Artists Against Fracking: New anthem - "Don't Frack my Mother"

Artists Against Fracking have come up with a new musical video to convince Governor Cuomo of New York State to ensure that the moratorium on fracking passes and continues way past the current two-year mark.

To celebrate the progress made so far in the fight against fracking, with New York State Assembly passing a two-year moratorium on fracking in the state, Sean Lennon has written a little ditty.

"Don't Frack My Mother" is the new anthem of the anti-fracking movement. The fight is not yet over, as the bill still has to pass the State Senate, to then get signed into law by Governor Cuomo, so there is a definite need to keep up the pressure.

Interested parties can tweet Governor Cuomo to remind him why fracking is such a bad idea and share the song with him.

You may recognize a few of the faces in the video - you will see that by sharing the video and sending a tweet to Governor Cuomo, you are in very good company!

Just in case, below is a list of the artists who have contributed: 

Adrian Grenier, Alexa Chung, Ben Lee, Carrie Fisher, Daniel Pinchbeck, Devendra Banhart, Fred Armisen, Ione Skye, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Fox, Liv Tyler, Lindsey Wixson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mark Ronson, Melissa Auf Der Maur, Michael Skolnik, Natasha Lyonne, Penn Badgley, Reggie Watts, Sean Lennon, Susan Sarandon, Yoko Ono, Zoë Kravitz.

Along with band members from:

Au Revoir Simone, Black Lip, Cibo Matto, The Citizens Band, The Like, The Strokes, Wilco, Wild Belle.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/345399

Artists Against Fracking 'tweetstorm' to target Governor Cuomo February 6

Right now, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is considering lifting a temporary ban on fracking in New York, threatening communities' health, polluting vital water sources and opening up peoples' lands to gas exploration. You can help.

From Lady Gaga to Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, Artists Against Fracking have got the backing of more than 200 artists in the fight to end fracking. See the full list of artists here. 

Digital Journal reported recently on the visit by Artists Against Fracking to Pennsylvania, where Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon, Susan Sarandon and Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, Arun Ghandi visited families living in the area. These families have been severely impacted by fracking, which has robbed them of clean ground water.

Fracking, or to give it its full name, hydraulic fracturing, is a method of extracting natural gas and oil from rocks, at depths from 2,000 to 10,000 feet. What they do first is to drill deep wells straight down through the aquifer. The drilling then curves horizontally below the earth's surface and into its shale rock formations. Once this is done, millions of gallons of water, laced with chemicals, is injected at extremely high pressure into the rock formations. This breaks apart the rock and frees trapped methane, along with other dangerous materials.

There are currently more than 27,000 wells in the US, each of which uses 1-8 million gallons of water and 80-300 tons of chemicals each time it is fracked. Wells can be fracked up to 8 times. However, the danger is that only 4 of the 31 states that have major fracking projects have robust drilling rules in place. The fracking industry remains exempt from Clean Water, Safe Drinking Water and Clean Air Acts, hazardous waste disposal and other federal regulations.

In the video above you can hear and see what has happened in Pennsylvania through the whole fracking industry. While fracking was previously banned in New York State, Governor Andrew Cuomo is currently considering a temporary lift to this ban, and this could happen within the next three weeks. 

Award-winning filmmaker Josh Fox has made the short film about the visit by Artists Against Fracking to Pennsylvania, where people can hear from residents living with fracking, and explaining the problems resulting from the industry.

Artists Against Fracking are asking everyone to watch the film, and then prepare for a coordinated day of action on Twitter. What they say is: "Groups and communities across the country are organizing a "tweetstorm" targeting Governor Cuomo on Wednesday February 6th from 1pm ET until 4pm ET."

"What's a tweetstorm? A tweetstorm is when people agree to use twitter.com to tweet a message at a decision maker, pressuring him or her to make a decision. Think of it as a virtual protest at the Governor's office." "Together we'll flood Governor Cuomo's Twitter inbox with thousands of tweets calling for a ban on fracking in New York."

If readers would like to get involved, here is what you should tweet: Tell @NYGovCuomo #dontfrackny! Click to sign the petition @causes to protect clean & healthy communities: http://links.causes.com/s/clIHwX?r=gUBO  

If readers prefer, they can go straight to the petition page and leave their mark. 

To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342888

Yoko Ono Lennon awards Julian Assange with "Courage Award for the Arts 2013"

On Sunday in New York City, Yoko Ono Lennon presented the Courage Award for the Arts 2013 to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who accepted the award in absentia. 

 Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Ratner, Yoko Ono Lennon, Baltasar Garzón and Ricardo Patiño at the
2013 Courage Awards for the Arts presentation to Julian Assange.

The award was created by Ono to recognize artists who have demonstrated independent thought and have resisted commercial and political pressure in their work.

In presenting the apt award to Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, in absentia, at a ceremony at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, Ono said: "Our public officials have forgotten that they are ultimately accountable to the people who put them in office; that the information they keep in secrecy belongs to all of us. Julian Assange took a courageous step by rightfully returning what belongs to the public domain. For that reason, I believe we need to stand behind him."

Due to being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, waiting for the UK to grant him safe passage out of the country, Assange was unable to attend. However, Assange's lawyers, Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Honorable Judge Baltasar Garzón Real, represented him at the ceremony.

Ratner delivered Assange's speech, which can be read at the end of this article, dedicating this award to the staff of WikiLeaks. The speech references both Bradley Manning and Aaron Swartz, who recently committed suicide rather than face the possibility of 30 years in prison for downloading academic articles.

Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño was also present and stated, “Julian gives us all an example: the powerful cannot hide information to dominate states and destroy democracies.” 

Daniel Ellsberg, a champion for Bradley Manning, also attended the award ceremony, saying, “Julian Assange richly deserves this award. I hope that this award will give the Nobel Committee the courage to award Bradley Manning and Julian Assange the Nobel Peace Prize.” 

  
Julian Assange's speech made in absentia: 

First of all, I want to thank Yoko Ono Lennon for her courage and spirit in granting me this award. A fine woman whose many actions define her. The test for all of us.

People often ask me how I keep going.

They ask as if my work was some kind of burden to me.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no greater pleasure than fighting for your principles.

There is no greater pleasure than in fighting for those who have risked all to share your vision.

And there is no greater pleasure than seeing those who you admire, in turn, move to fight for you.

And while the embassy that shelters me is still surrounded by armed police, my voice is free.

Within the constraints of the UK surveillance operation outside, I am free to see my staff and my friends.

Many have fought and continue to fight to permit this basic liberty and I am grateful to them.

I want to thank the Ecuadorean people.

I want to thank President Rafael Correa and Foreign Minister Patiño for their courageous and unyielding support.

Their stance strengthens not just my rights but the rights of political refugees everywhere. Support them.

I dedicate this award to our courageous sources, supporters and to my staff.

Through their courage and wit they are revealing the true nature of our global human civilisation. This is how we may reform it. Elevate it - and make it just, beyond its humble origins.

Their courage in documenting war crimes, gross human rights violations, and the corruption of our societies is unequaled.

I want to thank all our anonymous volunteers and all those volunteers from Anonymous. You are unseen in your work but your work is far from unseen.

But I want to specifically name some.

Volunteer Aaron Swartz, aged 26. Political activist, hounded to death right here in New York last month as part of the broader political crackdown against our ideals.

Alleged source, now political prisoner, Bradley Manning. Bradley is now two weeks away from 1000 days in prison. The longest pre-trial detention in US military history.

Alleged source, now political prisoner, Jeremy Hammond, detained without trial, right here in New York, for the last 336 days as of today.

Volunteer and alleged source, now political prisoner, Gottfrid Svartholm, detained in Sweden for almost five months.

WikiLeaks banking blockade protesters Christopher Weatherhead, aged 22, and Ashley Rhodes, aged 28. Sentenced in the UK last week to 18 months and 7 months in prison respectively.

And I want to thank my lawyers Baltasar Garzón and Michael Ratner who are representing me here today, as they do every day.

They together with our other lawyers in the US, Europe, Africa, Australia, and Ecuador are part of the fight to make sure that our rights are respected and WikiLeaks can continue its mission.

With such courage, tenacity, love, and support from our friends, silencing WikiLeaks remains and will continue to remain a fantasy.

We will continue our fight to document the world, understand its institutions, and hold our civilization to a higher standard.

Julian Assange
Ecuadorean Embassy
London
3rd February 2013

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To the source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342803
 
Other recent Julian Assange News:  
Julian Assange will run for Australian Senate in 2013  
Assange: WikiLeaks film 'The Fifth Estate' a ‘propaganda attack’

Yoko Ono & 'Artists Against Fracking' visit Pennsylvania

Yoko Ono and her son, Sean Lennon, started a petition against fracking in New York. They were then invited to visit communities in Pennsylvania to see the actual impacts and effects of fracking, up close and personal.

Together with their friend Susan Sarandon, and honored by being joined by Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, Arun Ghandi, they headed off to Pennsylvania to find out for themselves the effects of this controversial method of gas extraction. They also invited members of the press to travel along with them.

They drove into the quaint town of Montrose, PA, only to be upset by the sight of a gas pad of four drills, with a hissing pressure release. There was a giant compressor station under construction, a drilling rig which reached to the sky, and a whole load of huge trucks, full of sand and toxic chemicals running around on narrow dirt roads. Not so quaint after all.

However, the sight of the beautiful landscape being ruined was not all, as the group then met the residents, whose homes and lives have been forever changed because of fracking. Among the people they met were Vera Scroggins, Craig Stevens, Rebecca Roter, Frank Finan, Ray Kemble and the Manning family.

The video above includes an interview with Tammy Manning about the pollution of their well and ground water. None of these residents can drink water from their own wells any more, even though they are on their own properties, due to the poisoning of the fracking process. They cannot use their well water to drink, to wash dishes, to bathe, do laundry or to cook food. In effect, these families have to buy water every day, despite the fact that they have their own wells, on their own properties, that used to supply them with fresh healthy water.

As Manning says in the video, they have to run the water to prevent methane gas from building up and possibly causing an explosion. When they do this, they have to ensure that their windows are open, as the gas could then poison them. It is a dreadful situation, and there is apparently no way to reverse this.

Artists against Fracking

Sean Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Arun Ghandi visit with families impacted by dirty fracking operations in PA.

"Our water was bubbling in our well. It looked like a full running boil in our well," said Tammy Manning, 45. "We don't want to have to leave," she added. "We just bought the house. But if we've no water what can we do."

Naturally, when their water went bad, their property values declined, making it difficult to even sell and move to a healthier place to raise their families. "I don't think we can sell it with no water. We're stuck," said Manning.

What makes it worse is that the gas companies are accusing these defenseless people of lying. However, the Artists against Fracking group saw the brown smelly water in the homes they visited, and even took samples away with them. 
 

Artists against Fracking

Yoko Ono, Sean Lennon and Susan Sarandon hold water from Ray Kemble's kitchen sink.

During their visit to Pennsylvania, the Guardian reports that the group was somewhat attacked by filmmaker, Phelim McAleer, in Dimock, who is pro-fracking. McAleer apparently approached the group's bus with a cameraman.

McAleer apparently then loudly accused Ono, Lennon and Sarandon of acting in the interests of the "1%" in their opposition to the practice. The Irish filmmaker then apparently lost his trilby hat in the mud when he heckled the activists and got heckled back.

McAleer was also in the news recently after accusing Matt Damon, star of the new film, Promised Land which deals with the subject of fracking, of being a "liar." Apparently a panel discussion about the movie featured Damon and Damon said that the movie wasn’t political.

“I don’t want to call Matt Damon a liar but he’s a liar, really,” McAleer said. “It’s a deeply political movie and it’s deeply disingenuous for Matt Damon to say otherwise. … Matt Damon isn’t telling the truth.”

In the latest incident in Pennsylvania, McAleer shouted at them and cited EPA studies, that the group says are incorrect, saying that the drinking water in Dimock was safe.

Yoko Ono sincerely hopes that Governor Cuomo will make the same tour as they did before making any decisions on whether to allow fracking in New York. While its too late for Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, Ono is hoping that Governor Corbett of Pennsylvania will visit the same families and homes as the group did, to stop the industry from spreading further in that beautiful state.

Ono and Artists against Fracking are also urging President Obama to take a trip to Pennsylvania and to set aside any notion he may have of depending on fracking instead of true clean energy. Ono says that industry documents prove that these wells crack and leak, more and more over time. This cannot be prevented and once it occurs, cannot be fixed, thousands of feet below ground.

Anyone who wishes to prevent this same awful situation happening in New York can sign the petition here, and learn more about the dangers of fracking here.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/342080

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Video: Actor Mark Ruffalo talks against fracking in New York: