Tonight is a Blue Moon

Earth First! Blockades TECO Coal Plant at RNC in Tampa

by Everglades Earth First!

“You Built This Disaster” banner spoofs RNC motto (“We Built this”)

UPDATES: Seven people in total were detained for blocking the roads which stopped all traffic into the coal plant for near four hours. Six were locked down in the road and one was dragged off the top of the truck.

Over one hundred people showed up to support the blockade, many on the buses who traveled down with the Occupy Wall Street contingent from NYC, and dozens of media outlets in town for the RNC reported on the action.

In the end, no one was arrested, as it seemed the police used a strict policy of controlling the perception of protests by avoiding conflict all week.

Regardless, in the end this action not only succeeded in closing access to a massive coal power plant for hours, it also linked the plant’s operations to the corporate-funded political system, and even shut down the Port of Tampa temporarily (as well as freaked out a nearby IKEA who happen to be in the midst of an old-growth logging controversy), just by the threat of our presence!

What follows is a press release from Everglades EF! released at the start of the action:

Apollo Beach, FL—In the climax of the 2012 Republican National Convention, protestors with Earth First! have blocked access roads to TECO’s Big Bend coal plant on the eastern shore of Tampa Bay. The environmental action group is citing corporate influence in politics and ecological impacts of fossil fuel dependency as reasons for the disruption.

One of two lockdowns along the road, blocking all truck access to the TECO plant

This year’s RNC was funded by an estimated $55 million in corporate pay-offs, with corporations including the Tampa based-TECO Energy, along with Chevron, Duke Energy and Exxon Mobil.

Yanomami Indians ‘massacred’ by goldminers in Venezuela

Cross Posted from Survival International

Goldminers in Venezuela have carried out a ‘massacre’ of isolated Yanomami Indians, according to reports received by Survival International.

Witnesses of the aftermath described finding ‘burnt bodies and bones’ when they visited the community of Irotatheri in the country’s Momoi region, close to the border with Brazil.

Initial reports suggest up to 80 people have been killed, but these numbers are impossible to confirm. Only three survivors have been found.

Russia Dumped 17 Nuclear Reactors and Tons of Waste in the Arctic

by Charles Digges / Bellona.org

Enormous quantities of decommissioned Russian nuclear reactors and radioactive waste were dumped into the Kara Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Siberia over a course of decades, according to documents given to Norwegian officials by Russian authorities and published in Norwegian media.

Bellona had received in 2011 a draft of a similar report prepared for Russia’s Gossoviet, the State Council, for presentation at a meeting presided over by then-president Dmitry Medvedev on Russian environmental security.

The Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom confirmed the figures in February of this year during a seminar it jointly held with Bellona in Moscow.

Bellona is alarmed by the extent of the dumped Soviet waste, which is far greater than was previously known – not only to Bellona, but also to the Russian authorities themselves.

The catalogue of waste dumped at sea by the Soviets, according to documents seen by Bellona, and which were today released by the Norwegian daily Aftenposten, includes some 17,000 containers of radioactive waste, 19 ships containing radioactive waste, 14 nuclear reactors, including five that still contain spent nuclear fuel; 735 other pieces of radiactively contaminated heavy machinery, and the K-27 nuclear submarine with its two reactors loaded with nuclear fuel.

Undercover Narc Enabled Houston Felonies

Cross Posted from FireDogLake

Why did undercover Austin Police Department Detective Shannon G. Dowell provide material support for an activist protest that resulted in them being charged with a felony in Houston?

That’s the question I want answered after speaking with Ronnie Garza, a member of Occupy Austin who faces felony charges resulting from actions at the Port of Houston on December 12, 2011. On this day, the National Port Shutdown day of action, seven activists from Austin, Dallas, and Houston blocked the main entrance into the port by laying in the road and linking arms inside lockboxes (also known as sleeping dragons), which physically linked them together so that police cut them apart. The use of these instruments resulted in these seven being charged with Unlawful Use of a Criminal Instrument or Device, while others who merely linked arms and legs faced lesser misdemeanor charges. I was present at this day of ‘Gulf Port Action‘ and wrote about it on my blog, Approximately 8,000 Words.

Coyote Extermination Conjured in Cincinnati Suburb

by Lisa Wakeland

Mariemont officials are still considering a plan to reduce the coyote population in the village by allowing police to shoot and kill the animals in an 80-acre area.

Unis’tot’en Action Camp

Report from the struggle to stop the Pacific Trails Pipeline

by subMedia.tv

This is the second video subMedia.tv has produced about the struggle to stop a natural gas transport project called the Pacific Trails Pipeline or PTP. The Unis’tot’en, a clan of the Wet’suet’en Nation have built a protection camp to bock PTP, in so called British Columbia in Canada. This is the third time the Unis’tot’en have called for a convergence in their territories.

Remains Are of Woman Who Was Scalped, Hate Crime Investigated

Human remains found about a year ago in Kentucky belonged to a woman of Native American descent who appears to have been scalped, state police said Tuesday.

Detective Chad Winn told The Associated Press that the case is being investigated as a possible hate crime. Forensic examiners found markings on the skull consistent with a scalping, he said. By examining the structure of bones and teeth, investigators determined the woman was likely of Native American descent.

Hurricane Isaac May Stir Up Oil From BP Spill

by Lynne Peeples

As Hurricane Isaac batters the Gulf Coast, some experts are warning that the storm could threaten more than levees, power lines and gas prices.

Isaac’s high winds and rains, they speculate, could also stir up remnant crude oil from the BP’s Deepwater Horizon spill — exposing more residents and wildlife to its potentially toxic effects.

“This is another disaster on top of the hurricane that we’re going to have to deal with,” Garret Graves, chairman of Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, told The Huffington Post. “The threat is not insignificant.”

Up to 1 million barrels of oil are estimated to remain in the Gulf of Mexico. That oil remains, Graves said, because BP has failed to clean it all up in the more than two years since the tragedy. “That’s four to five times the oil that was spilled with the Exxon Valdez,” he added.

Rush Limbaugh: Obama Manipulated the Hurricane Forcast to Sabotage the RNC

from Climate Progress

On his radio show today, Rush Limbaugh suggested that the government manipulated hurricane forecasts in order to force Republicans to cancel a day of their national convention, saying the model “allows them to do it.”

“The hurricane center is the regime; the hurricane center is the Commerce Department. It’s the government. It’s Obama,” Limbaugh said.