Massive Indonesian offensive displaces thousands of West Papuans in Paniai as helicopters attack and raze villages

Earlier this month, West Papuans raise their flag of independence, calling for the end of Indonesia's occupation. On December 13, Indonesian security forces burned and raised nearly 30 West Paupuan villages and forcefully evacuated another 130.

cross posted from Intercontinental Cry

Thousands of people have reportedly fled in terror from a large area in Paniai, West Papua as a massive combined Police and military offensive attacked villages on December 13, attempting to break armed resistance from pro-independence guerrillas.

Credible human rights sources are claiming up to 20 local people have been shot dead by Indonesian security forces around the jungle centre of Markas Eduda, during a brutal operation that is reported to have razed 26 villages, and caused over 10,000 people to flee to the relative safety of Enaratoli.

Over four full strength combat battalions of Indonesian army (TNI) Kostrad commandos from Battalion 753, Brimob paramilitary police, and elite counter-terrorism troops from Detachment 88 – all units armed, trained, and supplied by the Australian Government – were deployed in a cordon to surround the headquarters of the Paniai Free Papua National Liberation Army (TPN-OPM), under the command of General Jhon Yogi.

Since 7 December, civilians from the villages and around Dagouto and Eduda have been progressively evacuated, with no regard for welfare, by security forces. Many were housed in a multipurpose hall Uwatawogi Enarotali. This evacuation was carried out at the request of Chief of Police, Secretary of Paniai District and Commander of the Special Team Gegana Brimob, to broaden the battlefield between the TPN and the Mobile Brigade. Paniai Civilians became increasingly restless and frightened, and had little access to food or basic needs, their starving even more pronounced.

According to human rights sources, security forces have been constantly targeting remote communities that inhabit the foothills along the West-East mountain range which extends from the Grasberg to Cape Dagouto-Lake Paniai.

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Background of the crisis:

Over the twenty six years that Indonesia has held official control of West Papua, the indigenous population has endured one of the twentieth century’s most repressive and unjust systems of colonial occupation. An on-going war has been fought against a popularly supported indigenous movement opposed to Jakarta’s rule, and against members of the civilian population who stand in the way of Indonesian “development”. Under the Indonesian government’s Transmigration program, the indigenous West Papuans are being reduced to a minority population due to an annual influx of over 10,000 families of sponsored migrants from Java and Sulawesi and an unknown number of “spontaneous” migrants. The widespread appropriation of land for new settlements, forestry concessions, mining projects and farming has led to numerous large-scale conflicts between the Indonesian military and dispossessed tribespeople, particularly in the late 1970s, 1984, and again in 1990-92 and 1994-95.

 

Activists protest against Devada power plant in India

Angry villagers opposing the 1040 MW Hindjua thermal power plant at Palavalasa clash with security during a panel visit.

HYDERABAD – The 1,040 MW Hinduja Thermal Power Plant coming up at Devada village in the coastal district of Visakhapatnam has run into trouble again, with locals and activists staging mass protests against the mega project on grounds of environmental pollution and large-scale displacement of farmers.

A large group of residents and anti-project activists, supported by opposition parties and environmental groups, staged a demonstration near the plant site on Monday, demanding immediate halt to the works and effective rehabilitation package for the displaced families. As the protests led to tension in the area, police swung into action and dispersed the demonstrators.

The coal-based power project, being developed by the Hinduja Group, has run into rough weather with local farmers, opposition groups, energy experts and environmental activists putting up a stiff resistance.

Bulgaria and the Fight Against Genetically Modified Food

Waves of protests in Bulgaria forced Parliament to ban the cultivation of GM crops in the country in March 2010. Photo by BGNES

Genetically modified animal feed without GMO labeling is being sold on the Bulgarian market, according to reports of the Public Environmental Center for Sustainable Development/ PECSD/ in Varna and environmental NGO ‘Za Zemiata’ (For the Earth).

A team of experts conducted the testing in November with the financial assistance of the European Union.

A Varna-based laboratory concluded that five types of feed containing soybean meal produced in Bulgaria contain over 5% of GMO soy “RoundupReady Soya 40-3-2”, the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) announced.

The tests were performed using the “Real Time PCR” method for DNA analysis, which is considered as the most reliable nowadays.

The representatives of the two environmental organizations explained that, under Bulgarian and European legislation, the products should have been labeled due to the high content of genetically modified ingredients.

Bulgarian and EU laws require special labeling for feed containing over 0.9% of genetically altered ingredients.

Ivaylo Popov from Za Zemyata explained that the results of the tests would be sent to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

The environmentalists said that the test results would be officially recognized because they had not been conducted by a state body, despite the fact that they were obtained at a licnesed laboratory.

The representatives of the two associations demanded heftier sanctions for companies selling GMO feed without proper labeling.

They suggested that a portion of the revenues collected from such penalties should remain with the supervisory bodies because no money had been so far earmarked for feed testing.

The representatives of the two environmental groups also insisted that the the Bulgarian state standard (BDS) for yogurt and cheese include a ban on the use of milk from animals fed with GMO feed

In the meantime, Bulgaria’s Agriculture Ministry issued a letter, saying that GMO feed was being imported from third countries via Romania and was sold freely on the Bulgarian market.

In February, Bulgaria became the seventh EU country to impose a safeguard clause against MON810 maize.

Even though MON 810 was approved for use by the EU in 1998, six countries – Austria, Hungary, Greece, France, Luxembourg, and Germany have banned it by taking advantage of safeguard clauses.

In March 2010, Bulgaria’s Parliament banned the cultivation of genetically modified crops in the country by conclusively adopting amendments to the Genetically Modified Organisms Act.

(Un)Occupy: Occupy Wall Street Stirs Up Radical Ideas in Indian Country

By Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Indian Country Media Network

Indigenous People’s Resistance Day 2011

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement may be the most significant social movement in the U.S. since the pre–Iraq War protests in 2002, which saw tens of thousands of people take to the streets in some cities. But OWS has more in common with the activism of the civil rights era than the antiwar protests because it exposes the imbalances of American society, and while Native people are acutely aware of those imbalances, many of them are questioning the terms of the OWS debate—they wonder, for example, what it really means to “occupy” Wall Street, or any place else in America for that matter?

As many Native bloggers and activists have pointed out, Wall Street is already occupied—it was (and is) the territory of the Lenape and other First Nations. That’s why some Native activists see decolonization as a more appropriate framework for any discussion of the current economic crisis. This has been expressed in many ways throughout Indian country. In Albuquerque, the OWS movement based on the campus of the University of New Mexico that had been calling itself “Occupy Burque” voted to adopt a new name: (Un)Occupy Albuquerque, linking corporate greed to the theft of Native land.

In early October, the Albuquerque (un)occupation movement enjoyed vigorous participation by the community, fueled in large part by energetic students skilled in the art of street activism. A blogger on the website DailyKos.com identified only as “evergreen2” noted that New Mexico, which is one of the most diverse states in the nation and is one of only four U.S. states with a majority-minority population—that is, less than 50 percent white—has a “very strong and vocal indigenous population” for whom the term occupy is problematic: “For New Mexico’s indigenous people, Occupy means 500 years of forced occupation of their lands, resources, cultures, power and voices by the imperial powers of both Spain and the United States. A big chunk of the 99 percent has been served pretty well by that arrangement. A smaller chunk hasn’t.”

Read more:http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/12/13/occupy-wall-street-stirs-up-radical-ideas-in-indian-country-67100 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/12/13/occupy-wall-street-stirs-up-radical-ideas-in-indian-country-67100#ixzz1gRpUrjSd

Durban Deal will not Avert Catastrophic Climate Change, say Scientists

Scientists and environmental groups warned that urgent action was still needed to rescue the world from climate change, despite the deal sealed on Sunday morning in Durban after two weeks of talks.

Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said: “This empty shell of a plan leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change. If Durban is to be a historic stepping stone towards success the world must urgently agree ambitious targets to slash emissions.” Although governments managed to find a last-minute deal that should lead to the first legally binding global agreement on climate change covering developed and developing countries, they did not discuss whether their pledges to cut emissions would prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

Under the Durban agreement, governments will now spend four years negotiating how far and how fast each country should cut carbon emissions.

Atkins said the science was clear – the current emissions targets set by developed and developing countries were inadequate, and if they were not strengthened, the poorest would be hurt most. “Millions of the poorest people around the globe are already facing the impacts of climate change – countries like the US who have done most to create this crisis must now take the lead in tackling it,” he said.

Other environmental groups and scientists agreed.

“What is positive in Durban is that governments have reopened the door to a legally binding global agreement involving the world’s major emitters, a door which many thought had been shut at the Copenhagen conference in 2009,” said Bill Hare, director at Climate Action Tracker.

“What remains to be done is to take more ambitious actions to reduce emissions, and until this is done we are still headed to over 3C warming. There are still no new pledges on the table and the process agreed in Durban towards raising the ambition and increasing emission reductions is uncertain in its outcome.”

Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics said the current pledges from countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions were not enough to hold global temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which scientists say climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

He said that, according to the United Nations environment programme, countries’ current emissions pledges would collectively mean that global annual emissions of greenhouse gases would be about 50bn tonnes in 2020, similar to the total in 2011.

But to have a 50-50 chance of avoiding global warming over 2C, scientists estimate that global annual emissions would need to fall to about 44bn tonnes in 2020, to less than 35bn tonnes in 2030 and less than 20bn tonnes in 2050.

Ward said: “[That means the current] pledges for emissions reductions are not consistent with the two degrees target, although they would, if delivered, move us halfway between ‘business as usual’ and the path on which we would need to be in 2020.”

Several participants in the talks said current pledges had been covered at last year’s conference in Cancún where countries confirmed their emissions targets. Instead, this year was about diplomacy: chiefly, the issue of whether countries should be bound to cut emissions through an international treaty, or should make voluntary pledges. The question has dogged the talks for over a decade.

At the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, nations failed to write a treaty though they did sign up to a lesser form of agreement, in which the world’s biggest emitters – developed and developing – set out targets to curb their carbon by 2020.

However, the targets that have been set will be subject to review from 2013-15 to decide whether they should be toughened, especially in the light of a scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out in 2014. The climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, said: “The direction of travel is clear – the targets can only be strengthened. The scientific evidence is growing clearer.”

For some, including the US and China, this “pledge and review” process of voluntary pledges offers an adequate way of ensuring carbon is reduced globally. But for others, including the EU and many developing countries, it is inferior to a legally binding international treaty, because the voluntary process is too prone to politicians reneging on their commitments.

Brazil’s chief negotiator, ambassador Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, said: “This is a landmark achievement that creates real possibilities for scaling up the fight against climate change. It’s an excellent text that clearly sets points of action, points of commitment, and timetables, and it is legally-binding, so it is extremely effective, potentially, for responding to the need of climate change. We got what we came to Durban to get.”

In return for the Durban agreement, the EU conceded to developing country demands to continue the Kyoto protocol after its current emission-cutting targets expire next year.

The EU is the only major developed country bloc to agree to a continuation. Japan, Canada and Russia have all refused, and the US has never ratified the pact.

Reposted from Fiona Harvey and John Vidal Guardian UK

US plans its first megadam in 40 years

by Fred Pearce

I'll be dammed (Image: Aurora/Alamy)

It reads like a fairy tale from the brothers Grimm: a giant US state is planning a giant hydroelectric dam that could flood a tiny shrew out of its idyllic home.

Later this month, Alaskan authorities will file plans in Washington DC for a 213-metre megadam on one of the country’s last remaining wild rivers: the Susitna. If approved, it would be the country’s first hydroelectric megadam for 40 years, and its fifth tallest, just 8 metres shy of the Hoover dam.

Opponents say the project is a $4.5 billion boondoggle that will affect wildlife including caribou, grizzly bears and salmon. Instead they say the state should tap its abundant tidal, geothermal and wind power.

But the icon for protest against the dam may turn out to be the country’s most secretive shrew. Weighing in at just 1.5 grams, Sorex yukonicus lives on a bank 10 kilometres downstream of the proposed site for the dam.

In 1995, Daniel Beard, head of the US Bureau of Reclamation, the nation’s main constructor of dams, declared the US dam-building era over. He cited growing environmental concerns. Dozens of dams have since been torn down to revive fisheries and reinstate river habitats.

Comeback dams

But after years in the environmental doghouse, large dams are being promoted as a source of low-carbon energy, and the 600-megawatt Susitna project looks like it could be the first to get the green light.

The Susitna dam was first planned in the 1970s, but was dropped on both cost and environmental grounds. Two years ago, then-governor Sarah Palin revived the scheme. State legislators voted to go ahead in July. On 29 December, the Alaska Energy Authority will submit a preliminary licence application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which could trigger a national debate on dam construction.

The number of wild rivers in the world is diminishing fast as a result of dam construction and other engineering projects. According to a report on wildlife in the vicinity of the dam, prepared for the state by consultants Alaska Biological Research and published in August, Susitna’s 62-kilometre reservoir will flood a migration route used by pregnant caribou and the grizzly bears that prey on them, and disrupt a major run for Coho and sockeye salmon.

Then there is the shrew. The 7-centimetre-long mammal was discovered in 1982 by Stephen MacDonald of the University of Alaska Museum. MacDonald, who is now at the Museum of Southwestern Biology in Albuquerque, New Mexico, says that small mammals dependent on habitats that will be destroyed or altered by the dam could disappear. That includes the shrew, whose riverside habitat will be subject to drastic changes in water levels as the dam’s turbines are turned on and off to power the nearby towns of Fairbanks and Anchorage.

Despite extensive searches, only 38 specimens of the shrew have been found, according to the Alaska wildlife study.

Montana Using Unmanned Drones Against Wolves

Cross Posted from LA Times

In early November, Sen. Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, made his own political contribution. Thrilled at the testing of a drone aircraft manufactured in Montana, Baucus declared: “Our troops rely on this type of technology every day, and there is an enormous future potential in border security, agriculture and wildlife and predator management.” A manufacturer’s representative claimed his company’s drone “can tell the difference between a wolf and a coyote.” Pilotless drone aircraft used by the CIA and the Air Force to target and kill alleged terrorists now appear to be real options to track and kill “enemy” wolves.

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Fracking News: Bulgarians Protest against Shale Gas Exploration

"Bulgaria without shale gas extraction!" the poster on the left reads. Photo by dariknews.bg

Some 200 people gathered on Saturday  in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia to protest against the potential shale gas exploration in the country.

The march started in front of the Environment Ministry building in Sofia, passed through the parliament and ended in front of the Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism.

The protesters demanded that the controversial hydraulic fracturing technology should be abolished in Bulgaria and called for legislative control over oil- and gas extraction technologies.

Over 10 000 Bulgarian citizens have signed under the demand for a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing for shale gas extraction and research in the country, Angel Slavchev, one of the protest’s organizers, has told dariknews.bg. According to him, the technology is extremely dangerous and may lead to irreversible consequences.

The protesters have so far not succeeded in their efforts to start a dialogue with the government, Slavchev has claimed.

Over 200 citizens from the Northeastern cities of Dobrich and Varna and the town of Kavarna gathered in Dobrich on Saturday to protest against the shale gas exploration that may take place in their region. They came out with a declaration demanding a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing and calling for the end of all shale gas concessions until a law is passed abolishing the technology.

On Friday, Traicho Traikov, Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism, revealed that the contract with US energy giant Chevron for shale gas exploration and production in Bulgaria, which is still being negotiated, will not be made fully public because there is an element of a trade secret.

He gave assurances, however that talks were underway with the company for making a substantial part of the agreement available to the public.

Traikov explained that the contract would provide for the mandatory submission of a working program for the exploration activities that would be subject to all sorts of administrative checks.

The document would also provide for unlimited liability in the case of environmental damage and the obligation to cover 100% of the cost of eliminating it.

Agency Made Wrong Call on Desert Bald Eagle

By Tim Hull

Desert Bald Eagle

(CN) – The desert-nesting bald eagle does not have threatened-species protection because wildlife officials ignored federal law and may have let policy issues cloud their judgment, a federal judge ruled in Arizona, ordering the federal agency to take a new look at a “result-driven” finding on the Sonoran Desert-dwelling raptor.
     Biologists say there are less than 50 nesting pairs of desert bald eagles in Arizona, where they tend to live along the arid state’s few rivers and streams.
     The Center for Biological Diversity and the Maricopa Audubon Society have argued since 2004 that the species deserves protection under the Endangered Species Act as a “distinct population segment” of the bald eagle, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) famously removed from the threatened-species list in
     2007 and touts as one its greatest successes.
     In two lawsuits, the environmental groups claimed that the service has failed to properly study whether the desert subspecies should be listed separately and has ignored overwhelming evidence from scientists that the dryland bird is significantly different from bald eagles in other habitats.
     U.S. District Judge David Campbell recently set aside the agency’s “12-month finding” on the species and ordered it to complete a new study by April 2012. The service’s finding that the desert bald eagle is a discrete species but insignificant to the bald eagle population as a whole was marred by preconceived notions and had simply aped the previous decision to delist all bald eagles, Campbell said.
     “It appears that the 2007 de-listing decision was made … in an environment in which Washington’s ‘policy call’ resulted in ‘marching orders’ for FWS scientists in Arizona,” the Nov. 30 decision states. “Needless to say, a result-driven decision should not become the presumptive baseline for a subsequent and properly-noticed status review, to be departed from only for compelling reasons.”
     Between 2008 and 2009, Fish and Wildlife scientists in Arizona produced 10 drafts of the 12-month finding, all of them concluding that the desert eagle was discrete, significant and deserving of protection, according to the ruling.
     Nonetheless, the service’s assistant director for endangered species, Gary Frazer, decided in 2009 that the desert eagle did not qualify for distinct population segment status, based on his review of the 2007 delisting rule for all bald eagles. The resulting 12-month finding “incorporated much of the de-listing rule verbatim,” according to the ruling.
     Judge Campbell agreed with environmentalists that the 2007 delisting rule for bald eagles “was not a valid status review for the desert eagle” and “was made at a time when FWS simply was not open to new information about the desert eagle.”
     “FWS did not comply with the notice, comment, and consultation requirements established by statute and regulations for a status review and 12-month finding,” he wrote.
     “An invalid status review should not trump a valid status review,” Campbell added. “Findings reached without appropriate notice, comment, and consultation should not become an agency’s presumptive decision. Such a procedure flies in the face of the notice, comment, and consultations requirements of the law.”
     The plaintiffs’ co-counsel, Dan Rohlf, with the Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Ore., told Courthouse News that the agency has fought for so long against protecting the desert bald eagle because of a fear that listing the Arizona bird would somehow dull the public-relations sheen of the bald eagle’s delisting everywhere else.
     “My suspicion is that the agency doesn’t want what it likes to hold up as an example of the endangered species act’s success to come with an asterisk,” he said. “Washington, D.C., is a place where politics often times come into play, but listing decisions have to be based solely on science. In this case the science is pretty clear that the population of eagles is both discrete and significant.”
     A Fish and Wildlife spokesman in Phoenix said that the agency was still reviewing the ruling and could not comment.
     In an earlier lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity challenged the service’s refusal to study whether the desert bald eagle qualified as a distinct population in the run-up to the highly publicized delisting of all bald eagles.
     Siding with the environmental groups in that case, U.S District Judge Mary Murguia said she had “no confidence in the objectivity of the agency’s decision making process’ due, in part, to evidence in the record that FWS officials in Washington, D.C. had given ‘marching orders’ to local FWS personnel that the petition was

Just Released: No REDD Papers, Vol I

REDD is an acronym for the UN Program: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries. There are many concerns amongst indigenous, environmental, social justice, and climage change groups that REDD policies favor global market capitalism and industry at the expense of forest health and local/indigenous sovereignty.

Global Justice Ecology Project has just published the No REDD Papers, Volume 1. To download it, click on one of the links below. The first link will download the booklet with one page per sheet of paper; the second link will download the booklet with 2 pages, side by side, per piece of paper.

NoReddPapers_Download
NoReddPapers_Download_spreads

To download the beautiful poster, click here: NO REDD_Poster-Cartel