Apocalypse No!

Juan Santos

From the beginning, this culture—civilization—
has been a culture of occupation. - Derrick Jensen

It's scripted: a tragedy whose end is embedded in its beginnings, an
unfolding logic whose conclusion is the inevitable result of its premises.

It's simple. And obvious. We find ourselves in the midst of the most
rapid mass extinction in Earth's history; we have the power to all-but
end life on Earth. We can do so with nuclear weapons, today, in Iran,
or simply by turning the ignition switch on our automobiles and
gliding over paved surfaces where nothing can live. A little more
carbon dioxide, just a little, will tip the scale - unleashing our
potential for matching the greatest mass extinction ever – the one
called The Great Dying.

Science has given us until roughly 2012 to take radical action to
change the course we're on. In the next six years, they tell us, we
will determine the fate of the Earth.
With the US and its white colonial puppet Israel on a nuclear
collision course with Iran and Syria, we may have less time than that.

250 million years ago 95% of all species died. Only one large land
animal was left. Carbon dioxide and methane – the two most deadly of
the greenhouse gases – were responsible. We can do it again. We've
followed the script, we know our lines, and we've reached the final scene.

For that reason, this is a most exciting juncture for the Armageddon
mongers among us.

That's most of who believe in the colonizer's religion, in the Beast,
the Great Tribulation, the Four Horsemen, the Seven Seals, and the
other visions of St. John the Apocalyptic, whose hallucinogenic
fantasies penetrated clearly into the essence, unveiling the
inevitable end, the direction this civilization must head and the end
it must reach.

Bike Warrior writes:

Activists Promote Alternative Transportation Through Cross Country Bike Ride

Student activists from two universities will be bicycling cross-country from New York City to Portland, Oregon this summer as part of the Bikes Against Big Oil campaign, to express concern over rising gas prices as oil companies continue to show windfall profits.

Lauren Giaccone, a student at Pace University in New York City, said this about the campaign:

We are riding to spread awareness of alternatives to cars as a primary means of transportation, and to encourage people, especially those living in major cities, not to sit back and let the big oil companies shaft them in this way. People are disillusioned that a solution can be reached in the near future, because the government has done nothing to help them. The government could easily step in to regulate gas prices if it wanted to, and without sacrificing environmental safety standards.

Peak Opportunity!

Earth Liberation and the Oil Endgame

Acornista, Peak Oil Anarchy

[Also published in Earth First! Journal,
Eostar (March–April) 2006.]

By now, all radical environmentalists—if not all humans—should be aware of the fatal ecological effects of civilization’s unsustainable energy binge. Yet many of us have been slow to grasp the true gravity of what our rapid depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels portends.

We must recognize three essential points about civilization’s imminent energy future: First, the unfolding “energy crisis” is real and will soon manifest as chronic oil scarcity. Second, industry is seeking to quickly and quietly implement a nightmarish swarm of ultra-dirty oil “substitutes,” ranging from coal-to-oil “liquefaction” in Appalachia to nuclear-powered “heavy oil” mining in northern Canada and biofuel plantations in South America. Rather than presenting feasible solutions, these “alternatives” are unsustainable and ecologically destructive. Third, we cannot cling to the hope that scientists will unveil a magical cocktail of clean, oil-free “alternative” technologies that will power a benign “new civilization.”

Anonymous Comrade writes:

The Drop

New York City, April, 2006

"The Drop," an exhibition about water quality and rights, is taking place at Exit Art in NYC. It opens April 8th. On Saturday, April 29th, a conference considers the question:

"Water Challenges Facing New York City:
Finding Visionary Solutions"

Saturday, April 29, 2006

THE DROP public programs will include two panel discussions and an artist-led walking tour of New York's waterways & water resources, organized by Amy Lipton of ecoartspace, a curator who has been engaged with art and the environment for ten years. In the spirit of promoting discussion and analysis, Exit Art has organized a flexible presentation of panels and speakers.

Former ELF Spokesperson Subpeonaed to Grand Jury; Protest Set

Anonymous

EUGENE, OR – Former spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), Craig Rosebraugh, has been subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury in Eugene, Oregon investigating ELF activity throughout the Pacific Northwest. Rosebraugh has been commanded to appear at 9:00am on March 16 at the Federal Building in Eugene, 211 E. 7th Avenue. A protest against the grand jury system and in support of Rosebraugh is planned for the same day beginning at 8:30am outside the building.

NOT BORED! writes:

"The Sick Planet"

Guy Debord

Today "pollution" is in fashion, exactly in the same manner that revolution is: it takes hold of the entire life of society, and it is illusorily represented in the spectacle. It is boring chatter in a plethora of erroneous and mystifying writings and discourses, and in reality [dans les faits] it gets everyone in the throat. It reveals itself everywhere as ideology and it gains on the ground as real process. These two [mutually] antagonistic movements -- the supreme stage of commodity production and the project of its total negation, equally rich in internal contradictions -- grow together. They are the two sides through which a single historical moment (long-awaited and often foreseen in inadequate partial figures) manifests itself: the impossibility of the continuation of the functioning of capitalism.

The epoch that has all the techincal means to absolutely alter the conditions of life of the entire Earth is also the epoch that, by the same separated technical and scientific development, disposes of all of the means of control and indubitable, mathematical prediction to exactly measure in advance where -- and when -- the automatic increase in the alienated productive forces of class-society will lead: that is to say, so as to measure the rapid degradation of the conditions for survival in the most general and trivial senses of the term.

While imbecilic reactionaries still hold forth on and against an aesthetic critique of all this, and believe themselves lucid and modern when they affect to marry their century by proclaiming that the super-highway and Sarcelles have their own beauty, which one must prefer to the discomfort of the "picturesque" old neighborhoods, or by gravely remarking that the entirety of the population eats better, despite those nostalgic for good food, the problem of the degradation of the totality of the natural and human environment already completely ceases to pose itself on the plane of so-called ancient quality, aesthetic or otherwise, and radically becomes the problem of the material possibility for existence of a world that pursues such a movement. This impossibility is in fact already perfectly demonstrated by all of separated scientific knowledge, which now only discusses the expiration [date] and the palliatives that, if one applies them diligently, can slightly delay it. Such a science can only accompany to destruction a world that has produced it and has it, but is forced to do so with open eyes. It thus shows, to a caricatural degree, the uselessness of knowledge without use.

Anti-Nukleer Cephe (ANC — Anti-Nuclear Front) writes:

No Nuclear Future for Turkey!

Anti-Nuclear Front was in action in Istanbul against the nuclear plans in Anatolia and Thrace. [For photos: www.antinukleer.org]


Anti-Nukleer Cephe (ANC — Anti-Nuclear Front) made an action against the nuclear plans in Anatolia and Thrace. The government hand-in-hand with global usurpers wants to build 3 or 5 nuclear power plants in Anatolia and Thrace. The certain decision has not been declared yet, but the Minister of Energy speaks of constructing nuclear power plants. ANC has begun its campaign against the nuclear greed of the power with distributing pamphlets on February 17.

Killer Whale Is Most Toxic Mammal in Arctic, Says WWF
Reuters

Killer whales are the most toxic mammals in the
Arctic, riddled with household chemicals from around the world, the
environmental pressure group WWF said on Monday.

Scientists found that the blubber of killer whales, or Orcas, taken from a
fjord in Arctic Norway was full of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs),
pesticides and even a flame retardent often used on carpets.

Brazil's Amazon States Suffer Record Drought

Larry Rohter, New York Times

MANAQUIRI, Brazil — The Amazon River basin, the world's largest rain
forest, is grappling with a devastating drought that in some areas
is the worst since record keeping began a century ago. It has
evaporated whole lagoons and kindled forest fires, killed off fish
and crops, stranded boats and the villagers who travel by them,
brought disease and wreaked economic havoc.

In mid-October, the governor of Amazonas State, Eduardo Braga,
decreed a "state of public calamity," which remains in effect as the
drought's impact on the economy, public health and food and fuel
supplies deepens. But other Brazilian states have also been severely
affected, as have Amazon regions in neighboring countries like Peru,
Bolivia and Colombia.

"FBI Arrests Suspected Eco-Terrorists"

Paul Shukovsky, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

In a series of coordinated raids around the nation Wednesday, federal agents arrested six suspected eco-terrorists for arsons at four locations and the destruction of an electric transmission tower in the Northwest.

The arrests could mean a break in the investigation of the May 21, 2001, firebombing of the University of Washington’s Urban Horticulture Center.