3-week Winter Action Camp, St. Louis, January

APPLY NOW:  For the MORE-RAMPS-BMIS Winter Action Camp

RAMPS action against Mountaintop Removal

The camp will feature a 2-week (Jan 7-20) and 3-week (Jan 7-27) option. There will be two featured tracks, direct action and community organizing, with significant overlap and emphasis put on how these fundamental aspects of resistance fit together. Both tracks will include multiple actions targeting extractive industries and provide a solid set of skills that can be used in any campaign. Both tracks are a full-time commitment and will include intensive training and hands-on experience.

St. Louis is home to five coal companies (including Arch, Patriot and Peabody) agri-giant Monsanto and leading frack sand provider (Mississippi Sands)–just to name a few.

As Arch attempts to destroy Blair Mountain, Patriot shirks paying thousands of retired miners’ pensions, Peabody continues to pollute water in Black Mesa, and so much more, their CEOs hide in St. Louis, far from most of the communities whose health, water and way of life they are destroying.

In January, MORE, RAMPS, BMIS and members of the Black Mesa/Big Mountain communities are coming together for the 1st urban Winter Action Camp in St. Louis as yet another part of the growing national uprising against economic and resource extraction.

Build community organizing & direct action skills. Hold CEOs accountable. Grow a movement. Join the winter action camp. 

Apply here today, space is limited!

Pumpkin pie and tofurky in the trees, hot damn!

Photos from a Humboldt tree sit

Trinidad, California- Community supporters brought tofurky, potatoes, and pumpkin pie to the tree sitters on Green Diamond property in Trinidad. The tree sit is on the trail to Strawberry Rock and has been occupied for a little over one year. The timber company plans to clear-cut the area. Check out the beautiful photos below. For background on the campaign, read the news post from the Humboldt Herald and the statement from Redwood Forest Defenders, a group that formed a month after Green Diamond cancelled a THP due to the 4-year occupation of over 50 trees outside Eureka, CA by a different group, Earth First! Humboldt.

Update From Cascadia Forest Defenders

Hello friends, the first batch of folks arrested at the state capitol building occupation this last summer went through sentencing yesterday. They got over $1000 in fines, 60 hours of community service, and 18 months probation. The other crew is facing more serious charges and will be taking their case to trial in March. Stay posted.

Donation made out to Cascadia Forest Defenders can be mailed to

Earth First, P.O. Box 96, Eugene OR 97440

or just visit our website! www.forestdefensenow.com

Court rules peace activists can sue the U.S. military for infiltration

Cross Posted from the National Lawyers Guild

In a potentially precedent-setting decision, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a Guild lawyer’s challenge to military spying on peace activists can proceed. The ruling marks the first time a court has affirmed people’s ability to sue the military for violating their First and Fourth Amendment rights.

“This has never been done before,” said NLG member attorney Larry Hildes, who is handling the case. “The U.S. government has spied on political dissidents throughout history and this particular plot lasted through two presidencies, but never before has a court said that we can challenge it the way we have.”

California Releases First-ever Fracking Regulations

by Paul Rodgers / Mercury News

Wading into one of the hottest environmental debates in the nation, California on Tuesday released its first-ever regulations for hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the increasingly common — and controversial — practice of freeing oil and gas from rock formations by injecting chemicals under high pressure into the ground.

The rules proposed by the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown would require energy companies to disclose their fracking plans to the state 10 days before starting operations. The companies also would be required to post to an online database with the locations of their work and the chemicals used, and they would face new rules for testing and monitoring their wells.

“There is a high degree of public interest in this, a high degree of legislative interest, and interest in the Brown Administration in having rules that are clear,” said Jason Marshall, chief deputy director of the California Department of Conservation.

Environmental groups immediately blasted the rules as weak and riddled with loopholes.

300 protest Tnuva, call for CEO’s resignation

Cross Posted from Jerusalem Post

By SHARON UDASIN

PHOTO: COURTESY OF ‘TNUVA CRUELTY’

About 300 animal rights activists gathered in Tel Aviv on Monday – International Animal Rights Day – to protest abuse that has allegedly gone on in Tnuva’s Adom-Adom brand slaughterhouse in Beit She’an.

The protest follows a criminal investigation launched this weekend against Tnuva by the Environmental Protection Ministry and the Beit She’an police, after the television program Kolbotek on Reshet aired an expose on the facility Thursday night. Showing workers prodding cattle with electric shockers, beating them and dragging them by the legs with forklifts, the program said that the abuse was rampant at the site.

Getting the Shell Out of BC

ForestEthics Advocacy’s Karen Tam Wu shares the exciting news that coalbed methane drilling has been banned from British Columbia’s Sacred Headwaters. Thanks to the local communities and 100,000 ForestEthics supporters who helped ‘Get the Shell out!’

Montana Land Board Approves Keystone Pipeline Lease

Remembering Avalon on Winter Solstice

Environmental and social justice activist, ELF warrior and political prisoner William C. Rodgers (known to friends as “Avalon”) died on December 21, 2005. A casualty of the Green Scare, he committed suicide in jail, citing the following reason:

“To my friends and supporters to help them make sense of all these events that have happened so quickly: Certain human cultures have been waging war against the Earth for millennia. I chose to fight on the side of bears, mountain lions, skunks, bats, saguaros, cliff rose and all things wild. I am just the most recent casualty in that war. But tonight I have made a jail break—I am returning home, to the Earth, to the place of my origins. Bill, 12/21/05 (the winter solstice.)”

Florida Panther Deaths in 2012 Hit Record High

Two Road Fatalities, Days Apart, Raise Toll to 26

by the Center for Biological Diversity

ORLANDO, Fla.— The deaths of two endangered Florida panthers struck on roads this week brings the number of known deaths this year to 26, the highest on record. The deaths highlight the urgent need to protect habitat for the panther’s South Florida breeding population, as well as the importance of reintroducing panthers to the swampy border between Florida and Georgia to broaden the weakening gene pool of the population.