Action Reports – Page 36

Jeremy Hammond Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison

Jeremy Hammond sketched by Molly Crabapple

I’m finding this post hard to type; my fingers are trembling, my pulse is racing. I’m furious. Just minutes ago hacktivist Jeremy Hammond learned his fate in a Manhattan federal court. Ten years in prison, for taking part in a hack that revealed some of the shadiest aspects of the corporate intelligence industry.

The 28-year-old pleaded guilty earlier this year to participating in the Anonymous hack of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor). Hammond, a longtime Chicago political activist, garnered no personal financial gain from the hack; he has consistently maintained that he acted in what he believed to be the public interest. The revelations of the Stratfor hack uphold his claim: It is indeed in the public interest to know that Dow Chemicals paid a private security firm to follow and low-level harass individuals fighting for recognition and restitution for the Bhopal disaster; it is of public interest too that the Coca Cola company employed Stratfor to spy on PETA activists, that the Department of Homeland Security used the firm to spy on Occupy activities. These details all came out of the Stratfor hack. Our context is such that the intelligence firm’s activity is supported and upheld by the law, Hammond’s work to reveal it is punished with a ten year sentence.

Hammond admitted guilt to a crime; he has already served 18 months in federal detention, much of the time in solitary confinement. But whether Hammond’s acts were legal or not should not be conflated with whether or not they are ethical. This country would be a darker place even than it is today were its history not peppered with people willing to act outside of what is legal in service of what is right. It’s worth stressing too that the law that Hammond is being punished for breaking falls under the outdated and dangerously sprawling Computer Fraud and Abuses Act (CFAA) — the same legislation, enacted in 1986, that threatened to put Aaron Swartz in prison for decades before the young technologist took his own life. At his sentencing Friday, Hammond read a statement (please read here in full), explaining why he chose to act outside legal confines in hacking Stratfor and other corporations:

Could I have achieved the same goals through legal means? I have tried everything from voting petitions to peaceful protest and have found that those in power do not want the truth to be exposed. When we speak truth to power we are ignored at best and brutally suppressed at worst. We are confronting a power structure that does not respect its own system of checks and balances, never mind the rights of it’s own citizens or the international community.

… While in prison I have seen for myself the ugly reality of how the criminal justice system destroys the lives of the millions of people held captive behind bars. The experience solidified my opposition to repressive forms of power and the importance of standing up for what you believe.

Hammond’s fight is part of a larger “epistemic war”, as philosopher Peter Ludlow has put it. There is an ideological battle underway between those who seek to control information — and therefore the very truths available to the public — and those who seek to share it and create and informed and empowered public. The stakes, as Chelsea Manning and now Hammond have learned, are high. ” I had to ask myself, if Chelsea Manning fell into the abysmal nightmare of prison fighting for the truth, could I in good conscience do any less, if I was able? I thought the best way to demonstrate solidarity was to continue the work of exposing and confronting corruption,” Hammond said today.

Yes, the hacktivist broke the law; he has admitted as much for some months from within a prison cell. But if there was some doubt as to the ideological valance to Hammond’s punishment, consider that hackers who pleaded guilty to involvement in the very same hack but were charged on British soil received sentences of no more than 30 months, most of which is to be served on probation. Hammond’s 120 month sentence is a chilling messages of the lengths the U.S. government will take to crush dissent and punish challenges to the corporatist surveillance state.

“I am aware that I could get as many as 10 years, but I hope that I do not, as I believe there is so much work to be done,” said Hammond — and ten years he has received. There is so much work to be done.

ELF Claim Responsibility for Colorado Mink Farm Raid

“On the night of November 14th, the Earth Liberation Front visited the previously unknown Colorado mink farm of Monte Ages, located at 622 Valley View Drive in Moffat County. This is one of the smallest mink farms in operation, so opening nearly every cage took very little time. The mink understood our mission and quite literally flew to the ground to make a dash for freedom. To cause the deranged Mr. Ages more financial trouble, breeding cards were removed and strewn about, and thrown in the piles of mink waste.

Michael Whelan will offer the same tired lies in response to this action. He advises farmers to ‘sympathize with the poor, lost animals.’ The lost wild animals who are now able to move freely, who will no longer be subject to Michael and his friends preferred methods of execution in the pelting season just two weeks away.

The truth is that mink are not domesticated. They are captive bred, and only for the quality of their pelts. Mink are aquatic animals who are solitary in the wild and travel several miles per day. The surrounding area of Moffat County is pristine wildlife habitat. The ones who escaped this wildlife prison will now live out their lives along the Little Snake and Yampa Rivers.

Mr. Ages has plans to move and expand his operation to 35591 North Hwy 13 in the town of Craig. This will not be tolerated. Your dreams of despoiling Northwest Colorado, contaminating our drinking water, and exploiting native american wildlife will turn into a nightmare. There will be consequences when darkness falls.

We send a salute to those courageous few who continue to fight alongside the earth and animals, even as your work is overshadowed by the bloggers, video editors, and all manner of self-aggrandizing activists.”

Victory for Elsipogtog on the Highway, While Battle Continues in Court

$RCMP cars burn in retaliation for a violent raid on a First Nations blockade of pre-fracking testing equipment in Elsipogtog, New Brunswick, Oct 17, 2013$ November 15th, Mi’kmaq demonstrators declared “victory” Thursday after stopping thumper trucks belonging to a Houston-based energy company from conducting shale gas exploration north of Elsipogtog First Nation.

While about 100 Mi’kmaq and supporters faced a line of RCMP officers as SWN Resources Canada’s thumper trucks idled in the background, the Elsipogtog band council was 200 kilometres away in a Fredericton courtroom seeking an ex parteinjunction to stop SWN from continuing the exploration work. A hearing on the injunction is set for Friday.

On Hwy 11 tensions ran high as Mi’kmaq demonstrators from Elsipogtog and other communities along with non-First Nations supporters tried to block SWN from operating their thumper trucks while the RCMP tried to intervene. SWN eventually decided to turn the trucks around with plans for another attempt expected Friday.

A well-known Elsipogtog fracking opponent Lorraine Clair was arrested during the protest for mischief, assault a police officer and resisting arrest, according to New Brunswick RCMP.

Still, spirits were high among people from Elsipogtog who watched SWN’s trucks roll away as dusk began to set.

“It is a small victory, but a victory nonetheless,” said Brennan Sock, from Elsipogtog. “We will take anything right now. We got the trucks to leave, we managed to slow them down as much as we can.”

T’uma Bernard, a Mi’kmaq Warrior from Prince Edward Island, said he saw renewed unity among the demonstrators.

“It was a great victory, it was a great day,” said Bernard.

RCMP spokesperson Const. Jullie Rogers-Marsh said there were acts of vandalism throughout the day that are under investigation.

“A truck belonging to a private company working in the area and several pieces of equipment were damaged,” said Rogers-Marsh.

She said the RCMP had video of “somebody wearing a mask” pulling up geophones along Hwy 11. Rogers-Marsh there “also threats of illegal acts.”

Rogers-Marsh said the police officers are there to maintain public safety.

“Being safe and peaceful and lawful is very important and we are in the area continuing to monitor the situation,” said Rogers-Marsh. “Our role is public safety and we are there to protect everyone.”

Thumper trucks interact with geophones, which are strung along the ground, to create imagery of shale gas deposits underground.

In Fredericton, the Elsipogtog band was seeking an injunction to stop SWN arguing “outside radical elements” were converging “in significant numbers” as a result of the company’s continuing shale gas exploration.

The band’s filing said military forces are at play on the police side of the operation and warned a repeat of the Oct. 17 raid in Rexton, NB., by RCMP tactical units is looming.

“The circumstances combine to create a very real danger that, as active seismic exploration is recommenced in the coming hours and days, outside radical elements, the respondent SWN and the RCMP, other police and even military forces, all interact so as to cause a repeat escalation of the unacceptable and dangerous events that took place in Rexton,” said the filing.

The filing also names provincial Energy Minister Craig Leonard and the Assembly of First Nations Chiefs in New Brunswick (AFNCNB).

The filing argues that the province failed in its duty to consult and that the AFNCNB, which Elsipogtog gave authority to consult on its behalf, failed in its responsibility by “inaction and inadequate engagement.”

AFNCNB’s lawyer Mike Scully has told APTN National News that the province set the terms of the consultation and the AFNCNB had to act within those limited parameters.

While the band leadership will continue its legal battle in the courtroom Friday, the grassroots are vowing to be back on the pavement with their bodies to stop the thumpers.

“Nobody is going nowhere, they can’t bully us and use force tactics against the people of the land,” said Bernard.

Sock said people would be out all night keeping a watchful eye.

“We have a lot of people who are dedicated and will be out there all night to make sure they don’t come back,” said Sock.

War Game Shows US & Canada Fear Eco-Attacks on Infrastructure

Cyber-Eco-Terrorist Wargames Suggest New Level of Domestic Counterinsurgency

by Sasha / EF! Newswire

Last night [Nov. 13], the FBI and DHS linked up with 10,000 engineers and an intercontinental web of utility company executives in a cross-country war game. The target: ecoterrorists targeting critical electrical infrastructure points. Their tactics: computer viruses, bombs, and guerrilla warfare.

The coordinated attacks on the US power grid took place across hundreds of transmission lines and transformers throughout the US, throwing tens of millions of citizens into darkness. As police, firefighters, and utility workers rushed to repair the damaged or destroyed infrastructure, the enemy sprang their traps, killing seven and wounding 150.

While the simulation was almost entirely virtual, some companies actually sent trucks with linemen to practice investigating critical equipment isolated from the system by computer viruses.

In today’s New York Times, Matthew L. Wald reports, “Drill participants said they would not talk about the specific locations of the simulated attacks, for two reasons: The locations were chosen at points that the insiders knew were vulnerable, and the companies involved were promised that if they participated, their performance would not be held up to public criticism. The purpose, organizers said, was to pose problems that were hard to solve, to expose areas that needed improvement.” Those involved were monitored and recorded by attentive agents with Washington’s Department of Homeland Security National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center in order to assess how the “fog of war” scenario would play out.

The GridEx Wargame is the second in an established tradition of “Grid Exercises,” which test the reliability of electrical infrastructure response and cybersecurity. The first GridEx took place two years ago, and involved a much smaller group of people. According to the NYT, 210 utility companies played this year’s GridEx II, as well as Canada’s RCMP. Since the RCMP are involved, and they have spent a ton of money studying counterinsurgency against indigenous peoples, it would not be surprising if First Nations are also in the cross-hairs of GridEx.

The model attacks were modeled after infrastructural sabotage that has actually taken place across the world. For instance, one simulation regarding Southwestern Electric Power Company in Louisiana, Arkansas and eastern Texas, had attackers using guns and bombs against a power plant and a transformer, and 108,000 of the company’s 520,000 customers lost power. This drill was likely modeled after the destruction of a 100 foot electrical tower in August, wherein a saboteur used a moving train to catch a cable that was hooked up to the tower.

Judging by the huge difference between the violence of the drill and the crafty technique of the actual incident, it is apparent that state agencies are, as usual, squandering enormous budgets on child-like enactments of their closest fantasies.

The effects of the intense and high-pressure wargames are obvious on the employees who are meant to participate in them. According to one SEPC worker, “It was more severe than anything we’ve drilled. By the end of the exercise, 20,000 customers were still in the dark. The parent company got hit harder: Power was knocked out for an additional 162,000 customers, and one employee was killed.”

Nadya Bartol, the senior cybersecurity strategist at the Utilities Telecom Council, explained re-enforced the importance of the wargame, however, stating, “It’s a good idea, just like it’s a good idea for a student to take a training test for the SAT.” Apparently Bartol believes that training tests for the SAT involve “school shooter” drills.

The bizarrely asymmetrical nature of the drill to the actual threat of electrical sabotage is reminiscent of the notorious Lakeland counterinsurgency exercises. In Lakeland, troops were briefed that a separatist town had abandoned the US for the Sierra Club, and the ELF had ignited an eco-war amidst the anarchy.

Counterinsurgency is already deployed throughout the US by local police fighting gangs (read: terrorizing people of color), the Border Patrol terrifying migrants, and the DHS monitoring huge portions of the population in order to alienate anti-fracking activists. The goal of counterinsurgency is to ensure that basic infrastructure and governmental services are secured in order to win the “hearts and minds” of the population.

What we are witnessing is Counterinsurgency 2.0—an industrial security state that organizes itself under the cloak of wargames, which are kept secret from the public due to the high probability of popular outcry against paranoia and wastage of resources. According to counterinsurgency, hearts and minds are secured by an “operational environment” that ensures electrical power and infrastructural security, so the state must secure those things (even if the population does not like their methods) to retain popular approval.

Thus we see a vague mapping of where the State believes that the most sensitive positions lie. It is not the general method of state repression that counterinsurgency takes into consideration, but the simple, brute power of “security” for daily life.

Check out Sasha’s article on Counterinsurgency in the Marcellus Shale in Life During Wartime: Resisting Counterinsurgency (AK Press 2013)

Badger Honour

14th November From schnews

Badger killings in detail

14th November From schnews

Badger killings in detail

When the Badger Trust threatened Natural England with legal action for extending the badger cull, Natural England said the the claim was based on a fundamental confusion, but can you blame them, when those involved in the cull have been so, well, confusing. Between the secrecy, the lying, u-turns and even the blaming of the badgers for not co-operating with being shot. Schnews attempts to digest the badger farce a little…

TRIGGER WARNING

The theory is that killing badgers will reduce TB in cattle by 16%. Previous trials used traps to catch the animals before shooting them, but this was vetoed as too expensive and too vulnerable to disruption. This time, they've gone for the economy version where the badgers are shot while free running. Vaccinating badgers has been dismissed by government as too expensive though several independent groups are vaccinating. The whole policy ignores the real problems around bovine TB, which you can read about here (SchNEWS 836)

One of the important criteria of the cull is that at least 70% of the badgers in a given area must be killed, to minimise the number of disturbed survivors roaming about spreading the disease further afield – the so-called 'perturbation' effect.

The main problem with this was pretty clear from the beginning; nobody knows how many badgers there in the first place. Previous data showed more about the distribution of badger enthusiasts than badgers.

In 2012, Defra postponed the cull, using the excuse that the badger population was far higher than expected. when their population estimate shot up suddenly. This year, when half way through the process it was clear the cull was floundering, they revised the population estimate down – the famous 'pesky badgers moved my goalposts' moment. In a statistical manipulation worthy of anybody's Five Year Plan, Paterson's Politburo announced that 940 badgers amounted to 65% of the population (Unmolested populations of badgers have shown no sign of these wild oscillations in numbers)

Stalin Paterson has been caught out fibbing about more thasn the numbers though. On 10th October he stated in parliament that ‘…some of the animals we have shot have been desperately sick-in the final stages of disease…’ Mark Jones vet and executive director of Humane Society International said: “As a vet I find Mr Paterson’s claim that badgers shot in the pilot culls were ‘desperately sick’ highly suspicious. I know of no evidence to back this up, indeed all the available data suggests that even where bovine TB is rife among cattle, only a tiny proportion of badgers will be suffering any symptoms of the disease. The figure is perhaps as low as one in a hundred. As Mr Paterson has refused to have the badger carcases tested for TB, he cannot possibly have any scientifically credible data to support his assertion and nobody will be permitted to challenge his claim because DEFRA is having all the bodies incinerated”

In Somerset they have killed 940 badgers, which with the current population estimate of 1450 is 65%. But at one point they said the population was 4300, which meant they had to kill 3000 badgers. If we've got the maths right, 940 is only 22% of 4300. At the end of the original Gloucester period, only 30% had been killed.

The Somerset cull has now stopped but the Gloucester cull zone has been granted an eight week extension.

Action against the cull

The sustained level of resistance to the cull has been impressive, never leaving shooters to operate in peace. Hundreds of people have been spending their nights in the cull zones, often travelling long distances. A single badger killed is clearly one too many but the determined work of so many has helped make the cull a failure. Whatever the government spin says, shooters on the ground have been admitting there was 'no point even turning up most nights.'

SchNEWS spoke to a regular traveller to the cull zones “One of the best things about the cull is how it has brought together such a diversity of people together for the sake of the badgers. There has been good co-operation and acceptance of different tactics with those going on legal night patrols on footpaths working alongside those directly sabotaging the shooters with noise and torches. Meanwhile, the Badger Trust have been fighting the cull in court and the likes of Brian May have been doing the media bit. There have been lively pro badger marches in towns all round the country. Hunt saboteurs have reported an increase in support since sabotaging the cull.Those sorts of alliances and radicalising of the animal loving middle england could be a bit of an own goal for the shooting lobby.”

Info for Action

Policing tactics in the two cull zones have been very different but they haven't in either case suceeded in disrupting the sabotage. Gloucestershire policing has been a lot more pro-active, more arrests and harassment of activists, than in Somerset.

“In terms of tactics, the hardest part has generally been finding the shooters. Good sett surveying beforehand, recording and communicating sightings and sheer numbers of people out looking have all proved helpful. The groups walking footpaths with torches have made certain areas impossible to shoot in and noisy disruption of shoots have stopped them as well. When cage traps are used you can squash them or cut them open with bolt cutters. The cull is still going on in Gloucestershire so get on down there to practice your trap destruction skills.”

Next

The licences for these two cull zones last for four years, but other pilot culls may be started next year. Top of the list is Dorset. Culling has to stop over the winter but may start again in the spring.

An 'independent panel' is supposed to be evaluating the evidence to decide if the trials are successful. Indications suggest that Owen 'shoot the buzzards' Paterson will not accept any thing but approval of the cull.

ALF Returns to Royal Institute in Brazil: Liberates 300 Rats and Mice

14th November One week after announcing the closure of its laboratory in São Roque, the Instituto Royal was raided again.

14th November One week after announcing the closure of its laboratory in São Roque, the Instituto Royal was raided again. In the early hours of November 13, a group of masked activists stormed the complex, forced open doors and removed more than 300 rats and mice who still remained inside the lab. According to police, three security guards were tied up during the raid (one guard was tied up with laces from his boots).

Expensive microscopes, computers and other research equipment was destroyed. Three cars and a motorcycle parked on site were also vandalized. “We regret that activists have again resorted to riot,” the institute said in a statement.

Actions on behalf of piers against High Speed Train start

As it was planned beforehand, yesterday november the 12th there were actions in solidarity with the piers against the Basque project of High Speed Train and obviously, against the projecyt itself.

As it was planned beforehand, yesterday november the 12th there were actions in solidarity with the piers against the Basque project of High Speed Train and obviously, against the projecyt itself. This Saturday a demonstration has been organised to dennounce the lack of proportion between the pennalties against the piers and other well known criminals (what to say about those ones who are destroying Amalurra (Mother Earth) and wasting loads of public money on useless infrastructures!!!). As you may known, the piers are facing between four and nine years for pieing the current Navarran regional president Yolanda Barcina in a meeting for a High Speed network between institutions of both S'pain and France, and as she was president of this institution.

http://mugitu.blogspot.com.es/

yesterday november the 12th there were actions all over the basque Country: in Arruazu , Cadreita , Bilbo , Basauri , Donostia, Irun, Orereta, Gasteiz, Basauri, and S'pain: Cáceres, Asturies
and on the previous days there were actions in Sakana, Barañain and there are more events planned before Saturday in Lezo, Pasaia and even at Bussoleno (Italy). The trial against the 4 piers is next Monday in Madrid at the High Hearing Court. There are solidarity and dennounce activities organized there too.

The High Hearing Court deals with terrorism acts, but this is what the authorities are treating the pieing like, like a terrorist action, and because of that, the 4 and 9 years penalties. It's clear that the aim of this repression is to put people away from movilising against big infrastructures and destruction, but as we can see on these days previous to the trial and we will see on Saturday at the demonstration (there are already buses organised from each city and town), what they really provoke is more reaction.

Actions on te 12th November

Acticvists took over the High Speed train work site in Cadreita demanding immediate and definitive cessation of work. conducting a sit for 35 minutes has prevented the continuation of the work by climbing the machines and unfolding banners.

ARRUAZU (Navarra): one of the accused is councillor of this little rural village where people gathered to reclaim to be left alone.

Donostian: people demonstarted outside the local Court wearing cook hats (many actions and performance are takin place with cooks and cakes as main ingridient). Activists have reached the balcony of the local Court where they haged a banner in solidarity. Two people were arrested and face a fine

BASAURI: 30 people gathered despite the rain in solidarity with the anti-TAV piers .

LEZO – Orereta : 25 people gathered and marched.

BILBO : people demonstrated outside the Basque regional Government

On 9th November two activists chained themselves from their neck at the flags of the Navarran provintial government balcony with banners against the High Speed Train and in solidarity with the four piers. In the meantime people gathered outside screaming aganist teh High Speed Train and against destruction of Nnature. The police tried to cut the D-locks with shears, finding it imposible and ending up taking the flags away (and smashing a window! … and the flags, obviously) They were arrested spending the night in police station (they were not provided any matress and they kept the light on for all night). On Sunday morning were taken befor the judge acussed of "Resistance and severe desobidiance against the authority" (as it should be!!!) resistencia y desobediencia grave a agentes de la autoridad.

Photos: http://ekinklik.org/index.php/es/ultimas-coberturas/411-encadenamiento-contra-el-tav-y-en-solidaridad-con-los-tartalaris

On 7th November: 8 activists enroled for the Conference Work Community of the Pyrenees (a previous Conference as this was where YBarcina was pied at before). They were prevented from attending it. Instead around 60 people gathered outside the Conference in solidarity with the piers and against the High Speed Train. At the end of the event there was a pie war between the demonstrators.

Rising Tide Takes on Fossil Fuel Transport

tar sands megaload 13th November

Rising Tide Disrupts Coal Luncheon

On the heels of shutting down the Port of Vancouver to protest the illegal approval of a massive oil terminal, today Portland Rising Tide disrupted a Millennium Bulk Terminals presentation and luncheon with Portland’s Maritime Commerce Club.

40 activists with Portland Rising Tide entered the Doubletree Hotel in the Lloyd District and disrupted a Millennium Bulk Terminals presentation on their proposed 50-million ton coal export facility in Longview, WA. Millennium Bulk Terminals, owned by Ambre Energy and Arch Coal, was presenting to the Maritime Commerce Club.

Rising Tide Monitors and Protests US-95’s Largest OmegaLoad

On Sunday night, November 10 … Wild Idaho Rising Tide (WIRT) monitored and protested the heaviest and longest megaload of tar sands extraction equipment to recently traverse U.S. Highway 95 and Interstate 90 in Idaho …. another megaload builder of the largest industrial project on Earth!

Support Spied Upon, a vital expose film telling the story of activists targeted by secret police

Dear Earth First!ers,

Due to its effective use of creative direct action tactics in recent decades, Earth First! has consistently been a target of state repression and excessive police tactics. Now we are making a film with other environmental activists who have been targeted by undercover police, with the goal of exposing these abusive repression tactics.

"Spied Upon" is an internationally made full-length documentary that uses the outing of former UK undercover cop Mark Kennedy as it's starting point. Kennedy had begun his international operation by targeting Earth First! in the UK in 2003, and had worked across Europe as well as for the FBI for seven-years before being outed by his unknowing activist girlfriend and her circle of Nottingham friends in 2010. Now this woman and a number of other women are suing police bosses in the UK for what has been exposed as a regular undercover police tactic of duping activist women into long-term relationships. Spied Upon is working with some of these women to support them and help them have their story told.

Mark Kennedy turned private in 2010 and started his own security firm as well as saying that he was working for Global Open, a private security firm known to target animal rights activists on behalf of pharmaceutical company clients. It appears as though that is exactly what Kennedy was doing when he went to Italy to spy on an animal liberation gathering in the summer of 2010. He even tried to strengthen his credibility by saying he was an important Earth First! activist, see the video clip here we shot with Italian activists who tell about when they were unknowing targets of Kennedy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx38iZ14nc

State repression has long featured the use of undercover police, but a lesser known use of undercover tactics has been those used by private security firms on behalf of private corporations. These practices construe an intense invasion of privacy that is not even allowed for state undercover police, and this scandal needs to be exposed! We have also uncovered illegal collusion between private and state security forces. This collusion is a key focus of the film Spied Upon, which we are also making as a tool that activists can use to highlight the current problems environmental groups face today.

We plan to release Spied Upon internationally in 2014. However, to do this, we need your support to make this film happen. Our film crew comes from grassroots activism, and we are turning to the grassroots, meaning you, to seek funding. Please take a look at our crowdfunding web-site and teaser video at Indiegogo, and take action to help us please by making a donation if you support our work: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/spied-upon

In solidarity,
The crew at Spied Upon

PS. Lots more info at: www.spiedupon.com

Indigenous Petro-Struggles

$stop fracking indigenous$ 12th November

Another Elsipogtog Showdown Brewing

SWN Resources Canada is planning to resume its controversial shale gas seismic exploration work on Wednesday, according to Elsipogtog War Chief John Levi. …

Levi said Connors told the people that SWN would withdraw a lawsuit against several community members if the Houston-based firm was allowed to finish its exploration work unimpeded.

“We said no, we are going to be there,” said Levi, in an interview with APTN National News. “What we told him was we are going to be there Wednesday.”

Ponca Families Challenge TransCanada

Keystone XL pipeline opponents took to a Neligh rancher’s land Saturday, protesting the proposal they say cuts through the historic Ponca Trail of Tears and poses a steep environmental risk. Ponca tribal families, Oceti Sakowin tribes, Brave Heart Society, Bold Nebraska, and others — hosted the Ponca Trail of Tears Spiritual Camp, the first in a series of tribal events aimed at showcasing solidarity among ranchers and Native Americans against TransCanada’s project.