Katuah Earth First! Shuts Down TD Bank in Protest Against Kesytone XL

22nd March 2013taking over the lobby

Four arrest­ed at live­ly protest against fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture

22nd March 2013taking over the lobby

Four arrest­ed at live­ly protest against fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture

More pic­tures here

Asheville, NC —  60 peo­ple took to the streets today to protest the Key­stone XL pipeline in down­town Asheville. After a ral­ly in Pritchard Park, the march made its way to TD Bank, a major investor in the Key­stone XL pipeline and occu­pied the lob­by, forc­ing the bank to close for the rest of the day. Pro­tes­tors car­ried ban­ners read­ing, “Oba­ma, Your Pipedream is a Night­mare” and “TD Bank, divest from dirty oil.” Police arrest­ed four pro­test­ers who refused to leave until TD Bank agreed to divest from the tar sands indus­try.

The action was orga­nized by Asheville based Kat­u­ah Earth First! and is part of a week of nation­wide protests called for by Tar Sands Block­ade  a coali­tion of Texas landown­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists fight­ing the south­ern leg of the pipeline.

“We are going to hold account­able the com­pa­nies that threat­en our future with their dirty invest­ments. With every dol­lar TD Bank invests in the Key­stone XL pipeline we can feel the noose tight­en­ing around our necks,” said Pat­ty Petro­luse, a stu­dent in Asheville. TD Bank holds over 13 mil­lion shares in Tran­scana­da, the com­pa­ny build­ing the Key­stone XL pipeline.

“In a time of esca­lat­ing drought, wild­fires, and super-storms fueled by cli­mate change it is sui­ci­dal to invest bil­lions of dol­lars in new fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture. The Key­stone XL pipeline would be deliv­er­ing the dirt­i­est fos­sil fuel imag­in­able, tar sands oil”, said Hen­ry Lowry.

If built, the pipeline would tear through thou­sands of miles of sen­si­tive ecosys­tems, farm­land, and Native Amer­i­can trib­al lands in order to deliv­er Cana­di­an tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refiner­ies. Con­trary to indus­try claims, the vast major­i­ty of the oil would be des­tined for export, not for US con­sump­tion. Canada’s tar sands oil has been labeled by envi­ron­men­tal groups as the “dirt­i­est project on earth.” Extrac­tion of tar sands requires mas­sive strip mines that have already destroyed hun­dreds of square miles of Canada’s bore­al for­est. Tar sands oil pro­duc­tion is extreme­ly ener­gy inten­sive and pro­duces far more green­house gas emis­sions than con­ven­tion­al oil.

The week of protest has seen protests in over 30 cities around the coun­try and over 40 arrests as activists express their oppo­si­tion to the Key­stone XL Pipeline. Kat­u­ah Earth First! is proud to con­tribute to the nation­wide move­ment against new fos­sil fuels infra­struc­ture.

Breaking News: Cops Move in on Willits Treesit; Cutting and Construction to Follow

21 March 2013
If you are any­where near Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty, get out there and help!Warbler_treesit_9045_1000p_WEB

21 March 2013
If you are any­where near Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty, get out there and help!Warbler_treesit_9045_1000p_WEB
Willits, CA-Oppo­nents of the Cal­trans Will­lits Bypass through endan­gered wet­lands are con­verg­ing on the site to pro­tect a tree-sit­ter as dozens of Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol vehi­cles arrived at the Bypass protest area in Willits in Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty at 7 a.m. this morn­ing. CHP offi­cers began cor­don­ing off the access roads to the area, keep­ing a gath­er­ing num­ber of pro­test­ers and wit­ness­es away from the tree-sit and Cal­trans’ pro­posed con­struc­tion area. The 24-year old local farmer in the tree who calls her­self “the War­bler” has been aloft next to High­way 101 since Jan­u­ary 28.
 
Four arrests have been made of Willits res­i­dents, and the sit­u­a­tion is still active­ly unfold­ing. Anoth­er Bypass pro­test­er has been stand­ing in front of the brush crush­ing machine that is in the juris­dic­tion­al wet­lands and has repeat­ed­ly blocked it after hav­ing been removed sev­er­al times with­out arrest. Cal­trans’ per­mit process is not com­plete with regard to the Migra­to­ry Bird Act, in effect until Sep­tem­ber 15 for the nest­ing sea­son.
 
Updates will be released as the sit­u­a­tion unfolds.

Caltrans Bypass Battle in Willits Heats Up As Activists Sit Down to Block Equipment

16 March 2013

16 March 2013

Willits, CA-Local res­i­dents say Cal­trans tried to bull­doze their way through Fed­er­al and State reg­u­la­tions again in what has become a run­ning bat­tle over the planned Bypass high­way around Willits in Men­do­ci­no Coun­ty. Activists sat down in front of mov­ing equip­ment and called Cal-tip to report vio­la­tions of the Inter­na­tion­al Migra­to­ry Bird Act after bird nests were found. This was the third time activists have blocked equip­ment since Jan. 28, when a tree sit­ter named War­bler Warblerwent aloft in a tall pon­derosa pine at the south­ern end of the pro­posed con­struc­tion site on Hwy. 101 just out­side Willits to protest Cal­trans’ Bypass.

At issue is pro­to­col regard­ing required sur­veys for nest­ing birds in com­pli­ance with the Migra­to­ry Bird Act and a “juris­dic­tion­al wet­land” dam­aged when Cal­trans work­ers drove an exca­va­tor into the bog­gy area and it became stuck.
 
When Cal­trans arrived at 7:30 a.m. Wednes­day, they were accom­pa­nied by Arrow Fenc­ing Com­pa­ny and their con­sult­ing biol­o­gists, who walked ahead of the noisy machine in case nests were again found in its path. Cal­trans and Arrow Fenc­ing employ­ees on site claimed they had been told they could pro­ceed by Joann Dunn, Cal­i­for­nia Depart­ment of Fish and Wildlife’s (DFW) region­al liai­son to Cal­trans. No proof was avail­able that revised pro­to­cols for the bird sur­veys required before start­ing con­struc­tion had been approved by DFW.
 
Reached by phone, DFW Joann Dunn said she had not seen the pro­to­cols but that the Depart­ment had agreed Cal­trans could con­tin­ue fenc­ing in the pre­vi­ous­ly dis­turbed area, despite being under an “active inves­ti­ga­tion”. Last week it was revealed that Cal­trans did not have the approved pro­to­cols from DFW need­ed pri­or to per­form­ing bird sur­veys.  State DFW ordered Cal­trans to sub­mit revised pro­to­cols and do new bird sur­veys.
 Excavator tracks flat jurisdictional wetlands
The Bypass would raise a  thir­ty-foot high earth­en wall on either end of the small north­ern Cal­i­for­nia town, con­nect­ed by an ele­vat­ed two-lane, high-speed viaduct span­ning the Lit­tle Lake Val­ley. Sen­si­tive wet­lands and Coho salmon in the two longest trib­u­taries to the Eel Riv­er would be severe­ly impact­ed.  More­over, safe­ty con­cerns about the viaduct, which has no exits, have been raised repeat­ed­ly. Cal­trans’ EIR says the safe­ty stan­dards will be met in Phase II of the plan, which oppo­nents sus­pect may nev­er be fund­ed, leav­ing them with a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly pre­dictable high­er rate of seri­ous and fatal acci­dents.
 
State Sen­a­tor Noreen Evans last week sent a let­ter to Cal­trans with some “point­ed ques­tions” about Cal­trans’ design plans after her aide vis­it­ed the site and met with those opposed to the Cal­trans’ Bypass, accord­ing to the Willits News.  That let­ter can be found on the Willits News site at https://www.facebook.com/WillitsWeekly/posts/493170500739029.
 
Dur­ing the sit-down block­ade, activist Jaime Cheva­lier said, “We told Cal­trans we’d leave if they’d stop all work and sit down and talk with Sen­a­tor Noreen Evans.”

Deutsche Bags, the Keylime XL Pipeline and a Week of Eco-Action to Remember

16th March 2013

16th March 2013

“…It was lat­er learned that the group’s actions relate to their protest against the con­struc­tion of the Keylime XL pipeline and finances for the project ema­nat­ing from Deutsche Bank.”

—Offi­cer Rodriguez, Palm Beach Police Prob­a­ble Cause Affi­davit

What a bunch a Deutsche Bags

No Offi­cer, that ain’t Keylime ema­nat­ing from Deutsche Bank.

Today kicks off a Week of Action to Stop Tar Sands Prof­i­teers. As you may have heard, the good folks on the front lines of the tar sands resis­tance have called for sol­i­dar­i­ty with their ongo­ing effort of block­ades along the route of Key­stone XL con­struc­tion.

What we have below are some lessons learned from an action in Flori­da last Novem­ber, where amidst a call for sol­i­dar­i­ty with Tar Sands Block­aders fight­ing the Key­stone XL pipeline, four peo­ple were arrest­ed at Deutsche Bank (one of KXL’s many financiers). The protest took place on Palm Beach Island, a bas­tion of obscene wealth and elit­ism in south Flori­da.

No Officer, that ain't Keylime emanating from Deutsche Bank...

What a bun­cha Deutsche Bags! Click here to read doc­u­ment

About two weeks ago, the final case of the four folks who got popped on “the Island” was resolved, result­ing in a hand­ful of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice hours and a few measly months of pro­ba­tion. More impor­tant­ly though, arrestees gained access to police records from the action dur­ing the pre-tri­al process (avail­able to you by click­ing the images on the right) and they have the free­dom to talk more eas­i­ly now that a few sketchy charges are no longer hang­ing over their heads. 

We hope some of these sev­en lessons may come in handy for the folks, both new­bies and well-sea­soned, who are plan­ning to have an action-packed week: 

Les­son #1. Press Releas­es: Its a good idea to wait ’till after the action is in place before you send a press release out far and wide. Espe­cial­ly if a local news­pa­per shares an office build­ing with a bank you’re tar­get­ing. (The paper in this case being the Palm Beach Dai­ly News, known around here as “The Shiny Sheet” because they pride them­selves on using glossy un-recy­clable paper for their front page. Every day.) Oth­er­wise, kiss your ele­ment of sur­prise good-bye, and say hel­lo to that beefy mus­tached under­cov­er cop wan­der­ing the park at your deploy­ment site.

Closed due to dirty investments KXL

Click here to read the Doc­u­ment.      Extra Cred­it Les­son, SEO 101: Did you know that the more times we write cor­po­rate names like Deutsche Bank, Tran­sCana­da or Michels in a news post, the high­er a sto­ry like this ranks in online search­es for them, help­ing expose them, cast doubt from their share­hold­ers and clients and pos­si­bly dri­ve up the cost of their PR firm con­tracts and insur­ance poli­cies? For extra fun let’s add an individual’s name, like James Zahringer of Deutsche Bank, so this will come up in search­es for him as well. “Tag­ging” them helps do this too.

Les­son #2. Masks: Wear­ing a ban­dana around your face can be help­ful at times func­tion­al for both its the­atri­cal and secu­ri­ty qual­i­ties—cool-look­ing even. But there are addi­tion­al ele­ments to take into con­sid­er­a­tion here. For exam­ple, like an ostrich hid­ing its head in sand, some­times wear­ing a mask in small group makes you stand out more than, say, a shave and some pen­ny-loafers might. And then there’s the whole being-accused-of-try­ing-to-rob-a-bank thing (Yes, even if that bank deals only in man­ag­ing invest­ments.) While this charge got thrown out of court, we found it hard con­vinc­ing news out­lets to retract their false alle­ga­tions. On that note…

Les­son #3. Media: Don’t expect fair or accu­rate cov­er­age, espe­cial­ly from a news­pa­per shar­ing an office with a bank your protest­ing. Even if you write up a good sol­id press release (as we thought we had done.) A poten­tial­ly-thwart­ed bank rob­bery prob­a­bly trumps an eco-rad­i­cal office occu­pa­tion in the cor­po­rate news pret­ty much every time.

Les­son #4. Crim­i­nal charges: If, in assess­ing your action plan and poten­tial crim­i­nals charges you could be accused of, you real­ize they are most like­ly to be some over­ly-broad hokey non-sense like “dis­or­der­ly con­duct” or “breach of the peace,” then plan to make them count. For exam­ple, u‑locking front doors (where there is still an avail­able fire exit), defac­ing win­dows with stick­ers say­ing “Closed Due to Dirty Invest­ments” and dump­ing a messy, sticky sub­stance that looks like tar sands oil (but smells like brown­ie bat­ter)… Those all fall under a sin­gle charge, so why skimp? On a side note relat­ed to legal strat­e­gy, one of the ways in which bogus charges were beat­en was in prepar­ing for tri­al by sub­poe­naing evi­dence and wit­ness­es which would fur­ther expose and incon­ve­nience our tar­get busi­ness estab­lish­ments, thus sweet­en­ing the plea deals offered.

Les­son #5. Pic­tures: If you end up with a cam­era which has pho­tos that could be used against some­one in court, its a good idea to take pre­cau­tions that avoid them being con­fis­cat­ed or sub­poe­naed as evi­dence. Its a bad idea to hide them so well that you no longer have any pic­tures from the action to show what hap­pened, leav­ing you using a mes­sage-less pic­ture of some­one get­ting arrest­ed from that stu­pid cor­po­rate news­pa­per which you will be com­plain­ing about, pos­si­bly for months to come, instead of the fun­ny-ass pic­tures of your friends get­ting tack­led in front of a Deutsche Bank look­ing like 1920s-era ban­dits.

Les­son #6. Sto­ries: We have to tell our own. While it might be eas­i­er to let the police doc­u­ments do it for us, its not always as reli­able as it has been here. And if you can’t pub­lish your sto­ry in a time­ly manor due to pend­ing legal obsta­cles or oth­er hur­dles, then come up with a time­less way, or a new-time­ly­ness, or some oth­er orig­i­nal and/or fun­ny way to present it (like this… Yes. This that you’re read­ing right now. Click here to start again from the top.) After all, the world changes accord­ing to the sto­ries we tell about our actions. Good actions are vehi­cles for good sto­ries; good sto­ries are a path to all-out-rev­o­lu­tion. Con­verse­ly, good actions accom­pa­nied by bor­ing over­ly-ide­o­log­i­cal sto­ries are paths to Joe Stalin’s din­ner par­ty (like the one that prompt­ed his wife Nadya to kill her­self). Bru­tal, and total­ly b‑o-o-o-o-r-r-r-i-n‑g.

Les­son #7. Win­ning: We are win­ning. If you don’t believe the hyper­bol­ic rhetoric on your favorite overzeal­ous anar­chist social media web­pages, then check out the finan­cial sector’s news on occa­sion, like Bloomberg’s take last month on Deutsche Bank “re-trench­ing” on oil and gas invest­ments (“The bank post­ed a fourth-quar­ter loss of $2.9 bil­lion… due to “reduced client activ­i­ty,” accord­ing to a Jan. 31 earn­ings state­ment”) or Platts’ report a few years back on Deutsche’s doubt that KXL could meet its dead­lines. Our ene­mies feel pres­sure.

The last take-home mes­sages

This fight is grow­ing. Here’s one small exam­ple: When this arti­cle was start­ed, Credo—that strange activist-phone com­pa­ny com­bo deal—had just announced a well-craft­ed, ambi­tious “pledge of resis­tance” for mass civ­il dis­obe­di­ence against the KXL tar sands pipeline coin­cid­ing with the State Department’s release of a pathet­ic envi­ron­men­tal assess­ment which moved it one big step clos­er to full approval. By the time we hit “pub­lish,” Cre­do has already got­ten well over 50,000 com­mit­ments from peo­ple look­ing to plug in… pos­si­bly on your plans for next week—plans that will become a part of the vic­to­ry sto­ry.

Let's see if

The pic­ture of this neo-nazi was tak­en by a Tar Sands Block­ad­er along the KXL route in east Texas recent­ly. Alright, now let’s see if we can get the words “Nazi,” “Michels” and the CEO’s name, “Richard Kinder” to come up togeth­er in a search engine. Woo! Isn’t this excit­ing!?

Oh, wait. A few more things. In case you missed it, there are some great lists of action tar­gets where you can show your sol­i­dar­i­ty with folks fight­ing the pipeline, includ­ing address­es for all the Michels offices in the US. Michels is the con­trac­tor con­struct­ing the KXL pipeline (not to men­tion the Ten­nessee fracked gas pipeline being fought in Penn­syl­va­nia right now). Michels’ CEO is Richard Kinder. He lives at 2929 Lazy Lane Boule­vard, Hous­ton, TX 77019–1301. Add to the repul­sion, he appar­ent­ly has no prob­lem hir­ing nazis.

Red Lake Chippewa Blockade Enbridge Tar Sands Pipelines

16 March 2013

16 March 2013

For over two weeks now, Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan (We Love Our Land) has been occu­py­ing land direct­ly above four pipelines across an ease­ment that Enbridge has claimed since 1949 when the com­pa­ny, then called Lake­head Pipe Line Com­pa­ny, installed the first of four pipelines across land owned by the Red Lake Band of Chippe­wa despite not hav­ing an ease­ment from the Red Lake Chippe­wa Nation. These pipes car­ry tox­ic tar sands, Bakken oil, as well as Cana­di­an crude. By threat­en­ing the local lakes, these pipes endan­ger the lives and eco­nom­ic liveli­hood of Red Lake Band mem­bers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3JXYe88sREc

The grass­roots group of Red Lake Chippe­wa and Anishi­naabe Indi­ans is joined by block­aders and sol­i­dar­i­ty activists deter­mined to shut down the pipelines, hold Enbridge to account for steal­ing land, and protest Enbridge’s pro­posed expan­sion of the near­by Alber­ta Clip­per tox­ic tar sands pipeline.

Locat­ed in North­ern Min­neso­ta near the town of Leonard, the occu­pa­tion of the Red Lake land began Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 28. Requests to Enbridge regard­ing inter­nal safe­ty reg­u­la­tions relat­ed to above-ground activ­i­ty over their pipelines result­ed in a spokesper­son claim­ing that activ­i­ty such as fires and the con­struc­tion of per­ma­nent struc­tures like fences and hous­es would result in a pipeline need­ing to be shut down.

Sim­i­lar encamp­ments, like the Unist’ot’en Camp, have been spring­ing up across the con­ti­nent to fight the fos­sil fuel indus­try and stop the destruc­tion of sacred lands in the pur­suit of ever-more dan­ger­ous and destruc­tive fos­sil fuel resources. Indeed, the pipeline indus­try would be hard pressed to imag­ine a tougher time in which to be doing busi­ness.

Indige­nous resis­tance to tar sands pipelines in the region dates back to 2009 when Enbridge’s Alber­ta Clip­per tar sands line was run through Leech Lake and Fond du Lac Anishi­naabe reser­va­tions. The pipeline was only saved by tech­ni­cal­i­ties in trib­al law that led a judge to dis­miss the case against the deci­sion by elect­ed offi­cials to con­tract with Enbridge.

Enbridge is cur­rent­ly in the process of seek­ing approval to near­ly dou­ble the capac­i­ty of the near­by Alber­ta Clip­per tox­ic tar sands pipeline from its cur­rent 440,000 bar­rels per day up to 800,000 bpd. Not only will the Red Lake action take four pipelines offline, it is also set­ting prece­dent that pipeline expan­sion will not be tol­er­at­ed! Not only that, but shut­ting down the ille­gal Enbridge pipelines may pre­vent mil­lions of bar­rels of dirty tar sands from reach­ing mar­ket.

Now, with a deci­sive­ly bold move and the back­ing of large con­stituen­cies of Red Lake Band mem­bers due to years of local com­mu­ni­ty self-edu­ca­tion, Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan might well set the first exam­ple of a tar sands line being forced to shut down per­ma­nent­ly due to protest after it has been oper­a­tional!

“When I was informed about the ille­gal tres­pass­ing of the com­pa­ny Enbridge on my home­land, I knew there was some­thing I could do. I start­ed call­ing as many Red Lak­ers as I could to try and make them aware,” said Ang­ie Pala­cio who ini­ti­at­ed the encamp­ment with the sup­port of the Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work.

Sup­port for their efforts has been pour­ing in from many nations and groups:

Tom Poor­bear, vice pres­i­dent of the Ogalala Sioux Nation declared, “We ful­ly sup­port the Red Lake Nation and its mem­bers who are oppos­ing the Enbridge pipeline to stop the flow and remove the ille­gal pipeline from their land.”

Bill McK­ibben, founder of 350.org has stat­ed, “I imag­ine every­one involved in the plan­et-wide resis­tance to fos­sil fuel is watch­ing them with thanks.”

Chief Bill Eras­mus of the Dene First Nation stat­ed, “We ful­ly sup­port and are inspired by the Red Lake mem­bers and their resis­tance as it is stat­ed in the Moth­er Earth Accord; affirm­ing our respon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect and pre­serve for our descen­dents, the inher­ent sov­er­eign rights of our indige­nous nations, the rights of prop­er­ty own­ers, and all inher­ent human rights.”

Enbridge, of course, is a major play­er in the tox­ic tar sands pipeline saga being respon­si­ble for the costli­est onshore petro­chem­i­cal spill in US his­to­ry. On July 25, 2010 a tar sands/diluted bitu­men spill from Enbridge’s 6B pipeline near Mar­shall, Michi­gan that result­ed in the release of over a mil­lion gal­lons of tox­ic tar sands/diluted bitu­men and a per­ma­nent­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed 40-mile stretch of the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er along well as sev­er­al trib­u­taries. There have been hun­dreds of health prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with expo­sure to the tar sands chem­i­cals and since the spill sev­er­al deaths have been attrib­uted to the sud­den expo­sure. These chem­i­cals imme­di­ate­ly begin evap­o­rat­ing upon release and are heav­ier than air, form­ing a tox­ic cloud at ground-lev­el that is prac­ti­cal­ly inescapable.

Clear after the spill was the com­plete lack of under­stand­ing Enbridge and US Fed­er­al oil spill response teams had in how to clean up a tar sands/diluted bitu­men spill. Dilut­ed bitu­men is not crude oil and there­fore does not behave like crude oil upon release. There are still no estab­lished cleanup pro­to­cols and emer­gency first respon­ders in regions like Texas and Okla­homa, where the 750,000 bar­rels per day Key­stone XL pipeline is pro­posed to tra­verse by the end of 2013, have nev­er been informed or warned as to how to man­age the extreme­ly tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men spills com­mon to the tar sands indus­try.

Com­mu­ni­ties in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the dev­as­tat­ing spill are still reel­ing and are show­ing lit­tle to no signs of recov­ery – bio­log­i­cal or eco­nom­ic.

Nizhawen­daamin Inaakim­i­naan is well aware of these hap­pen­ings and has tak­en one of the most excit­ing steps to rid their ter­ri­to­ry of the threat to com­mu­ni­ty health and safe­ty that tar sands pipelines pose.

They are accept­ing dona­tions to assist in the pur­chase of build­ing and life-sus­tain­ing mate­ri­als here:
https://www.wepay.com/donations/enbridgeblockade. Please donate if you can!

Thousands of Workers Protest Gold Mine in Athens

13th March 2013

13th March 2013

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Thou­sands of pro­test­ers marched in cen­tral Athens against a dis­putable gold min­ing project in north­ern Greece which they say is ruin­ing the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment in the region and brings zero prof­its to the cash-strapped coun­try.

“We want the land, the water and the trees, not a gold­en tomb”, chant­ed thou­sands of Greeks, march­ing in sup­port of the local com­mu­ni­ty in the Skouries region of Chalkidi­ki, in north­ern Greece.

[EF! News Note: This gold mine project was also the recip­i­ent of an ambi­tious eco-arson attack last month]

The envi­ron­men­tal impact of gold min­ing in the 317 thou­sand sq. km region is severe, say the pro­test­ers. There is almost a gram of gold in every ton of soil in the area. Hun­dreds of thou­sands of tons of earth will have to be dug out, cut­ting through a pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al for­est, then chem­i­cal­ly processed using arsenic, cad­mi­um and oth­er tox­ic chem­i­cals.

These will irre­versibly dam­age local agri­cul­ture and fish­ing and pose a grave health risk for the entire region, as a gigan­tic cloud of dust looms over it and tox­ic damps are built to house the processed soil.

We spoke to activist and math­e­mat­ics pro­fes­sor Anto­nis Var­doulakis, from the Aris­totelian Uni­ver­si­ty in Thes­sa­loni­ki, Greece’s sec­ond largest city, only 100 km from the region in ques­tion.

Nine­ty-five per­cent of the gold mine in Skouries belongs to Cana­di­an multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Eldo­ra­do Gold and five per­cent to Hel­las Gold, a pri­vate com­pa­ny owned by Fotis and George Bobo­las, Greece’s con­struc­tion tycoons and media moguls.

Astound­ing­ly, the Greek State owns zero per­cent roy­al­ties in the gold mines in Skouries and anoth­er three region­al gold and sil­ver mines. Futher­more, in 2011, the Greek gov­ern­ment was the inter­me­di­ary for the trans­fer of own­er­ship between the cur­rent and for­mer own­er com­pa­nies, for a mere 11 mil­lion euros.

The gold min­ing project in North­ern Greece is fast becom­ing one of the most con­tro­ver­sial sto­ries in the cri­sis-strick­en coun­try. Apart from the envi­ron­men­tal haz­ard, there is no appar­ent evi­dence the gold mines will bring finan­cial pros­per­i­ty in the region­al com­mu­ni­ty, or increase cash-flow into the state cof­fers.

Check out news from an arson attack on the Skouries gold mine last month

Forest Protest, Economic Sabotage, Australia

13 March 2013

A for­est protest in the Cen­tral High­lands is cost­ing con­trac­tors about $20,000 a day, accord­ing to the state Lib­er­als.

13 March 2013

A for­est protest in the Cen­tral High­lands is cost­ing con­trac­tors about $20,000 a day, accord­ing to the state Lib­er­als.

FlorentineProtest2_PhotoByEmmaCapp

Oppo­si­tion forestry spokesman Peter Gutwein described the protest, by up to 10 mem­bers of envi­ron­men­tal group Still Wild, Still Threat­ened, as a dis­grace­ful act of eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage.

The group is protest­ing in But­lers Gorge near Lake King William.

One pro­test­ers has chained them­self to a gate while anoth­er climbed into a tree sit.

Mr Gutwein said up to 20 work­ers were being denied access to their law­ful jobs.

“Rather than the weasel words offered yes­ter­day, if Labor were seri­ous about pro­tect­ing jobs and invest­ment, then they would act to stop this dis­grace­ful act of eco­nom­ic sab­o­tage,” Mr Gutwein said.

“What this shows is that no mat­ter how much Labor tries to appease the Greens, it will nev­er be enough. This so-called peace deal won’t bring ‘peace’. The protests won’t stop.”

Yes­ter­day, the gov­ern­ment con­demned the anti-log­ging protest in the World her­itage-nom­i­nat­ed for­est.

The pro­test­ers claim that a small num­ber of coupes were being har­vest­ed in areas nom­i­nat­ed for pro­tec­tion under the forestry peace deal.

How­ev­er, deputy pre­mier Bryan Green said the coupes were part of exist­ing har­vest­ing oper­a­tions to meet con­trac­tu­al wood sup­ply require­ments.

Anarchists Killed Nanotech Scientist in “Feral Defense of Wild Nature”

10 March 2013

[eds. note: the fol­low­ing arti­cle is from a pro busi­ness, mil­i­tary and defense jour­nal]  by Busi­ness Insid­er Mil­i­tary and Defense

10 March 2013

[eds. note: the fol­low­ing arti­cle is from a pro busi­ness, mil­i­tary and defense jour­nal]  by Busi­ness Insid­er Mil­i­tary and Defense

An Anar­chist ter­ror group call­ing them­selves “Indi­vid­u­als Tend­ing Toward Sav­agery” (ITS) has recent­ly claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for a high pro­file attack on a sci­en­tist two years ago, and made sev­er­al death threats, accord­ing to reports.

Dr. Ernesto Mén­dez Sali­nas, a biotech­nol­o­gy expert, was shot and killed in 2011, but until this admis­sion his death was large­ly attrib­uted to the gen­er­al rise of vio­lence in Mex­i­co, and even lat­er attrib­uted to a rash of car jack­ings.

The ITS fol­lowed its shock­ing claim of respon­si­bil­i­ty by issu­ing threats against any promi­nent researchers in the field of nano and biotech­nol­o­gy, whom they plan to take out with Ted Kaczyn­s­ki-like tac­tics. (A par­tic­u­lar hero of theirs.)

The rea­sons for doing so: Uncon­trol­lable pro­lif­er­a­tion of nano-par­ti­cle “goo” that will con­sume the earth in a man-made, micro­scop­ic apoc­a­lypse.

The group has claimed bomb attacks in the past, but how many are theirs is unclear. The anar­chists say they’ll either take respon­si­bil­i­ty for attacks months lat­er or not all. For one such unclaimed “attack,” which killed 20 peo­ple, they say the gov­ern­ment is sup­press­ing infor­ma­tion.

From a blog ded­i­cat­ed to the group:

The explo­sion in the Pemex tow­er (for exam­ple) in Jan­u­ary 2013, which left 20 dead and hun­dreds wound­ed, shows what “evi­dence” the gov­ern­ment and the media are going to make known. Lies upon lies.

The gov­ern­ment report­ed that the explo­sion was the result of a bro­ken gas line. ITS has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty, though there’s no evi­dence avail­able to prove their claim.

Nonethe­less, until nan­otech­nol­o­gy is stopped, they vow to con­tin­ue.

“We have said it before, we act with­out any com­pas­sion in the fer­al defense of Wild Nature. Did those who mod­i­fy and destroy the Earth think their actions wouldn’t have reper­cus­sions? That they wouldn’t pay a price? If they thought so, they are mis­tak­en,” they said in a state­ment after the most recent attack.

Excavator and bulldozer torched during ongoing Khimki Forest struggle, Russia

anony­mous report:

anony­mous report:

“Dur­ing the night of 08/03/13 we placed 3 incen­di­aries on con­struc­tion vehi­cles in a sand extrac­tion com­plex of Sol­nechno­gorsk dis­trict (near Moscow).
The sand from this site goes to the high­way con­struc­tion projects in Khim­ki for­est as well as some oth­er region­al devel­ope­ment projects. Two vehi­cles were com­plete­ly destroyed: a tracked doz­er and an exca­va­tor.

Because of damp weath­er one of the devices failed to ignite, so we had to back­track. With rav­aging flames from burn­ing exca­va­tor at our backs, we approached the bomb and re-wired it.

Whole­heart­ed sup­port to CCF-Rus­sia, Indone­sian rebels from Kulon-Pro­go, ALF/ELF/FAI groups around the world.
Com­bat­ant sol­i­dar­i­ty with “ALF lone wolf” Wal­ter Bond, impris­oned mem­bers of greek CCF, Mar­co Camenish and ital­ian anar­chist per­se­cut­ed under the police oper­a­tions of 2012 like Tor etc.
Felic­i­ty Rid­er: remain free!
Tor­tu­ga: we enjoyed read­ing your let­ters man!

- Wolf­pack, ELF/FAI

excavator set on fire at road construction site, Russia

anony­mous report, from From Rus­sia With Love:

anony­mous report, from From Rus­sia With Love:

“On wednes­day, 06/03/13, we paid a vis­it to yet anoth­er high­way expan­sion site. We looked for a decent tar­get and, upon find­ing one, put 6 litres of gaso­line wired to a timer inside dri­ver’s cock­pit. Alas, the exca­va­tor didn’t burn out com­plete­ly: as soon as flames burst out of the cock­pit, work­ers rushed over and start­ed fight­ing the fire. It appears that they have suc­ceed­ed. Nev­er­the­less, our point was made. In the fol­low­ing texts we’ll speak of ways of assem­bling a prim­i­tive clock­work timer and how to upgrade on molo­tov fuse.

A tra­di­tion­al salute to our com­rades. We express whole­heart­ed sup­port to every anar­chist who’s got in trou­ble. We hope you are read­ing this. Grant­ed, this peri­od is not the best one for you, but times will change and this will pass. Of course, no need to hope for a cloud­less future. We wish you luck and all the best.

Our sol­i­dar­i­ty to all the impris­oned com­rades from CCF, those on the run and under tri­al. To every­one who con­tin­ues to fight, who refus­es to bow down. To all our broth­ers and sis­ters who finds strength to resist. We ded­i­cate this arson to you. We see you in the streets.

- Con­spir­a­cy Cells of Fire – Rus­sia, ‘Arti­fi­cers cell’ ”