Category: Climate / Environment

Peace & Justice History for 11/3:

November 3, 1883
The U.S. Supreme Court, in its decision Ex Parte Crow Dog, declared Native Americans were ultimately subject to U.S. law, “not in the sense of citizens, but . . . as wards subject to a guardian . . . as a dependent community who were in a state of pupilage.”
However, the Court acknowledged the sovereignty of tribal authority in the particular case at hand. The Congress, however, essentially overturned the Court’s decision two years later.
Chief Crow Dog, 1898
More on Ex Parte Crow Dog 
November 3, 1917
Bolsheviks, the followers of Vladimir Lenin, took control of the capital, Moscow, and the Kremlin, the fortress-like grouping of government buildings and churches at the center of the capital city, as the Russian revolution succeeded.
November 3, 1969

President Nixon announced the “Vietnamization” program to shift fighting by U.S. troops to U.S.-trained Vietnamese troops. “We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable.”
The last U.S. troops didn’t return home until 1975.
November 3, 1972

Five hundred protesters from the “Trail of Broken Treaties,” a Native American march, occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices (part of the Department of Interior) in Washington, D.C., for six days. Their goal was to gain support from the general public for a policy of self-determination for American Indians.

Read more about the occupation: 
Read the Indian Manifesto: 
November 3, 1979
Five members of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later the Communist Workers Party) which had organized a “Death to the Klan” rally, were murdered and ten others injured when the rally was attacked by 40 Ku Klux Klan members and Nazis in Greensboro, North Carolina. The political organization had been joined in the march by a group of local African-American mill workers. At the time of the shootings, not one police officer was present.
Two all-white juries acquitted the murderers despite the fact that the whole incident was on videotape. But in 1985 a federal jury found two policemen, a police informant/Klan leader, and five Klansmen and Nazis liable for the wrongful death of one of the demonstrators.
November 3, 1985
The Rainbow Warrior bombed
Two French agents of the DGSE (Secret Service) dramatically changed their pleas on charges related to the bombing and sinking of the Greenpeace’s ship, Rainbow Warrior, and pled guilty. The ship was attacked in Auckland (New Zealand) harbor in anticipation of sailing to Moruroa Atoll to interfere with French nuclear weapons testing. It was the first act of terror ever committed in New Zealand.
Read more 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november3

Return the SCOTUS to law and order-

(I don’t know if this is gonna work; I’m not on Instagram, but I went there, and could see, hear, read, and got the embed link. MomsRising is asking for shares, so if anyone cares to share, thank you!)

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American Bird Conservancy

Black Vulture

Peace & Justice History for 11/2:

November 2, 1920

Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs received nearly one million votes for President though he was serving a prison sentence at the time for his criticism of World War I and his encouraging resistance to the draft.
More on Debs  
November 2, 1982
Voters in nine general elections passed statewide referenda supporting a freeze on testing of nuclear weapons. Only Arizona turned it down.

Dr. Randall Forsberg, a key person behind the Freeze movement
Dr. Randall Forsberg
November 2, 1983

A bill designating a federal holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (to be observed on the third Monday of January) was signed by President Ronald Reagan.
King was born in Atlanta in 1929, the son of a Baptist minister. He received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 organized the first major protest of the civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated nonviolent civil disobedience of the laws that enforced racial segregation. 
The history of Martin Luther King Day   (pdf)

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november2

Lots of links here;

I’ve read 5 of them. One I clicked in particular is most excellent, and easy to read. Link below; there are fine pieces on Ten Bears’s page.

Fey Fickle Today …

https://www.popsci.com/america-before-epa-photos/

Peace & Justice History for 11/1:

November 1, 1872

Susan B. Anthony and her three sisters entered a voter registration office set up in a barbershop.  They were part of a group of fifty women Anthony had organized to register in her home town of Rochester.  Anthony walked directly to the election inspectors and, as one of the inspectors would later testify, “demanded that we register them as voters.”
The election inspectors refused, but she persisted, quoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s citizenship provision and the article from the New York Constitution pertaining to voting, which contained no sex qualification. She persisted: “If you refuse us our rights as citizens, I will bring charges against you in Criminal Court and I will sue each of you personally for large, exemplary damages!”
The inspectors sought the advice of the Supervisor of elections: “Young men,” he said, “do you know the penalty of law if you refuse to register these names?” Registering the women, the registrars were advised, “would put the entire onus of the affair on them.” The inspectors voted to allow Anthony and her three sisters to register.   In all, fourteen Rochester women successfully registered that day. But the Rochester Union and Advertiser editorialized: “Citizenship no more carries the right to vote that it carries the power to fly to the moon . . . if these women in the Eighth Ward offer to vote, they should be challenged, and if they take the oaths and the Inspectors receive and deposit their ballots, they should all be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
November 1, 1929
Australia abolished peace-time compulsory military training.
November 1, 1954
A war of independence to end French colonial rule over the north African nation of Algeria began when 60 bombs were set off on this day in Algiers, the capital. Over the next eight years 1.5 million Algerians would die, along with about 30,000 French. The French had dominated the country since 1830.

French troops clash with Algerian civilians 
Read more 
November 1, 1954
The U.S. produced the biggest ever man-made explosion in the Pacific archipelago of Bikini, part of the Marshall Islands. The hydrogen bomb, equivalent of 20 million tons of TNT was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
It overwhelmed the measuring instruments, indicating that the bomb was much more powerful than scientists had anticipated. One of the atolls was totally vaporized, disappearing into a gigantic mushroom cloud that spread at least 100 miles wide, dropping back to the sea in the form of radioactive fallout.
November 1, 1961
50,000-100,000 women joined protests against the resumption of atmospheric nuclear tests by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The demonstrations, in at least 60 U.S. cities, led to the founding of Women Strike for Peace. Their slogan: “End the Arms Race – Not the Human Race.”
See Photos from Swarthmore College Peace Collection 
 
“Women’s Strike for Peace” storming the Pentagon in a 1967 protest against the war in Vietnam.

Bella Abzug demonstrating with WSP
photo: Dorothy Marder
November 1, 1970
Detroit’s Common Council voted for immediate withdrawal of U.S. armed forces from Vietnam.
November 1, 1983
A senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz about intelligence reports that showed Iraqi troops resorting to “almost daily use of CW [chemical weapons]” against the Iranians.

Saddam Hussein had invaded Iran in 1980.

But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president’s recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
November 1, 1990
As part of the adoption of the International Law of the Sea, forty-three nations agreed to ban dumping industrial wastes at sea by 1995. Neither the U.S. nor Canada (along with Albania, Burundi, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan and San Marino) have ever ratified the treaty which thus lacks the force of U.S. federal law.
More on the Law of the Sea 
November 1, 2003
The Tel Aviv memorial for Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin, slain eight years previously, was transformed into a peace rally with over 100,000 protesting the military policies of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.”Yitzhak was right, and his path just,” said Shimon Peres, the former prime minister and architect of the Oslo peace accords with Mr Rabin. “His views today are clear and enduring. There will be no retreat; we will continue.”

Read more

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorynovember.htm#november1

hecatedemeter’s Samhain Prayer

This Is a Prayer for Samhain. This Is a Prayer for Resistance.

Musk, Bezos need just 90 minutes to match your lifetime carbon footprint, says Oxfam

Between jets, yachts and investments in destructive companies, billionaires are speed running the apocalypse

Brandon Vigliarolo Wed 30 Oct 2024 // 10:30 UTC

Despite their self-professed environmental bona fides, tech billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the their ilk are responsible for so much carbon emissions that the average person would need a lifetime to match the amount one of them spews in 90 minutes.

That’s the claim from international nonprofit Oxfam, which yesterday published what it said is the first-ever study looking at the luxury transport (i.e., private jets and yachts) and investment emissions of 50 of the world’s richest billionaires.

“Oxfam’s research makes it painfully clear: the extreme emissions of the richest, from their luxury lifestyles and even more from their polluting investments, are fueling inequality, hunger and – make no mistake – threatening lives,” Oxfam International executive director Amitabh Behar said of the findings. “It’s not just unfair that their reckless pollution and unbridled greed is fueling the very crisis threatening our collective future – it’s lethal.”

Private jets, one of the most visible and publicized ways the ultra-rich get around, are significant polluters but still pale in comparison to the impact of their other indulgences. Billionaires are “treating our planet like their personal playground [and] setting it ablaze for pleasure and profit,” in Behar’s words.

Oxfam was able to identify private jets belonging to 23 of the billionaires it looked at for its report, and found that they flew an average of 184 times in a 12-month period, spending around 425 hours in the air during the period. Those jets emitted an average of 2,074 tons of carbon dioxide – equivalent to what the average person would emit in 300 years, or what someone in the global poorest 50 percent would emit if they lived for two millennia.

Musk and Bezos were called out for particularly egregious emissions, with Musk’s fleet of two (known) private jets responsible for 5,497 tons of CO2 over the course of a year (equivalent to 834 years of emissions from the average Earthling), and Bezos’ two-jet fleet emitting around 2,908 tons of carbon.

Once a darling of environmentalists for his work on electric vehicles, Musk has had no shortage of negative coverage for his excessive use of private jets, including for incredibly brief flights instead of a surface commute.

Yachts are even worse, with the average seafaring billionaire pleasure boat responsible for nearly three times as much carbon emission as the average private jet.

Along with looking at jet and yacht emissions, Oxfam also examined the stakes that various billionaires have in corporations and their publicly stated emissions, and the findings are stark.

Of the 50 billionaires studied, around 40 percent of their investments were in high-polluting industries like oil, mining, and shipping, with few having significant renewable energy investments. That means the average billionaire’s investment portfolio is responsible for 340 times the emissions of private jets and yachts – combined.

But don’t forget to recycle
While the billionaires in the study might be raking in the cash for themselves, Oxfam said that its findings suggest their voluminous carbon footprints are causing far more losses around the globe. (snip-More)

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/30/tech_billionaires_carbon_footprint/

We The People Are Doin’ It!!

i voted

Peace & Justice History for 10/30:

October 30, 1967
Martin Luther King, Jr. and seven other clergymen were jailed for four days in Birmingham, Alabama. They were serving sentences on contempt-of-court charges stemming from Easter 1963 demonstrations they had led against discrimination.
The U.S. Supreme Court had upheld their convictions for violating a court order enjoining them from marching [Walker v. Birmingham]. Public Safety Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor had twice denied them a parade permit. The law Connor used was declared unconstitutional two years later [Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham].
The constitutional issues
October 30, 1995

Over 80 people were arrested at Sugarloaf Mountain in southern Oregon during a massive direct action to prevent clear-cutting of old-growth forests on public land by private timber companies.
Sugarloaf protest 
October 30, 2000
George Mizo of the United States, Rosi Hohn-Mizo of Germany (his wife) and Georges Doussin of France were awarded Vietnam’s first-ever State Medal of Friendship by the President of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam for their work in building the Vietnam Friendship Village.

The Vietnam Friendship Village after five years; the medical clinic is in the foreground, other buildings are residences.

Mizo and the Vietnam Veterans Association built a residential facility for orphan children and elderly or disabled adults. George Mizo was a veteran of both the Vietnam War and the struggle to end U.S. support of the contra insurgency in Nicaragua, and repressive regimes elsewhere in Central America [see September 15, 1986].
General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnam’s senior military commander during both the French and American wars advised the Mizo’s 12-year-old son, Michael, “Never go to war.”
About the Vietnam Friendship Village Project 

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryoctober.htm#october30