October, 18 2013, 01:29pm EDT

Activists on Six Continents to Urge Global Leaders to Ban Fracking
WASHINGTON
On Saturday, October 19, thousands of people concerned about the threat that drilling and fracking for oil and gas poses to the environment, communities and their shared resources will unite through approximately 250 actions on six continents for the second annual Global Frackdown. A coordinated international day of action against fracking, the Global Frackdown will gather concerned citizens in over 25 countries who will send a message to elected officials around the world that they want a future powered by clean, renewable energy, not polluting fossil fuels. Initiated by Food & Water Watch, over 350 advocacy, environmental and public health organizations including 350.org, Environment America, MoveOn.org, Progressive Democrats of America, Democracy for America, Breast Cancer Action, Energy Action Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Action are expected to participate in the Global Frackdown.
"Fracking is a global issue with significant policy and political implications both in the United States and overseas," said Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. "In January, President Obama promised to take 'bold action' on climate change, but his plans to accelerate drilling and fracking will only exacerbate the problem. It's time for him to be a leader on the global stage and reject fracking as many communities around the world have already done."
"The Global Frackdown shows that the movement for a ban on fracking is truly worldwide. To frack or not to frack comes down to this simple choice: do we want another fifty years of dependency and addiction to toxic fossil fuels, or do we want to move on, worldwide, to renewable energy," said Josh Fox, the director of Gasland and Advisory Board Member for Americans Against Fracking. "From every perspective be it water and air contamination, global climate change or the health of our democracies worldwide, we need to break from the past. The Global Frackdown is one of many powerful moments where the world is saying we need to move on."
In New York City, a broad coalition of groups will unite at the New York City Wine & Food Festival to articulate how fracking affects food systems and to ask Governor Andrew Cuomo to listen to the science and ban fracking in the state. Meanwhile, Californians Against Fracking will convene a rally in Oakland to urge Governor Jerry Brown to ban fracking. In Culver City, California, a coalition of organizations will hold a rally, followed by a five-mile bike ride and walking brigade, to raise aware of the effects of fracking in the Los Angeles Basin and to support a moratorium on fracking in the city of Los Angeles.
"Our elected leaders--from President Obama to small town city council members--should take notice: fracking is bad for our neighborhoods, bad for our drinking water, bad for the climate and bad for their own legacies, and MoveOn members and allies are holding them accountable," said Victoria Kaplan, campaign director at MoveOn.org Civic Action.
A recent poll released by the Pew Research Group finds that opposition to fracking has grown significantly across most regions and demographic groups. Overall, 49 percent are opposed to increased fracking, while only 44 percent support it. As scientific studies continue to confirm the inherent dangers of fracking to the environment and public health, the American people are seeing through the millions of dollars being spent on advertising by the oil and gas industry, and are increasingly opposing fracking.
"Each fracking operation opens dozens of pathways for polluting our water, our air and our land," observed John Rumpler, senior attorney at Environment America and co-author of the recent report, Fracking by the Numbers: Key Impacts of Dirty Drilling at the State and National Level. "Multiply those threats by tens of thousands of wells and waste disposal sites, and we have an environmental nightmare in the making. The prudent course is to stop this dirty drilling before more damage is done."
Polls in key states such as New York, California and Pennsylvania show similarly high levels of opposition to fracking. A recent poll released by Siena College finds that 45 percent of New York voters oppose the state Department of Environmental Conservation plans to move forward with fracking in the Southern Tier, the part of New York that extends above Pennsylvania. Only 37 percent said they would support such a move. Meanwhile, in California, 53 percent of likely voters polled by the Public Policy Institute of California said they're against the expansion of fracking in the state. According to a poll conducted by The Center of Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan in conjunction with the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion, almost two-thirds of Pennsylvanians support a moratorium on fracking until its effects can be better studied.
"Thousands of young activists are converging in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for Power Shift 2013, and will join the Global Frackdown, because our generation is determined to use its people power to move beyond fracking," said Whit Jones, campaign director for Power Shift. "The thousands of young people at Power Shift 2013 are fighting fracking in their communities, and we're uniting to demand that the Obama Administration and EPA stand up to fracking too."
Last week, the European Parliament voted to require energy companies to conduct environmental audits before commencing drilling and fracking, and a French court upheld a ban on fracking. Bulgaria and some Swiss and German states have also adopted a ban or a moratorium on fracking activities. Other European Union member states, such as the Czech Republic, Romania and Germany are considering a moratorium on fracking until an adequate regulatory framework has been is in place for unconventional energy projects such as shale gas. To date, 383 communities in the United States have passed measures against fracking.
"On October 19, all of us have an opportunity to make our voices heard about the health and environmental effects of fracking, and the often corrupt process that allows energy companies to take private land and taxpayer-owned assets for fracking and big profits at our expense," said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America. "It's time to stand up for the rights of citizens and stand up to big energy. Show up, be counted and let's win this fight."
In August, a million Americans signed petitions objecting to the Obama Administration's plans to frack on federal lands. Nearly 650,00 of those petitions were collected by Americans Against Fracking member organizations, and called for a complete ban. Weeks later, Food & Water Watch, MoveOn.org, Environmental Action, and other allied organizations in Americans Against Fracking and the Stop the Frack Attack Network collected over 250,000 petitions asking the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to reopen investigations into the possible link between drilling and fracking and water contamination in Pennsylvania, Texas and Wyoming.
"All over the world people are rising up to say, 'Instead of fracking for ever dirtier fuel, it's time to tap the endless energy of the wind and sun,'" said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Nebraska Women Gets Two Years in Prison After Giving Abortion Pills to Teen Daughter
"In this particular case, here's the audacity: Self-managed abortion is not even a crime in fucking Nebraska," said one rights advocate.
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Amid a wave of right-wing efforts to quash abortion rights across the United States, a Nebraska judge on Friday sentenced Jessica Burgess to two years in prison after helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy and bury the remains in early 2022.
Police have said that over two years ago, then-17-year-old Celeste Burgess took abortion pills—provided by her mother—at approximately 29 weeks pregnant and gave birth to a stillborn fetus, which the pair burned and buried in Norfolk, Nebraska.
Celeste Burgess was sentenced to 90 days behind bars and released earlier this month. Tanner Barnhill, who pleaded no contest to attempting to conceal a death for helping with the burial, was sentenced to nine months of probation and 40 hours of community service.
Jessica Burgess, who took a plea deal, faced up to five years in prison. She pleaded guilty to providing an abortion after 20 weeks of gestation, tampering with human remains, and false reporting. As Jezebelnoted, the 42-year-old was charged even though the state's 20-week ban that was in effect at the time applied to "licensed abortion providers, not people self-managing their own terminations."
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Nebraska is among several states that have tightened abortion restrictions since June 2022. In May, Republican Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen signed a bill banning abortion at 12 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions for rape, incest, and to save the life of the pregnant person—a measure which has taken effect but that rights group are fighting in state court.
The Burgesses' cases have also heightened concerns about digital communications, given that police obtained and Facebook parent company Meta complied with a search warrant for their private messages. Further, there are rising fears that U.S. law enforcement may eventually try to use new laboratory methods allegedly developed by researchers in Poland—which has outlawed most abortions—to detect medication commonly used to end pregnancies in biological specimens.
Across the United States from 2000 to 2020, "at least 61 people were criminally investigated or arrested for ending their own pregnancies or helping someone else do so," according to a report released this month by Pregnancy Justice and other groups. From 2006 to 2020, "more than 1,300 people were arrested in relation to their conduct during pregnancy," including people who experienced miscarriages and stillbirths but were suspected of self-managing abortions.
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In a historic move, U.S. President Joe Biden vowed Friday to travel to Michigan next week and stand with striking United Auto Workers members, an announcement that came just hours after union autoworkers widened their strike to include all U.S. General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers.
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Biden—who is seeking reelection next year—is a self-described "pro-labor president" but his response to the UAW is notably different from last year, when he came under fire for signing legislation to block a nationwide rail strike.
At noon Eastern time this Friday, workers at all 38 GM and Stellantis parts distribution facilities across the U.S. walked off the job as the UAW escalated its strike.
"We will shut down parts distribution until those two companies come to their senses and come to the table with a serious offer," UAW president Shawn Fain said in a video update. "The plants that are already on strike will remain on strike."
Fain said Ford was spared the escalation because UAW and company negotiators were making "real progress" at the bargaining table.
While some striking workers said they'd prefer the president didn't join them, others welcomed the solidarity.
"Me personally, I wouldn't mind if Biden stepped up and showed some support," 55-year-old Laura Zielinski of Toledo, Ohio, toldReuters earlier this week, recalling 2010, when he was vice president and visited her city's Stellantis assembly plant.
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Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Friday on social media that it was "unprecedented" for a sitting U.S. president to join striking workers on a picket line.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered Palestinians and their defenders Friday after presenting a map of "The New Middle East" without Palestine during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
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Middle East Eyereported Netanyahu also held up a map of "Israel in 1948"—the year the modern Jewish state was established, largely through the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Arabs—that erroneously included the Palestinian territories as part of Israel.
Palestinian Ambassador to Germany Laith Arafeh said on social media that there is "no greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a 'map of Israel' that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people, then attempting to spin the audience with rhetoric about 'peace' in the region, all the while entrenching the longest ongoing belligerent occupation in today's world."
As Middle East Eye noted:
The inclusion of Palestinian lands (and sometimes land belonging to Syria and Lebanon) in Israeli maps is common among believers of the concept of Eretz Yisrael—Greater Israel—a key part of ultra-nationalist Zionism that claims all of these lands belong to a Zionist state.
Earlier this year, Netanyahu's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, spoke from a podium adorned with a map that also included Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria as part of Greater Israel. In the same event, he said there was "no such thing as Palestinians."
The use of such maps by Israeli officials comes at a time when Netanyahu's ultra-nationalist government has taken steps that experts say amount to the "de jure annexation" of the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu used the maps in an attempt to illustrate the increasing number of Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel under the Abraham Accords brokered by the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump.
"There's no question the Abraham Accords heralded the dawn of a new age of peace," the Israeli prime minister said. "But I believe that we are at the cusp of an even more dramatic breakthrough, an historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East."
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