The Yuppie-Manventure-Industrial Complex

Profiteering Gentlebros of the Wilderness

by Caity Weaver / Gawker

Do you have a Y-chromosome and also a keenly refined rustic aesthetic? Are you eager to go camping but hesitant to put yourself in a position where you could ever be out-of-doors? Do you have $40 to blow on a hand-stitched “masculine, yet understated” leather keychain?

Sounds like you’re in the market for a fastidiously planned adventure.

The Wilderness Collective is a company that specializes in curating artisanal manliness by coordinating expeditions that invite robust young gentlebros “to find out what [they] are made of; to be measured by the wilderness.” For $2,500 ($3,500 with bike rental), you can “reclaim masculinity through adventure.” Included in the cost is a videographer on-hand to record the masculine rebirth for sick Facebook videos.

Dung Beetles: Celestial Navigators

by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News

[The text of this work is free to share and distribute under the following Creative Commons License CC-BY-ND 3.0]

In a world where magic is endangered, the starry-eyed dung beetle is a beacon of hope. 

According to new research, these charming excrement-obsessed scarabs with brains no bigger than a grain of rice observe the stars—and more specifically, the Milky Way—to navigate through the night.

O yes, its with a map of the heavens that the dung beetle and its nourishing mierda make their way.

illustration by beck

“Dung is a precious resource for food,” says Eric Warrant, an Australian biologist who worked on the team that made the discovery, “and male beetles invest much energy and time in creating and rolling a ball that will be used by a female to lay her egg within.”

As you can imagine, its extremely important that male dung beetles roll that BM ball in the straightest possible path away from the pile—and other male beetles intent on pilfering their poo—to a secure burying location. After mating, that fecal booty will serve as breakfast, lunch and dinner for tiny and disgustingly adorable dung beetle babies. It’s a matter of sex, parenthood and survival.

Mobilize to Stop GE Trees!

Organize to Stop the Tree Biotechnology 2013 Conference from Deciding the Future of the World’s Forests this Spring in Asheville, NC, Marriot Renaissance Hotel

“The world doesn’t just need more trees. We need trees that can do more.”
–ArborGen, “The Next Monsanto,” GE tree research and development company

Call to action from Global Justice Ecology Project:

“From May 26-June 1, industry leaders, scientists and policy makers will meet in Asheville, NC for the Tree Biotechnology 2013 Conference. The conference will discuss current and future applications of GE trees, including large-scale plantations of GE eucalyptus trees for pulp and biofuels in the southern United States, from South Carolina to Texas.  We will be there to take action.  Will you?”

Demonstrators Confront Tar Sands Investment Meeting

Die-in at investors’ conference

Photos and article by Will Bennington

Hartford, Conn.—Prospective investors in the Canadian tar sands were met by demonstrators [Jan 29, 2013] at a meeting hosted by the US Commercial Service and the Canadian Consulate General.

Throughout the morning, climate justice organizers with Green Mountain Earth First!, Rising Tide Vermont, and Capitalism vs. the Climate attempted to enter the highly guarded meeting, although no demonstrators were able to pass through security check points.

Tarnation

Environmentalists, landowners and Valero await decision on the Keystone XL pipeline

By Michael Barajas

PHOTOS BY TAR SANDS BLOCKADE / LAURABOREALIS
A protester is arrested outside Wells, Texas.

The town of Wells is easy to overlook, just a few blocks of homes and a school stretching along a busy state highway. Paths that shoot north from the main drag plunge you deep into a forest of towering East Texas pines. In November, construction crews here navigated bulldozers, feller bunchers, and excavators through rows of trees, laying the groundwork for a fight with global implications: the battle over a 1,700-mile pipeline connecting Texas oil refineries to Canada’s vast deposits of tar sands.

Ranchers, Native Activists Protest Keystone XL Pipeline in Nebraska

By Kevin Abourezk / Sioux City Journal

Native drummers perform at the start of a demonstration Monday by Keystone XL pipeline opponents. The pipeline would transport tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

LINCOLN — Cowboys hats and shawls adorned a coalition of more than 100 ranchers and Native activists who gathered Monday at the state Capitol to protest the Keystone XL pipeline and show support for indigenous rights.

As six children held up a large banner that read “Idle No More” and singers pounded drums, about half a dozen people spoke against the Keystone XL and perceived attacks on Native sovereignty.

“Look at the children standing before us,” said Myron Long Soldier, chairman of the Lincoln Indian Center. “Those are the ones we need to fight for.”

He criticized Gov. Dave Heineman for approving the pipeline’s route through Nebraska after initially opposing it. The economic benefits to be gained from the pipeline through jobs and development will be only temporary while the environmental effects will last for generations, Long Soldier said.

Idle No More, a grassroots Native social justice movement, hosted the rally with support from pipeline foe Bold Nebraska. The event included Native ceremonial songs, drumming, Lakota and Christian prayers, and a round dance. Children and others held signs that read “You Don’t Own the Earth!” and “Down With White Clay!”

Idle No More began as a response to proposed legislation in Canada that would reduce drastically the number of legally protected waterways and lower the threshold of consent needed to allow Native communities to surrender their lands. It has grown to include rallies and flash mobs by Native people across the country and in Canada.

Disturbing Greg Boyce’s Peace: StopPeabody Activists Kidnapped by Hotel Security

Activists were arrested distributing this flyer near Peabody CEO Boyce’s apartment

Activists were arrested distributing this flyer near Peabody CEO Boyce’s apartment

Two activists were arrested for distributing this flyer near the apartment of Peabody Energy CEO Greg Boyce on Tuesday inside the Chase Park Plaza hotel and apartment complex. The activists were charged with disturbing the peace and released after eight hours in custody.

Earlier that morning, a small group known as the “Chase Park Plaza Committee for Non-Evil” leafletted inside the building’s parking garage, posting warnings to tenants and guests that Boyce, a “known climate criminal,” resides inside the building. The flyer states: “Mr. Boyce’s crimes, while too extensive and storied to detail completely here, reveal a legacy of gross disregard for the city of St. Louis, workers’ rights, human life, and the future of the planet as a whole,” and features criticism of Peabody’s complicity in the forced relocation of Dineh (Navajo) families from their ancestral homeland in Black Mesa, Arizona. Activists also used the flyer to highlight Peabody’s efforts to shirk on their obligations to retired coal miners, as well as the massive $61 million tax break that Peabody received from the city of St. Louis in 2010.

Read the rest here.

Rising Tide group rises from the Florida Keys

Florida can sometimes be a lonely place for eco-radicals like us here at the Earth First! Journal. So we were overjoyed this week when we received a note from a new direct action group in one of the most ecologically precarious regions of the US—the Florida Keys.

The Keys, known mostly as tourist destination, have also long been a battleground against the forces of greed and industry (since the days of industrialist Henry Flagler’s railroad).

While Key West has long boasted of the Conch Republic (motto: “We seceded Where Others Failed”), which has celebrated a mock  independence movement every April since ’82, we hope to see Rising Tide bring a new, slightly more ambitious revolutionary sentiment in the region. 

Alberta Oil Spill: Up To 3,000 Barrels Spill Near Red Deer River

Cross posted from Huffington Post, originally posted 06/08/2012

Crews were scrambling [last Summer] to contain and clean up a pipeline spill that is believed to have sent up to 475,000 litres of crude oil flowing into a rain-swollen Red Deer River system in west-central Alberta.

Indigenous Organizers to Hold Round Table Meeting on Tar Sands Resistance and Decolonization

Re-posted from our friends at the Tar Sands Blockade

Tar Sands Blockade has been working to amplify the voices of communities who will be most impacted by tar sands exploitation; Indigenous peoples and lands at the point of extraction and Latin@ and African American communities in the Gulf Coast where the tar sands will be refined and shipped to overseas markets in a tax-free trade zone.

On February 14th -18th Earth First! will be hosting it’s annual organizers conference and winter rendezvous. Indigenous land defenders and anti-pipeline organizers will hold a round table on tar sands Resistance and decolonization.