Category: Climate Chaos

New Blockades in Guangdong, Third Major Protest This Week

Blockade via dumptruck17 July 2013 Author­i­ties in the south­ern Chi­nese province of Guang­dong have promised to halt pro­duc­tion at two fac­to­ries near Sihui city after demon­stra­tors blocked the gates, clash­ing with work­ers in the third mass e

Blockade via dumptruck17 July 2013 Author­i­ties in the south­ern Chi­nese province of Guang­dong have promised to halt pro­duc­tion at two fac­to­ries near Sihui city after demon­stra­tors blocked the gates, clash­ing with work­ers in the third mass envi­ron­men­tal protest in the region this week, activists said on Tues­day.

Local res­i­dents said vehi­cles con­tin­ued to come in and out of the main gates of an ink-mak­ing plant and a print fac­to­ry on Tues­day, how­ev­er, rais­ing sus­pi­cions that pro­duc­tion may still be going on.

The promise from local gov­ern­ment offi­cials came after hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Sihui’s Baisha vil­lage con­verged on the Nanyue Screen Print­ing Fac­to­ry and the Pre­ci­sion Ink. Co. Ltd. plant, which they claim are pol­lut­ing the local envi­ron­ment.

“We blocked up their gates using cement,” one pro­test­er sur­named Lu said on Tuesday.”We demand­ed that the work­ers on the pro­duc­tion floor stop work, but they closed the door on us and wouldn’t let us in.”

“A group of peo­ple got overex­cit­ed and forced their way onto the shop floor, and got into a fight with some of the work­ers there,” Lu said. ”A num­ber of vil­lagers were injured in the fight, and had to be tak­en to hos­pi­tal.”

Mount­ing anger

A sec­ond Baisha res­i­dent sur­named Liang said anger had been mount­ing over alleged pol­lu­tion from both fac­to­ries among local peo­ple for a num­ber of years.

“In recent years, peo­ple have been get­ting sick, and it’s get­ting worse and worse,” Liang said. “A lot of vil­lagers have devel­oped res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­eases like asth­ma and pneu­mo­nia.”
“A lot of peo­ple have con­stant sore throats and inflam­ma­tion, too, while some of the old­er peo­ple in the vil­lage have lung can­cer,” he said.

“The kids all have upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract inflam­ma­tion, asth­ma and even pneu­mo­nia.”
Lu said vil­lagers were still sus­pi­cious that the promise to halt pro­duc­tion hadn’t been car­ried out, because both fac­to­ries pro­vid­ed high lev­els of income to local gov­ern­ment through tax­a­tion

“These two fac­to­ries are class A tax­pay­ers to the Sihui munic­i­pal gov­er­ment,” he said. “They are very large, and they pay huge amounts in tax­es.”

“They are big cus­tomers around these parts, and they hire a lot of work­ers, so of course the gov­ern­ment is going to be on their side.”

‘Run­ning nor­mal­ly’

An employ­ee who answered the phone at the neigh­bor­hood com­mit­tee of the rul­ing Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Sihui’s Chengzhong dis­trict declined to com­ment. “I don’t know about this,” the employ­ee said.

Repeat­ed calls to the dis­trict envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion depart­ment went unan­swered dur­ing office hours on Tues­day.

An employ­ee who answered the phone at the Nanyue Screen Print­ing Co. said admin­is­tra­tive staff were oper­at­ing nor­mal­ly on Tues­day, but declined to com­ment on the protest, or on the report­ed halt in pro­duc­tion.

“We are all at work, and things are run­ning nor­mal­ly,” the employ­ee said, in ref­er­ence to the office staff. “I don’t real­ly know about it, because the top-lev­el lead­er­ship is deal­ing with it.”

Third protest

The Sihui con­fronta­tion on Mon­day marks the third mass envi­ron­men­tal protest in Guang­dong this week.

On the same day, thou­sands of peo­ple marched in Huadu dis­trict of the provin­cial cap­i­tal Guangzhou in protest over plans to build a waste incin­er­a­tor plant on their doorstep.
And the Huadu protest came just one day after res­i­dents of Jiang­men won an appar­ent con­ces­sion from local offi­cials, who said they would can­cel plans to build a nuclear fuel pro­cess­ing plant near the city after three days of demon­stra­tions.

Wors­en­ing lev­els of air and water pol­lu­tion, as well as dis­putes over the effects of heavy met­als from min­ing and indus­try, have forced ordi­nary Chi­nese to become increas­ing­ly involved in envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion and protest.

Honduran Army Kills Indigenous Leader of COPINH Who Resisted Dam in Rio Blanco

16 July 2013 On Mon­day July 15th, while the Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co, in Hon­duras, marked 106 days of resis­tance to the build­ing of Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric dam, the Army indis­crim­i­nate­ly shot at the demon­stra­tors killing one of the l

16 July 2013 On Mon­day July 15th, while the Lenca com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co, in Hon­duras, marked 106 days of resis­tance to the build­ing of Agua Zarca hydro­elec­tric dam, the Army indis­crim­i­nate­ly shot at the demon­stra­tors killing one of the lead­ers of the resis­tance, Tomas Gar­cia, and seri­ous­ly injur­ing his son (pho­to).

Tomas was a Lenca indige­nous leader who was part of his community’s Indige­nous and Aux­il­iary Coun­cil and of the Nation­al Coun­cil of the Civic Coun­cil of Pop­u­lar and Indige­nous Orga­ni­za­tions of Hon­duras (COPINH).

The Hon­duran activist was shot dead while he was walk­ing with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to the project’s facil­i­ties owned by Desa and Sino­hy­dro com­pa­nies, while his son, who was seri­ous­ly injured by a high-cal­i­bre bul­let, is in hos­pi­tal and his life is in dan­ger, Berta Cac­eres, leader of COPINH, told Real World Radio.

Berta described the act as “a des­per­ate and crim­i­nal reac­tion” by the com­pa­nies that want to build a dam on Riv­er Gual­caeque, seri­ous­ly affect­ing the com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing there. The Hon­duran army sup­ports the com­pa­nies, said Berta, and they even pay for the trans­porta­tion and main­te­nance of troops deployed by the Hon­duran gov­ern­ment in Tegu­ci­gal­pa in Rio Blan­co.

On Mon­day night, COPINH report­ed of more mil­i­tary troops being deployed in Zaca­pa, San­ta Bar­bara, and there were fears of new shoot­ings against civil­ians dur­ing the wake of the mur­dered indige­nous leader.

“The com­mu­ni­ty is out­raged. We are in great sor­row, also because we believe we have to con­tin­ue our strug­gle”, said Berta dur­ing a phone inter­view. “As the elec­tions approach (in Novem­ber) they want to teach COPINH a les­son”, she explained and said the com­mu­ni­ty decid­ed to con­tin­ue occu­py­ing the access to the dam.

A few hours after the inci­dents, COPINH had report­ed that since Fri­day 12, top exec­u­tives of the com­pa­ny Desar­rol­lo Energéti­co Sociedad Anón­i­ma (DESA)- which is in charge of the project togeth­er with the orig­i­nal group Sino­hy­dro – trav­elled to meet with local hit­men, who are respon­si­ble for direct threats against sev­er­al mem­bers of the indige­nous coun­cil, includ­ing Tomas Gar­cia.

Before they start­ed shoot­ing at civil­ians, the mil­i­tary made no attempt to talk with the activists, said Berta.

The leader of COPINH was ille­gal­ly arrest­ed in May and sub­mit­ted to a tri­al for pur­port­ed­ly hav­ing an ille­gal weapon, some­thing that the court could not prove and the case was final­ly dis­missed.

The leader high­light­ed that in the new cas­es of repres­sion against res­i­dents of the com­mu­ni­ty of Rio Blan­co, we urgent­ly need inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty to report the civic and mil­i­tary author­i­ties and both com­pa­nies for mur­der.

“We are aware that we are con­front­ed with an impuni­ty strat­e­gy in a con­text that seems to be wors­en­ing”, said Berta. She said the com­mu­ni­ties’ deter­mi­na­tion to defend their ter­ri­to­ry is strength­ened in these sit­u­a­tions of state and pri­vate vio­lence.

In fact, riv­er Gual­car­que is con­sid­ered an essen­tial part of the Lenca spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the com­mu­ni­ties are con­fronting the busi­ness projects as a trib­ute to their culture’s sym­bol­ic fig­ure: Lem­pi­ra.

“We con­tin­ue fight­ing, we are not afraid, we will not be prey to fear and we will con­tin­ue this peace­ful but strong bat­tle for life”, she con­clud­ed.

Daniel McGowan Loses Lawsuit Against Bureau Of Prisons

16 Jult 2013 A fed­er­al court has dis­missed an envi­ron­men­tal activist’s claims against the U.S.

16 Jult 2013 A fed­er­al court has dis­missed an envi­ron­men­tal activist’s claims against the U.S. Bureau of Pris­ons over a restric­tive prison wing he was housed in, but a law­suit filed by oth­er pris­on­ers against the gov­ern­ment over its restric­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­age­ment units con­tin­ues.

Daniel McGowan, 39, served sev­en years in fed­er­al prison for arson con­nect­ed with the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front, four of them in the secre­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion man­age­ment units, or CMUs, dubbed “Lit­tle Guan­tanamo” by crit­ics.

Along with dozens of oth­er most­ly Mus­lim inmates, McGowan’s phone calls with the out­side world and phys­i­cal con­tact with his fam­i­ly were severe­ly lim­it­ed. Even after he was released to a halfway house, McGowan was briefly tossed back into prison this year for writ­ing a Huff­in­g­ton Post blog entry detail­ing his case.

McGowan’s lawyers at the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights had argued that his re-jail­ing proved he was still at risk for re-incar­cer­a­tion in the CMUs. But the judge over­see­ing the law­suit dis­agreed, cit­ing a 1990s-era law that severe­ly restricts the rights of fed­er­al pris­on­ers to chal­lenge cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment.

McGowan’s lawyers at the Cen­ter for Con­sti­tu­tion­al Rights said in a state­ment that they were “deeply dis­ap­point­ed” by Senior Judge Bar­bara J. Rothstein’s deci­sion, but that they would push on with the larg­er law­suit.

Residents raise sinkhole warning signs over Shell tunnel

sinkhole_1.jpgYes­ter­day (14th July), local res­i­dents and sup­port­ers raised signs on Sruwad­da­con estu­ary, warn­ing of the sink­holes that con­tin­ue to appear over Shel­l’s tun­nel.

sinkhole_1.jpgYes­ter­day (14th July), local res­i­dents and sup­port­ers raised signs on Sruwad­da­con estu­ary, warn­ing of the sink­holes that con­tin­ue to appear over Shel­l’s tun­nel. Res­i­dents first noticed the sink­holes begin­ning to appear in the spe­cial area of con­ser­va­tion on the 20th May and numer­ous sink­holes have appeared along the tun­nel route since then.

The warn­ing signs which read “Dan­ger Sink­holes: Keep Back” were erect­ed in order to warn users of the estu­ary of pres­ence of the sink­hole, which have been up to 8 foot deep. Res­i­dents were forced to put up the warn­ing signs after both Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil and the Depart­ment of Ener­gy & Nat­ur­al Resources, despite being con­tact­ed, have failed to take any action.

The Nation­al Parks & Wildlife Ser­vice are also believed not to have inves­ti­gat­ed thus far the pos­si­ble dam­age that may be occur­ring to the ben­th­ic life in the estu­ary, despite the area being both a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion and a Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area.

Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way stat­ed “When Shell experts were giv­ing evi­dence in the oral hear­ing, there was­n’t a word about sink­holes and the bub­bling up of pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed mate­r­i­al to the sur­face of the spe­cial area of conservation”.[1]

Shell have pre­vi­ous­ly sent up to 10 work­ers with shov­els out on the estu­ary in a failed attempt to fill in the sink­holes.

Mr Con­way con­tin­ued “We can cur­rent­ly fol­low the path of the tun­nel by the trail of sink­holes that have appeared on the strand. Fail­ure to reg­u­late has caused alot of suf­fer­ing in Ire­land, yet the Gov­ern­ment are still allow­ing Shell to do what­ev­er they want. The sink­holes are fur­ther proof that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to aban­don their respon­si­bil­i­ty to reg­u­late Shell.”

Links

[1] YouTube Video: What’s hap­pen­ing in Shel­l’s Tun­nel? — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hvz2l27Ooc

[2] Reports of sink­holes above Cor­rib tun­nel inves­ti­gat­ed
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/reports-of-sinkholes-abo…54717

[3] Mid­west Radio Clip about third sink-hole in Sruwad­da­con estu­ary
http://www.shelltosea.com/content/midwest-radio-clip-ab…tuary

 

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Bubbling in the water in the foreground while people raise warning signs in the background of photo
Bub­bling in the water in the fore­ground while peo­ple raise warn­ing signs in the back­ground of pho­to

sinkhole_4.jpg

sinkhole_5.jpg

New Tree Sit in Tasmanian Old Growth

15th July Anti-forestry activists have erect­ed a tree sit to halt log­ging in Tasmania’s far south.

15th July Anti-forestry activists have erect­ed a tree sit to halt log­ging in Tasmania’s far south.

Huon Val­ley Envi­ron­ment Centre’s Jen­ny Weber says the wood from the old growth is des­tined for tim­ber proces­sor Ta Ann Tas­ma­nia. 

”The tree sit struc­ture is attached to the log­ging machines, halt­ing them from con­tin­u­ing log­ging today,” Ms Weber said. 

The protest again involves mem­bers of the Aus­tralian Stu­dent Envi­ron­ment Net­work who also shut down Ta Ann’s Smith­ton mill on Fri­day. 

The Smith­ton action was con­demned by peak envi­ron­ment groups who nego­ti­at­ed the forestry peace deal which will lead to 504,000 hectares of forests being pro­tect­ed. 

How­ev­er, it is up to the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil to approve a pro­tec­tion order for the future reserves. MLCs will make their deci­sion after con­sid­er­ing how effec­tive the leg­is­la­tion has been, includ­ing the impact of ongo­ing protests on Tasmania’s wood mar­kets. 

Ta Ann Tas­ma­nia has repeat­ed­ly denied using wood from old-growth forests.

Midnight Confiscation of Drilling Equipment at New Brunswick Anti-Fracking Protest

 

 

fra15 July 2013 Elsi­pog­tog First Nation, New Brunswick – ”We’ve tak­en it to the next lev­el,” said Grand Elder Ray Robin­son of last night’s events. “The bub­ble is about to burst, if it hasn’t already been burst.”

At approx­i­mate­ly 12 mid­night last night, locals began hear­ing boom­ing sounds char­ac­ter­is­tic of the South­west­ern Ener­gy (SWN) seis­mic test­ing trucks, or ‘thumpers,’ as well as oth­er less famil­iar indus­tri­al sounds near­by. After an online call-out express­ing con­cern that SWN might be attempt­ing to begin drilling under the cov­er of dark­ness, locals and camp mem­bers began to search for the source of the sounds.

Local Elsi­pog­tog war­rior Jason Okay recounts what fol­lowed: “We stopped to ask for direc­tions from a lady’s house that was near the sounds. We told her where we thought the sounds were, and she said ‘No way! That’s my [pri­vate­ly owned] land!’ We said ‘sor­ry ma’am, but your land’s get­ting drilled.’”

Camp mem­bers and locals entered the for­est on the woman’s prop­er­ty to find a crowd of RCMP offi­cers and pri­vate secu­ri­ty forces pro­tect­ing two SWN trucks. Pro­test­ers con­front­ed the RCMP, stat­ing that SWN was oper­at­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty with­out con­sent and must leave imme­di­ate­ly.

Accord­ing to Okay and oth­er camp sources, pro­test­ers were fol­lowed onto the site by a group of indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as UN inde­pen­dent observers, who pro­ceed­ed to talk with the RCMP. Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion, it is report­ed that the “observers” con­vinced the RCMP to escort SWN offi­cials off the prop­er­ty, aban­don­ing the trucks. Elsi­pog­tog res­i­dents con­fis­cat­ed the trucks, tow­ing them onto the Elsi­pog­tog reserve where they are still being held.

Fol­low­ing the aban­don­ment of the site by SWN secu­ri­ty and the RCMP, locals went deep­er into the for­est and dis­cov­ered what are report­ed to be unmanned SWN drilling trucks. Upon inves­ti­gat­ing the sur­round­ing area, a series of large holes in the earth were dis­cov­ered. War­riors and pro­test­ers remain camped out in the area await­ing means to trans­port the equip­ment to the reserve.

“Every­thing should halt,” said Okay of the sig­nif­i­cance of last night’s con­fronta­tion. “SWN should real­ize we don’t want them here … [If we would­n’t have con­fis­cat­ed the equip­ment] they’d be drilling right now.”

Police remain camped out near the entrance to the site of the drills, block­ing any attempts by pro­test­ers to trans­port the equip­ment off-site. Unmarked police vehi­cles dot the high­way near the camp site, and SWN secu­ri­ty vehi­cles have been sight­ed dri­ving past the camp fre­quent­ly. A Glob­al News crew attempt­ed to set up with­out con­sent in front of the camp at approx­i­mate­ly 5:00am this morn­ing, but were evict­ed by camp mem­bers before film­ing began.

Ques­tions about UN observers

 Chief Aaron Sock of Elsi­pog­tog states that he con­tact­ed the UN last week­end to request UN obser­va­tion, in order to main­tain peace between the RCMP and locals due to recent secu­ri­ty con­cerns. Two indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied by them­selves and local lead­er­ship as UN Inde­pen­dent Observers have been present on camp for two days since, con­duct­ing inter­views with camp mem­bers, col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion, and last night, pro­vid­ing a medi­at­ing role in con­fronta­tions.

How­ev­er, upon con­tact­ing Wilton Lit­tlechild, Chair­per­son of the Unit­ed Nations Expert Mech­a­nism on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples (EMRIP), Lit­tlechild stat­ed that while he was con­tact­ed by Chief Sock in regards to secu­ri­ty con­cerns at the camp, he had not direct­ly deployed any observers as of yet.

Mean­while, a source in the office of the spokesper­son for the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the UN con­firmed to rabble.ca that there are cur­rent­ly no UN observers any­where in Cana­da.

Despite this lack of clear ver­i­fi­ca­tion, camp mem­bers and First Nations lead­er­ship hold that the indi­vid­u­als have a rela­tion­ship with the UN, point­ing to the RCMP’s respect for the observers’ role as medi­a­tors in last night’s con­fronta­tion as fur­ther evi­dence.

Update – 11:45pm EST: Upon fur­ther dis­cus­sion with local lead­er­ship and the indi­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as ‘UN Inde­pen­dent Observers,’ it has been made clear that the term ‘Inde­pen­dent Observ­er’ was intend­ed to com­mu­ni­cate that the indi­vid­u­als were not direct­ly employed by the UN. They have been appoint­ed by local lead­er­ship to main­tain a peace­keep­ing role in the camp, and com­pile a report based on their obser­va­tions of the sit­u­a­tion to be inde­pen­dent­ly sub­mit­ted on behalf of the com­mu­ni­ty to the Expert Mech­a­nism on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples (which has been con­firmed by the UN via Wilton Lit­tlechild, Chair­per­son of EMPRIP). The titles of the indi­vid­u­als have been switched to ‘Peace­keep­ers’ to avoid future con­fu­sion.

Claire Stew­art-Kani­gan is a writer from Mon­tre­al cur­rent­ly report­ing from the anti-frack­ing protest camp. See her first dis­patch here. 

Pho­to: Jason Okay

Activists Form Human Pipeline on Flatbush Avenue to Protest Natural Gas Pipeline

Activists say they’re con­cerned wildlife would be impact­ed if some­thing went wrong with the pipeline being built in Brook­lyn. (July 14, 2013)

Activists say they’re con­cerned wildlife would be impact­ed if some­thing went wrong with the pipeline being built in Brook­lyn. (July 14, 2013)

Dozens of activists formed a human pipeline on Flat­bush Avenue today in protest of a nat­ur­al gas pipeline that’s being built through parts of Brook­lyn.

Parts of the pipeline are already under con­struc­tion to con­nect Brook­lyn with a pipeline that goes up and down the East Coast. Activists say they’re con­cerned about the impact the under­ground flow­ing gas could have on the bor­ough, wildlife and the envi­ron­ment.

A rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Transco, the com­pa­ny behind the project, argued that oppo­nents are over­look­ing the fact that the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits of nat­ur­al gas are exact­ly what is dri­ving the project. It is also the pri­ma­ry rea­son why the may­or specif­i­cal­ly cit­ed this project as key to help­ing the city achieve its clean air goals, Transco says.

The spokesper­son added that Transco has been safe­ly pro­vid­ing nat­ur­al gas to New York City for more than 50 years with­out inci­dent.

A pub­lic com­ment peri­od will be held to dis­cuss the project fur­ther.

China Cancels Uranium Plant One Day After Protest

13 July 2013

13 July 2013

Chi­na has abrupt­ly can­celed plans to build its largest ura­ni­um pro­cess­ing plant in a south­ern Chi­nese city, a day after hun­dreds of pro­test­ers took to the streets demand­ing the project be scrapped, a local gov­ern­ment web­site said on Sat­ur­day.

The pro­posed 230-hectare com­plex in the heart of China’s Pearl Riv­er delta indus­tri­al heart­land in Guang­dong province had also sparked unease in neigh­bor­ing Hong Kong and Macau.

Author­i­ties in the gam­bling enclave had for­mal­ly raised the issue with their Guang­dong coun­ter­parts, the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post report­ed.

A one-line state­ment pub­lished on the Hes­han city government’s web­site said that “to respect people’s desire, the Hes­han gov­ern­ment will not pro­pose the CNNC project”.

State-run Chi­na Nation­al Nuclear Cor­po­ra­tion and Chi­na Guang­dong Nuclear Pow­er Corp (CGNPC) had planned to build the 37 bil­lion yuan ($6 bil­lion) project.

Offi­cials from both com­pa­nies could not be reached for com­ment.

A Bei­jing-based nuclear pow­er expert said he was sur­prised local author­i­ties had tak­en the deci­sion as the project designed to pro­duce 1,000 tonnes of ura­ni­um fuel annu­al­ly by 2020 was hot­ly con­test­ed by local gov­ern­ments.

“Com­pared to a nuclear pow­er plant, a ura­ni­um pro­cess­ing facil­i­ty is way more safer, as there is no fusion or reac­tion tak­ing place in the pro­duc­tion process,” said the offi­cial with close knowl­edge of the project. He declined to be iden­ti­fied as he was not autho­rized to speak to the press.

The sur­pris­ing­ly swift deci­sion to can­cel the project came after hun­dreds marched to city offices on Fri­day that forced offi­cials to pledge an exten­sion of pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion by 10 days. Locals had planned more protests on Sun­day.

Chi­nese author­i­ties are becom­ing increas­ing­ly sen­si­tive to local protests over envi­ron­men­tal issues, hav­ing can­celed, post­poned or relo­cat­ed sev­er­al major petro­chem­i­cal and met­als plants.

The planned con­ver­sion and enrich­ment plant had been meant to sup­ply fuel for China’s expand­ing nuclear pow­er capac­i­ty, like­ly to reach 60–70 gigawatts by 2020 from the cur­rent 12.6 GW.

Chi­na cur­rent­ly pro­duces 800 tonnes of ura­ni­um fuel at its plants in south­west­ern Sichuan province and north China’s Inner Mon­go­lia. Chi­na sources ura­ni­um both from domes­tic mines and imports from Kaza­khstan, Cana­da and Aus­tralia, said the expert.

Guang­dong is one of the country’s largest nuclear pow­er bases, already run­ning five nuclear reac­tors and build­ing anoth­er dozen, incor­po­rat­ing tech­nolo­gies from com­pa­nies like French Are­va and West­ing­house, a unit of Japan’s Toshi­ba Corp.

Reclaim the Power! Invite to protest camp

This sum­mer, a wide coali­tion of peo­ple and groups are com­ing togeth­er to Reclaim the Pow­er — join us.

This sum­mer, a wide coali­tion of peo­ple and groups are com­ing togeth­er to Reclaim the Pow­er — join us.

If you’re up for cre­at­ing a more sus­tain­able, equal soci­ety, we want you to join us. If you want to fight against the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal crises that gov­ern­ments and big busi­ness have cre­at­ed, we want you to join us. If you want to meet, plan and take action with a diverse range of groups and indi­vid­u­als who have shared goals, we want you to join us.

Reclaim the Pow­er is going to be a 4 day action camp and protest at West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion. West Bur­ton is the first of up to 40 new gas fired pow­er sta­tions that are cur­rent­ly being planned. If they are built, the UK will def­i­nite­ly fail to meet our mod­est car­bon reduc­tion tar­gets. This gives us a real oppor­tu­ni­ty to change the way our pow­er is gen­er­at­ed and con­trolled. The main­stream polit­i­cal par­ties want to tie us to fos­sil fuels for anoth­er gen­er­a­tion. They want to allow ener­gy com­pa­nies to get ever rich­er whilst more and more peo­ple are forced to choose between heat­ing and eat­ing. We want a sus­tain­able ener­gy sys­tem that pri­ori­tis­es peo­ple, not prof­it. This is a huge deci­sion and it’s hap­pen­ing now. Let’s Reclaim the Pow­er and stop this Dash for Gas.

Last Octo­ber, 21 envi­ron­men­tal activists shut down EDF’s West Bur­ton pow­er sta­tion for a week in protest at the government’s Dash for Gas. With your help, includ­ing a sol­i­dar­i­ty peti­tion signed by 64,000 peo­ple – they fought off EDF’s attempt to sue them for £5 mil­lion. 
And now we’re going back.

This sum­mer, from 16th-20th August, over 1000 peo­ple will gath­er on the doorstep of the pow­er sta­tion for a camp – includ­ing work­shops and action plan­ning – and a mass action. With your help, we will shut down the Dash for Gas.

Please share this call­out with your net­works.

Peru: police fire on Cajamarca protesters —again

8th July 2013 Nation­al Police troops in Peru’s Caja­mar­ca region opened fire July 6 on campesinos attempt­ing to attend the pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of an envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ment on the 

8th July 2013 Nation­al Police troops in Peru’s Caja­mar­ca region opened fire July 6 on campesinos attempt­ing to attend the pub­lic pre­sen­ta­tion of an envi­ron­men­tal impact state­ment on the Chadín II hydro-elec­tric project at the high­land town of Celendín, wit­ness­es said. Accord­ing to a state­ment from the group Tier­ra y Lib­er­tad, nine were wound­ed when the troops fired on the oppo­nents of the project who were try­ing to gain access to the pub­lic build­ing where the meet­ing was being held. Mar­le Libaque Tasil­la, a leader of the local ron­da, or peas­ant self-defense patrol, and an orga­niz­er for Tier­ra y Lib­er­tad, said that among the injured is the not­ed Peru­vian envi­ron­men­tal­ist Nicanor Alvara­do Car­ras­co.

The Chadín II project is con­ceived to speed the devel­op­ment of min­ing projects in Caja­mar­ca, and is slat­ed to pro­vide ener­gy to the Yana­cocha com­pa­ny which is devel­op­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Con­ga project. Thou­sands of local res­i­dents stand to be dis­placed by the Chadín II project, which would flood some 3,000 hectares along the Río Marañon, a major trib­u­tary of the Ama­zon. Protests against the hydro project were held in the affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties late last year. (Tier­ra y Lib­er­tad via Kaos en La Red, July 7; Noti­ci­asSER, Dec. 12)

The shoot­ing inci­dent occurred three days after Celendín held offi­cial com­mem­o­ra­tions for the five campesinos killed by Nation­al Police last July dur­ing protests against the Con­ga project. A spe­cial mass was held at Celendín’s church, fol­lowed by a pub­lic pro­ces­sion to the ceme­tery where the mar­tyrs lie bured. (Celendin Libre, July 4)