China: Thousands of displaced farmers in 5 day protest over hydroelectric dam

Chinese paramilitary police crushed a five-day protest by up to 2,000 Chinese villagers who complained that they weren’t being paid enough to relocate for one of China’s largest hydroelectric power projects, according to local officials.

The villagers set roadblocks, physically harassed officials and damaged government vehicles in Suijiang County in the southwestern province of Yunnan before being dispersed by paramilitary police on Tuesday afternoon, the officials said.

More than a dozen police were injured, they said. No demonstrators were hurt, said a local-government spokeswoman, who agreed to be identified only by her surname, Wu. The reports of injuries couldn’t be independently confirmed.

The protest was one several examples of civil unrest triggered by land disputes in China, where farmers increasingly are being forced to relocate to make way for housing, golf courses or large infrastructure projects.

Suijiang County is on the border between Yunnan and Sichuan province. It is near the Jinsha River site of the Xiangjiaba Hydroelectric Station, which is designed to be one of China’s largest.

Read the rest of the story here.

IMF Resistance: Mobilization Against the World Bank, D.C. April 15-17th

Call to Action for the Spring 2011 IMF/World Bank Meetings!

On April 16, 2000, twenty-thousand protesters besieged the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. In 2011 the IMF and World Bank are again meeting on April 16. Their previous schemes ended in failure, but the Great Recession, bailouts, and austerity have brought them back from the brink. On A16 2011 we will again confront the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Everyone’s invited…

For More information Go To:

http://imfresistance.org/

or Email:
contact |at| imfresistance |dot| org

Bulgarians Protest Russian-Backed Nuke Proposal

Hundreds of people joined an anti-nuclear protest in Sofia on Wednesday, calling for the government to drop plans for a new Russia-backed nuclear plant after the radiation disaster in Japan. About 300 protestors -- some wearing gas masks and radiation suits -- gathered outside the government headquarters to shout "No to Belene!" against the planned 2,000 megawatt facility on the Danube in northern Bulgaria. Many people at the rally had yellow radiation signs stamped on their jackets and carried slogans reading "Stop the Nuclear Bomb in Belene." In a declaration distributed to journalists, the organisers warned that "the Fukushima disaster showed that the nuclear industry had not learned the lessons of (the world?s worst nuclear accident in) Chernobyl."

The Terraba fight proposed hydro-electric dam in Costa Rica

Rio Terraba

Following several large protests, Costa Rica’s indigenous Terraba people have filed a lawsuit seeking to halt construction of a hydro-electric power station due to flood a large swath of their territory, officials said Wednesday.

The power plant is the biggest such project in Central America. It is expected to produce up to 630 megawatts starting in 2016.

The lawsuit was filed on March 21 by the Terraba Indian Territory development association before the administrative court, a spokesperson said.

According to Gabriella Habtom, secretary of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination

…Costa Rica, through its state-owned electricity company, intends to construct a hydroelectric dam (“the Diquis dam”) that will flood at least ten percent of the Térraba people’s titled lands. As well as permanently depriving the Térraba of the use and enjoyment of these lands, the Diquis dam, if built in the manner currently proposed, will also flood a large number of sites of sacred, cultural and archaeological significance to the Térraba people. These include sites of fundamental importance to their identity, cultural integrity, and spiritual and religious freedom, including many hundreds of burial sites and geographical features that are considered to be ‘pillars of Térraba existence and identity’.

The Terraba number approximately 750 people. The proposed project would bring in 9,000 non-indigenous workers and their familes, causing long term, multi-generational social and environmental impacts on the region and the Terraba people.

According to the UN, only 1.68 percent of Costa Rica’s population is indigenous.

Another Evacuation as Smoke Rises from Another Japanese Nuke Plant, Japanese Protest

Smoke was spotted at another nuclear plant in northeastern Japan on Wednesday, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

The company said smoke was detected in the turbine building of reactor No. 1 at the Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant around 6 p.m. (5 a.m. ET).

Smoke could no longer be seen by around 7 p.m. (6 a.m. ET), a company spokesman told reporters.

The Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant is about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, where workers have been scrambling to stave off a meltdown since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems there.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. owns both plants.

After the dual disasters, Japanese authorities also detected cooling-system problems at the Fukushima Daini plant, and those living within a 10-kilometer radius (6 miles) of Fukushima Daini were ordered to evacuate as a precaution.

Protest
Hundreds were protesting on Wednesday outside the Tokyo headquarters of Tokyo Electric Power Co , the operator of the earthquake-crippled Fukushima nuclear plant in northeast Japan.

Protestors were chanting “Stop nuclear power”.

The Japanese Nuke Meltdown is being equated to Chernobyl in terms of plutonium release. See the video here.

New Earth First! Music Comp plus Vol. II of the 30th Anniversary are available!

EF! 30th Anniversary CD, Still Wild!, has been released, along with Volume II of the Journal!!
SPREAD THE WORD!

In case you haven’t heard, we have just released the EF! 30th Anniversary CD! You can find out more details, including who’s on it and how to buy a hard copy or an online version at: musicians.earthfirstjournal.org

For those who have already gotten an early pre-released copy of the CD: You can now download a printable PDF of the insert with information about the musicians, the project, etc., also at the link above.

If this project is well received and supported, we already have enough songs for a second disc. (Thanks to all the awesome musicians who sent songs, sorry we couldn’t use ’em all on this one!)

To all you EF! Journal subscribers, your Volume II edition of the Journal’s 30th Anniversary publication is in the mail. If you are not yet a subscriber, get on it already! You can do it online at http://www.earthfirstjournal.org or send us a check for $30 (and bypass the paypal fees) at EF! Journal, POB 964, Lake Worth, FL 33460

Thanks for all your support. Keep it coming!

(and Keep It Wild!)

—EF! Journal Collective

Diesel Spill In Maine, Rivers and Hatcheries Poisoned

At least 1,000 gallons of off-road diesel fuel leaked from a truck at Foss Construction Co. overnight Monday, sending fuel into the Middle River, the Pleasant River and through vital smelt spawning beds.

“This is a mess,” Robert Shannon of the Department of Environmental Protection said while overseeing the cleanup. Shannon said his crew and Clean Harbors Inc. would be on site for days and it could be weeks before the fuel dissipates from the 3½ miles of affected river.

“It’s kind of like the perfect storm,” Shannon said. “We have a ground spill that enters a brook, which feeds a stream [that flows] into one river that connects with another and ends up at a fish hatchery and spawning grounds.”

Read the rest of the story here.

Farmers, environmentalists blockade coal seam gas pipeline in Australia

An environmental activist has been arrested at a human blockade protesting against the construction of a coal seam gas pipeline on Queensland’s Western Downs.

Friends of the Earth campaigner Drew Hutton was arrested at 2.20pm (AEST) on Tuesday at the Tara Estate, south of Chinchilla.

Police charged him under Section 804 of the Petroleum and Gas Act with obstruction of a petroleum authority holder, an offence that carries a potential $50,000 fine.

The section guarantees mining and gas companies access to private land.

The protest is part of a month-long campaign by local farmers and environmentalists to stop Queensland Gas Company building a 16km pipeline to take coal seam gas from five wells on the estate to the nearby Kenya gas processing plant.

Read the rest of the story here.

Florida Department of Environmental Protection turn blind eye to destruction of reefs… again.

Collusion, corruption, incompetence, complicity, ineptitude or just a party to outright fraud? Why will the Florida Department of Environmental Protection not enforce the permits they issue?

Another beach “renourishment” project and more bogus data as the contractors circumvent project mandated environmental permit monitoring and the FDEP turns a blind eye; afraid or unable to catch the perpetrators as they lay waste to miles of coastal habitat.

This years poster child for ecosystem destruction is the Hillsboro beach renourishment project. The project permit requires the contractor to limit the amount of coral-killing silt generated by monitoring turbidity levels. The standard which they must not exceed is 29 turbidity units (NTU) above background beyond a point 150 meters from the beach sand placement area, or about 492 feet.

For weeks Reef Rescue, other groups and individuals have been supplying FDEP with evidence of noncompliance. In fact, since 2005 Reef Rescue has documented contractor fraud on five separate beach renourishment projects. But the Sunday, March 27, display of a total disregard for permit compliance and habitat destruction goes to Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Company for creating one of the worst silt plumes we have witnessed. So expansive, it engulfed two South Florida coastal counties and stretched from Hillsboro Beach to north of Boca Raton.

Click on this link to view the Sunday turbidity slide show.

Related post from Juno Beach

Silt plumes over the reefs were reported by scuba diving charter boats almost as soon as work on the project began. On December 22, dive operators found underwater visibility of less than five feet at the popular dive spot “Shark Canyon”, located offshore of the Juno Beach construction site.

Japan on “Maximum Alert” as radiation increases, New stong earthquake increases fears

Japan’s prime minister says the country is on “maximum alert” over its nuclear crisis as radiation continues to seep out of the disabled Fukushima nuclear plant and traces of plutonium have been found in the soil.

Radiation has been detected in the atmosphere on nearly every continent on Earth.

A magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit northern Japan on Tuesday, Japan’s national broadcaster NHK said citing local meteorologists.

The tremor occurred just one hundred miles from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, which was crippled by a powerful quake and ensuing tsunami earlier in March.

The epicenter of the new quake was registered at a depth of 18.2 kilometers (11.3 miles). No tsunami warning was issued after the latest earthquake.