Protest - Revolt

COAST SALISH TERRITORY – Activists blocked access to the federal Port of Vancouver for an hour early this morning as part of an International Day of Action in Support of  Elsipogtog Land Defenders in New Brunswick. Access to the Port at the foot of Clark Drive was blocked for an hour. Traffic was backed up as far as as the eye could see.

On a cold and overcast morning, approximately 50 people gathered outside the RCMP station at the University of BC in Vancouver to denounce the RCMP assaults on Mi'kmaq in New Brunswick and to stand in solidarity with the struggle against fracking.  Members of the Musqueam nation, along with UBC students and anarchists from East Vancouver, participated in the rally.

“In addition, allowing ourselves to balance our left-brain tendencies with what our hearts and emotions naturally seek in times of both ego and literal death is crucial. Now is the time for reading and writing poetry, speaking it to another person, composing and sharing music, creating works of art, dancing, drumming, cooking a nourishing meal for a friend, and engaging in all manner of ritual, whether spiritually-based or rituals of our daily routine that we savor with unprecedented gratitude.”

Dozens of protesters calling on The Bay to protect factory workers snaked their way through the store’s flagship location in Vancouver Monday, yelling "Sign the Accord" as they marched through the department store. The demonstrators, which include garment factory workers and members of the B.C. Federation of Labour, want The Bay and its chain of stores to sign The Bangladesh Accord -- which promises independent safety inspections, public reports on factory conditions and that companies will cover the cost of needed repairs.

There is a pressing need for a coherent left strategy on climate change and in relation to the planetary environmental threat in general. The current scientific consensus indicates that we have at best several decades before the earth’s average surface temperature rises by 2°C, viewed as the point of irreversible climate change. This means that decisive action must be taken quickly if the world is not to go off the planetary climate cliff.

Environment and development groups together with young people, trade unions and social movements will walk out of the UN climate talks on Thursday in protest at what they say is the slow speed and lack of ambition of the negotiations in Warsaw. Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam, 350.org, Friends of the Earth, the International Trade Union confederation and ActionAid have all said they will leave the talks and not return.

After the Philippines lead climate negotiator, Naderev "Yeb" Saño, delivered an emotional speech to delegates at the U.N. climate summit, he was greeted by youth activists who held up a banner that read, "2012 Bopha 1,067; 2013 Haiyan 10,000+?" As a result, they were banned from the climate conference for their action. We speak with one of of the activists, 23-year-old Clémence Hutin from Push Europe, and get Saño’s response.

A human chain spanned Manhattan’s West Side Highway. The group carried a highway-wide yellow banner that proclaimed, “Stop the Pipeline” and sang the old civil rights anthem, “Which Side Are You On?” This act of peaceful civil disobedience last Saturday stopped traffic on the three-lane highway and resulted in 13 arrests, enacted in an orderly and non-violent fashion by both the protesters and the NYC police. A white-haired woman in a wheelchair was among those handcuffed and transported to a nearby police station for booking.

Three years after the financial meltdown of 2008, the U.S. Occupy movement opened the possibility for a left regroupment against resurgent neoliberalism.

FIVE years ago the world was in the grip of a financial crisis that is still reverberating around the globe. Much of the blame for that can be attributed to weaknesses in human psychology: we have a collective tendency to be blind to the kind of risks that can crash economies and imperil civilisations. Today, our risk blindness is threatening an even bigger crisis. In my book The Energy of Nations, I argue that the energy industry's leaders are guilty of a risk blindness that, unless action is taken, will lead to a global crash – and not just because of the climate change they fuel.