Combe Haven Defenders deliver tree to East Sussex County Council offices

14.2.13

Not deterred by the evic­tion of the camps on the route over thir­ty oppo­nents of the £100 mil­lion Bex­hill-Hast­ings link road vis­it­ed East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil in Lewes this w

14.2.13

Not deterred by the evic­tion of the camps on the route over thir­ty oppo­nents of the £100 mil­lion Bex­hill-Hast­ings link road vis­it­ed East Sus­sex Coun­ty Coun­cil in Lewes this week.

They did­n’t arrive emp­ty hand­ed how­ev­er– they turned up with big bits of tree, left over from the felling at Adam’s Farm. They then pro­ceed­ed to wedge them into the doors of the coun­cil offices. The coun­cil’s door­men seemed remark­ably reluc­tant to take deliv­ery of the boughs which ESCC has com­pul­so­ri­ly pur­chased.

The coun­cil came togeth­er on Tues­day for a rare meet­ing of all 49 coun­cil­lors to agree its 2013 bud­get, George Osborne will have been pleased to hear that his Tory cronies vot­ed to spend pub­lic mon­ey on the Road — which will dev­as­tatethe Combe Haven val­ley — at the same time as it is mak­ing cuts of £ 70m, which will be borne main­ly by chil­dren and vul­ner­a­ble adults.

Accord­ing to Combe Haven Defend­ers “Peter Jones, ESC­C’s bul­ly boy has aban­doned claims that the road will relieve con­ges­tion, con­struct­ing instead a myth of job cre­ation, yet the day before the bud­get meet­ing, cen­tral Gov­ern­ment announced £16m to regen­er­ate sea­side towns like Bex­hill and Hast­ings, much of it sus­tain­able and com­mu­ni­ty-based. West­min­ster expects to gen­er­ate 4000 jobs. This is more than four times total num­ber of jobs that the Link Road might hope to cre­ate at a frac­tion of the cost.”

In a fur­ther devel­op­ment, a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request by Hast­ings Alliance revealed that the road has yet to receive final fund­ing approval from the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. How­ev­er, the doc­u­ments were heav­i­ly redact­ed and cam­paign­ers are demand­ing to know what oth­er embar­rass­ing infor­ma­tion has been with­held.

There are an increas­ing num­ber of autonomous affin­i­ty groups com­mit­ted to resist­ing by direct action. Combe Haven Defend­ers are now joined by a Crowhurst res­i­dents group and a local Quak­er affin­i­ty. The bat­tle over Combe Haven is only just begin­ning.

www.combehavendefenders.org.uk

Protesters continue to frustrate Shell’s work 17th Feb

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

This last week has been anoth­er week of resis­tance to Shell con­tro­ver­sial pipeline, with numer­ous truck block­ades and dis­rup­tion to work­ers

In sol­i­dar­i­ty with our friend Izzy Ní Ghraidm, we have con­tin­ued to keep up the pres­sure on Shell by block­ing trucks and work­ers through­out the day.
Shell work­ers arrive at 6.30am and there are up to 105 truck move­ments per day so there’s plen­ty of chance to show your oppo­si­tion and sup­port the local com­mu­ni­ty.

Shell was forced to admit that they had been expe­ri­enc­ing prob­lems with the Tun­nel Bor­ing Machine after it was announced on the radio that work on the tun­nel had resumed.
How­ev­er just days after this was announced there are rumours fly­ing of fur­ther prob­lems.

As the pho­to of Glen­gad shows, the Shell com­pound has expand­ed and is now just next to the old camp field. It is a real eye­sore on this beau­ti­ful land­scape but it is not too late to stop it.
Come up and sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell.
 

Relat­ed Link: http://www.shelltosea.com
 

actions against E‑On in Nottingham

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

15.02.2013

Last night the doors to the Not­ting­ham E‑on Open House on Lis­ter Gate were d‑locked shut in sol­i­dar­i­ty with any­one strug­gling to stay warm this win­ter.

Eon and their part­ners in crime are not only destroy­ing the plan­et as they extract every last inch of nat­ur­al resources from the ground, they’re also doing their best to fleece each and every­one of us as they raise the prices year in year out. What we did last night was a minor act. Car­ried out by indi­vid­u­als who are dis­gust­ed with the ways in which the cor­po­rate pow­er and greed which goes hand in hand with this sys­tem. It is destroy­ing the plan­et, human beings and every liv­ing thing. We must fight back.
 
Update: I work across the road from the open house. It had to open two hours lat­er than usu­al.
 
——-
 
Stop G8 Notts hit the streets of Not­ting­ham yes­ter­day dis­trib­ut­ing a leaflet that made con­nect­ing the every­day real­i­ty of pover­ty in the city, where peo­ple are forced to choose between eat­ing or stay­ing warm to the cap­i­tal­ist spec­ta­cle of the G8 sum­mit tak­ing place lat­er this year.
Indi­vid­u­als were recep­tive to the mes­sage although many peo­ple did­n’t view them­selves as empow­ered to do any­thing about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. This re-enforced the impor­tance of us being on the streets talk­ing and engag­ing with as many peo­ple as we can, talk­ing about the prob­lems, their caus­es and how we can tack­le them on micro and macro lev­els.

Starv­ing to Sttay Warm

Fuel pover­ty protest against E.on.

Eon and the oth­er five big ener­gy com­pa­nies (EDF, Cen­tri­ca, SSE, Scot­tish Pow­er and npow­er) are a car­tel which con­trols 99% of the domes­tic ener­gy mar­ket. Domes­tic ener­gy prices for us are con­stant­ly ris­ing whilst every year these com­pa­nies declare record prof­its.

Accord­ing to a recent sur­vey, this win­ter 1 in 4 fam­i­lies have had to face a stark choice between heat­ing and eat­ing. Whilst e.on exec­u­tives and share­hold­ers spend bumper prof­its on sec­ond homes and hol­i­days
abroad, peo­ple in the UK are freez­ing because they need to eat.

We are starv­ing to stay warm!

On June the 17th and 18th the G8 world lead­ers will be meet­ing in Fer­managh, North­ern Ire­land, to dis­cuss how to main­tain the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem which enables and jus­ti­fies this day­light rob­bery. While we allow our lives to be gov­erned by these crooks prof­it will always come before peo­ple. The only way to achieve real change is to break from this vicious cycle of exploita­tion, smash cap­i­tal­ism and reor­gan­ise our com­mu­ni­ties in a way which ensures every­one has access to the neces­si­ties of life.

From the 10th of June there will be a week of action, work­shops and meet­ings in Lon­don to protest against the G8 and to work towards build­ing the sort of world that we want to live in

stopg8notts@riseup.net

 

Tasmanian Activists Challenge Mining in The Tarkine

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop

Two female activists from envi­ron­men­tal direct action group Groundswell have tak­en peace­ful action to high­light the detri­men­tal impacts that min­ing in the Tarkine will have on healthy dev­il pop­u­la­tions liv­ing in the region.

At 10AM on Sat­ur­day, Feb. 2, Groundswell activists deployed a ban­ner read­ing “FOR DEVILS SAKE, DON’T MINE THE TARKINE” from the Alexan­dra Sus­pen­sion Bridge, in Launceston’s Cataract Gorge.  The two climbers– a local law stu­dent and a doc­tor- remained sus­pend­ed from the bridge for two hours until 12pm.

“The Tarkine region of North West Tas­ma­nia con­tains the last wild pop­u­la­tions of dis­ease free dev­ils.   Min­ing and asso­ci­at­ed activ­i­ties are of sig­nif­i­cant threat to the dev­ils of this region” said Groundswell spokesper­son Sarah Van Est.

tasmanian-devil

“Already under direct threat from the dead­ly facial tumour dis­ease, loss of habi­tat sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es the like­li­hood of con­tact between healthy and dis­eased ani­mals. This has the poten­tial to increase the rate of spread of DFTD.”

“A fur­ther threat is the sub­stan­tial increase of heavy traf­fic in the area, which would great­ly increase wildlife road­kill” added Miss Van Est.

A lead­ing wildlife expert, Prof. Hamish McCal­lum, head of Grif­fith University’s School of Envi­ron­ment and for­mer chief sci­en­tist of the Save the Tas­man­ian Dev­il Pro­gram, con­firmed that the mines would have a poten­tial­ly dis­as­trous impact on dev­ils.

“There is suf­fi­cient evi­dence to sug­gest that it may threat­en the sur­vival of pop­u­la­tions of Tas­man­ian dev­ils in the area,” said Pro­fes­sor McCal­lum.

Miss Van Est said that “Self-reg­u­la­tion and token fines offer no real incen­tive for wealthy min­ing com­pa­nies to take mea­sures to ensure pro­tec­tion for the endan­gered Tas­man­ian icon.”

As well as con­tain­ing sig­nif­i­cant dev­il habi­tat, much of the Tarkine has already been inde­pen­dent­ly ver­i­fied as high con­ser­va­tion val­ue wilder­ness. Groundswell is call­ing on the State and Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ments, specif­i­cal­ly fed­er­al envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Tony Burke,  to safe­guard the area and the dev­ils by ensur­ing imme­di­ate and ongo­ing pro­tec­tion in the form of Nation­al Park or World Her­itage List sta­tus for the Tarkine region.

48 arrested in historic act of civil disobedience to stop Keystone XL pipeline

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

JULIAN BOND, BILL MCKIBBEN, MICHAEL BRUNE, AND OTHERS ARRESTED IN FRONT OF WHITE HOUSE IN CALL FOR ACTION ON CLIMATE

WASHINGTON, D.C. — This morn­ing, 48 envi­ron­men­tal, civ­il rights, and com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers from across the coun­try joined togeth­er for a his­toric dis­play of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence at the White House where they demand­ed that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma deny the Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline and address the cli­mate cri­sis.

Among the notable lead­ers involved in the civ­il dis­obe­di­ence were Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club; Bill McK­ibben, Founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, for­mer pres­i­dent of the NAACP; Dan­ny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevi­ty; Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Con­nor Kennedy, and Daryl Han­nah, Amer­i­can actress.

After block­ing a main thor­ough­fare in front of the White House, and refus­ing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrest­ed and trans­port­ed to Ana­cos­tia for pro­cess­ing by the US Park Police Depart­ment.

“The threat to our planet’s cli­mate is both grave and urgent,” said civ­il rights activist Julian Bond. “Although Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has declared his own deter­mi­na­tion to act, much that is with­in his pow­er to accom­plish remains undone, and the deci­sion to allow the con­struc­tion of a pipeline to car­ry mil­lions of bar­rels of the most-pol­lut­ing oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fel­low cit­i­zens and declare, ‘I am will­ing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The envi­ron­men­tal cri­sis we face today demands noth­ing less.”

 

“We real­ly shouldn’t have to be put in hand­cuffs to stop KXL–our nation’s lead­ing cli­mate sci­en­tists have told us it’s dan­ger­ous fol­ly, and all the recent Nobel Peace lau­re­ates have urged us to set a dif­fer­ent kind of exam­ple for the world, so the choice should be obvi­ous,” said 350.org founder Bill McK­ibben. “But giv­en the amount of mon­ey on the oth­er side, we’ve had to spend our bod­ies, and we’ll prob­a­bly have to spend them again.”

“For the first time in the Sier­ra Club’s 120-year his­to­ry, we have joined the ranks of vision­ar­ies of the past and present to engage in civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, know­ing that the issue at hand is so crit­i­cal, it com­pels the strongest defen­si­ble action,” said Michael Brune, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sier­ra Club. “We can­not afford to allow the pro­duc­tion, trans­port, export and burn­ing of the dirt­i­est oil on Earth via the Key­stone XL pipeline. Pres­i­dent Oba­ma must deny the pipeline and take deci­sive steps to address cli­mate dis­rup­tion, the most sig­nif­i­cant issue of our time.”

If approved, the Key­stone XL pipeline would boost car­bon pol­lu­tion tomor­row by trig­ger­ing a boom of growth in the tar sands indus­try in Cana­da, and great­ly increas­ing green­house gas emis­sions.

The Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency (EPA) has esti­mat­ed that this tar sands pipeline will boost annu­al U.S. car­bon pol­lu­tion emis­sions by up to 27.6 mil­lion met­ric tons – the impact of adding near­ly 6 mil­lion cars on the road.

How­ev­er, new research by Oil Change Inter­na­tion­al (OCI) shows that the government’s esti­mates of the car­bon emis­sions asso­ci­at­ed with Key­stone XL under­es­ti­mates the full impact of tar sands because a bar­rel of tar sands pro­duces sig­nif­i­cant­ly more petro­le­um coke than con­ven­tion­al crude, which is more car­bon-inten­sive than coal. The research can be found at: http://priceofoil.org/2013/01/17/petroleum-coke-the-coal-hiding-in-the‑t….

OCI’s research shows that Key­stone XL will pro­duce enough pet­coke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emis­sions from this pet­coke have not yet been includ­ed in cli­mate-impact analy­sis of the pipeline or the tar sands indus­try and OCI shows that it will raise total emis­sions by at least 13 per­cent.

Shell to Sea campaigner jailed for 3 months. 14th Feb

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Ms Ní Ghraidm plead­ed guilty to a Sec­tion 8 and 9 charge and refused to do com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice as she felt her protest was a ser­vice to a com­mu­ni­ty under siege from Shell. The Judge then sen­tenced Ms Ní Ghraidm to 3 months in jail.

Izzy has been a strong sup­port­er of Shell to Sea for years and her com­mit­ment to the cause is much appre­ci­at­ed by us here in Mayo.
She has coura­geous­ly stood up for our strug­gle to pro­tect our com­mu­ni­ty and is pas­sion­ate in her fight to reclaim Irish nat­ur­al resources.

Speak­ing from the Court, Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way stat­ed “Yes­ter­day in Bel­mul­let Dis­trict court, we saw a com­mit­ted envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­er being jailed for a minor pub­lic order inci­dent. On the oth­er hand a Shell secu­ri­ty guard who was caught deal­ing drugs is allowed to walk free. Ms Ní Ghraidm has tak­en a brave stand to sup­port this com­mu­ni­ty’s strug­gle against a greedy multi­na­tion­al that will do what­ev­er it is allowed to by the sub­servient State insti­tu­tions”.

Mr Con­way con­tin­ued “What we’re expe­ri­enc­ing is the selec­tive appli­ca­tion of the law. Yes­ter­day Prov­i­dence Resources dropped their Dublin Bay oil drilling licence because the State has not got it’s required EU envi­ron­men­tal laws in place. The same EU envi­ron­men­tal laws apply to Cor­rib but are being ignored.”

Fracking Saboteur Sentenced to 6 Months. 13 Feb

As far as we can tell, there’s been no clear rea­son expressed about why he did it.

As far as we can tell, there’s been no clear rea­son expressed about why he did it. But does there real­ly need to be? Any­one who risks their free­dom to attack a frack­ing site in the Mar­cel­lus Shale, and in one evening suc­ceeds at delay­ing oper­a­tions for three months, is a hero to all who drink water and hate ener­gy cor­po­ra­tions.

Tan­ner Long, 21, from the Trout Run area of Lycoming Coun­ty, PA, alleged­ly admit­ted to an ambi­tious act of van­dal­ism on August 30, 2012, and was sen­tenced in late-Jan­u­ary to six months of prison (in a “coun­ty pre-release cen­ter”) and five years pro­ba­tion.

The sto­ry was not heav­i­ly report­ed out­side the local area, but you can check out a short news clip here, which includes heart warm­ing images of over­turned bull­doz­ers at a trashed frack­ing site on pub­lic land. You can also send him a let­ter here for the time being:

Tan­ner J. Long #3625
Lycoming Coun­ty Prison
277 West Third Street
Williamsport, PA 17701

What we know of the sto­ry: In Sep­tem­ber 2012, a $10,000 reward was offered by Brubach­er Ener­gy Ser­vices for any infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the arrest and con­vic­tion of who­ev­er van­dal­ized con­struc­tion equip­ment in Loy­al­sock State For­est. 

Accord­ing to Myron Brubach­er, an own­er of the Lan­cast­er Coun­ty company.”They basi­cal­ly cut the trees to block access to the road where our equip­ment was locat­ed.”

The van­dals, who had some­how acquired keys, used pieces of equip­ment to dam­age oth­er pieces of equip­ment. In total, the com­pa­ny report­ed $120,000 in dam­ages.

“They rolled sev­er­al pieces, one of our machines was rolled over on its side. They did a lot of dam­age,” Brubach­er said. “It took three months to repair the dam­age.”

He added that the com­pa­ny has increased secu­ri­ty since the van­dal­ism.

Lycoming Coun­ty Judge Nan­cy L. Butts  told Long to “grow up.” While we at the EF! Newswire could see  the poten­tial for fla­grant Bart Simp­son-inspired imma­tu­ri­ty when fac­ing off with some­one named Judge Butts, her hon­or was appar­ent­ly refer­ring to Long’s hero­ic van­dal­ism being imma­ture (as opposed any per­son­al insult  to Butts that one may have eas­i­ly been tempt­ed to utter, as we were.)

While three oth­ers report­ed­ly watched on the night of Aug. 30, Long start­ed heavy equip­ment belong­ing to Brubach­er Ener­gy, of Bow­mans­ville, at a well site off Route 14 north of Trout Run.

Whaling fleet in chaos as scattered Japanese poachers abandon harpoon ship dangerously low on fuel.

MELBOURNE, Aus­tralia  — An anony­mous source with­in Korea has report­ed that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is in total dis­ar­ray, with Sea Shep­herd Australia’s ship the SSS Sam Simo

MELBOURNE, Aus­tralia  — An anony­mous source with­in Korea has report­ed that the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet is in total dis­ar­ray, with Sea Shep­herd Australia’s ship the SSS Sam Simon tail­ing the refu­elling tanker for the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet, the Pana­man­ian-reg­is­tered and South Kore­an-owned ves­sel Sun Lau­rel.  The Sam Simon plans to fol­low the Sun Lau­rel in hopes to track them straight to the Nis­shin Maru.

The source detailed that the Sun Lau­rel was only con­tract­ed to refu­el the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet until mid-Feb­ru­ary, but because Japan’s Whal­ing Pro­gram is so close­ly con­nect­ed to their com­mer­cial fish­ing inter­ests, they are using their clout with­in the fish­ing indus­try, attempt­ing to pres­sure the Sun Lau­rel to refu­el the whalers below 60° in Aus­trali­a’s Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry, with the threat of black­list­ing the Sun Lau­rel from future con­tracts if they don’t abide.

Sea Shep­herd Aus­tralia Direc­tor, Jeff Hansen states, “The Yushin Maru is in a des­per­ate sit­u­a­tion, quite pos­si­bly unable to get to safe­ty in the event of an emer­gency. The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet would­n’t be in this predica­ment if they weren’t pari­ahs for their ille­gal whal­ing; unwel­come to refu­el in any land-based port with­out scruti­ny and banned from Aus­tralian ports, they must hire a refu­elling ves­sel sim­ply to be fuelled for their ille­gal poach­ing.  These poach­ers are in con­tempt of an Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court rul­ing and should not be in the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary in the first place. The South Kore­an ves­sel, the Sun Lau­rel is sup­ply­ing fuel to the ille­gal oper­a­tions of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet, which is akin to sup­ply­ing equip­ment to ele­phant poach­ers in Africa.”

Oper­a­tion Zero Tol­er­ance Co-Cam­paign Leader, Bob Brown stat­ed, “Once again, Japan’s whal­ing fleet is flout­ing inter­na­tion­al law. Now it is draw­ing in the Gov­ern­ment of South Korea, which so wise­ly decid­ed against whal­ing last year. South Korea should order this tanker to turn around and go home. Oth­er­wise it invites world con­dem­na­tion instead of the praise it so recent­ly enjoyed.”

The source report­ed that the Yushin Maru is sep­a­rat­ed from the fleet by hun­dreds of miles, very low on fuel and unable to pro­ceed unless refu­elled.  This indi­cates that the Yushin Maru has been total­ly aban­doned by the Nis­shin Maru and the rest of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in their hour of need.

Cap­tain of the SSS Steve Irwin, Sid­dharth Charkravar­ty recounts: “While in pur­suit of the Nis­shin Maru, the Steve Irwin picked up the Yushin Maru as a tail­ing ves­sel, rid­ing extreme­ly high out of the water, indi­cat­ing that they were very low on fuel.  A few days lat­er when the whalers tried to swap the Yushin Maru with a ful­ly fuelled Yushin Maru No. 3, the Steve Irwin instead chased the Yushin Maru in the oppo­site direc­tion of the whaler’s fac­to­ry ship for 150 miles.  Dur­ing this chase, the Yushin Maru was unable to reach their full speed of 20+ knots, but was bare­ly able to eke out 16–17 knots, con­firm­ing that they were low on fuel and hence run­ning at a more fuel-sav­ing speed.”  Since then, this Kore­an source reports, the Yushin Maru is con­serv­ing their mea­gre fuel stores and is unable to cov­er the ground between them and the Nis­shin Maru.

Rather than remain with their sis­ter ship, or even trans­fer fuel to them, the Yushin Maru No. 3 instead chose to aban­don the Yushin Maru in the treach­er­ous waters of the South­ern Ocean in order to chase the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin.

Sea Shep­herd Founder, Paul Wat­son says, “This action shows the neg­li­gence of the whal­ing com­man­der, not only for the sanc­ti­ty of the whales of the South­ern Ocean Whale Sanc­tu­ary, but an utter and total dis­re­gard for the life and safe­ty of the crews who work on these death ships.  Last year, on Oper­a­tion Divine Wind, when one of Sea Shep­herd’s ships, the Brigitte Bar­dot, was com­pro­mised, we stopped our entire cam­paign to escort them to port and ensure their safe­ty.  It’s not sur­pris­ing that the whalers share no such cama­raderie for one anoth­er, since their entire motive for being in these waters is ruth­less greed.”

Cap­tain Peter Ham­marst­edt, aboard the SSS Bob Bark­er said, “Oper­a­tion Zero Tol­er­ance has had vic­to­ries in so many forms, from inter­cept­ing the whalers’ fuelling ves­sel, and thus cut­ting their sea­son, to pulling two-thirds of the fleets’ har­poon ships entire­ly out of oper­a­tion, and keep­ing the sole remain­ing har­poon­er with the fac­to­ry ship run­ning, stunt­ing their progress, and severe­ly lim­it­ing their abil­i­ty to poach Antarc­ti­ca’s pris­tine waters.  We also inter­cept­ed the whal­ing fleet before they had a chance to fire a sin­gle har­poon.”

The Bob Bark­er con­tin­ues to chase and hunt the whalers’ butcher­ing ship, the Nis­shin Maru, unen­cum­bered by a tail, and aid­ed by a fleet of aer­i­al scout­ing drones.

http://www.seashepherd.org.au/news-and-media/2013/02/10/japanese-whaling-fleet-abandons-harpoon-vessel-nearly-empty-on-fuel-1491

Lifelong Oklahoman Youth Pastor Locked to Machinery in Protest of Keystone XL 11 Feb

Ear­li­er this morn­ing, Ste­fan Warn­er, a youth pas­tor who was born and raised in Har­rah, OK, locked him­self to machin­ery being used to build the tox­ic Key­stone XL tar sands pipeline through Creek land near Schoolton, OK.

Warn­er is tak­ing action to pro­tect the health of the North Cana­di­an Riv­er, com­mu­ni­ties and land that this pipeline would run through from being irre­versibly dam­aged by dilut­ed bitu­men (tar sands) leaks and spills. He is send­ing a clear mes­sage that the cur­rent day colo­nial­ism and dis­re­gard for the health and sov­er­eign­ty of indige­nous peo­ples in Alber­ta, Cana­da, and along the pipeline is unacceptable—from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, as well as a human per­spec­tive.

Tar sands pipelines have a hor­ren­dous track record: the exist­ing Key­stone 1 pipeline leaked 12 times in its first year, and at least thir­ty times to date. In 2010, the added dan­gers of tar sands pipelines were demon­strat­ed by Enbridge’s Line 6B pipeline spill of more than a mil­lion gal­lons of dilut­ed bitu­men into the Kala­ma­zoo Riv­er in Michi­gan. The Kala­ma­zoo tar sands spill is the costli­est inland spill in U.S. his­to­ry, drain­ing the oil spill cof­fers and plac­ing the $800 mil­lion and ris­ing price tag onto the backs of local and fed­er­al tax­pay­ers. But it is not the mon­e­tary bur­den that weighs heav­i­est. It is the toll on human life and the health of local ecosys­tems that is immea­sur­able, espe­cial­ly the tox­i­c­i­ty of the dilut­ed bitu­men and undis­closed pro­pri­etary chem­i­cals has proven dev­as­tat­ing.

In addi­tion to the immense dan­gers posed by the Key­stone XL, Tran­sCana­da has been mis­rep­re­sent­ing the eco­nom­ic effects of the pipeline. The major­i­ty of con­struc­tion jobs are tem­po­rary and have been filled by Wis­con­sin-based con­trac­tor Michel’s, not Okla­homans and Tex­ans. Despite Tran­sCana­da and the State Department’s rhetoric of ener­gy inde­pen­dence, the dilut­ed bitu­men trans­port­ed by the Key­stone XL is des­tined for export to for­eign mar­kets after being refined in Gulf Coast refiner­ies, and the Nation­al Resources Defense Coun­cil asserts that the KXL will increase domes­tic gas prices.

“I grew up in a town where the North Cana­di­an Riv­er runs right through, and we can’t let the North Cana­di­an become anoth­er Kala­ma­zoo,” said Okla­homan youth pas­tor Ste­fan Warn­er. “I fig­ure folks have to take action to stop our beau­ti­ful Okla­homa from being marred by a for­eign cor­po­ra­tion, and stand up to fight big cor­po­ra­tions who think that poi­son­ing peo­ple and steal­ing land is accept­able so long as they make a prof­it.”

Warn­er is act­ing with Great Plains Tar Sands Resis­tance, a coali­tion of Okla­homans and allies fight­ing to pre­vent con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL which will bring dan­ger­ous and tox­ic dilut­ed bitu­men from the bio­me-con­sum­ing tar sands gigapro­ject to refin­ery com­mu­ni­ties in the Gulf. This action comes in the wake of dozens of sim­i­lar actions which have active­ly fought con­struc­tion of the Key­stone XL in Okla­homa and Texas. In light of reports of shod­dy weld­ing by Tran­sCana­da whistle­blow­er Evan Vokes and the recent release of pho­tographs depict­ing holes in the weld of a pipe buried in Texas, the strug­gle to keep the Key­stone XL from being com­plet­ed is even more urgent.

Updates

At 8 a.m., direct sup­port for Ste­fan was arrest­ed with­out warn­ing and placed in police car. Six oth­er peo­ple on site are being detained.

At 9 a.m., six peo­ple detained now arrest­ed. Sev­en police vehi­cles are on scene. Work­ers have low­ered side-boom in dis­re­gard of Stefan’s safe­ty and OSHA reg­u­la­tions. Ste­fan is still locked to machin­ery but lying painful­ly face-down on the low­ered arm. Police are obscur­ing Ste­fan from view and not allow­ing any­one with­in pho­tograph­ing dis­tance.

At 9:15 a.m., anoth­er indi­vid­ual arrest­ed. This per­son was not ini­tial­ly detained but was pre­vent­ed from access­ing her vehi­cle since 8 a.m. Ste­fan
is still hold­ing strong. It also appears that this action is also blockad­ing an active frack site.

Indigenous resistance forces Malaysia to scale back twelve dam megaproject

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

A Malaysian state min­is­ter Fri­day said the gov­ern­ment would not push ahead with build­ing a dozen new dams on Bor­neo island, acknowl­edg­ing they have caused out­rage from local tribes and envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

The pro­pos­als sparked fears that the dams would destroy pris­tine rain­forests, endan­ger wildlife, and dis­place natives in Sarawak, a Malaysian state crossed by pow­er­ful rivers with rich jun­gle habi­tats.

“It is not a firm plan to build 12 dams. I don’t think we will need that. We will only need four,” James Mas­ing, Sarawak’s state min­is­ter of land devel­op­ment, told AFP in an inter­view.

Mas­ing said the gov­ern­ment was back­ing off in response to wide­spread crit­i­cism. Protests over the years have seen activists and locals stag­ing block­ades of roads into dam areas.

“I’m pleased that this type of thing (protests) takes place. Not all that we do is cor­rect, and this shows we need to refine our plans and think again,” he said.

The now-com­plete Bakun mega-dam, which is not part of the new dam pro­pos­al, has already been dogged for years by claims of cor­rup­tion in con­struc­tion con­tracts, the flood­ing of a huge swathe of rain­for­est and the dis­place­ment of thou­sands of tribes­peo­ple.

Despite that, the gov­ern­ment moot­ed con­struct­ing more dams as part of an indus­tri­al devel­op­ment dri­ve to boost the resource-rich state’s back­ward econ­o­my.

Anoth­er dam at Murum, also deep in the inte­ri­or, is near­ing com­ple­tion and two oth­ers are in the plan­ning stages as part of the new pro­pos­al.

Togeth­er the four dams — at Bakun, Murum, Baleh and Baram — are already expect­ed to put out near­ly 6,000 megawatts of pow­er, six times what Sarawak cur­rent­ly uses, Mas­ing said.

“The protests are becom­ing more vocal on the ground so (the dam rethink) is a very good devel­op­ment for me,” said Peter Kallang, mem­ber of a Sarawak tribe and chair­man of SAVE Rivers, an NGO that has cam­paigned against the dams.

How­ev­er, he said plans for the Baram and Baleh dams should be scrapped as well, not­ing that the Baram dam would dis­place about 20,000 peo­ple, com­pared to about 10,000 at Bakun, and destroy irre­place­able for­est.

He said SAVE Rivers last month organ­ised a float­ing protest along the Baram riv­er that cruised down riv­er for three days and was met with sup­port along the way by local tribes­peo­ple.

Kallang and oth­er activists have also trav­elled abroad to lob­by against the dams, includ­ing meet­ing offi­cials of Hydro Tas­ma­nia, an Aus­tralian cor­po­ra­tion that advis­es the Sarawak gov­ern­ment on the dams.

The Tas­ma­nia gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tion pledged in Decem­ber after meet­ing the activists that it would pull its per­son­nel out of Sarawak by the end of 2013, Kallang said.

Sarawak’s tribes — eth­ni­cal­ly dis­tinct from Malaysia’s major­i­ty Malays — fear that they will lose their ances­tral lands and hunt­ing and bur­ial grounds, as the gov­ern­ment encour­ages them to make way for projects and move into new set­tle­ments.

Those are equipped with med­ical clin­ics, elec­tric­i­ty, and Inter­net access. But vil­lage elders and activists say alco­holism, drug use, and crime are on the increase and anger is ris­ing over con­tin­u­ing encroach­ment on native lands.

In one of the block­ades in 2011, Penan tribes­peo­ple blocked roads into their lands for a week to protest log­ging and alleged riv­er pol­lu­tion by Malaysian firm Inter­hill until the block­ade was dis­man­tled by author­i­ties.