White House march revives Keystone XL protest movement

Cross Posted from The Guardian

Environmental activists protest against the Keystone XL pipeline on 18 November 2012. Photograph: 350.org

Hundreds of people who say they worry oil that would be carried theKeystone XL pipeline will accelerate climate change marched around the White House on Sunday, hoping to revive a movement credited with slowing down the permit process for the crude oil project.

The protesters chanted “Hey, Obama! We don’t want no climate drama” and said they hoped the president’s election-night promise to address climate change means he will reject the pipeline, which needs a presidential permit to cross into the United States from Canada.

BREAKING: 40 People Stop Keystone XL Construction: Four Lock to Machinery, Nacogdoches Student and Two Others Launch a New Tree Blockade

Cross Posted from Tar Sands Blockade

November 19, 2012

UPDATE: 2:00 pm – From coast to coast, solidarity against the Keystone XL

In Burlington, Vermont, and Fairfax, California, activists displayed banners decrying Keystone XL’s role in the ongoing climate crisis. “As communities continue to rebuild in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, it should be obvious that the expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure is unacceptable,” said Sara Mehalick of Rising Tide Vermont. “From Transcanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, to Vermont Gas’s scheme to pump gas under Lake Champlain, to ExxonMobil’s plans for a New England tar sands pipeline, our right to a livable planet is under attack.”

Fairfax, California:

Burlington, Vermont:

UPDATE: 1:10 pm – Ground supporters blockade cherry picker to protect tree-sits; police retaliate with reckless pepper spray and arrests

Cherokee County Sheriffs brought in a cherry picker to try and extract the three tree blockaders. In response, a couple dozen ground supporters stood in front of the truck with the cherry picker and pushed up against it in an attempt to stop it. The truck driver refused to stop until they hit one of the supporters and almost dragged him underneath the vehicle. In an effort to disperse the crowd, police began indiscriminately spraying people in the face with pepper spray, including a 21 year old woman from Nacogdoches and a 75 year old woman with a heart condition. The officer who pepper sprayed supporters is refusing to identify himself. Two more of the ground supporters have been arrested, bringing the total for today to nine. Donate now to support these brave blockaders standing up for their communities in the face of brutal police repression.

Anti-KXL Solidarity Action Targets Deutsche Bank on Palm Beach Island

Four arrested as concerned Florida residents demonstrate opposition to investments in Transcanada/ Keystone XL Pipeline

See corporate media coverage from Palm Beach Daily News here.

An activist is taken into custody by Palm Beach police during a protest on Royal Palm Way.

West Palm Beach, FL – Monday, November 19, 2012 – Dozens of protesters with Everglades Earth First! and supporters of the Tar Sands Blockade in East Texas are rallied today on Palm Beach island, demonstrating opposition to the construction of the Gulf Coast portion of the Keystone XL Pipeline. As the nation rebounds from life-threatening droughts, raging wildfires, devastating hurricanes and ever rising temperatures, we wish to draw attention to investors financially responsible for the construction of a pipeline supporting the world’s most devastating fossil fuels project, TransCanada’s Alberta tar sands.

NAACP Study “Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People”

By: Jenée Desmond-Harris

(The Root) — It’s not news that coal-fired plants cause pollution, and it’s not surprising that it’s low-income people and people of color who tend to live closest to them. But “Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People,” a new report released this week by the NAACP, the Indigenous Environmental Network and the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, breaks down the numbers to communicate just how bad the environmental injustice is.

The organizations ranked 378 coal-fired power plants in the nation based on their Environmental Justice Performance, a score based on the plants’ toxic emissions as well as the demographics of their surrounding areas (things like race, income and population density). The results led NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous to conclude, “Coal pollution is literally killing low-income communities and communities of color … There is no disputing the urgency of this issue. Environmental justice is a civil and human rights issue when our children are getting sick, our grandparents are dying early, and mothers and fathers are missing work.”

Here’s some of what they found: The 6 million Americans living near coal plants have an average income of $18,400, compared with $21,857 nationwide, and 39 percent are people of color. That’s especially troubling news for those who can’t afford to live elsewhere, because pollutants emitted by coal plants have been linked to asthma attacks, lung inflammation, chronic bronchitis, irregular heart conditions and birth defects. According to the Clean Air Task Force, coal pollution is estimated to cause 13,200 premature deaths and 9,700 hospitalizations per year across the United States.

Rallies, public gatherings banned in Ayun

Cross Posted from Pakistan Observer

Chitral—The district administration of Chitral has imposed section 144 in Ayun valley banning all types of rallies and public gatherings following protests by the local people against cutting of trees in their area. The police have registered FIR against 53 people protesting against the cutting of trees and deforestation and arrested over 20 so far. In massive protest against deforestation by different quarters of society in Ayun valley, the business activitiescame to standstill on the call of the traders union while schools remained closed.

Moreover, a religious congregation was held in the main Jamia Mosque of the valley that was addressed by former Tehsil Nazim Shahzada Sikandarul Mulk and District President Qaumi Watan Party, Abdul Wali Advocate. A unanimous resolution was passed by the congregation that an independent commission should be set up that would determine the royalty issue and other pertinent matters related to the cutting of forests in Ayun valley.

Cross-border solidarity against Turkey’s power plant plans near Bulgaria

Cross Posted from FOCUS

Sofia. More than 200 people have gathered at the seacoast in the Bulgarian village of Rezovo, joining a cross-border protest and voicing disagreement with Turkey’s building a thermal power plant (TPP) a few kilometers away from the border with Bulgaria, announced the press center of the Bulgarian Socialist Party—Burgas.

The participants in the protest lighted torches and fired fireworks in the sky, thus showing to the people protesting at the same time in Turkey that they support one and the same idea.

[EF! News note: from what we could find, the “TPP” generally refers to a coal-fired plant, but include gas or oil.]

Rural Rebels and Useless Airports: La ZAD – Europe’s Largest Postcapitalist Land Occupation

October 2012, Notre dames des Landes, France.

Chris leans forward, her long fingers play with the dial of the car radio “I’m trying to find 107.7 FM“ … a burst of Classical music, a fragment of cheesy pop. “ Ah! Here we go! I think I’ve got it?”  The plastic pitch of a corporate jingle pierces the speakers: “Radio Vinci Autoroute: This is the weather forecast for the west central region…happy driving to you all. Traffic info next.” Chris smiles.

The narrow winding road is lined with thick hedgerows. Out of the darkness the ghostly outline of an owl cuts across our headlights. We dip down into a wooded valley, the radio signal starts to splinter. The well-spoken female voice fractures into static, words tune in and out and then another kind of sound weaves itself into the airwaves. We rise out of the wood onto a plateau, the rogue signal gets clearer, for a while two disturbingly different voices scramble together – the slick manicured predictable sounds of Radio Vinci wrestles with something much more alive, something rawer – a fleshier frequency.

 “ The cops have left the Zone for the night…good riddance… Yeah! Keep it up everyone! ……” There is a moment of silence, we hear breathing, then a scream into the microphone “This is Radio Klaxon…Klac Klac Klac! ”We feel her emotion radiate through the radio waves “ It’s nine thirty five.” she laughs and puts a record on, passionate Flamenco guitar pumps into the car.

Climate Change Resistance Solidarity Action

Since spring 2010, frontline Northwest activists have been resisting tar sands transportation projects and associated police states in our communities and on our roads, through six court cases, a dozen arrests, and over 50 direct actions. Residents of Moscow and Lewiston, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Missoula, Montana, and regional rural enclaves have defended our wild places, home towns, and public roadways from the climate-wrecking, industrial ravages of “megaload” equipment transported for ExxonMobil, Weyerhaeuser, and other undisclosed corporations to Alberta destinations and tar sands operations. Our monitoring, protesting, and litigating activities have challenged, stalled, diverted, blockaded, frustrated, cost millions, and forced some of the biggest, wealthiest, most powerful dirty energy purveyors on Earth to boost their security, pay our state, county, and city police officers as escorts, guard their unoccupied stopover and port spaces, dismantle their supposedly irreducible loads, and sneak around us on alternative routes.

One Big Step Closer to Ending Mountaintop Removal

Cross Posted from Huffington Post

By Mary Anne Hitt

One of Appalachia’s biggest coal companies is getting out of the mountaintop removal business. In a landmark announcement, Patriot Coal, one of Appalachia’s three largest mountaintop removal companies, has signed a settlement agreement with the Sierra Club, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and West Virginia Highlands Conservancy committing to end its practice of large scale surface mining in Appalachia, and to retire much of its mountaintop removal equipment, including two massive mining machines called draglines. The conservation groups were represented in the negotiations by Joe Lovett of Appalachian Mountain Advocates.

Black Elk Energy oil rig fire: two feared dead, two more missing

Cross Posted from The Guardian

Two people are feared dead and two more are missing after a fire on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana, the US coast guard said on Friday.

Four other workers were injured in the resulting fire on the Black Elk Energy rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Lieutenant Commander Solomon Thompson, from coast guard sector New Orleans, said four people were unaccounted for following the fire. The coast guard was trying to confirm a report that two of the four were dead, Thompson said. Two others are described as missing.