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Muskrat Falls Inuit Arrested Battling Churchill River Hydroelectric Project in Labrador 13th April

A 74-year old Inuit elder has ended a hunger strike and been released from jail after being arrested along with seven others protesting the controversial Muskrat Falls hydroelectric dam on the Churchill River in Labrador.

But another of the arrestees says the protesters, who have been fighting for decades to gain full national recognition as Inuit descendants in Canada’s easternmost province, are undaunted.

“We’ve been pushed around for generations,” said Todd Russell, president of the NunatuKavut Community Council (formerly the Labrador Métis Association), who was taken into custody along with Elder James Learning for blocking roads to protest the controversial Muskrat Falls hydroelectric project. “We will defend ourselves in the court system, but we will continue to assert our aboriginal rights to our traditional territory, and we will continue to mount protest after protest if that’s what it takes to have our views known and our rights respected.”

At issue is the Muskrat Falls power project, a $7.7-billion plan to build a hydroelectric power station and a new dam on the Churchill River. The project would also see massive transmission lines installed to supply power to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

Several months after a judge issued an unusual permanent injunction against disruption of dam construction, members of the community blocked the Trans-Labrador Highway on April 5 in protest over what they see as being shut out of any negotiating processes, the community council said.

“It’s the area where we hunt, where we fish, where we have built homes, where our people have trapped,” said Russell, a former Liberal Member of Parliament. “There are areas of a sacred, and very special, nature there. The government will not recognize that there are overlapping and conflicting interests with this hydroelectric development.”

During his arrest Russell was dragged by members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) after he lay down alongside the other protesters, all arrested on obstruction charges. Though seven were released on bail the same day, Learning refused to sign a written promise to stay off the land on the grounds that doing so would extinguish his aboriginal title and rights to his people’s traditional territories.

Learning’s family released a statement expressing concerns over his incarceration, not only because he has been on a hunger strike since his arrest on April 5 but also because the Inuit elder has prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Learning was imprisoned at Labrador Correctional Centre, in Goose Bay. He was released on April 9.

“It is tragic that our father has had to risk death through hunger to protest the destruction of his homeland and culture, of NCC territory and culture,” said Learning’s daughter, Carren Dujela, in a statement before his release. “How do you tell your children their grandfather is in jail and on a hunger strike? With tears in your eyes and pride in your heart!”

The community council has been locked in a battle for government recognition for years. Also known as Inuit-Métis or Labrador Métis, the community traces its lineage to Inuit people living along the Atlantic coast in Labrador who signed a treaty with Europeans in 1765. When research revealed in 2006 that the Labrador Métis, though mixed blood, are direct descendants of the Inuit, the Labrador Métis Association renamed itself the NunatuKavut Community Council, meaning “our ancient land.”

Now, the community council wants the government to enter talks over development on lands claimed as traditional territories. In Canada, though the courts have not granted Indigenous Peoples a veto over industrial projects, they have generally upheld the right to be consulted and accommodated. But the country is a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which guarantees aboriginal communities the right to “free, prior and informed consent” over development on their land.

“You can’t keep putting our people in jail, or keep arresting our people, or forcing our people to go on hunger strikes to have our rights recognized,” Russell added. “We know, and the government knows, that all of these things end in negotiations. It’s about time the government realized it’s better to do that now than put our people through these terrible experiences of being incarcerated.”

Protests, Lawsuits and Arson: South American Mine Resistance 12th April

• Four hundred protesters stormed the planned site of the Minas Conga mine in Yanacocha, Peru, and set fire to construction equipment yesterday. Minas Conga would be the biggest gold mine in Peru, and has been the target of sustained protests from local indigenous residents who say the mine would destroy their water supply. In July, police killed five protesters in anti-mine clashes; the deaths led to a pending complaint to the Inter-American Human Rights Court.

• On April 3, 30 protesters crashed the opening of the Expominas trade fair in Quito, Ecuador, where the government was seeking to coax new investments in mineral and oil mining. Protesters crashed the inaugural speech by singing a rewritten version of the popular hip-hop song “Latinoamérica” by Calle 13: “You cannot buy Intag, you cannot buy Mirador, you can’t buy Kimsacocha, you can’t buy my Ecuador.”

Ecuador is home to a powerful (largely indigenous) anti-mines movement. Leftist President Rafael Correa’s support for big mining has been a major factor costing him support from much of his former base.

• A Chilean court has suspended construction of Barrick Gold’s long- embattled Pascua Lama mine, based on complaints from local indigenous communities that the mine will destroy their water supply. Unfortunately, the injunction does not affect construction in the Argentinean portion of the project, including the process plant and tailings storage facility.

Chile suspends Barrick Gold mine on indigenous fears of pollution 11th April

A Chilean court on Wednesday suspended Barrick Gold Corp.’s Pascua-Lama mine after indigenous communities complained that the project is threatening their water supply and polluting glaciers.

The appeals court in the northern city of Copiapo charged the Toronto-based gold miner with “environmental irregularities” during construction of the world’s highest-altitude gold and silver mine.

Interior Minister Andres Chadwick welcomed the mine’s suspension and said he hopes the world’s top gold mining company can now fix problems at Pascua-Lama.

“We’re not surprised at all and we think it is good that through a legal organism, construction work is suspended while Pascua effectively attends to the charges already made by the environmental regulator,” Chadwick told local Radio Cooperativa.

Barrick (TSX:ABX) said Wednesday it was still awaiting formal notification of the injunction halting construction on the Chilean side of the Pascua-Lama mining project and would assess the potential implications when it came.

However, it said construction activities in Argentina, where the majority of the project’s critical infrastructure is located, including the process plant and tailings storage facility, are not affected.

Meanwhile, the start date for the mine straddling the Andean border with Argentina has already been delayed by more than six months to the second half of 2014. Cost overruns have seen the price tag rise from $3 billion to more than $8 billion.

The injunction stems from a constitutional rights protection petition filed with the court on Oct. 22 by a representative of a Diaguita indigenous community and other individuals against Barrick’s Chilean subsidiary and the regional Environmental Evaluation Commission.

That move followed a similar petition filed in late September by representatives of four Diaguita indigenous communities against the Barrick subsidiary, Compania Minera Nevada, with the EEC.

The plaintiffs allege non-compliance with aspects of the project’s environmental approval in Chile that have resulted in negative impacts on water sources and contamination, or at least the risk of contamination, of the Estrecho and Huasco rivers, according to information supplied by Barrick.

Daniel McGowan Forbidden From Publishing Articles Without Permission April 10th

After more than seven years, the stack of dehumanizing and seemingly unconstitutional interactions between Daniel McGowan and the American prison system is now piled so high it is teetering over into a recursive mess of bleak and Kafkaesque absurdity.

Last Monday, McGowan published a piece on the Huffington Post that laid out much of his situation to date. After years in prison for his role in environmentally motivated property destruction that was prosecuted as acts of terrorism, he wrote, he was finishing up the remaining months of his sentence in a halfway house in Brooklyn.

The various perversions of the case that sent McGowan away are well documented in the documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. But, as McGowan wrote, less publicized is what happened to him a year into his prison term: Despite a flawless disciplinary record, McGowan was transferred to an experimental new Communications Management Unit, a supermax-like extreme-isolation facility some have dubbed a “Little Guantanamo.”

Why was McGowan transferred to a CMU? He never got a good answer to that question, even after a Freedom of Information Act request, so, along with other CMU inmates, he filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the CMUs and alleging that they are effectively political prisons designed to silence the voices of people whose message the government doesn’t like. As it turned out, McGowan was right: Bureau of Prisons memos discovered through the lawsuit appear to link his transfer to the CMU to the fact that he continued to write things the government found politically objectionable.

“While incarcerated and through social correspondence and articles written for radical publications, inmate McGowan has attempted to unite the radical environmental and animal liberation movements,” one memo states, before dilating on other political statements McGowan made in interviews and his own writing.

McGowan wrote about all of this in his Huffington Post piece last Monday. Two days later, the staff at the halfway house to which he had been assigned told him that his work permit had been revoked on order of the Bureau of Prisons. The next morning, federal marshals arrived and brought him to the Metropolitan Detention Center. Once there, he was presented with a document explaining that he had violated the terms of his release to the halfway house. Specifically, the incident report stated that McGowan had violated a prison regulation that stated “an inmate currently confined in an institution may not … act as a reporter or publish under a byline.”

That’s right: McGowan was sent back to jail for writing about how he’d been imprisoned in a CMU for writing things.

There’s more: The regulation that the Bureau of Prisons cited to justify returning him to jail had actually been declared unconstitutional by a federal court in 2007, and the Bureau of Prisons had finally taken it off the books in 2010. McGowan’s lawyers mentioned this to the bureau and to the lawyers representing the government in his lawsuit, and he was re-released to the halfway house on Friday.

But that’s not the end of it. Back at the halfway house, staff presented McGowan with a document and directed him to sign it. The document stated that “he is not permitted to have any contact with the media without approval from the BOP’s Residential Reentry Manager. Accordingly, Resident McGowan was advised that writing articles, appearing in any type of television or media outlets, news reports and or documentaries without prior BOP approval is strictly prohibited.”

It’s worth noting that McGowan hadn’t been asked to sign this document when he first arrived at the halfway house, nor, as far as his lawyers can tell, has anyone there been asked to sign it. In fact, there’s nothing in the Bureau of Prison’s published media policy that requires pre-approval before publishing anything.

“There is no national prohibition on publishing,” Chris Burke, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons, confirmed this afternoon.

“I thought I had lost my ability to be surprised by what the Bureau of Prisons does years ago,” said Rachel Meeropol, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights who’s representing McGowan. “But restricting an individual’s freedom of speech in this manner is truly surprising. It’s beyond ironic that Daniel was retaliated against and returned to prison for publishing a blog about being retaliated against for speaking out in prison.”

Here’s the incident report explaining McGowan’s return to prison:

Daniel McGowan Incident Report

Oklahoma Grandmother Locks Herself to KXL Heavy Machinery 9th April

ALLEN, OK – Tuesday, April 9, 2013, 9:00 AM – Oklahoma grandmother Nancy Zorn, 79, from Warr Acres, has locked herself to a piece of heavy machinery effectively halting construction on TransCanada’s Keystone XL toxic tar sands pipeline. This action comes in the wake of the disastrous tar sands pipeline spill in Mayflower Arkansas, where an estimated 80,000 gallons of tar sands spilled into a residential neighborhood and local waterways.

Using a bike-lock Zorn has attached her neck directly to a massive earth-mover, known as an excavator, which has brought construction of Keystone XL to a stop. Zorn is the second Oklahoma grandmother this year risking arrest to stop construction of the pipeline, and her protest is the third in a series of ongoing civil disobedience actions led by the Oklahoma-based coalition of organizations, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance.

“Right now our neighbors in Arkansas are feeling the toxic affect of tar sands on their community. Will Oklahoma neighborhoods be next?” asked Zorn before taking action today. “I can no longer sit by idly while toxic tar sands are pumped down from Canada and into our communities. It is time to rise up and defend our home. It is my hope that this one small action today will inspire many to protect this land and our water.”

Exxon Mobil’s recent Pegasus pipeline spill has forced local residents to evacuate their homes due to life-threatening toxins released into their neighborhood. Local families have experienced episodes of nausea, headaches, and respiratory problems due to acute exposure to deadly chemicals, like benzene, that are mixed in with the raw tar sands. Pegasus was carrying up to 90,000 barrels of tar sands a day before it ruptured and spilled. The Keystone XL pipeline is slated to carry over 800,000 barrels a day; an alarming 10 times the amount of tar sands.

“In the last two weeks alone there have been at least six different inland oil spills across the country,” said Eric Wheeler, an Oklahoma native and spokesperson for Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. “It’s time to stop referring to pipeline spills as accidents, it’s now abundantly clear that leaks are just part of business as usual. Tar sands hurt everyone they touch, from the indigenous communities in Alberta whose water is being poisoned, to the Gulf Coast communities that are forced to breathe toxic refinery emissions. We’re not going to allow this toxic stuff in our beautiful state.”

UPDATE 10:30AM: Nancy Zorn has been extracted by local law enforcement and taken into custody. Please consider contributing to Nancy’s bail fund

Sabotage at Powharnal OCCS

08/04/2013

At some point over the past weekend multiple items of plant machinery at an extension to the Powharnal open cast coal site in East Ayrshire were put beyond working use. High value targets including a prime mover and bulldozer were also targeted to cause maximum disruption to workings at the mine.

08/04/2013

Scottish Coal is falling and not only do we intend to make sure that they go down – but that they stay down too.

Taiwan Activists Praise “Tree-Top” Man 8th April

BANGKOK: Taiwan activists are praising one man’s efforts to bring about change to the environmental policies of the East Asian country through his demonstration atop a tree.

BANGKOK: Taiwan activists are praising one man’s efforts to bring about change to the environmental policies of the East Asian country through his demonstration atop a tree. Dubbed the “tree-top” man, Pan Han-chiang has vowed to stay in his perch until a local council ends its controversial development project.

“I have so much respect for him and what he is doing,” environmental activist Li Xiun told Bikyanews.com as the protest entered its 12th day on Monday.

The government of New Taipei City, on the outskirts of the capital, plans to build a swimming pool and an underground parking garage in the grounds of a junior high school in the Panchiao district.

Despite objections from conservationists, some nearby residents and alumni and teachers of the school, a contractor started removing five out of the 32 targeted 40-year-old trees from the campus late last month.

In reaction, activist Pan, 46, climbed one of the trees on March 28 and has refused to come down, with meals and water supplied by his supporters on the ground.

“We will supply him with what he needs until the government changes,” said one of his supporters.

The sit-in has halted preparatory work on the project.

“This is the last method we can use now… the protest will continue indefinitely if the government decides to go ahead with the project,” his brother Pan Han-sheng was quoted by AFP as saying.

The city government insists that the project, estimated to cost Tw$310 million ($10.4 million), is designed to meet public demand and the trees will be replanted elsewhere.

But opponents question the wisdom of removing mature trees – many of them unlikely to survive transplantation – to build the swimming pool and especially the underground parking garage, which they say is unnecessary.

“These trees are part of the collective memory of tens of thousands of students graduating from the school. It is cruel to cast off their memory,” said Pan Han-sheng.

He said at least 3,000 people have expressed opposition to the project.

Japan Confirms Sea Shepherd Success in the Southern Ocean

Operation Zero Tolerance has been Sea Shepherd’s most effective campaign to date.

The Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, the front organisation for Japanese illegal whaling activities has released their kill records for 2012/

Operation Zero Tolerance has been Sea Shepherd’s most effective campaign to date.

The Japanese Institute for Cetacean Research, the front organisation for Japanese illegal whaling activities has released their kill records for 2012/2013.

They wanted 50 Humpbacks. They took none.

They wanted 50 Fin whales. They took none.

They wanted 935 Minke whales. They killed 103.

832 Minke whales not slain! 50 Humpbacks and 50 Fins not slaughtered!

During the 2010-2011 Operation No Compromise, the Japanese whaling fleet took 17% of their illegal self-allocated quota. During the 2011-2012 Operation Divine Wind, the Japanese whalers took 26% of their illegal self-allocated quota.

103 Minke whales and zero Fin whales and zero Humpback whales translates into 9.96% of their combined quota. The whalers took only 11% of their Minke whale quota and zero percent of their Fin and Humpback quota.

These percentages translate into a financial disaster for the Japanese whalers. The overhaul of Nisshin Maru alone cost $24 million dollars. Outfitting, fuelling and operating costs added an additional estimated $11 million dollars. That figure may be much higher. Going on the conservative estimate of $35 million dollars, means that it cost the whalers a minimum of $340,000 per whale. There are only two words to describe this, “economic lunacy”. In addition there is the loss of prestige and the anger of the international community directed at the Japanese people.

Sea Shepherd would have reduced the killing much lower if not for the sucker punch delivered at the eleventh hour by the Ninth District Court of the United States that effectively knocked Sea Shepherd USA out of Operation Zero Tolerance by granting the Japanese whalers an injunction against intervention by Sea Shepherd USA.

Sea Shepherd Australia immediately swept up the banner, carried it down to the Southern Ocean and delivered the most determined campaign ever mounted to shut down the unlawful poaching activities of the Japanese whaling fleet in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. Sea Shepherd Australia predicted that the take would not exceed 10% and the overall take was indeed just under 10%.

“Sea Shepherd Australia is elated that we have delivered the worst season to date to these whale poachers from Japan. These poachers have shown a complete disregard for cetacean life, human life and Australian and International law. By targeting protected and endangered whales in a whale sanctuary and risking massive oil spills in the pristine Antarctic wilderness, they are showing the world their contempt for ocean life and for the global community who has consistently called for an end to whaling," said Jeff Hansen, Sea Shepherd Australia Director.

"One whale killed is still one whale killed too many. However, today we celebrate the fact that with courage and conviction in the face of great danger and adversity, the brave crews of the four Sea Shepherd ships were able to successfully prevent the Japanese whaling fleet from reaching more than ninety percent of their self-allocated quota. This has meant saving the lives of 932 threatened, endangered and protected whales,” said Captain Peter Hammarstedt.

"Nine years ago on Sea Shepherd's first Whale Defense campaign the lives of 85 whales were saved. At the conclusion of the 9th Antarctic campaign, that number has increased 11-fold to 932. Operation Zero Tolerance is by far Sea Shepherd's most successful campaign with the kill numbers being the lowest since the illegal research-whaling program started. It is a definitely an epic moment in Sea Shepherd's history, however it is an even bigger one for the whales. Never has the sanctuary been more peaceful. While the crews and the ships bore the brunt of the violence at the hands of the Japanese Whaling Fleet, the whales were spared the harpoons,” said Captain Siddharth Chakravarty.

Open letter on the future of the Faslane peace camp

April 6, 2013

CORRECTION: The open meeting on the future of the peace camp will now be held at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex on Saturday 13th April.

April 6, 2013

CORRECTION: The open meeting on the future of the peace camp will now be held at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex on Saturday 13th April.
For the last two years, there has been a small group of us rebuilding Faslane Peace Camp as a community of anti-nuclear action. We came together with a shared vision that if we maintain the camp as a safe and alcohol and drug free space with regular actions and campaigning, we could create a strong, autonomous community active in the fight against Trident and the militarisation of the West coast of Scotland.

Part of our vision has been achieved in making the camp a safe and welcoming space with facilities to support anti-nuclear action, low impact living and skill sharing. We have worked to sustain resistance to nuclear weapons as central to this space and our collective reason for being here through our own direct action campaigns and active involvement in wider Scottish anti-nuclear and anti-military movements. However, our main hope that we would grow, in terms of strength through numbers, has not been achieved. Maintaining this space whilst having an active campaign with so few of us has put us under such pressure, personally and as a collective, that we can’t continue.

This letter is our issuing a notice of this, identifying potential outcomes for the camp, our own limits in achieving these and, hopefully initiating an inclusive discussion on the future of Faslane Peace Camp that does not see the four current residents assuming this responsibility.

Our proposal:
We feel, as a group, our limit on being here is 12th June 2013, the 31st anniversary of the Camp. If the responsibility on deciding and enacting the future of the camp is to be ours,(i.e. if this notice does not provoke wider constructive discussion on the future of the camp or encourage a new wave of residents) then we will enact the following proposal:
we will start taking the camp down on 12th May to create a garden space (to be finished by 12th June) that will both celebrate the 31years of resistance here and act as a site facility to support future action camps.

We feel that leaving the camp empty and open to chance is not an option because we have seen it having “fallen into the wrong hands” and feel that this is much more detrimental to the peace movement and activism in general than the camp not being here.

The camp’s potential, capacity and support and the potential for continuing:
We feel that the camp’s capacity to support a self-sufficient community of resistance should not go understated. Despite ups and downs, for the last thirty years the camp has been an active challenge to the stationing of nuclear weapons on the Clyde. Many of the people who have passed through here have learned and continued to practise so many skills in active resistance and low impact living. Those of us here have grown and learned so much, from a personal level to an understanding of the nature of the state sponsored terrorism of nuclear weapons and the banality of the everyday running of this evil. This is a space to learn, grow and challenge a very fundamental human willingness to tolerate societal corruption (in this case, that of nuclear weapons) as well as maintaining a degree of living “outside the system” whilst we make attempts to challenge it.

The facilities here are indicative of the ingenuity of thirty years of creative and resourceful individuals who have simply found ways to create alternative ways of organising that challenge so many of the negative learned behaviour in society.

Ideally, we would love to see this continue, not least because so many have worked so hard to continue it but also because the symbolism of dismantling the camp at this potentially crucial time in the struggle for nuclear disarmament (in the context of the ongoing Scottish independence and Trident replacement debates) would be the worst possible timing.

We believe that maintaining supportive community living here, as well as active campaigning, can only be sustainably achieved with a significant increase in numbers, possibly eight residents. The potential and capacity of the camp is also severely limited by the lack of wider input and practical support for it’s inhabitants. We have felt like caretakers of a souvenir. We have felt a strong and increasing sense of moral support for what we are doing but with this has come inadequate and dwindling practical support.

In short, we feel that the camp can only have a future if a larger group of people decide they wish to be based here and the wider peace movement assumes a degree of collective responsibility to support these people, emotionally and practically and take active measures to ensure their welfare. The current residents would be committed to providing long term support to any group or individuals that wish to continue the Camp.

What happens next:
So many people have given so much of their lives and energy to the Peace Camp and anti-nuclear movement so we expect our proposal and thoughts contained here to have mixed responses. We have therefore decided to call an open meeting on Saturday 14th April at 4pm in the Kinning Park Complex, Glasgow as part of the Scrap Trident weekend and welcome any constructive input on this day or via email from this point onward (faslane30@gmail.com).

Whatever the decision on the future of the camp, we will continue with campaigning and an active presence at Faslane, but perhaps not in the form of continuous occupation. Nevertheless, we want to avoid the symbolism of taking the camp away at this crucial and hopeful time for disarmament and will actively support any viable alternative to this.

On 13-15th of April, there will be an unprecedented demonstration in Glasgow and mass blockade of Faslane with Scrap Trident and we expect this to be the beginning of a new wave of anti-nuclear and anti-militarist action. The future is disarmament!

http://faslanepeacecamp.wordpress.com/

Earth First! Summer Gathering: 7th-11th August 2013

This year's the Summer Gathering will be in the Hastings area near the Bexhill-Hastings Link Road campaign. It will run from the evening of Wednesday 7th August and finish on Sunday 11th August.

The Earth First! Summer Gathering takes place each year to provide a space in which the radical ecology movement can share skills and plan for future campaigns and actions. Anyone who is interested in ecological direct action will have a valuable part to play and is welcome to come to this family friendly gathering. If you've not been to an Earth First! Gathering before and are thinking about it, please do come, we are a very friendly, welcoming bunch and would love to have you get involved

Programme: Workshops, skill sharing and planning action, plus low-impact living without leaders. Meet people, learn skills.

Transport/location: exact location will be announced 2 weeks before gathering on website.

Cost: £20-£30 from each person to cover all costs except food. (If you really can't afford this, please come anyway and give what you can).

Food: Delicious vegan food will be available, and meal tickets will be on sale at the gathering.

What to bring: Everyone will be camping so bring a tent, sleeping bag etc.

If you have any particular accommodation, access or dietary needs please tell us asap but at least two weeks in advance so we can plan suitable facilities. There will be a small amount of living vehicular space if booked in advance, on a first come first served basis.

Contact: summergathering-at-earthfirst.org.uk

http://efgathering.weebly.com