Author: earthfirst

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

 

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

Daniel McGowan Released After Lawyers Confirm He Was Jailed For HuffPost Blog 5th April

Lawyers for envi­ron­men­tal activist Daniel McGowan said in a state­ment Fri­day after­noon that he had been returned to his halfway house in Brook­lyn.

Lawyers for envi­ron­men­tal activist Daniel McGowan said in a state­ment Fri­day after­noon that he had been returned to his halfway house in Brook­lyn. They added that they had con­firmed McGowan was jailed by fed­er­al mar­shals on Thurs­day for his Huff­in­g­ton Post blog post — on the basis of a prison reg­u­la­tion that was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by a judge in 2007.

Their state­ment read:

Daniel McGowan has been released from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter in Brook­lyn where he was tak­en into cus­tody yes­ter­day and is back at the halfway house where he has been resid­ing since his release from prison in Decem­ber. Yes­ter­day, Daniel was giv­en an “inci­dent report” indi­cat­ing that his Huff­in­g­ton Post blog post, “Court Doc­u­ments Prove I Was Sent to Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Man­age­ment Units (CMU) for My Polit­i­cal Speech,” vio­lat­ed a BOP reg­u­la­tion pro­hibit­ing inmates from “pub­lish­ing under a byline.” The BOP reg­u­la­tion in ques­tion was declared uncon­sti­tu­tion­al by a fed­er­al court in 2007, and elim­i­nat­ed by the BOP in 2010. After we brought this to the BOP’s atten­tion, the inci­dent report was expunged.

The Bureau of Pris­ons did not imme­di­ate­ly return a request for com­ment.

The ear­li­er sto­ry …

NEW YORK — The jail­ing of envi­ron­men­tal activist Daniel McGowan is under review, a Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP) offi­cial said Fri­day morn­ing.

McGowan, who plead­ed guilty to arson linked to the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front in 2006, was serv­ing out the final months of his sev­en-year sen­tence in a Brook­lyn halfway house when he was jailed by fed­er­al mar­shals Thurs­day morn­ing, alleged­ly for writ­ing a com­men­tary on The Huff­in­g­ton Post crit­i­cal of a harsh­ly restrict­ed fed­er­al prison unit in which he had spent time.

Tra­cy Rivers, a res­i­den­tial reen­try man­ag­er for the BOP in New York, told Huff­Post Fri­day morn­ing, “We are review­ing this case to deter­mine if the actions that were tak­en were appro­pri­ate.”

Rivers declined to say more about why McGowan was moved to the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter, cit­ing pri­va­cy issues. But she not­ed that a deter­mi­na­tion would be made in McGowan’s case by the end of Fri­day.

In gen­er­al, Rivers said, pris­on­ers can be pun­ished for vio­lat­ing a BOP rule thatpro­hibits giv­ing inter­views to the news media with­out offi­cial approval. But that rule says noth­ing about pris­on­ers writ­ing blog posts.

McGowan’s wife, Jen­ny Synan, told Huff­Post that nei­ther he, his lawyers nor a BOP offi­cial she talked to about the case had heard of a reg­u­la­tion pro­hibit­ing pris­on­ers from writ­ing blog posts.

In a state­ment Thurs­day, McGowan’s lawyers at the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights said, “If this is indeed a case of retal­i­a­tion for writ­ing an arti­cle about the BOP retal­i­at­ing against his free speech while he was in prison, it is more than iron­ic, it is an out­rage.”

UPDATE: 1:25 p.m. — Daniel McGowan may soon leave jail. His attor­ney with the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights, Rachel Meeropol, told Huff­Post Fri­day after­noon, “We have been told by the BOP that he will be sent back to the halfway house today.”