GARDINER & WEST YELLOWSTONE, MT: Over 130 wild buffalo have been slaughtered by the National Park Service in Yellowstone since February 8th. They have captured a total of 275 and plan to slaughter all of them. George Cadman of Free Radio Santa Cruz 101.1 FM spoke with Stephany Seay of the Buffalo Field Campaign about the real reasons behind the slaughter, what they are doing to fight this and how people can get involved.

On Thursday February 21st, Critical Resistance will present Gender, Health Care and the Prison Industrial Complex, at the Louden Nelson Community Center in Santa Cruz, starting at 7:15pm. This will be the second in a series of monthly events that focus on different aspects of the prison industrial complex. This evening will feature speakers from Justice Now, Critical Resistance and Santa Cruz AIDS Project.

Vigils will be held across California this week to remember Lawrence "Larry" King, the 15 year old E.O. Green Junior High student who was shot on February 12th in Oxnard. Larry was declared brain-dead Wednesday after he was shot in the head twice by a fellow junior high student at school, and he was taken off life support three days later. According to friends, Larry was perceived to be gay and gender non-conforming and had been bullied at school. The suspect, a 14-year old student, has been charged with attempted murder, and the case is being prosecuted as a hate crime. Vigils will be held in San Francisco on Tuesday and in Fresno on Wednesday.

Peace Fresno sponsored a Presidents' Day peace march on Monday, Feb. 18th. Organizers called it "Mourning in America" and about 150 marchers went from the Tower Theatre to the new Federal Building in downtown Fresno. There was an extremely heavy police presence at the march, but there were no incidents.

A federal court in San Francisco has wiped whistleblower site Wikileaks.org offline, granting an injunction requested by lawyers for a Swiss bank, which is attempting to prevent the public from accessing allegations of illegal activity at the bank. On Feb. 18th, Judge Jeffrey S. White ordered Wikileaks.org's San Mateo-based domain registrar to "disable the wikileaks.org domain name" and to "immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name."

On January 30th, Elik Elhanan and Bassam Aramin spoke to a crowd of about 80 people in the basement of the Vets Hall in Santa Cruz. They are both members of Combatants for Peace, an Israeli/Palestinian organization made up of former fighters that attempts to now use their experiences to bridge gaps in peoples' understanding of the conflict and work for nonviolent, just, and viable solutions to the conflict.

Anti-war protesters celebrated on February 13th after having forced the US Army's Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies (ICB) to cancel the second day of its annual conference at UC Santa Barbara. The day prior, over 500 UCSB students and Santa Barbara community members disrupted the conference to demand an end to UC complicity in weapons research designed to kill Iraqis in an illegal war. The ICB is a $50 million Army-funded research institute hosted by UCSB, with sub-contracts at MIT and Caltech.

Friday, February 15th was Iraq Moratorium Day #6. The Iraq Moratorium is a community- based nationwide campaign to organize public displays of opposition to the war in Iraq on the third Friday of each month. Iraq Moratorium events include actions such as wearing black ribbons, calling Congress to say "Bring Home Our Troops," and coming together for protests and outreach events in cities all over the US. There were actions at military recruiting stations in Berkeley and Mountain View, and leafletting at Caltrain.

On February 12th, the Berkeley City Council voted 7-to-2 to "clarify" an anti-recruitment resolution it had passed on January 29th. The original resolution stated that the U.S. Marine Recruiting Station near Berkeley High School "is not welcome in the city, and if recruiters choose to stay, they do so as uninvited and unwelcome intruders." The new resolution states that the military recruiters have the legal right to stay and that while the city opposes the war and military recruitment, it supports the troops. Members of Code Pink say they now intend to place a resolution against the recruitment center on the local ballot.

Protesters had camped out overnight Monday to oppose changes to the Council's anti-recruitment stand. Several pro-war groups organized members to confront protesters in Berkeley on Tuesday. During afternoon protests, three high school students were arrested by the Berkeley police. No one on the pro-war side was arrested.

Carissa Phelps was 12 years old when she was forced into prostitution on the mean streets of Fresno. She has returned to Fresno to put a spotlight on the sexual exploitation of youth, which she says is still happening today. Telling her story is a part of the process.

On February 4th, lawyers representing Jennifer Charles requested that the University of California's lawsuit attempting to stifle her free speech be dismissed. Charles, a UC Santa Cruz alumnus, has been acting as the media contact for tree sitters at UCSC protesting the University's plan to destroy 120 acres of forest. The tree sitters have been protecting groves of redwoods since November 7th, when hundreds of people rallied in opposition to the increased University construction.

On Wednesday, Feb. 13th, attorneys will present oral arguments in the infamous Fajitagate case before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a special hearing at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall. In a motion for recusal filed last week, plaintiff's attorney Dennis Cunningham asserted that Judge Bybee, one of three judges on the panel, cannot be fair because of his involvement in authorizing the Bush Administration's torture policies.

On February 11th, more than two hundred participants of the Longest Walk 2 embarked on a five-month journey on foot from San Francisco. They plan on arriving in Washington, D.C. on July 11, 2008. Native American tribal leaders, religious groups, environmentalists, teachers, students, and people from throughout the world are joining the walk with its "peaceful and spiritual call to action to protect Mother Earth and defend human rights."

On February 7th, more than 100 UNITE HERE Local 19 service sector employees and community activists protested across the street from Google Inc. headquarters in Mountain View to support workers' rights. The rally was held adjacent to the site of Google's future four-star hotel and conference center. Despite repeated requests, Google has refused to address concerns about whether future hotel workers will be able to freely choose to join a union.

The California Fish and Game Commission in San Diego voted 3-0 on February 7th to designate the longfin smelt (Spirinchus thaleichthys), a native fish that has dropped to record low numbers in the San Francisco Bay-Delta and is nearing extinction in other northern California estuaries, as a "candidate species." This is the first step toward a formal listing as an endangered or threatened species under the California Endangered Species Act, according to a press release from a coalition of three environmental groups.

Modesto Anarcho writes, "Modesto Anarcho #6 is out now and ready for download and distribution! This issue is packed full of insurrectionary class struggle analysis about what's going on in the California Central Valley area. Included within are extensive direct action and repression reports, poetry, news about ongoing struggles and happenings, a report back from the Feral Visions gathering, an in depth look at the recent Modesto dumpster dive ban, an article detailing the resistance to development at Jesse Morrow Mountain in Fresno, and much more!"

On February 7th, the Australian Government released graphic photos of whales being slaughtered by a Japanese whaling fleet to the media. The Australian Government has also extended the mission of the Oceanic Viking in documenting the whale slaughter in preparation for an international legal case against Japanese whaling. The graphic images apparently show a mother minke whale and its calf being winched aboard a Japanese vessel after being shot with explosive tipped harpoons.

GARDINER, MONTANA - Yellowstone National Park officials captured 53 wild American bison on February 8th inside the Stephens Creek bison trap located within Yellowstone National Park's borders. The captured bison are members of the last wild, genetically intact population existing in the United States, and number fewer than 4,600. Most, if not all, will be sent to slaughter without being tested for brucellosis antibodies.

From February 4th through the 8th, Students for Justice in Palestine held a series of protests and teach-in as part of Israeli Apartheid Week at UC Berkeley. On February 6th there was a rally on Sproul Plaza with Barbara Lubin from Middle East Children's Alliance and other community leaders.

On February 2nd, a number of animal rights/liberation activists demonstrated for about three hours outside of J.Malnick Clothing at 1901 Broadway St. in Downtown Oakland. J.Malnick is Oakland's only major fur retailer, which sells both full length fur coats and fur-trimmed items as part of their inventory. Activists turned many customers away (who vowed to never shop there again) much to the dismay of the store's employees.

Volunteers hope to gather over 400,000 signatures on a petition to put the California Cannabis Hemp and Health Initiative on the state's ballot for 2008. Advocates of hemp as well as of the religious and medical uses of cannabis have sponsored this initiative, which would repeal criminal and civil penalties for cannabis, ban drug testing for metabolites, and provide that marijuana be regulated in a manner similar to the wine industry. It would also decriminalize the cultivation, distribution, and possession of industrial hemp, as well as order the immediate release from jail of all non-violent marijuana offenders.

On Monday February 4th, members of San Francisco's medical cannabis community and their supporters gathered to call for Mayor Gavin Newsom to end his silence about recent US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)'s scare tactics against medical cannabis facility landlords. Days later, Newsom's spokesperson made a lukewarm statement against the DEA's actions. Some SF Supervisors are concerned that this statement did not demonstrate enough leadership, because many measures would be needed to protect dispensaries from closure, and to assure patients' continued access to their medicine should the DEA's threatening letters lead to many dispensaries closing down. On February 12th<, the SF Board of Supervisors postponed a resolution that would show the Supes' support for John Conyers, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee of Congress, who called for hearings to investigate the DEA's attempts to undermine California state laws. Patients and supporters spoke out in support of this resolution, which will be voted upon on February 26th.

Corpy pregunta, "¿Por que no tenemos una pagina en Indybay para representar la comunidad de Watsonville? Watsonville es una ciudad con población igual de Santa Cruz. ¡Hay muchas personas aqui que quieren participar en hacer las noticias!"

The 7th annual Campus Earth Summit was held on January 31st at UC Santa Cruz. The well-attended event was organized by the Student Environmental Center and the Sustainability Office at UCSC and featured local speakers, a 'low carbon' lunch sourced from local organic farms, workshops on reducing 'carbon footprints' and conversations about environmental sustainability at UCSC. The summit was held in conjunction with Focus the Nation, a nationwide climate change teach-in happening simultaneously at over 1,000 colleges and universities across the USA.

The California Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday,March 4th in the marriage cases that are challenging the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger highlighted that the California Supreme Court should decide the constitutional questions posed by the marriage statutes when he vetoed two measures passed by the California Legislature in 2005 and 2007 that would have permitted same-sex couples to marry. The California Supreme Court typically issues its decisions within 90 days following oral arguments.

Direct Action to Stop the War (DASW) organized protests for Tuesday, February 5th, the day California voters went to the polls for the 2008 presidential primary, to demand that Democratic presidential candidates take stronger anti-war positions. DASW called into question the "anti-war" credentials of candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Protesters gathered at 5pm in San Francisco's U.N. Plaza and in Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza for marches to Clinton's and Obama's campaign headquarters in SF and Oakland.