Raging Grannies Blockading Entrances and Exits of WA Department of Ecology

Octo­ber 30th, 2014

UPDATE: Grannies Unlock After 6‑Hour Block­ade

Cur­rent­ly, sev­en mem­bers of the Seat­tle Rag­ing Grannies are block­ing the entrance to the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy head­quar­ters, stalling traf­fic and pre­vent­ing employ­ees from enter­ing work. The groups are sit­ting in rock­ing chairs chained togeth­er across the Department’s vehi­cle entrance.

They are telling work­ers that the Depart­ment is closed today for a “Work­shop on How to Say No to Big Oil.” Today’s action coin­cides with hear­ings on a con­tro­ver­sial study on the safe­ty of oil trains con­duct­ed by the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy. Hun­dreds are expect­ed in Olympia to express con­cern at the study’s nar­row scope and omis­sion of risks to the envi­ron­ment or treaty rights.

Police and FBI are on the scene try­ing to direct traf­fic, and ecol­o­gy man­age­ment is mak­ing sup­port­ive employ­ees move inside so they can’t talk to the media about their sup­port of the elders.

Dale R Jense, pro­gram man­ag­er for the department’s oil spills safe­ty pro­gram, is cur­rent­ly walk­ing the line and talk­ing to the grannies, who remain in high spir­its and are singing songs. There is a group of sup­port­ers mak­ing sure that the DoE knows that fos­sil fuel ship­ments are unpop­u­lar, dan­ger­ous, and bad for the plan­et.

“We’re here to help the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy learn how to say no to the oil indus­try,” said Beth DeRooy. “After grant­i­ng per­mits to four ille­gal oil train ter­mi­nals and let­ting for­mer BNSF exec­u­tives write their oil study, I was wor­ried the folks over at the Depart­ment nev­er learned how to say no and need­ed a lit­tle help from their grannies.”

Since 2012 the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy has grant­ed per­mits for oil-by-rail ter­mi­nals at four of Washington’s five refiner­ies. Ter­mi­nals in Taco­ma, Ana­cortes and at Cher­ry Point out­side of Belling­ham, have begun tak­ing trains while a fourth is under con­struc­tion at the Phillips 66 refin­ery in Fer­n­dale. Envi­ron­men­tal groups have argued that the these ter­mi­nals are ille­gal under the Mag­nu­son Act, which pro­hibits expan­sions at Wash­ing­ton refiner­ies that may increase the amount of oil they han­dle.

Per­mits for a fifth oil-by-rail ter­mi­nal at Shell’s Puget Sound refin­ery are cur­rent­ly under con­sid­er­a­tion. “Hot on the heels of record wild­fires, Gov­er­nor Inslee’s so-called Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy is going to ignore the envi­ron­ment in this study? They’re act­ing more like the Depart­ment of Oil Trains,” stat­ed Cyn­thia Linet.

Last year Gov­er­nor Inslee direct­ed the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy to con­duct a safe­ty study on the extreme­ly con­tro­ver­sial ship­ment of oil by rail. The governor’s study has been crit­i­cized for ignor­ing impacts on the envi­ron­ment, treaty rights and glob­al warm­ing, as well as fail­ing to ques­tion whether they should build oil-train ter­mi­nals in the first place.

The Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy has declared that impacts on the envi­ron­ment, trib­al treaty rights or local economies are “ancil­lary” and not being con­sid­ered. The Depart­ment has also come under fire after rev­e­la­tions that a num­ber of the study’s authors are for­mer BNSF exec­u­tives.

“You’d think bring­ing explod­ing trains to help oil com­pa­nies dev­as­tate Native Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties in North Dako­ta would be easy to say no to, but it looks like the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy needs a stern les­son from their grannies,” said Car­ol McRoberts.

Many of North Dakota’s oil wells are on trib­al lands of the Man­dan, Hidat­sa and Arikara nations. In addi­tion to spills and oth­er local pol­lu­tion, the oil boom has brought tremen­dous social costs to the com­mu­ni­ties. Deaths from auto acci­dents, drug abuse and vio­lent crime have explod­ed; hous­ing short­ages force many to live in sub­stan­dard con­di­tions; and sex­u­al vio­lence such as rape and sex traf­fick­ing have become preva­lent in a once small com­mu­ni­ty.

“My daugh­ter is 15 months old and my heart aches that I do not even want her to be at home for fear of what she’d be exposed to,” said Kan­di Mos­sett, a mem­ber of the Man­dan, Hidat­sa and Arikara nations who sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to today’s oil train hear­ings. “This oil boom using frack­ing has been dev­as­tat­ing for us and no amount of mon­ey can ever give us back what’s being lost.”

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Pro­tes­tors hand­ed out dough­nuts and cof­fee as they turned away employ­ees’ cars. They also hand­ed out a fli­er explain­ing “How to Say No To Fos­sil Fuels.” The fli­er calls on the Depart­ment of Ecol­o­gy to reject all new fos­sil fuel projects pro­posed for Wash­ing­ton and to explic­it­ly link their rejec­tion to con­cerns about glob­al warm­ing.

Cli­mate jus­tice activists point out that if all pro­posed fos­sil fuel ter­mi­nals are built, the North­west will be trans­port­ing five times more car­bon than the Key­stone XL Pipeline.

“It’s grandma’s com­mon sense – we need to keep car­bon in the ground to stop cat­a­stroph­ic glob­al warm­ing, and if they can’t ship it, they have to leave it in the ground,” said Rosy Betz-Zall. But while he has been wide­ly hailed as one of the green­est gov­er­nors in Amer­i­ca, Inslee has yet to out­right reject a major fos­sil fuel project, or even declare a mora­to­ri­um on projects that would increase dan­ger­ous ship­ments of explo­sive oil.

“Gov­er­nor Inslee talks about being a cli­mate cham­pi­on, but he keeps say­ing ‘maybe’ to new fos­sil fuel projects, when what we need is a sol­id ‘NO’,” said Dee­jah Sher­man-Peter­son.

“Take it from your granny: if you want to say yes to some­thing good – a just, clean ener­gy future – you have start by say­ing NO to some­thing bad – build­ing more fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture.”

Today’s protest fol­lows an intense wave of oppo­si­tion to oil-by-rail across the North­west this sum­mer with pro­tes­tors lock­ing them­selves to bar­rels of con­crete and sit­ting atop tripods to block­ade rail­road tracks across Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon.

80 Arrested At Spontaneous Protests Over #ZAD Remi Fraisse’s Assassination By French Police

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Octo­ber 30th, 2014

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Octo­ber 30th, 2014

80 peo­ple have been arrest­ed sim­ply for speak­ing up against state ter­ror and cap­i­tal­ism, by a total pan­icked riot police force in Paris des­per­ate to repress spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tions over the exe­cu­tion of 21 year old Remi Fraisse at Testet.

The streets of Paris, Lyon and oth­er cities have been cov­ered in anti-cap­i­tal­ist, anti-police and anti-state mes­sages; the signs of rage over the assas­si­na­tion by the police of a 21 year old paci­fist, and defend­er of the Testet for­est.

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Cops encir­cled peo­ple, trapped them, cap­tured them and dragged them to police vans sim­ply for being on the streets and speak­ing up, such police bru­tal­i­ty and abus­es sim­ply remind of well known total­i­tar­i­an regimes, deplored by Europe all over the world, except in Europe.

Remi Fraisse died on the spot when he was hit by a tear gas grenade fired by riot police Sat­ur­day night dur­ing the repres­sion of a protest in the Testet for­est to stop a dam which will prof­it some indus­tri­al farm­ers at the cost of destroy­ing 40 ha of for­est.

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Wit­ness­es’ tes­ti­monies forced cops to admit they killed Remi. A state offi­cial called him “stu­pid” for “dying for an idea”. While state offi­cials are try­ing to con­trol the pub­lic rage over the police killing by claim­ing that patience is need­ed for “prop­er inves­ti­ga­tion”, the boss of riot police said that Remi’s mur­der was a fatal­i­ty and that no cop will be sus­pend­ed. He hint­ed no cop will be held account­able either. Images filmed just pri­or to Remi’s assas­si­na­tion expose the bar­barism of the police and their bru­tal­i­ty in repress­ing the protests.

Images above have been aired by France 2 aired and they prove the bar­barism of the police repres­sion against ZAD. Cops fired with intent to kill, unlike what their boss says, they fired tear gas grenades at peo­ple who were sev­er­al meters from them.

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Hun­dreds gath­ered in spon­ta­neous demon­stra­tions, called “ille­gal” by the French media, in Paris, trig­ger­ing a mas­sive deploy­ment of cops. 200 peo­ple were inter­ro­gat­ed by police for sim­ply being on the streets. Cops tried to stir vio­lence, they encir­cled over 100 pro­tes­tors around the town hall and tried to ket­tle them. Protests are announced in Italy tomor­row, too.The chief of riot police claims that cops have the right to kill because “they did not have the inten­tion” to mur­der Remi, he says it’s not “con­ceiv­able” to sus­pend cops over the assas­si­na­tion of Remi. This cop posi­tioned him­self above any state law, since pros­e­cu­tors claim that the “inves­ti­ga­tions” of Remi’s assas­si­na­tion con­tin­ue. Appar­ent­ly, anyone’s life is can­celled just at the sight of cops in Europe, since they are not respon­si­ble when they fire their lethal pro­jec­tiles. Remi’s death is also anoth­er proof that police riot weapon­ry cause death, but it seems that since they are called non-“lethal” by the apol­o­gists of state bar­barism, cops who use them are absolved of any respon­si­bil­i­ty. Death is what awaits any­one who stands in the way of prof­its which in Europe are placed above all, life, human needs and envi­ron­ment.

Footage from protest in the evening of Octo­ber 26th in the town of Gail­lac in the Tarn depart­ment:

http://youtu.be/jUQjY1tRVAw

http://youtu.be/rbeBMBHxixM

Argentina: Quechua Community Members Occupy Airport During Second Day of Protest Against Plupetrol

Octo­ber 29th, 2014

Inhab­i­tants inform the author­i­ties that, if their requests are not respect­ed, they will be tak­ing more direct mea­sures, such as man­u­al­ly clos­ing pipeline valves.  They ask that DINOES (Spe­cial Oper­a­tion Divi­sion) does not inter­vene. 

Octo­ber 29th, 2014

Inhab­i­tants inform the author­i­ties that, if their requests are not respect­ed, they will be tak­ing more direct mea­sures, such as man­u­al­ly clos­ing pipeline valves.  They ask that DINOES (Spe­cial Oper­a­tion Divi­sion) does not inter­vene. 

On the sec­ond day of protest­ing against the neg­li­gent deci­sions of Plus­petrol, a dom­i­nat­ing E&P pri­vate com­pa­ny orig­i­nat­ing from Argenti­na, Quechua inhab­i­tants took their retal­i­a­tion to the air­port.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence, Aure­lio Chi­no Dahua, pres­i­dent of Fediquep (Indige­nous Quechua Fed­er­a­tion of the Pas­taza), explained that the peo­ple feel deceived by both the cor­po­ra­tion and the state.  He relates such uneasi­ness to the the state’s dis­en­gage­ment from alle­vi­at­ing Pluspetrol’s social-envi­ron­men­tal impacts on the com­mu­ni­ty, even in the face of raw evi­dence.

The indige­nous leader also projects his indig­na­tion towards the government’s lack of com­mit­ment, stat­ing that, although the Quechua peo­ple have fos­tered active dia­logue with the author­i­ties since 2011, not one pro­gram has been imple­ment­ed with the sole pur­pose of meet­ing their demands.

Dahua reit­er­at­ed that, dur­ing the last months, Plus­petrol Norte has been erod­ing and divid­ing the com­mu­ni­ties, and that Fediquep has been bla­tant­ly ignor­ing the inhab­i­tants’ rights.  For such rea­sons, he pro­pos­es that the com­pa­ny retreats from the area and, if they wish to resume the oper­a­tion, heeds to the community’s direct par­tic­i­pa­tion.  It is also being demand­ed that fam­i­lies are con­nect­ed to the elec­tric­i­ty that is pro­vid­ed by Lore­to Region­al Gov­ern­ment and Plust­petrol.

Mean­while in Nue­vo Andeos, the peo­ple hold their grounds in hopes that atten­tion will final­ly be brought to their demands.

Not too long ego, it was them who request­ed a reme­di­a­tion process of Shan­shococha Lagoon, as well as ade­quate com­pen­sa­tion for Pluspetrol’s exper­i­men­ta­tion through­out the past 15 years.

As the con­ver­sta­tion moves, it is evi­dent that yesterday’s demon­stra­tion in Nue­vo Andoas is being vig­or­ous­ly sup­port­ed by sur­round­ing areas with­in the Pas­taza and that will sure­ly res­onate beyond.

[EF!  Newswire Note:  The fol­low­ing post is a loose trans­la­tion of an arti­cle first pub­lished by Servin­di.]

21 Year Old ZAD Activist Killed in Clashes with Police at Testet Dam Resistance

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Octo­ber 26th, 2014

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Octo­ber 26th, 2014

17 hours after police attacked again the ZAD resis­tance in Testet, south of France, a 21 year old ZADist was found dead. Dur­ing the clash­es, wit­ness­es say they saw a man col­lapse and noticed the police tak­ing him away.

On Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 25th, thou­sands of peo­ple from all over France gath­ered at Testet in oppo­si­tion to the dam project and the vio­lent repres­sion of the ZAD resis­tance, which is ongo­ing for years, and has increased in the past months.

Police attacked the pro­tes­tors to remove them, and some mil­i­tants bat­tled the cops until late in the night. Police fired rub­ber bul­lets, tear gas grenades; sev­er­al pro­tes­tors were bad­ly injured.

Lat­er in the night, fire­fight­ers and police claimed they have found the body of a man in the woods, while eye wit­ness­es who were there say the body was found at police road­blocks.

“A wit­ness said he saw some­one col­lapse in clash­es and being removed by the police“ , says Ben has Lefetey, spokesman for the Col­lec­tive for safe­guard­ing wet­land Testet, dur­ing a press con­fer­ence Sun­day morn­ing.

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Police blame the clashed on the resis­tance, to jus­ti­fy the bru­tal repres­sion they enforced on the pro­tes­tors. The com­man­der of the gen­darmerie Tarn, quot­ed by the AFP, claimed that “100–150 anar­chists masked and dressed in black threw incen­di­ary devices” and oth­er pro­jec­tiles at police sur­round­ing a mobi­liza­tion “2000″ oppo­nents.

In a state­ment, the asso­ci­a­tion Action for the Envi­ron­ment says: “Act­ing for the Envi­ron­ment can see that after sev­er­al weeks of police vio­lence indis­crim­i­nate­ly and some­times out­side any legal frame­work (iden­ti­ty papers and per­son­al effects burned, dis­re­spect pri­vate areas …), the police have once again made ​​use of rub­ber bul­lets, stun grenades and tear gas and even though the event took place in a good atmos­phere [sic] -child. The pres­ence of the police at the end of the day will appear again for what it is: a provo­ca­tion lead­ing to a tragedy.”

“Accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary infor­ma­tion we have col­lect­ed, the death took place in the con­text of clash­es with the police at 2:00 am. We are not say­ing that the secu­ri­ty forces have killed an oppo­nent, but a wit­ness we said the deaths hap­pened dur­ing clash­es, “he told AFP by phone Ben Lefetey, spokesper­son of the group Save the wet­land Testet, which includes most of the oppo­nents of the dam project . “We do not know more about the cause of death.”

Con­tact­ed, the pre­fec­ture did not want to com­ment. The pros­e­cu­tor in Albi, Claude Derens, refused to make any com­ment “before the results of the autop­sy will take place tomor­row (Mon­day) in the after­noon.” Accord­ing to a source close to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the young man who died was 21 years old and “was among those who were in the midst of clash­es last night” (Sat­ur­day).

 

“The pro­posed reser­voir dam 1.5 mil­lion m3 of water stored is grow­ing fig­ure “Notre-Dame-des-Lan­des South­west”, in ref­er­ence to this com­mon Loire-Atlan­tique, where sig­nif­i­cant mobi­liza­tion caused the freeze in 2012 the cre­ation of a new air­port. Since the begin­ning of clear­ing Sep­tem­ber 1, skir­mish­es and ral­lies have mul­ti­plied around the site. The pro­posed water reten­tion is sup­port­ed by the Gen­er­al Coun­cil of the Tarn. Oppo­nents denounce an expen­sive project for, accord­ing to them, only a small num­ber of farm­ers prac­tic­ing inten­sive agri­cul­ture.”

“Mem­ber of the Paris col­lec­tive sup­port Notre-Dame-des-Lan­des and sym­pa­thiz­ers es-es of the oppo­nent Testet. Accord­ing to the infor­ma­tion avail­able, one of us died that night dur­ing clash­es with riot police in the ZAD Testet. Nei­ther obliv­ion or par­don.”

Mas­sive protests are announced lat­er on Sun­day.

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Pacific Island Warriors Blockade World’s Largest Coal Port

Octo­ber 25th, 2014

Cli­mate Change War­riors from 12 Pacif­ic Island nations pad­dled canoes into the world’s largest coal port in New­cas­tle, Aus­tralia, Fri­day (Octo­ber 17th) to bring atten­tion to their grave fears about the con­se­quences of cli­mate change on their home coun­tries.

The 30 war­riors joined a flotil­la of hun­dreds of Aus­tralians in kayaks and on surf­boards to delay eight of the 12 ships sched­uled to pass through the port dur­ing the nine-hour block­ade, which was organ­ised with sup­port from the U.S.-based envi­ron­men­tal group 350.org.

The war­riors came from 12 Pacif­ic Island coun­tries, includ­ing Fiji, Tuvalu, Toke­lau, Microne­sia, Van­u­atu, The Solomon Islands, Ton­ga, Samoa, Papua New Guinea and Niue.

Mikaele Maia­va spoke with IPS about why he and his fel­low cli­mate change war­riors had trav­elled to Aus­tralia: “We want Aus­tralia to remem­ber that they are a part of the Pacif­ic. And as a part of the Pacif­ic, we are a fam­i­ly, and hav­ing this fam­i­ly means we stay togeth­er. We can­not afford, one of the biggest sis­ters, real­ly destroy­ing every­thing for the fam­i­ly.

“So, we want the Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly the Aus­tralian lead­ers, to think about more than their pock­ets, to real­ly think about human­i­ty not just for the Aus­tralian peo­ple, but for every­one,” Mikaele said.

REUTERS / David Gray

Speak­ing at the open­ing of a new coal mine on Oct. 13, Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Tony Abbott said that “coal is good for human­i­ty.”

Mikaele ques­tioned Abbott’s posi­tion, ask­ing, “If you are talk­ing about human­i­ty: Is human­i­ty real­ly for peo­ple to lose land? Is human­i­ty real­ly for peo­ple to lose their cul­ture and iden­ti­ty? Is human­i­ty to live in fear for our future gen­er­a­tions to live in a beau­ti­ful island and have homes to go to? Is that real­ly human­i­ty? Is that real­ly the answer for us to live in peace and har­mo­ny? Is that real­ly the answer for the future?”

Mikaele said that he and his fel­low cli­mate war­riors were aware that their fight was not just for the Pacif­ic, and that oth­er devel­op­ing coun­tries were affect­ed by cli­mate change too.

“We’re aware that this fight is not just for the Pacif­ic. We are very well aware that the whole world is stand­ing up in sol­i­dar­i­ty for this. The mes­sage that we want to give, espe­cial­ly to the lead­ers, is that we are humans, this fight is not just about our land, this fight is for sur­vival.”

 

Mikaele described how his home of Toke­lau was already see­ing the effects of cli­mate change,

“We see these changes of weath­er pat­terns and we also see that our food secu­ri­ty is threat­ened. It’s hard for us to build a sus­tain­able future if your soil is not that fer­tile and it does not grow your crops because of salt intru­sion.”

Tokelau’s coast­line is also begin­ning to erode. “We see our coastal lines chang­ing. Fif­teen years ago when I was going to school, you could walk in a straight line. Now you have to walk in a crooked line because the beach has erod­ed away.”

Mikaele said that he and his fel­low cli­mate change war­riors would not be con­tent unless they stood up for future gen­er­a­tions, and did every­thing pos­si­ble to change world lead­ers’ men­tal­i­ty about cli­mate change.

“We are edu­cat­ed peo­ple, we are smart peo­ple, we know what’s going on, the days of the indige­nous peo­ple and local peo­ple not hav­ing the infor­ma­tion and the knowl­edge about what’s going on is over,” he said.

“We are the gen­er­a­tion of today, the lead­ers of tomor­row and we are not blind­ed by the prob­lem. We can see it with our own eyes, we feel it in our own hearts, and we want the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to realise that. We are not blind­ed by mon­ey we just want to live as peace­ful­ly and fight for what mat­ters the most, which is our homes.”

Toke­lau became the first coun­try in the world to use 100 per­cent renew­able ener­gy when they switched to solar ener­gy in 2012.

Speak­ing about the canoes that he and his fel­low cli­mate war­riors had carved in their home coun­tries and bought to Aus­tralia for the protest, he talked about how his fam­i­ly had used canoes for gen­er­a­tions,

“Each extend­ed fam­i­ly would have a canoe, and this canoe is the main tool that we used to be able to live, to go fish­ing, to get coconuts, to take fam­i­ly to the oth­er islands.”

Anoth­er cli­mate war­rior, Kathy Jet­nil-Kijin­er, from the Mar­shall Islands, brought mem­bers of the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly to tears last month with her impas­sioned poem writ­ten to her baby daugh­ter Matafele Peinam,

“No one’s mov­ing, no one’s los­ing their home­land, no one’s gonna become a cli­mate change refugee. Or should I say, no one else. To the Carteret islanders of Papua New Guinea and to the Taro islanders of Fiji, I take this moment to apol­o­gise to you,” she said.

The Pacif­ic Islands Forum describes cli­mate change as the “sin­gle great­est threat to the liveli­hoods, secu­ri­ty and well-being of the peo­ples of the Pacif­ic.”

“Cli­mate change is an imme­di­ate and seri­ous threat to sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and pover­ty erad­i­ca­tion in many Pacif­ic Island Coun­tries, and for some their very sur­vival. Yet these coun­tries are amongst the least able to adapt and to respond; and the con­se­quences they face, and already now bear, are sig­nif­i­cant­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their col­lec­tive minis­cule con­tri­bu­tions to glob­al emis­sions,” it says.

Pacif­ic Island lead­ers have recent­ly stepped up their lan­guage, chal­leng­ing the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment to stop delay­ing action on cli­mate change.

Oxfam Australia’s cli­mate change advo­ca­cy coor­di­na­tor, Dr Simon Brad­shaw, told IPS, “Aus­tralia is a Pacif­ic coun­try. In opt­ing to dis­man­tle its cli­mate poli­cies, dis­en­gage from inter­na­tion­al nego­ti­a­tions and forge ahead with the expan­sion of its fos­sil fuel indus­try, it is utter­ly at odds with the rest of the region.”

Dr. Brad­shaw added, “Australia’s clos­est neigh­bours have con­sis­tent­ly iden­ti­fied cli­mate change as their great­est chal­lenge and top pri­or­i­ty. So it is inevitable that Australia’s recent actions will impact on its rela­tion­ship with Pacif­ic Islands.

“A recent poll com­mis­sioned by Oxfam showed that 60 per­cent of Aus­tralians thought cli­mate change was hav­ing a neg­a­tive impact on the abil­i­ty of peo­ple in poor­er coun­tries to grow and access food, ris­ing to 68 per­cent among 18 to 34-year-olds,” he said.

Vis­it IPS news for fresh per­spec­tives on devel­op­ment and glob­al­iza­tion

Construction of Areng Dam Continues Despite Natives Protests

Regardless of the dam's progression, Chong inhabitants continue to express their discontent.

Regardless of the dam's progression, Chong inhabitants continue to express their discontent.

Octo­ber 21st, 2014

Regard­less of the dam’s pro­gres­sion, Chong inhab­i­tants con­tin­ue to express their dis­con­tent.

The deten­tion and release of 11 envi­ron­men­tal activists in Cambodia’s Areng Val­ley in mid-Sep­tem­ber end­ed the last major protests of the con­tro­ver­sial Stung Cheay Areng hydro dam project.

Activists had been detain­ing and block­ing con­voys of vehi­cles into the val­ley since March of this year, but their makeshift road­block has since been com­man­deered by the country’s Roy­al Cam­bo­di­an Armed Forces.

The valley’s native Chong inhab­i­tants have watched the dam project grow with a mix­ture of fear and bit­ter­ness. The Chong have dwelt along the Areng for over 600 years but soon, if the dam is com­plet­ed, it will flood at least 26,000 acres of land. Moth­er Jones writes that the esti­mates range between 40 and 77 square miles.

This will dis­place more than 1,500 peo­ple, and is already invit­ing the rape of the Cen­tral Car­damom Pro­tect­ed For­est. To begin the dam project, new roads had to be built to trans­port equip­ment back and forth, pro­vid­ing free access to unscrupu­lous tim­ber com­pa­nies. At least 20,000 cubic yards of rose­wood (worth an esti­mat­ed $220 mil­lion in tim­ber) have been ille­gal­ly logged since the dam project began.

The dam itself is being con­struct­ed by Sino­hy­dro Resources, China’s largest dam-build­ing con­trac­tor and its third firm to take on the task. Ini­tial­ly, Chi­na South­ern Pow­er Grid was to build the dam, but relin­quished its con­tract with the Cam­bo­di­an gov­ern­ment in 2010 on pur­port­ed­ly “moral” grounds.

A report from the Japan­ese Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion Agency on the project lat­er point­ed out that the dam would only gen­er­ate an out­put of 108 megawatts – too lit­tle for so high a mon­e­tary and envi­ron­men­tal cost.

Chi­na Guo­di­an Cor­po­ra­tion was the next firm to take up the project, but pulled out in 2013. They, too, found the dam to be eco­nom­i­cal­ly unvi­able.

Though the dam would be hypo­thet­i­cal­ly capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing enough pow­er for 87,000 homes, Inter­na­tion­al Rivers argues that “the dam will only oper­ate at 46 per­cent capac­i­ty dur­ing the dry sea­son, pre­cise­ly when Cam­bo­dia most needs the elec­tric­i­ty.”

In addi­tion to this low ener­gy out­put, the dam is pro­ject­ed to be more of a bur­den to Cam­bo­dia than a bless­ing – even with­out tak­ing the valley’s 31 endan­gered ani­mals into account. Areng is just one of 17 dams the coun­try wants to build over the next two decades, but most of their pow­er will be export­ed to neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. What’s worse, Sino­hy­dro will own the dam for the next 40 years before turn­ing it over to the Cam­bo­di­an gov­ern­ment, at which time the dam’s main­te­nance costs and envi­ron­men­tal impacts will poten­tial­ly make it worth­less to the coun­try.

Despite all this, Cambodia’s Min­is­ter of Mines and Ener­gy and Min­is­ter of Envi­ron­ment have both stat­ed that the Areng dam is on sched­ule for com­ple­tion by 2020.

But that hasn’t stopped natives from protest­ing.

“Even if they piled mon­ey one meter above my head, I don’t want their Chi­nese mon­ey,” one vil­lager told Moth­er Jones’ Kalya­nee Mam. “I want to stay in my vil­lage. Even with all this mon­ey, I could only spend it in this life. I wouldn’t be able to pass it on to my grand­chil­dren. I just want my vil­lage and my land for the future of my grand­chil­dren.”

by Plan­et Experts

Wrexham Borras drill site occupied — Please support the camp

Camp banner19.10.2014

Camp banner19.10.2014

GP Ener­gy (who were bought out by Dart who in turn have been bought out by IGas) applied for plan­ning per­mis­sion to do an explorato­ry drill for coal bed methane (CBM) at Bor­ras, Wrex­ham. Frack-off describes coal bed methane as the evil twin of shale gas. Wrex­ham coun­cil refused the appli­ca­tion back in March after at lot of work by local peo­ple to edu­cate the plan­ning com­mit­tee on the dan­gers of uncon­ven­tion­al gas extrac­tion. The suc­cess of this was at least in part due to increased aware­ness of the issues as a result of a test drill hap­pen­ing at the same time in near­by Farn­don. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Wales Plan­ning Inspec­tor over­turned the coun­cil’s deci­sion ear­li­er this month — on some dis­tinct­ly dodgy grounds — and the site is now under immi­nent threat of test drilling, even though it is in an area where the gov­ern­men­t’s own report has indi­cat­ed CBM extrac­tion isn’t fea­si­ble due to the geol­o­gy.

A pub­lic meet­ing has been called for 23 Octo­ber in Bor­ras but, in advance of that, the site has been occu­pied this week­end and a com­mu­ni­ty pro­tec­tion camp set up. Sup­port (includ­ing more campers) and sup­plies need­ed. Please get there if you can. Post­code LL13 9TG. There’s a camp Face­book group or you can con­tact Frack-Free Wrex­ham for more infor­ma­tion.

an idyllic spot - let's keep it that way

Camp flier
Camp fli­er

Flier for meeting and camp info
Fli­er for meet­ing and camp info

Around 25 peo­ple were on site this after­noon. Those who had been camp­ing since Fri­day said they were over­whelmed with the num­ber of peo­ple who’d called round to the camp to wish them well and drop off sup­plies, water, build­ing mate­ri­als, camp­ing gear and all sorts of oth­er use­ful stuff. As well as a group of tents in the mid­dle, a com­post toi­let had already been built, as well as a shel­ter by the fire and a kitchen under con­struc­tion.

Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Camps can only suc­ceed with the sup­port of the local com­mu­ni­ty, so if you live local­ly, or fur­ther afield, and care about pro­tect­ing the coun­try­side, air, water, food… (prop­er­ty own­ers might also care about their prop­er­ty val­ues which are liable to plum­met in areas where drilling goes ahead), please call in to the camp and see what’s need­ed. There’s a warm wel­come for all friend­ly vis­i­tors — just turn up. Police pres­ence so far has been low key.

The site is quite mud­dy, par­tic­u­lar­ly around the gate, so bear that in mind if you’re plan­ning to go into the field. If you’re dri­ving, park­ing is pos­si­ble on the verge along­side the gate and if you’re trav­el­ling by bus, the site is about 1 mile from the Holt Lodge Inn. Take the turn­ing near­ly oppo­site the Holt Lodge into Shep­herds Rd. Fol­low this road right to the end, turn left at the T‑junction and the site is on the left just after the Bor­ras vil­lage sign. The C56 bus from Wrex­ham or Chester, both of which have rail­way sta­tions, stops at the Holt Lodge Inn. A camp phone num­ber will be avail­able soon.

Frack Free Wrex­ham
- e‑mail: frack­freewrex­ham [AT] riseup.net

Manitoba Hydro Evicted from Northern Dam Station by Protesters

pimicikamak-first-nation-protest-2

Octo­ber 17th, 2014

Pro­test­ers have forced employ­ees of Man­i­to­ba Hydro out of the Jen­peg gen­er­at­ing sta­tion in north­ern Man­i­to­ba.

The pro­test­ers, from Pimi­cika­mak Cree Nation, deliv­ered an over­sized evict­ed notice on Fri­day to staff at the sta­tion and the employ­ee hous­ing com­plex, both of which are locat­ed on the Nel­son Riv­er in Pimi­cika­mak ter­ri­to­ry.

“The build­ing is emp­ty, locked, undam­aged and under the Pimi­cika­mak flag,” states a release from the Cree Nation, which is locat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 525 kilo­me­tres by air north of Win­nipeg.

A few hydro per­son­nel remain inside the dam itself to mon­i­tor the facil­i­ty. Pimi­cika­mak guar­an­tees the safe­ty and well-being of these peo­ple, and ensures that hydro facil­i­ties will not be dam­aged.”

The pro­test­ers want com­pen­sa­tion for dam­ages caused by flood­ing from the dam, which opened in 1979.

“The hydro sys­tem floods 65 square kilo­me­tres of Pimi­cika­mak land and caus­es severe dam­age to thou­sands of kilo­me­tres of shore­line,” Chief Cathy Mer­rick stat­ed in the press release. “Out­ly­ing grave sites have been washed away; Pimi­cika­mak peo­ple have died as a result of semi-sub­merged debris from erod­ing shore­lines and unsafe ice con­di­tions caused by hydro.

“The project has turned a once boun­ti­ful and inti­mate­ly known home­land into a dan­ger­ous and despoiled pow­er cor­ri­dor.”

Jen­peg, which Man­i­to­ba Hydro uses to con­trol out­flows from Lake Win­nipeg into the Nel­son Riv­er sys­tem, is locat­ed about 20 kilo­me­tres from Cross Lake, which is the main Pimi­cika­mak set­tle­ment with some 8,000 res­i­dents.

“This is our home; we will not let it be tram­pled,” said Mer­rick. “This dam has been great for the south but for us it is a man-made cat­a­stro­phe. Hydro needs to clean up the mess it has cre­at­ed in our home­land. Hydro needs to treat us fair­ly.”

She said the provin­cial gov­ern­ment has spo­ken about rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with all hydro-affect­ed peo­ples, and a “new era” of “part­ner­ship” but so far none of that has hap­pened.

The hydro sys­tem pro­duces $3.8 mil­lion worth of pow­er on its five Nel­son Riv­er dams every day, accord­ing to Mer­rick, who not­ed it “has not con­tributed to ‘the erad­i­ca­tion of mass pover­ty and mass unem­ploy­ment’ as was con­tem­plat­ed in the 1977 North­ern Flood Agree­ment.

“The NFA says affect­ed peo­ple will be dealt with fair­ly and equi­tably,” she said, adding, “In many parts of Cana­da, gov­ern­ments and com­pa­nies are real­iz­ing that every­one ben­e­fits when the tremen­dous wealth and oppor­tu­ni­ty of the land is shared fair­ly.”

Pimicikamak’s road map to pos­i­tive change includes:

  • A pub­lic apol­o­gy from Pre­mier Greg Selinger for past and present harms suffered​ by all hydro-affect­ed peo­ples and their lands.
  • A com­mit­ment from Man­i­to­ba and Man­i­to­ba Hydro to engage in a good-faith process to ful­fill promis­es in the NFA, includ­ing mea­sures relat­ed to com­mu­ni­ty devel­op­ment, envi­ron­men­tal mit­i­ga­tion and max­i­mum employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties.
  • A rev­enue shar­ing agree­ment and/or water rental arrange­ment with Pimi­cika­mak.

“​The Pimi­cika­mak peo­ple will not leave Jen­peg until Man­i­to­ba and Hydro make sub­stan­tive com­mit­ments to fol­low the course out­lined above,” Mer­rick said.

The chief and coun­cil will be meet­ing with provin­cial and hydro offi­cials at the Jen­peg sta­tion on Fri­day.

Hambach: Trees with Platforms Felled

Noname

Octo­ber 17th, 2014

Noname

Octo­ber 17th, 2014

The dai­ly mad­ness con­tin­ues.
This morn­ing activists from the tree ocu­pa­tion “Gruben­blick“ report­ed about an unpleasent vis­it beneath their plat­forms:
RWE, Köt­ters Secu­ri­ty and the Police with a cher­ryp­ick­er. The occu­pa­tion is direct­ly at the edge of the clearcut, no more than 100 meters dis­tance to the hole of the [open cast coal] mine. Some pic­tures from Gruben­blick
The work­ers of the land­mur­der­ing com­pa­ny RWE cut down trees which had plat­forms on them. Soon after the police came by and exam­ined the occu­pied trees of “Gruben­blick“. Pre­sum­ably they made prepa­ra­tions for an evic­tion.

Now it is qui­et again, the activists of Gruben­blick stay in the trees and have a hideous look on the deep­est hole of europe and uncount­able treestumps.

Fracking Protest Camp Set Up to Protect Horse Hill, UK

Campaigners at the Horse Hill site near Horley, photo credit: Marina Pepper

Octo­ber 16th, 2014

Campaigners at the Horse Hill site near Horley, photo credit: Marina Pepper

Octo­ber 16th, 2014

A protest group has set up camp near Hor­ley to pro­tect a site from pos­si­ble frack­ing fol­low­ing news that oil ‘shows’ at Horse Hill after weeks of explo­ration.

Horse Hill Devel­op­ments has been drilling at the Horse Hill site since the begin­ning of Sep­tem­ber with a promise to cam­paign­ers that it would not be frack­ing there, but Frack Free Sur­rey fear the com­pa­ny is test­ing the ground for future projects in the Weald.

The com­pa­ny does not cur­rent­ly have a license to frack, but stat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 18 that “the infor­ma­tion gained through these activ­i­ties will pro­vide valu­able insights into the tech­ni­cal and eco­nom­ic via­bil­i­ty of uncon­ven­tion­al devel­op­ment else­where in the Weald Basin”.

More than 80 peo­ple attend­ed a meet­ing held by Red­hill Greens and Frack Free Sur­rey on Mon­day (Octo­ber 13), to dis­cuss the drilling and the pos­si­ble threat of frack­ing across the weald.

 

 

Rob Bas­to, from Frack Free Sur­rey, said:“If frack­ing goes ahead in the area it could result in thou­sands of wells in the south-east with dis­as­trous con­se­quences – for our local envi­ron­ment and the glob­al cli­mate. We are utter­ly opposed to any new fos­sil fuel devel­op­ment in our area.”

Bren­da Pol­lack, from Friends of the Earth, said cam­paign­ers are con­cerned as many com­pa­nies are now “sala­mi slic­ing” their appli­ca­tions, in order to have a greater chance of suc­cess. Explorato­ry licences are grant­ed in the first stage, which means a frack­ing licence can be eas­i­er to get once indus­tri­al work has already tak­en place on the land.

But Ms Pol­lack said cam­paign­ers were keen not to scare mon­ger.

She said: “We are con­cerned that ulti­mate­ly the com­pa­ny wants to extract shale oil. The site is in the Weald Basin – an area known to con­tain oil trapped in shale rock. While they may be using con­ven­tion­al tech­niques at this test­ing phase, there is every rea­son to believe it could lead to frack­ing.

“Chas­ing dif­fi­cult to reach fos­sil fuels is not the answer to our ener­gy prob­lems. Sur­rey should be invest­ing in clean­er renew­able ener­gy projects to help reduce the impacts of cli­mate change.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Cam­paign­ers have set up camp at the Horse Hill site near Hor­ley

Ms Pol­lack said many peo­ple are con­cerned as Mag­el­lan Petro­le­um

Cor­po­ra­tion, who have a 35% stake in Horse Hill Devel­op­ments, are also part­nered with Cel­tique Ener­gy who recent­ly had an appli­ca­tion turned down to drill at Nine Acre Copse in Fern­hurst.

In Sep­tem­ber, Scott Bradley, chief exec­u­tive of Horse Hill Devel­op­ments Lim­it­ed, said: “We are delight­ed with the progress being made and the drilling per­for­mance to date. We now look for­ward to the next phase of this con­ven­tion­al project and await our tar­get eval­u­a­tion results eager­ly.”