Category: Global

Glob­al

(India) Anti-Nuclear Fishermen

 

On 22nd Sep­tem­ber 3,000 fish­er­men and anti-nuclear activists aboard 500 boats attempt­ed to block­ade a port to pre­vent the unload­ing of nuclear fuel into the recent­ly con­struct­ed Kudanku­lam nuclear pow­er plant locat­ed on the Tamil Nadu coast in south­ern India.

 

On 22nd Sep­tem­ber 3,000 fish­er­men and anti-nuclear activists aboard 500 boats attempt­ed to block­ade a port to pre­vent the unload­ing of nuclear fuel into the recent­ly con­struct­ed Kudanku­lam nuclear pow­er plant locat­ed on the Tamil Nadu coast in south­ern India.

This mas­sive pow­er plant is a joint ven­ture between India and Rus­sia and hous­es two nuclear pres­sur­ized water reac­tors (PWR) reac­tors, with future plans to con­struct four addi­tion­al reac­tors at the site.

This has result­ed in a peri­od of sus­tained direct action by local res­i­dents, strong­ly opposed to the plan­t’s con­struc­tion. Over a mil­lion peo­ple live with­in 30 km of the pro­posed plant. Over the last year demon­stra­tors have endured severe repres­sion as over 10,000 police and para­mil­i­tary forces have been deployed in the area. Vil­lagers have been beat­en, hun­dreds have been arrest­ed and some activists face charges of sedi­tion and even of wag­ing war against the gov­ern­ment. In April the police cut off the water, food and pow­er-sup­ply to protest­ing vil­lagers and imposed a cur­few in the vil­lages at the heart of the resis­tance.

At this point the Peo­ples Move­ment Against Nuclear Ene­gy (PMANE) called off their protests hop­ing for some respite for the peo­ple. They filed a pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion against the gov­ern­ments civ­il nuclear pro­gram com­plain­ing that the plant itself was unsafe, that there has not been a pub­lic hear­ing and thus it is an author­i­tar­i­an project imposed upon the peo­ple. Unfor­tu­nate­ly their pleas were ignored and when the Indi­an gov­ern­ment announced that the load­ing of fuel into the plant would begin on or around 11th Sep­tem­ber the peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly sprung into action.

CHAIN REACTION

On 10th Sep­tem­ber thou­sands of anti-nuclear pro­test­ers marched towards the pow­er plant, many were injured by the police who lobbed tear-gas shells into the crowd, while at Man­ap­padu police fired into the crowd and a fish­er­man was shot and killed. On the 13th hun­dreds of pro­test­ers formed a human chain in the sea to protest at the load­ing of the fuel, stay­ing in for two hour inter­vals in shifts. They demand­ed the release of all arrestees, com­pen­sa­tion for those injured by the police and an end to the police repres­sion.

One major fact is that there are more than one mil­lion peo­ple liv­ing with­in a 30km radius of the plant, which in the event of a dis­as­ter would make the evac­u­a­tion of the pop­u­la­tion impos­si­ble. This far exceeds the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Atom­ic Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Board and so the plant should nev­er have been built there. Not that this will wor­ry the Russ­ian firm that sup­plied and built the reac­tor as the Indi­an gov­ern­ment agreed that they will have zero lia­bil­i­ty in the event of an acci­dent. (Sim­i­lar con­di­tions apply to pow­er com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for major civic emer­gen­cies in the UK)

Beyond their legit­i­mate safe­ty con­cerns, vil­lagers have oth­er rea­sons to be angry. The gov­ern­ment has invest­ed mil­lions on a new hos­pi­tal and oth­er facil­i­ties exclu­sive­ly for plant empoy­ees, mean­while the rest of the locals live in squalor lack­ing even basic facil­i­ties such as run­ning water.

The Indi­an gov­ern­ment has attempt­ed to dis­cred­it the move­ment com­plain­ing that for­eign organ­i­sa­tions are agi­tat­ing the local peo­ple and that this should not be allowed. Despite all of this fur­ther demon­stra­tions are planned for the com­ing weeks and they are not giv­ing up.

(Sweden) Swedish Forest Occupation Declares Temporary Victory

Envi­ron­men­tal activists have been cel­e­brat­ing a vic­to­ry on Got­land Island, off the coast of south­east Swe­den, as tree felling machin­ery remained idle on Sat­ur­day evening.

Envi­ron­men­tal activists have been cel­e­brat­ing a vic­to­ry on Got­land Island, off the coast of south­east Swe­den, as tree felling machin­ery remained idle on Sat­ur­day evening.

“It was a smart and brave deci­sion,” field biol­o­gist Alva Snis Sigtryg­gs­son told Swedish news agency TT. “It feels like a par­tial vic­to­ry.”

Ear­li­er in the day police had to use cut­ting equip­ment to remove Green­peace pro­tes­tors who had chained them­selves to the machin­ery. The tree clear­ance was planned to make way for a con­tro­ver­sial lime­stone quar­ry in the Ojnare for­est adja­cent to an EU des­ig­nat­ed Natu­ra 2000 pro­tect­ed area.

The forestry own­ers’ asso­ci­a­tion, Mel­lan­skog, issued a state­ment indi­cat­ing that the for­est clear­ance will be stopped until after a High Court Rul­ing on the issue.

“We are well aware that Nord­kalk has a legal right to start work here but we want to avoid long term splits and bit­ter­ness in this com­mu­ni­ty where we have many mem­bers,” the asso­ci­a­tion wrote.

The min­ing company’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion chief, Eva Feldt, called the deci­sion “deplorable” and blamed the coun­try gov­er­nor for putting pres­sure on the forestry group.

Envi­ron­men­tal groups, includ­ing the Swedish Soci­ety for Nature Con­ser­va­tion and Green­peace have pledged to block all attempts to open a quar­ry in the area which they say should be pro­tect­ed in line with Euro­pean Union rules on bio­di­ver­si­ty.

The Swedish Ojnare For­est has been described as unlike any oth­er on the plan­et – with unique ancient pine forests, short in stature due to the cold cli­mate, yet with indi­vid­ual trees up to 1000 years old, in ecosys­tems con­tain­ing 265 endan­gered species. These old forests shroud the island’s unique and com­plex ground­wa­ter sys­tem, and their destruc­tion will place the island’s biggest fresh­wa­ter source at risk. The area’s unique nat­ur­al ecosys­tem habi­tats are of high nation­al inter­est for nature con­ser­va­tion, as the Ojnare For­est is locat­ed between and adja­cent to two Euro­pean Natu­ra 2000 con­ser­va­tion areas, and is pro­posed to become a Nation­al Park. The Ojnare For­est and its nat­ur­al ecosys­tems are under attack by a large open pit lime­stone mine that would cov­er 420 acres with a 26 meter deep tox­ic hole.

Over the objec­tions of the Swedish Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency, and despite appeals to the Supreme Court, prepara­to­ry work for the mine is already under­way. There is a major for­est protest occu­pa­tion ongo­ing at Got­land Island against this log­ging and min­ing. Pro­test­ers have been occu­py­ing Ojnaresko­gen since July, and in recent days some 70 police offi­cers have come to remove them, and the num­ber of pro­tes­tors has risen to over 100 – rang­ing from self-described rebels against eco­cide, to fam­i­lies with small chil­dren. Despite hav­ing already start­ed clear­ing land for in excess of what had been approved, Mel­lan­skog decid­ed on Sat­ur­day to sus­pend the ongo­ing log­ging on Got­land pend­ing a deci­sion from the Supreme Court. While a pos­i­tive devel­op­ment, protest con­tin­ues until the log­ging and entire project are can­celled.

Although the acute­ly threat­ened area is “only” 170 hectares in size, the case reveals Sweden’s weak for­est pro­tec­tion leg­is­la­tion and pos­si­ble resource allo­ca­tion cor­rup­tion. Only a few per­cent of Sweden’s high con­ser­va­tion val­ue forests remain, and only 3.3 per­cent of the pro­duc­tive for­est area is pro­tect­ed. The ver­dict in this case will be used by oth­er cor­po­ra­tions to clearcut and exploit oth­er old nat­ur­al ecosys­tems in the coun­try. Eco­log­i­cal Inter­net has a long his­to­ry of suc­cess­ful­ly sup­port­ing local Scan­di­na­vian old-growth for­est pro­tec­tion move­ments. In 2009, our net­work sent 1,117,294 protest emails in a suc­cess­ful cam­paign stop­ping indus­tri­al devel­op­ment in 80% of Finland’s Cen­tral Lap­land wilder­ness, cov­er­ing tens of thou­sands of hectares. Few thought such pro­tec­tions were pos­si­ble, yet with strong local orga­niz­ing backed up by EI’s unprece­dent­ed glob­al network’s inter­na­tion­al cam­paign, it was one of many great vic­to­ries for Earth’s old forests.

(USA) Hudson Valley Earth First! Continue to Resist Fracking in New York

Res­i­dents in west­ern Orange Coun­ty began fight­ing the project over a year ago, and have tak­en every legal step pos­si­ble. FERC (the Fed­er­al Ener­gy Reg­u­la­to­ry Com­mis­sion) approved the project with a 3 to 2 vote, unprece­dent­ed in their his­to­ry as a rub­ber stamp­ing revolv­ing door for indus­try. The split deci­sion was the result of an alter­na­tive site pro­posed by res­i­dents, which would involve the expan­sion of an already exist­ing com­pres­sion facil­i­ty. With their deci­sion, FERC con­firmed what we already knew, that when the inter­ests of indus­try come up against com­mu­ni­ty, the gov­ern­ment is no ally. The gas indus­try has plans to turn Min­isink and West­ern Orange Coun­ty into a hub for oper­a­tions, with anoth­er com­pres­sion sta­tion and an $800 mil­lion dol­lar nat­ur­al gas pow­er plant already in the ear­ly stages of reg­u­la­to­ry approval.

 

The com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, has no plans to bow to indus­try or FERC. They have respond­ed with a promise for dai­ly action. On day 1, the site was suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed for over half the day, and only one res­i­dent was arrest­ed (he was released with­in 2 hours with a tick­et for dis­or­der­ly con­duct). On day 2, there were numer­ous work stop­pages as a result of soft block­ades (one brave indi­vid­ual was arrest­ed), vehic­u­lar inter­ven­tion, and the actions of one res­i­dent who jumped on top of a piece of heavy machin­ery (and amaz­ing­ly man­aged to avoid arrest). On day 3, around 75 peo­ple, includ­ing many chil­dren and local fam­i­lies marched from the site through town and back again to con­tin­ue to spread aware­ness about the tox­ic com­pres­sor sta­tion and strength­en resolve. On Day 4, a flash mob stopped traf­fic to the site for about an hour, with CBS news com­ing to cov­er the sto­ry. As we approach the 5th day, it remains to be seen how this cam­paign will esca­late in the near future.

One thing is cer­tain; no one in this area saw resis­tance of this mag­ni­tude com­ing. Hope­ful­ly this sig­nals a sea change in the way things have been in the Hud­son Val­ley. This bio-region has suf­fered enough sub­ur­ban­iza­tion, gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, pol­lu­tion, and down­right dirty deal­ing. From Indi­an point (the nuclear plant with no evac­u­a­tion plan) to PCBs, nat­ur­al gas infra­struc­ture to green-washed incin­er­a­tor projects, we are here to let it be known that the hey­day of indus­try is over. No com­pres­sor sta­tion! No com­pro­mise! Long live the Indi­ana Bat!

The next day of action is this Sat­ur­day (10/6/12) with anoth­er march, fol­lowed by a direct action train­ing pre­sent­ed by Hud­son Val­ley Earth First! 

excavator torched, trees spiked in the Ukraine

report­ed by activists in Ukraine:

“Ukraine, Kiev.
Exca­va­tor torched.

report­ed by activists in Ukraine:

“Ukraine, Kiev.
Exca­va­tor torched.

In the night of 02/10/2012 anony­mous activists attacked a clearcut site on the ‘Bald Moun­tain’. A LIEBHERR exca­va­tor fell vic­tim to their arson. Clearcut coor­di­nates: http://wikimapia.org/#lat=50.3891043&lon=30.5495088&z=16&l=0&m=b
We take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to report about a sim­i­lar action at the same loca­tion on the 20/03/2012 (http://nature-first.info/2012/03/20/forest-svyatoshyno/).”

—

report­ed on http://vk.com/anarcho.ecoline:

“Tree spik­ing in Ternopol munic­i­pal park. Ukraine.

This act of eco­tage is in response to devel­op­ment plans of a local con­struc­tion com­pa­ny: it intends to destroy a pub­lic park to make room for pri­vate liv­ing blocks.

We spiked trees with huge nails, so the devel­op­er will have to bring in heavy equip­ment in order to destroy those trees. But con­struc­tion vehi­cles can be tak­en care of as well!”

(USA) Tar Sands update: Blockader Locks to Underground Capsule to Protect a Family Farm

WINNSBORO, TEXAS – Mon­day, Octo­ber 1, 2012 8:00AM – A Tar Sands Block­ade pro­test­er has stopped the destruc­tion of a small fam­i­ly farm in East Texas by lock­ing him­self in front of oncom­ing Key­stone XL clear­ing equip­ment.

WINNSBORO, TEXAS – Mon­day, Octo­ber 1, 2012 8:00AM – A Tar Sands Block­ade pro­test­er has stopped the destruc­tion of a small fam­i­ly farm in East Texas by lock­ing him­self in front of oncom­ing Key­stone XL clear­ing equip­ment. Hous­ton res­i­dent, Ale­jan­dro de la Torre, 28, is tak­ing action to stop the Key­stone XL pipeline from destroy­ing the home of yet anoth­er Texas fam­i­ly threat­ened by TransCanada’s poi­so­nous tar sands slur­ry.

In a pow­er­ful dis­play of con­vic­tion, De la Torre locked his arm into a con­crete cap­sule buried direct­ly in the pro­posed path of the tox­ic pipeline. This coura­geous act is pre­vent­ing TransCanada’s unwel­comed onslaught of machines from dev­as­tat­ing prop­er­ty cap­tured through emi­nent domain abuse. Fol­low live updates on face­book and twit­ter.

“I was raised in New Orleans, so I’ve seen how local com­mu­ni­ties suf­fer at the hands of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions,” attests de la Torre. “I’m will­ing to risk arrest today to stop this tar sands pipeline because I have the priv­i­lege to help pro­tect the safe­ty of those most affect­ed. Key­stone XL endan­gers the health and safe­ty of every­one from the landown­ers and their fam­i­lies now threat­ened by can­cer caus­ing leaks, to the refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in Hous­ton that have to breathe the dirty air, as well as peo­ple of col­or around the world who are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly affect­ed by cli­mate change.”

In a sep­a­rate protest just miles away on the oth­er side of Winns­boro, Tar Sands Blockade’s aer­i­al tree protest enters into its sec­ond week. Sit­ters in plat­forms near­ly 100 feet in the air are not deterred by reck­less behav­ior on the part of TransCanada’s work crews. Despite repeat­ed warn­ing of the dan­gers on the part of the pro­test­ers, the com­pa­ny is encour­ag­ing the use of dan­ger­ous tree clear­ing equip­ment with­in feet of pro­test­ers’ trees, endan­ger­ing their lives.

Today’s block­ade comes less than a week after Tran­sCana­da super­vi­sors encour­aged law enforce­ment to bru­tal­ize two peace­ful pro­test­ers who were act­ing in defense of the largest tree block­ade in Texas his­to­ry. One of the abused pro­test­ers, Ben­jamin Franklin, explained why peace­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence must con­tin­ue despite the vio­lence orches­trat­ed by Tran­sCana­da, “I encour­age every­one to per­se­vere in the face of this type of sheer bru­tal­i­ty. To fol­low one’s moral com­pass in spite of extreme chal­lenges is the way we move for­ward towards a more humane, tar sands-free plan­et.”

Below is a pre­vi­ous­ly record­ed video of the landown­er, Susan Scott whose land stands to be clear-cut today, con­fronting TransCanada’s sur­vey­ors.

“Tran­sCana­da doesn’t have any local com­mu­ni­ty ties, it lies about the safe­ty of its pipeline because it cares more about mon­ey than about peo­ple,” claims Ron Seifert, spokesper­son for Tar Sands Block­ade.  “If this multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion had any com­pas­sion for East Texan’s homes, it would respect our con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed prop­er­ty rights instead of con­demn­ing the land and using it for its own pri­vate gain.”

UPDATE: 9:30AM – Police Arrive and Begin to Calm­ly Access the Sit­u­a­tion

UPDATE: 10:30AM – Tran­sCana­da Work­ers Bring­ing Shov­els and Threat­en­ing to Dig Ale­jan­dro Out

UPDATE: 11:00AM – Police Baf­fled About How to Respond – Tran­sCana­da Heli­copter Cir­cling Over­head

UPDATE: 11:30AM – Fire and Res­cue Crews Arrive With More Plain Clothes Police

UPDATE: 1:00PM – Police Steal Cam­era From Observers Stand­ing Near­by on Pri­vate Prop­er­ty

After the the tor­ture tac­tics used on our block­aders last week at the encour­age­ment of Tran­sCana­da super­vi­sors we’ve made ever effort to ensure we have observers on the scene care­ful­ly watch­ing with a video cam­era. Observers were stand­ing near­by on pri­vate prop­er­ty when police con­fis­cat­ed their cam­era! For­tu­nate­ly, TV crews are arriv­ing on the scene and hope­ful­ly they wouldn’t be sub­ject­ed to this same obstruc­tion of civ­il lib­er­ties.

UPDATE: 1:15PM – Police Attach Hand-Cuffs to Alejandro’s Ankles – Unde­terred He Holds Strong

UPDATE: 1:25PM – Police Put a Screen Around Ale­jan­dro So Observers Can’t Watch and Pro­tect Him

Since the police stole our main cam­era right now we only have pho­to of the screen tak­en far away with a cell phone cam­era. A back­up pho­tog­ra­ph­er arrived on the scene lat­er and took high def­i­n­i­tion pho­tos that we’ll upload on our flickr stream tonight.

UPDATE: 3:00PM – Police Chis­el­ing Away at the Under­ground Cap­sule That Ale­jan­dro is Locked Into

UPDATE: 3:45PM – Ale­jan­dro Has Been Arrest­ed For Help­ing Save a Fam­i­ly Farm From Key­stone XL

After delay­ing con­struc­tion for almost an entire day Ale­jan­dro has been extract­ed from the under­ground cap­sule and arrest­ed. Through his brave actions he was able to bring to light the dis­re­spect that local landown­ers have suf­fered at the hands of TransCanada’s emi­nent domain abuse and tram­pling of landown­er rights.

Sup­port Alejandro’s legal fees with a gen­er­ous dona­tion.

UPDATE: 4:00PM – Bull­doz­er Has Moved in to Lev­el More of the Fam­i­ly Farm 

After being delayed almost an entire work-day by Alejandro’s actions Key­stone XL con­struc­tion crews quick­ly moved in with machin­ery to get in at least one hour of work bull­doz­ing a local landown­ers beloved fam­i­ly farm before the end of the work day.

To per­ma­nent­ly stop this tox­ic pipeline we need more peo­ple to join us. Sign up to attend our Direct Action Train­ing Oct. 12–14th.

UPDATE: 6:00PM – Read Alejandro’s Sto­ry of How His Pas­sion For Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Moti­vates Him

“I’m will­ing to risk arrest because I have a cer­tain amount of per­son­al priv­i­lege that allows me to par­tic­i­pate. I don’t live near a Gulf refin­ery, or on land that’s at risk from a dev­as­tat­ing tar sands spill, so I’m able to play a small part in an action that will real­ly help people’s lives.  I’m here to stand up for peo­ple on the front lines because they’re being tram­pled to make way for cor­po­rate prof­its.

I’m sick of see­ing these dev­as­tat­ing affects on a per­son­al and com­mu­ni­ty lev­el and on a grand glob­al scale in which cor­po­ra­tions and their prof­its call all the shots.”

Read more of Alejandro’s sto­ry here.

UPDATE: 8:00PM – Excel­lent Cov­er­age From KLTV Chan­nel 7 – Tyler

KLTV.com-Tyler, Longview, Jack­sonville, Texas | ETX News

UPDATE: OCTOBER 2nd, 9:00AM – Alejandro’s Bail Set at $10,000

Yes­ter­day Hous­ton res­i­dent Ale­jan­dro de la Torre delayed Key­stone XL clear cut­ting oper­a­tions on a fam­i­ly farm out­side Winns­boro, Texas for almost an entire day. De la Torre locked him­self to an under­ground cap­sule in the path­way of Key­stone XL to pro­tect the farm, say­ing sim­ply that “I’m here to stand up for peo­ple on the front lines because they’re being tram­pled to make way for cor­po­rate prof­its.” After Wood Coun­ty Sher­iff Depart­ment con­fis­cat­ed peace­ful observers camera’s they arrest­ed him for his coura­geous action.

De la Torre is cur­rent­ly being held on trumped up charges and a bail set at $10,000, an out­ra­geous sum for a non­vi­o­lent peace­ful pro­test­er. As a sup­port­er of Ale­jan­dro and the block­ade please demon­strate your sup­port with a gen­er­ous dona­tion to his bail. 

UPDATE: OCTOBER 2nd, 10:0AM- Ale­jan­dro Released!

Ale­jan­dro de la Torre has been released from Wood Coun­ty Jail. When more infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able we will update. For now, check out what Ale­jan­dro said before he was arrest­ed on our blog.

(USA) Tar Sands Blockade update (Day 9)

After yesterday’s auda­cious move by Tran­sCana­da to cut around the west side of the tree block­ade and com­plete­ly out­side of the des­ig­nat­ed Key­stone XL path­way, or ease­ment, block­aders have tak­en action.  

After yesterday’s auda­cious move by Tran­sCana­da to cut around the west side of the tree block­ade and com­plete­ly out­side of the des­ig­nat­ed Key­stone XL path­way, or ease­ment, block­aders have tak­en action.  

In the mid­dle of the night block­aders erect­ed a 30 foot high tim­ber pole in the new­ly clear-cut path­way. Life­long Tex­an Mary Ger­ma­nati has climbed atop the pole and is refus­ing to come down until the Key­stone XL pipeline is stopped for good. The pole is a free stand­ing struc­ture that’s safe­ly sup­port­ed by numer­ous life-line ropes to keep it upright. If Tran­sCana­da moves to sev­er these sup­port ropes it could seri­ous­ly injure Ger­ma­nati. Yes­ter­day their machin­ery was oper­at­ing so close that it shook the tim­ber scaf­fold­ing wall and sev­ered ropes attached to near­by trees intend­ed to keep a safe buffer between the machin­ery and the block­aders. Now that we are livestream­ing our hope is that the eyes of the world will pre­vent them from reck­less­ly endan­ger­ing peace­ful pro­tes­tors.

UPDATE: 9:00AM – Sher­iff Arrives and Tries to Talk Block­ad­er Down From Her Pole

UPDATE: 10:00AM – Livestream is Down Due to Tech­ni­cal Dif­fi­cul­ties 

Sor­ry folks, we’re doing our best down here in the back­woods of East Texas. Thanks for your patience as we attempt to bring you live footage of the tree block­ade. You can help us buy the tech­ni­cal equip­ment we need to con­tin­u­al­ly improve the qual­i­ty of the cov­er­age.

UPDATE: 11:00AM – Work­ers and Sher­iff Unsure How to Get Mary Down – Sit­u­a­tion is Steady

Block­aders on the ground have been talk­ing with Tran­sCana­da work­ers to explain how they are unable to pro­ceed with today’s clear-cut­ting oper­a­tion because Mary is secure­ly up a 40 foot pole in their path­way. Work­ers and the sher­iff are unsure how to get Mary down from her block­ade. A Tran­sCana­da work­er is film­ing every­one, hence we’ve been wear­ing masks for our own legal pro­tec­tion.

UPDATE: 1:00PM – Tran­sCana­da Work­ers in the Dis­tance – Mary Hold­ing Strong After yesterday’s close encoun­ters with TransCanada’s heavy machin­ery oper­at­ing dan­ger­ous­ly close to peace­ful tree block­aders things are calm today. It seems that Mary’s pres­ence on a 40 foot pole in the clear-cut path of the Key­stone XL has deterred their oper­a­tions for the day. Work­ers and police are still milling around on the ground. The only sound audi­ble from the tree block­ade is a wood-chip­per and exca­va­tor mov­ing slash piles of felled trees fur­ther away along the clear-cut scar. Hold strong Mary!

UPDATE: 5:00PM – Mary’s Action Stopped All New Clear-Cut­ting Today

Life­long Tex­an Mary Ger­ma­nati remains qui­et­ly perched on top of her 40 foot pole in the mid­dle of Key­stone XL clear-cut­ting site. Tran­sCana­da work­ers and police, unsure of how to deal with Mary, avoid­ed her all day and didn’t bring the heavy machin­ery back to the clear-cut they had begun the day before. About a dozen work­ers on foot and  four-wheel­ers roamed around on the ground.


Video stream­ing by Ustream


Video stream­ing by Ustream

(USA) Love and Rebellion in the East Texas Woods

I’m writ­ing to ya’ll from a safe space near­by the Tar Sands Block­ade in rur­al east Texas.  Ear­ly this week, heed­ing the call of friends and com­rades already on site, we assem­bled a crew of Earth First!ers from the North­east US and made the 30+ hour dri­ve to the site to pro­vide cru­cial rein­force­ment.  The tree vil­lage set up on site is one of the most fan­tas­tic things we’ve ever seen, and the emerg­ing pic­tures on the inter­net do it no jus­tice. Down below the pods, hideous mon­sters in the form of mas­sive feller bunch­ers and doz­ers fill the air with the heinous sounds of cor­po­rate eco­cide: mechan­i­cal whirs, saw­ing, and worst of the all the sound of beau­ti­ful trees hun­dreds of years old falling to their death, dri­ving wildlife from their homes.

Yes­ter­day a feller bunch­er began clear­ing through a sec­tion of the for­est, rapid­ly advanc­ing towards one of the tree sit­ters.  Clear­ly print­ed in large let­ters on the side of the death machine read a warn­ing to stay back at least 500 feet.  A rov­ing team on the ground that I was part of began cat-and-mou­s­ing the feller bunch­er, try­ing to keep our com­rade in the tree safe.  On the ground two Tran­sCana­da work­ers and one local sher­iff oper­at­ing as an armed mer­ce­nary of the cor­po­ra­tion over­saw the oper­a­tions, try­ing to move through the felled trees to push back our crew from the clear cut site.  We con­tin­ued to advance, deter­mined not only to pro­tect our com­rade above in the canopy but to push them back and show them that we are not scared and that we will RESIST.  At one point as we had just watched the feller bunch­er take down an 80 foot water oak not 40 feet away from the sit­ter and we heard our friend scream­ing from above plead­ing for the safe­ty of their life, I ran towards the machine about 25 feet away mak­ing eye con­tact with the dri­ver who con­tin­ued to oper­ate the machine and yelling to Tran­sCana­da and their bought and paid sher­iff that we would not stay back, that they were going to kill our friend if they con­tin­ued to advance and they were required by law to stop the machine.  The sher­iff approached say­ing that “they” (speak­ing as if they were actu­al­ly part of TC) weren’t com­ing any fur­ther at that point and they turned the machine around to con­tin­ue clear cut­ting.  A crew of 7 of us held our ground and remained in defense of the sit­ter on the oppo­site side of a creek where we were forced to watch tree after tree fall. A dense part of the for­est was instant­ly turned in to a morose tree morgue.

 

Over­come with emo­tions, hav­ing nev­er seen a clearcut myself and cer­tain­ly hav­ing nev­er faced down a mas­sive feller bunch­er, I moved back through the clearcut, across the creek where our friend sat above us in a tree.  Feel­ing the ener­gy com­ing from the mer­ci­less­ly mauled fresh tree stumps, I lay over a large one cry­ing uncon­trol­lably as I watched the remain­ing few trees off in the dis­tance be cut and wres­tled out of place. I angri­ly con­tem­plat­ed the enor­mi­ty of the cor­po­rate state, the can­cer that is cap­i­tal­ism, and the injus­tice of the entire sit­u­a­tion. Com­rades were there to com­fort me and togeth­er we all walked away from the hor­ri­ble scene feel­ing renewed in our fight and cer­tain in our deci­sion to come to Texas to fight this mad­ness and call atten­tion to this scene.

As I write this now I’m receiv­ing word from the site that they’re cut­ting in from the south side, only 20 feet away from the sit­ter we spent yes­ter­day pro­tect­ing.  North from there at the wall that y’all have seen pho­tos of ear­li­er this week, sev­er­al of our friends’ lives are at risk and trees are being cut dan­ger­ous­ly close. TC is now clear­ing from the west side of the site, attempt­ing to box our site in and pre­sum­ably make way for cher­ry pick­ers and oth­er extrac­tion devices.

One of the locals who is cur­rent­ly resist­ing the Key­stone XL pipeline in sol­i­dar­i­ty with sev­er­al local landown­ers shared sto­ries with a few of us.  It is absolute­ly clear that Tran­sCana­da is pay­ing off local law enforce­ment offi­cers.  In addi­tion TC is relent­less­ly try­ing to serve peo­ple with law­suits, putting gag orders on landown­ers who had pre­vi­ous­ly been strong allies, and buy­ing off oth­ers.  Yes­ter­day one of our key allies awoke to TC in their yard with a big feller bunch­er.  TC had promised them mul­ti­ple times both ver­bal­ly and in for­mal­ly writ­ten depo­si­tions that they would give “fair” notice before begin­ning to destroy their land.  It seems like TC knew that this area is quick­ly receiv­ing an influx of resisters and gave this landown­er no warn­ing, know­ing that we’d have cer­tain­ly act­ed at that site.

Despite the sit­u­a­tion we are keep­ing spir­its high.  Last night I came out of the woods with three com­rades to head to a safe space to write this com­mu­nique to y’all.  We were excit­ed to find that many new friends and many famil­iar faces had arrived to rein­force the site.  We’re here for the long haul and are ask­ing y’all to come down to help defend our friends in the trees and stand up to Tran­sCana­da and their dirty pipeline.  What we’re doing is not enough, but there is strength in num­bers and with the aid of more friends we can turn up the heat on TC.  There are many oppor­tu­ni­ties to plug in in var­i­ous ways here and the pipeline is going in all across this region.  There are many allies and a sup­port­ive cam­paign.  We sit here anx­ious­ly wait­ing to re-join our com­rades and wor­ried for their safe­ty, and eager to return to the woods and keep up the fight.  We hope to see you in the woods.

In Sol­i­dar­i­ty & For the Wild,

Your Anony­mous Com­rade

(Australia) Newcastle residents protest health effects of proposed 4th coal terminal

New­cas­tle res­i­dents and activists dressed in med­ical gowns protest­ed the lack of con­sid­er­a­tion of health and cli­mate change effects in the pro­posed build­ing of a fourth coal ter­mi­nal at the port of New­cas­tle, already the world’s largest coal port. A peace­ful protest and ‘lock­on’ occurred out­side The office of NSW Min­is­ter for Plan­ning Brad Haz­zard last Thurs­day who is due to con­sid­er the mer­its of the pro­pos­al.

Relat­ed: Newcastle’s T4 project puts short-term prof­it before health | Some­thing in the air: time for inde­pen­dent test­ing in coal areas | Coal Ter­mi­nal Action Group

Dressed as doc­tors and patients, about 20 pro­tes­tors hold­ing ban­ners and plac­ards occu­pied the front steps of Gov­er­nor Mac­quar­ie Tow­er at 1 Far­rer Place, Syd­ney.

Two cam­paign­ers were allowed in to meet with Min­is­ter Haz­zard’s staff. They spent 25 min­utes dis­cussing the 4th ter­mi­nal and relay­ing the com­mu­ni­ty’s con­cerns over health and cli­mate and request­ed a pub­lic meet­ing in New­cas­tle with the Min­is­ter.

On the steps of the build­ing Spokesper­son Alex McIn­nis said “We are here because there are plans to expand New­cas­tle coal port, which is going to hurt the health of the com­mu­ni­ty because of the impact of coal dust. It’s also going to dam­age our farm­land and cli­mate.”

“So, we’ve come to Min­is­ter for Plan­ning Brad Haz­zard’s office to urge him to reject the planned expan­sion of the coal port and lis­ten to the com­mu­ni­ties con­cerns over health and put those con­cerns in front of the inter­ests of the coal com­pa­nies and reject the coal ter­mi­nal.” she said.

Anoth­er pro­tes­tor dressed in a med­ical gown said: “We are here today because in the res­pi­ra­to­ry unit the asth­ma caused by coal dust in the Hunter region and New­cas­tle is a seri­ous health haz­ard. We are ask­ing Min­is­ter Haz­zard not to allow the pro­posed 4th coal ter­mi­nal in New­cas­tle to go ahead.”

Police attend­ed and asked the pro­tes­tors to move. Some vol­un­tar­i­ly left the steps. Two pro­tes­tors in med­ical gowns refused and had their locks removed by the Police Res­cue Squad and were tak­en away and arrest­ed.

 

A steep drop in coal prices and reduced Demand for coal has caused many coal com­pa­nies like Rio Tin­to and Xstra­ta to shelve expan­sion plans in the Hunter Val­ley and cut jobs.

The fourth coal ter­mi­nal at New­cas­tle pro­posed by Port Waratah Coal Ser­vices will expand coal export capac­i­ty from 210 to 330 mil­lion tonnes each year, yet the demand for coal appears to be falling. Min­ing and trans­port of this coal will dou­ble the coal dust pol­lu­tion from coal trains, piles and coal load­ers that peo­ple breath in towns through­out the Hunter Val­ley.

Med­ical aca­d­e­mics have argued that Newcastle’s T4 project puts short-term prof­it before health. Pub­lic health and com­pre­hen­sive health mon­i­tor­ing has tak­en sec­ond place in coal regions to the argu­ments in favour of eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. The long term health costs are sim­ply nev­er fac­tored into the eco­nom­ic costs.

The med­ical and health issues of coal are well known. Coal dust con­tributes to asth­ma, can­cer, heart dis­ease and stroke and it inter­feres with lung devel­op­ment and com­pro­mis­es intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ty. In the US there has been health cost­ing data gath­ered show­ing that if the cost of dis­ease result­ing from coal was paid for by the coal and pow­er indus­tries it would almost dou­ble the cost of elec­tric­i­ty. Up to 50,000 deaths each year in the US are attrib­uted to pol­lu­tion from pow­er plants. A 2009 report by Physi­cians for Social Respon­si­bil­i­ty (USA) out­lined ‘Coal’s Assault on Human Health’ and the need to phase out coal on health, ener­gy and cli­mate grounds.

In Aus­tralia we have a woe­ful record of pol­lu­tion mon­i­tor­ing and assess­ing health costs from coal. A good start to address­ing the imbal­ance between eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment and health would be estab­lish­ing com­pre­hen­sive pol­lu­tion mon­i­tor­ing done reg­u­lar­ly and inde­pen­dant­ly for all coal areas — mines, trans­port cor­ri­dors, ports, coal fired pow­er sta­tions and near­by res­i­den­tial areas — at the expense of the coal indus­try and make the data pub­licly avail­able. Read more at Some­thing in the air: time for inde­pen­dent test­ing in coal areas.

The Coal Ter­mi­nal Action Group is rais­ing mon­ey to mon­i­tor coal dust in sub­urbs between the Hunter Val­ley coal mines and Newcastle’s port.

Doc­tors for the Envi­ron­ment in their sub­mis­sion and com­ment on the Envi­ron­ment Impact state­ment said :“From the data pre­sent­ed, New­cas­tle is a pol­lut­ed town with like­ly exist­ing health impacts and now we have a pro­pos­al that will undoubt­ed­ly increase pol­lu­tion. It is not that Aus­tralia needs to make this sac­ri­fice for ener­gy secu­ri­ty, as alter­na­tives to burn­ing coal for ener­gy cur­rent­ly exist. Fur­ther­more the mor­bid­i­ty and mor­tal­i­ty con­ferred on the world’s peo­ple by the export of this coal would not be insignif­i­cant.”

Sources:

is a cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist from Mel­bourne Aus­tralia who has been writ­ing on cli­mate change, sci­ence and protests since 2004. This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Aus­tralia Indy­media

(USA) Cascadia Forest Defenders occupy billboard by Biomass Plant

Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers are prob­a­bly most know for  tree sits and occu­py­ing gov­ern­ment offices — most recent­ly over log­ging in the Elliott State For­est, but when it comes to log­ging, mills and bio­mass plants are a part of the equa­tion, so today CFD is occu­py­ing a bill­board near the Seneca Sawmill/Seneca Sus­tain­able ener­gy plant:

ACTIVISTS OCCUPY BILLBOARD OUTSIDE EUGENE POLLUTER SENECA SAWMILL

Eugene, OR- This after­noon mem­bers of Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­ers occu­pied a bill­board out­side of the West Eugene Seneca Sawmill with a ban­ner that read, “SENECA JONES: BAILOUTS, CLEARCUTS, & POLLUTING WEST EUGENE”.

Seneca Bio­mass is a wood burn­ing pow­er plant in West Eugene that opened in the spring of 2011 amid pub­lic protest. Though the project has been mar­ket­ed as “green ener­gy,” Seneca Bio­mass failed its first EPA air pol­lu­tion test last fall. The plant releas­es an esti­mat­ed 17,900 pounds of air tox­ins into West Eugene Neigh­bor­hoods annu­al­ly —t his in addi­tion to the 73,000 pounds already released annu­al­ly from the mill itself. There are three schools with­in three miles of the Seneca Bio­mass facil­i­ty.

While there are many indus­tri­al pol­luters in West Eugene, it so hap­pens that Seneca Jones receives pub­lic fund­ing for its dirty ener­gy project. Seneca cur­rent­ly receives 10 mil­lion dol­lars in tax cred­its from the state of Ore­gon under the Busi­ness Ener­gy Tax Cred­it Pro­gram. Seneca is now suing the state for an addi­tion­al one mil­lion to off­set the pro­duc­tion costs of their new plant.

“They get paid, we get pol­lut­ed,” says west Eugene res­i­dent and Cas­ca­dia For­est Defend­er Grace Warn­er. “It would be nice if the state would give that 11 mil­lion to help­ing schools– not to pol­lut­ing them.”

Seneca is also respon­si­ble for much of the clear-cut log­ging in Ore­gon pub­lic forests. Seneca is one of the top three pur­chasers of tim­ber sales in the Elliott State For­est, where com­pa­nies clear-cut up to 850 acres every year. While the State Land Board jus­ti­fies the destruc­tion of Oregon’s last rem­nants of coastal tem­per­ate rain­for­est to ben­e­fit pub­lic schools, log­ging in the Elliott con­tributes to less than one per­cent of the State’s annu­al school bud­get.

Ore­gon can do bet­ter. We demand that Seneca:

Stop pol­lut­ing West Eugene.
Stop clear-cut­ting Oregon’s ancient forests.
Start pay­ing tax­es like the rest of us.

(USA) From the Woods: Tar Sands blockade update

I’m cur­rent­ly part of a team of awe­some friends rov­ing through the woods of east Texas as part of the Tar Sands Block­ade (TSB).

I’m cur­rent­ly part of a team of awe­some friends rov­ing through the woods of east Texas as part of the Tar Sands Block­ade (TSB). This is an epic fight to defend Tex­ans’ homes and land against the clearcut­ting and pol­lu­tion caused by the build­ing of the mas­sive Key­stone XL pipeline.

The media team for TSB are doing an awe­some job of updat­ing our web­site as Tran­sCana­da (TC) and their hired goons advance toward our block­ade with heavy equip­ment and repeat­ed­ly endan­ger our peo­ple in some scary ways. A friend and I thought that allies of the TSB might appre­ci­ate an on-the-ground per­spec­tive, and so before I go back to defend­ing our block­ade I thought I’d update y’all.
     The for­est of east Texas is total­ly beau­ti­ful. Water oak, sweet gum and slash pine trees define the canopy, and green bri­ar, mus­ca­dine grapes and beau­ty­ber­ry bush­es cov­er the ground. This for­est is home to great blue herons, turkey vul­tures, whip­poor­wills, lots of deer, rat­tlers and oth­er snakes, armadil­los, and even occa­sion­al black bears. All of these are our nat­ur­al allies and have been incred­i­bly dis­turbed by the clear cut­ting of their home.   
     At the begin­ning of this week the bad guys were oper­at­ing a feller bunch­er and clear cut­ting a vast swath of for­est aimed direct­ly at our block­ade. On Tues­day morn­ing we tem­porar­i­ly stopped them by plac­ing our­selves direct­ly in the path of their machines. As a back­hoe was plac­ing tim­bers over a gul­ly so that oth­er more destruc­tive stuff like feller-bunch­ers could advance toward our block­ade, two of our team locked down to the back­hoe and stopped it in its tracks while the rest of us pro­vid­ed cov­er. The lock­down­ers were then tor­tured by local police with TC super­vi­sors watch­ing and laugh­ing. After they were extract­ed from the back­hoe, the tim­ber bridge got built and the feller bunch­er start­ed rapid­ly destroy­ing trees advanc­ing toward our block­ade.
     Then we ran out in front of it and one of my friends sat down direct­ly in its path. All of us were way too close to the back­hoe for it to oper­ate safe­ly. Instead of back­ing away slow­ly to a safe dis­tance per OSHA reg­u­la­tions, the oper­a­tor of the machine (which might’ve been the same guy oper­at­ing the back­hoe) decid­ed to fell anoth­er tree and drop it right on my friend’s head. This demon­strates anti­so­cial and poten­tial­ly mur­der­ous behav­ior and this guy clear­ly should be get­ting men­tal help, not oper­at­ing heavy machin­ery. TC super­vi­sors were watch­ing this hap­pen the whole time, and nod­ding with approval. This is crim­i­nal and they should be pros­e­cut­ed for reck­less endan­ger­ment and attempt­ed manslaugh­ter, both of which are ille­gal in the state of Texas. It’s lucky that I caught the whole thing on film and even luck­i­er that my friend jumped out of the way in time and is now rel­a­tive­ly safe.
Our friends in trees and on the Wall are incred­i­bly brave to be main­tain­ing their posi­tions despite the mech­a­nized onslaught advanc­ing toward them and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of bru­tal­i­ty by TC’s hired goons, and we are here to sup­port them no mat­ter what. The bad guys have now advanced all the way up to the wall, leav­ing a scarred and dev­as­tat­ed land­scape in their wake. There are work­ers, boss­es and goons below (as I write this) mak­ing all kinds of scary and emp­ty threats. Our peo­ple are jovial and defi­ant in the face of dan­ger. We’re invit­ing all our friends and allies out to vis­it our block­ade and pro­vide sup­plies, encour­age­ment and rein­force­ments. We who are liv­ing in the for­est are com­mit­ted to main­tain­ing our posi­tions no mat­ted how intim­i­dat­ing this multi­bil­lion-dol­lar cor­po­ra­tion and their enablers in local law enforce­ment try to be. Run­ning cir­cles around con­fused TC boss­es and their goons in the beau­ti­ful Texas for­est is total­ly fun, and every­one should come out and par­tic­i­pate.You can help by com­ing down to join us, by doing sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against TC and their enablers in your local town, by send­ing us funds and/or gear, reach­ing out to your media con­tacts, and telling all your friends about this and ask­ing them to spread the word.
    We need: walkie-talkies, AAA bat­ter­ies, camo gear, rain gear, climb­ing gear of all kinds, tools, satel­lite inter­net, solar pan­els, deep-cell bat­ter­ies, woods food, water fil­ters, and video cam­eras.
     We make our stand here in the hope of inspir­ing oth­ers to make a stand against Key­stone XL in a broad diver­si­ty of ways. Cor­po­ra­tions should not be allowed to just roll over us the way they’ve repeat­ed­ly done for decades. Resis­tance is com­ing. Every­one affect­ed by this pipeline must real­ize that risks must be tak­en in defense of what we love. Lay­ing down in front of things, or any vari­a­tion on that, is good for pub­lic­i­ty but is nowhere near enough. Peo­ple must rise up and defend their homes.
Love and Rage,
Anony­mous Block­ad­er # 57