Climate activist Tim DeChristopher due for sentencing
 

An activist who disrupted a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry by bidding $1.8m (£1.1m) he did not have for the right to drill in remote areas of Utah is due to be sentenced on Tuesday.

As Bidder No 70, Tim DeChristopher put in bogus bids and won drilling rights to 14 parcels of land at the auction, seen at the time as a last scramble by the Bush administration to open up wilderness lands to oil and gas extraction.

The action made DeChristopher a hero to some environmentalists, but he could face up to 10 years in prison and a $750,000 fine following his conviction last March of defrauding the government.

"It is all up the judge. He can pretty much do what he wants," DeChristopher, an economics student, said in a telephone interview.

But he added: "I do think I will serve some time in prison. That is what I think will be the next chapter in my life."

Sentencing was scheduled for 3pm Utah time, or 10pm UK time on Tuesday.

In the LA Times, Peter Yarrow wrote Tim DeChristopher's courageous bid to save our world:

Tim is a hero to me, the kind of hero Peter, Paul and Mary stood up for consistently over the last 50 years. Throughout American history, acts of civil disobedience have led to change. Think about the Underground Railroad that helped escaped slaves to freedom, or about the courageous actions of people like Rosa Parks, who refused to stay in the back of the bus simply because of their skin color. Without this kind of defiance of unjust laws, our country would likely still be denying people of color basic freedoms.

Now Tim has taken a stand against federal energy policies and the way they further global warming. At our concert for him, Bethany and I sang "If I Had a Hammer" and "Blowin' in the Wind," the songs Peter, Paul and Mary sang at the 1963 March on Washington where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech. Why? Because Tim's act of civil disobedience grew out of a long American tradition of conscience.
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At his trial, Tim was prevented from explaining the ethical and moral motivation for his acts to the jury. It is appalling that both the judge and the government's prosecution team have pursued Tim's civil disobedience trial as if he were a simple criminal who broke the law without reason or conscience. Doing so deprived him of the opportunity to sway the jury with the moral force of his motive.

In their sentencing memo, the government's attorneys wrote: "A significant prison term will promote respect for the law.... To be sure, a federal prison term here will deter others from entering a path of criminal behavior." The same might have been said of King, had our government been so odiously disrespectful of his moral courage at the time.

And Will Potter has written Green is the New Red:
 

In his debut book, Green Is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement under Siege, independent journalist Will Potter details one such assault on freedom and democracy, the targeting of environmental and animal-rights activists. In recent decades, corporations whose profits depend on degrading the ecosphere started to worry that those activists posed a real threat to their operations. Politicians and law-enforcement agencies responded with laws and tactics targeting not only the illegal actions of some of those groups but also the constitutionally protected speech and association of a wider range of groups. The fear-and-smear campaigns take their toll on the activists.
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The strategy behind these tactics is fragmentation. In discussing this, I think it’s helpful to visualize social movements as having a “horizontal” and “vertical” component. The intention is to separate these movements horizontally, and create rifts between them and the broader left. Animal rights activists and environmentalists are therefore depicted as ideological extremists who, if they have their way, will stop you from eating meat and driving cars and having pets. There are of course already tensions between these movements and the more traditional left, but campaigns by corporations and politicians intend to exacerbate them. If these movements are not seen as part of a broader social justice struggle, it is easier for other leftist and progressive groups to turn their backs on their repression.

Similarly, there is a campaign to fragment these movements vertically. Aboveground lawful groups are told that they must condemn underground groups, and if they do not they will also be treated as terrorists. This two-prong strategy -- breaking these movements away from other social movements, and breaking the aboveground away from the underground -- isolates those who are being targeted and intensifies the repression.

But the wealthy are more concerned with food for the less fortunate - For Dogs, Entrees From Same Butchers Who Feed Their Masters
 

From the moment Mookie tasted his new dog food, he was a forever-changed Jack Russell terrier. He devoured that first meal, his tongue lapping even the underside of the bowl, desperately searching for more. And then Mookie, who is 9, started barking — at the refrigerator.

“It was like an affirmation,” said Mookie’s owner, Liz Wiseman, whose other Jack Russell, Melanie, had a similar reaction to the new food. “They liked it and it was good for them; I knew we were on the right track.”

Mookie and Melanie are beneficiaries of one of the latest trends for New Yorkers with pockets deep enough to ensure their dogs get only the best. To pet owners like Ms. Wiseman, who lives in the East Village, premium dog food is not good enough. Instead, they are opting for freshly made cuisine from high-end local butchers who already supply the choicest cuts for upscale restaurants.

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Jessica Applestone, an owner of Fleisher’s Grass-Fed and Organic Meats in Kingston, N.Y., which has also gotten into the dog food business, has a similar opinion of processed dog food.

“If you’re not feeding your dog human-quality food it’s a terrifying thing.”