Loggers ‘burned Amazon tribe girl alive’ to force tribe to leave forest

By Raf Sanchez / The Telegraph

Loggers in Brazil captured an eight-year-old girl from one of the Amazon’s last uncontacted tribes and burned her alive as part of a campaign to force the indigenous population from its land, reports claimed on Tuesday night.

Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives Photo: AP

The child was said to have wandered away from her village, where around 60 members of the Awá tribe live in complete isolation from the modern world, and fallen into the hands of the loggers.

Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives, who live in a protected reserve in the north-eastern state of Maranhão .

“She was from another tribe, they live deep in the jungle, and have no contact with the outside world. It would have been the first time she had ever seen white men. We heard that they laughed as they burned her to death,” he said.

Reports of the killing, which was said to have happened in October or November last year, were seconded by the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), a Catholic group which said it had seen footage of her charred remains.

A spokesman for the Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department said the government was urgently investigating the claims.

Huge iron ore deposits and valuable timber have encouraged mining and logging companies to enter the forests of Maranhão despite laws designed to protect the few remaining uncontacted tribes, often leading to violent clashes.

Around 450 tribes people have were murdered in Brazil between 2003 and 2010, according to figures from CIMI.

Survival International, a charity for tribal groups, warned that a third of the Awá’s land had already been destroyed and that their nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle was being threatened as animals fled in the face of the approaching logging companies.

Action Alert from the Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project

Wolves and lynx threatened by the “Deep” timber sale in Central Oregon

The Paulina Ranger District of Ochoco National Forest is planning to revive the “Deep” timber sale already defeated by us in court as the “Jackson’ sale, with very few changes and almost all the same commercial sale units.

 This means that once again habitat for resident lynx, northern goshawk, pileated woodpeckers and for dispersing endangered gray wolves will be threatened by logging of this magnificent high elevation mixed conifer forest and that the area is at risk from “timber mining” as the forest is concentrated along stream drainages and may not recover from logging, resulting in streams drying up and permanent forest loss. Please call the Ochoco Forest Supervisor, Kate Klein, and ask that the Jackson sale be cancelled for these reasons: 541-416-6500

 

About Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project

Since our inception in 1991 in rural eastern Oregon, our mission has been to protect, defend, and restore the natural ecosystems of the Blue Mountains and eastern Oregon Cascades bioregions. Our efforts include proactive public education on ecological issues, forest surveys and documentation of proposed public lands projects (timber sales, road building, livestock grazing, herbicide and biocide programs, etc.), training, ongoing involvement in public lands policy management decisions, and litigation in federal courts to protect the biodiversity and ecological integrity of the region.

Canadian environmentalists block logging operations for one week and running

Environmentalists in Alberta, Canada have been blocking logging operations in the Castle Wilderness Area for over a week despite below freezing temperatures. On January 11 several dozen environmentalists, including local residents, set up tents on the access road for the logging operations. Spray Lakes Sawmills wants to log 300 acres of land in the wilderness area.

 “If we keep people there and the machinery idle until spring, that might be a good time — come spring, they won’t be able to do any logging. I hope it doesn’t take that long, but we have a lot of committed people, people coming from all over,” said Gordon Peterson of the Castle-Crown Wilderness Coalition (CCWC) told CBC News.

 According to CCWC the, “Castle Region is an important part of the Crown of the Continent Ecosystem which covers approximately 27,000 square miles of Alberta, BC, and Montana and includes Waterton Lakes National Park, Glacier National Park, and the Bob Marshall Wilderness.” It also serves as an important wildlife corridor and is critical habitat for grizzly bears. In addition to logging the Castle Wilderness is threatened by oil and gas projects in the area.

Taxidermy the Rich

Egyptians demand environmental rights in the revolution

cross posted from Egypt Independent

The leading slogan of Egypt’s revolution has been “Bread, Freedom and Human Dignity,” reflecting the deterioration of Egyptians’ quality of life throughout Mubarak’s thirty-year reign. Consequently, an array of human rights issues have featured among the demands made since the beginning of the 25 January revolution.

One such issue has been securing environmental rights.

The basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled, which often include the right to life, liberty, freedom of expression and equality before the law, are intertwined with environmental rights because they seek to protect the quality and continuity of life through the conservation of natural resources, pollution prevention and land use regulation.

Consequently, it is of no surprise that since 25 January, environmental demands have also served to mobilize people.

Two noteworthy examples include Damietta, where residents took to the streets in protest against pollution caused by a fertilizer plant, and in Idku, where residents launched a campaign against a British Gas project they see as potentially catastrophic for the area’s environment.

The Earth First! Journal Needs Your Help

Hey All,

We are very close to printing our Brigid / Winter issue of the Earth First! Journal. We currently need another $1000 bucks to make this happen.

Please help out by donating a bit of what you can.

To donate got the the EF! Journal website and click on the donate button or send a check or cash to Earth First! Journal / PO Box 964 / Lake Worth, FL 33460

“Playing hard on high seas”

This weekend, journalist Rosslyn Beeby with the Canberra Times in Australia drew connections between Sea Shepherd and Earth First! in a follow-up story about the three activists detained on a Japanese wailing ship last week. Below are some highlights from the article, touching on the history of Earth First! and Ed Abbey:

Yup, that's an EF! tat alright...

“Earth First!” That’s the sign-off used by West Australian activist Simon Peterffy in a farewell Facebook post before embarking on a hazardous night journey – in one of the Sea Shepherd’s ocean pursuit inflatables – to board the Japanese whaling vessel, Shonan Maru No 2. The move was planned, in strict secrecy, as a protest against Japanese whaling in the Southern Ocean.

”I love my life and love you all! Thanks everyone for their commitment to defend the Redtails and the earth. Earth First!” the founder of the WA anti-logging group Forest Rescue wrote. The forest red-tailed black cockatoo (Calyptorhynchus banksii naso) has become a rallying symbol for the fight to save the state’s south-west forests. Protected under WA law as a bird that is ”rare or likely to become extinct”, the cockatoos live in marri, karri and jarrah forests which are rapidly disappearing. The federal recovery plan for the species lists habitat loss for ”agriculture, timber harvesting, woodchipping and mining” as the principal cause of their decline.

Peterffy, who boarded the Japanese ship with fellow Forest Rescue activists Glen Pendlebury and Geoffrey Tuxworth, has red-tail feathers tattooed on his arms, as well as the Earth First! symbol—a stone axe and monkey wrench. And on the Forest Rescue website, the WA forest conservation group Peterffy founded some years ago, the symbol is accompanied by the Earth First! motto—”No compromise in defence of Mother Earth.”

So who, or what, is Earth First? Anyone familiar with American author Edward Abbey’s eco-activism classic The Monkey Wrench Gang knows the answer. They may even wistfully be eyeing paint aerosols in the local hardware store, wondering whether to daub ”Hayduke lives” across a billboard.

Animal Self-Liberation Front strikes in Brazil in daring zoo escape

Refusing to wait for the aid of bi-pedal liberators, 8 capuchin monkeys took matters into their own hands January 11^th and broke out of a Brazilian zoo. The monkeys utilized a rock to smash open the lock on their cage and made a break for it under cover of darkness. Apparently this isn’t the first time monkeys have tried to escape the small community zoo, but workers say using a stone tool has been their most surprising and effective method yet.

Unfortunately four of the monkeys have been recaptured. Three of them were caught using traps baited with fruit. The fourth monkey was captured after it broke into a restaurant. “It was a surprise because this isn’t the jungle here, and to have [a monkey] enter my establishment,” said the restaurant owner. “It was fun.”

According to an article posted on treehugger.com on the incident, “Capuchin monkeys are thought to be the most intelligent of the New World monkeys, exhibiting a remarkable ability to use stone tools. Researchers have observed capuchins in the wild gathering rocks, often collected from great distances away, to help them to crack open hard nuts. This skill is passed on generationally as younger monkeys learn by watching their elders.

“Applying this same tool usage to the novel task of breaking locks, however, indicates an extraordinary use of logic to solve the unnatural dilemma of their captivity. But what’s more, perhaps, is the fundamental desire which guided their actions: the longing to be free.”

Psy-Ops: How to learn to stop worrying and love the oil sands

by Ahni / Intercontinental Cry

“Communication might be understood as both the conduit for and the actual substance of human culture and consciousness. Psychological warfare is the application of mass communication to modern social conflict.”
—Science of Coercion, Christopher Simpson, American University

Tendencies of psychological warfare (U.S. Army War College):

1. Destroys will and ability of enemy to fight
2. Deprives enemy of support of allies and neutrals
3. Increases internal will to victory

Effects of psychological warfare (U.S. Army War College):

* Dissension
* Distrust
* Fear
* Hopelessness

Given the challenges that we face as Indigenous Peoples in Canada, it’s important to take a step back every now and again, if only so we make sure we know what exactly is being placed in front of us. If we don’t than we run the risk of wasting what little time and resources we have to stop an untenable project like, for example, the proposed Enbridge pipeline–a project that threatens our cultural heritage, our health, the environment and our ability to exist as distinct Peoples.

The goal of this article is to explore one of the most far reaching obstacles around, which happens to be blindsiding us this very moment. I refer here to the psychological war that has been waged on us by the government of Canada, oil companies and proponents of the tar sands.

read the rest here: http://intercontinentalcry.org/how-to-learn-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-oil-sand

Thousands Protest against US based Chevron’s plans for Fracking in Bulgaria

Anti-shale gas protesters flooded the Patriarh Evtimiy square in downtown Sofia Saturday. Photo by Vida Delcheva

Bulgarian citizens have rallied in capital Sofia, as well as in Varna and Shumen, to protest against the imminent exploration for shale gas in the country.

The protesters, including environmentalists and ordinary citizens, have requested that the Bulgarian Parliament impose a moratorium and later a regulatory ban on the exploration and production of shale gas in the country.

They see the novel method, involving so-called hydraulic fracturing, as highly risky, with many instances of poisoning of groundwater reported globally.

Over the summer, the Bulgarian government granted a concession to US energy giant Chevron to explore for shale gas in a large segment of Dobrudzha, north-eastern Bulgaria.

Dobrudzha is one of the main agricultural regions of Bulgaria, producing a large part of the country’s grain. It also holds important groundwater reserves.

In Dobrudzha’s largest center, Dobrich, hundreds gathered Saturday to express their opposition to the exploration of shale gas.

A similar protest is being held in nearby Varna on the Black Sea, Bulgaria’s third largest city.

More than 1,000 gathered downtown in capital Sofia on a protest march against shale gas, which is planned to end with a protest in front of the House of Parliament.

Some activists have claimed that Chevron exploration for shale gas in Bulgaria has already started undercover, in spite of assurance by senior government officials that finalization of the contract is outstanding, and that the company will have to present an environmental impact assessment.

Saturday protests are scheduled for nine more cities across Bulgaria, including Plovdiv, Burgas, Shumen, Pleven and Blagoevgrad.

Later Saturday afternoon a protester reported that during a meeting Friday, key ruling GERB party MPs, including Parliament Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva, had assured they made a “political commitment” to pass legislation banning the exploration and production of shale gas in Bulgaria.