Artists Against Fracking have released a mini-documentary by filmmaker Josh Fox (Gastown) of the group’s recent tour of fracking sites in Pennsylvania. The group will air a winning TV ad from its #DontFrackNY video contest next week.

Below, Yoko Ono’s new television spot in response to NY Governor Cuomo’s silence and his upcoming Feb. 27th deadline for a decision on fracking. The ad features Ono addressing the Governor, with a response to her unmet requests for meetings.

“Governor Cuomo, since you haven’t met with me about the dangers of fracking, I will show you. PS: Nice to meet you, Governor,” Ono says in the ad.

"After visiting with families in Pennsylvania whose water, homes and lives have been hurt by the gas industry, I wanted to show Governor Cuomo and the public what I saw," she says. "He must know what could happen to New Yorkers -- our air, our water, our climate -- if he allows fracking."

Since the 1970s, the coal industry has been deploying deceptive advertising campaigns to scrub its image and delay important clean air standards. They use the same arguments year after year - environmental protections will cripple the economy, the science behind pollution problems is inadequate, and that coal is already clean.

Check out the coal industry's deceptive advertisements at www.quitcoal.org/coalads

Democracy Now! is broadcasting live from the annual U.N. Climate Change Summit, as it convenes in Doha, Qatar. Tune in Dec. 3-7, to see coverage of the official proceedings, as well as events outside the conference.

As Amy Goodman noted in her recent column, "No world leader at the UN climate change summit hasn’t heard the warnings, but it will take popular pressure to make them act."

Today, delegates from nearly two hundred nations are gathering in Qatar for the UN'sThis new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them."> COP18 – the latest round of UN climate talks aimed at cutting greenhouse-gas emissions.

While they all try to talk it out in Qatar, Bill McKibben and his grassroots initiative with 350.org may achieve far more on the ground than any solemn swear of re-commitment to the Kyoto Protocol will at Qatar. This new campaign is spreading an urgent message face-to-face all over the country, as this group of activists visit over twenty cities in the USA. Their message: it's simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming – anything more than this risks total catastrophe for all life on the planet. The problem: fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five more times the safe amount . . . And they’re planning to burn it all – unless we rise up to stop them.

Via Occupy Wall Street, Real Democracy Now! Paris:

To the financial institutions of the world, we have only one thing to say: we owe you NOTHING!

To our friends, families, our communities, to humanity and to the natural world that makes our lives possible, we owe you everything.

To the people of the world, we say: join the resistance, you have nothing to lose but your debts.

On O13, in the larger context of the worlwide "globalnoise" mobilisation, and within the Global Week of Action against Debt, we will mobilise against debt in several cities of the world: Barcelona, Madrid, Mexico, Paris, New York, Rome…

The governments' response to the financial and economic crisis is the same everywhere: cuts in expenditure and austerity measures under the pretext of reducing deficits and the repayment of a public debt which is the direct outcome of decades of neoliberal policies. The same neoliberal policies that have plundered economic and natural resources and exploited human lifes in Latin America, Asia and Africa for decades, are now also being imposed on the people of Europe and North America.

Governments in the service of finance are using this pretext to further reduce social spending, lower wages and pensions, privatize public utility and goods, dismantle social benefits and deregulate labour laws, and increase taxes on the majority, while social and tax giveaways are generalized for the big companies and the highest income households, the rich, the 1%.

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Since the 1970s, the coal industry has been deploying deceptive advertising campaigns to scrub its image and delay important clean air standards. They use the same arguments year after year -- environmental protections will cripple the economy, the science behind pollution problems is inadequate, and that coal is already clean.

Chico Mendes, Ken Sarowiwa, Dian Fossey, Joan Root, P.D. Majhi and Amit Jethwa, are just a handful of the thousands of environmental activists murdered for defending the planet. As another year approaches, be reminded of the majesty of the earth that inspired them, and also let it inspire you.

This is a non-commercial attempt from Sanctuary Asia to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network.

Content credit: The principal source for the footage was Yann Arthus-Bertrand's incredible film"HOME." The music was by Armand Amar. Thank you, too, Greenpeace and http://timescapes.org/

The Arctic ice we all depend on is disappearing. Fast. Soon it could be ice free for the first time since humans walked the Earth. This would be not only devastating for the people, polar bears, narwhals, walruses and other species that live there - but for the rest of us too.

Oil companies are using melting sea ice to drill for more of the oil that is causing global warming in the first place. In fact, Shell’s Arctic fleet will be arriving any day now to begin exploratory drilling off the coast of Alaska this summer. That's just madness. It's time for us to take back sanity from those who have lost the plot.

Our leaders won't listen to her, but they'll listen to you. What do you have to say to those who want to destroy the Arctic?

Greenpeace, Jude Law, Radiohead and hundreds of thousands of people around the world are coming together to demand we save the Arctic from oil drilling, industrial fishing and militarization. Join us at http://www.savethearctic.org

Via ChicagoSpring.org:

On May 19, Mayor 1% Emanuel will bring to Chicago military and civilian representatives of the 28-nation US-commanded and largely US-financed North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and heads of state and finance ministers of the G-8 world economic powers.

They meet on behalf of the 1% of the world, the rich and the powerful, the bankers and generals. Their agenda is to continue to impose austerity, or poverty, by cutting social spending for workers and the poor to maintain profitability for the rich and to launch more wars to stop the rise of the poor nations of the Third World.

The people of this fine city do not want these summits. The mayor has his own agenda. In anticipation of widespread opposition to the war & poverty agenda of the NATOG8, Mayor Emanuel passed a set of first-amendment crushing ordinances, known as "Sit Down Shut Up", to stifle the exercise of free speech and assembly during the summits. The mayor single-handedly gave himself the abililty to issue no-bid security contracts and deputize out-of-town law enforcement while imposing harsh restrictions on parades, marches and demonstrations.

But we will not be silenced. We will stand up to this corrupt system and say enough! Join Occupy Chicago, Coalition Against NATO/G8 (CANG8), the Midwest Antiwar Mobilization and many more as we gather in Chicago in May!

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