Earth First! Winter Moot, what to expect

This years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

This years Earth First! Win­ter Moot takes place in South Lanark­shire, Scot­land. In a months time envi­ron­men­tal­ists from across the UK and beyond will con­verge to dis­cuss and debate. Below is an update from the organ­is­ing col­lec­tive who are work­ing on the pro­gram.

The Moot 2012 col­lec­tive has felt that at pre­vi­ous EF! Gath­er­ings groups have pri­mar­i­ly attend­ed to recruit for their respec­tive cam­paigns. Yet those who attend EF! Gath­er­ings are pre­dom­i­nant­ly already active, mak­ing them good places for net­work­ing, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly for out­right recruit­ment. We recog­nise the effort gath­er­ing organ­is­ers put into plan­ning agen­das but often the more dis­cur­sive aspects of the gath­er­ings focus on larg­er, abstract ques­tions and debates have often been framed by self-appoint­ed experts. We feel that these dis­cus­sions inef­fec­tive­ly attempt to find answers or reach con­sen­sus where this is inap­pro­pri­ate.

For exam­ple at the first EF! Gath­er­ing 20 years ago the ques­tion was asked: ‘What is EF!?’ 20 years lat­er in 2011 at the last Moot the same ques­tion was still being asked …

The answer is EF! is what we make it, and this year we are going to make it a space in which we can approach our cam­paigns both crit­i­cal­ly and ana­lyt­i­cal­ly by ask­ing more spe­cif­ic and prac­ti­cal ques­tions. Our activism should be con­stant­ly evolv­ing not stuck in a rut ask­ing the same ques­tions again and again.

The agen­da will be designed to ask ques­tions around four key issues: the tac­tics we use; the strate­gies that we employ in our cam­paigns; com­mu­ni­ty sol­i­dar­i­ty; and sus­tain­able activism. There will be no attempt to reach con­clu­sions or con­sen­sus espe­cial­ly about what EF! is. Instead we want to have dis­cus­sions that lead to new ideas that could evolve ongo­ing cam­paigns or give cre­ative inspi­ra­tion to ones that are just get­ting start­ed.

A free space will be pro­vid­ed in which cam­paigns will be able to hold meet­ings and have fur­ther dis­cus­sions if they wish, and there will also be some space giv­en for cam­paign updates with an empha­sis on hon­est analy­sis rather than pro­mo­tion.

For updates and more info check the web­site or email us.

EF!WM Crew
e-mail: efwintermoot@noflag.org.uk
Home­page: http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk

Canadian environmentalists block logging operations for one week and running

18.1.12

18.1.12

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists in Alber­ta, Cana­da have been block­ing log­ging oper­a­tions in the Cas­tle Wilder­ness Area for over a week despite below freez­ing tem­per­a­tures. On Jan­u­ary 11 sev­er­al dozen envi­ron­men­tal­ists, includ­ing local res­i­dents, set up tents on the access road for the log­ging oper­a­tions. Spray Lakes Sawmills wants to log 300 acres of land in the wilder­ness area.

 ”If we keep peo­ple there and the machin­ery idle until spring, that might be a good time — come spring, they won’t be able to do any log­ging. I hope it doesn’t take that long, but we have a lot of com­mit­ted peo­ple, peo­ple com­ing from all over,” said Gor­don Peter­son of the Cas­tle-Crown Wilder­ness Coali­tion (CCWC) told CBC News.

 Accord­ing to CCWC the, “Cas­tle Region is an impor­tant part of the Crown of the Con­ti­nent Ecosys­tem which cov­ers approx­i­mate­ly 27,000 square miles of Alber­ta, BC, and Mon­tana and includes Water­ton Lakes Nation­al Park, Glac­i­er Nation­al Park, and the Bob Mar­shall Wilder­ness.” It also serves as an impor­tant wildlife cor­ri­dor and is crit­i­cal habi­tat for griz­zly bears. In addi­tion to log­ging the Cas­tle Wilder­ness is threat­ened by oil and gas projects in the area.

30 days of actions at Faslane

30 Days of Action at Faslane

30 Days of Action at Faslane

Faslane Peace Camp are announc­ing 30 days of non-vio­lent direct action against the Faslane Naval Base to mark the 30th birth­day of the Peace Camp. Over the last year, a small group of us have been endeav­our­ing to make Peace Camp a healthy and hap­py place to facil­i­tate direct action against Tri­dent. We are ready for action! The birth­day cel­e­bra­tions will com­mence on Sat­ur­day 9th of June 2012 and con­tin­ue until the 9th of July.

This week the First Min­is­ter of Scot­land Alex Salmond announced that an inde­pen­dent Scot­land would be a nuclear free Scot­land. Whilst these are wel­come words, the response is that the MOD are report­ed­ly look­ing into new venues south of the bor­der in the fear that Scot­land will win inde­pen­dence. We need to give a clear and unmit­i­gat­ed mes­sage that sim­ply mov­ing them is not enough. We are in a unique posi­tion to make this poten­tial removal from Scot­land mean an ipso fac­to end to nuclear weapons in the UK but our mes­sage needs to be full vol­ume!

We are invit­ing local, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al groups to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for a day of anti-nuclear activ­i­ties, this can be a march to the base,  a demo at the gates, a block­ade, a mass tres­pass, a die-in… get cre­ative! If you are a small group or an indi­vid­ual and want to team up with oth­ers, we can help chore­o­graph part­ner­ships. We can also facil­i­tate work­shops on direct action at Faslane so no activist expe­ri­ence is nec­es­sary. There will be lots to be done day to day and plen­ty of roles to ful­fil dur­ing the 30 Days cam­paign and the time lead­ing up to it so enthu­si­as­tic helpers (and dona­tions) will be wel­comed with open arms! Com­mu­nal meals will be pro­vid­ed and there will be plen­ty of sleep­ing and camp­ing spaces.

For more infor­ma­tion, legal stuff and for details of our safer spaces, res­i­den­cy and alco­hol agree­ments please con­tact Faslane30@riseup.net or write to us at: 30Days, Faslane Peace Camp, Shan­don, Helens­burgh, G84 8NN.

 

More nails in the GM coffin — bye bye BASF / amaranth fights back against GM menace / Take the Flour Back

18 Jan­u­ary 2012

BASF, the last firm still devel­op­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops in Ger­many is stop­ping its work, admit­ting defeat in the face of wide­spread Euro­pean oppo­si­tion to to the idea.

18 Jan­u­ary 2012

BASF, the last firm still devel­op­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops in Ger­many is stop­ping its work, admit­ting defeat in the face of wide­spread Euro­pean oppo­si­tion to to the idea.

This fol­lows deci­sions by Bay­er and Syn­gen­ta to stop their genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) crop work in Ger­many over the last few years.

Ger­man chem­i­cal giant BASF has announced that it will halt the devel­op­ment or com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) crops in Europe, and move its biotech R&D oper­a­tions to the US. The firm cit­ed con­sumer and polit­i­cal resis­tance to trans­genic plants in Europe for its deci­sion. 

BASF will now con­cen­trate its plant biotech­nol­o­gy activ­i­ties in North and South Amer­i­ca, and the head­quar­ters of BASF Plant Sci­ence will be moved from Lim­burg­er­hof, Ger­many, to Raleigh, North Car­oli­na, US. BASF expects that this will result in the loss of 140 jobs in Europe.

‘We are con­vinced that plant biotech­nol­o­gy is a key tech­nol­o­gy for the 21st cen­tu­ry,’ said Ste­fan Mar­ci­nows­ki, a mem­ber of BAS­F’s exec­u­tive board. ‘How­ev­er, there is still a lack of accep­tance for this tech­nol­o­gy in many parts of Europe — from the major­i­ty of con­sumers, farm­ers and politi­cians. There­fore, it does not make busi­ness sense to con­tin­ue invest­ing in prod­ucts exclu­sive­ly for cul­ti­va­tion in this mar­ket.’ 

BAS­F’s deci­sion was met with warn­ings from indus­try rep­re­sen­ta­tives and lob­by­ists, but cel­e­bra­tion by oth­ers, includ­ing envi­ron­men­tal advo­cates and at least one for­mer indus­try insid­er. 

Present­ly, only two GM crops are autho­rised for cul­ti­va­tion in the EU: MON810 maize, made by US-based Mon­san­to, and BAS­F’s Amflo­ra pota­to. MON810 is only approved for sale as an ani­mal feed and starch from Amflo­ra is used in indus­tri­al process­es.

Mau­rice Moloney, the chief exec­u­tive of Rotham­st­ed Research in the UK, which has been engaged in GM work, said that mov­ing the focus of crop sci­ence even fur­ther away from Europe is ‘deeply regret­table’. Such a move will ‘make inno­v­a­tive new tech­nolo­gies, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to GM, less avail­able to Euro­pean pro­duc­ers and con­sumers and car­ries the risk of deny­ing them access to crops and foods with health and envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits,’ he added. 

BAS­F’s deci­sion is like­ly to adverse­ly affect Europe’s eco­nom­ic growth and food sup­ply, Moloney warned. ‘It is iron­ic that much of the sci­ence that cre­at­ed mod­ern biotech­nol­o­gy came from Europe and yet Euro­peans have been deprived of the envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits such as the reduc­tion of the use of pes­ti­cides and improved soil qual­i­ty as well as the more obvi­ous eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of cheap­er food and agri­cul­tur­al prod­ucts,’ he said. 

In addi­tion, Alan Dewar, an inde­pen­dent ento­mol­o­gist who directs Dewar Crop Pro­tec­tion and used to be head of ento­mol­o­gy at a divi­sion of Rotham­st­ed Research, called BAS­F’s deci­sion to quit Europe ‘indica­tive of the ever increas­ing iso­la­tion that Euro­pean sci­en­tists find them­selves in’. Dewar high­light­ed ‘inad­e­quate sen­tences’ hand­ed down by judges in sev­er­al Euro­pean coun­tries to pro­tes­tors who have been ‘caught red-hand­ed’ destroy­ing GM field tri­als, say­ing it is not sur­pris­ing that biotech crop research has stalled in Europe. 

But Igna­cio Chapela, a micro­bial ecol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley and senior researcher with the Cen­tre for Biosafe­ty in Nor­way, says that genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms have been over­hyped and that the indus­try needs to be sig­nif­i­cant­ly trimmed down. 

‘The size of the GMO mar­ket should be much small­er, but it is being pro­mot­ed very strong­ly with the full force of the US gov­ern­ment,’ Chapela says, who for­mer­ly worked for Swiss firm San­doz, Sygen­ta’s pre­de­ces­sor, devel­op­ing new agri­chem­i­cals. He says much pub­li­cised claims that GM crops would cut lev­els of her­bi­cides and insec­ti­cides in the food chain have failed to mate­ri­alise and, in fact, many of these prod­ucts have led to more of both. 

The envi­ron­men­tal group Friends of the Earth (FoE) Europe also cel­e­brat­ed BAS­F’s announce­ment. ‘This is anoth­er nail in the cof­fin for genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied foods in Europe,’ said Adri­an Bebb, agro­fu­els cam­paign coor­di­na­tor for FoE Europe. ‘This is a good day for con­sumers and farm­ers and opens the door for the Euro­pean Union to shift Europe to green­er and more pub­licly accept­able farm­ing.’

How­ev­er, is this a real vic­to­ry or a sleight of hand?  Read more

——

Ama­ranth, the Inca sacred plant, attacks GM soya crop

5,000 hectares trashed, 50,000 threat­ened! 

It first hap­pened in 2004, when a farmer in Atlanta in the US found ama­ranth that had spread to his fields was resis­tant to Roundup — the her­bi­cide much GM was bred to resist.  But since then, the ‘weed’ has spread wide­ly, and accord­ing to the UK’s Cen­tre for Ecol­o­gy and Hydrol­o­gy there has been gene trans­fer. 

[note: this is an old arti­cle, excerpt tak­en from here.  There have been a rash recent­ly of arti­cles about GM repost­ed from the last years, that pur­port to be from 2012; this arti­cle about ama­ranth was not pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered on this site, hence it’s brief repost­ing]

——

Past action against BAS­F’s UK HQ

Future action this May against GM wheat tri­al

Regional Strike Paralyzes Hydroelectric Project in Colombia

19 Jan­u­ary 2012

19 Jan­u­ary 2012

The Region­al Move­ment for the Defense of the Ter­ri­to­ry launched a region­al strike in Huila, Colom­bia on Jan. 3 to protest the destruc­tive impacts of the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project and the enter­ing of UK-based petro­le­um com­pa­ny Emer­ald Ener­gy into the bio­di­verse moun­tain­top moor ecosys­tem of the Páramo of Miraflo­res. The move­ment, com­pro­mised of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Affect­ed by the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project (ASOQUIMBO), the Civic Com­mit­tee of West­ern Huila, com­mu­ni­ties from the Páramo of Miraflo­res and the Region­al Indige­nous Coun­cil of Huila (CRIHU), has blocked the high­way and bridge known as Paso del Cole­gio and has par­a­lyzed the con­struc­tion of the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project, coura­geous­ly push­ing the divert­ing of the Mag­dale­na Riv­er behind sched­ule while fac­ing vio­lent evci­tions by riot police and the mil­i­tary and a media black­out.

The three main demands of the strike are that the envi­ron­men­tal licens­es for the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project and Emer­ald Ener­gy be imme­di­ate­ly sus­pend­ed, pub­lic envi­ron­men­tal hear­ings be held for the project in affect­ed com­mu­ni­ties and for multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion Emge­sa to imme­di­ate­ly repair the Paso del Cole­gio Bridge and oth­er high­ways that have been dam­aged while work­ing on the Quim­bo project. Last week Colom­bi­a’s Comptroller´s Office respond­ed by open­ing a “pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tions” against the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment, the Region­al Envi­ron­men­tal Autonomous Cor­po­ra­tion (CAM) and INVIAS- High­way Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty for vio­la­tions of the envi­ron­men­tal license of the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project. In addi­tion, Govenor Cielo Gonalez of Huila, House Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Con­sue­lo Gon­za­lez de Per­do­mo and Sen­ate Vice Pres­i­dent Alexan­der Lopez have all come out in sup­port of the region­al strike and the demands of the move­ment.

After two weeks of par­a­lyz­ing con­struc­tion of the dam, con­stant con­fronta­tions with secu­ri­ty from the con­struc­tion site in block­ing the entry of work­ers from both land and the riv­er, the Min­is­ter of Envi­ron­ment final­ly agreed to meet for an hour and a half with the com­mu­ni­ties in a meet­ing medi­at­ed by the gov­er­nor. Jan­u­ary 25 through the 31 there will be pub­lic assem­blies through­out the region where fish­er­peo­ple, agri­cul­tur­al work­ers, cat­tle ranch­ers, log­gers, pick-up truck dri­vers, sand dig­gers and con­struc­tion work­ers affect­ed by the Quim­bo will be able to present their griev­ances to rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Comptroller’s Office and the Ombuds­men Offices fol­lowed by a day of pre­sent­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and archae­o­log­i­cal impacts and the very seri­ous tec­ton­ic risk in the area of the dam. Oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions for the Paso de Cole­gio Bridge, the Paramo of Miraflo­res and oth­er regions affect­ed the bridge dam­age will be held. Fur­ther­more, on Jan. 18 there was a Judi­cial Review of the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project as a result of Vice Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Alexan­der Lopez’s motion to the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment to sus­pend the divert­ing of the Mag­dale­na Riv­er to pre­vent an “irre­versible cat­a­stro­phy” until the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment present its review and response to all the cas­es pre­sent­ed on Feb­ru­ary 3. If the Quim­bo Dam is not sus­pend­ed, ASOQUIMBO is pre­pared to risk lives to occu­py the Dam Con­struc­tion site and stop it indef­i­nite­ly.

The region of the Quim­bo is rich in bio­di­ver­si­ty, includ­ing over 900 ha of Ripar­i­an for­est ecosys­tem along the river´s edge, as well as exten­sive fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al lands. Dur­ing the last four years the project has caused eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion, increased cost of liv­ing, psy­cho­log­i­cal trau­mas, and abus­es against local com­mu­ni­ties. Over 2,000 peo­ple live in the region that would be cov­ered by the 9,500 ha reser­voir, though more than 15,000 peo­ple in cen­tral Huila depend on this region for employ­ment and food pro­duc­tion.

One of the sec­tors most affect­ed by the Dam is the fish­ing indus­try. “The Quim­bo con­struc­tion site dumps a vari­ety of liq­uid and oth­er pol­lu­tion into the riv­er, before the Quim­bo a fam­i­ly could catch up to 40lb. of fish a day now a fam­i­ly is lucky if they can catch 8 lb. ad there is no way to live with that” described Miri­am Restre­po, a local fish­er­woman from Hobo at the strike. “The fish we catch can only live and feed in run­ning water and we fish­er­man do not own land, we live along the sand banks where we fish. Emge­sa does not want to com­pen­sate us because they say we won´t be affect­ed by the Quim­bo.”

The move­ment against the Quim­bo dates back to 2007 when the first envi­ron­men­tal license for the project was giv­en to the Span­ish multi­na­tion­al ener­gy com­pa­ny Emge­sa (now a sub­sidiary of Ital­ian Ener­gy giant Enel) under ques­tion­able cir­cum­stances. At th time, then-Pres­i­dent Alvaro Uribe made busi­ness deals with Emge­sa and did not include any local gov­ern­ment or the leg­is­la­ture from any say in the deci­sion mak­ing process. It was then that the Mag­dale­na Riv­er was hand­ed over to com­pa­ny as a Pub­lic Util­i­ty indef­i­nite­ly by the for­mer pres­i­dent Uribe. Since then, the envi­ron­men­tal license for the project has been changed mul­ti­ple times in nego­ti­a­tions between Emge­sa and the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment, always to cater to the demands of the com­pa­ny. When issues such as the numer­ous sen­si­tive tec­ton­ic faults with­in the region not­ed by INGEOMINAS (the State Geo­log­i­cal Insti­tute) or the unique arche­o­log­i­cal findsthat were dis­cov­ered by the Colom­bian Insti­tute of Anthro­pol­o­gy and His­to­ry (ICANH), this caused the envi­ron­men­tal license to be sus­pend­ed until an accu­rate arche­o­log­i­cal sur­vey of the area was com­plet­ed. Those deci­sions were sub­se­quent­ly revoked by the Pres­i­dent or the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment. In addi­tion,Envi­ron­men­tal Laws were changed by for­mer Pres­i­dent Uribe with less than 72 hours before his term end­ed to favor the com­pa­ny over the impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties in August 2010.

On Novem­ber 29, 2011 the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment and Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Devel­op­ment through Res­o­lu­tion 123 revoked its pri­or sus­pend­ing of the license through Res­o­lu­tion 1096 of June 14 which had been sus­pend­ed for not appro­pri­ate­ly com­pen­sat­ing landown­ers and for dis­plac­ing work­ers from pro­duc­tive farms. The new license was grant­ed stat­ing that pri­or vio­la­tions had been rec­ti­fied with­out the Min­istry of Envi­ron­ment vis­it­ing the region to ver­i­fy what actions Emge­sa report­ed to the Min­istry. The License states that Emge­sa can­not buy out farms that are cur­rent­ly in pro­duc­tion, though “numer­ous farms that we worked on such as La Vir­gina, La Güi­pa and oth­ers are aban­doned in dis­ar­ray when they pre­vi­ous­ly employed up to 30 work­ers each,” explained farm­work­er Harold Segu­ra, a res­i­dent from La Jagua.

Dur­ing the last four years the farm­ers who grow tobac­co, cof­fee, cacao, day labor­ers, fish­er­men, arti­sans, log­gers, and oth­er inhab­i­tants of the region have grown and uni­fied into ASOQUIMBO, rec­og­nized both region­al­ly and nation­al­ly as a deter­mined, effec­tive and coher­ent social move­ment and as an exam­ple of com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance against a hydro­elec­tric dam project whom many believe will set prece­dents for oth­er anti-dam strug­gles in Colom­bia and else­where. As part of Nation­al Move­ment for the Defense of Ter­ri­to­ries of theMove­ment Rios Vivos, ASOQUIMBO has grown to build ties with oth­er com­mu­ni­ties affect­ed by dams, such as Urra I & II en Cor­do­ba, Hidrosog­amoso in San­tander and Hidroituan­go in Antio­quia.

Colom­bian Pres­i­dent Juan Manuel San­tos has placed min­ing and ener­gy pro­duc­tion as a vital “loco­mo­tive” of devel­op­ment for the coun­try that seeks to be piv­otal in the region´s infra­struc­ture cre­ation and resource extrac­tion. Caught in the path of this loco­mo­tive are hun­dreds of indige­nous, Afro-descen­dent and peas­ant com­mu­ni­ties whose ter­ri­to­ries rich in gold and oth­er met­als, coal, oil, hydro­log­i­cal resources and rich soils for agro-fuel pro­duc­tion are caught in the mid­dle of a bat­tle between the State resource extrac­tion poli­cies and their human right to self-deter­mi­na­tion. In Colom­bia, the strug­gle against the Quim­bo is the strug­gle against gold in Suarez, Cau­ca, which is also the strug­gle against oil Palm in the Montes de Maria, as it is the strug­gle against the Cer­re­jon Coal Mine in la Gua­ji­ra.

Please Sup­port the Region­al Move­ment for the Defense of the Ter­ri­to­ry by con­tact­ing Colom­bian Min­is­ter of the Envi­ron­ment Dr. Frank Pearl of the Repub­lic of Colom­bia and inform him that you sup­port the Region­al Strike and call for:

Min­is­ter Frank Pearl
fpearl@minambiente.gov.co
011 57 332 3400

-Imme­di­ate sus­pen­sion of the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project´s Envi­ron­men­tal License. Yes to Agro Eco­log­i­cal Food Secu­ri­ty Campesino Reserve!
- Imme­di­ate sus­pen­sion of the Emer­ald Energy´s Envi­ron­men­tal License in the Cer­ro Paramo de Miraflo­res.
- Emge­sa imme­di­ate­ly repair of the Paso del Cole­gio Bridge and the high­ways con­nect­ing La Pla­ta-Garzón, La Pla­ta-Tesalia-Íquira and La Pla­ta-Leti­cia.

For more infor­ma­tion about the Quim­bo Hydro­elec­tric Project:
Damming Mag­dale­na: Emge­sa Threat­ens Colom­bian Com­mu­ni­ties
The His­to­ry of the Quim­bo in Colom­bia: Dammed or Damned?
Protests against the Quim­bo Dam
Polin­iza­ciones Blog

Three Sea Shepherd Crew Injured in Skirmish with Japanese Harpoon Vessel

January 18th, 2012

The Japanese whalers have escalated their aggression by throwing iron grappling hooks at Sea Shepherd boats.

Two Steve Irwin crew were struck in the shoul­der with iron grap­pling hooks and one crewmem­ber was struck twice in the face with a long bam­boo pole.

January 18th, 2012

The Japanese whalers have escalated their aggression by throwing iron grappling hooks at Sea Shepherd boats.

Two Steve Irwin crew were struck in the shoul­der with iron grap­pling hooks and one crewmem­ber was struck twice in the face with a long bam­boo pole.

The Yushin Maru No. 2 con­tin­ues to tail the Steve Irwin. The inci­dent occurred at 0400 Hours AEST at 64 degrees 17 min­utes South and 155 degrees 41 min­utes East. This is about 300 miles north of Maw­son Penin­su­la off the George V Land coast of Antarc­ti­ca.

“Our small boats were attempt­ing to slow down the Japan­ese har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru No. 2, which is aggres­sive­ly tail­ing the Steve Irwin,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

Yushin Maru sprays Delta boat with water cannonYushin Maru sprays Delta boat with water can­nonAmer­i­can crewmem­ber Bri­an Race, (25) from New York, was jabbed twice in the face with a bam­boo pole receiv­ing lac­er­a­tions above his right eye and on his nose.

Rus­sell Bergh of South Africa, (35) a cam­era­man for Ani­mal Plan­et, was struck in the right arm and shoul­der with an iron grap­pling hook thrown from the har­poon ves­sel result­ing in deep bruis­ing.

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Guil­laume Col­let of France, (27) was also struck in the right arm and shoul­der by an iron grap­pling hook result­ing in deep bruis­ing.

There were no injuries incurred by any of the crew on the Japan­ese ves­sel.

Two of the three har­poon ves­sels have been assigned to tail Sea Shep­herd ships, effec­tive­ly knock­ing out two of the three killing boats.

“We are almost at the lim­it of the east­ern bound­ary of their self assigned hunt­ing area,” said Cap­tain Wat­son. “We should be get­ting close.”

Whale Wars Victory – Activists to be Released

10.1.12

An unsched­uled meet­ing between Japan’s whalers and envi­ron­men­tal activists on the high seas seems an unlike­ly back­drop to an out­break of détente.

10.1.12

An unsched­uled meet­ing between Japan’s whalers and envi­ron­men­tal activists on the high seas seems an unlike­ly back­drop to an out­break of détente.

But Aus­tralia was qui­et­ly cel­e­brat­ing a minor vic­to­ry for diplo­ma­cy on Tues­day after Japan agreed to release three anti-whal­ing activists who ille­gal­ly board­ed one of its whal­ing ships over the week­end. 

The trio, all Aus­tralian cit­i­zens, have been detained on the Shonan Maru 2, which is pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty to the fleet, after clam­ber­ing aboard ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing to protest Japan’s annu­al hunts in the Antarc­tic. The Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ing Com­mis­sion banned com­mer­cial whal­ing in 1986 but allows Japan to hunt a lim­it­ed num­ber of whales for “sci­en­tif­ic research.” The fleet left port last month with plans to kill some 900 whales this sea­son.

The inci­dent threat­ened to cause ten­sion between Aus­tralia and Japan, close trade and secu­ri­ty part­ners. Soon after the men were detained it seemed like­ly that they would be kept aboard the Shonan Maru 2 and tak­en to Japan, where they faced a tri­al and pos­si­ble impris­on­ment for tres­pass­ing.

By late Mon­day evening, how­ev­er, Japan had agreed to release the trio, a move wel­comed by Australia’s prime min­is­ter, Julia Gillard.

Prime Min­is­ter Gillard, who came under imme­di­ate pres­sure at home to secure the activists’ release, thanked Japan for its coop­er­a­tion, but sound­ed a warn­ing to cam­paign­ers think­ing of employ­ing sim­i­lar forms of direct action.

“No one should assume that because an agree­ment has been reached with the Japan­ese gov­ern­ment in this instance that indi­vid­u­als will not be charged and con­vict­ed in the future,” she said in a state­ment. “The best way to stop whal­ing once and for all is through our court action.

Aus­tralia has lodged a legal chal­lenge to the annu­al whale hunts with the inter­na­tion­al court of jus­tice in the Hague but a deci­sion is not expect­ed until 2013 at the ear­li­est.

Can­ber­ra’s del­i­cate task was to bal­ance an elec­tion pledge to end the whale hunts with a pub­lic show of respect for mar­itime law.

The release, which won’t hap­pen until an Aus­tralian coast­guard boat ren­dezvous­es with the Shona Maru 2 in sev­er­al days’ time, was wel­comed by Sea Shep­herd’s founder, Paul Wat­son.

But in an inter­view with Mac­quar­ie Radio, Mr. Wat­son said: “If the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment would do their job and ful­fill their elec­tion promis­es, these things wouldn’t be hap­pen­ing.”

Japan, mean­while, insist­ed the deci­sion to release the men did not mean it had gone soft on Sea Shep­herd.

The trio are not mem­bers of the group – they belong to anoth­er orga­ni­za­tion called For­est Res­cue – and had not injured any mem­bers of the Shonan Maru 2’s crew when they board­ed, Japan’s chief cab­i­net sec­re­tary, Osamu Fujimu­ra, told reporters.

“The three activists were not vio­lent dur­ing or after they board­ed the whal­ing ves­sel,” he said. “There was no evi­dence that they were part of Sea Shep­herd, which has been engaged in obstruct­ing the fleet.”

Japan may have also had in mind the neg­a­tive inter­na­tion­al pub­lic­i­ty it attract­ed in 2010, when it pros­e­cut­ed for­mer Sea Shep­herd mem­ber Pete Bethune, who had board­ed the Shonan Maru 2 to protest the sink­ing of the group’s high-tech speed­boat. Mr. Bethune, who had been car­ry­ing a knife, was giv­en a sus­pend­ed sen­tence and deport­ed.

Offi­cial sup­port for the whal­ing pro­gram was also put under the spot­light last month when it was revealed that the gov­ern­ment had used 2.28 bil­lion yen ($30 mil­lion) of tax­pay­er mon­ey intend­ed for the tsuna­mi recov­ery effort to fund this year’s hunt, on top an exist­ing $6 mil­lion annu­al sub­sidy. The fish­eries agency said the use of the fund was jus­ti­fied because one of the towns destroyed in the dis­as­ter was a whal­ing port.

ANOTHER EXCAVATOR MADE HARMLESS

Jan­u­ary 12, 2012 — Swe­den
report­ed to Öre­bro’s ALF/DBF Press Office (after pho­to from svt.se):

“We just end­ed a death machine, a so called exca­va­tor, in the wood side of Öre­bro.. You should do so to if you care at all about the earth­lings around you, and all of our home, plan­et earth.

-Against the true ECO FASCISM: the fas­cism com­mit­ted against all wild life, and against all oth­er oppres­sion.
FUCK ALL NATIONAL STATES, FUCK PATRIOTISM! Love this plan­ets life instead!
GO OUT!!!

EARTH LIBERATION FRONT
JORDENS BEFRIELSEFRONT”

Video

Sea Shepherd Dancing Dangerously With the Outlaw Whaling Fleet in the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary

11 Jan­u­ary 2012

The nau­ti­cal chess pieces con­tin­ue to move and the board keeps chang­ing in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

11 Jan­u­ary 2012

The nau­ti­cal chess pieces con­tin­ue to move and the board keeps chang­ing in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary.

The Shonan Maru #2 is no longer chas­ing the Steve Irwin. The secu­ri­ty ves­sel has been replaced by the har­poon ves­sel Yushin Maru #2. It is assumed that the Shonan Maru #2 will now head west towards the Aus­tralian cus­toms ves­sel Ocean Pro­tec­tor to turn over the three Aus­tralian pris­on­ers onboard. With the Yushin Maru #2 now fol­low­ing the Steve Irwin, and the Yushin Maru #3 still at Mac­quar­ie Island, the Nis­shin Maru now has only one har­poon ves­sel left — the Yushin Maru.

Sea Shep­herd has tem­porar­i­ly lost drone con­tact with the Nis­shin Maru and can­not guar­an­tee that whal­ing has not begun. If so, it will pro­ceed with two of the three har­poon ves­sels not involved in killing oper­a­tions. “If we had one more ship, there would be no pos­si­bil­i­ty of any whales dying,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “In July I met with Green­peace rep­re­sen­ta­tives at the IWC and request­ed of them that they send one ship to sup­port us. I told them that one more ship would shut down this entire fleet. They refused, and that is deeply dis­ap­point­ing, and as a result whales may die.”

Sea Shep­herd is work­ing to secure a third large, fast, ice-strength­ened ves­sel to return next sea­son. The Sea Shep­herd fast scout ves­sel Brigitte Bar­dot remains in Fre­man­tle under­go­ing repairs from dam­age caused by the extreme weath­er con­di­tions of the South­ern Ocean.

“We have demon­strat­ed that we can shut these poach­ers down and every year we become more effec­tive than the year before. One more ship will give us the abil­i­ty to throw a blan­ket of inter­ven­tion over them that will com­plete­ly extin­guish their ille­gal oper­a­tions,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son.

The drop­ping away of the Shonan Maru #2 removes the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the trans­fer of the three For­est Res­cue men to the Steve Irwin. The trans­fer of the men to the Steve Irwin would have saved the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars. Mean­while despite being ordered out of the ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters of Australia’s Mac­Quar­ie Island, the Yushin Maru #3 con­tin­ues to ille­gal­ly remain inside the twelve mile ter­ri­to­r­i­al lim­it.

“The Japan­ese whalers act like they own the entire South­ern Ocean,” said Bob Bark­er Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen of the Nether­lands. “They go where they want, when they want, and do what they want, with com­plete con­tempt for Aus­tralian sov­er­eign­ty.”

 

Scaling tree cutters and trees to halt Corrib pipeline works

Shell today, 9th Jan­u­ary 2012, began to cut down a Coillte plan­ta­tion in the vil­lage of Leen­amore, Co. Mayo. This sur­prise move marks the begin­ning of their attempts to pre­pare the 4km stretch of land between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and the Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery. Despite a large Gar­da and pri­vate secu­ri­ty pres­ence, cam­paign­ers entered the tree felling area and halt­ed work.

Shell start­ing this sec­tion of the pipeline was com­plete­ly unan­tic­i­pat­ed both by local cam­paign­ers and those of us liv­ing at Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp. Rumour had it that the clear­ing of the plan­ta­tion might not hap­pen until lat­er in the year. As it hap­pened many of us had planned to take the day off actions today to tend the camp gar­dens, carve new wind tur­bine blades, bake bread and work on oth­er projects. The day turned out quite dif­fer­ent to how we planned…

When we arrived at Leen­amore at 11am we saw that they were cut­ting down trees at two dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the road and set­ting up a machin­ery stor­age com­pound. There was a heavy Gar­da pres­ence includ­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic order unit with no num­ber tags. There were twen­ty Gar­daí and at least fifty of Shell’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty IRMS attempt­ing to guard the tree line. There was sev­en of us, basi­cal­ly mean­ing we were out­num­bered by about 10 to 1.

A few of us tried to get over the fence or into the trees to pre­vent the tree cut­ting from hap­pen­ing. Five of us suc­ceed­ed in breach­ing lines of secu­ri­ty to impede work at dif­fer­ent times. Some of us were car­ried back over the barbed wire fence by secu­ri­ty guards. The secu­ri­ty guards had real dif­fi­cul­ty in remov­ing us from the area as the ground was extreme­ly uneven and bog­gy. They kept stum­bling as they car­ried us out and it was real­ly dan­ger­ous for the secu­ri­ty them­selves. The Gar­dai were stand­ing out on the road and wouldn’t let us stand on the road.

After try­ing to get in over the fence along the road a few times, sev­er­al cam­paign­ers broke away to try to enter from fur­ther away and dis­ap­peared in the woods.

To everyone’s delight, one cam­paign­er reap­peared about an hour lat­er, on top of a tree-cut­ting dig­ger. Anoth­er cam­paign­er, also reap­peared a hour lat­er, with­out his trousers! His expla­na­tion was that the ski-suit he had been wear­ing had been caus­ing rustling as he approached secu­ri­ty lines so even­tu­al­ly he had to resort to remov­ing them and run in his ther­mals to make it to climb a tree that was in the path of Shell’s destruc­tion. As a new­com­er to the camp, this is his expe­ri­ence of try­ing to stop Shell in his own words;

“I arrived at the camp a few days ago. It’s my first vis­it. I spent the first day help­ing to block lor­ries and got a good chance ot be active against Shell’s destruc­tion. This morn­ing every­one was sur­prised that Shell were start­ing work on the for­est. A few of us went away to come at the machin­ery from anoth­er angle. We crawled through the woods towards the area they were cut­ting slow­ly. As were crawl­ing towards the dig­ger I dart­ed off left. All the secu­ri­ty were shout­ing ‘hold the line’. I kept run­ning until a group of secu­ri­ty broke away from a group at the road and start­ed run­ning after me. I ran back into the woods with them run­ning behind me shout­ing, so I went to ground and hid for 20 min­utes. Then crawled down a bit and looked up to see where they were and they were all around me. I had to run accorss a big gap where they could all see me and into anoth­er patch of woods. With them all run­ning behind me I got into the trees again. I reached the first suit­able tree to climb just to the right of the tree-cut­ting-dig­ger. By the time I was up the secu­ri­ty guards had run past me but couldn’t see me. Fif­teen or twen­ty of them were below film­ing and wan­der­ing around. They shout­ing at me, things like ‘are you going to come down?’ and ‘Chop him down!’. I climbed right to the top to see where the dig­ger was. I swung to anoth­er tree and then to anoth­er to get a bit clos­er to the dig­ger as it moved. I stayed up for about 45 min­utes as the dig­ger broke up the trees beside me. The secu­ri­ty guards start­ed to get more and more angry with me. They start­ed shak­ing the tree and get­ting sticks. I said, ‘I’m real­ly going to want to come down with you doing that!’. I nego­ti­at­ed with them to let me come down safe­ly and agreed that one of them would escourt me out of the woods. I met up with the oth­er campers and camp back to get a cup of tea and some food. A few local peo­ple called in to catch up with us. I feel good to be here to so far. I’ve met some good peo­ple. I found it good to be doing actions with ener­getic peo­ple who have been fight­ing this cam­paign for a long time.”

The oth­er camper up on the tree-cut­ter stayed up to stop work until 6.30pm before com­ing down. This camper report­ed that one of the IRMS secu­ri­ty super­vi­sors that had been run­ning after him in the woods, as he got to the tree-cut­ter, had injured his ankle and had even­tu­al­ly been stretchered off the site. The cam­paign­ers were not arrest­ed as the cut­ting was hap­pen­ing on pri­vate land.

New camp mem­bers are always wel­come and even if you don’t feel like crawl­ing around in the woods in your first few days there is plen­ty of oth­er things to do…

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.

http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org
 
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Shell’s tree cutting disrupted for second day running

Dis­rup­tion to the felling of the Coillte wood­land for Shel­l’s planned onshore pipeline (along with the stop­ping of haulage trucks to the Augh­oose com­pound), con­tin­ued today as pro­tes­tors inter­cept­ed a spe­cial­ist 8‑track tree felling machine between the Augh­oose tun­nelling com­pound and Leen­amore for­est.

A Bar­ret­t’s truck trans­port­ing the machine was halt­ed as it made the 1km jour­ney at 7am this morn­ing by a small band of mer­ry pro­tes­tors, one of whom quick­ly ascend­ed the arm and set­tled into posi­tion as a lone Gar­da looked on. Sev­er­al more Gar­daí soon came to join her sup­port­ed by a large num­ber of IRMS staff who have been posi­tioned along the road by the for­est since yes­ter­day.

As a win­tery dawn broke over the beseiged bog the Gar­daí “removal” team arrived along with their “trans­porter”, dri­ven by Sgt Aidan Gill, who then pro­ceed­ed to ini­ti­ate Gar­da attacks on the gath­er­ing sup­port­ers, in the name of health and safe­ty.

Fol­low­ing some hasty posi­tion­ing of ‘crash-mat­tress­es’ and blan­kets (!!) on and around the machine an attempt was made to remove the pro­tes­tors, only for the Gar­daí to dis­cov­er that the pro­tes­tor had D‑locked her neck to the machine.

In an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly reck­less move, the Gar­daí then decid­ed to use an angle grinder just mil­lime­ters away from the pro­tes­tors’ head, all to enable the con­tin­u­a­tion of Shel­l’s work for the day.

How­ev­er the delay of 3 & 1/2 hours to the tree felling had also thwart­ed all deliv­er­ies of stone and removals of peat at the Augh­oose com­pound as the dri­ver of the truck car­ry­ing the machine had been swerv­ing so much, as to end up pre­vent­ing the pas­sage of any oth­er trucks on the road.
After being tak­en down the pro­tes­tor was arrest­ed and charged and is due to appear in Bel­mul­let court along with 4 oth­er cam­paign­ers.

Lat­er on in the evening anoth­er protest was called for out­side Bel­lan­aboy, how­ev­er it seems the lat­est activ­i­ty has result­ed in a fur­ther increase in the amount of Gar­daí loi­ter­ing in the area. About 15 Gar­daí were imme­di­ate­ly on hand and so not too many trucks were stopped in the evening.

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is call­ing for sup­port in advance of this com­ing Fri­day the 13th of Jan­u­ary. Fri­day is the first Day of Sol­i­dar­i­ty of the new year, when peo­ple from around Ire­land are invit­ed to join the protests for a day to show their sup­port for the ongo­ing resis­tance to the Cor­rib Gas Project.