Early morning on the 11th September 12 a group of 20 climate change activists calling themselves ‘Ice Bloc’ unloaded nearly two tonnes of ice into the main entrance of Shell HQ. The protest was timed to coincide with this week's impending announcement of the lowest sea-ice coverage ever recorded, a loss of about 50% more ice coverage than the summer ice minimum 30 years ago.
The activists are angry that Shell are set to profit from this environmental catastrophe.The company has this week begun to drill for oil in newly exposed areas once covered by ice. The protest happens as news reports that Shell are already having to delay operations due to floating sea ice near their drill-site [1].
The group are seeking to bring the collapse of the Arctic ice sheet to the door of Shell because they hold the company partly responsible for the carbon emissions that caused climate change, leading to the melt.
The activists piled the 27kg blocks of ice high in the entrance way, which looks on to the South Bank, creating a huge wall of ice to greet Shell executives as they arrived at work.
Rachel Griffin, involved in today’s action, said:
“Right now the Arctic sea ice, a part of the planet essential for our survival, is vanishing because companies like Shell have filled the atmosphere with climate-changing gases.
“Yet rather than being stopped from trading and held to account, the company have begun drilling in Alaska, an area of the Arctic once covered with ice. That they are already having problems there just shows how ludicrous the plan is.
“The political response has been pitiful. People need to take action now to minimise this unprecedented disaster.”
The activists are part of a bigger network, Climate Justice Collective, which grew from the Climate Camp
Opponents of genetically engineered foods blocked shipments and deliveries yesterday at Monsanto Co’s vegetable seed company that developed a new genetically modified sweet corn that will hit stores this fall.
The protesters, who want to remove all so-called genetically modified organisms (GMOs) from the food supply, say their action is a preview of about five dozen other events planned for countries around the world next week.
They also hope to drum up support for a California ballot measure that would require food sellers to label a broad range of products, including soup, soy milk, breakfast cereals and chips, that contain GMOs.
Monsanto and other developers of these biotech crops say they are safe. But U.S. regulators do not require any independent safety tests that would put a lid on doubts raised by consumers and some scientific and health groups.
More than 40 countries around the world have some requirements for labeling foods containing ingredients from genetically modified crops. But U.S. regulators have rejected requests by many groups for similar labeling rules, and as a result many Americans do not know that they have been eating GMOs for years.
At the protest on Wednesday, about a dozen people organized by a network of anti-GMO activists called Occupy Monsanto stopped trucks from entering or leaving Monsanto’s Oxnard, California-based Seminis for nearly six hours.
The activists, some dressed in biohazard suits, blocked truck entrances with cars and chained themselves to the vehicles.
Police arrested nine of the protesters and charged them with trespassing, organizers said.
Seminis’ biotech sweet corn is one of the newest GMO crop products to make it to market. The corn was altered genetically to withstand dousings of a common weedkiller and to ward off certain pests.
“We deserve to know what we are eating and we should put GMO crops back in the lab and off the kitchen table,” protester Rica Madrid said.
Occupy Monsanto is not affiliated with the backers of a California proposal to label foods that are made with crops or from animals that have had their genetic makeup altered in the laboratory.
Monsanto did not directly address Wednesday’s events but said the company’s work helped improve farm productivity and food quality.
“We respect each individual’s right to express their point of view on these topics,” Thomas Helscher, a Monsanto spokesman, said of the Seminis protest.
DIFFERENT VIEW IN EUROPE
GMOs are deeply unpopular in Europe and many other countries, but they eventually came to dominate key crops in the United States after Monsanto in 1996 introduced a soybean genetically altered to tolerate Monsanto’s Roundup weed killer.
Using genes from other species, Monsanto and rivals including DuPont andDowChemical have since introduced an array of genetically altered crop varieties.
The most popular genetically engineered crops in the United States include corn, soybeans, sugar beets and canola – staple ingredients in a wide array of popular packaged foods.
Proponents of GM crops say they make farming more efficient by making plants resistant to pesticides, pests and harsh growing conditions, such as drought. They say genetically modified crops are no different from conventional types and that increasing demand for food, biofuels and livestock feed can only be met with help from the biotech industry that Monsanto dominates.
Critics say GM crops have not always lived up to their promise and that the benefits to farmers do not outweigh myriad risks to human and animal health and to the environment.
Assessing such risks is difficult in the United States. The government does not require GMO crops to undergo independent safety testing before they are approved, and it does not require labeling for GMO content which makes it next to impossible to track any links to human health problems.
The World Health Organization says “individual GM foods and their safety should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.”
Recently, some U.S. scientists have raised alarm bells over what they see as potentially dangerous implications from overuse of GMO crops.
Among the concerns is the fact that the rapid adoption by U.S. farmers of genetically engineered corn, soybeans and cotton has promoted increased use of herbicides, which critics say has triggered an epidemic of herbicide-resistant weeds and more chemical residues in foods.
This week, the Center for Food Safety vowed to sue the U.S. government if it approves a new type of genetically altered corn developed by Dow.
By: Ronald Suarez, President of the Network of Peruvian Indigenous Communicators, Ucayali
*Correction: Maple Energy is a company listed in London and Lima, Peru. It is not a Canadian company.
Over 400 villagers in the Native Community of Canan de Cachiaco in the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon have taken control of nine oil wells, belonging to oil company, Maple Gas, in oil lot 31B.
Community members took over the oil wells on September 2nd, and continue to hold them as a result of 37 years of oil contamination in their territory by the company.
The community leader, Basilio Rodriguez Venancio, said the action was made necessary because the company did not consider the environmental impact assessment carried out by an independent consultant.
One of the oil wells occupied by members of the Canaan de Cachiaco community in the Peruvian Amazon, September 2012
The community is demanding that the company pay them compensation for the use of their lands and for the environmental damage they have suffered for 37 years. Such damage includes the contamination of their rivers, their only source of drinking water, and the contamination of their soils due to the company´s use of chemicals and heavy minerals, which the population says has significantly affected the productivity of their land.
Several community members testified that they have become sick due to the company’s negligence and contamination of their drinking water. There have been several instances in the past years of cancer and ¨unknown deaths¨ that the community attributes to company abuses.
The community awaits the arrival of state representatives from the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Ministry of Environment, scheduled for Thursday, September 13th, to resolve this conflict.
Meanwhile the villagers are still stationed in the camp until authorities settle their claims.
For more information on the case of Canaan de Cachiaco, and the neighboring community, Nuevo Sucre, watch this video.
On the night of 08.09 Kiev eco-activists dug a trench cutting the only road that led to the sanctuary 'Zhukov Ostrov', a habitat of several rare species of animals. Kievan middle and upper class has developed a bad habit of using SUVs for weekend hikes to forests and riverbanks. The act was an attempt to make such kind of communion with nature more difficult."
Hundreds of protesters have battled riot police for hours over plans for a gold mine in northern Greece’s Halkidiki peninsula.
Police fired tear gas to fend off protesters who had gathered in the Skouries area of Halkidiki, northern Greece, on Sunday to protest gold mining activity.
Dozens of residents of the nearby village of Ierissos, as well as protesters who arrived by coaches and cars from Thessaloniki, approached the forest in Skouries, where Hellenic Gold, a subsidiary of Canadian firm Eldorado Gold, has begun mining activity that locals are appealing against.
Protesters accused the police of making heavy use of tear gas, causing a fire in the woods, and of chopping down trees to prevent demonstrators from approaching the mine. Police say protesters threw firebombs at them, setting ablaze a forested area on the site. Either way, the fire has been put out.
There were reports of several people being arrested and detained at Ierissos police station. Several people were also injured, including SYRIZA MP Vangelis Diamantopoulos.
Hellenic Gold has been awarded an area of 26,400 hectares, of which 410 is forest land. Almost all the trees in the forest will be cut down as part of the mining firm’s plan to extract gold. The company says it will replant trees when it finishes its work.
Environmental opponents of the mine argue it would lead to the destruction of the local forest and irreversible damage to the ecosystem. Owners of local tourist lodging are also fiercely opposed due to environmental reasons.
This is not the first clash over the gold mine. Opponents succeeded a decade ago in canceling a multimillion-dollar gold mining project in a nearby area. Source
The film below, Treasure Hunt, documents that struggle. This is the first 10 minutes of the film:
“Spectra Showdown” protest against fracking in New York City, Sep. 6, 2012
“Spectra Showdown” protest against fracking in New York City, Sep. 6, 2012
“Today [Sep 6] the ongoing protest called “Spectra Showdown,” [in New York City]has finally turned into the scene of civil disobedience that the group has been anticipating. At least two people have been reportedly arrested.
“After pre-construction in July, Spectra Energy begins a new phase of construction today that has involved shipments of materials on a barge on the Hudson and from the West Side Highway. Spectra hardhats were seen on people digging at 8:30 this morning right next to the bike path while protesters gathered next to them. A barge with a crane was on the River. The protesters held banners but it wasn’t until after 10 AM that it was tweeted that two were arrested.
“The protest has been against hydrofracking (a process being used to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus shale fields of Pennsylvania and the general bioregion).”
"In Norfolk UK on the 26th of August 2012 a cruel factory farm breeding ducks for meat in which they were fed on growth exhilarating chemicals and have no access to water for swimming and living in their natural way, had it's fence cut open, doors smashed in and 123 prisoners freed and sent to loving temporary homes, soon to be freed back into the wild.
"In Norfolk UK on the 26th of August 2012 a cruel factory farm breeding ducks for meat in which they were fed on growth exhilarating chemicals and have no access to water for swimming and living in their natural way, had it's fence cut open, doors smashed in and 123 prisoners freed and sent to loving temporary homes, soon to be freed back into the wild.
This is not hard, all of you compassionate people CAN JUST DO THIS! Take action tonight. Hit them hard and hit them often right where it hurts. You do not have to be a ninja to liberate, you just need good bolt cutters, some strong boxes and homes offered by people you can trust.
Until all cages are empty and all prisoners freed from abuse and exploitation, we will continue the war.
Three activists from Tar Sands Blockade locked themselves to construction equipment near Saltillo, TX this morning, shutting down the construction site completely. As of the latest update, workers and police had all left the site, leaving the blockade intact.
The action is the third so far for Tar Sands Blocakde, a group devoted to stopping TransCanada’s plan to expand the Keystone XL Pipeline to transport oil from the Alberta Tar Sands to Texas. It follows only days upon an August 28 action, when four activists locked themselves to the underside of a truck actually carrying a piece of the planned pipeline. A total of seven protesters were arrested, but not before all Keystone construction transportation for the southern segment was shut down for a full day.
In an unrelated action targeting big energy infrastructure, more than 150 protesters from Everglades Earth First! and Occupy Wall Street blockaded the access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the eastern shore of Tampa Bay, FL on Aug 31, coinciding with the last day of the Republican National Convention in Tampa.
According to a press release, “Earth First! activists chose this day for their protest in order to highlight Mitt Romney’s plan to expand what the group calls the “energy empire” which favors the interest of big donors in oil, gas and coal industries.” TECO was also chosen for its involvement in mountaintop removal coal mining.
The plant was successfully blockaded for nearly four hours. Seven people were arrested. And as a bonus: the action led freaked-out authorities to temporarily shut down the Port of Tampa!
I left on Sunday, August 19. The judge (was foaming at the mouth!), like Silvia, I am also granted parole having reached two-thirds of the sentence. Finding the warmth of vegan compas, finding sights and words, it’s a pure joy to me.
Hello to all the comrades:
I left on Sunday, August 19. The judge (was foaming at the mouth!), like Silvia, I am also granted parole having reached two-thirds of the sentence. Finding the warmth of vegan compas, finding sights and words, it’s a pure joy to me.
Despite the isolation imposed on us during this time, in fact, there has not been a single time when I had the feeling of being alone. From the letters, from the news of events and initiatives, the news that came of actions, was almost palpable energy, a strong experience, despite everything. So, by force and warmth received from the courage, I can not say thank you enough. Thanks, really.
Naturally, nothing is over, rather, it is just a new beginning along “the path off the main street.”
Now missing Costa and Marco, Porco dio!
Total solidarity with all those investigated and raided by the operation “Mangiafuoco” and all the Anarchist rebels still inside.
