Protests delay destructive Amazon dams

25.3.11
The con­struc­tion of the Madeira dams in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon has been delayed, fol­low­ing vio­lent protests at the Jirau dam site last week.

Con­struc­tion work­ers report­ed­ly set fire to build­ings and more than 40 bus­es at the site, and ran­sacked shops and cash-points, in protest against low pay and bad work­ing con­di­tions.

The protests brought the dam con­struc­tion to a stand still.

25.3.11
The con­struc­tion of the Madeira dams in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon has been delayed, fol­low­ing vio­lent protests at the Jirau dam site last week.

Con­struc­tion work­ers report­ed­ly set fire to build­ings and more than 40 bus­es at the site, and ran­sacked shops and cash-points, in protest against low pay and bad work­ing con­di­tions.

The protests brought the dam con­struc­tion to a stand still.

The Jirau and San­to Anto­nio dams, part of the Madeira Riv­er hydro­elec­tric com­plex, will dam­age vast areas of land, upon which numer­ous trib­al peo­ples depend for their sur­vival. The Indi­ans did not give their con­sent for the dams to be built.

Domin­gos Par­intintin of the Par­intintin tribe said, ‘We hope that the project will be stopped, because it is our chil­dren who will suf­fer the con­se­quences. They will no longer have enough fish or enough game to feed them­selves’.

The uncon­tact­ed Indi­ans liv­ing in the area are extreme­ly vul­ner­a­ble as they depend com­plete­ly on their for­est, and they have lit­tle resis­tance to out­side dis­eases, which threat­en to dri­ve them to extinc­tion.

A report in the Fol­ha de São Paulo, one of Brazil’s biggest news­pa­pers, warned of an ‘explo­sion of crim­i­nal­i­ty’ in the area, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cide, sex­u­al exploita­tion and drug traf­fick­ing, as the dam con­struc­tion has attract­ed thou­sands of immi­grants. More than 37,000 con­struc­tion work­ers are report­ed to be build­ing the two dams.

This huge wave of immi­gra­tion is putting pres­sure on the land and increas­ing the risks faced by the uncon­tact­ed Indi­ans.

French com­pa­ny GDF Suez is lead­ing the con­sor­tium build­ing the Jirau dam.

A banquet of possibilities…the 12th OKasional cafe is on it’s way

March 21, 2011

We are hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings in the next few weeks before we open up again in a new loca­tion, so get in touch to find out when and where our next meet up is. It’s a prop­er ban­quet of pos­si­bil­i­ties so come share your ideas and enthu­si­asm, join a work­ing group, and get involved.

March 21, 2011

We are hold­ing reg­u­lar meet­ings in the next few weeks before we open up again in a new loca­tion, so get in touch to find out when and where our next meet up is. It’s a prop­er ban­quet of pos­si­bil­i­ties so come share your ideas and enthu­si­asm, join a work­ing group, and get involved.

We are tak­ing book­ings for work­shops already begin­ning on the 11th of April so hit us up with your pro­pos­als…

give us a shout at our email mcrokcafe@gmail.com

OK-UPY & DEFY.X
http://okcafe.wordpress.com

The Unfair Fare Dodge! A railway adventure

16 April, 12 noon

16 April, 12 noon

Dressed as The Rail­way Chil­dren (as much tweed as you can man­age!) we will hold a ral­ly at Mon­u­ment sta­tion before tak­ing red flan­nel pet­ti­coats and flags to the rail­way plat­form. From there you’re invit­ed to join the Unfair Fare Dodge as we pay a rea­son­able fare for a 30 mile jour­ney (we’ll pay the amount you would pay for the equiv­a­lent jour­ney in Europe). Our gov­ern­ment plans to increase fares a mas­sive 31% over the next 4 years. To cut car­bon emis­sions, we need to cut — not increase — train fares. We can do some­thing about that.

Organ­ised by Cli­mate Rush
More info: http://www.railwayadventure.wordpress.com

The Climate Renegades are GO GO GO!

At a time when cuts and aus­ter­i­ty are grab­bing the head­lines, the need for action on cli­mate change has nev­er been greater. Floods, heat­waves, ener­gy short­ages, ris­ing food prices – these are just the start if we don’t take action now.

At a time when cuts and aus­ter­i­ty are grab­bing the head­lines, the need for action on cli­mate change has nev­er been greater. Floods, heat­waves, ener­gy short­ages, ris­ing food prices – these are just the start if we don’t take action now.

This sum­mer the Cli­mate Rene­gades will tour the coun­try to sup­port grass-root and com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles, both embry­on­ic and estab­lished, based upon local needs and wish­es. Are you part of a local cam­paign against cuts and/or cli­mate change that wants to do some­thing big this sum­mer? Or per­haps you are some­one who has skills to offer? If so, read on…

We are a roam­ing col­lec­tive of expe­ri­enced envi­ron­men­tal activists with skills to share. We are look­ing to hold events that raise aware­ness of the need for action on cli­mate jus­tice, enable inde­pen­dence from a con­strict­ing eco­nom­ic sys­tem, and empow­er com­mu­ni­ties under threat. These events will cre­ate a space for col­lec­tive cre­ativ­i­ty and free expres­sion, will pro­mote and utilise non-vio­lent direct action as a viable tac­tic for inspir­ing rad­i­cal change, and will act as space for a free exchange of skills, knowl­edge and ideas.

Cli­mate Rene­gades is one of a few projects that came out of the Camp for Cli­mate Action’s Space for Change gath­er­ing.

We wish to pro­mote pro­gres­sive change from peo­ple com­ing togeth­er with­in and across com­mu­ni­ties in the face of dom­i­nant pow­ers, to con­front prob­lems and take their fate into their own hands. Through a diver­si­ty of tac­tics we wish to sup­port this change.

We find repres­sion and abuse of social strug­gles by con­cen­trat­ed pow­er – be that state, big busi­ness or ‘rev­o­lu­tion­ary’ Polit­i­cal par­ties. For this rea­son, we share a tra­di­tion and com­mit­ment to active anti-hier­ar­chy and col­lec­tive deci­sion mak­ing.

Cli­mate Rene­gades is not envis­aged to form a move­ment or a mod­el for future years. Our role is one of facil­i­tat­ing and devel­op­ing the strength of cam­paigns, enabling the vision­ing of com­mon solu­tions and high­light­ing the impor­tance of envi­ron­men­tal strug­gles in this time of forced aus­ter­i­ty.

For more info, e‑mail us or check out our Face­book group!

climaterenegades@riseup.net
http://www.facebook.com/help/?mail_sent#!group.php?gid=116697736256

BANK FIREBOMBED BY ELF, RUSSIA

anony­mous report:

“A group of ELF activists reports a bank fire­bombed on the night of March the 12th. Win­dows bro­ken and 4 molo­tovs (3 litres of gaso­line total) thrown inside the office made for a nice and bright firestorm.

anony­mous report:

“A group of ELF activists reports a bank fire­bombed on the night of March the 12th. Win­dows bro­ken and 4 molo­tovs (3 litres of gaso­line total) thrown inside the office made for a nice and bright firestorm.

Bank we have cho­sen to attack plays major role in pro­vid­ing finan­cial sup­port for defor­esta­tion project in Khim­ki for­est: it loaned out about 29 bil­lion rubles to the con­trac­tors respon­si­ble for toll high­way con­struc­tion that has already killed acres of for­est north of Moscow.
We express ten­der sol­i­dar­i­ty with anar­chists from Belarus who suf­fer from state repres­sion for tak­ing an active posi­tion against destruc­tion of our forests (they are blamed for a fire­bomb­ing attempt at russ­ian embassy in Min­sk, Belarus). And we call for decen­tral­ized actions against Sber­bank of Rus­sia, Vin­ci com­pa­ny and Belarus gov­ern­ment offices over­seas on March the 15th (or lat­er, nev­er mind the date) on behalf of our belarus com­rades.

ELF-Rus­sia”

Arson at National Institute of Forestry, Agricultural, and Livestock Research in Mexico

6 March 2011
anony­mous report (trans­la­tion by This Is Our Job):

6 March 2011
anony­mous report (trans­la­tion by This Is Our Job):

“We, the Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front, take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the arson at the Mex­i­can Val­ley Exper­i­men­tal Field in Tex­co­co, Mex­i­co State. The field belongs to the Nation­al Insti­tute of Forestry, Agri­cul­tur­al, and Live­stock Research (INIFAP), which is ded­i­cat­ed to the research and devel­op­ment of “improved tech­nol­o­gy” in the areas of agri­cul­ture, ani­mal hus­bandry, and for­est exploita­tion. For exam­ple, INIFAP has been respon­si­ble for the pro­duc­tion of over 100 new genet­ic vari­eties of plants since 2005, great­ly increas­ing the country’s crop pro­duc­tion and there­fore its demand for land to be defor­est­ed and pol­lut­ed with pes­ti­cides and her­bi­cides.

This year, INIFAP opened the Nation­al Cen­ter for Genet­ic Resources (CNRG), which is respon­si­ble for stor­ing genet­ic sam­ples of every species endem­ic to Mex­i­co and Latin Amer­i­ca.

The Sci­en­tists in this field argue that their project is ben­e­fi­cial to ecosys­tems, but if we ana­lyze it, these peo­ple are real­ly ded­i­cat­ing their lives to the cre­ation of new types of organ­isms in the name of progress. If we leave such a great vari­ety in their hands, will any­thing ever be out of their reach? INIFAP also car­ries out forestry research, which it uses to pro­mote the increased defor­esta­tion of wild habi­tats. For exam­ple, two weeks ago INIFAP pub­lished an arti­cle about the tim­ber indus­try, an insti­tu­tion that had devel­oped “eco­log­i­cal” (note the quotes) fur­naces for dry­ing logs in the moun­tains north of Puebla. In its arti­cle, INIFAP made its hopes clear that these fur­naces would lead to growth in the region’s forestry indus­try, thus threat­en­ing an envi­ron­ment in which all kinds of species coex­ist.

There­fore, we claim the fol­low­ing eco­tages inside and out­side this fed­er­al insti­tu­tion:

1. Leav­ing an incen­di­ary device—made from three litres of gaso­line, fus­es for det­o­na­tion, and air fresh­en­ing pel­lets as delays—among hun­dreds of sacks of her­bi­cide in a ware­house inside their facil­i­ty.

2. Leav­ing anoth­er incen­di­ary device—fueled by four liters of gasoline—at the entrance to the main build­ing near the exper­i­men­tal field.

3. Leav­ing two incen­di­ary devices inside two green­hous­es out­side and behind the facil­i­ty.

4. Also leav­ing behind declar­a­tive and threat­en­ing graffiti—like “THIS TIME IT WAS FIRE, NEXT TIME IT WILL BE BOMBS,” “ELF,” “INIFAP = DESTRUCTION OF WILD NATURE,” “FLT,” “MORE GMOS, MORE FIRE,” among others—on the win­dows, floor, and walls of the main build­ing; the walls of the oth­er build­ings; an INIFAP van; and the pow­er gen­er­a­tor.

We’ve struck again. We made use of months of thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion to study the tar­get, tak­ing into account the shifts of the guards, who must have cer­tain­ly been sur­prised to find out we were there that morn­ing of Feb­ru­ary 27—leaping over their secu­ri­ty fence, run­ning through their park­ing lot, and turn­ing our exis­tence into a threat­en­ing aggra­va­tion to the projects of those who dream of total domes­ti­ca­tion. We infil­trat­ed the insti­tu­tion itself as well as its fields, where the green­hous­es were locat­ed. We shift­ed into action once again, our fire reignit­ing to dam­age and destroy the prop­er­ty of those who believe they own the plan­et on which we sur­vive as the degen­er­ate species of the tech­no­log­i­cal-indus­tri­al sys­tem.

Keep­ing our impris­oned anti­civ­i­liza­tion com­rades Adrián and Braulio in mind, we’re absolute­ly ready to make this type of attack a clear mes­sage to indus­tries and insti­tu­tions that imple­ment tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment.

In anoth­er sense, the attack was a sym­bol­ic act direct­ed at sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy. To us, the action may have been of very lit­tle or no impor­tance, but it was still nec­es­sary, since from our per­spec­tive it’s deplorable to sit around like mere pas­sive spec­ta­tors wait­ing for things to change. We don’t believe that this action is going to change real­i­ty right away, as that would make us either naive or over­ly prag­mat­ic. But it does func­tion as a des­per­ate act of expres­sion through which we sig­ni­fy that the real­i­ty we live in must be negat­ed in its total­i­ty, and that the best nega­tion is the destruc­tion of what­ev­er gives mean­ing to the estab­lish­ment: “social peace,” nor­mal­i­ty, insti­tu­tions, respect for prop­er­ty, etc. In this case, the destruc­tion was direct­ed at one of the major parts of modernity’s sys­tem of dom­i­na­tion: tech­no-sci­ence. This time, the attack was on a fed­er­al gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tion respon­si­ble for forestry research and biotech­nol­o­gy, among oth­er things. As a pre­text for its exis­tence, we’re told that it is seek­ing a bet­ter life for the human beings who live in this coun­try, cre­at­ing accep­tance of this kind of research among the pop­u­lace. But, as we all know, there are also neg­a­tive aspects, which to us have greater impact and are more unac­cept­able and than the ben­e­fits: the arti­fi­cial­iza­tion and dom­i­na­tion of wild nature, espe­cial­ly of poten­tial­ly free beings includ­ing human beings, plus the denial of the nec­es­sary auton­o­my for free human self-deter­mi­na­tion. On the one hand, the state grants itself the right and the oblig­a­tion to pro­vide its inhab­i­tants with the means for their sur­vival. On the oth­er hand, the state isn’t even nec­es­sary, since it caus­es alien­ation when­ev­er its sub­jects doesn’t find them­selves direct­ly immersed in activ­i­ties that serve to sat­is­fy their sur­vival needs. This leads to numer­ous psy­choso­cial prob­lems, and of course gen­er­ates the mar­ket as an inter­me­di­ary, which in turn func­tions through the stan­dard­iza­tion of the mas­sive present-day con­sump­tion that is dete­ri­o­rat­ing the envi­ron­ment. This is very much relat­ed to the insti­tu­tion we attacked, which attempts to make excus­es for con­tin­u­ing its sci­en­tif­ic bar­barism by cre­at­ing new technologies—in this case, biotech­nolo­gies that claim to solve the prob­lems that sci­ence itself caus­es, fos­ter­ing the idea that such ecosys­tem dete­ri­o­ra­tion doesn’t mat­ter as long as we have the sci­ence to fix it. Thus, a vicious cir­cle is cre­at­ed that attempts to solve prob­lems with more prob­lems, under the pre­tence of a “bet­ter life.”

Our pro­pos­al is to negate the arti­fi­cial real­i­ty that civ­i­liza­tion has con­struct­ed, not indi­rect­ly, but by seek­ing a way of life that doesn’t involve domination—the most autonomous way of life pos­si­ble with­in wild ecosys­tems and with­out inter­me­di­aries, espe­cial­ly those that are mere decep­tions like sci­ence and mod­ern dom­i­nat­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Of course, this pro­pos­al won’t be accept­ed by most peo­ple, which is fine and even desir­able, since among the prob­lems posed by forms of social orga­ni­za­tion are the dom­i­nat­ing struc­tures con­ceived by mass soci­eties. There­fore, we trust that peo­ple who have a tru­ly crit­i­cal and rad­i­cal con­science will reflect on the real prob­lems con­fronting us and act accord­ing­ly.

We con­tin­ue to be the burn­ing rage of a dying plan­et.

—Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front, Mex­i­co”

Sizewell Camp 2011, 22–25 Apr

Skill Share, Net­work, Protest and Remem­ber
Pow­er for the peo­ple, not prof­its for the few

Fri 22 – Mon 25 April
with NATIONAL DEMO — SAT 23 APRIL

Spend East­er week­end camp­ing on the beach at Sizewell, on the pic­turesque Suf­folk coast, east­ern Eng­land, to show your oppo­si­tion to new nuclear pow­er and high­light the need for sus­tain­able ener­gy solu­tions.

Skill Share, Net­work, Protest and Remem­ber
Pow­er for the peo­ple, not prof­its for the few

Fri 22 – Mon 25 April
with NATIONAL DEMO — SAT 23 APRIL

Spend East­er week­end camp­ing on the beach at Sizewell, on the pic­turesque Suf­folk coast, east­ern Eng­land, to show your oppo­si­tion to new nuclear pow­er and high­light the need for sus­tain­able ener­gy solu­tions.

The week­end will also mark the 25th anniver­sary of the Cher­nobyl nuclear dis­as­ter. It includes a protest at the pow­er sta­tion entrance, A pub­lic meet­ing, skill-shar­ing and info work­shops, wood­land and beach walks, veg­an grub and net­work­ing. Now is the time to take action against new nuclear build. Come and join us to say: Nuclear pow­er? No thanks!

Con­tact:
camp@sizewellcamp.org.uk
http://sizewellcamp.org.uk

The camp is organ­ised by activists from the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work

Standing up to Surveillance Conference, 17 Apr

A Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing.
Sun­day 17th April. 10.30am – 5pm.
Venue : Rich Mix 35 – 47 Beth­nal Green Road, Lon­don, E1 6LA

Entry: £5 (unwaged) £10 (waged) dona­tion. This includes tea, cof­fee and a light lunch.
Pri­or reg­is­tra­tion is essen­tial.

A Con­fer­ence host­ed by the Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing.
Sun­day 17th April. 10.30am – 5pm.
Venue : Rich Mix 35 – 47 Beth­nal Green Road, Lon­don, E1 6LA

Entry: £5 (unwaged) £10 (waged) dona­tion. This includes tea, cof­fee and a light lunch.
Pri­or reg­is­tra­tion is essen­tial.

Speak­ers include: Tom Fowler (activist and edi­tor of Rad­i­cal Wales), Marc Vallee (pho­to­jour­nal­ist and inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist), Jason Parkin­son (video­jour­nal­ist), Kevin Blowe (Com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre work­er, writer and com­men­ta­tor), Sam Wal­ton, (activist with green and black cross and cli­mate camp legal teams), Emi­ly Apple (Fit­watch activist) and oth­ers to be con­firmed.

The gath­er­ing of ‘intel­li­gence’ by police on polit­i­cal pro­test­ers and minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties is now a com­mon­place activ­i­ty. Some ini­tia­tives hit the press – the use of under­cov­er police offi­cers to infil­trate paci­fist and envi­ron­men­tal cam­paigns, for exam­ple, or installing ’covert’ cam­eras with counter ter­ror­ism mon­ey to watch the move­ments of Birmingham’s Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.

Oth­ers have become rou­tine and sys­tem­at­ic; pho­tograph­ing peo­ple attend­ing demon­stra­tions; demand­ing names and address­es; ’map­ping’ com­mu­ni­ties; gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion from uni­ver­si­ties, Mosques and com­mu­ni­ty organ­i­sa­tions; build­ing up a data­base of pro­test­ers and their activ­i­ties. Intel­li­gence gath­er­ing is big busi­ness, and there are huge sums to be made by the com­pa­nies that pro­duce and sup­ply the lat­est sur­veil­lance equip­ment or ana­lyt­i­cal soft­ware.

What is dri­ving this rapid and seem­ing­ly unstop­pable descent into a sur­veil­lance state? Why are so many of us poten­tial tar­gets for state scruti­ny? Is an increas­ing demand for intel­li­gence dri­ven by a fear of ‘extrem­ism’? Or by the avail­abil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy and the mil­lions that can be made from it? And what can be done to stop it?

Many of the speak­ers at the Stand­ing up to Sur­veil­lance con­fer­ence have first-hand expe­ri­ence of the per­son­al and polit­i­cal con­se­quences of intel­li­gence-gath­er­ing by police or secu­ri­ty ser­vices. The aim is to pro­vide a space to share expe­ri­ences, pool knowl­edge, and devel­op a deep­er under­stand­ing of how our soci­ety as a whole is affect­ed.

Every­one is wel­come.

The Net­work for Police Mon­i­tor­ing includes cam­paign groups Fit­watch, CAMPACC, Newham Mon­i­tor­ing Project, Cli­mate Camp Legal Team and The Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp.

After Space for Change

The ‘dis­cus­sion space’ on crab­grass is the place to share com­ments, con­cerns and ideas about the decision(s) made at Space for Change. Here’s how:

1) Go to https://we.riseup.net/discussion_space.
2) Click ‘log in’ at the top right cor­ner
3) Once logged in, select ‘join group’
4) And you’re in!

The ‘dis­cus­sion space’ on crab­grass is the place to share com­ments, con­cerns and ideas about the decision(s) made at Space for Change. Here’s how:

1) Go to https://we.riseup.net/discussion_space.
2) Click ‘log in’ at the top right cor­ner
3) Once logged in, select ‘join group’
4) And you’re in!

If you don’t already have a crab­grass user­name and pass­word you can quick­ly get one by going to https://we.riseup.net and select­ing ‘new account’.

3) INTERIM WORKING GROUPS — get involved!

The fol­low­ing inter­im work­ing groups were set up at Space for Change:

- Tat and Dosh: to max­imise the use­ful­ness of our mate­r­i­al resources
— Com­mu­ni­ca­tions: to address ongo­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and media issues. To learn from and doc­u­ment our expe­ri­ences
— New struc­tures: to inves­ti­gate new organ­i­sa­tion­al forms, struc­tures and tac­tics for pos­si­ble next exper­i­ments.
— Next meet­ing: to organ­ise a meet­ing in the next 2–3 months to share ideas about these next exper­i­ments

They each have Crab­grass pages that can be found by putting the fol­low­ing after https://we.riseup.net/
tat_dosh
com­mu­ni­ca­tions
new_structures
next_meeting

Then click ‘request to join group’.

All of these groups are part of the inter­im Crab­grass Net­work ‘After Space for Change’ which you can join here:
https://we.riseup.net/after_space_for_change. Hav­ing groups be part of a net­work is use­ful to be able to see what oth­er groups are doing.

You can either join the whole net­work or just one of the work­ing groups.

If Crab­grass is a bit strange to you, check out the help pages here:
https://we.riseup.net/crabgrass

4) METAMORPHOSIS STATEMENT

In case you missed the state­ment com­ing out of Space for Change at Monk­ton Wyld, it can be read on the Cli­mate Camp web­site here:
www.climatecamp.org.uk/2011-statement

“FRIENDS OF THE EARTH” TORCH CARS, ARGENTINA

2 March 2011
anony­mous com­mu­nique (trans­la­tion):

“Arson attacks on vehi­cles in Buenos Aires, Argenti­na

Image: http://www.lahaine.org/b2-img11/arte.JPG

2 March 2011
anony­mous com­mu­nique (trans­la­tion):

“Arson attacks on vehi­cles in Buenos Aires, Argenti­na

Image: http://www.lahaine.org/b2-img11/arte.JPG

We were fed up with the futile crit­i­cisms of the domes­ti­cat­ed thugs who, under the guise of pro­mot­ing our well-being, have tak­en the life from us with their machines of dom­i­na­tion. We decid­ed it was much bet­ter to look at what actions a per­son can take to make each day a lit­tle more free.

Far from want­i­ng to debate and get our­selves involved in the absurd wel­farist demands required to be a part of the reformist strug­gle, we say to them that we shit on their cages, cars and police … and on every per­son who is sat­is­fied being a slave …
They should all feel unsafe because war has been declared on soci­ety by those who have respect for nature.

Free­dom for our com­rades impris­oned in the bomb case in Chile who are on hunger strike.
Greet­ings to those who spread word of our actions.

Arson attacks on auto­mo­biles dur­ing the last week of Feb­ru­ary 2011:
· 4x4 truck on Bahia Blan­ca and Melin­cue (Devo­to).
· Auto­mo­bile parked on Llaval­lol and Pedro Lozano, a block from the sta­tion, and at the door of the legal address of the pub­lish­er respon­si­ble for the dis­trict gov­ern­ment (VDP) web­site.

Do it your­self, the­o­ry and prac­tice.

Friends of the Earth.”