Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to 2 years in prison on July 26, 2011 at the Salt Lake City federal courthouse. He was taken immediately into custody, being denied the typical 3 weeks afforded to put his affairs in order and say goodbye to his friends and family.

Federal prosecutors asked for Tim to receive an extra harsh prison sentence in an effort to intimidate the movement that stands with him. They hoped that by condemning him to years behind bars, they would “make an example out of him” and deter all of us from taking meaningful action. Read the complete Post.

SATURDAY FEB. 19
1:30 PM – 4 PM
BCIT downtown 555 Seymour St., Vancouver

If you are an environmentally-focused BC resident who recently joined the BC Liberal party as part of our membership drive, then you are welcome to attend our town hall / membership convention. Be part of deciding who will become the next Premier of BC – because it’s likely we control enough votes to determine the outcome!

Our plan is to hold an intimate town/convention of the BC Green Liberal Caucus, carried by live web-streaming to our members in the rest of the province. If you cannot join us in person, then please RSVP above with the “Live-streaming” ticket, so we know how many members will participate. But if you can come in person, we want you there!

Here’s the schedule (note that this is a revised time to follow the candidates’ debate on Shaw TV):

1:30 p.m. - Meet and greet, light refreshments

2:00 – 3:30 - Roundtable Q&A with whichever candidates choose to come and try to win our votes!  CURRENTLY SCHEDULED:  Mike de Jong at 2 p.m., George Abbott at 3 p.m.  Waiting on word from the other candidates.  This may be your ONLY CHANCE to hear the candidates speak on environmental issues!  Don’t miss it!

We will supplement these appearances with whatever information we’ve been able to come up with about the candidates’ positions on environmental issues.  Non-partisan NGO’s like Organizing For Change and Conservation Voters of BC are working on getting information, which they’ll make public.  Candidates and non-caucus members will be asked to leave at the conclusion of the roundtable.

NOTE: Live-streaming will end at 3:30 so that caucus votes and decisions are not public information

3:30 – 4:00 p.m. - Members-only review of candidate statements and positions, and group discussion.
At the end of this review, we intend to decide on a recommendation to support a candidate (this may include a ranking of candidates to match the BC Liberal voting procedure).  We will hold that recommendation till the following day, to gather input from caucus members who watched the convention via live-streaming, then we will issue a press release and spread our recommendation to all BCGL members province-wide.

Please RSVP now, so we can ensure that we have enough space for everyone!

See you there for this historic greening of the BC Liberal Party!

Posted on Nov 29, 2010

By Chris Hedges

On Dec. 16 I will join Daniel Ellsberg, Medea Benjamin, Ray McGovern and several military veteran activists outside the White House to protest the futile and endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many of us will, after our rally in Lafayette Park, attempt to chain ourselves to the fence outside the White House. It is a pretty good bet we will all spend a night in jail. Hope, from now on, will look like this.

Hope is not trusting in the ultimate goodness of Barack Obama, who, like Herod of old, sold out his people. It is not having a positive attitude or pretending that happy thoughts and false optimism will make the world better. Hope is not about chanting packaged campaign slogans or trusting in the better nature of the Democratic Party. Hope does not mean that our protests will suddenly awaken the dead consciences, the atrophied souls, of the plutocrats running Halliburton, Goldman Sachs, ExxonMobil or the government.

Hope does not mean we will halt the firing in Afghanistan of the next Hellfire missile, whose explosive blast sucks the oxygen out of the air and leaves the dead, including children, scattered like limp rag dolls on the ground. Hope does not mean we will reform Wall Street swindlers and speculators, or halt the pillaging of our economy as we print $600 billion in new money with the desperation of all collapsing states. Hope does not mean that the nation’s ministers and rabbis, who know the words of the great Hebrew prophets, will leave their houses of worship to practice the religious beliefs they preach. Most clerics like fine, abstract words about justice and full collection plates, but know little of real hope.

Hope knows that unless we physically defy government control we are complicit in the violence of the state. All who resist keep hope alive. All who succumb to fear, despair and apathy become enemies of hope. They become, in their passivity, agents of injustice. If the enemies of hope are finally victorious, the poison of violence will become not only the language of power but the language of opposition. And those who resist with nonviolence are in times like these the thin line of defense between a civil society and its disintegration. Read the complete Post.

Coalition of the Willing

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a ‘post Copenhagen’ world.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.

The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global public in the fight against global warming. This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analysis of swarm activity and social revolution, ‘Coalition of the Willing’ makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people.

by Mike Thomas on March 9, 2009

This week I received a response to my Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Transportation in British Columbia. My request read:

Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, I am requesting information including Ministry staff and/or consultant reports, Ministerial briefings, memorandums, emails, or other records on the topic of peak oil (declining fossil fuel availability, the price of oil, gas and diesel, and other related topics) and the impact on highway traffic volumes, traffic design standards, alternative transportation options and road maintenance and construction funding.

My intention in asking for this stemmed from a search on the Ministry of Transportation website for the phrase “Peak Oil” to which there are no results. I thought that surely it is in the public’s best interests to know what the Ministry intends to do with its assets worth billions of dollars (that are still being expanded), and can be maintained only with cheap, plentiful oil – not the likely situation in years to come, so I went through the Freedom of Information channel…

Apparently I bit off more than I can chew, and received an estimate that the cost of retrieving and photocopying this information was going to be $805.00. Click on the image to the right for an excerpt of the response. Read the complete Post.

VANCOUVER (January 29th, 2009) – A one-minute animated film made by a group of Vancouver filmmakers won the year-end “2008 People’s Choice Award” in the Friends of the Earth One-Minute Film Competition. Winners were announced in London, England by Friends of the Earth, an international organization seeking to inspire solutions to environmental problems.

Viewers from around the world voted for How to Boil a Frog as their favorite 60-second film among the top 10 entries shown online.  This “cheeky animation of a frog incensed by the world hotting up due to climate change” was written and produced by North Vancouver filmmaker, Jon Cooksey.  Cooksey has won a lunch in London with one of the judges, Trainspotting Producer Andrew MacDonald.  In describing the film, MacDonald said, “The animation How to Boil a Frog is professionally made and fun – it pulls viewers in and gets them thinking about climate change through its original entertaining style.”

How To Boil a Frog tells the story of Lou, a South American tree frog, who appears to be enjoying a Jacuzzi, until we see that he is the proverbial boiling frog, and the heat source is a burning Earth. Lou tastes the planet, and discovers the source of this global warming:  oil, factories, and cars. He yanks out the offending fossil-fuelled culprits, and bounces away on a happier planet.

Read the complete Post.

‘Veggie Love’: PETA’s Banned Super Bowl Ad