The Massacre Everyone Ignored: Chevron, Kazakhstan and a US-Backed Dictator

By Mark Ames, The Exiled

21 December 11

With violence and government crackdowns making headlines from so many familiar parts of the world, there’s hardly been a peep in the media about the biggest and ugliest massacre of all: Last Friday in Kazakhstan, riot police slaughtered up 70 striking oil workers, wounding somewhere between 500 and 800, and arresting scores. Almost as soon as the massacre went down in the western regional city of Zhanaozen, the Kazakh authorities cut off access to twitter and cell phone coverage – effectively cutting the region off from the rest of the world, relegating the massacre into the small news wire print.

But not before someone was able to get a video out to YouTube last Friday, showing the moment when the striking oil workers rushed the barricades. They’ve had to have put up with inhuman, medieval abuse for months now, culminating with the murders a few months back of a striking oil worker and the 18-year-old-daughter of another union organizer, as well as the jailing of a labor lawyer working with the striking oil workers.

Keep in mind, the oil company whose workers are striking for better pay and union recognition, KazMunaiGaz, is “owned” by the billionaire son-in-law of Kazakhstan’s Western-backed president-for-life. Among Kazakhstan’s leading American partners are Chevron, whose website boasts, “Chevron is Kazakhstan’s largest private oil producer” – adding this bit of unintentional black humor:

“In Kazakhstan, as in any country where Chevron does business, we are a strong supporter of programs that help the community.”

 

Click here to go to the article on Reader Supported News

Justin Solondz Pleads Guilty

UW Center of Urban Horticulture after May 2001 Fire

The man accused of building the firebomb used by Earth Liberation Front radicals to torch the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001 pleaded guilty this morning in U.S. District Court in Tacoma. Justin Solondz, 31, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and arson under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, who agreed to recommend a seven-year prison sentence when Solondz is sentenced on March 16.

The man accused of building the firebomb used by Earth Liberation Front radicals to torch the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture in 2001 pleaded guilty this morning in U.S. District Court in Tacoma.

Justin Solondz, 31, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and arson under a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, who agreed to recommend a seven-year prison sentence when Solondz is sentenced on March 16.

A former student at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Solondz was arrested July 6 in Chicago after his expulsion from China, where he had been serving a prison term for selling drugs.

Solondz was a purported member of a cell of radical environmentalists known as “The Family” who are believed to have participated in a string of arsons and other sabotage that caused $80 million in damage in Washington, Oregon, California and Colorado. Prosecutors claimed that Solondz built a firebomb in a “clean room” behind a home in Olympia, transported it to Seattle and served as the getaway driver the night of the UW arson.

The firebomb was planted in the office of UW professor Toby Bradshaw at the Center for Urban Horticulture. Bradshaw was targeted because the arsonists believed, mistakenly, he was genetically engineering trees. [EF!J Ed. note: see correction below]

Damage from the arson was estimated at more than $6 million.

In June, Solondz’s former girlfriend, Briana Waters, pleaded guilty to charges of arson, conspiracy to use a destructive device, possessing an unregistered destructive device and the use of an explosive device in a crime of violence in connection with the arson. She agreed to testify against Solondz.

Two other women, Lacey Phillabaum and Jennifer Kolar, pleaded guilty to the UW arson and were sentenced to three and five years, respectively. [EF!J Ed. note: Kolar and Phillabaum also cooperated with the state by testifying against others arrested for  ELF actions. Further details about them and other are listed here.]

Also charged in the UW arson was William C. Rodgers, who committed suicide in an Arizona jail in December 2005.

Solondz was indicted in Washington state and California in 2006. The FBI issued a $50,000 reward in late 2008 for information leading to his arrest. At the time, the FBI said he might be in Canada, Europe or Asia.

He surfaced in Dali, a Chinese city popular with Western tourists, using a phony Canadian identification and an altered appearance. He was arrested in a drug investigation in March 2009 and was sentenced to three years in prison.

Article reposted from Seattle Times.

EF! Journal Editors’ note and correction: Bradshaw was indeed involved with genetic engineering of poplar trees at the time of the arson, which is plainly clear from the University of Washington website: “Toby Bradshaw, a research professor in the department of Botany, is just one of many UW professors using genetic modification in their research…” 

The Seattle Times article’s allegation that the “arsonists believed, mistakenly, he was genetically engineering trees” is an outright lie perpetuated by industry PR machines. The dispute was only a minor technical matter between the language of the ELF communique and the quote by Bradshaw himself—the ELF alleging that he was engineering trees for commercial release, Bradshaw claiming that his research would never leave the lab.

Meanwhile, the massive push by biotech lobbyists continues with the assistance of lackeys like Bradshow at their service, as does the battle to stop GE trees from spreading across the world (including the US.) Just ask groups like the Global Justice Ecology Project about AborGen.

Anti-Coal Plant Protesters Storm Buildings, Evict Officials, Block Roads in South China

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

Residents block a highway in Haimen, China, to protest a proposal to build a second coal-fired power plant in the seaside town. Police in riot gear fired tear-gas and beat demonstrators who stormed government buildings. (AFP/Getty Images / December 20, 2011)

Reporting from Shenzhen, China—

Residents revolted Tuesday against development plans in yet another town in Guangdong province, redoubling the challenge to the Communist Party in China’s most affluent and open-minded region.

The newest uprising involved as many as 30,000 people protesting plans for a coal-fired power plant in the southern seaside town of Haimen. Residents stormed local government offices and blocked a busy highway that runs from the manufacturing hub of Shenzhen to the city of Shantou.

Although organizers denied there was any copycat effect from protests in Wukan, a village 70 miles away where residents booted out local government two weeks ago, the similarities were striking enough to be unnerving to a central government that values stability above all.

Protesters say riot police reacted harshly to the Haimen uprising, beating demonstrators and firing tear gas into the crowd. There were unconfirmed reports that a 15-year-old boy had been killed and dozens of people badly beaten.

“The guy was lying on the ground and not moving after scuffling with the police,” Lin Zutao, a 25-year-old protester, said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

The demonstration started peacefully. Photographs showed many elderly people and children among the crowds surrounding the government offices, with lines of riot police keeping watch. But it grew more chaotic as some protesters moved on to block the highway and threw bottles at police.

The catalyst for the demonstration was a plan by local government to build a second coal-fired power plant despite environmental problems caused by a plant that began operations in 2008. Residents said the plant destroyed the area’s fishing industry and contributed to a rise in cancer rates.

“Our homeland was once so beautiful and now it’s so polluted,” said an anonymous letter posted online. “To my 100,000 fellow Haimenese, we need to stand up. Today we are not rioting, but we need to be angry.”

Lin, the protester, said, “The pollution is so bad, we have no way to live here.”

He emphasized that there was no relationship between what was happening in his town and Wukan.

“We have already been talking about preventing this plant from being built for one to two months, so I don’t think the Wukan protests have had any influence on us.”

In Wukan, a village of 20,000, residents were enraged that the local government confiscated farmland for a Hong Kong real estate developer. Early this month, they in effect forced local officials to flee the village and they set up barricades at the town entrance to keep out authorities. The dispute escalated after a popular villager named to negotiate with authorities was arrested and died in custody, apparently beaten to death, although the government said he had a heart attack.

Nearly two weeks after the death, authorities had yet to return the body of Xue Jinbo, 42. Villagers were planning to hold a march Wednesday to demand that the body be released for an independent autopsy and burial. Negotiations between protesters and authorities continued late Tuesday.

There were reports that Wukan residents were receiving conciliatory messages from the province’s deputy secretary of the Communist Party, while an offer was on the table for the developer to return more than 400 acres.

Chinese scholars have estimated that there are as many as 90,000 “mass incidents” each year in this vast country, many of them triggered by land confiscation. Nevertheless, the Wukan protest drew international attention because the villagers went as far as to evict local government and have refused to be subdued.

Wen Yunchao, a Guangdong activist and writer who is now working out of Hong Kong, does not expect the protests to evolve into a nationwide uprising.

“The timing is not ripe for things to evolve the way they did in Tunisia,” Wen said. “You have to remember, too, that this part of Guangdong is not typical of China. They can watch Hong Kong television. They are exposed to different points of view and foreign media.”

The Chinese government isn’t taking any chances. Wary of publicizing what happened in Haimen, the Guangdong traffic radio channel reported Tuesday only that the highway was blocked in both directions because of a “traffic accident” and instructed drivers to take an alternative route.

A First Hand Look at Life in an Old Growth Tree Sit in Southern Tasmania

Activists Silenced by Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act File Lawsuit

by: Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

(Photo Illustration: Lance Page / Truthout)

Animal rights activists filed a federal lawsuit on Thursday to challenge the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), a law they say has violated their First Amendment rights and allows the government to label peaceful protesters as “terrorists.”

Plaintiffs Sarahjane Blum and Iver “J” Johnson, who have both been animal rights activists for more than a decade, said AETA intimidated activists into silence and squashed their movement.

“I spent years uncovering conditions on foie gras farms and educating the public about the way ducks and geese are abused,” said Blum. “I no longer feel free to speak my mind on these issues out of fear that my advocacy could actually convince people to stop eating foie gras – affecting those businesses’ bottom line and turning me into an animal enterprise terrorist.”

Critics claim AETA has implications for dissenters beyond the animal rights movement. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), who are representing the plaintiffs, told reporters that the Bush-era law is too broad and could be interpreted as designating certain acts of civil disobedience as terrorist activity.

Meeropol said AETA’s language is so broad that Occupy Wall Street protesters could be labeled terrorists if they caused a bank with a cafeteria that serves meat to lose property or business during an action.

On the surface, AETA seems to target direct action groups like the Animal Liberation Front that, in the past, have taken credit for arsons that destroyed factory farms and liberating animals from laboratories. AETA is often lumped in with the so-called Green Scare of the last decade, which saw a government crackdown on animal rights and environmental activists in the name of fighting “eco-terrorism.”

Fur farmers and pharmaceutical companies that test products on animals lobbied for AETA and claim the law protects property from destruction and employees from intimidation. Critics, however, claim the AETA is written so broadly that anyone who interferes with an animal enterprise’s profit margins could be labeled a terrorist and sent to prison.

Johnson said his fellow activists are now afraid to organize and engage in legal protest activity because they fear even marching and chanting could be considered terrorist activity under AETA.

“There was a general fear in the community that engaging in First Amendment speech could cause them to be designated terrorists under the AETA,” said Johnson.

The law amends the 1992 Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) and makes it easier for the justice department to target animal rights activists. In 2006, a group of activists from the group Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty now known as the SHAC 7 were convicted of conspiring to violate AEPA by publishing a web site advocating protest activity against animal testing labs and their employees. Each activist received prison sentences for this web publishing.

In 2009, terrorism officials arrested four activists under AETA in California for protesting in front of people’s homes. The activists faced ten years in prison for leafleting, chanting, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk and using the Internet to find information on animal researchers. A federal judge dismissed the case in 2010 after CCR filed a motion.

New Tree Sit in Tasmania

Check out the blog theObserverTree to get real time updates and offer support.

by CRAIG HOGGETT / The Mercury

Miranda Gibson of Still Wild Still Threatened in her new tree-top home in the Styx Valley. Picture: MATT THOMPSON

[On December 14, the Tasmanian forest defense group] Still Wild Still Threatened…set up a 60m-high tree sit-in at the TN044B logging coupe near Maydena inside the 430,000ha being assessed for reserve status under the forestry peace deal.

The “Observer Tree” will be occupied by SWST’s Miranda Gibson, who was one of two activists assaulted by workers during a protest in 2008.

Speaking to the media via mobile phone from the platform, Ms Gibson said she would maintain a blog and a web camera to broadcast to the world.

“It’s a different approach because one of our major concerns is that there is a misconception out there that the forest has been protected,” Ms Gibson said. “We want people to see what is happening in the forests.”

She said she was committed to staying on the platform until logging in 13 coupes inside the area being assessed for protection stopped.

Technical difficulties prevented Ms Gibson from speaking to journalists via video-link, but SWST expect the webcast to be up in the next few days.

Senator Bob Brown yesterday used his taxpayer-funded charter allowance to hire a helicopter to allow media outlets to photograph and film the tree-sit from the air.

He said Premier Lara Giddings and Prime Minister Julia Gillard were dishonouring their own agreement by allowing Forestry Tasmania to log the coupes.

“Their word is being clear-felled by what I judge is illegal logging. If this agreement has any legal force then this logging is illegal,” Senator Brown said.

“I didn’t write this agreement, I didn’t have anything to do with it, but the Prime Minister did and the Premier did. The Prime Minister wrote to me and said these forests had been placed in informal reserves.”

Forestry Tasmania’s general manager of operations Steve Whitely said the coupe was one of 13 being logged inside the assessment area that was identified by independent schedulers as necessary for supply contracts.

He described the protest as frustrating and pointless given that forestry operations would shut down for about a month from tomorrow.

“Forestry Tasmania needs to keep operating and we need to select some coupes that are suitable to meet our customers’ needs and we’re doing that while there’s a verification process going on,” Mr Whitely said.

Ms Kerr said that she would not be deterred by the Christmas shutdown. “I’ll stay up here and keep an eye on things and be here ready when they get back,” she said.

 

 

No War but the Eco-Class War!

Everglades Earth First! joins Occupy Palm Beach in March on Worth Avenue tomorrow

Palm Beach Island’s Worth Avenue is home to some of the world’s most repulsive rich and elite. The following text is from a flyer that participants in the general assembly of Occupy Palm Beach are circulating to invite participation and explain some of the stores which will be targeted by demonstrators:

“Saturday, December 17th,  Step off at Noon from Worth Ave. and South Ocean Blvd (A1A).

The 1% got bailed out and they are spending that loot on Worth Ave. Let us remind them that their theft has not gone unnoticed! Here are targeted businesses owned by the 1% who are exploiting people, animals, and the environment.

On the 100 Block North
-Gucci: Clothing made in Shenzcen, China in October workers reported egregious sweat-shop like abuse, resulting in miscarriage and urinary tract issues.

-Hugo Boss: The original Hugo Boss was an active member in the Nazi Party and used forced labor to make uniforms for the Hitler Youth and other Nazi party organizations.

-Lacoste: Works with suppliers in China who pollute the Yangtze and Pearl rivers especially with hormone disrupting chemicals. Yangtze is home to thousands of subsistence fishermen, and the potentially extinct Yangtze River Dolphin. 

-Emilio Pucci: Emilio Pucci, while at Reed College, Oregon, was a staunch defender of the fascist regime, and also fought in Mussolini’s army.

On the 200 Block North
-Escada: Target of anti-fur groups including the Animal Liberation Front, this pressure lead them to end their use of fur beginning in January 2012.

-Graff: Owns huge diamonds, many from Africa and possible conflict regions.

On the 300 Block South
-Ralph Lauren: Re-touches advertisements of models to make them look thinner, adding to unhealthy beauty standards, and epidemic of disordered eating.

LAST AND LEAST
-The Everglades Club: This infamous club of the super rich, has a long history of excluding Black and Jewish people, even today does not have any members of color. Members pay around 10,000 dollars to join. According to recent reports, the club houses the workers in hot and cramped dorms separated along ethnic lines. Here the 1% schmooze and make deals that affect all of our lives.“

———————
To join the march, meet at 11am on Olive downtown West Palm Beach, in front of the old City Hall building. Bring a bicycle to ride across the bridge to the meeting point on Worth Avenue and the beach (there will also be caravans to transport people without bikes.) Check out more on Occupy Palm Beach County here.  See today’s article about the march in the Palm Beach Daily News.

Genetically modified moths called crop aid

cross posted from UPI

A British company says genetically modified moths it has developed could be used to reduce the population of the vegetable-eating insects.

Oxitec says its modified male diamondback moths, carrying a lethal gene, could be released into the countryside, which would cause their offspring to die almost immediately — with a resulting fall in their numbers and increased vegetable yields for farmers, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.

The company said it would like to start trials next year but the proposal faces stiff opposition from organizations concerned about risks to wildlife and to human health.

“Mass releases of GM insects into the British countryside would be impossible to recall if anything went wrong,” Helen Wallace, the director of GeneWatch UK, said.

“Changing one part of an ecosystem can have knock-on effects on others in ways that are poorly understood,” she said. “This could include an increase in different types of pest. Wildlife that feeds on insects could be harmed if there are changes to their food supply.”

Using GM insects to kill the pests that prey on food crops is better for the environment than chemical sprays, Oxitec Chief Executive Officer Hadyn Parry said.

There is a demand from farmers for the technology and Oxitec is developing a number of GM insects for use in Britain and around the world to protect crops, Parry said.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/12/15/Genetically-modified-moths-called-crop-aid/UPI-35501323997284/#ixzz1gimTA1Ew

Here it goes! Retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas

Russian research team astonished after finding ‘fountains’ of methane bubbling to surface

by Steve Connor cross posted from the Independent

Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.

The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.

In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.

“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said. “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.”

Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.

Dr Semiletov’s team published a study in 2010 estimating that the methane emissions from this region were about eight million tonnes a year, but the latest expedition suggests this is a significant underestimate of the phenomenon.

In late summer, the Russian research vessel Academician Lavrentiev conducted an extensive survey of about 10,000 square miles of sea off the East Siberian coast. Scientists deployed four highly sensitive instruments, both seismic and acoustic, to monitor the “fountains” or plumes of methane bubbles rising to the sea surface from beneath the seabed.

“In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Dr Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale – I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometre or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere – the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.”

Dr Semiletov released his findings for the first time last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Treesitter Denied Witnesses in PreTrial Hearing

by Squirrel, crossposted from RAMPS

I was immensely disheartened to hear the magistrate’s flat-out denial of my lawyer’s request that our witnesses be allowed to testify on my behalf. During the past few weeks, I had been strengthened and moved by the willingness of so many people to make personal sacrifices to testify in my trial. Some of the witnesses I had wanted were personally affected by living in a mining region, while others had an expert knowledge of years of violations by the coal companies and neglect of the DEP. But the prosecuting attorney objected to bringing these witnesses in on the grounds that it would confuse the jury. Now, I have the choice of having a trial without witnesses (testifying on my behalf) in magistrate court, or appealing for a possibly fairer trial in circuit court, where other local activists have had cases held over their heads for years. It’s a weighty decision.

Back at my status hearing, my lawyer told me that the police were pressuring the court to send me to jail for thirty days–one day for every day I spent in the oak three. But I wasn’t disappointed to hear the magistrate deny my witnesses because I’m afraid to go to jail; I expect to be convicted at this trial whatever I do. I was disappointed because I have a particular ardor for accuracy and for fullness in understanding. I really, really like it we humans feel out truth while groping about in the obscurity of a deceit meant to subdue and oppress us. Personally, I feel that, if we were allowed to explain in court how we know that birth defects(1), cancer, and liver diseases are higher in communities near strip mines, if we were able to list the years of violations and hazards created by Massey Energy and Alpha Natural Resources and the DEP’s non-responsiveness, if we could only share the potential impacts of stripping Coal River Mountain, I don’t think that we would confuse the jury: I think that we would allow the courtroom to understand what was really going on when my friends and I chose to oppose Alpha’s ruination on its own turf.

There was of course the “danger,” though, that the prosecuting attorney wanted to avoid by excluding any witnesses who could bear testimony to these things. The “danger” is that, if a jury heard these things, they might not want to convict me, whether or not I was technically breaking the law. They might just decide that breaking a law to save the lives of people and the beauty of these mountains was actually right. We should all try to remember the threat that we pose to oppressive governance when we understand the greater, more complex dynamics at play in our world.

And we should strive to be dangerous, toppling artifice wherever it obstructs justice.