Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom,East Bay Branch
Visit our web page www.WILPFEastBay.org
Contact us at wilpf@wilpfeastbay.org
Meetings are 2nd Saturday of the Month 10am-noon
110 41st St. (Piedmont Gardens) just off Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.
You are invited to join us Saturday
October 13, 10:00 AM planning meeting
WILPF U.S. has a new home on the web!
Come check them out! Please bookmark and visit their new site at www.wilpfus.org/ Reminder WILPF.US is about to hold elections and dues paying members in the last 18 months will receive a ballot. Dues are sliding scale starting form $15. Members receive the magazine Peace and Freedom , monthly e-newsletter and alerts. If you are not sure about your membership status, check www.wilpfus.org/ or respond to this e-newsletter. If you do not receive a ballot by Sept 20 respond to the email address of this newsletter.
Keep the Frack Out of My Water
by WILPF Earth Democracy Issue Committee and
Food and WaterWatch
On September 22 – WILPFus Earth Democracy joins the growing coalition in the Global Frackdown Day of Action calling for a global BAN on fracking.
We join this people’s movement to ban fracking not just in the U.S., but world-wide. This is one big step toward environmental and climate justice that will help secure national and international peace and freedom now and for future generations. WILPF is one of many hundreds of partner endorsing organizations.
We support events featured on the Global Frackdown www.globalfrackdown.org/
website with a link to a petition to Obama and California Governor Brown. To learn more link: www.foodandwaterwatch.org/
Not So Fast Natural Gas! 5 Frightening Facts About Fracking
1. Fracking a single well can require more than one million gallons of water. This depletes local ground water and can dry up near by creeks. The wastewater produced by fracking contains high levels of radioactivity that wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to treat.
2. Dangerous fracking chemicals are kept secret. Companies don’t have to disclose what chemicals they use. Independent analysts have identified 41 chemical that are extremely toxic.
3. Thanks to lobbying efforts from then vice president Dick Chaney, Big Oil and Gas are exempt for the Safe Drinking Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
4. Explosions used in fracking shatter the rock containing gas, and can lead it into nearby household wells and drinking water. This can make us sick or even kill us. Some householders have been able to light their tap water on fire. See the movie Gasland (2010)
5. Fracking is growing at an exponential rate. It is already underway in 28 states including California. Big OIL and Gas companies are racing to drill more wells before people realize how dangerous and permanent this is.
6. Natural Gas is being sold as the ‘clean energy’, but this is wrong. It still emits carbon and other greenhouse gases. It emits 1/2 the carbon as coal and 70% as much as oil and it created 1/5 of the US carbon emissions in 2008. It emits large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than CO2
U-S-to-auction-state-shale-for-drilling
by Stephanie M. Lee, reporter San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, September 8, 2012
A nearly 18,000-acre stretch of land extending from California’s Central Coast to the San Joaquin Valley is the setting for a brewing debate over an oil-extraction method that has little governmental oversight. The land, which spans Monterey, San Benito and Fresno counties, rests on a large chunk of the Monterey Shale, a formation of underground minerals long eyed by the energy industry for its potential to yield billions of barrels of oil.
That potential is expected to come closer to reality in December, when the federal government – which owns below-surface rights to the mostly private land – is scheduled to hold an auction to lease out parcels to oil and gas companies.
The lease sale, the second on the Monterey Shale in about a year, will occur in the midst of a growing battle among environmentalists, politicians and the energy industry over the drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” It injects a high-pressure mix of water, sand and chemicals into the ground to unlock oil and natural gas from shale rock layers deep within the earth – resources that cannot be tapped with conventional drilling techniques.
Fracking has been in use for half a century, but recent technological refinements have unlocked previously untouched deposits and resulted in a boom in oil and natural gas production.
Now opposition is rising among environmentalists in California, the nation’s fourth-largest oil-producing state. Operators have voluntarily disclosed more than 350 fracking wells throughout the state, from Northern California to Long Beach. But there is no way to know for sure how many exist, because California, unlike some states, does not require companies to reveal the number or location of the wells. The companies also are not required to disclose the chemicals they use – a fact that has angered some politicians and activists.
State and nationwide rules for fracking are taking shape, but watchdogs worry they will not be strict enough. Two bills in the state Legislature that would have regulated the procedure fell short last month after heavy lobbying by oil and gas groups.
The Monterey Shale drew the attention of activists this summer when the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which oversees the mineral rights, announced the auction of 79 parcels spanning 17,847 acres. In compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act, the bureau produced a draft analysis of U.S. to auction state shale for drilling – see SFGate Page 1 of 4
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/U-S-to-auction-state-shale-for-drilling-3850852.php 9/9/2012 8:41:39 PM/
WHAT WE CAN DO BOUT FRACKING
Support events featured and sign a petition on the Global Frackdown www.globalfrackdown.org/
Or write to Obama and California Governor Brown
Learn more at www.foodandwaterwatch.org/
Is Violence and WAR Natural?
Nancy Hanowi, former professor of Peace Studies at UC Berkeley, presented the ‘Seville Statement on Violence’, published in the Peace Review 4:3 (1992). The statement was an outcome of UNESCO sponsored meetings in Seville. “It is scientifically incorrect to say we have inherited a tendency to make war from our animal ancestors. Fighting occurs but warfare is a peculiarly human phenomenon and does not occur in other animals. Biology does not condemn humanity to war. Humanity can be freed from the bondage of biological pessimism. The same species who invented war is capable of inventing Peace. The responsibility lies with each of us.”
ACTION: join Wisconsin WILPHers, copy and send letters to regarding drones
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta Director David H. Petraeus
1400 Defense Pentagon Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20301-1400 Washington, D.C. 20505
Dear Secretary Panetta and Director Petraeus:
We believe drone warfare is cowardly, counter productive, a violation of international law and that it makes a mockery of what we believe the U.S. stands for — namely respect for human rights and the rule of law.
What is honorable about someone sitting at a computer panel thousands of miles way and killing another human being with the press of a button? How can we expect that indiscriminate killing in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia isn’t going to create even more people who want to avenge these deaths by doing harm to the U.S.? Even the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan says that this is the result occurring due to the CIA program of drone warfare which some credible reports say has killed more people than were killed on 9/11.
We believe it also a violation of international law. Law professor, Bill Quigley summarizes the five reasons that drone warfare is illegal:
1) Assassination by the US government has been illegal since 1976.
2) United Nations report directly questions the legality of US drone killings.
3) International law experts condemn US drone killings.
4) Military law of war does not authorize widespread drone killing of civilians.
5) Retired high-ranking military and CIA veterans challenge the legality and efficacy of drone killings.
Friday September 21 will be the International Day of Peace. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said, “Peace is one of humanity’s most precious needs. It is also the United Nations highest calling.” The drone warfare that the United States engages in draws us further and further away from a peaceful world. We are all called upon to take action to bring about a more peaceful world, and bring an end to the suffering caused by warfare.
So the question is why is the Department of Defense and the CIA engaging in such illegal and immoral practices and why are you wasting our tax dollars by building a drone training facility in Wisconsin? We look forward to your prompt response to the Wisconsin Coalition to Ground the Drones, 2237 Fox Avenue, Madison, WI 53711.
Sincerely:
