Elsipogtog Blockade Halts Seismic Testing

Community Member Hit by Car, Sovereignty Summer Campaign Calling for National Solidarity Actions

by Mles Howe / Dominion Paper

By Sunday, June 23rd, SWN Resource Canada’s highly contested and protested seismic testing along highway 126, in Kent County, New Brunswick, had almost wrapped up.

But the seismic test along the highway is only one of several planned testing lines, and the company’s attempts to begin another line of seismic testing – this time along the back roads of Kent County – was yesterday halted in its tracks by community members living in the vicinity of Browns Yard.

Obama’s Climate Speech Will Surely Be Full of Shit

by Madame Beaubama, Clairvoyant at Arms / Earth First! News

Today President Obama will deliver a speech on climate change at Georgetown University. You can watch it live here:  whitehouse.gov/liv

It promises to be, as some copy editor working in the White House dungeons has crafted for a press release, his “vision for a comprehensive plan to reduce carbon pollution, prepare our country for the impacts of climate change, and lead global efforts to fight it.”  

As you probably already know, with the full force of a fucking sneaky but brilliant team of writers and political goons, he is going to sell us a big load of shit.

Look for these messages between the lines:   

An Open Letter to Lierre Keith and Derrick Jensen

by Sasha Ross / Earth First! News

Your recent article, published in Counterpunch on the summer solstice, opens up the space for much discussion. While we’ll all hopefully look back on this problem as a frustrating distraction, for the time being we must confront the issue with positivity and direct action.

Before I begin, I would like to remember the lives of the those killed on this day, forty years ago, in the largest massacre of LGBT people in US history—the arson of Metropolitan Community Church. In an event that mimicked the massacre of 1913 in Calumet, Michigan, immortalized by Woody Guthrie, some anti trans people blocked the door to the first LGBT church ever, and burned the place down. In 15 minutes, 32 people lost their lives. Their crime was loving one another, and celebrating the forth anniversary of the Stonewall Riot (coming up on the 28th, btw).

For Earth First!, the issue of gender is worth hashing out, because trans inclusive policies make EF! what it is. There are currently two Trans and Womyn’s Action Camps affiliated with Earth First!, and some of EF!’s most dedicated and long-time organizers are trans people. These are people who put their bodies on the line consistently to stop a genocidal machine that is destroying the earth. 

I work with several trans people and queer folks at my job at a Cascadia biodiversity group, and I am proud to count myself among their numbers. I have been part of LGBT communities since I was in second grade. I am also a co-founding moderator of the Earth First! Newswire, where much of the debate has taken place. I want to use this space to speak out: please, stop the insanity. Stop spreading ignorance about the trans community. Let’s break bread with our trans allies and all people struggling to be free. Now is the time for fearless love.

BREAKING: Activist has Climbed Inside Enbridge Tar Sands Pipe in Michigan

UPDATE: Chris has been arrested and is in need of bail funds. Please donate to his bail fund here.

by Rabb!t / Earth First! Newswire

Chris “The Whammer” at the pipe entrance.

Early this morning Chris “The Whammer” Wahmoff climbed inside a segment of Enbridge’s Line 6B Pipe south of Marshall, Michigan, to halt reconstruction of the line. Chris used a skateboard to slide-crawl his way deep into the pipe, where he has said he is prepared to stay until at least 5:00 PM tonight. Chris is part of the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands (MI-CATS), a grassroots group that seeks to stop all transportation and refining of tar sands in Michigan, and advocates against tar sands production and transportation everywhere.

Chris is positioned less than half a mile from where the Enbridge Line 6B pipeline broke in 2010, spilling bituminous sands oil into the Kalamazoo River. The oil was being transported through the pipeline from Canada to the United States. Recent water samples have shown that the river is still contaminated, some three years after the spill occurred, yet Enbridge is already at work reconstructing this stretch of the line. Chris’s action is an attempt to halt construction, and bring attention to the fact that Enbridge is moving on with this dangerous project without having cleaned up the spill from the previous line. 

Tasmania Defended: The World Celebrates the Success of Community Action to Protect Forests.

from The Observer Tree

The decision today by the World Heritage Committee to approve the extension to the Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area is testament to the power of the community, after decades of action to defend these forests.

The Observer Tree and the forest surrounding it as well as the site of Camp Florentine blockade are now World Heritage listed.

“On December 14th 2011 I climbed to the top of a tree in a threatened forest and said I would stay until the forest was protected. That forest is now World Heritage. It is thanks to the support from people right around the world that the forest is still standing and is now protected” said Miranda Gibson, spokesperson for Still Wild Still Threatened.

“For 14 months I watched over the forest every day with the hope that we, as a community, could defend those trees for future generations. Today, for that forest, we have achieved that” said Ms Gibson. 

BREAKING: Construction of KXL Pump Station Shut Down in Oklahoma

Eight lock down to construction equipment in largest action yet by the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance.

from Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance

Protesters locked down to construction equipment. Photos from @iamed_nc

[UPDATE: Nine people have been arrested. You can donate to their bail fund at http://gptarsandsresistance.org/donate/ and share this around. They managed to shut down the site until a volunteer firefighter reportedly injured one of the lockdowners, who is in the ambulance currently and whose injuries are unknown to us. Folks soonafter unlocked out of concerns for their safety.]

Seminole, OK – Early this morning, eight individuals blocked construction of a pump station for TransCanada’s controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on Seminole land-by-treaty by locking on to equipment in the largest action yet by the Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. The group took action today, physically halting the construction process, as a part of an effort to prevent the Great Plains from being poisoned by inherently dangerous tar sands infrastructure, as well as demonstrate the necessity for direct confrontation with industries that profit off of continued ecological devastation and the poisoning of countless communities from “Alberta, CA” to the Gulf. This action comes during the first day of a nationwide week of coordinated anti-extraction action under the banner of Fearless Summer.

Police Cut off Willits Protester from Food and Water

This incident occurred on the third day that Red-Tailed Hawk has been perched on a stitcher, blocking Willits bypass construction and protecting critical wetlands. For some background read Red-Tailed Hawk High Up on the Stitcher for Second Day.

from Save Little Lake Valley

Crowd of supporters marches onto wetlands destruction site to resupply Red-Tailed Hawk, who has run out of food.

Saturday evening around 45 supporters of Red-Tailed Hawk’s occupation of a wick drain “stitching machine” converged on the site in what was precious wetlands in the path of CalTrans’ freeway project. Supporters walked onto the site unopposed until they reached CHP squad cars, when two officers emerged and tried to call a halt to the march. Supporters from Willits, Ukiah and beyond proceeded on the the stitcher in which Red-Tailed Hawk is perched. When he lowered a supply rope, they tried to attach bundles of food and water. CHP officers repelled the attempt three times, cutting the rope in the process.

With press on hand protestors quietly sat and reasoned with the officers to allow resupply to Red-Tailed Hawk, who has no food and very little water left. The officers refused and refused as well to reveal whether they were under orders to starve him until he descends.

Experimental Geoengineering Could Create Food Scarcity

by Martin Lukacs / The Guardian

Two Harvard engineers are to spray sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000 feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease the temperature of the Earth.

Victory! Grassroots Organizing Stops Massive Strip Mine in VA

By Skyler Simmons, Southern Appalachians EF! Newswire Correspondent

It has been a long, hard fight but residents of the small coalfields town of Appalachia, VA can breathe a little easier after the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals, and Energy (DMME) for the second time rejected a mountaintop removal mine permit for Ison Rock Ridge. The massive strip mine, proposed by A&G Coal would have leveled over 1000 acres of Ison Rock Ridge and filled in four valleys on the outskirts of Appalachia and Inman.

“I am so pleased to finally see the DMME stand up for the people they are supposed to represent,” said Sam Broach, president of Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards (SAMS). “The people living in the areas affected by surface mining can sleep well tonight knowing that the mountains above them won’t be blown up, and the air they breathe will be a little bit cleaner.”

SAMS, along with the Sierra Club and Blue Ridge Earth First! fought the DMME for years to stop the permitting of new MTR sites in this isolated corner of Virginia with little success. It appears that their years of community organizing, protests, and direct action are finally paying off with the rejection of the Ison Rock Ridge Permit.

Sabotage Against Shell’s Pipeline in Erris, Ireland

by Andrew Flood / Glyko Symoritis

Yesterday morning around 50 Shell to Sea campaigners kicked off the Week of Action against Shell’s experimental high pressure gas pipe in Erris by tearing up the bog road Shell has laid as part of its attempt to finish the pipeline.  They also destroyed the sandbag dam that Shell were attempting to build across part of the estuary in order to be able to work on the pipeline route regardless of the tides.  This was accomplished in full view of about 15 security from IRMS – the security company hired by Shell to repress protest.