scene researching the film. As a loud and proud anarchist, two months is enough to get a tone and feel for our world, but not enough to really understand the politics or the participants in it.

Here’s a couple of things that stood out to me.

Fourth Generation Oklahoman, Founder of the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House, Locks Himself to KXL Construction Equipment

Cross Posted From Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance
Follow this developing story at GPTSR’s website

Wewoka Oklahoma-Monday, May 13th, 7 am

Early this morning Bob Waldrop, 60,
fourth generation Oklahoman and prominent Oklahoma City community member
walked onto an active construction site for the Keystone XL pipeline in Seminole County and
locked himself to an Excavator, a piece of heavy machinery used in the
construction of the pipeline. Waldrop took a stand today in defense of the
land and the human and non-humans that depend upon it to survive.

Waldrop, as a founding member of the Oscar Romero Catholic Workers House,
is a part of Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance, a growing coalition of
groups and individuals dedicated to stopping the expansion of Tar Sands
infrastructure throughout the Great Plains. His action follows an
escalating number of work-stopping actions, of which there were five in
April alone, in Oklahoma.

Sea Shepherd launches Operation Relentless

Cross Posted from Sea Shepherd

 

Off the back of Sea Shepherd’s most successful campaign to date, Operation Zero Tolerance that saved 932 whales, Sea Shepherd launches Operation Relentless. Like last season’s campaign, Operation Relentless will be managed and led by Sea Shepherd Australia with campaign leaders Bob Brown and Jeff Hansen.

It will be Sea Shepherd’s 10th Antarctic whale defence campaign defending at risk whales in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. During the past nine seasons, Sea Shepherd’s direct-action interventions have saved the lives of more than 4,500 whales and exposed illegal Japanese whaling to the world. With the help of Australians and people around the world, Operation Relentless is shaping up to be a monumental success for the whales.

A Call For More Meeting Disruptions!

by Rabb!t, Earth First! Newswire

As the saying goes: dress for the job you want [to undermine], not the one you have [been].

Lately, environmental activists have been shedding the flannels and camo and straightening their ties in order to infiltrate meetings, conferences and symposiums, disrupting dirty energy projects at the point of decision. Not only can you stop a lot of bulldozers by interrupting the executives who order the bulldozers—you also get to see the looks on those execs’ faces as they realize that all their power and money suddenly appear insubstantial in the face of passionate cries and steel bicycle locks.

Just yesterday, the Pittsburg Post-Gazette reported, protesters fed up with mountaintop removal coal mining crashed PNC Financial Services Group’s annual shareholder’s meeting. According to participants, PNC is one of the nation’s largest financiers of mountaintop coal mining. The activists, most of whom were from the Earth Quaker Action Team, called out the names of board members and asked them to state their position on mountaintop removal. PNC’s chairman and CEO, James Rohr, tried to continue the meeting in spite of the disturbance, but finally gave up, calling the meeting off about 15 minutes after it started.

[Update: Read George Lakey's personal account of the action here]

Caltrans Bypass Battle in Willits Heats Up As Activists Sit Down to Block Equipment

Willits, CA-Local residents say Caltrans tried to bulldoze their way through Federal and State regulations again in what has become a running battle over the planned Bypass highway around Willits in Mendocino County. Activists sat down in front of moving equipment and called Cal-tip to report violations of the International Migratory Bird Act after bird nests were found. This was the third time activists have blocked equipment since Jan. 28, when a tree sitter named Warbler went aloft in a tall ponderosa pine at the southern end of the proposed construction site on Hwy. 101 just outside Willits to protest Caltrans’ Bypass.

At issue is protocol regarding required surveys for nesting birds in compliance with the Migratory Bird Act and a “jurisdictional wetland” damaged when Caltrans workers drove an excavator into the boggy area and it became stuck.

 

Thoughts on Ecological-Crisis, #Egypt, #Jan25, #Tahrir, and Revolutionary Struggle

“Shut down the arms dealers. Do not let them make it, ship it.” -From Tahrir Square, November 22, 2011

A black block participant, Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt. January 25, 2012. Source: Al-Jazeera

by SabiTaj Mahal,
Earth First! Journal

January 25, 2013, is the two year anniversary of a massive gathering that took place in Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, that kicked off a series of events that eventually lead to the end of Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, and the Egyptian Revolution (See: Timeline: Egypt’s Revolution)

My father spent four years in Egypt during the 1970′s. As a young spry Muslim college student from Pakistan, he chose to go to Egypt because he wanted to learn more about the historic region and learn a new language while completing his university education. As soon as I was able to talk, he told me stories of his adventures in Egypt, describing in detail his awe of the environment, and how they were special moments stuck in time. Because of this ever increasing industrial world, the Egypt my father experienced no longer exists. One of his favorite stories to share with me was when he first tasted the freshwater from the Nile:

“I drank the water from the Nile. We were on a trip going down the Nile… I forgot to bring water and I was thirsty… so I layed stomach down on the raft, cupped my hands, scooped up what I could… it was the sweetest water I ever tasted! The man who was pushing our boat told me, ‘You will now talk about Egypt for the rest of your life’. I feel lucky, because now, you can’t drink from the Nile anymore, its too polluted.”

Day 2 of the Earth First! Film Fest in Florida

Get yer radical holiday EF! merch at the Earth First! Film Fest

We have an awesome lineup of some radical, entertaining, visual awesomeness! People are coming in from all over and we already have a handful of Earth First!ies crashing in our EF! Journal office (thanks for working in the garden friends!).

So bring yerself over here to see these incredible movies on a big screen, eat food, and hangout with folks.

Climate Change Resistance Solidarity Action

Since spring 2010, frontline Northwest activists have been resisting tar sands transportation projects and associated police states in our communities and on our roads, through six court cases, a dozen arrests, and over 50 direct actions. Residents of Moscow and Lewiston, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Missoula, Montana, and regional rural enclaves have defended our wild places, home towns, and public roadways from the climate-wrecking, industrial ravages of “megaload” equipment transported for ExxonMobil, Weyerhaeuser, and other undisclosed corporations to Alberta destinations and tar sands operations. Our monitoring, protesting, and litigating activities have challenged, stalled, diverted, blockaded, frustrated, cost millions, and forced some of the biggest, wealthiest, most powerful dirty energy purveyors on Earth to boost their security, pay our state, county, and city police officers as escorts, guard their unoccupied stopover and port spaces, dismantle their supposedly irreducible loads, and sneak around us on alternative routes.

Tar Sands Blockade Calls For Solidarity Actions November 19th

Alright, eco-warriors, consider yourselves on notice. Tar Sands Blockade is stepping our game up, and we’re calling on you to do the same.

We’ll be throwing down in a big way next Monday, November 19^th, somewhere near Nacogdoches, Texas, the heart of outlaw territory in this region for hundreds of years, and we want you to do the same. If you’re close enough or able to travel, of course we’d love to have you here with us, but we also want to see communities rising up and defending their homes from the wanton destruction of extractive industry everywhere.

Increased Action in Texas, Slowing the Keystone Pipeline

“Rise Up and Defend Your Home,” looks like there’s a new banner up at the Tar Sands Tree-sit!

While Transcanada strongly believes that there is “overwhelming support” to build this disasterous pipeline, the Earth First! Newswire is committed to keeping the international community of readers and eco-warriors posted on all of the amazing resistance that is helping prevent Alberta Tar Sands from traveling into the US. the following two paragraphs are copied directly from the Transcanada website.

TransCanada is fully committed to the construction of the 1,897-km (1,179-mile) Keystone XL Pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska. We will re-apply for a Presidential Permit and expect a new application to be processed in an expedited manner, making use of the exhaustive record compiled over the past three plus years of regulatory review to allow for an in-service date of 2015. TransCanada anticipates approval of the Presidential Permit application – which is required as the pipeline will cross the Canada/U.S. border – in the first quarter of 2013, after which construction will quickly begin.
 
TransCanada continues to believe in the value of Keystone XL due to the overwhelming support the project has received from American and Canadian producers and U.S. refiners who signed 17 to 18 year contracts to ship over hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil per day to meet the needs of American consumers. 

In late June the Obama administration, moving swiftly on the president’s promise to expedite the southernmost portion of the disputed Keystone XL pipeline, has granted construction permits for part of the route passing through TexasOn August 9th, in Livingston Texas. On August 19th the Transcanada corporation officially began construction of the Keystone XL pipeline which will carry poisonous tar sands from Alberta Canada to the Gulf of Mexico despite overwhelming opposition from landowners and concerned residents, but a broad coalition called the Tar Sands Blockade is organizing to stop the violence and defend our homes in the path of this toxic tar sands pipeline.

The tar sands blockade has successfully delayed construction of the pipeline for two days by locking themselves to construction machinery and shutting down the construction sites. There have been two successful blockades at construction sites in Livingston and Saltillo, Texas.

Transcanada surveyors were also prevented from preparing for construction when landowners and community members turned them away north of Winnsboro at an ongoing vigil to protect a local wine vinyard which will be destroyed if construction begins. Read on for so much more.Watch this video for inspiration to join us in Texas or donate to support our work!