Corporate Power vs. Animal Rights

*Cross Posted from Mickey Z at Infoshop News*

“We know we cannot be kind to animals until we stop exploiting them—exploiting animals in the name of science, exploiting animals in the name of sport, exploiting animals in the name of fashion, and yes, exploiting animals in the name of food.”

– César Chávez

If anyone requires proof that dark green ethics and radical earth defense are becoming more and more widespread, consider how the all-purpose smear of “terrorist” is being increasingly used by governments and private groups to criminalize eco-dissent.

Mic Check: So, what exactly is a terrorist?

By current standards, you can pack a calf into veal crate or pump food down a goose’s gullet or grind up live male chicks to fertilize your fields—and you’d run no risk of being called a terrorist.

You could also clear-cut forests to make way for doomed livestock or blow off mountain tops in search of coal or pump toxin-filled smoke into the atmosphere and you’d garner virtually no attention at all—let alone be labeled a terrorist.

But if you choose a lifestyle based on compassion and logic or speak out against vivisection or protest use of fur? Well, thanks to the Green Scare, you deserve an orange jumpsuit and a one-way ticket to Gitmo.

Green Scare refers to “the federal government’s expanding prosecution efforts against animal liberation and ecological activists, drawing parallels to the ‘Red Scares’ of the 1910′s and 1950s.”

This term was first known to have appeared in 2002 in the wake of congressional hearings titled “The Threat of Eco-Terrorism” which discussed groups including the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

Strip Coal Mines Resurfacing in Nova Scotia

Almost six years after Nova Scotia imposed a moratorium on 13 surface coal mining projects in Cape Breton, the province is about to release a report that can reopen operations.

Next month, the ministers of environment and natural resources will be handed a study –  produced by the government and university scientists – that allows a surface mine in Cape Breton to proceed as a case study.

The study and the moratorium started in 2006 due to public opposition to the provincial government’s decision to grant a surface mining permit to Pioneer Coal Ltd. of Antigonish.

The company was told it could begin mining 1.6 million tons of coal from close to the surface of the former Prince mine near Point Aconi, the last operating underground mine in Nova Scotia, which closed in 2001.

Two years later, the province issued a call for proposals to restart development of the Sydney Coalfield — the largest coal operation in Eastern Canada. The result was 14 surface mining proposals and a single seven-year permit for Pioneer.

The operation has moved into a reclamation phase that includes cleaning up the old Prince mine site and restoring the land and its vegetation. The work is supposed to be completed within a year of the mine’s closure, expected in 2013.

Local residents say the Pioneer project has been a disaster from Day 1.

“How would you like to have a bulldozer in your backyard all night long?” said Brian Gerrow, who lives within a kilometre of the mine site.

“All summer, we can’t open the windows because of the noise and the dust. You can’t get a breath of air. . . . This has been going on since they started.”

Officials with Pioneer did not respond to two requests for an interview.

Greenpeace Blockades Duke Energy HQ

Cross Posted from Charlotte Observer

Six Greenpeace protesters were arrested after unfurling a sign in front of the Duke Energy building Wednesday morning, protesting the company’s recently-approved rate hikes.
The protesters ascended 20-foot-tall tripods and hung a banner between them that read “Duke Energy: no dirty rate hikes.” They were wearing t-shirts that said “Be a good neighbor.”

The protest generated a large response from police officers and fire officials, but no one was injured. Authorities blocked a portion of South Tryon Street near Stonewall Street as they worked to remove the sign.

CMPD Capt. Jeff Estes said the protesters all face misdemeanor charges, including blocking the sidewalk.

Three are charged with violating a recently-passed city code ordinance that prohibits people from placing “any instrument, tripod, bipod or other pole or object with the intent to obstruct pedestrian or vehicular movement on a public road, public sidewalk, public right of way, entrance or exit to private property or any other area open to the public.” The ordinance was passed in January in preparation for the upcoming Democratic National Convention, officials said.

Last month, the N.C. Utilities Commission approved an overall 7 percent rate increase for Duke Energy’s 1.8 million customers in the state. Monthly bills for typical residential customers will go up about $7.

Greenpeace sent out two press releases early Wednesday about the protest, and posted messages and pictures about the protest near the Bechtler museum on Twitter. One tweet referred to the Duke CEO Jim Rogers read: “Be a good neighbor, Jim Rogers! Stop polluting the neighborhood.”
Duke says Greenpeace continues to ignore the utility’s progress in cleaning up its emissions. The rate hike approved in January will pay for $5 billion in new construction as it replaces 3,800 megawatts of older, dirtier power plants by 2015.

“The irony is that the same environmental protesters who urged us to improve the performance of those plants are now protesting Duke Energy for doing so,” said company spokesman Dave Scanzoni.
Duke is in the midst of a $7 billion construction blitz that will include two new coal power plants in North Carolina and Indiana with state-of-the-art pollution controls, and two more plants to be fueled by cleaner-burning natural gas. The company’s projections show emissions sharply lower in pollutants that form ozone, haze and other air-quality problems by 2017.
All of the activists arrested today were from North Carolina, including three from Charlotte, and the protest took place outside the headquarters as Duke employees were arriving for work.

“We’re sending a message to Jim Rogers: stop raising our rates,” handcuffed protester Monica Embrey of Charlotte told the Observer as she was placed into the back of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department’s prisoner transport van.

Embrey, 24, said she and the others who were arrested were protesting the fact that Duke Energy doesn’t use more environmentally friendly energy production methods.

“It’s a rate increase for dirty energy,” she said. “It’s a rate increase for thousands of asthma attacks a year.”

Wednesday’s protest follows a Greenpeace protest on top of the 400-foot stack of Progress Energy’s Asheville coal plant earlier this week.

Venezuelans Blockade Streets, Burn Tires After Oil Spill

Cross Posted from ABC News

 

Hundreds of protesters blocked streets and burned tires in eastern Venezuela on Wednesday to demand clean water after a recent oil spill polluted rivers and streams that supply local storage tanks.

“We have not had water for a week,” said Maria Rodriguez, an angry 26-year-old housewife who joined the protest in the city of Maturin. “We don’t have water to cook and bathe, and we don’t have the money needed to buy bottled water everyday.”

Crude oil began spilling from a ruptured pipeline on Feb. 4 near Maturin.

Monagas state Gov. Jose Gregorio Briceno declared a “state of emergency” following the spill, halting water distribution and closing schools in the state’s capital of Maturin, which is located approximately 255 miles (410 kilometers) northeast of Caracas

Representatives of Venezuela’s state oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela S.A., or PDVSA, have not revealed how much oil leaked into the river.

City mayor Jose Vicente Maicavares said approximately 2,000 people, including PDVSA employees, trying to contain the spill that has fouled the Guarapiche River.

Maicavares called for calm, saying officials were doing everything possible to resolve the problem.

“We understand the irritation,” Maicavares told a news conference on Wednesday. “We can only be patient.”

None of the protesters have been arrested, he said.

Ramiro Ramirez, environmental director of state oil company, told the state-run Venezuelan News Agency last week that workers have been using absorbent barriers to block the crude in the river.

They have also shut off water intakes along the river, where a drinking water purification plant is located, Ramirez said.

State oil company officials said a pipe that transports crude to a processing plant ruptured.

Ramirez said officials were investigating what caused the accident.

Protests Planned as Counterinsurgency Prevails in Penn

A group of mainstream enviros are protesting a State Senator in Pennsylvania for helping to pass zoning ordinances that forbid regulation of natural gas drilling. In a press release, the Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, Penn Environment, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Conservation Voters announced:

“State lawmakers approved last week’s legislation (HB 1950) that overturns local zoning ordinances and forces townships to allow gas operations in residential and all other parts of the municipality. Sen. Solobay represented one of five Democratic senators supporting the legislation. (Senators) McIlhinney and Erickson had publicly voiced their opposition to overturning local zoning rights, but then reversed their stand in voting for final passage of the law.”

There is more behind the scenes than it would appear. The energy industry has been astroturfing a movement to get the zoning rules changed for quite a while. Funded by initial grants from such genial supporters of democracy as  BP, Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, Halliburton, etc, one powerful group is called Energy in Depth; in spite of its list of high donors, it still calls itself a “local”, close-to-home organization with a staff of just 12 native Pennsylvanians representing a consortium of “small, domestic energy producers”. According to an article in Truthout, however,

“Some of the “Meet the Team” pages on these local initiatives neglect to mention the stake the staff might have in the expansion of fracking. For example, the campaign manager of the EID Northeast Marcellus Initiative owns a planning and market research consulting business that works with communities on zoning ordinances. Some citizens have been attempting to regulate fracking through zoning or other local democracy, while industry groups have been attempting to limit local zoning or other regulations as well as federal regulations of the drilling practice.” But the transparent interest in altering municipal zoning to cater to corporate capital is nothing new in itself; it is simply the place where things start to get interesting.

After the now-notorious Oil & Gas meeting earlier this year, when two different gas company officials declared that counterinsurgency and psy ops tactics were being used to gain the upper hand on civilian dissenters, EID spokesperson Chris Tucker attempted to cover up the admissions by calling them “jokes”. After all, EID is payed for in large part by Anadarko Petroleum, whose external affairs manager had litterally suggested that all gas company employees download FM 3-24, the Army’s counterinsurgency field manual. As for the guy who spoke about psy-ops, saying, “We have several former psy ops folks that work for us at Range because they’re very comfortable in dealing with localized issues and local governments,” he is from Range Resources, which shells out thousands of dollars in campaign conributions every year to none other than Tim Solobay, a Democrat who cheerled the zoning rules from the start.

Counterinsurgency sounds like something that goes on with snipers on rooftops and black ops raids against terrorist strongholds, but it is much deeper than that. The FM 3-24 declares that counterinsurgency operations includes nongovernmental organizations, international financial organizations, and multinational partners (like the energy industry). The idea is, at the bottom level, to subjugate people to a point where they are willing to be ruled. The domination of energy companies throughout the political process, right down to the zoning permits and even including the collaboration between private security contractors and the Department of Homeland Security, which is referenced in Greenscare 2.0, is textbook counterinsurgency, and it’s steam rolling over a grassroots environmental movement.

#OccupyDuke Protest Kicks Off Greenpeace Campaign

from quitcoal.org

On Monday, 16 Greenpeace activists were arrested after unfurling a banner at the Progress Asheville Power Station hang a banner on a smoke stack at the plant. Activists secured themselves to the coal loader and conveyers, which prevented coal from entering the facility. The Progress Energy owned Asheville Power Station uses the most destructive form of coal mining, mountain top removal, which is flattening mountains across Appalachia. The plant produces 1,994 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 788 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and 2,629,243 tons of carbon dioxide. Its coal ash ponds are designated ‘high hazard’ by the EPA, meaning they are likely to kill people

Ecuador: Indigenous Leaders Want Stop to Oil

Indigenous leaders from Ecuador’s Amazonian lowlands are calling for the government to drop plans to auction 21 leases near the Peruvian border for oil drilling. After a two-day meeting on February 7 and 8, the leaders delivered a statement to the Ministry of Hydrocarbons office in the town of Puyo, demanding a permanent moratorium on drilling in the region, “out of respect for our world view, our collective rights and the rights of nature.”

Bring the Animals Back to Black Mesa!

From theprecarious.com

Rangers employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs rode in on horse back and four wheelers, armed with portable corals and livestock trailers, to take horses and calves from Dineh tribal elders living on Black Mesa, last week. Residents of the traditionally tribal land say the livestock seizure is the latest push in a relocation effort elders have fought for more than three decades.

“They’re violating universal human rights,” said Bahe Katenay, one of the Dineh people who lives in the Big Mountain Community of Black Mesa. Katenay grew up on Black Mesa

Solidarity needed for MOVE 9 defendants!

The EF! Journal received love and appreciation from behind the bars, deep in the belly of the US injustice system. Two members of the incarcerated MOVE 9, who are still imprisoned for their efforts towards black liberation in the seventies, wrote to express how much they appreciate receiving news that Earth First! is going strong and fighting for what’s right, for nature and life.

They also outreached for solidarity. They’re asking for folks to write to their parole board. Copy, paste, fill out and sign the letter below

Burning Their Fortress to the Ground

Fire destroys the Attikon theater block in Athens as protests raged... above, a building housing the first Starbuck’s in Greece, was also destroyed

Athens in flames… again

The news tells us that the riots are about austerity measures. But here at the Earth First! Newswire, we suspect there’s something more to it. Having gotten to spend some time in Greece last year, we think that many of those bold wild-eyed anarchists setting fire to the city have something more than mere economic reforms in mind.

While there is a beauty and ecological value to a city in flames which stands on its own, the value is so much deeper when those fires represent a domino effects taking place in the whole of Fortress Europe. The empires of western civilization are falling, and every environmentalist should be cheering it on.

Last year, when the fuel in London caught a spark, we had some thoughts on the deeper meaning of the riots and urban ecology. We think the same applies in Athens