Trial for Coal River Mountain treesitter coming up…

Banners in honor of Judy Bonds hand from treesit, Summer 2011

and other updates from Appalachia

The trial for Squirrel, one of the treesitters from Coal River Mountain campaign featured in the last Earth First! Journal (Mabon 2011 issue), is scheduled at 9:30AM on February 9th in the Raleigh County Magistrate Courthouse in Beckley, West Virginia. The other sitter, Becks, had their pre-trial postponed and is still awaiting a trial date.

In other updates from the good folks at RAMPS: “Finally, we have a campaign space! We welcome you to come live and work with us in our cozy one-room cabin in the woods of Pax, WV.  We’re completely off the grid! The cabin boasts solar panels that provide our electricity, a woodstove that burns salvaged wood for heat, and a spring where we can collect drinking water.”

Confiscation of Black Mesa Herd

ALERT!!!

Livestock Impoundment crews are confiscating horses and calves belonging to several Dineh people of Big Mountain/Black Mesa, Arizona right now. These livestock impoundments constitute human rights violations against traditional Dineh (Navajo); they take away one of their major food sources and one of the main sources of their livelihood.

Please stay on alert.  We have contacted the office of Land Range Management; if they do not respond by tomorrow, we will ask you to flood their lines and say that the elders need their animals to survive and these confiscations are WRONG, that we are watching, and that we see this ongoing harassment as part of cultural genocide.

Eight calves and multiple horses were impounded because the Elders did not have correct permits. One permited calf was taken from an elder and put on Navajo Partitioned Lands (NPL). The ranger told the elder to go ahead and get the calf herself if she wanted it back. Let’s make sure they don’t get away with this.

We’re collecting funds to pay for livestock reclamation. We know it will be at least $500. The amount increases daily.  You can go here to donate now http://blackmesais.org/donate/ !

Many Thanks for Your Support. Stay in touch!

Hallie, Berkley, Liza, Derek, and Tree

For more about Black Mesa, visit Black Mesa Indigenous Support

Anonymous hacks another private intelligence company, reveals spying on Occupy Austin and Deep Green Resistance

Documents reveal law enforcement sharing information with STRATFOR

STRATFOR employee Marc Lanthemann (from a social networking profile that is not longer online)

Computer hackers known as Anonymous leaked information obtained by hacking into private intelligence firm Stratfor’s computer network. The documents—what Anonymous is calling a teaser—suggest that from at least October to November 2011 Stratfor worked with Texas law enforcement to infiltrate the Occupy movement and spy on the Deep Green Resistance (DGR) movement. The document contains emails in which Stratfor employees discuss Occupy Austin and DGR. Stratfor “Watch Officer” Marc Lanthemann writes about receiving information on Occupy Austin and DGR from a “Texas DPS agent.” The Texas Department of Public Safety is a statewide law enforcement agency that includes an Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division.

A statement from Aric McBay and Lierre Keith, authors of the book Deep Green Resistance, condemns the surveillance and infiltration of activist groups by law enforcement and private corporations and calls on activists and their allies to expose and protest the violation of constitutional rights.

Monsanto attacked by Anonymous hackers!

In a thread of hack events from the Anonymous group, the most recent target has been Monsanto.com. Anonymous, which briefly knocked the FBI and Justice Department websites offline as well as Music Industry websites in retaliation for the US shutdown of file-sharing site Megaupload, is a shadowy group of amazing international hackers.

Anonymous Message To Monsanto: We fight for farmers! – Video Transcript (Cross-Posted from Organic Common Sense): “To the free-thinking citizens of the world: Anonymous stands with the farmers and food organizations denouncing the practices of Monsanto We applaud the bravery of the organizations and citizens who are standing up to Monsanto, and we stand united with you against this oppressive corporate abuse. Monsanto is contaminating the world with chemicals and genetically modified food crops for profit while claiming to feed the hungry and protect the environment. Anonymous is everyone, Anyone who can not stand for injustice and decides to do something about it, We are all over the Earth and here to stay.

To Monsanto, we demand you STOP the following:

• Contaminating the global food chain with GMO’s.
• Intimidating small farmers with bullying and lawsuits.
• Propagating the use of destructive pesticides and herbicides across the globe.
• Using “Terminator Technology”, which renders plants sterile.
• Attempting to hijack UN climate change negotiations for your own fiscal benefit.
• Reducing farmland to desert through monoculture and the use of synthetic fertilizers.
• Inspiring suicides of hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers.
• Causing birth defects by continuing to produce the pesticide “Round-up”
• Attempting to bribe foriegn officials
• Infiltrating anti-GMO groups

Tags: Anonymous, ArborGen, GJEP, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Monsanto, Mosaic, Novartis, Pfizer, Procter and Gamble, Sanofi-Aventis, Sumitomo Chemical, Yara

Indonesia: Mining permit revoked after mob torches company’s office and frees prisoners

Charge!

The Indonesian government has announced that it will revoke the permit for a controversial gold mine after massive rioting against the project. The protests were aimed at Sumber Mineral Nusantara a company hoping to open the mine on Sumbawa island.

The crowd, which was thousands strong, ransacked and burned two government offices to express their outrage at the mine which would threaten the communities land and drinking water. The mob continued on to a nearby detention center and forced the authorities to release 35 of their comrades who were arrested at a protest against the mine last year.

Opposition to the mine has been ongoing for over a year. A similar protest last December resulted in two community members being shot and killed by police.

Animal-rights activist wins $15 grand in leafleting-arrest lawsuit

By Vinny Vella

Edward Coffin said yesterday was “bittersweet,” even though he ended it $15,000 richer.

The city agreed to pay Coffin, an animal-rights activist, that sum as a settlement. He sued the city last year with the help of the state’s branch of the American Civil Liberties Union after he was illegally arrested during a supermarket protest in 2009.

Tags: animal rights activist, city police officers, civil liberties union, philadelphia police officers, whole foods market

New Orleans Hurricane Protection Plan To Rely on Wetland and Delta Restoration

Encroaching seas have eroded southeastern Louisiana.

By Mark Fischetti  /  Scientific America

More than six years after Hurricane Katrina plowed into New Orleans and the Mississippi River delta, a plan has finally emerged to protect the area from future storms. It relies heavily on the restoration of wetlands to cut down high surges of ocean water like those that flooded the city in 2005—somewhat of a surprise, considering past efforts focused on levees and seawalls.

Last week, after prolonged deliberations over competing plans between state and federal agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and cities and parishes (counties), the state’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority released the Louisiana Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast. If all its provisions are carried out, the work would require $50 billion over 50 years.

Land that would be lost (red) if the protection plan is not undertaken.

The plan includes maps of what the state’s refurbished delta would look like from the air by 2061. It also shows maps of the wetlands that would disappear by 2061 (see image below), as well as the extent of flooding that storms such as Katrina would bring, if the projects aren’t built. Southern Louisiana has lost 1,883 square miles of wetlands during the past 80 years, an area three-quarters the size of Delaware, largely because of erosion that has been catalyzed by hundreds of miles of manmade navigation channels and oil and gas pipeline canals. Most of that land will not be regained. But if the plan’s projects succeed, by 2042 the state would begin to gain more land annually than it loses, and by 2061 it would gain an average of about 2.5 square miles a year.

Read the rest of the article here.

Tags: Army Corps of Engineers, gas pipeline, hurricane katrina, mississippi river delta, southern louisiana

Monsanto Admits Defeat in France, Biotech Corn Contaminates

by Gordon Davis  /  The Scottish Farmer

French beekeepers demonstrate to protest the use of genetically-modified organisms in front of French Monsanto headquarters in Bron, near Lyon, January 20, 2012. REUTERS/Robert Pratta

FRANCE HAS held firm in its opposition to Monsanto’s genetically modified MON 810 maize – and the agri-chemical multinational has admitted defeat.

Monsanto had been putting legal pressure on the French government to lift its 2008 cultivation ban on MON 810, firstly with a successful appeal to the European Court of Justice, then with a follow-up case heard in France’s own highest court, the Council of State.

But despite both these institutions ruling that the ban was “insufficiently justified in law”, the French Government, backed by President Sarkozy, has insisted that it will still not allow cultivation of the biotech maize.

Now Monsanto has announced that it would not be selling seeds for MON810 in France this year.

France’s stand – and Monsanto’s capitulation – has been warmly welcomed by anti-GM lobbyists GM Freeze, whose campaign director Pete Riley said: “The decision by Monsanto not to market MON810 seeds in France in 2012 is yet another sign that Monsanto has failed to convince the public or policy makers that there is any benefit to growing to growing GM crops.

“This needs to be acknowledged by industry and politicians and there should be a big shift to agricultural research and development which addresses the future sustainability of farming in Europe. EU policy needs to forget about the bottom line of biotech corporations and focus on developing agro-ecological farming which provides for the needs of farmers, consumers, the environment and future generations.”

Five other EU countries – Germany, Greece, Austria, Luxembourg and Hungary – have current bans on MON810 cultivation in place, and the issue has recently been complicated by another European Court of Justice ruling requiring honey contaminated with GM pollen to be fully authorised as a novel product and labelled as such before it can be sold.

Tags: biotech corporations, ecological farming, future generations, gm crops, pete riley, scottish farmer

Conservation On The Front Line: Muara Tae’s Last Stand Against Big Palm Oil

from Intercontinental Cry

Leaders of Muara Tae community survey the remains of their forest after industrial cutting for a palm oil plantation

Deep in the interior of East Kalimantan, Indonesia, the Dayak community of Muara Tae is struggling to defend itself from a sustained assault by palm oil companies.

It’s Muara Tae’s last stand, warns Pak Singko, a traditional leader from the Dayak community, who is now turning to the international community for support. “This is the last remaining forests that we have and the only land we have to survive. If my forests are gone, our lives will end.”

Read the rest of the article here.

 

 

Tags: community survey, dayak, east kalimantan indonesia, industrial cutting, palm oil plantation, traditional leader

Mother Polar Bear Mauls Chevron CEO, Rampages in Defense of Cute Cub

Wanna help fuel the angry fire-breathing polar bear? Consider donating to the Earth First! Journal today!

Just kidding, but sooner or later the bears are bound to get their hands on a CEO and when they do, we will report it to you!

In the past we have posted and published stories about wild leopards, jellyfish, and other animals and humans confronting the loss of wilderness by fighting back.

The Earth First! Journal publishes news from the frontlines of the war to stop the earth brutilizing machine and we need your help. All over the world a battle is raging and we are here to get the word out about it.

We currently need to raise $400 in order to finalize our payment to our printers and roughly $600 to mail the magazine out. Our publication allows us to maintain our online presence as well through the Earth First! Journal Newswire which is one of the best sources for information about protests, actions, and environmental and animal rights.

Did you know that the state of Montana is using military grade unmanned drones to hunt wolves?

Did you know that Canadian activists have been blockading logging trucks in sub-zero temperatures for the last couple weeks?

Did you know that Earth First! and Occupy protesters recently blockaded a bridge at a corporate investors meeting?

PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING $1, $5, $10, $100 or $10,000,000 dollars today. We know how to make a buck streatch. The Earth First! Journal is an anarchist-run editorial collective. Funds will be used to publish the newest issue of the Journal and to cover the costs necessary to maintain our online news source.

Donate online here.

Or send cash, check, or money order to: the Earth First! Journal  /  PO Box 964  / Lake Worth, FL 33460

For the Wild,

the Earth First! Journal collective

Tags: canadian activists, corporate investors, hunt wolves, logging trucks, unmanned drones, wild leopards