Arson Attack on Seattle “Green” Development

The arson of some townhouses under construction was recently claimed by anonymous Seattle Anarchists.  This is the communique they left, citing their reasons and expressing their joy:

“Just before midnight, Monday Feb 25, we strolled over to the townhouses under construction on 24th and Norman in the Central District. After slipping inside, we set one ablaze. Oh what ease! Oh what fun!

Sustainable development is a myth that makes us sick. By furthering gentrification and ecological destruction, these buildings dress disaster up as progress, promising a “green” future that will never be.

Our attack was just one more opportunity to joyously reject the status quo. It was another attempt to shed the subjugated subjectivity forced upon us by Capital and the State. We act against civil society and its attempts at domestication. Fuck that shit.

Celebrate a global justice holiday today at the EF! Film Fest! in Lake Worth

Thirteen years ago today, a grassroots movement took to the streets of Seattle and shut the city down, effectively ruining the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) summit and turning the global tide against corporate rule. Four years later, we faced off with the one of the most well-funded police forces in the world in the streets of Miami to expose the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) summit.

This evening we will be celebrating these amazing events of Novembers past at the first annual Earth First! Film Fest, hosted by the EF! Journal Collective, with independent films from about the mobilizations in Miami and Seattle, along with other films on industrial globalization and its discontents.

Japanese Whalers Are Denied Protection Request Against Sea Shepherd

Japanese whalers asked a US federal court in Seattle to make the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society stop harassing them during their whale hunt in the Southern Ocean. Based out of Friday Harbor, Washington, Sea Shepherd and its lawyers argued the Japanese had no jurisdiction, and that whaling is not a legitimate business, anyway.

“If a heroin dealer came to federal court and sought an injunction to be able to continue to sell their heroin in a particular neighborhood without interference from anyone, I have no doubt that the court would turn them down,” said Dan Harris, Sea Shepherd’s lawyer.

The judge evidently agreed today, refusing the whalers’ protection request.

Outside the courthouse, Gavin Carter, a spokesperson for the whalers, complained about the ruling. “You can’t have anarchy on the high seas,” he whined. Apparently, he’s never met Sea Shepherd founder and patriarch Captain Paul Watson, a man known for his top-down, authoritarian ways. If he had, Carter would know that Sea Shepherd sees itself as an enforcer of international laws that protect marine life. If anything, it’s the government of Japan that’s advocating anarchy, illegally hunting whales to sell their bodies for food.

This ruling comes less than a week after a standoff in sub-zero Antarctic waters between Sea Shepherd activists on a jet-ski and three inflatable boats, and the Nishin Maru 2, a Japanese harpoon boat. The spray from a water cannon on the harpoon boat hit the activist on the jet-ski in his chest, causing him to fall into the frigid waters. He was able to make it back onto his jet-ski and return to the Steve Irwin, a Sea Shepherd vessel nine miles away.

Sea Shepherd is promising to keep up their campaign against the whalers until the hunt ends at the end of March.

Spray from a cannon of a Japanese harpoon boat knocks a Sea Shepherd activist into the water