Category: Global

Glob­al

(Switzerland) Eco-anarchist Costa is released from prison!

Eco-anar­chist pris­on­er Cos­ta Ragusa is released like Bil­ly and Sil­va – Nev­er repen­tant – Nev­er for­got­ten!

Eco-anar­chist pris­on­er Cos­ta Ragusa is released like Bil­ly and Sil­va – Nev­er repen­tant – Nev­er for­got­ten!

The com­rades had been sen­tenced for plan­ning an attack against a lab­o­ra­to­ry of IBM nan­otech­nol­o­gy under con­struc­tion in Zurich.

(USA) When Big Oil Attacks

Tues­day after­noon in East Texas, after police bru­tal­ly tor­tured two pro­test­ers locked to a back­hoe and work­ers resumed destruc­tion of the for­est, mem­bers of the Tar Sands Block­ade, deter­mined not to be deterred by vio­lence, moved in to try and stop work again. One activist sat down in front of a feller bunch­er, a hideous machine used to rapid­ly cut down small­er trees, and, after mak­ing eye con­tact with the work­er, almost had a tree dropped on him. The video shows it all, and you can read the activist’s own telling of the inci­dent here.

There’s real­ly not much else to say. Big Oil is attack­ing our bod­ies, our homes, and the plan­et, and now that the cards are on the table, it’s time to fight back. Word on the street is that we’ve got a love­ly crew of Earth First!ers ready for action join­ing us tonight or tomor­row morn­ing, but there’s plen­ty of room for you to get involved too. Go here or email noneshallpass@riseup.net, and we’ll see you on the ground.

- Tar Sands Block­ad­er

(USA) Texas Tar Sands Blockade Continues Despite Police Torture

Despite sum­mer being over, things con­tin­ue to heat up in Texas for the Tar Sands Block­ade as we enter day 3 of the tree-sit.  On Mon­day, 8 peo­ple took to the trees to defend the land from clear-cut­ting that would allow for con­tin­ued con­struc­tion of the pipeline.  And yes­ter­day, two ground-dwelling allies locked them­selves to a piece of con­struc­tion machin­ery that was being used to build a road to the tree vil­lage, effec­tive­ly halt­ing TransCanada’s work for most of the day.

The police response to this action was pre­dictable but nev­er­the­less shock­ing.  Under the encour­age­ment of Tran­sCana­da super­vi­sors, police used sus­tained choke­holds, vio­lent arm-twist­ing, pep­per spray, and mul­ti­ple shocks from a Taser, all while the two block­aders were in hand­cuffs. Despite the tor­ture, the two block­aders held strong for hours, and their per­se­ver­ance has only fur­ther inspired block­aders to con­tin­ue the protests. This morn­ing, in response to the bru­tal­i­ty inflict­ed on our com­rades yes­ter­day, anoth­er activist has ascend­ed into the tree vil­lage to join the aer­i­al block­ade, bring­ing its total pop­u­la­tion to 9.

Ben­jamin Franklin, one of the tor­tured pro­test­ers, had this to say after being released from jail: “As some­one who has a reli­gious ded­i­ca­tion to non­vi­o­lence, I have a duty to assist non­vi­o­lent tac­tics. This is a path to change that works. Despite every­thing that hap­pened at the direc­tion of Tran­sCana­da, I don’t regret my involve­ment at all. I encour­age every­body 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.”

Tran­sCana­da has shown bla­tant dis­re­gard for the safe­ty of peace­ful peo­ple, local fam­i­lies, and our plan­et. Despite their claims to be con­cerned for safe­ty, whether of pro­tes­tors, landown­ers, or the plan­et, time and time again this has been shown to be patent­ly false. From encour­ag­ing tor­ture to defraud­ing and coerc­ing peo­ple out of their land to cut­ting cor­ners with safe­ty mea­sures for detect­ing and pre­vent­ing spills, TransCanada’s only con­cern is abun­dant­ly clear – prof­it.

They can be stopped. Every day of delay costs them mon­ey and brings us a tiny bit clos­er to the goal of stop­ping the pipeline. The odds are low, but this is a winnable fight.

If you read the call to action or saw this awe­some video, you know how dev­as­tat­ing extract­ing and burn­ing tar sands oil will be to the cli­mate and how crit­i­cal stop­ping this pipeline is. This action has the poten­tial to be a huge turn­ing point for the resis­tance move­ment against fos­sil fuels, but it needs your help to sur­vive and suc­ceed. If you can spare any­thing, make a dona­tion here. If you want to do more, vis­it this page or email noneshallpass@riseup.net to get involved.

For the wild!

- Tar Sands Block­ad­er

(Mexico) Community defeats giant cement company in Mexico

CEMEX oppo­nents from Hidal­go

CEMEX oppo­nents from Hidal­go

CEMEX can­not burn more waste in the state of Hidal­go

In a state­ment released yes­ter­day by GAIA, the Huicha­pan com­mu­ni­ty, in the cen­tral México’s state of Hidal­go, has achieved a his­toric vic­to­ry, after 6 months of protests and legal actions that drove to the clo­sure of the plant of Proam­bi­ente com­pa­ny, a sub­sidiary of Cemen­tos Mex­i­canos, CEMEX, by the Sec­re­tary of Envi­ron­ment and Nat­ur­al Resources.

This plant was respon­si­ble for receiv­ing and pro­cess­ing a large part of the 12,000 tons of sol­id waste gen­er­at­ed dai­ly in Mex­i­co City, to be burned as an alter­na­tive fuel in the kilns of CEMEX plant in Huicha­pan.

Ship­ping to cement kilns was a major “solu­tion” dri­ven by the Mex­i­co City gov­ern­ment (GDF), through an agree­ment with CEMEX, for the treat­ment of Mex­i­can capital’s waste, after the clo­sure of  Bor­do Poniente land­fill (the largest in Latin Amer­i­ca), in Decem­ber 2011, and has been strong­ly crit­i­cized for its neg­a­tive impacts on human health and the envi­ron­ment derived from its poten­tial emis­sions of heavy met­als, diox­ins and furans, and oth­er con­t­a­m­i­nants.

The inhab­i­tants of the town of Huicha­pan, main­ly in the com­mu­ni­ties of Maney, Don­goteay and Zothe, locat­ed around the CEMEX plant, start­ed to feel the neg­a­tive effects on health and ecosys­tems when it began to receive and indis­crim­i­nate­ly burn waste from DF and orga­nized their­self in the Cit­i­zens Unit­ed for the Envi­ron­ment (CUMA) move­ment, to resist this false solu­tion to a prob­lem gen­er­at­ed else­where in the coun­try and raise their own alter­na­tives for waste man­age­ment.

The local com­mu­ni­ty has been con­stant­ly sup­port­ed by biol­o­gist Jorge Tadeo Var­gas, from the Glob­al Alliance for Incin­er­a­tor Alter­na­tives (GAIA), and State Rep. San­dra Ordaz Oliv­er, Pres­i­dent of the Health Com­mis­sion of the State Con­gress, who are com­mit­ted to enforce statewide in Hidal­go the ban of com­bus­tion of munic­i­pal sol­id waste and haz­ardous waste, and pro­mote a Zero Waste law for the state and its munic­i­pal­i­ties, includ­ing more sus­tain­able options such as waste reduc­tion and sep­a­ra­tion at source, reuse, recy­cling and com­post­ing.

 

(USA) People Lock Themselves to Keystone XL Machinery to Defend Tree Village

Defend­ing the block­ades from “the machine”

Defend­ing the block­ades from “the machine”

DATELINE WINNSBORO, TX — This morn­ing two Texas-born Tar Sands Block­aders have locked them­selves to a crit­i­cal piece of equip­ment for TransCanada’s Key­stone XL con­struc­tion in order to pro­tect a mas­sive tree vil­lage in the direct path of the tox­ic tar sands pipeline.

The vil­lage, where eight tree sit­ters remain in vig­il, is on prop­er­ty that Tran­sCana­da now claims own­er­ship of through court action. Key­stone XL con­struc­tion crews have advanced just over 300 yards away from the north­ern bound­ary of Tar Sands Blockade’s tree vig­il.

Stay updat­ed at the Tar Sands Block­ade web­site

 

OVER 50 PARTRIDGES FREED

“Over 50 par­tridges were boxed up from a breed­ing facil­i­ty and tak­en to a pub­lic wildlife reserve where shoot­ing is banned. Their release was quick and they all flew off into the night.

Until all are free! — Ani­mal-Lib­er­a­tion-Front”

“Over 50 par­tridges were boxed up from a breed­ing facil­i­ty and tak­en to a pub­lic wildlife reserve where shoot­ing is banned. Their release was quick and they all flew off into the night.

Until all are free! — Ani­mal-Lib­er­a­tion-Front”

(USA) Sunrise Intervention at Gas Industry Convention

It was 7:00 am, the last day of the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coalition’s annu­al con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, when a group of 40 or so peo­ple gath­ered to meet the gas indus­try face to face. “We just want­ed to see what they had to say for them­selves” said one of the pro­test­ers.

It was 7:00 am, the last day of the Mar­cel­lus Shale Coalition’s annu­al con­ven­tion in Philadel­phia, when a group of 40 or so peo­ple gath­ered to meet the gas indus­try face to face. “We just want­ed to see what they had to say for them­selves” said one of the pro­test­ers. It turned out the indus­try del­e­gates weren’t so shy for talk­ing after-all.

(scroll down for full gallery)

The con­ven­tion was called “Shale Gas Insight” and took place in the for­ti­fied Philadel­phia Con­ven­tion Cen­ter in down­town Philly. The con­ven­tion  host­ed hun­dreds of ven­dors and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from just about every com­pa­ny involved in hydraulic frac­tur­ing, or “Frack­ing” as some call it. You can read about the work­shop titles here; http://shalegasinsight.com/conference-schedule/

The action, called “Sun­rise Inter­ven­tion” by local orga­niz­ers, suc­ceed­ed in bring­ing peo­ple togeth­er to face the indus­try on their own terms. For hours, indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives were forced to pass through an aggres­sive pick­et at the front entrance with ban­ners, flags, drums, and chants. This was pre­ced­ed by a “walk of shame” in which the del­e­gates were ver­bal­ly con­front­ed for an entire city block in pub­lic view. As they approached the con­ven­tion cen­ter, peo­ple phys­i­cal­ly blocked them from enter­ing. To say the least, it became a venue for inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

“I real­ly val­ued the hon­esty on behalf of the del­e­gates” said a bystander. At one point a group of uni­formed char­ter school kids joined in the fun, tak­ing pictures–laughing and point­ing.

“We were hop­ing the del­e­gates would get arrest­ed for col­lab­o­rat­ing in envi­ron­men­tal crimes” said one of the pick­eters when the police arrived. But they didn’t.

“I’m too scared to do the right thing” whis­pered an offi­cer from his car. The police then sep­a­rat­ing the pick­et onto either side of the main entrance, ush­er­ing del­e­gates off the side­walk into the road.

Although the police estab­lished a rit­u­al­is­tic pres­ence, they didn’t do much to pro­tect the del­e­gates from the angry crowd. Per­haps they weren’t too impressed with the gas industry’s pol­i­cy on pub­lic health.

The protest last­ed a cou­ple more hours, police & all, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for del­e­gates to reach the door. Once most of the del­e­gates were inside, the protest end­ed in an un-per­mit­ted march through down­town Philadel­phia to meet up with an ACT UP ral­ly and street the­ater per­for­mance.


(USA) Tar Sands Blockade Launces 8‑Person Treesit

Gan­dalf hates tar sands.

The ongo­ing Tar Sands Block­ade cam­paign has launched an 8‑person treesit in the planned path of the under-con­struc­tion Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline. “Con­struc­tion can­not pro­ceed until tree-sit­ters descend and Tran­sCana­da clear-cuts through hun­dreds of trees to make way for the tox­ic tar sands pipeline,” Tar Sands Block­ade announced.

The treesit­ters have announced their inten­tion to remain in the trees until the Key­stone XL pipeline is stopped for good.

Tar Sands Block­ade is an ongo­ing cam­paign to stop the con­struc­tion of TransCanada’s Key­stone pipeline through Texas and Okla­homa. The pipeline is meant to car­ry oil from Alberta’s tar sands to the US.

There are still plen­ty of ways to get involved in this cam­paign. Fol­low news of the treesit here. For some ways to get involved, read this call to action or vis­it Tar Sands Block­ade.

 

 

(Brazil) Fishermen Paralyze Construction of the Belo Monte Dam

Fish­er­men form a line to block

Fish­er­men form a line to block access to the con­struc­tion site of a cof­fer dam on the Xin­gu Riv­er, Sep. 2012

From Inter­na­tion­al Rivers:

On Wednes­day [Sep. 19], a group of about 50 fish­er­men pre­vent­ed a fer­ry from trans­port­ing machines and work­ers to a cof­fer dam being built for the Belo Monte Dam Com­plex, set­ting up a protest camp on one of the main islands of the Xin­gu Riv­er near the con­struc­tion site.

After assem­bling, the pro­test­ers decid­ed to remain indef­i­nite­ly in place, and called on Norte Ener­gia and IBAMA to imme­di­ate­ly nego­ti­ate com­pen­sa­tion for the loss of eco­log­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive fish species that the fish­er­men have suf­fered as a result of the cof­fer dam’s con­struc­tion.

“The fish­er­men have seen a 50% reduc­tion in fish­eries pro­duc­tion. The riv­er is dry­ing up. Sev­er­al species failed to spawn over the last year due to Norte Ener­gia’s inter­ven­tion in the riv­er.  A lot of fish are dying, and in some loca­tions the com­pa­ny wants to impede the fish­er­men from access­ing the riv­er,” explained Ana Bar­bosa Laide of the Movi­men­to Xin­gu Vivo, who has accom­pa­nied the mobi­liza­tion.

On Wednes­day night, a group of fish­er­men who depend on orna­men­tal fish from the riv­er joined the group, demand­ing that envi­ron­men­tal agency IBAMA guar­an­tee the sur­vival of species that are endem­ic to the area where the dam is being built, say­ing that oth­er­wise, the species will go extinct. “They argue that if these species die off, IBAMA should release its pop­u­la­tion of col­lect­ed orna­men­tal fish in order to save the eco­nom­ic liveli­hoods of the fish­er­men,” explained Laide.

Accord­ing to the move­ment lead­ers, the occu­pa­tion protests the deci­sion of IBAMA to allow Norte Ener­gia to per­ma­nent­ly close the riv­er. Dur­ing this process, the fish­er­men were not con­sult­ed nor informed about how they could con­tin­ue their eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties, or how they could con­tin­ue to trans­port their boats on the riv­er past the dam. “The riv­er is ours and we came to fish. You can’t just pro­hib­it fish­ing, we have to work, “says Lucio Vale, Pres­i­dent of the Fish­er­men’s Colony of Altami­ra.

On the evening of the 19th, civ­il police offi­cers, accom­pa­nied by mem­bers of Norte Ener­gia, were at the demon­stra­tion site. Accord­ing to agents, they were assured that the protest was non-vio­lent.

(Peru) Despite Promised Reforms, Another Mine Resister Killed in Peru

Peru­vian pol

Peru­vian police are becom­ing noto­ri­ous for using lethal force against pro­test­ers. In this pic­ture, police respond with force to protests which rocked the Ama­zon region in 2009.

Despite gov­ern­ment promis­es of reforms in the way nat­ur­al resource con­ces­sions are han­dled, anoth­er anti-mines pro­test­er has been killed in Peru. This marks the 19th per­son killed in a nat­ur­al resource-relat­ed con­flict since Pres­i­dent Ollan­ta Humala took office in July 2011.

Clash­es between police and pro­test­ers broke out in the Ancash region on Wednes­day Sep. 19, when police tried to break up a block­ade of a road lead­ing to Bar­rick Gold’s Pier­na mine.  Locals blame the mine for con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing their drink­ing water and using up their water sup­ply.

The com­pa­ny tem­porar­i­ly shut down the mine fol­low­ing the killing.

The vio­lence came even as Peru’s Con­gress debates reforms to the way min­ing con­ces­sions are han­dled, includ­ing the cre­ation of a new over­sight body to eval­u­ate min­ing con­ces­sions, sep­a­rate from the agency respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing them.

The gov­ern­ment has also been tout­ing its new pol­i­cy of con­sult­ing with affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties regard­ing oil and gas con­ces­sions in the Ama­zon, but com­mu­ni­ties in resis­tance to such projects have expressed skep­ti­cism about what such con­sul­ta­tion will actu­al­ly mean.

“Which com­mu­ni­ties will be con­sult­ed? What are the terms and con­di­tions? Indige­nous peo­ples need answers to these ques­tions, because there is a great deal of mis­trust,” said con­gress­mem­ber Veróni­ka Men­doz.

“We think it is good that they will hold a con­sul­ta­tion. But how can they rem­e­dy all of the dam­age they have done to us in the last 40 years in just a short time? They need to explain that to us first,” said Achuar indige­nous leader Andrés San­ti, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of Native Com­mu­ni­ties of Cor­ri­entes.