The world’s largest exca­va­tor, also owned by RWE. Not nec­es­sar­i­ly the one occu­pied.

The Ham­bach For­est, in South­west Ger­many, is the site of an ongo­ing for­est and mead­ow occu­pa­tion against the expan­sion of the adja­cent lig­nite (brown coal) mine.

March 15th, 2015

In the night from Sat­ur­day to Sun­day at about 00:30 am, activists of the anti-coal-move­ment have occu­pied an exca­va­tor inside the open­cast-mine Inden. One per­son is locked on, three oth­ers have climbed the dig­ger with har­ness­es. A ban­ner read­ing “Lig­nite kills. Every­where.” was dropped.

“The dead­lock of the exca­va­tor, which is one of the cen­tre­pieces of RWE, means a mas­sive inter­ven­tion in the smooth run­ning of the cor­po­ra­tion. There­by we delib­er­ate­ly dis­turb the con­tin­ued exploita­tion of a source of ener­gy which entire ecosys­tems fall vic­tim to”, says Kon­ny L. (name changed). “Due to the expan­sion of the pit peo­ple are dis­placed and dis­pos­sessed. At the Ham­bach mine, an old for­est is being cut down, which was since the begin­ning of the Mid­dle Ages in cit­i­zens‘ hands – if a for­est can ever belong to some­one – and was ever since man­aged rel­a­tive­ly sus­tain­able. Now RWE has bought it, with the sole pur­pose of utter­ly destroy­ing it for the prof­its from coal min­ing.”

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hambacherforst/” class=“wp-image-41791” height=“201” src=”/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/69JXeQG.png” width=“357” />

from https://www.flickr.com/photos/hambacherforst/

How­ev­er, it is not only the region­al con­se­quences that prompt the activist into action. Kon­ny L. illus­trates: “The glob­al warm­ing caused by lig­nite com­bus­tion leads to droughts, floods, epi­demics, etc. These cost hun­dreds of thou­sands of lives and force count­less peo­ple to flee. “
From the activists‘ per­spec­tive, active resis­tance against a prof­it-ori­ent­ed busi­ness mod­el is the only way to effec­tive­ly coun­ter­act these prob­lems in order to “end this cat­a­stro­phe that will soon­er or lat­er be felt fierce­ly world­wide. Those who only think of their own inter­ests or believe in gov­ern­ments and busi­ness to do the job, will in the long run destroy their own and future gen­er­a­tions‘ liveli­hoods.”

The occu­pants have announced to block the work of the exca­va­tor for as long as the evic­tion by the police will take. The occu­pa­tion is still ongo­ing.

The dig­ger is locked dead – caused by not even by 10 deter­mined peo­ple!
A sys­tem is not unstop­pable, if the will is there and if peo­ple start using their own the heads for deci­sions, instead of just rumi­nat­ing giv­en rules and opin­ions. Then anoth­er way of life becomes pos­si­ble, with no one starv­ing and no one afraid of their own species. A way of life, where peo­ple treat each oth­er respect­ful­ly and with­out oppres­sion.
The action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple in and around Fukushi­ma, who, like so many peo­ple world­wide, have become vic­tims to the greed of few. The resis­tance move­ments against coal and nuclear ener­gy are going hand in hand, because both sources of ener­gy do (soon­er as well as lat­er) cause large-scale envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and thou­sands of casu­al­ties. We will not be intim­i­dat­ed by repres­sion and threats. Unless all liv­ing beings get the pos­si­bil­i­ty to live and grow with­out human oppres­sion, some­thing is going hor­ri­bly wrong.

Let’s fix it! Come to Block­upy Action Day in Frank­furt (18.3.), the evic­tion of the occu­pied-by-refugees Ger­hart-Haupt­mann-Schule in Berlin (19.3.), the protests against the G7 sum­mit in Elmau, Bavaria (2.–8.6.).
Let’s live resis­tance and start rebel­lion togeth­er!

Dig­ger Occu­pa­tion – News Tick­er

The bot­tom is being cleared – the top is still untouched
07:50

The evic­tion of the par­tial occu­pa­tion by three per­sons in the low­er / mid range of the exca­va­tor is has pro­ceed­ed quite far. One per­son is already in cus­tody. The V‑shaped steel tube, in which anoth­er person’s both hands are chained to each oth­er, has already been cut open, pre­sum­ably by grind­ing. Thus, it is antic­i­pat­ed that the two oth­er per­sons won‘t remain on the exca­va­tor very much longer.
The three oth­er per­sons, who occu­pied the tip of the exca­va­tor at 70 meters height with climb­ing equip­ment, after all didn‘t have any police con­tact.
One embed­ded press per­son is also, after all, in place.
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Climb­ing Cops arrived
about 06:30

The climb­ing unit of the police is on site and will prob­a­bly soon­er or lat­er start prepar­ing evic­tion.
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Trick­le is redi­rect­ed
05:37

A small dig­ger has shown up (or rather a reg­u­lar-sized one, which is of course tiny in rela­tion to the giant exca­va­tor). Using this, the trick­le, which (as we all know) threat­ened to tilt the giant dig­ger and kill the climbers, has been begun to divert. So just in case any autonomous sports groups are around in the mine, please do not under any cir­cum­stances sab­o­tage the activ­i­ties of this dig­ger – it guards the lives of our com­rades! (… and along the way, the cap­i­tal of RWE …)
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Heli­copter doesn‘t do any­thing
04:05

As men­tioned. It came, it saw, and it didn‘t do any­thing.
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Police sub­mit a request to God to tilt the exca­va­tor
03:39

Some of the uni­form wear­ers were, in com­pa­ny of RWE employ­ees, on the exca­va­tor in order to speak to a part of the occu­pants. Accord­ing to them, the exca­va­tor at it‘s cur­rent posi­tion is being under­mined by a trick­le and there­fore threat­ens to tip over. Of course RWE hap­pen to have noticed just right now that they have parked their giant dig­ger in quick­sand. Now isn‘t that delight­ful for the activists, to final­ly have a mean­ing­ful and so very fun­ny rea­son for not leav­ing a per­ilous place?
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Police arrived
02:07

About 15 policeofficinated‘s have arrived under the dig­ger and made con­tact with the RWE employ­ees.
By the way, the exca­va­tor has not moved despite the threats.
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RWE work­force once again life threat­en­ing
01:08

Staff of RWE pro­nounced to piv­ot the occu­pied exca­va­tor after the activists were already on top of it. This indeed could be life-threat­en­ing for the climbers, some of whom are locat­ed on the tow­er of the dig­ger and some in mov­ing parts. After this fact had already been clear­ly point­ed out to the empoly­ees, they explic­it­ly threat­ened to acti­vate the machines if the peo­ple would not with­in five min­utes be down. And an end to the open death threats is not in sight.