Red Lake Pipeline Blockade Initiated in Northern Minnesota

Posted from Twin Cities Indymedia

#RLBlockade begins!

On the Red Lake sovereign nation land located in what is today known as northern Minnesota, an occupation has started at a location above the Enbridge-owned pipeline built without permission of the Red Lake Nation in 1949 (hashtag #RLblockade). Already a helicopter from Enbridge briefly landed next to the site (video), near the town of Leonard.

It is expected if the occupation proceeds for three days, the flow of oil – which may include controversial tar sands bitumen extracted from Alberta, Canada – will have to be shut down. The 72-hour countdown has started around roughly 3PM Thursday.

Supporters have been invited onto the site by tribal members to support the blockade, and currently volunteer media from the new UneditedMedia collective, TC Indymedia & [informally] OccupyMN are on site. Internet access appears stable enough for @uneditedcamera to periodically livestream as the camp takes shape for the long haul, also aided by mild weather. Also @samRichards10 and Robert DesJarlait (@r_desjarlait) are providing updates. Desjarlait tweeted “This isn’t a blockade, as some have reported. There is nothing to block. It is a non-confrontational protest.” However, it does have potential consequences akin to that created by a blockade.

Protestor Locks Himself to Conference Equipment, Disrupts TransCanada Presentation At Oil Industry Gathering

Watch Ethan’s disruption of business as usual live! Check out our twitter page for live updates as well.

Cross Posted from Tar Sands Blockade

Houston, TX — February 28th, 2013, 1:45pm — a protestor with Tar Sands Blockade this afternoon locked his neck to a projector screen in the middle of a TransCanada presentation at the North American Crude Marketing Conference in Houston. In taking direct action, Ethan Nuss confronted in-person Paul Miller, TransCanada’s Executive Vice President of Oil Pipelines, and a ballroom of tar sands industry investors, demanding a halt to the toxic Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

Saving Predators May Help Save Climate

The three-spined stickelback is a lean, mean green-house gas preventing machine

by the Center for Biological Diversity

Sure, predators regulate prey — simply by eating them. But a new study shows that, at least in freshwater ecosystems, these food-chain top dogs are also key characters in curbing carbon pollution. In a project published in Nature Geoscience, when researchers removed all of two prime predators from certain streams and ponds, they found these ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide than normal aquatic networks: 93 percent more.

Huila Community of Colombia Continues to Defend the Earth from Mega-Development

From UpsideDownWorld.org, by Polinizaciones

The New Year in Huila started as 2012 finished, with the National Authority of Environmental Licenses’ (ANLA) refusal  to hold the energy company Enel-Endesa-Emgesa accountable for failing to comply with the environmental license for the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project.

The Comptroller’s Office has continually studied the information put forth by Association of Affected Peoples of the Quimbo Hydroelectric Project (Asoquimbo), and has backed the local communities’ demands that the environmental license be respected in regards to resettlement, compensations and environmental mitigation.  Meanwhile in Huila, local media have falsely reported that nothing is wrong in the region and have irresponsibly reduced their reporting to nothing more than public relations on behalf of the company’s image.

Nonetheless, throughout Huila, the resistance has not only manifested from the communities affected by the Quimbo Dam, but also from the communities in Gigante and Garzón affected by petroleum company Emerald Energy, as well as communities in southern and central Huila resisting the Master Advantage Plan of the Magdalena River which would hand over the country´s largest and most important river in concession to the state-owned company HydroChina. In addition to the invasion of extractive industries to Huila, the regions large amount of coffee growers have been impacted by the falling price in coffee which has progressively gotten worse since the signing of the US free trade agreement. As a result, Huila and all of Colombia’s coffee growers have also started pressuring the Colombian State that has resulted injuries in recent days as coffee growers have had clashes with the riot police (ESMAD).

Sea Shepherd Anti-Whalers Now Labeled ‘Pirates’ by US Fed Court

The Sea Shepherd ship Bob Barker (R) colliding with the Japanese whaling fleet fuel tanker the San Laurel. (AFP Photo)

Reposted from RT

A US federal court has branded the conservationist group Sea Shepherd as pirates, and ordered them to cease their operations at sea, opening the door for Japanese whalers to pursue legal action in the United States against the activists.

Chief judge Alex Kozinski wrote in an 18-page opinion that “you don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch” to be classified as pirates.

Remembering the Wounded Knee Occupation

Cross Posted from Socialist Worker

By Brian Ward

IN RECENT months, the Idle No More movement led by First Nations in Canada has spoken out against disastrous government policies threatening reserves and the environment. Idle No More has been a powerful voice of resistance, particularly as consciousness about environmental issues grows.

Of course, Native resistance is nothing new to this continent. It has been part of history since Europeans set foot on Turtle Island (as North America is known to some Native Americans). The images of the Idle No More movement blockading highways across Canada reminds us of past struggles.

One of the most important such struggles began 40 years ago on February 27: the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 by Oglala Lakota elders and the American Indian Movement (AIM), who called for the impeachment of the corrupt tribal council president Dick Wilson, and for Congress to reexamine broken treaties.

Pork Protests Directed Against Walmart

Photo by Doug Strickland. 

Cross Posted from timesfreepress.com

By Shelly Bradbury

For the last four weeks, Phil Letten has been road-tripping through the U.S. in a gray Toyota Corolla, donning a suit and tie each day and inflating a 10-foot-tall caged pig at Walmarts in cities from California to New York.

Monday, he was in Huntsville, Ala. Tuesday he stopped in Chattanooga, and today he’s in Nashville. He’s a national campaign coordinator for Mercy For Animals, a nonprofit group that claims Walmart’s pork suppliers abuse pregnant pigs by keeping them in small cages that prevent them from lying down comfortably, turning around or engaging in natural behaviors.

Lithuania Delays Declaration of Chevron as Shale Gas Exploration Winner Due to Protests

Cross Posted from KyivPost

Vilnius – Because of public protests, the Lithuanian Environment Ministry has delayed a meeting of the Commission for Hydrocarbon Resource Exploitation scheduled for Wednesday, where American energy concern Chevron might have been announced the winner of a shale gas exploration tender.

Demonstrators Gather at Wisconsin Capitol

Cross Posted from The Daily Cardinal

Approximately 70 demonstrators gathered on the Capitol steps Tuesday to protest the contentious state mining bill that is designed to ease the mine permitting process in the state before the state Senate fully considers the bill Wednesday.

Everglades Earth First! Brings Anti-Biotech Fight to Kolter Group

Land deal could signify move forward for Scripps’ biotech city on Briger forest

Today in West Palm Beach, Florida, Everglades Earth First! (EEF!) announced their official opposition to the Kolter Group’s purchase of the Briger Forest. The EEF! collective, which maintained a 6-week treesit on the site in 2011, visited the corporate office of the venture capitalist vultures at Kolter with this message: “If you buy Briger you’re buying the community resistance to the Scripps Florida Phase II project.” The project has been contested for years, with multiple legal challenges citing impacts to protected species, including hand fern and gopher tortoise.

While his underlings call him Bobby, after watching this video, you may want to call him Blinky. …Has Scripps gone into genetically engineering robot CEO’s?!

In case you want to pay a visit (or send a letter) to Kolter Group Co yourself, their address is 701 S. Olive Avenue, West Palm Beach, FL 33401. And you can call them at (561) 682-9500, or fax (561) 682-1050. The CEO’s name is Robert Julien, but his underlings seem to call him Bobby. His extension is 221.

Although the Kolter Group claims to be committed to “creating better communities” they seem to have little issue with building homes and businesses within close proximity of the proposed biotech facility.