Category: Action Reports

Fracking on trial — again!

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

The safe­ty of frack­ing will be chal­lenged at Pre­ston Mag­is­trates Court today, as 3 peo­ple go on tri­al fol­low­ing a protest at Cuadrilla’s Hes­keth Bank site, Lan­cashire, in Decem­ber last year. (1) The tri­al is expect­ed to last until Thurs­day.

 

On 1 Decem­ber 2011, pro­tes­tors from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide occu­pied the test drilling rig, shut­ting it down for 13 hours. (2) (3)

Hydraulic frac­tur­ing is a method of extract­ing gas in shale rock. Huge amounts of water mixed with tox­ic chem­i­cals are forced into the ground at high pres­sure, a large pro­por­tion of which are nev­er recov­ered. This flu­id also leach­es arsenic out of rocks, cre­at­ing a dan­ger­ous cock­tail that’s dif­fi­cult to dis­pose of. In the Unit­ed States numer­ous spills of these flu­ids have con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed irri­ga­tion water, affect­ing food sup­plies, and the health of sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. (4) (5) (6)

Rachel Green­wood from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide said: “Once frack­ing takes place con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of land and water, and the dev­as­ta­tion of local ecosys­tems, is inevitable. You can­not do it safe­ly, and reg­u­la­tion of frack­ing is total­ly inef­fec­tive. Cuadrilla were able to con­tin­ue drilling after their plan­ning per­mis­sion had expired. If frack­ing is allowed to go ahead in Lan­cashire it could hap­pen through­out the UK.”

There are twelve licens­es to frack for shale gas in the UK, five of which are held by Cuadrilla resources in Lan­cashire. (7)

Cuadrilla’s activ­i­ties are opposed both by local groups (8) (9) and cli­mate cam­paign­ers. On 10th July 2012, three peo­ple were found guilty of aggra­vat­ed tres­pass fol­low­ing an occu­pa­tion of the Cuadrilla Resources test drilling site at Banks. (10) On 18 June, 20 peo­ple block­ad­ed Cuadrilla Resource’s drilling rig at PR Marriot’s com­pound in Chester­field, lock­ing them­selves to the gates to pre­vent the rig from being moved to Cuadrilla’s site in Lan­cashire. (11)

UK Methane recent­ly announced their inten­tion to apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham, Bris­tol. (12)

Coal Bed Methane involves drilling into coal seams to extract gas in a sim­i­lar man­ner to frack­ing. A wide vari­ety of tech­niques are used depend­ing on the nature of the coal seam. If the seam is per­me­able enough, pump­ing water out of the seam will be enough to start gas flow­ing from the well, but if not, some sort of stim­u­la­tion will be need­ed. Often this is hydraulic frac­tur­ing.

Because the coal seams tend to be rel­a­tive­ly close to the sur­face, and because such large quan­ti­ties of water are pumped out of the coal seam (water that has been mari­nad­ing in coal for thou­sands of years), prob­lems with water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and leak­ing methane tend to occur regard­less of whether frack­ing is per­formed. (13)

There is cur­rent­ly plan­ning per­mis­sion for around 60 Coal Bed Methane wells in Britain. (14)

Notes for edi­tors

1. Two of the defen­dants are charged with aggra­vat­ed tres­pass (sec­tion 68 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994). The oth­er is charged with an offence under sec­tion 69 Crim­i­nal Jus­tice and Pub­lic Order Act 1994, which is fail­ing to leave land as soon as prac­ti­ca­ble when direct­ed to do so by the senior offi­cer at the scene.

2. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2011/dec/01/fracking-lancashire-hesketh-bank-cuadrilla

3. Pho­tos of the action are avail­able at: https://secure.flickr.com/photos/71113300@N08/

4. ‘Cracks in the Façade: EPA Traced Pol­lu­tion of Under­ground Water Sup­ply to Hydraulic Frac­tur­ing’ (Aug 2011 – EWG)
http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/fracking/cracks_in_the_facade.pdf

5. ‘Methane con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of drink­ing water accom­pa­ny­ing gas-well drilling and hydraulic frac­tur­ing’ (May 2011 – Duke)
http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/cgc/pnas2011.pdf

6.‘Shale gas: a pro­vi­sion­al assess­ment of cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal impacts’ (Jan 2011 – Tyn­dall Cen­tre)
http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/sites/default/files/coop_shale_gas_report_final_200111.pdf

7. http://frack-off.org.uk/new-homepage/bad-guys/locations/

8. Res­i­dents Action on Fylde Frack­ing: http://stopfyldefracking.org.uk/

9. Rib­ble Estu­ary Against Frack­ing: http://reafg.blogspot.co.uk/

10. The defence was sup­port­ed by a num­ber of wit­ness­es, includ­ing aca­d­e­mics from the UK and US and mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty, who tes­ti­fied regard­ing the con­se­quences of shale gas extrac­tion, in terms of cli­mate change, water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, earth­quakes and severe health effects. For more infor­ma­tion see: http://frackingontrial.org/

11. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/jun/18/fracking-protest-chesterfield-cuadrilla-hesketh-bank

12. UK Methane have con­tact­ed Tran­si­tion Keyn­sham to announce that they will apply for plan­ning per­mis­sion to drill a Coal Bed Methane bore­hole in Keyn­sham: http://www.frackfreesomerset.org

13. http://frack-off.org.uk/coal-bed-methane-the-evil-twin-of-shale-gas/

14. http://frack-off.org.uk/bad-guys/locations/

For more infor­ma­tion see:
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.frackfreesomerset.org
www.frack-off.org.uk
www.frackingontrial.org

Climate Sirens drop banner on Tower Bridge

Today Cli­mate Siren activists scaled Tow­er Bridge to drop a mas­sive ban­ner above the Par­a­lympic sym­bol which read “Cli­mate Change our Next Chal­lenge”.

Today Cli­mate Siren activists scaled Tow­er Bridge to drop a mas­sive ban­ner above the Par­a­lympic sym­bol which read “Cli­mate Change our Next Chal­lenge”. Their blog con­tains ‘an open let­ter to the world’ (see below) where they ask us all to focus on the “chang­ing cli­mate and the threat it pos­es to our civilisation’s very exis­tence on this beau­ti­ful plan­et” After the drop Tow­er bridge was evac­u­at­ed for “safe­ty rea­sons” the activist arrest­ed and tak­en to Bish­ops­gate where their sup­port­ers fol­lowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Peo­ple of the World,

The 2012 Olympics were a huge inspi­ra­tion as to how we can come togeth­er to over­come chal­lenges and achieve suc­cess – at many lev­els; as par­tic­i­pants, as spec­ta­tors, as com­peti­tors, even as a host nation. No doubt the Par­a­lympics will equal or sur­pass this.

But these Games can be an inspi­ra­tion for us to con­front the biggest chal­lenge our species has ever faced – per­haps will ever face: The chang­ing cli­mate and the threat it pos­es to our civilisation’s very exis­tence on this beau­ti­ful plan­et.

Cli­mate change is hap­pen­ing now. Don’t be fooled by those whose vest­ed inter­ests ensure that they would have you think oth­er­wise. Or by cold­er win­ters. Cli­mate change unfolds uneven­ly over time and is not uni­form across all areas of the globe. Think of the stock mar­ket:

“Any com­pe­tent finan­cial advi­sor will tell you that the road to secure retire­ment is paved with mar­ket drops. Any com­pe­tent cli­mate sci­en­tist will tell you that our road to a hot­ter plan­et will be paved with cold snaps, even record-break­ers.” – Prof. Lau­rence Smith

Even those for­mer­ly scep­ti­cal come round to the irrefutable evi­dence even­tu­al­ly, as Prof. Muller has recent­ly shown. We may not under­stand the phys­i­cal sci­ence of the Earth well enough to accu­rate­ly pre­dict how the cli­mate will change over long peri­ods, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the region­al lev­el, but then we don’t under­stand mete­o­rol­o­gy well enough to deter­mine whether it will be rain­ing or not in Chica­go next 15th April. Doesn’t mean that it will not be rain­ing in Chica­go come 15/04/13!

But our mod­els are get­ting bet­ter. Twen­ty years ago, sci­en­tists had to ‘write-in’ com­plex, irreg­u­lar cli­mate vari­abil­i­ty events such as El Niño/La Niña cycles. Nowa­days, they arise spon­ta­neous­ly with­in our mod­els: a clear indi­ca­tor that we are get­ting more and more accu­rate in our pre­dic­tions.

Even with­out the mod­els, the field of pale­o­cli­ma­tol­ogy gives us irrefutable and chill­ing evi­dence of how rapid­ly and enor­mous­ly the glob­al cli­mate can and has changed. Ice cores tell us that around 11,500 years ago, sur­face tem­per­a­ture in Green­land increased by 8.3°C in a sin­gle decade. In the Pliocene, when sea lev­els were 25 metres high­er than they are now, the C02 con­tent of the atmos­phere was just 100 parts per mil­lion (ppm) more than they are now. Our annu­al rate of increase is cur­rent­ly about 2.07ppm and ris­ing.

We are already com­mit­ted to a 0.6°C rise on 1990 lev­els, sim­ply from the long-term warm­ing effects of what we’ve already put in the atmos­phere. Even the IPCC (noto­ri­ous for under­es­ti­mat­ing glob­al cli­mate change to achieve sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus) in its most opti­mistic SRES sce­nario – known as ‘B1’ – sees us approach­ing close to a 2°C rise in glob­al tem­per­a­ture by 2100. In this mod­el, norther­ly lat­i­tudes, includ­ing the Arc­tic, would see ris­es any­where between 3.5 – 6°C by century’s end. That might not sound like so much until you realise that the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence between a giant ice sheet cov­er­ing Edin­burgh, Berlin, Moscow and New York was only 5°C low­er than now, dur­ing the last Ice Age. 

The biggest chal­lenge is not in phys­i­cal­ly doing what is nec­es­sary – we have the tech­nol­o­gy and skills to tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able soci­ety with­out a huge amount of dif­fi­cul­ty. The chal­lenge is in over­com­ing the doubts and con­fu­sion sown by those with vest­ed inter­ests in pre­vent­ing change. To over­come our fears and take that first step into new ter­ri­to­ry. It is the chal­lenge of con­fronting the forces of demog­ra­phy, glob­al­i­sa­tion and cli­mate change and ask­ing seri­ous ques­tions about the way we organ­ise our economies, soci­eties and local com­mu­ni­ties, the way we use our Earth’s nat­ur­al resources, how we dis­trib­ute them and how we pre­serve them for future gen­er­a­tions. 

In truth, our biggest chal­lenge is a moral chal­lenge. 

And we face it now.

clisir

Australia: Climate activists do Banner drops in Boggabri and Melbourne against coal rush

Activists from Quit Coal were able to get a mes­sage across this morn­ing: with a ban­ner drop over the main entrance of the Vic­to­ri­an State par­lia­ment house. The ban­ner said “ ‘Coal is the sin­gle great­est threat to civil­i­sa­tion and all life on our plan­et’ Prof. James Hansen, NASA.

Activists from Quit Coal were able to get a mes­sage across this morn­ing: with a ban­ner drop over the main entrance of the Vic­to­ri­an State par­lia­ment house. The ban­ner said “ ‘Coal is the sin­gle great­est threat to civil­i­sa­tion and all life on our plan­et’ Prof. James Hansen, NASA. Why is Bail­lieu fund­ing coal?” At the same time activists in cen­tral NSW at Bog­gabri climbed a coal-crush­er and dropped a ban­ner which said “Stop the Coal Rush: Pro­tect Health, Water, Cli­mate”

Relat­ed: Fur­ther sub­si­dies for Vic­to­ri­an coal by Vic­to­ri­an and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments | Quit Coal pho­tos: Par­lia­ment House Ban­ner Drop & Lock On

“Why is Baillieu funding coal?” demand climate activists

Four activists elud­ed secu­ri­ty and were able to climb the scaf­fold­ing at the back of par­lia­ment house to the roof to drop the ban­ner just after 9am. Two chained them­selves on the roof while two more dropped down with the ban­ner on ropes. Nine oth­er peo­ple chained them­selves on the steps of par­lia­ment house. Pro­tes­tor Dominic O’D­wyer said from the roof: “We are plan­ning on stay­ing here until the gov­ern­ment does some­thing recog­nis­ing the threat that cli­mate change pos­es. We would like the gov­ern­ment to take the threat of cli­mate change seri­ous­ly.”

 

The ban­ner was present for a few hours before police peace­ful­ly escort­ed the pro­tes­tors away. Bolt cut­ters had to be brought in to cut the chains of peo­ple on the steps. Accord­ing to a police spkeswoman no charges have been laid at this stage.

MR Bail­lieu when asked about the protest by reporters com­ment­ed “It will be a mat­ter for the pres­i­dent and the speak­er. Those peo­ple have endan­gered them­selves but they have also endan­gered oth­er peo­ple.”

Ener­gy min­is­ter Michael O’Brien called the protest a “stu­pid and dan­ger­ous stunt”.

Dominic O’D­wyer, who chained him­self on the roof, told AAP reporter and report­ed in the Her­ald Sun “We’re dis­ap­point­ed that the gov­ern­ment is not tak­ing action on cli­mate change and they’ve got their head in the sand. That’s why we’re here today, we’re not here today because we enjoy this. We’ve seen record ice melts in the Arc­tic this year, that means more bush­fires, more severe droughts, worse flood­ing, which affects mil­lions of Vic­to­ri­an fam­i­lies.”

Gavin Jen­nings, Deputy Leader of the Oppo­si­tion in the Leg­isla­tive Coun­cil and Shad­ow Min­is­ter of Health, tweet­ed dur­ing the protest:

 

One of the rea­sons pro­tes­tors iden­ti­fied for the action was the State gov­ern­ment deci­sion to put $45 mil­lion into fund­ing ‘clean coal’ ini­tia­tives along with anoth­er $45 mil­lion from the Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment. Mr O’D­wyer said “For a start they should with­draw that mon­ey”.

Protest against coal expansion Gunnedah Basin, NSW

While the protest at the Vic­to­ri­an Par­lia­ment House was occur­ring there was also a protest and ban­ner drop in cen­tral New South Wales, where activists scaled a coal-crush­ing plant at Bog­gabri Coal Mine on the Gunnedah basin.

Accord­ing to the media release the NSW Gov­ern­ment has recent­ly approved a four­fold expan­sion of the Bog­gabri Coal Mine. The two pro­tes­tors dropped a ban­ner say­ing: “Stop the Coal Rush: Pro­tect Health, Water, Cli­mate”. After more than 8 hours atop the coal-crush­er two pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed and tak­en to Narrabri Police Sta­tion. The men were protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Leard State For­est, in the Gunnedah Basin, for three open-cut coal mines.

Sources:

GM sunflowers — Faucheurs Volontaires in action

2 Sep­tem­ber 2012

Press release

In the ear­ly hours of 2nd Sep­tem­ber, a hun­dred Faucheurs Volon­taires (vol­un­tary reapers of GM) from all over France simul­ta­ne­ous­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed 8 test fields in the Isère region and 1 in the Drôme.

2 Sep­tem­ber 2012

Press release

In the ear­ly hours of 2nd Sep­tem­ber, a hun­dred Faucheurs Volon­taires (vol­un­tary reapers of GM) from all over France simul­ta­ne­ous­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed 8 test fields in the Isère region and 1 in the Drôme.

Par cette action que nous assumons pleine­ment, nous voulons : met­tre en évi­dence qu’une par­tie impor­tante des sur­faces de tour­nesol de la région a été semée avec des var­iétés mutées, issues de tech­nolo­gies brevetées, tolérantes à des her­bi­cides, véri­ta­bles OGM qui ne dis­ent pas leur nom. Dénon­cer le pas­sage en force des firmes semen­cières et des opéra­teurs de la fil­ière, qui cachent aux paysans la véri­ta­ble nature de ces var­iétés. C’est la poli­tique du fait accom­pli : on colonise les champs, ensuite on dis­cutera.

Par ailleurs, aucune traça­bil­ité ni éti­que­tage n’est exigée pour les pro­duits de con­som­ma­tion humaine (graines et huile de tour­nesol) et ani­males (graines et tourteaux) Les récoltes de ces par­celles seront mélangées avec les récoltes con­ven­tion­nelles et se retrou­veront donc dans nos assi­ettes

Nous atten­dons du min­istre de l’agriculture et des Ser­vices de l’Etat : qu’ils garan­tis­sent aux con­som­ma­teurs la lib­erté de con­som­mer sans OGM qu’ils agis­sent pour que ces tech­nolo­gies ne soient plus exclues du champ d’application de la direc­tive européenne 2001–18 sur les OGM (alors qu’elle les définit comme tels : art 2 et 3)

Ces var­iétés de tour­nesol muté con­stituent des impass­es tech­niques : tou­jours plus de pes­ti­cides, risques de résis­tance de l’ambroisie… Les pro­duc­teurs doivent les refuser et ne pas se laiss­er embar­quer dans cette spi­rale qui les ren­dent encore plus dépen­dants des firmes semen­cières agrochim­iques

PAS D’OGM DANS NOS CHAMPS ET NOS ASSIETTES QU’ILS SOIENT ISSUS DE TRANSGENESE OU DE MUTAGENESE

Les Faucheurs Volon­taires

Japan Dolphins Day 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Around 100–150 pro­test­ers held a ral­ly out­side the Embassy of Japan in Lon­don yes­ter­day (31st August 2012) to send a clear mes­sage to Japan on the eve of the Tai­ji dol­phin slaugh­ter sea­son- END THE UNNECESSARY & CRUEL MURDER OF DOLPHINS IN THE COVE. Sim­i­lar events were held at Japan­ese embassies around the world, with thou­sands of pas­sion­ate  peo­ple from all walks of life and of all ages com­ing togeth­er for the cause and cel­e­brat­ing lives of the beau­ti­ful and intel­li­gent crea­tures on Japan Dol­phins Day. We made a lot of noise and got a lot of atten­tion from embassy staff, secu­ri­ty and impor­tant­ly the pub­lic.

 

For more infor­ma­tion-

http://thecovemovie.com/

http://www.seashepherd.org/

http://savejapandolphins.org/

USA: Earth First! Blockades Florida’s Dirtiest Power Plant protesting Mitt Romney’s Acceptance Speech

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Apol­lo Beach, FL—In the cli­max of the 2012 Repub­li­can Nation­al Con­ven­tion, pro­tes­tors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the east­ern shore of Tam­pa Bay. The envi­ron­men­tal action group is cit­ing cor­po­rate influ­ence in pol­i­tics and eco­log­i­cal impacts of fos­sil fuel depen­den­cy as rea­sons for the dis­rup­tion.

Report from Indy­bay IMC: A30 Earth First! Lock­down at Tam­pa’s Big Bend Coal Plant Dur­ing 2012 RNC
| Youtube video: Envi­ron­men­tal Protest in Tam­pa Bay dur­ing RNC , Pro­tes­tors chained togeth­er, Protest ends peace­ful­ly

This year’s RNC was fund­ed by an esti­mat­ed $55 mil­lion in cor­po­rate pay-offs, with cor­po­ra­tions includ­ing the Tam­pa based-TECO Ener­gy, along with Chevron, Duke Ener­gy and Exxon Mobil.

Accord­ing to a report by Nat­ur­al Resources Defense Coun­cil (NRDC) last year, Flori­da is among the dirt­i­est states in pow­er plant pol­lu­tion. NRDC found TECO’s Big Bend plant to be in the state’s, “top three most pol­lut­ing smoke stacks.”

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.

Romney’s top ener­gy pol­i­cy advi­sor is the wealth­i­est oil­man in the coun­try and accord­ing to data ana­lyzed by the Cen­ter for Respon­sive Pol­i­tics, Rom­ney has already raised more from min­ing inter­ests than Bush or McCain raised from these indus­tries in their entire cam­paigns.

Local­ly, TECO’s Big Bend plant has a long his­to­ry of pol­lu­tion. Along with being declared Flori­da’s num­ber one dirt­i­est pow­er plant by Flori­da Con­sumer Action Net­work, they were also doc­u­ment­ed dis­charg­ing waste into Cobia Bay in Apol­lo Beach in years past.

But that’s not all. TECO has been called one of the nation’s worst offend­ers when it comes to moun­tain­top removal coal min­ing. In coal min­ing regions of the Appalachi­an Moun­tains, TECO has ruined entire com­mu­ni­ties to max­i­mize their prof­its. Ken­tucky coal­field res­i­dent Doug Jus­tice worked in the coal mines for 22 years and said “I have nev­er seen an out­fit treat a com­mu­ni­ty the way TECO Coal has done us.”

In response to the dev­as­ta­tion from floods caused be TECO’s min­ing in 2002, Granville Burke of Letch­er Coun­ty, Ken­tucky, had this to say: “I wish TECO had nev­er start­ed min­ing above our home. Pro­tec­tion for fam­i­lies like ours is sup­posed to come from the state and fed­er­al reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies, but instead they look the oth­er way as coal com­pa­nies destroy entire com­mu­ni­ties for the sake of prof­it.”

“Dirty ener­gy becomes dirty pol­i­tics. We can’t afford to stand by and watch it any­more. We have to fight back.” Said Rachel Kijew­s­ki, an orga­niz­er with the Earth First! move­ment in Flori­da.

xxx

 

Twyford Down anti-road protests gathering, September

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There is going to be a Twyford Down anti-roads protest reunion to mark that it is 20 years since the protests start­ed.  It’s on 29–30 Sept, when it’ll be the Har­vest Moon.  

There will be a camp run along the same lines as 20 years ago (bring what you expect to find… water butts, tents, food, etc).  That said, there will be some domes and the @ teapot are going to be doing cater­ing (Sat din­ner and Sun break­fast) — hur­rah!  Camp loca­tion to be on top of St Cather­ine’s Hill, near Win­ches­ter.

There will also be a protest / pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty about this cur­rent Gov­ern­men­t’s mania of road­build­ing. 

 Please spread this amongst your con­tacts who you think may be inter­estd.  There is a Face­book page if you do such things called Twen­ty Years Since Twyford: http://www.facebook.com/events/344190508996315/

More details and fly­er down­load­able at http://bettertransport.org.uk/blogs/roads/100912-twyford-20

Netherlands: destruction of potato GM trial site

Two GM pota­to tri­al fields at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wagenin­gen were destroyed by activists in July and August 2012. 

The pota­to tri­als were for mildew resis­tance.  They were in Lelystad and Valther­mond. It was only recent­ly, on 16th August, that the destruc­tion was dis­cov­ered.  The action has not been claimed. 

Two GM pota­to tri­al fields at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wagenin­gen were destroyed by activists in July and August 2012. 

The pota­to tri­als were for mildew resis­tance.  They were in Lelystad and Valther­mond. It was only recent­ly, on 16th August, that the destruc­tion was dis­cov­ered.  The action has not been claimed. 

Russia. Khimki forest (north of Moscow). Construction vehicles torched, tree-cutter assaulted, his arm broken

report­ed by activists in Rus­sia:

“Rus­sia. Khim­ki for­est (north of Moscow). Con­struc­tion vehi­cles torched, tree-cut­ter assault­ed, his arm bro­ken.

report­ed by activists in Rus­sia:

“Rus­sia. Khim­ki for­est (north of Moscow). Con­struc­tion vehi­cles torched, tree-cut­ter assault­ed, his arm bro­ken.

Unknown activists have torched sev­er­al con­struc­tion vehi­cles and assault­ed tree-cut­ter at the new toll high­way con­struc­tion site in Khim­ki for­est. These news appeared in joint dec­la­ra­tion, pub­lished by state enter­prise “Avtodor” and “North-East­ern con­ces­sion” (sub­sidiary of Vin­ci). The acci­dents hap­pened on nights of 19.07 and 21.07.
“Avtodor” rep­re­sen­ta­tives stat­ed that an assault on tree-cut­ters took place on 19.07: one of the work­ers tried to pre­vent eco-activists from enter­ing the con­struc­tion site. In the fol­low­ing fight his arm broke.
On the night of 21.07 spe­cial con­struc­tion vehi­cles were torched: sev­er­al brand new har­vesters and hydraulic exca­va­tor were com­plete­ly destroyed by fire. Mate­r­i­al dam­age is esti­mat­ed to be over $ 2 000 000.
Ear­li­er the same com­pa­nies filed a com­plaint about unknown peo­ple open­ing fire on con­struc­tion vehi­cles (sup­pos­ed­ly from “Saiga”, a civ­il 12-mm car­bine) and torch­ing work­ers sheds with molo­tovs.
Eco-activists present at the site of eco-camp near the con­struc­tion failed to pro­vide police with evi­dence or ideas about the nature of per­pe­tra­tors.”

report­ed by activists in Rus­sia:

“Rus­sia. Khim­ki for­est (north of Moscow). Con­struc­tion vehi­cles torched, tree-cut­ter assault­ed, his arm bro­ken.

Unknown activists have torched sev­er­al con­struc­tion vehi­cles and assault­ed tree-cut­ter at the new toll high­way con­struc­tion site in Khim­ki for­est. These news appeared in joint dec­la­ra­tion, pub­lished by state enter­prise “Avtodor” and “North-East­ern con­ces­sion” (sub­sidiary of Vin­ci). The acci­dents hap­pened on nights of 19.07 and 21.07.
“Avtodor” rep­re­sen­ta­tives stat­ed that an assault on tree-cut­ters took place on 19.07: one of the work­ers tried to pre­vent eco-activists from enter­ing the con­struc­tion site. In the fol­low­ing fight his arm broke.
On the night of 21.07 spe­cial con­struc­tion vehi­cles were torched: sev­er­al brand new har­vesters and hydraulic exca­va­tor were com­plete­ly destroyed by fire. Mate­r­i­al dam­age is esti­mat­ed to be over $ 2 000 000.
Ear­li­er the same com­pa­nies filed a com­plaint about unknown peo­ple open­ing fire on con­struc­tion vehi­cles (sup­pos­ed­ly from “Saiga”, a civ­il 12-mm car­bine) and torch­ing work­ers sheds with molo­tovs.
Eco-activists present at the site of eco-camp near the con­struc­tion failed to pro­vide police with evi­dence or ideas about the nature of per­pe­tra­tors.”

 

“On the night of 20–21 july, after hav­ing received news of new tree-cut­ting activ­i­ty in Khim­ki for­est, we decid­ed to vis­it the work­ers. We aimed for 2 trucks and exca­va­tor parked on the clear cut. They were com­plete­ly destroyed.

Our sol­i­dar­i­ty goes out to eco-activists who broke the arm of pri­vate guard who was guard­ing the clear cut (this piece we learned from news).

Enough of pseu­do-legal­ism!

Do like us, do bet­ter than us.
- Autonomous autonoms

 

Protesters Shut Down Largest Mountaintop Removal Coal Mine in U.S.

Ramp­ing up renewed efforts to end moun­tain­top removal min­ing in cen­tral Appalachia, scores of pro­test­ers staged a dar­ing action at the con­tro­ver­sial

Ramp­ing up renewed efforts to end moun­tain­top removal min­ing in cen­tral Appalachia, scores of pro­test­ers staged a dar­ing action at the con­tro­ver­sial Hobet strip mine today in Boone Coun­ty, West Vir­ginia, shut­ting down oper­a­tions through a series of coor­di­nat­ed lock downs, tree-sits and ban­ner drops. In a sym­bol­ic chal­lenge to the Oba­ma administration’s failed reg­u­la­to­ry poli­cies, the protest tar­get­ed the Hobet 45 moun­tain­top removal mine, which had been grant­ed a wide­ly denounced per­mit over two years ago.”

Twen­ty pro­test­ers were arrest­ed, and are being held for a total of $500,00 dol­lars in bail. A call for sup­port to raise funds has been issued.

View a video of the action here. Learn more at rampscampaign.org.