from SOA Watch
On July 25, two international accompaniers from the Honduras Accompaniment Project (PROAH), from Switzerland and France, were held captive for two and a half hours in the community of La Nueva Esperanza by armed men who guard the mining operations of Lenir Pérez, the owner of Minerales Victoria.
by Niko / Earth First! Journal
Oso Blanco, who is currently serving 80 years in prison for robbing banks for money to support the Zapatista Rebellion, recently developed a cancer in his liver and required letters to be written demanding treatment. The letters were effective in calling the attention of the prison staff to Oso’s condition and granting him medical treatment. Now, we have received a request for more letters to be written to urge for the doctor’s recommendations to be followed up on.
from Latin American Herald Tribune
BUENOS AIRES – Vaca Muerta, one of the world’s largest shale oil and gas fields, is not yet fully developed, but environmentalists are already warning of the negative effects that the non-conventional oil play could have on Argentina.
Millions of liters of water, thousands of tons of sand and chemicals will be used to extract oil and gas from the field using hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” a controversial method that involves pumping a pressurized fluid – usually composed of water, sand and chemicals – into a shale formation to create a fracture in the rock layer and release trapped petroleum or natural gas.
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from Fuelfix
A federal agency plans to open up a state forest in eastern Ohio to shale gas drilling.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management wants to open more than 4,500 acres of the Blue Rock State Forest in Muskingum County to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.
Bids from oil and gas companies will be sought in a Dec. 12 public sale. That has environmental-advocacy groups asking why neither federal nor state officials took any additional steps to inform the public.
by Global Justice Ecology Project
A coalition of seven conservation groups sued the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday afternoon in federal district court in Colorado for allocating more than 800,000 acres of federal public land to climate-warming oil shale and tar sands development without undertaking formal consultation to protect endangered species.
The lands due to be mined are in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming within the Green River Formation, which the U.S. Geological Survey states contains between 353 billion and 1.146 trillion barrels of oil with “high potential for development,” — in fact, so high it holds 2 to 7 times as much as Alberta’s 170 billion barrels targeted by the Keystone XL pipeline.
from BBC
Natalie Hynde, daughter of Pretenders star Chrissie Hynde, and eco-protester Simon “Sitting Bull” Medhurst formed a “human lock” by the site entrance gate.
They were freed within a couple of hours and led into police vans.
Protesters fear the works could lead to fracking, the process of extracting shale gas from deep underground.
Earlier today, the owner of Valley Meat, Co., near Roswell, NM, announced that his horse slaughterhouse was hit by arson. The blaze did not burn the whole factory down, but appears to have been targeted for the refrigeration unit.
According to De Los Santos, “The fire inspector was out there. He took samples of the dirt and stuff just to make sure. But he said this was something that was not done by electricity or lightning. He said something was poured on it to light it.”
The damage will postpone the factory’s startup, since it cannot work without a refrigeration unit. Chaves County police are calling the blaze, “very suspicious.”
anonymous communique / North American Animal Liberation Press Office
Riverside, CA: In a communique received by the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, the Animal Liberation Front has taken credit for liberating captive pheasants from four out of six pens at a Riverside, California farm on July 22nd. According to documents posted at the Wildlife Farm Database (“Directory of captive wildlife operations for activists”), the Ash Grove pheasant farm is one of just over 60 farms in California that breed “game birds,” including quail and partridges.The birds are slaughtered for sale as meat, or sold to captive hunting facilities to be shot at close range by so-called hunters.
This is the third raid of a pheasant farm in the last 18 months. In March 2012, the Animal Liberation Front released 70 to 100 birds from a farm in Oregon. Several months later, the ALF released “dozens” of pheasants from another Oregon farm.
The communique reads, in full:
On the night of July 22, the masked rescuers of the Animal Liberation Front entered the Ash Grove Pheasant Farm at 10540 Victoria Avenue in Riverside, California. As the farmer slept just feet away, the fencing was torn open with wire cutters. Four of the six pens on the property were breached, giving these beautiful beings a chance at freedom.
anonymous communique / Bite Back
The American Mink is native to North America, and can survive in the wild after release from captivity
“On the evening of July 28, 2013, friends of wildlife entered the Burley, Idaho, mink farm of Fur Commission USA Board Member Cindy Moyle, compromised the perimeter fencing, and set up roving surveillance of the on-site night watchman. We then liberated the entirety of her breeding stock into the wild, emptying over twenty-five percent of this wildlife prison.
Illuminated in the moonlight, 2400 of these wild creatures climbed out of the cages where they had passed their entire lives in isolated darkness, to feel the grass under their feet for the first time. Their initial timidity quickly became a cacophony of gleeful squealing, playing, cavorting, and swimming in the creek that runs directly behind the Moyle property. They will live out their new lives along the Snake River watershed.
Cross Posted from West Coast Native News
Last night, July 27th, about 35 anti-shale gas activists blockaded a 20 ton truck, subcontracted to SWN Resources Canada, for over 8 hours. The truck, filled with helicopter bags – each containing dozens of geophones – was attempting to exit southward along Irving Road, a back road west of highway 126 in New Brunswick. The truck, as well as eight other equipment trucks subcontracted to SWN, were conducting seismic testing in the hopes of finding shale gas deposits along a 35.9 kilometer north-south line known as ‘Line 5′. All the equipment and workers were halted until about 3:30am Atlantic Time.
EF! DAM
Ecodefense
Earth First! Newswire 