Tag Archives: protests

by | May 24, 2013 · 10:11 am

Week of protests planned against genetically engineered trees at industry conference

From the Campaign to STOP GE Trees, Global Justice Ecology Project, Earth First!, Dogwood Alliance, Global Forest Coalition and Biofuelwatch

Asheville, NC- Local, national and international groups are combining forces for a series of events and protests against the international Tree Biotechnology 2013 conference in Asheville, NC from 25 May to 1 June.

The International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) is organizing the bi-annual Tree Biotechnology conference.

ArborGen, one of the sponsors of the IUFRO conference, wants to commercially sell millions of GE eucalyptus trees in seven southern states from South Carolina to Texas.

Eucalyptus trees are a documented invasive species and are explosively flammable. The US Forest Service reports they will use twice the water of native trees.

ArborGen claims GE trees can be used for climate change mitigation.  The groups protesting the IUFRO conference say GE trees are a false solution to climate change and will actually worsen it through uncontrollable firestorms and destruction of native forests.

The Tree Biotechnology 2013 conference will discuss promotion of GE tree technologies not just in the US, but globally.

The week of protests in Asheville includes the following:

Saturday, 25 May, March Against Monsanto, 2 p.m.
GE trees protesters will join the march and the Coordinator of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees will speak at the rally.  The rally begins at Pack Square Park followed by a march and a second rally. Photo Ops available.

Monday, 27 May, Teach-In 3 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Experts will speak on the dangers of GE trees, biomass electricity and other forms of extreme energy false solutions including nuclear power, fracking, tar sands and coal mining at the Toy Boat Community Art Space, 101 Fairview Road.

Tuesday, 28 May, Rally and March, 4 p.m.
A rally against GE trees starts in downtown Ashville in Pritchard Park.  The rally will be followed by a march to the Tree Biotechnology Conference site. Photo Ops available.

Wednesday, 29 May, Showing of “A Silent Forest: The Growing Threat, Genetically Engineered Trees”, 6 p.m. This documentary is narrated by renowned geneticist Dr. David Suzuki.  The Apothecary, 39 S. Market St.

For more details on these events, including times and locations, or to follow the news day by day, go to: treebiotech2013.org or follow us on facebook.

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Biodiversity, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Commodification of Life, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, Forests and Climate Change, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, The Greed Economy and the Future of Forests, Water

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by | December 5, 2012 · 4:30 pm

Indigenous protests grow as Ecuador auctions Amazon oil blocks

November 28 2012. Source: Upside Down World, Amazon Watch

Police, military and hotel security attempted to forcibly remove indigenous leaders and protesters from the front entrance of the oil conference. Photo: Amazon Watch

Police, military and hotel security attempted to forcibly remove indigenous leaders and protesters from the front entrance of the oil conference. Photo: Amazon Watch

Quito – Hundreds of indigenous people gathered outside the Marriott Hotel in Quito today at the VII Annual Meeting of Oil and Energy where the Ecuadorian government announced the opening of the XI Round, an oil auction in which 13 oil blocks went on sale covering nearly eight million acres of rainforest in the Amazonian provinces of Pastaza and Morona Santiago near the border with Peru.

Led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) and the Confederation of Amazonian Indigenous Nationalities (CONFENIAE) and representing seven indigenous nationalities, the group overtook the entrance to the hotel and were meet by military, police, private security forces and pepper spray. Several indigenous leaders entered the meeting and publicly confronted Minister of Non-Renewable Energy Wilson Pastor.

“CONFENIAE was never consulted about this,” said Franco Viteri, President of CONFENIAE. “Our position on oil extraction is clear: We are absolutely opposed.” Continue reading →

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by | September 17, 2012 · 4:57 pm

Protests disrupt India’s nuclear energy plan

By Rama Lakshmi and Simon Denyer, September 15, 2012. Source: Washington Post

Photo: Washington Post

Koodankulam, INDIA — It is a protest that not only threatens the commissioning of the largest nuclear reactor in India but also could cripple the country’s plans to satisfy more of its growing energy needs with nuclear power.For nearly 400 days, residents of fishing villages in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu have demonstrated against a new seaside nuclear plant here. Thousands marched toward the site this week, chanting, “We don’t want nuclear power,” until police firing tear gas and brandishing bamboo canes beat them back.

“This is now the center of all the anti-nuclear protests across India,” said Anicha Milton, a frail, 30-year-old fisherwoman. “If we succeed here, no new nuclear reactor can come up anywhere.”It took 14 years and help from Russia to build the twin reactors here, and the plant is weeks from beginning production. But as post-Fukushima fears about the safety of nuclear reactors reached a peak last week, India’s hope of meeting some of its growing energy deficit with nuclear power in the next two decades appears increasingly unrealistic.

On Thursday, the protesters waded into the sea near the plant, standing in chest-high water to draw attention to their fears and vowing to prevent engineers from loading fuel into the reactor. Similar protests over health concerns and the acquisition of farmland have stalled several proposed nuclear power plants across India, including at sites set aside for American and French companies.

At stake is India’s ability to fuel its economic ambitions by setting up more power plants as well as its ability to address a growing tide of popular protests in a democratic manner. Continue reading →

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by | August 21, 2012 · 11:30 am

Peru anti-mining struggles: an official in Cajamarca switches sides, peasant farmers protest Rio Blanco project

August 16, 2012. Source: WW4 Report

In a turn-around in the conflict over the proposed Conga gold mine in Cajamarca, Peru, right-wing fujimorista congressman from the region, Joaquín Ramírez Gamarra, has come out publicly for shelving the project in the interests of social peace. “The suspension of the Conga mining project is the best path to follow,” he said. “It will permit us to not only calm the situation, but also to open spaces for dialogue.” Breaking ranks with President Ollanta Humala, he added: “The state of emergency should be lifted; the provinces of Cajamarca, Celendín and Bambamarca cannot remain under a state of exception. This would say much about the proposal for an opening on the part of the Executive.” (El Mercurio, Cajamarca, Aug. 14; RPP, Aug. 7)

In an indication of how high tensions have risen in Cajamarca region, last month the Defense Front for the village of El Tambo, Bambamarca province, announced that the local ronda (peasant self-defense patrol) had captured a youth of 19 years who confessed to having been contracted by the Yanacocha mining company to assassinate the regional president, Gregorio Santos Guerrero, a leading voice in opposition to the Conga project. The young man, whose identity was not revealed, was said to be a member of a criminal band called Los Mudos (the Mute, presumably a reference to not ratting out to the police). The Defense Front said he had been promised 12 million soles ($4.5 million) to kill Santos and other leading mine opponents. (Celendin Libre, July 23)
Continue reading →

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by | August 19, 2012 · 2:01 pm

Showdown brewing against fracking pipeline in NYC

By Peter Rugh, August 15, 2012. Source: Nation of Change

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There’s a showdown brewing out West, out by the West Side Highway in Manhattan, that is, where Texas-based Spectra Energy Corp. has its finger on the trigger of a whole lot of hydraulically fracked natural gas that it’s just itching to pump into New York City. After months of public hearings, lawsuits and protests a final showdown is culminating; it’s Spectra and their backers versus environmentalists and community members who aim to send the pipeline peddlers packing.

“Hey Spectra,” hollered Monica Hunken, an organizer with Occupy Wall Street’s Direct Action working group, “We’re the new sheriff in town!” The theme from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly played in the background over a portable speaker system as an Unwelcoming Committee assembled at a boat-shaped playground along the Hudson River on Thursday evening.

Over Hunken’s shoulders the words “Stop Spectra” were emblazoned Bat Signal-style on the big glass windows of the luxury Standard Hotel beside High Line Park. The signal was projected from OWS’s “Illuminator” van in order to shine light on a villain activists say will poison New Yorkers and could blow a crater in the West Village. After gathering together, the Unwelcoming Committee marched along the Hudson and into the Meatpacking District.

The Spectra Pipeline, officially titled The New Jersey-New York Expansion Project, will run from Staten Island, into New Jersey and then across the Hudson to Manhattan, where Gansevoort Street meets the West Side Highway, beside a sanitation pier. It will pump 800 million cubic feet of highly-pressurized, highly-inflammable, carbon-intensive, radon-rich natural gas into New Yorkers’ homes and office buildings on a daily basis.

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by | August 17, 2012 · 2:43 pm

Keystone XL pipeline construction begins amid protests

By Kim Murphy, August 16, 2012. Source: LA Times

Keystone XL pipeline protest
Protesters from Tar Sands Blockade unfurl banner at equipment storage site to protest construction of southern segment of Keystone XL oil pipeline. Photo: Tar Sands Blockade / August 16, 2012

The Canadian pipeline company TransCanada has quietly begun construction of the southern leg of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, installing segments near Livingston, Texas, company officials confirmed Thursday.

“Construction started on Aug. 9. So we’ve now started construction in Texas,” TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard told the Los Angeles Times.

The southern section of the pipeline received government approval in July.

The first in a series of protests also was launched Thursday as opponents of the pipeline, designed to eventually carry diluted bitumen from the tar sands of northern Canada to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast, unfurled protest banners at two equipment staging yards in Texas and Oklahoma.

“We just wanted to demonstrate that although they might be ready to begin, we would be ready to meet them,” Ron Seifert, spokesman for Tar Sands Blockade, said in an interview.

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by | August 13, 2012 · 5:00 pm

Peru: More protests over mining, water

08/11/2012. Source: World War 4 Report

More than 500 residents in the campesino community of Tumpa in Yungay province of Peru’s central Andean region of Áncash, began blocking roads leading to the local operations of the Mina California company Aug. 6, declaring an open-ended paro (civil strike) to demand a halt to the mine’s pollution of local waters. The mine is located near Nevado Huascarán, Peru’s highest mountain, and the national park of the same name, which forms the headwaters of several of Peru’s major rivers. (Servindi, Aug. 6) That same day, Aymara indigenous residents of Acora community in Puno region announced that a 72-hour paro begins Aug. 13, to protest President Ollanta Humala’s plans to move ahead with the Pasto Grande II irrigation project. The Pasto Grande II project would divert waters from the Lake Titicaca basin for agribusiness tracts on the coast in Moquegua region. The strike, called by the South Puno Natural Resources Defense Front, will also protest contamination of local waters by mining and other extractive industries. (Pachamama Radio, Aug. 10; Los Andes via La Mula, Aug. 6)

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by | August 8, 2012 · 1:31 pm

Nigeria: Ogoni protest govt’s inaction on UNEP oil pollution report

By Kelvin Elbiri, August 6, 2012. Source: Lagos Guardian

HUNDREDS of Ogoni took to the streets at Ogale-Eleme, Rivers State to protest the non-implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s report.

Meanwhile, the Pro National Conference Organisation (PRONACO), has okayed the August 2, 2012 declaration of the Ogoni people for political autonomy and self-determination of their people and territory within Nigeria.

The protesters demanded potable water. The Rivers State government, which has been supplying water through tankers to Elele for a while has denied any role in the implementation of the UNEP report.

The crowd that took to the streets chanting anti-government songs comprised chiefs, youths, men, woman, environmental activists, all carrying bottles filled with clean water, which symbolises what they expected from the Federal Government, the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation and Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), since the report was published last year.
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by | July 29, 2012 · 10:56 am

International conference, international protest, FBI visitations, or: The next big oil pipeline isn’t happening in Vermont – yet

By William Boardman panthers007@comcast.net

If you’re an oil company trying to get dirty tar sands oil from central Canada to a tanker port on the Maine Coast, why not just reverse the flow of a 71-year old pipeline that already carries crude oil from South Portland, Maine, to Montreal, passing through Vermont, New Hampshire, and Quebec, on the way?

One reason would be the Canadian court decision last February that denied permission for pipeline owners to build a pumping station in an agricultural zone in Dunham, Quebec, near the Vermont border.

Another reason not to proceed would be that Enbridge, Inc., owner of a pipeline from the central Canadian tar sands to Montreal, has recently suspended development of that pipeline for hotter, more corrosive tar sands oil. But the company continues to seek the permits to make its so-called “Trailbreaker Project” possible under better economic conditions.

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by | July 28, 2012 · 1:43 pm

Live video coverage from the Governors’ Conference protests in Burlington, VT

From July 29-30, Quebec Premier Jean Charest will be in Burlington, Vermont, USA. He will be co-chairing the 36th Conference of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers.

 

Charest will be meeting some of the most powerful people in our region to discuss policy, trade, and natural resources.

 

People will be converging in Vermont to defend:

-Access to education
-Indigenous rights
-Healthcare
-Migrant rights
-The environment

CUTV will be there too.

Join CUTV live from the streets of Burlington, Vermont July 29-30 as the struggle against Charest extends beyond the border.

For more information:
www.cutvmontreal.ca
www.btvconvergence.net

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