Category: Climate Chaos

Mining Company and Government Thugs Attack Guatemalan Mine Resisters

On Sep­tem­ber 17 and 18, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Mataque­s­cuint­la, Jala­pa and San Rafael Las Flo­res, San­ta Rosa, Guatemala protest­ed against the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of a min­ing project in their com­mu­ni­ties. In response to the first of these protests, provo­ca­teurs attacked both police and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers with stones. In response to a peace­ful block­ade out­side the min­ing site, pro­test­ers were “attacked with­out warn­ing by mem­bers of the mine’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty agency, the Nation­al Civ­il Police and the army, using tear gas can­nons, firearms and rub­ber bul­let guns. Secu­ri­ty agents attacked from inside the mine, with trained attack dogs. The Police cor­nered the unarmed pro­tes­tors, and the army sur­round­ed them, crouched and at the ready. The dis­play of repres­sive force had all the char­ac­ter­is­tics of mil­i­tary counter-insur­gency tac­tics that we had thought belonged to the past, includ­ing the bad inten­tions, bru­tal­i­ty and cow­ardice that so char­ac­ter­ize the tac­tics of the Nation­al Army.”

Fol­low­ing the attack, mil­i­tary heli­copters began fly­ing over the resist­ing com­mu­ni­ties, “like in the old days of the armed con­flict.”

 

Energy Industry Crackdown, Global Protest Frackdown

Yes­ter­day, while Shell announced suing Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al in an attempt to have the orga­ni­za­tion banned from protest with­in 500 meters of any Shell prop­er­ty in the Nether­lands,  New York activist Susan Walk­er was sen­tenced to 15 days in jail after she refused to pay a fine for block­ing the entrance to Iner­gy gas facil­i­ty in New York ear­li­er this month. 

But judges and jails aren’t enough to stop a world-wide move­ment against the ener­gy empire, and today marks the “Glob­al Frack­down” with more than 100 protests against gas frack­ing sched­uled to take place around the world. So get out there in the streets and raise some hell…

Shell sues Greenpeace to block environmental protests in the Arctic

The suit against Green­peace Int’l argued at Amsterdam’s Dis­trict Court Fri­day showed Shell aggres­sive­ly tak­ing the offen­sive to pro­tect its $4.5 bil­lion invest­ment in drilling for oil in the icy Arc­tic waters off the coast of Alas­ka. A ver­dict is not expect­ed for two weeks.

A protest at a Shell gas sta­tion in the Nether­lands — with stuffed polar bear. (AFP/ANP, Mar­cel Antonisse)

Green­peace has protest­ed Arc­tic drilling with oth­er stunts around the world, but the trig­ger for Friday’s law­suit was a Dutch demon­stra­tion on Sept. 14, in which Green­peace pro­test­ers blocked more than 70 Shell gas sta­tions in the Nether­lands for sev­er­al hours, drap­ing ban­ners and clamp­ing gas pump han­dles togeth­er with bike locks.

Fif­teen peo­ple were arrest­ed. Shell has not put for­ward any esti­mate of how much dam­age it suf­fered.

“Because Green­peace Inter­na­tion­al doesn’t oper­ate alone, but is the spi­der in the web of nation­al and local orga­ni­za­tions, our request includes that Green­peace inform its satel­lite orga­ni­za­tions that it no longer sup­ports protests that are sole­ly direct­ed at caus­ing Shell eco­nom­ic dam­age or that bring human lives and the envi­ron­ment in dan­ger,” Shell’s com­plaint said.

Protest backs jailed environmental activist in Inergy Blockade

Joseph Camp­bell, pres­i­dent of Gas Free Seneca, speaks Fri­day out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail. He said local res­i­dents turned to civ­il dis­obe­di­ence because their peti­tions, let­ters and attend­ing hear­ings failed to get their voic­es heard on Iner­gy Midstream’s pro­posed stor­age facil­i­ty.

Near­ly 30 peo­ple slammed the ener­gy indus­try out­side the Chemu­ng Coun­ty Jail on Fri­day but praised the Dundee woman held inside for refus­ing to pay a fine for tres­pass­ing at a pro­posed gas stor­age facil­i­ty.

They demon­strat­ed in sup­port of Susan Walk­er, 53, who plead­ed guilty to tres­pass­ing Wednes­day night before Read­ing Town Jus­tice Ray­mond H. Berry and got 15 days in jail after she refused to pay the $275 fine.

“We’re in agree­ment with Susan’s words when she spoke in the cour­t­house, ‘If I were a cor­po­ra­tion, I would not be going to jail,’” said one of four speak­ers, San­dra Ste­in­graber, an Itha­ca Col­lege schol­ar in res­i­dence who co-found­ed the coali­tion New York­ers Against Frack­ing.

Fracking Protests Planned Around The World By GlobalFrackdown Campaign

More than 100 protests against the nat­ur­al gas drilling process known as frack­ing are sched­uled to take place around the world on Sat­ur­day, build­ing on pub­lic con­cerns but also using an over­ly sim­pli­fied mes­sage to spur out­rage.

The Glob­al­Frack­down web­site and cam­paign was devel­oped by Food & Water Watch, a Wash­ing­ton, D.C. non­prof­it that was once part of Ralph Nader’s Pub­lic Cit­i­zen group. The cam­paign claims that frack­ing “has already dam­aged com­mu­ni­ties and ruined lives. It pol­lutes water and makes peo­ple sick.”

(USA) Another Lockdown Against the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline!

Pro­test­ers locked to equip­ment clearcut­ting forests to make way for the Key­stone tar sands pipeline. Winns­boro, TX, Sep. 19 2012

Tar Sands Block­ade pro­test­ers have locked them­selves to a wood chip­per and skid­der being used to clear-cut trees near Winns­boro, TX to make way for the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline. This is the fourth action to date in the Tar Sands Block­ade cam­paign.

The Tar Sands Block­ade cam­paign is active and ongo­ing. Calls to join the action have been put out both by the main group and by “a small crew of Earth First!ers and eco-anar­chists engaged in tac­ti­cal ele­ments of the larg­er Tar Sands Block­ade cam­paign.”

To find out more, watch this Tar Sands Block­ade action video, and vis­it tarsandsblockade.org and stoptarsands.org.

 

BBC Investigates Opencast Mining

THE  LOOSE ANTI OPEN-CAST NETWORK

BBC’s COUNRTYFILE PROGRAMME INVESTIGATES WHY A REMOTE HAMLET IS ON THE FRONT LINE OF A PLANNING BATTLE OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.

THE  LOOSE ANTI OPEN-CAST NETWORK

BBC’s COUNRTYFILE PROGRAMME INVESTIGATES WHY A REMOTE HAMLET IS ON THE FRONT LINE OF A PLANNING BATTLE OF NATIONAL IMPORTANCE.

A small vil­lage, of just 75 house­holds, is all that may stand between pre­serv­ing large sec­tions of the Eng­lish coun­try­side and the expressed desire of the UK Min­er­al Extrac­tion Indus­try to see more per­mis­sions giv­en to exploit­ing England’s min­er­al resources in areas that are more envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive and / or are clos­er to where peo­ple live.

The unfor­tu­nate vil­lage is Hal­ton Lea Gate, locat­ed on the Cum­bria / Northum­ber­land bor­der and near an Area of Out­stand­ing Nat­ur­al Beau­ty. A team from the BBC’s Coun­r­ty­file pro­gramme was film­ing there recent­ly to inves­ti­gate why this spot now finds itself on the front line of a nation­al plan­ning con­tro­ver­sy.

 In ear­ly August, after a Pub­lic Inquiry into an Appeal to grant per­mis­sion for an Open­cast Mine, the Inspec­tor found in favour of the Appli­cant. The sting in the tale, for all oth­er com­mu­ni­ties in Eng­land, is the rea­son­ing giv­en by the Inspec­tor to allow the Appeal. His rea­son­ing set a new case law prece­dent, it is argued, which affects all future min­er­al plan­ning appli­ca­tions in Eng­land.

 What the Appli­cant has to repli­cate in the future, is the argu­ment used here: that there is a nation­al need for the min­er­al in ques­tion, in this case coal. If they can per­suade the Plan­ning Author­i­ty (or the Inspec­tor, if the Appli­ca­tion has gone to an Appeal) that this is the case, then ‘great weight’ has to be attached to this claim. So much weight it seems, that this fac­tor alone may over­ride all oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions.  (1)

This sit­u­a­tion has arisen as a con­se­quence of the Gov­ern­ment imple­ment­ing the new Nation­al Plan­ning Pol­i­cy Frame­work. In the time lead­ing up to the 2010 elec­tion, lob­by­ing organ­i­sa­tions such as Coal­pro and the CBI lob­bied long and hard for a relax­ation of the plan­ning rules for min­er­al extrac­tion. (2) It seems, from this exam­ple, the first Pub­lic Inquiry for min­er­al extrac­tion to be held under the new rules, that their efforts have been reward­ed. The advice of the Inspec­tor has now gone to the Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ties and Local Gov­ern­ment to be con­firmed or reject­ed by a Min­is­ter.

The BBC came to inves­ti­gate the issue and explore why local peo­ple have tak­en on the task of rais­ing £40,000 so that they can mount a Judi­cial Review over the deci­sion. If local peo­ple are suc­cess­ful in rais­ing the mon­ey and mount­ing a suc­cess­ful action, they may have pre­vent­ed the flood­gates from open­ing and saved Eng­land from expe­ri­enc­ing a rash of min­er­al plan­ning appli­ca­tions for devel­op­ing swathes of the coun­try­side. This is now a Pub­lic Appeal, and dona­tions can be made payable to The North Pen­nines Pro­tec­tion Group, who have been one of the local groups who have opposed this Appli­ca­tion

An e peti­tion to the Gov­ern­ment has been start­ed about this plan­ning deci­sion and its impli­ca­tion for sim­i­lar plan­ning deci­sions else­where which can be signed by fol­low­ing this link:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/36985

Steve Leary for the Loose Anti Open­cast Net­work com­ment­ed

“ LAON was con­tact­ed by the BBC in the lead up to film­ing for the Coun­try­side pro­gramme. We are delight­ed to be able to coop­er­ate in the mak­ing of the pro­gramme and show why we argue that this is an issue of nation­al impor­tance which will affect oth­er com­mu­ni­ties up and down the Coun­try if the deci­sion is not changed.

We know of five oth­er open­cast mine appli­ca­tions, near Smal­ly in Der­byshire (George Farm) , Kirklees, Sth. York­shire (Dearne Lea), Trow­el in Not­ting­hamshire (Short­wood Farm) , Whit­ton­stall in Northum­ber­land ( Hood­sclose) and Gateshead  (Birk­lands) that will be affect­ed by this deci­sion if it stands.

In addi­tion, we are aware of three oth­er sites where a poten­tial appli­cant is mak­ing the final deci­sion to pro­ceed with a full appli­ca­tion in Gateshead,   Mar­ley Hill Recla­ma­tion) , Der­byshire ( Hill Top Project near Clay Cross) and Northum­ber­land  (Fer­neybeds near Wid­dring­ton Sta­tion, Northum­ber­land) which might also be affect­ed.

The issue here though, we believe, goes way beyond open­cast min­ing. It’s about relax­ing the rules around all forms of min­er­al extrac­tion from pits for sand, grav­el and clay to quar­ries for gran­ite and lime­stone to open­cast mines for coal. This is what the indus­try lob­bied for and now, it seems, the Gov­ern­ment has deliv­ered, if it upholds the Inspector’s rec­om­men­da­tion to approve the Appli­ca­tion and the Judi­cial Review fails. We there­fore urge peo­ple every­where, who cher­ish and love our coun­try­side, to sup­port both the peti­tion and the pub­lic appeal for mon­ey to take this case to a Judi­cial Review.”

The Coun­r­ty­file edi­tion of the pro­gramme is to be broad­cast on Sun­day 30th Sep­tem­ber 2012. It will include a 12 minute sec­tion on the Hal­ton Lea Gate issue.

———————————————————————————-

Ref­er­ences

1)   For more infor­ma­tion on the sig­nif­i­cance of this deci­sion as far as open­cast mine appli­ca­tions are con­cerned see  LAON PR7 here

http://nottingham.indymedia.org/articles/2754

2)   Evi­dence about the lob­by­ing to relax these plan­ning rules can be found here.

Brief­ing Note E2 “Ener­gy Pol­i­cy and the Pro­posed Nation­al Plan­ning Pol­i­cy Frame­work,” MOPG 2011  @

http://www.leicestershirevillages.com/measham/mopg-briefing-notes-series.html

——————————————————————-

ABOUT LAON

The Loose Anti-Open­cast Net­work (LAON) has been in exis­tence since 2009. It  func­tions as a medi­um through to oppose open cast mine appli­ca­tions through which any per­son / group can com­mu­ni­cate ideas, infor­ma­tion, requests for infor­ma­tion and pos­si­bly con­cert­ed actions if we find a tar­get. In addi­tion feel free to invite any oth­er per­son / group who oppose open­cast min­ing appli­ca­tions, to join the net­work so that it grows. At present LAON links indi­vid­u­als and groups in N Ire­land, Scot­land, Wales, Northum­ber­land, Co Durham, Leeds, Kirklees Not­ting­hamshire, Der­byshire, Leices­ter­shire and Wal­sall.

You can now fol­low LAON on Twit­ter @ https://twitter.com/Seftonchase

Anti Opencast Coal March in Clay Cross

A march is tak­ing place on Sat­ur­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber to show the strength of oppo­si­tion to any pro­pos­al to seek to open­cast mine on the Hill­top Project site. For more info see

http://nottingham.indymedia.org.uk/events/2774

A march is tak­ing place on Sat­ur­day 22nd Sep­tem­ber to show the strength of oppo­si­tion to any pro­pos­al to seek to open­cast mine on the Hill­top Project site. For more info see

http://nottingham.indymedia.org.uk/events/2774

Activists ‘brick up’ Shell HQ as Arctic melt

Activists ‘brick up’ Shell HQ as Arc­tic melts from Small Axe Films on Vimeo.

Activists ‘brick up’ Shell HQ as Arc­tic melts from Small Axe Films on Vimeo.

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

Indigenous Peruvians Occupy 9 Oil Wells

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Canaan de Cachi­a­co

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in Canaan de Cachi­a­co

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. 

 

Protesters in Greece Clash with Police Over Gold Mine, Again

Riot police show up to pro­tect min­ing inter­est

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:

 

The entire doc­u­men­tary with sub­ti­tles can be found online by click­ing this link.

 

Five Arrested in New York Anti-Fracking Sit-In

“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).”

 

Flurry of Anti-Fossil Fuel Direct Actions

Three activists from Tar Sands Block­ade locked them­selves to con­struc­tion equip­ment near Saltil­lo, TX this morn­ing, shut­ting down the con­struc­tion site com­plete­ly.

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!