Militant Mining Resistance

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Min­ing is one of the most vis­cer­al­ly destruc­tive and hor­rif­ic ways in which the dom­i­nant culture—industr

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Min­ing is one of the most vis­cer­al­ly destruc­tive and hor­rif­ic ways in which the dom­i­nant culture—industrial civilization—enacts its vio­lence on the liv­ing world. As entire­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly destruc­tive as this soci­ety is, few oth­er indus­tri­al activ­i­ties are as hor­rif­i­cal­ly con­fronting as min­ing. Whole land­scapes are cleared of life as communities—most often indige­nous or poor—are forced from their homes. Moun­tains lev­el to piles of bar­ren rub­ble which leach count­less poi­sons, scour­ing life from whole water­sheds. Pits of unimag­in­able size are carved from the bones of the earth, leav­ing moon­scapes in their wake.

Besides the imme­di­ate dam­age to the land at the site of oper­a­tions, the destruc­tion extends through the uses its prod­ucts are put to. In this way, min­ing is cru­cial to the con­tin­ued func­tion of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion, sup­ply­ing many of the raw mate­ri­als that form the mate­r­i­al fab­ric of indus­tri­al soci­ety. Steel, alu­minum, cop­per, coal, tar sands bitu­men, cement; the mate­ri­als extract­ed through min­ing are cen­tral com­po­nents of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion in an imme­di­ate and phys­i­cal way. They are the build­ing blocks of this soci­ety.

For­tu­nate­ly, as is the way of things, where there is atroc­i­ty and bru­tal­iza­tion, there is resis­tance. There has been a lot of mil­i­tant anti-min­ing action hap­pen­ing recent­ly; in the last few months alone there have been sev­er­al inspir­ing inci­dents of peo­ple tak­ing direct mil­i­tant action against min­ing projects and infra­struc­ture.

In Feb­ru­ary, sev­er­al dozen masked mil­i­tants raid­ed the Hel­las gold mine in Halkidi­ki, Greece. They fire­bombed machin­ery, vehi­cles, and offices at the site. The attack fol­lowed sev­er­al years of legal chal­lenges and pub­lic demonstrations—none of which suc­ceed­ed in stop­ping the mine, which will destroy forests, poi­son ground­wa­ter, and release air pol­lu­tants includ­ing lead, mer­cury and arsenic.

When local res­i­dents tried to stop the mine through the courts the gov­ern­ment ruled against them, claim­ing that the mine would cre­ate jobs. As the Deputy Min­is­ter of Ener­gy and Envi­ron­ment Asi­makis Papa­geor­giou said, “We can no longer accept this [area] being left unex­ploit­ed or bare­ly exploit­ed.”

State­ments like these on the part of those in pow­er, while not nec­es­sar­i­ly sur­pris­ing, help to make clear the real­i­ty we face; the dom­i­nant cul­ture requires the rend­ing of the liv­ing world into dead com­modi­ties. It can’t be per­suad­ed to change, no mat­ter how com­pas­sion­ate and com­pelling the appeals we make. It can only be forced to change.

More recent­ly, the Powhar­nal coal mine in Scot­land was attacked at the begin­ning of April. An anony­mous com­mu­nique was released via Indy­media Scot­land:

At some point over the past week­end mul­ti­ple items of plant machin­ery at an exten­sion to the Powhar­nal open cast coal site in East Ayr­shire were put beyond work­ing use. High val­ue tar­gets includ­ing a prime mover and bull­doz­er were also tar­get­ed to cause max­i­mum dis­rup­tion to work­ings at the mine.

This action presents yet anoth­er hope­ful exam­ple of mil­i­tant action tar­get­ing extrac­tive projects. This was not a sym­bol­ic act of prop­er­ty destruc­tion, but rather one aimed at mate­ri­al­ly dis­rupt­ing and stop­ping destruc­tive activ­i­ty. More so, the actionist(s) specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed key equip­ment and infra­struc­ture at the site to max­i­mize the impact of their actions, mak­ing good use of effec­tive sys­tems dis­rup­tion.

A third exam­ple comes from Peru, where in mid-April sev­er­al hun­dred pro­tes­tors stormed the Minas Con­ga gold & cop­per mine, occu­py­ing the site for a short while and burn­ing equip­ment. Besides the imme­di­ate dam­age done by the arson, the action forced the oper­at­ing com­pa­ny, Min­era Yana­cocha, to evac­u­ate per­son­nel and equip­ment, fur­ther dis­rupt­ing their oper­a­tions.

This lat­est protest in April is the lat­est in a con­tin­u­ous and diverse tapes­try of resis­tance to the Minas Con­ga mine. Such direct and mil­i­tant protests and actions last year forced Yana­cocha to put most of the min­ing project on hold, and the strong unyield­ing oppo­si­tion has New­mont Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion (which owns Yana­cocha) con­sid­er­ing pulling out of the project alto­geth­er. This is yet anoth­er exam­ple of how effec­tive mil­i­tant action can be in stop­ping min­ing and oth­er extrac­tive projects.

Of course there are plen­ty of above­ground and non­vi­o­lent efforts being made to oppose min­ing projects hap­pen­ing as well, and this isn’t meant to detract from or dis­miss their efforts. But the dom­i­nant cul­ture needs access to the raw mate­ri­als that feed the glob­al econ­o­my, and in the end it will secure those resources by force, refus­ing to hear “no!”

Again, this isn’t to say that non­vi­o­lent efforts are by any means doomed to fail­ure each and every time we employ them. It is to acknowl­edge that the entire exis­tence and oper­a­tion of indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion requires con­tin­ued access to “raw mate­ri­als” (oth­er­wise known as nat­ur­al liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties), and that the courts, reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tems, and laws have all been designed to pre­serve that arrange­ment. We may win occa­sion­al vic­to­ries here and there, but like a casi­no, they—the House, the cap­i­tal­ists, the min­ers, the extrac­tors, etc.— will always come out ahead in the end.

When above­ground & legal efforts to stop min­ing and oth­er extrac­tion projects fail, as they so often and reli­ably do, those deter­mined to pro­tect the lands and com­mu­ni­ties that are their homes turn to oth­er means.  

Attack­ing and destroy­ing the min­ing infra­struc­tures themselves—the phys­i­cal machines that are the imme­di­ate and direct weapons used to tear up biomes—forces a halt to extrac­tion with an unmatched direct­ness and imme­di­a­cy. Beyond min­ing itself, the strate­gic effi­ca­cy of tar­get­ing infrastructure—as the foun­da­tion­al sup­ports of any system—has been proven time and again by mil­i­taries and resis­tance move­ments around the world.

Of course, attacks tar­get­ing mines alone will like­ly nev­er be enough to stop such harm­ful and destruc­tive process­es alto­geth­er. That can only hap­pen by dis­man­tling indus­tri­al civ­i­liza­tion itself. And like anti-min­ing resis­tance, bring­ing down civ­i­liza­tion will require under­ground action— the tar­get­ing of key nodes of crit­i­cal indus­tri­al sys­tems through coor­di­nat­ed sab­o­tage.

As civ­i­liza­tion con­tin­ues its inces­sant death march around the world— tear­ing apart and destroy­ing ever more of the liv­ing world, ever more human and extra-human com­mu­ni­ties— resis­tance against it must of neces­si­ty become more mil­i­tant. With so much at stake, those resisters in Greece, Scot­land, Peru and else­where using mil­i­tant attacks on indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture to defend their lands and com­mu­ni­ties deserve our undy­ing sup­port. Those of us who val­ue life and jus­tice should not con­demn them, but cel­e­brate them— for theirs is pre­cise­ly the type of action that will be required to stop the mur­der of the liv­ing world.

 

Clean and Green? Rare Earth Elements and Technology

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Tox­ic waste being pumped into a tail­ings pond at a Rare Earth Ele­ment Mine.

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Tox­ic waste being pumped into a tail­ings pond at a Rare Earth Ele­ment Mine.

Maybe things aren’t as clean as they seem….  The Moth­er Nature Net­work describes the scene pret­ty well, “Lots of green tech­nolo­gies rely on rare earths [ele­ments], but iron­i­cal­ly, rare earth pro­duc­ers have a long his­to­ry of harm­ing the envi­ron­ment to get the met­als. Like many indus­tries that process min­er­al ores, they end up with tox­ic byprod­ucts known as ‘tail­ings,’ which can be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with radioac­tive ura­ni­um and tho­ri­um.”

With the re-open­ing of MolyCorp’s Moun­tain Pass mine in Cal­i­for­nia, Rare Earth Ele­ment (REE) min­ing came back on the scene in the U.S.  Ever since 2002 when that same mine had a 60 record­ed spills, result­ing in 600,000 gal­lons of radioac­tive water leak­ing into the Mojave desert, REEs have been com­ing only from Chi­na.  But with Chi­na restrict­ing some exports, and cut­ting back on the mines due to envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, min­ing com­pa­nies in the U.S. are out look­ing for more.

A report by Bloomberg, details some of the tox­ic rea­sons to leave REEs alone.

  • China’s rare-earth indus­try each year pro­duces more than five times the waste gas, includ­ing dead­ly flu­o­rine and sul­fur diox­ide, than the total flared by all min­ers and oil refin­ers in the U.S.
  • Rare earth min­ing in Chi­na pro­duced 25 mil­lion tons of waste­water laced with can­cer-caus­ing heavy met­als such as cad­mi­um.
  • It takes more chem­i­cals to sep­a­rate rare earth ele­ments from ore than it does for base met­als such as cop­per, zinc and lead.
  • Low lev­els of radioac­tive tho­ri­um and ura­ni­um also occur in min­er­als con­tain­ing many rare-earth ele­ments.
  • In a Decem­ber 2012 report, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency said that as yet, the agency has no for­mal strat­e­gy for man­ag­ing and min­i­miz­ing rare-earth mining’s risks.

The Bloomberg arti­cle also points out why they are still being mined, “Rare earth met­als are key to glob­al efforts to switch to clean­er (sic) ener­gy — from bat­ter­ies in hybrid cars to mag­nets in wind tur­bines”.

There are plans quick­ly spread­ing across the coun­try for REE mine explo­rations.  While some point out the grow­ing con­cerns; oth­er orga­ni­za­tions (like the Depart­ment of Defense) are going gang busters to get new REE mines oper­at­ing.

Guatemala Declares Emergency In 4 Towns Following Kidnappings, Shootouts. 3rd May

GUATEMALA CITY, May 2  – Guatemala declared an emer­gency in four south­east­ern towns on Thurs­day, sus­pend­ing cit­i­zens’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in an area where dead­ly protests over a pro­posed sil­ver mine have erupt­ed in recent weeks.

Guatemalan Pres­i­dent Otto Perez announced the move in an effort to quell protests tar­get­ing the mine belong­ing to Cana­di­an min­er Tahoe Resources Inc. Two peo­ple have been killed in the demon­stra­tions.

The company’s secu­ri­ty guards shot and wound­ed six demon­stra­tors on Sat­ur­day, said Mauri­cio Lopez, Guatemala’s secu­ri­ty min­is­ter.

The next day, pro­test­ers, who say the Escobal sil­ver mine near the town of San Rafael Las Flo­res will con­t­a­m­i­nate local water sup­plies, kid­napped 23 police offi­cers, Lopez said.

One police offi­cer and a demon­stra­tor were killed in a shootout on Mon­day when police went to free the hostages, said Lopez.

“I am not going to allow this to con­tin­ue,” Perez told reporters. “We have con­duct­ed a six-month inves­ti­ga­tion in this area with the attor­ney general’s office for var­i­ous crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.”

 

Police and mil­i­tary raid­ed the four towns on Thurs­day, arrest­ing 15 peo­ple sus­pect­ed of kid­nap­ping, weapons theft and destruc­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty.

Tahoe said in a state­ment it regret­ted the injuries to pro­test­ers caused by rub­ber bul­lets, but denied any respon­si­bil­i­ty for the deaths.

“Our inves­ti­ga­tion has shown that only non-lethal mea­sures were tak­en by our secu­ri­ty,” the com­pa­ny said.

The 30-day “state of emer­gency” will sus­pend cit­i­zens’ rights to bear arms and assem­ble peace­ful­ly. It also gives author­i­ties the pow­er, with­out a war­rant, to search res­i­dents sus­pect­ed of crimes.

Min­ing in Guatemala accounts for about 2 per­cent of gross domes­tic prod­uct. The country’s largest gold mine, the Mar­lin mine owned by Canada’s Gold­corp Inc, is expect­ed to pro­duce up to 200,000 ounces this year.

 

Indigenous Peoples Stop Dam Construction With New Occupation at Belo Monte Site 2nd May

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Altami­ra, Brazil – Some 200 indige­nous peo­ple affect­ed by the con­struc­tion of large hydro­elec­tric dams in the Ama­zon launched an occu­pa­tion today on one of the main con­struc­tion sites of the Belo Monte dam com­plex on the Xin­gu Riv­er in the Brazil­ian Ama­zon. The group demands that the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment adopt effec­tive leg­is­la­tion on pri­or con­sul­ta­tions with indige­nous peo­ples regard­ing projects that affect their lands and liveli­hoods. As this has not hap­pened, they are demand­ing the imme­di­ate sus­pen­sion of con­struc­tion, tech­ni­cal stud­ies and police oper­a­tions relat­ed to dams along the Xin­gu, Tapa­jos and Teles Pires rivers. Shock troops of the mil­i­tary police were await­ing indige­nous pro­tes­tors when they arrived at the Belo Monte dam site, but they were unable to impede the occu­pa­tion.

The indige­nous pro­tes­tors include mem­bers of the Juruna, Kayapó, Xipaya, Kuru­aya, Asuri­ni, Parakanã, Arara tribes from the Xin­gu Riv­er, as well as war­riors of the Munduruku, a large tribe from the neigh­bor­ing Tapa­jós riv­er basin. The indige­nous peo­ples are joined by fish­er­men and local river­ine com­mu­ni­ties from the Xin­gu region. Ini­tial reports indi­cate that approx­i­mate­ly 6,000 work­ers at one of the main Belo Monte con­struc­tion sites, Pimen­tal, have ceased oper­a­tions as a result of the protest. The occu­pa­tion, accord­ing to the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, will con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly or until the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment meets their demands.

 

Indige­nous peo­ples of the Xin­gu and Tapa­jós released this state­ment [Eng­lish trans­la­tion]:

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We are the peo­ple who live in the rivers where you want to build dams. We
are the Munduruku, Juruna, Kayapo, Xipaya, Kuru­aya, Asuri­ni, Parakanã, Arara,
fish­er­men and peo­ples who live in river­ine com­mu­ni­ties. We are Ama­zon­ian
peo­ples and we want the for­est to stand. We are Brazil­ians. The riv­er and the
for­est are our super­mar­ket. Our ances­tors are old­er than Jesus Christ.
 
You are point­ing guns at our heads. You raid our ter­ri­to­ries with war trucks
and sol­diers. You have made the fish dis­ap­pear and you are rob­bing the
bones of our ances­tors who are buried on our lands.
 
You do this because you are afraid to lis­ten to us. You are afraid to hear that
we don’t want dams on our rivers, and afraid to under­stand why we don’t
want them.
 
You invent sto­ries that we are vio­lent and that we want war. Who are the
ones killing our rel­a­tives? How many white peo­ple have died in com­par­i­son to
how many Indige­nous peo­ple have died? You are the ones killing us, quick­ly
or slow­ly. We’re dying and with each dam that is built, more of us will die.
When we try to talk with you, you bring tanks, heli­copters, sol­diers,
machine­guns and stun weapons.

What we want is sim­ple: You need to uphold the law and pro­mote enact­ing
leg­is­la­tion on free, pri­or and informed con­sent for indige­nous peo­ples. Until
that hap­pens you need to stop all con­struc­tion, stud­ies, and police oper­a­tions
in the Xin­gu, Tapa­jos and Teles Pires rivers. And then you need to con­sult us.
 
We want dia­logue, but you are not let­ting us speak. This is why we are
occu­py­ing your dam-build­ing site. You need to stop every­thing and sim­ply
lis­ten to us.

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Occu­pa­tions against the Belo Monte dam com­plex and mobi­liza­tions against oth­er Ama­zon­ian dams have become increas­ing­ly com­mon­place. Con­struc­tion on Belo Monte has been halt­ed on at least sev­en occa­sions over the last year due to the efforts of affect­ed indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties and fish­er­men to call atten­tion to the fail­ures of the Norte Ener­gia dam build­ing con­sor­tium and gov­ern­ment agen­cies to com­ply with the project’s man­dat­ed envi­ron­men­tal and social con­di­tions. On March 21st, approx­i­mate­ly 100 indige­nous peo­ples, river­bank dwellers (ribeir­in­hos) and small farm­ers expelled dam work­ers and occu­pied the Pimen­tal site, main­tained by the Belo Monte Con­struc­tion Con­sor­tium (CCBM). Addi­tion­al­ly, recent strikes and protests by dam work­ers have cre­at­ed addi­tion­al unrest at CCBM con­struc­tion sites.

The Munduruku indige­nous peo­ple and oth­er local com­mu­ni­ties have mobi­lized against a cas­cade of over a dozen large dams slat­ed for con­struc­tion on the neigh­bor­ing Tapa­jós riv­er and its major trib­u­taries, the Teles Pires, Juru­e­na and Jamanx­im. One of the first major dams under con­struc­tion, UHE Teles Pires, has been the sub­ject of law­suits by Fed­er­al Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tors for lack of pri­or con­sul­ta­tions with the Kayabi, Api­aká and Munduruku indige­nous peo­ples. In recent weeks, the removal of funer­al urns of the Munduruku peo­ple by dam con­trac­tors at the Sete Quedas rapids, con­sid­ered a sacred site for indige­nous tribes, pro­voked out­rage.

Last March Pres­i­dent Dil­ma Rouss­eff signed Decree no. 7957/2013 allow­ing the use of the Nation­al Guard and oth­er armed forces to ensure that dam con­struc­tion at places like Belo Monte and tech­ni­cal stud­ies for planned Ama­zon­ian dams are not inter­rupt­ed by indige­nous pro­tes­tors. In April, upon a request of the Min­istry of Mines and Ener­gy, approx­i­mate­ly 250 fed­er­al and mil­i­tary police troops were dis­patched to the Tapa­jós region to ensure con­tin­u­a­tion of tech­ni­cal stud­ies for the first two large dams sched­uled for con­struc­tion, São Luiz do Tapa­jós and Jato­bá. The mil­i­tary oper­a­tion came in response to protests from the Munduruku peo­ple, whose tra­di­tion­al lands would be direct­ly affect­ed by the two large dams and who have suf­fered from a his­to­ry of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions on their lands.

“Today’s protest demon­strates the relent­less resis­tance of a grow­ing group of unit­ed peo­ples against Belo Monte, Tapa­jós and oth­er destruc­tive dams through­out the Ama­zon,” said Leila Salazar-Lopez, Ama­zon Watch Pro­gram Direc­tor. “These are the final moments to change course as con­struc­tion clos­es in on the Xin­gu and oth­er life­line rivers of the Ama­zon.”

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Fearing Protestors, Tree Biotech Conference Cancels Visit to GE Tree Test Plot 2nd May

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EF! con­fronts GE tree sci­en­tists on the high seas in Charleston, SC in 2007

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EF! con­fronts GE tree sci­en­tists on the high seas in Charleston, SC in 2007

There is still a month to go before activists hit the streets of Asheville, NC to protest the 2013 Tree Biotech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence, but the indus­try is already show­ing signs of retreat. Appar­ent­ly fear­ing that pro­tes­tors will fol­low them wher­ev­er they go, the con­fer­ence orga­niz­ers recent­ly can­celled a group trip to a test plot of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered euca­lyp­tus trees. While the coun­ties in which these test plots are plant­ed are pub­licly known, the exact loca­tion of these mutant trees is a close­ly guard­ed secret. It seems they don’t want a mob of Earth First!ers to find out where they are!

 The 2013 Tree Biotech­nol­o­gy Con­fer­ence is an inter­na­tion­al gath­er­ing of sci­en­tists, forestry cor­po­ra­tions and uni­ver­si­ty researchers with a major focus on genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered tree pro­duc­tion. GE trees pose an unprece­dent­ed threat to native forests. Tim­ber and util­i­ty cor­po­ra­tions want to plant mil­lions of acres genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered trees through­out the South to burn for elec­tric­i­ty, as well as to con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing the unsus­tain­able lum­ber and paper indus­tries. These trees would be engi­neered to pro­duce their own pes­ti­cides, grow straighter and faster, tol­er­ate man­u­fac­tured pes­ti­cides, pro­duce ster­ile seeds, and reduce lignin con­tent (this is what makes the wood in a tree strong enough to stand up). If these traits escaped into native tree pop­u­la­tions, the effects would be dev­as­tat­ing and irre­versible.

 In anoth­er set­back for the GE tree indus­try, the USDA just announced the results of their pub­lic com­ment peri­od on the pro­posed approval of com­mer­cial plant­i­ngs of genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered euca­lyp­tus trees. While over 30,000 peo­ple spoke out against the com­mer­cial plant­i­ng of these Franken­trees, an under­whelm­ing, four, yeah that’s right four, peo­ple spoke out in favor of plant­i­ng GE trees. Though this pub­lic com­ment peri­od shows that there is next to no sup­port for GE trees, it is no time to let our guard down con­sid­er­ing that gov­ern­ment agen­cies reg­u­lar­ly ignore the pub­lic opin­ion.

 Help us keep the up the pres­sure on the USDA and the tree biotech indus­try. Join activists from around the coun­try as we stand up for native forests and send a loud NO to GE trees with a week of protests and edu­ca­tion­al events in Asheville, NC May 26-June 1st.

Faslane Peace Camp: Phoenix Gathering 3–5 May 2013

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Watch the great new video call-out.

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Watch the great new video call-out.

A 3 day gath­er­ing at Faslane Peace Camp to work out logis­tics etc of rebuild­ing or tat­ting down the camp.  For every­one who wants to be involved as a new res­i­dent or part of the new sup­port group.  
Please get in touch if you want to attend either phone the camp on 01436–820901 or e‑mail the peace camp sol­i­dar­i­ty group:
faslanepeacecampsolidarity@gmail.com

3rd, 4th and 5th May
Faslane Peace Camp, Shan­don, Helens­burgh, Dun­bar­ton­shire G84 8NT

Faslane Peace Camp is look­ing for new mem­bers!

Faslane Peace Camp is the longest run­ning peace camp in the world.  Opened in 1982 by local peo­ple opposed to the bas­ing of Tri­dent mis­sile sub­marines here, the peace camp has been a sym­bol of hope and resis­tance for over thir­ty years.
Over that time num­bers at the camp have fluc­tu­at­ed from 2 to 25 peo­ple liv­ing there at any one time.
Now num­bers are falling and the peo­ple liv­ing at the camp want to move on.  They’ve decid­ed to set a dead­line of May 12th 2013 to find more peo­ple or they are going to start dis­man­tling the camp and turn­ing it into a peace gar­den in time for the peace cam­p’s 31st birth­day on 12th June 2013.  
We don’t have that much time to find a group of peo­ple who are com­mit­ted to stay­ing at the camp to con­tin­ue the resis­tance to British nuclear weapons on the Clyde.  
Some for­mer peace campers and friends at the peace camp have set up a group to try to do this and are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing sup­port for new peo­ple mov­ing to the peace camp.
Please if you don’t want to see the Peace Camp close at this cru­cial time in the debate about nuclear weapons in Scot­land and can offer help in any way or are inter­est­ed in find­ing out more about liv­ing at the peace camp please email us the Faslane Sup­port Net­work at: faslanepeacecampsolidarity@gmail.com
Or talk to the peace campers them­selves by con­tact­ing Faslane Peace Camp on 01436–820901 or faslane30@gmail.com

Lots more recent sto­ries here,

Goldcorp Security Shoots Peaceful Protesters in Guatemala 1st May

Police, mil­i­tary and pri­vate secu­ri­ty attack peace­ful anti-min­ing pro­test­ers at the San Rafael mine in Guatemala, Sep.

Police, mil­i­tary and pri­vate secu­ri­ty attack peace­ful anti-min­ing pro­test­ers at the San Rafael mine in Guatemala, Sep. 2008

From Rights Action:

Six civil­ians were shot and wound­ed (2 seri­ous­ly) on April 27, 2013 by Tahoe / Gold­corp secu­ri­ty forces at Tahoe’s “San Rafael” mine site (munic­i­pal­i­ty of San Rafael Las Flo­res, depart­ment of San­ta Rosa, Guatemala).  The wound­ed are: Adol­fo Gar­cía, 57; his son Luis Gar­cía, 18; Wilmer Pérez, 17; Anto­nio Hum­ber­to  Castil­lo, 48;  Noé Aguilar Castil­lo, 27; Érick Fer­nan­do Castil­lo, 27.  Local res­i­dents, who are main­tain­ing a per­ma­nent peace­ful occu­pa­tion by the mine entrance in protest against it, saw com­pa­ny armed guards open fire on the group of men who were walk­ing by.  (Pren­sa Libre, April 29, 2013, http://www.prensalibre.com/santa_rosa/personas-resultan-incidente-San-Rafael_0_909509181.html)

Read more here about Goldcorp’s (and sub­sidiary Tahoe Resources’) recent his­to­ry of vio­lence and repres­sion against indige­nous and campesino com­mu­ni­ties in Guatemala.

 

The Fuel Nightmare Continues

It’s as if the uni­verse is try­ing to tell us some­thing, isn’t it?

It’s as if the uni­verse is try­ing to tell us some­thing, isn’t it?

First, a dis­as­trous month that saw at least 15 sep­a­rate oil spills world­wide, near­ly all of them in North Amer­i­ca. That month also saw an oil barge catch fire after a col­li­sion, and the pub­li­ca­tion of a study impli­cat­ing frack­ing as a cause of earth­quakes.

Now at least 600 gal­lons have spilled from an Enbridge oil pump­ing sta­tion near Viking, Minnesota.Two fuel barges car­ry­ing a nat­ur­al gas deriv­a­tive have explod­ed and are still burn­ing on the Alaba­ma Riv­er. And new reports strong­ly sug­gest that tar sands from Exxon’s Pega­sus Pipeline in Mayflower, Arkansas have seeped into Lake Con­way and are head­ing toward the Arkansas Riv­er.

Dis­as­ters like these bring the real costs of fos­sil fuels into sharp focus, because we can imag­ine our­selves affect­ed by them. But the truth is, dis­as­ters like these are part of every­day life for the peo­ple and oth­er beings liv­ing in areas where fos­sil fuels are extracted—or any oth­er indus­tri­al mate­ri­als, from cop­per for solar pan­els to coltan for cell phones.

If you wouldn’t want oil spilling into your back yard, if you wouldn’t want a strip mine rip­ping open a hole behind your house and poi­son­ing your water, then it’s time to admit that the eco­nom­ic sys­tem found­ed on con­sum­ing these mate­ri­als has got to go. We’ll nev­er have jus­tice or sus­tain­abil­i­ty if we base one group’s “high stan­dard of liv­ing” on the dis­lo­ca­tion and destruc­tion of oth­ers.

 

The Efficiency of Green Energy

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We ought not at least to delay dis­pers­ing a set of plau­si­ble fal­lac­i­es about the econ­o­my of fuel, and the dis­cov­ery of sub­sti­tutes [for coal], which at present obscure the cri

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We ought not at least to delay dis­pers­ing a set of plau­si­ble fal­lac­i­es about the econ­o­my of fuel, and the dis­cov­ery of sub­sti­tutes [for coal], which at present obscure the crit­i­cal nature of the ques­tion, and are eager­ly passed about among those who like to believe that we have an indef­i­nite peri­od of pros­per­i­ty before us. –William Stan­ley Jevons, The Coal Ques­tion (1865)

There are, at present, many myths about green ener­gy and its effi­cien­cy to address the demands and needs of our bur­geon­ing indus­tri­al soci­ety, the least of which is that a switch to “renew­able” ener­gy will sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce our depen­den­cy on, and con­sump­tion of, fos­sil fuels.

The oppo­site is true. If we study the actu­al pro­duc­tive process­es required for cur­rent “renew­able” ener­gies (solar, wind, bio­fu­el, etc.) we see that fos­sil fuels and their infra­struc­ture are not only cru­cial but are also whol­ly fun­da­men­tal to their devel­op­ment. To con­tin­ue to use the words “renew­able” and “clean” to describe such ener­gy process­es does a great dis­ser­vice for gen­er­at­ing the type of informed and ratio­nal deci­sion-mak­ing required at our cur­rent junc­tion.

To take one exam­ple – the pro­duc­tion of tur­bines and the allo­ca­tion of land nec­es­sary for the devel­op­ment, pro­cess­ing, dis­tri­b­u­tion and stor­age of “renew­able” wind ener­gy. From the min­ing of rare met­als, to the pro­duc­tion of the tur­bines, to the trans­porta­tion of var­i­ous parts (weigh­ing thou­sands of tons) to a cen­tral loca­tion, all the way up to the con­tin­ued main­te­nance of the struc­ture after its com­ple­tion – wind ener­gy requires indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture (i.e. fos­sil fuels) in every step of the process.

If the con­cep­tion of wind ener­gy only involves the pris­tine image of wind tur­bines spin­ning, ever so won­der­ful­ly, along a beau­ti­ful coast or grass­land, it’s not too hard to under­stand why so many of us hold green ener­gy so high­ly as an alter­na­tive to fos­sil fuels. Notice­ably absent in this con­cep­tion, though, are the images of every­thing it took to get to that end­point (which aren’t beau­ti­ful images to see at all and is large­ly the rea­son why wind ener­gy isn’t mar­ket­ed that way).

Because of the rapid growth and expan­sion of indus­tri­ali­a­tion in the last two cen­turies, we are long past the days of easy acces­si­ble resources. If you take a look at the type of min­ing oper­a­tions and drilling oper­a­tions cur­rent­ly sus­tain­ing our way of life you will read­i­ly see degra­da­tion and dev­as­ta­tion on uncon­scionable scales. This is our real­i­ty and these process­es will not change no mat­ter what our ends are – these process­es are the degree with which “basic” extrac­tion of all of the fun­da­men­tal met­als, min­er­als, and resources we are famil­iar with cur­rent­ly take place.

In much the same way that the absur­di­ties of tar sands extrac­tion, moun­tain­top removal, and hydraulic frac­tur­ing are plain­ly obvi­ous, so too are the con­tin­ued min­ing oper­a­tions and refin­ing process­es of cop­per, sil­ver, alu­minum, zinc, etc. (all essen­tial to the devel­op­ment of solar pan­els and wind tur­bines).

It is not enough – giv­en our cur­rent sit­u­a­tion and its dire impli­ca­tions – to just look at the pret­ty pic­tures and ignore every­thing else. All this does, as won­der­ful­ly reaf­firm­ing and uplift­ing as it may be, is keep us bound in delu­sions and false hopes. As Jevons affirms, the ques­tions we have before us are of such over­whelm­ing impor­tance that it does no good to con­tin­ue to delay dis­pers­ing plau­si­ble fal­lac­i­es. If we wish to go any­where from here, we absolute­ly need uncom­pro­mis­ing (and often bru­tal) truth.

A com­mon argu­ment among pro­po­nents of sup­posed “green” ener­gy – often preva­lent among those who do under­stand the inher­ent destruc­tive process­es of fuels, min­ing and indus­try – is that by sim­ply putting an end to cap­i­tal­ism and its prof­it motive, we will have the capac­i­ty to plan for the effi­cient and prop­er man­age­ment of remain­ing fos­sil fuels.

How­ev­er, the effi­cient use of a resource does not actu­al­ly result in its decreased con­sump­tion, and we owe evi­dence of that to William Stan­ley Jevons’ work The Coal Ques­tion. Writ­ten in 1865 (dur­ing a time of such great progress that crit­i­cisms were unfath­omable to most), Jevons devot­ed his study to ques­tion­ing Britain’s heavy reliance on coal and how the impli­ca­tion of reach­ing its lim­its could threat­en the empire. Many cov­ered top­ics in this text have influ­enced the way in which many of us today dis­cuss the issues of peak oil and sus­tain­abil­i­ty – he wrote on the lim­its to growth, over­shoot, ener­gy return on ener­gy input, tax­a­tion of resources and resource alter­na­tives.

In the chap­ter, “Of the econ­o­my of fuel,” Jevons address­es the idea of effi­cien­cy direct­ly. Preva­lent at the time was the thought that the fail­ing sup­ply of coal would be met with new modes of using it, there­fore lead­ing to a sta­tion­ary or dimin­ished con­sump­tion. Mak­ing sure to dis­tin­guish between pri­vate con­sump­tion of coal (which account­ed for less than one-third of total coal con­sump­tion) and the econ­o­my of coal in man­u­fac­tures (the remain­ing two-thirds), he explained that we can see how new modes of econ­o­my lead to an increase of con­sump­tion accord­ing to par­al­lel instances. He writes:

The econ­o­my of labor effect­ed by the intro­duc­tion of new machin­ery throws labor­ers out of employ­ment for the moment. But such is the increased demand for the cheap­ened prod­ucts, that even­tu­al­ly the sphere of employ­ment is great­ly widened. Often the very labor­ers whose labor is saved find their more effi­cient labor more demand­ed than before.

The same prin­ci­ple applies to the use of coal (and in our case, the use of fos­sil fuels more gen­er­al­ly) – it is the very econ­o­my of their use that leads to their exten­sive con­sump­tion. This is known as the Jevons Para­dox, and as it can be applied to coal and fos­sil fuels, it so right­ful­ly can be (and should be) applied in our dis­cus­sions of “green” and “renew­able” ener­gies – not­ing again that fos­sil fuels are nev­er com­plete­ly absent in the pro­duc­tive process­es of these ener­gy sources.

We can try to assert, giv­en the gen­er­al care we all wish to take in mov­ing for­ward to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, that much dili­gence will be tak­en for the effi­cient use of remain­ing resources but with­out the direct ques­tion­ing of con­sump­tion our attempts are mean­ing­less. His­tor­i­cal­ly, in many vary­ing indus­tries and cir­cum­stances, effi­cien­cy does not solve the prob­lem of con­sump­tion – it exas­per­ates it. There is no guar­an­tee that “green” ener­gies will keep con­sump­tion lev­els sta­tion­ary let alone result in a reduc­tion of con­sump­tion (an obvi­ous neces­si­ty if we are plan­ning for a sus­tain­able future).

Jevons con­tin­ues, “Sup­pose our progress to be checked with­in half a cen­tu­ry, yet by that time our con­sump­tion will prob­a­bly be three or four times what it now is; there is noth­ing impos­si­ble or improb­a­ble in this; it is a mod­er­ate sup­po­si­tion, con­sid­er­ing that our con­sump­tion has increased eight-fold in the last six­ty years. But how short­ened and dark­ened will the prospects of the coun­try appear, with mines already deep, fuel dear, and yet a high rate of con­sump­tion to keep up if we are not to ret­ro­grade.”

Writ­ing in 1865, Jevons could not have fath­omed the lev­el of growth that we have attained today but that doesn’t mean his ear­ly warn­ings of Britain’s use of coal should be whol­ly dis­card­ed. If any­thing, the con­tin­ued rise and dom­i­nance of indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion over near­ly all of the earth’s land and peo­ple makes his argu­ments ever more per­ti­nent to our present sit­u­a­tion.

Based on cur­rent emis­sions of car­bon alone (not fac­tor­ing in the reach­ing of tip­ping points and var­i­ous feed­back loops) and the best sci­ence read­i­ly avail­able, our time frame for action to avert cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change is any­where between 15–28 years. How­ev­er, as has been true with every sci­en­tif­ic esti­mate up to this point, it is impos­si­ble to pre­dict that rate at which these var­i­ous process­es will occur and large­ly our esti­mates fall extreme­ly short. It is quite prob­a­ble that we are like­ly to reach the point of irre­versible run­away warm­ing soon­er rather than lat­er.

Sup­pose our progress and indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ism could be checked with­in the next ten years, yet by that time our con­sump­tion could dou­ble and the state of the cli­mate could be expo­nen­tial­ly more unfa­vor­able than it is now – what would be the capac­i­ty for which we could mean­ing­ful­ly engage in any amount of indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion? Would it even be in the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty to imple­ment large-scale over­hauls towards “green” ener­gy? With­out a mean­ing­ful and dras­tic decrease in con­sump­tion habits (remem­ber­ing most of this occurs in indus­try and not per­son­al lifestyles) and a sub­se­quent decrease in depen­den­cy on indus­tri­al infra­struc­ture, the prospects of our future are severe­ly short­ened and dark­ened.

 

Affirmative: Fracking Awareness North Somerset is go, go, GO! 30th April

Frack­ing Aware­ness North Som­er­set (F.A.N.S) is a new organ­i­sa­tion seek­ing to mobi­lize com­mu­ni­ty based resis­tance against frack­ing. We aim to build a net­work of groups all over North Som­er­set to col­lec­tive­ly strug­gle against the insid­i­ous threat posed by frack­ing to our local com­mu­ni­ties and land­scape.

Frack­ing Aware­ness North Som­er­set (F.A.N.S) is a new organ­i­sa­tion seek­ing to mobi­lize com­mu­ni­ty based resis­tance against frack­ing. We aim to build a net­work of groups all over North Som­er­set to col­lec­tive­ly strug­gle against the insid­i­ous threat posed by frack­ing to our local com­mu­ni­ties and land­scape.

F.A.N.S. will encom­pass and offer sup­port for all anti-frack­ing/en­vi­ron­men­tal groups in North Som­er­set, pro­vid­ing them with up to date infor­ma­tion, encour­age­ment and sol­i­dar­i­ty in fight­ing this cause.

Our Face­book page is now up and run­ning and we are cur­rent­ly in the midst of design­ing our new North Som­er­set focused leaflets. We are also cre­at­ing a new web­site so that we are eas­i­ly con­tactable and can pro­vide infor­ma­tion and help for oth­er groups around North Som­er­set.

Once our leaflet and web­site are fin­ished, we are plan­ning F.A.N.S Fort­night – two weeks of talks, pre­sen­ta­tions, meet­ings, work­shops and film show­ings around the towns and vil­lages of North Som­er­set. F.A.N.S Fort­night aims to edu­cate the res­i­dents of these areas on the often com­plex issue of frack­ing. We seek to show them how they may be affect­ed by frack­ing in the com­ing years, but also that there is light at the end of the tun­nel.

So it’s all go from North Som­er­set! Please feel free to get in touch if you are inter­est­ed in sup­port­ing us or have a new group that would like to join F.A.N.S. We would also very much like to hear from any­one inter­est­ed in help­ing out with fes­ti­vals or ideas for pro­mo­tion.

Frack­ing will bring indus­tri­al North Sea gas extrac­tion to our very doorsteps. Togeth­er, we can stop it.

Com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance will be one of the most effec­tive tools deployed against the frack­ing cor­po­ra­tions. Despite what may appear at first glance to be a very bleak sit­u­a­tion, hope can be found by stand­ing togeth­er in focused sol­i­dar­i­ty.

There­fore, we will be encour­ag­ing and pro­vid­ing sup­port for any­one who would like to start their own local group. Our aim is to help as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble take their first ten­ta­tive steps in this strug­gle. Unit­ed com­mu­ni­ties are key to end­ing (with a firm and res­olute full stop) frack­ing’s threat to North Som­er­set.

A lot of pro­mo­tion is need­ed to ensure that res­i­dents know who we are and when we will be in their area. There­fore, mem­bers of F.A.N.S are plan­ning to vis­it a large num­ber of local South West sum­mer fes­ti­vals this year to man­age stalls, run work­shops and hold talks. We will also be pro­mot­ing F.A.N.S Fort­night and the events/meetings that are going to be held dur­ing that time.

Last on our cur­rent agen­da is ‘Love and Rage’ — a month­ly spo­ken word poet­ry and acoustic music night held in Bris­tol. Love and Rage will be a reg­u­lar fund-rais­er to help con­tribute towards the mon­e­tary demands of our cam­paign. It will also be a plat­form from which to inform peo­ple of the dan­gers posed by Frack­ing and, at the same time, hope­ful­ly mobilise them into action.

Relat­ed Link: https://www.facebook.com/pages/FANS-Fracking-Awareness-…07437