Category: Unnecessary Developments

4 Arsons against Bristol’s cellular transmission infrastructure over 24 Hours

Around Bris­tol between June 9th-10th, we left 7 mobile phone anten­nae in flames. Dai­ly con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety is depen­dent on unin­ter­rupt­ed flows (of goods, peo­ple, data, and ener­gy) and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions grid is no excep­tion.

Around Bris­tol between June 9th-10th, we left 7 mobile phone anten­nae in flames. Dai­ly con­tin­u­a­tion of cap­i­tal­ist soci­ety is depen­dent on unin­ter­rupt­ed flows (of goods, peo­ple, data, and ener­gy) and the com­mu­ni­ca­tions grid is no excep­tion. The lim­it­ed uses most of us can make from these flows only mask the way they are main­ly used to over­see and impose the dom­i­nant order, and increase its’ reach and con­trol. You need only look to how the val­ues of con­nec­tiv­i­ty, speed, and mobil­i­ty that are embod­ied in a mobile phone (for exam­ple) facil­i­tate a relent­less con­sumer cul­ture and the require­ment to be avail­able and flex­i­ble at all times: as much for the ben­e­fit of the boss and the adver­tis­er as for your fam­i­ly or friends. This is ful­ly con­sis­tent with the mod­ern restruc­tur­ing and decen­tral­i­sa­tion of the gigan­tic pro­duc­tive sys­tem which this soci­ety sub­jects us to. Hin­der­ing all this was our objec­tive.

2 anten­nae went up simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, in Ham­brook and out­side Ram Hill busi­ness park in Coal­pit Heath, both owned by O2. This is also not the first time O2 have been sin­gled out for dam­age acts because of the con­tracts they hold in the migrant deten­tion indus­try, with cops, and tag­ging for the pro­ba­tion ser­vice. Some hours lat­er a 3rd O2 anten­na went up in Coombe Din­gle, at the same time as a 4th fire was lit after gain­ing access to trans­mis­sion units con­nect­ed to the huge BT telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion tow­er in Lock­leaze. Sig­nals that will have been affect­ed are those of O2, T‑Mobile, Orange and Voda­phone. These cor­po­ra­tions var­i­ous­ly are con­nect­ed to the field of mil­i­tary equip­ment and arma­ment, use prison labour, and are famous for read­i­ly col­lab­o­rat­ing with elec­tron­ic polic­ing by the secret ser­vices (now that wide­spread data-sur­veil­lance is well known) while not even stop­ping at financ­ing Oxford uni­ver­si­ty with its’ exten­sive ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion labs. This has already led to their inter­ests being attacked in Berlin (T‑Mobile’s par­ent com­pa­ny*), Paris (Orange*), and Ban­bury (Voda­phone*).

For all above rea­sons it is always good to harm these cor­po­ra­tions, struc­tural­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, and then there is the issue of the anten­nae them­selves radi­at­ing who knows how much harm­ful­ness to near­by species. There were the pub­li­cised cas­es in Bris­tol even some years ago of a woman in Shire­hamp­ton who com­plained of the affects of an anten­na put up on her high rise flat­block and lat­er died from a brain tumor, while an anten­na nick­named The Tow­er of Doom was with­drawn from Sta­ple Hill after can­cer rates soared. Evi­dence has mount­ed up that pro­longed use of mobile phones dam­ages the immune sys­tem, decreas­es fer­til­i­ty, and caus­es brain tumors and can­cers: espe­cial­ly in the young. We should men­tion that the anten­na we burned in Coombe Din­gle is one of three on the grounds of a uni­ver­si­ty sports pitch also mar­ket­ed for schools, as are many oth­ers. Addi­tion­al­ly, twist­ed lab tech­ni­cians claim to have deduced from exper­i­men­ta­tion on oth­er mam­mals (built on tor­ture like so much sci­en­tif­ic research) that expo­sure while still in the womb “sig­nif­i­cant­ly dam­ages brain func­tion, struc­ture and behav­iour and sug­gest­ed that these expo­sures could con­tribute to chil­dren’s behav­iour­al dis­or­ders”.

These prod­ucts were and still are pushed on us as harm­less, although near­ly every study that claims this was fund­ed by the indus­try itself, when we had no idea of the long term affects, sim­i­lar­ly to the mar­ket­ing of asbestos or smok­ing before they began to show their dead­ly toll (to use only 2 bet­ter known exam­ples among thou­sands). These days even researchers at Bris­tol uni­ver­si­ty con­cede the dan­gers of cel­lu­lar use. What a surprise.…the per­ma­nent­ly wired envi­ron­ment turns out to be tox­ic, while com­pa­nies make a killing in prof­its and the gov­ern­ment receives bil­lions in tax­es and licens­ing. For most peo­ple pro­longed con­tact with mobile phones or wire­less net­works in gen­er­al seems unavoid­able, for work or to avoid social mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, in the street, on pub­lic trans­port, or at home: we are soak­ing in one more accu­mu­la­tive bar­rage in a poi­so­nous, anti-human and anti-life civil­i­sa­tion that grows by the day.

A recur­ring fea­ture of the estrange­ment that tech­nolo­gies such as mobile phones actu­al­ly cul­ti­vate between indi­vid­u­als, is how many addict­ed to their con­stant use now pre­fer to text mes­sage or to “tweet” to avoid the prospect of real life con­tact, and how many only feel safe com­mu­ni­cat­ing from behind a device. It is now com­plete­ly stan­dard for peo­ple to spend the major­i­ty of their wak­ing hours inter­fac­ing with one screen or anoth­er. Up and com­ing inven­tions such as Google Glass attempt to make this enclo­sure near total (although also depen­dent in part on unin­ter­rupt­ed trans­mis­sion infra­struc­ture). As a soci­ety that lives through high­ly com­plex tech­nolo­gies, we no longer ful­ly inhab­it our bod­ies and envi­ron­ment but instead some part of the tech­no-hive: and it is no longer only nerds and the young who prac­ti­cal­ly call this vir­tu­al real­i­ty their home. As the sphere dom­i­nat­ed by infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy expands, what is con­sid­ered social­ly of impor­tance in our actu­al lives shrinks to what can be con­veyed and received by the device, and so nar­row­ing human emo­tion and expe­ri­ence. Or think about the obses­sive urge to treat mod­ern life as some­thing less to be lived than to be doc­u­ment­ed in each detail for pas­sive con­sump­tion on the “social” net­works, as anoth­er exam­ple of coloni­sa­tion by cap­i­tal­ism and its’ tech­nol­o­gy.

Plan­ning and car­ry­ing out your exis­tence dig­i­tal­ly also allows the pos­si­bil­i­ties of unprece­dent­ed sur­veil­lance, and it hin­ders active rebel­lion or even ques­tion­ing of the dom­i­nant order by flag­ging up “abnor­mal­i­ties” in what you often vol­un­tar­i­ly share with your friends or “Friends.” At the same time, con­cert­ed exploita­tion of the base pop­u­la­tions around the world and eco­log­i­cal pil­lage to the point of col­lapse con­tin­ues to fat­ten the same rich par­a­sites’ pock­ets, and tech­no­log­i­cal immer­sion helps peo­ple nei­ther relate nor care. On the con­trary mil­lions now hunger for their part in the way of life that is killing every­thing.

With an anar­chist per­spec­tive in search of free and ful­fill­ing exis­tence, we fight to do away with all tech­nolo­gies born from the tox­i­fi­ca­tion and slav­ery of mines, fac­to­ries, and indus­tri­al infra­struc­tures, and for our dai­ly com­mu­ni­ca­tion to be as unmedi­at­ed as pos­si­ble. Tak­ing down these few nodes was not enough for us, it is not a case of sim­ply aban­don­ing the uses of a par­tic­u­lar device alone, but it is eras­ing the whole social sys­tem which first trapped us in its’ “neces­si­ty” which is the chal­lenge. We found anten­nae an easy way to start: it is sim­ply a mat­ter of burn­ing tires between the exposed cables and away you go. In North Lanark­shire, Scot­tish vil­lagers even felled one. By reflect­ing on rad­i­cal and anti-indus­tri­al his­to­ry in Britain (such as the Swing and Lud­dite insur­rec­tions), as well as con­tem­po­rary anar­chist guer­ril­la prax­is, we can see the advan­tage of low-tech, cheap, and eas­i­ly repro­ducible tac­tics to wreck machin­ery that enclos­es and impov­er­ish­es us, on an even more inti­mate lev­el present­ly than ever before. These ubiq­ui­tous (and high­ly expen­sive) struc­tures are spread around every town or city and fur­ther indus­tri­al­is­ing the coun­try­side, where they are some­times paint­ed green in the attempt to cam­ou­flage them: and dis­gust­ing­ly even have bird and bat nest­ing box­es mount­ed on some. Their guardians can­not always be watch­ing them all so it is up to our inge­nu­ity to remain a step ahead and stretch their forces thin. This and every net­work has its’ weak points, in these cracks in the archi­tec­ture of con­trol that afford us lever­age: a destruc­tive capac­i­ty we are appro­pri­at­ing. As the promis­es of hyper-tech­ni­fied mod­ern cul­ture con­tin­ue to show their shal­low­ness, rebels will car­ry on act­ing against the nox­ious instal­la­tions and the way of life they feed.

“.…Resis­tance against the Tech­no­log­i­cal-Indus­tri­al Machine lives only through the path of lib­er­a­tion from every pow­er and order, runs towards an event hori­zon where noth­ing has been writ­ten yet.” ‑let­ter from Gian­lu­ca Iaco­v­ac­ci, from C.R. San Michele prison

Our attack is not sep­a­rate from over­all anar­chist sub­ver­sion by all means, which nat­u­ral­ly includes sol­i­dar­i­ty with our pris­on­ers in ene­my hands. A wild greet­ing from Bris­tol to Adri­ano Antonac­ci, no less than to his friend and com­rade Gian­lu­ca (FAI/IRF Sub­ver­sive Anti-Civil­i­sa­tion indi­vid­u­al­i­ty) whose brave lone acts in Rome he is also accused of. Hel­lo to the new anar­chist and anti-colo­nial groups in Hong Kong and Aus­tralia, and sol­i­dar­i­ty to the Paris ten accused of sab­o­tag­ing prison prof­i­teers.

Our attack came at a time when the net­works are already set to be over­loaded by the World Cup hys­te­ria, to show our com­plic­i­ty with the insur­gent fight­ers in Brazil as they answer mas­sive dis­pos­ses­sion and mil­i­tarised slum clear­ances for the opu­lence of the games with street bat­tles and arson. Because it should be remem­bered that the enthralling spec­ta­cle, that is staged to make the rich yet more mon­ey and to dis­tract us from our dai­ly humil­i­a­tions, is based on the State and Cap­i­tal’s vio­lence against resisters, the indige­nous, and the poor­est in Brazil­ian soci­ety.

Let’s not for­get Marie Mason and Eric McDavid: both are still behind bars after State repres­sion and entrap­ment which fol­lowed an ear­ly string of Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front strikes in the USA. Years lat­er the earth lib­er­a­tion strug­gle is not defeat­ed either in spir­it or in prac­tice. The fight goes on with fur farms raid­ed and emp­tied across North Amer­i­ca, and our incen­di­ary-mind­ed sis­ters or broth­ers prowl­ing the besieged Turk­ish forests, the streets of the Cos­ta Rican metrop­o­lis, or the tech­no-indus­tri­al devel­op­ments in Switzer­land (on the last note: a quick reminder that the con­tin­u­ing legal threats against the released anar­chists Sil­via, Costas and Bil­ly, and also the lat­est vin­dic­tive treat­ment of Mar­co Camenisch around his prison trans­fer, have not gone unno­ticed by the inter­na­tion­al fire-starters).

Down with the soci­ety based on dom­i­nat­ing earth and all its’ crea­tures. Live Wires, FAI/ELF
(14th con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­na­tion­al Phoenix Project, one more part of a war that will nev­er be con­tained by a legal code)

* http://en.contrainfo.espiv.net/2013/01/08/berlin-incendiary-attack-on-deutsche-telekom-vehicle-in-friedrichshain/
* http://nantes.indymedia.org/articles/28902
* http://www.directaction.info/news_mar12b_06.htm

Caltrans Case Against Tree Sitter Dismissed

Falcon-300x274 10th June Long-stand­ing tres­pass charges against Mark Her­bert, aka “Fal­con,” who perched in an old oak tree in April, 2013, above the hill west of High­way 101 that Cal­trans is now

Falcon-300x274 10th June Long-stand­ing tres­pass charges against Mark Her­bert, aka “Fal­con,” who perched in an old oak tree in April, 2013, above the hill west of High­way 101 that Cal­trans is now exca­vat­ing for soil to con­struct the much-protest­ed Willits Bypass, where he observed and report­ed on devel­op­ments, were dis­missed entire­ly on May 29th by Judge Ann Moor­man in Uki­ah Supe­ri­or Court. Fal­con was charged with tres­pass 602K, “enter­ing any lands, whether unen­closed or enclosed by fence, 1) for the pur­pose of injur­ing any prop­er­ty or prop­er­ty rights or with the inten­tion of inter­fer­ing with a law­ful busi­ness…”

The Dis­trict Attor­ney told the court that no one had sub­poe­naed the CHP offi­cer from the Spe­cial Weapons and Tac­tics unit who super­vised the arrest of Her­bert, the wit­ness who was sup­posed to tes­ti­fy. Unlike oth­er tree sit­ters, includ­ing War­bler, the young woman whose orig­i­nal tree sit sparked the Bypass protests, Her­bert was not extract­ed by force, but agreed to come down when request­ed to do so.

Herbert’s attor­ney, Ed Den­son, said “Judge Moor­man indi­cat­ed the case was almost a year old and she dis­missed it. The CHP inves­ti­ga­tion was very per­func­to­ry and it should have been clear to the inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer that Her­bert had com­mit­ted no crime. The evi­dence shows that no inten­tion on Herbert’s part to inter­fere with any law­ful busi­ness or occu­pa­tion. “

Den­son elab­o­rat­ed: “Herbert’s case dif­fered from that of all the oth­er tree sit­ters, but the CHP failed to note that. Their report said his tree was north of 101, but the videos clear­ly show it was on a hill well south of 101 out of the con­struc­tion area. No one from Cal­trans or the CHP had even come to his site to ask him to come down until the day he was arrest­ed by a team of 24 offi­cers. He then vol­un­tar­i­ly descend­ed from the tree. It was clear that his pur­pose in doing the tree sit was to be a wit­ness to the events occur­ring across the high­way dur­ing the CHP block­ade of the media pre­vent­ing report­ing on the extrac­tion of the sit­ters. Her­bert was a spokesper­son for the effort to save the val­ley while the oth­ers were pre­vent­ed from con­tact with the pub­lic. Had the CHP thought things through, the tax­pay­ers could have saved thou­sands of dol­lars.”

The D.A. had almost a year to pre­pare and still was not ready to pros­e­cute the case. A ral­ly to sup­port Her­bert and fel­low activist Will Par­rish was held on the cour­t­house steps at noon. Par­rish, who writes for the Ander­son Val­ley Adver­tis­er, stopped work on the Cal­trans Bypass for more than eleven days last June and July by occu­py­ing a wick drain tow­er on the north end of the project, lead­ing final­ly to his arrest and the arrests of sev­er­al oth­er activists try­ing to sup­ply him with food and water denied him by CHP offi­cers on site.

Parrish’s hear­ing on resti­tu­tion demand­ed by Cal­trans in the amount of $150,000 has been post­poned to July 17. Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Sequiera said the case has become con­fus­ing and he is insist­ing now that Cal­trans sup­ply their own lawyer to appear in court on the case, which will also be over a year old by the time of the hear­ing.

Rathlin Blitzkrieg About to Hit East Yorkshire

West Newton, Well Site29th May 2014 Rath­lin Ener­gy caught activists nap­ping today when lor­ries arrived at Craw­ber­ry Hill site in East York­shire.

West Newton, Well Site29th May 2014 Rath­lin Ener­gy caught activists nap­ping today when lor­ries arrived at Craw­ber­ry Hill site in East York­shire. The police had allowed Rath­lin to ignore (no right turn) traf­fic signs to gain access with­out the knowl­edge of the activists wait­ing fur­ther down the road.
Activists aired their con­cerns about radio active haz­ard signs attached to lor­ries arriv­ing to remove waste water at the West New­ton site near Ald­bor­ough. The sur­face water had over­flowed the man made ditch­es made specif­i­cal­ly for the pur­pose due to heavy overnight rain. It seems this presents no present threat but fears are that when drilling begins again and the radioac­tive ele­ments are brought to the sur­face any fur­ther over­flow would con­t­a­m­i­nate the sur­round­ing area. Res­i­dents of the USA and Cana­da have pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed ‘dead zones’ of once thriv­ing eco­log­i­cal areas. con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by frack­ing and radioac­tive chem­i­cals, after over­flow­ing into ponds and lakes.
Activists were also wor­ried about ‘drill tips’ and acces­sories used in the drilling process­es. These are accord­ing to the activists, tipped with deplet­ed Ura­ni­um, to cut through the tough­est rock. Although it can­not be con­firmed that these prac­tis­es are tak­ing place in the East Rid­ing area, the tech­nique and equip­ment, have been avail­able for quite some time.
The Envi­ron­ment Agency has already giv­en per­mits to Rath­lin to extract waste, includ­ing radioac­tive waste. Uncon­firmed reports sug­gest Der­mot Nes­bit (Rath­lin Ener­gy direc­tor) had used his influ­ence as an Ex North­ern Ire­land, Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter to secure the per­mits, from the Envi­ron­ment Agency, the same depart­ment (with­in North­ern Ire­land) of which he was once chief.
Hull and East York­shire anti frack.

More Arrests of Anti Fracking Activists in East Yorkshire

24th May Fol­low­ing on from the arrests of two local res­i­dents last week, a fur­ther arrest has been made of an activist play­ing music in Bev­er­ley (near Hull.) A flotil­la of Police, from the Hum­ber­side divi­sion, armed with taz­ers and dogs, swooped into Bev­er­ley, town cen­tre, as the

24th May Fol­low­ing on from the arrests of two local res­i­dents last week, a fur­ther arrest has been made of an activist play­ing music in Bev­er­ley (near Hull.) A flotil­la of Police, from the Hum­ber­side divi­sion, armed with taz­ers and dogs, swooped into Bev­er­ley, town cen­tre, as the busker and anti frack­ing activist known as Daznez was play­ing and singing music in Bev­er­ley town cen­tre. Local peo­ple who were watch­ing and lis­ten­ing to the musi­cian remarked at the heavy hand­ed­ness of the arrest as at least six police per­son­nel and their dogs took the musi­cian into cus­tody. The musi­cian has been tak­en to Clough Road, Police Sta­tion in Hull but has not yet been charged with an offence.
Last week two res­i­dents of the Bev­er­ley area, were arrest­ed whilst med­i­tat­ing, at an ear­marked Frack site, at the Rath­lin Ener­gy, Craw­ber­ry Hill, drilling site. Hus­band and Wife, John and Valerie Majer, were charged with caus­ing intim­i­da­tion and annoy­ance con­trary to sec­tion 241 of the Trade Union and Labour Rela­tions Act.
Rath­lin Ener­gy has said it has no plans to frack in the area, although two per­mits have been grant­ed to them for work to be car­ried out.
There have pre­vi­ous­ly been charges of cor­rup­tion, abuse of pow­er and privledge, placed upon Rath­lin Ener­gy by activists. This fol­lows after, ex North­ern Ire­land Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Der­mot Nes­bitt, who is now a direc­tor of Rath­lin Ener­gy suc­ceed­ed in obtain­ing the per­mits from the very same gov­ern­ment agency, who were once account­able to him, to drill and extract waste, includ­ing the extrac­tion of radioac­tive waste, at the Craw­ber­ry Hill site and anoth­er, near­by site at West New­ton near Ald­bor­ough. (Updates to fol­low.)
East York­shire Anti Frack

Enbridge Pipeline Road Blocked by Protesters in Burlington

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20th May 2014. A group of pro­test­ers has block­ad­ed the road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline ear­ly this morn­ing in Burling­ton, Ont.

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20th May 2014. A group of pro­test­ers has block­ad­ed the road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline ear­ly this morn­ing in Burling­ton, Ont.

The pro­test­ers say they plan to con­tin­ue the block­ade for at least 12 hours.

A news release says the 12-hour stay rep­re­sents 12,000 “anom­alies Enbridge has report­ed to exist on the line.”

 

“Enbridge calls these devel­op­ments integri­ty digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the pro­test­ers, “but to any­one watch­ing the Line 9 issue, it’s clear Enbridge has no integri­ty. This work on the line is just a Band-Aid, a flim­sy patch over the most out­ra­geous flaws in the Line 9 plan.

“Line 9 has a lot of sim­i­lar­i­ties to Line 6B that erupt­ed in the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er. The risk is just not worth it,” she said.

From July to Decem­ber of last year, there were 308 main­te­nance digs along Line 9 — and the vast major­i­ty were for cracks in the line. In July alone, Enbridge filed 105 main­te­nance notices for digs on the line, accord­ing to doc­u­ments filed with the Nation­al Ener­gy Board.

The group says its mem­bers include res­i­dents of Burling­ton who don’t want the pipeline run­ning through their city.

“Line 9 has near­ly 13,000 struc­tur­al weak­ness­es along its length” said Bri­an Suther­land, a Burling­ton res­i­dent. “And yet Enbridge is only doing a few hun­dred integri­ty digs.”

There were about 20 pro­test­ers at the site ear­ly Tues­day. As of 8:15 a.m., no police had arrived.

Last June, a group of pro­test­ers shut down con­struc­tion at an Enbridge pump sta­tion in rur­al Hamil­ton.

About 80 peo­ple inter­rupt­ed con­struc­tion at the North West­over site.

In March, the NEB approved a request from Enbridge to reverse the flow and increase the capac­i­ty of the con­tro­ver­sial Line 9 pipeline that has been run­ning between south­ern Ontario and Mon­tre­al for years.

Line 9 orig­i­nal­ly shut­tled oil from Sar­nia, Ont., to Mon­tre­al, but was reversed in the late 1990s in response to mar­ket con­di­tions to pump import­ed crude west­ward. Enbridge now wants to flow oil back east­wards to ser­vice refiner­ies in Ontario and Que­bec.

It plans to move 300,000 bar­rels of crude oil per day through the line, a rise from the cur­rent 240,000 bar­rels, with no increase in pres­sure.

Oppo­nents argue the Line 9 plan puts com­mu­ni­ties at risk, threat­ens water sup­plies and could endan­ger vul­ner­a­ble species in eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive areas.

Breaking: Blockade Launched Against Enbridge Line 9 Pipeline

Photo: CBC20th May 2014. A group of area res­i­dents have block­ad­ed the access road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline, begin­ning at 7am this morn­ing.

Photo: CBC20th May 2014. A group of area res­i­dents have block­ad­ed the access road to an exposed sec­tion of Enbridge’s Line 9 pipeline, begin­ning at 7am this morn­ing. They say they will stay for at least twelve hours, one hour for every thou­sand anom­alies Enbridge has report­ed to exist on the line. These com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers turned away Enbridge employ­ees who were sched­uled to do work on Line 9 in prepa­ra­tion for it to car­ry tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the Alber­ta Tar Sands. This par­tic­u­lar work site is adja­cent to the Bronte creek, a major water­way flow­ing to Lake Ontario, the water source for more than ten mil­lion peo­ple.

“Enbridge calls these devel­op­ments integri­ty digs,” said Danielle Boissineau, one of the block­aders, “but to any­one watch­ing the Line 9 issue, it’s clear Enbridge has no integri­ty. This work on the line is just a band-aid, a flim­sy patch over the most out­ra­geous flaws in the Line 9 plan.” [Danielle notes that a record of just some of Enbridge’s false or mis­lead­ing state­ments is avail­able on the Enbridge Lies face­book page

“Line 9 has near­ly 13,000 struc­tur­al weak­ness­es along its length” said Bri­an Suther­land, a Burling­ton res­i­dent. “And yet Enbridge is only doing a few hun­dred integri­ty digs. Enbridge has been deny­ing the prob­lems with the pipe for years, and they still refuse to do the hydro­sta­t­ic test­ing request­ed by the province. Are we real­ly sup­posed to trust Enbridge when they tell us that this time they’ll do it right?”

 

Many of the block­aders point to the dis­as­trous spill from Enbridge’s line 6b into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan in 2010, where mil­lions of litres of oil spilled and have so far proven impos­si­ble to clean up. But many of them empha­size that their oppo­si­tion to Line 9 goes beyond safe­ty con­cerns.

“This is not about pipelines ver­sus rail; it’s about the Tar Sands,” said Danielle Boissineau. “It’s the dirt­i­est oil in the world: it’s not worth the destruc­tion it takes to pro­duce, it’s not worth the risk to our water­sheds to trans­port, and we def­i­nite­ly can’t afford the car­bon in our atmos­phere when it’s burned. At every step of the process, the Tar Sands out­sources the risks onto our com­mu­ni­ties and poi­sons water­ways like the Athabas­ca Riv­er and the Bronte creek while com­pa­nies like Enbridge get rich.”

Construction Vehicles Targeted

one of the M6 link sites15
one of the M6 link sites15th May 2014. About a lit­tle over week ago we snuck into a con­do devel­op­ment in Seat­tle and poured a gal­lon of bleach into the gas tank of an exca­va­tor. This was a small but eas­i­ly repro­ducible attack against the expan­sion of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion in Seat­tle.

Con­struc­tion vehi­cles are being tar­get­ed at M6 link road sites near Lan­cast­er, Eng­land caus­ing thou­sands of pounds of dam­age.

In what appears to be an orches­trat­ed cam­paign, hydraulic hoses were cut on exca­va­tors and dumper trucks.

Oth­er inci­dents include:

*Sand being put into tanks to con­t­a­m­i­nate the fuel

*Tyres being let down

*Dam­age to a tem­po­rary jet­ty in the Riv­er Lune

Thou­sands of pounds worth of dam­age was caused at a site at Cross­gills Farm, Lan­cast­er.

Police said: “Eight vehi­cles, includ­ing exca­va­tors and dumper trucks, were dam­aged to the tune of thou­sands of pounds at the week­end.

“Tyres have also been let down and sand put into fuel tanks.
“

“We are keep­ing an open mind as to who is respon­si­ble, how­ev­er the van­dals have made a con­cert­ed effort to cause crim­i­nal dam­age by using bolt crop­pers to cut the rub­ber hoses.”

 

Colombian Poor Occupy Lands Slated for Military Base

wYdfu2J12th May 2014 FORTUL, COLOMBIA–Holding down an occu­pa­tion for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colom­bia, even less so.

wYdfu2J12th May 2014 FORTUL, COLOMBIA–Holding down an occu­pa­tion for five months isn’t easy. Doing so in Colom­bia, even less so. But mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez in the munic­i­pal­i­ty of For­tul, near the bor­der with Venezuela, have raised the stakes even high­er: they’re occu­py­ing land owned by the Min­istry of Defense. The 100 hectare ter­rain now spot­ted with wood and plas­tic homes was slat­ed to become a large mil­i­tary base.

Locals say the land orig­i­nal­ly was pur­chased by Occi­den­tal Petro­le­um in order to build a large new base to coor­di­nate pro­tec­tion of a new oil pipeline which pass­es less than a few hun­dred meters from the lot.

“This land belongs to the Min­istry of Defense, it was pur­chased and spon­sored by Oxy, so we as good peo­ple from Arau­ca said that the most viable thing is to take over this plan, and see if the Min­is­ter of Defense will give it to us over time, many peo­ple need­ed this land,” said Jhon Car­los Ariza Aguilar, the Vice-Pres­i­dent of the com­mu­ni­ty of over 2,000 fam­i­lies. They began the occu­pa­tion on Novem­ber 26, 2013.

I met with Jhon and oth­er mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty on a hot Feb­ru­ary after­noon, weeks after the com­mu­ni­ty was sup­posed to have been removed by force. On Jan­u­ary 20, the army entered the shack set­tle­ment with a tank, and an evic­tion was sched­uled for Feb­ru­ary 4, but that date came and went with com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers in an uneasy calm about what would take place next.

For­tul is a munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Colom­bian foothills, between the moun­tains and the wide open plains, and not far from the Arau­ca Riv­er, which marks the bor­der with Venezuela. This oil rich region is also deeply con­flict­ual, on the road over, sol­diers hung around a hand­ful of tanks, and army pres­ence is ubiq­ui­tous. ELN and FARC guer­ril­las also patrol the area and have car­ried out attacks on Caño Limon-Covenas pipeline which serves Occidental’s near­by Caño Limon field. Under the heavy after­noon sun, a group of men lounged under a hand­ful of trees, and women relaxed under a shel­ter beside them. Iden­ti­cal palm shacks pro­tect­ed by green cloth roofs dot­ted the area.

As we spoke, a taxi cab arrived, with a mat­tress strapped to the top and fur­ni­ture in the trunk, indi­cat­ing anoth­er fam­i­ly per­ma­nent­ly mov­ing into the area. Ariza Aguilar indi­cat­ed that about one in four mem­bers of the occu­pa­tion was an inter­nal­ly dis­placed per­son, forced out of their homes because of the ongo­ing con­flict.

“Oxy bought this land and they gave it to the Min­istry of Defense” in 2010, said Jhon­ny Alex­is Cas­tro, the For­tul rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Joel Sier­ra Human Rights Foun­da­tion. Oxy did not respond to a request for com­ment.

The Oleo­duc­to Bicen­te­nario, a meter wide oil pipeline that will even­tu­al­ly trav­el 960km from Casanare depart­ment to the port of Cov­eñas, is three min­utes from the occu­pa­tion by road, on the back end of the com­mu­ni­ty the under­ground pipeline is but a few hun­dred meters away. “That’s why they want­ed a bat­tal­ion here, but there is a school very close, hav­ing a bat­tal­ion here would mean hav­ing a check­point right in front of the school,” said Cas­tro.

Today, chil­dren from the set­tle­ment are already attend­ing the school. “What mat­ters is that the chil­dren go and study, it doesn’t mat­ter if we have elec­tric­i­ty or not, that [they study] is the impor­tant thing,” said Ariza Aguilar. He invit­ed me to swim in a riv­er near­by, which pro­vides those liv­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty with a place to gath­er water, wash cloth­ing, and bathe.

The com­mu­ni­ty of Héc­tor Alirio Martínez is the first per­ma­nent occu­pa­tion of land owned by the Min­istry of Defense in Colom­bia. The com­mu­ni­ty takes its name from a local peas­ant activist who was pulled from a house at dawn and shot to death by sol­diers along with two oth­ers on August 4, 2004. “The prob­lem is that Arau­ca is con­sid­ered a red zone in Colom­bia, and any leader who ori­ents peo­ple, who even just teach­es them how to go to city hall (to man­age their paper­work), that’s enough to say they’re a guer­ril­la and hunt them until they kill them,” said Ariza Aguilar.

Com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers know that tak­ing part in the occu­pa­tion is an extreme­ly risky activ­i­ty, but for many the need for hous­ing and the abil­i­ty to send their chil­dren to school out­weighs the risk.

Protesters in East China Clash with Police Over Waste Incinerator Plan

Photo: Caixin10th May 2014  Pro­test­ers in east­ern Chi­na clashed with police at a ral­ly against plans to build a huge waste incin­er­a­tor that res­i­dents fear will be harm­ful to their health and add to pol­lu­tion.

Photo: Caixin10th May 2014  Pro­test­ers in east­ern Chi­na clashed with police at a ral­ly against plans to build a huge waste incin­er­a­tor that res­i­dents fear will be harm­ful to their health and add to pol­lu­tion.

Chok­ing smog blan­kets many Chi­nese cities and the envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion result­ing from the country’s break­neck eco­nom­ic growth is anger­ing its increas­ing­ly well-edu­cat­ed and afflu­ent pop­u­la­tion.

Two of the pro­test­ers told Reuters that the demon­stra­tions, which have last­ed for more than two weeks, turned vio­lent with hun­dreds of police descend­ing onto the streets of Yuhang, close to the tourist city of Hangzhou.

“There have cer­tain­ly been injuries,” one of the pro­test­ers, Wu Yun­feng, said by tele­phone. “The police have closed down the roads into Yuhang and locked the site down.”

 

Anoth­er pro­test­er, who declined to give her name, said sev­er­al police cars had been over­turned.

A police offi­cer, reached by tele­phone, said the demon­stra­tion had already end­ed. He declined to pro­vide fur­ther details.

Reuters was unable to reach the local gov­ern­ment for com­ment.

On Fri­day, the offi­cial Hangzhou Dai­ly news­pa­per defend­ed the con­struc­tion of the incin­er­a­tor, say­ing the tech­nol­o­gy it would use was safe and up to stan­dard.

Hangzhou, cap­i­tal of pros­per­ous Zhe­jiang province and best known in Chi­na as the site of a famous lake, has seen its lus­tre dimmed in recent years by a recur­rent smog prob­lem.

Pic­tures on China’s Twit­ter-like Wei­bo site showed police fight­ing with pro­test­ers and at least two pro­test­ers with blood stream­ing down their faces.

Anoth­er pic­ture showed sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple sur­round­ing a large group of police.

“We don’t want our chil­dren and grand­chil­dren to get can­cer. Give us back our beau­ti­ful home,” read one let­ter of protest car­ried on Wei­bo.

Reuters was not able to inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fy the pic­tures’ authen­tic­i­ty.

About 90,000 “mass inci­dents” – a euphemism for protests – occur each year in Chi­na, trig­gered by cor­rup­tion, pol­lu­tion, ille­gal land grabs and oth­er griev­ances.

Late in March, hun­dreds of res­i­dents of the south­ern town of Maom­ing staged protests against plans to build a petro­chem­i­cal plant there, for fear it would con­tribute to pol­lu­tion.

Tibetan Jumps to His Death to Protest Chinese Mine

9th May 2014 A young Tibetan stabbed him­self and jumped to his death from the roof of a build­ing in Tibet’s Cham­do pre­fec­ture on Wednes­day after author­i­ties tried to halt his protest against a Chi­nese mine being built in the area,

9th May 2014 A young Tibetan stabbed him­self and jumped to his death from the roof of a build­ing in Tibet’s Cham­do pre­fec­ture on Wednes­day after author­i­ties tried to halt his protest against a Chi­nese mine being built in the area, Tibetan sources in exile said.

Phak­pa Gyalt­sen, 32, died instant­ly after throw­ing him­self from a build­ing in Dzo­gang (in Chi­nese, Zuo­gang) prefecture’s Tong­bar town, a Tibetan liv­ing in India told RFA’s Tibetan Ser­vice on Wednes­day, cit­ing local sources.

After telling local Tibetans that he would “do some­thing” to oppose Chi­nese min­ing in Dzo­gang, Gyalt­sen “went to the town cen­ter, climbed onto a high build­ing, and called out for Tibetan free­dom,” the source said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

“When attempts were made to stop him, he stabbed him­self twice and jumped off the build­ing, dying instant­ly,” he said.

 

Tibet—called Xizang, or West­ern Trea­sure, by China—has become an impor­tant source of min­er­als need­ed for China’s eco­nom­ic growth, and min­ing oper­a­tions in Tibetan regions have led to fre­quent stand­offs with Tibetans who accuse Chi­nese firms of dis­rupt­ing sites of spir­i­tu­al sig­nif­i­cance and pol­lut­ing the envi­ron­ment as they extract local wealth.

Chi­nese min­ing oper­a­tions at a site near Madok Tso called Ache Jema began almost two months ago, an exile source in Europe said, also cit­ing con­tacts in Dzo­gang.

“They claimed that they are work­ing to build a dam, but in real­i­ty they are plan­ning to mine in the area, the source said.

“So the local Tibetans decid­ed to stop the plan, and every day three Tibetans were sent to guard the area, work­ing in rota­tion.”

Detained

Some of those watch­ing the site were lat­er detained by police in Tong­bar but were released after a few days, he said.

“Local author­i­ties also tried to con­vince area res­i­dents not to oppose the min­ing by offer­ing each fam­i­ly 10,000 yuan [U.S. $1,603] in com­pen­sa­tion,” RFA’s India-based source said, adding, “But the Tibetans argued that min­ing would have neg­a­tive impacts [on the area].”

“Phak­pa Gyalt­sen then told the local Tibetans that he would do some­thing him­self so that they would not have to protest and cause prob­lems.”

Gyalt­sen, the elder son of the area’s Choeshoe fam­i­ly, is sur­vived by a wife and three small chil­dren, with anoth­er child on the way, he said.

“Phone con­nec­tions to the area are now blocked, and it is dif­fi­cult to learn any­thing more about what is hap­pen­ing,” he said.

Spo­radic demon­stra­tions chal­leng­ing Beijing’s rule have con­tin­ued in Tibetan-pop­u­lat­ed areas of Chi­na since wide­spread protests swept the region in 2008, with 131 Tibetans to date self-immo­lat­ing to protest Chi­nese rule and call for the return of exiled spir­i­tu­al leader the Dalai Lama.

Report­ed by RFA’s Tibetan Ser­vice. Trans­lat­ed by Kar­ma Dor­jee. Writ­ten in Eng­lish by Richard Finney.