University of Massachusetts Divests From Fossil Fuels

from UMass Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaign

This Wednesday our movement won a massive victory: the University of Massachusetts System divested all directed holdings from the fossil fuel industry. This is a huge win for students, for the climate justice movement, and beyond.

Our badass organizers have been working for four years to finally secure this win and we are so grateful to share it with the entire UMass community. From faculty and staff to alumni and community members, our campaign could not have won full divestment without the hard work and sacrifice of SO MANY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE.

Shareholders Shamed at Imperial Metals AGM

from Warrior Publications

Imperial Metal shareholders gambled and lost today holding their AGM at the River Rock Casino. They were met with a noisy demonstration opposed to Imperial’s catastrophic Mt. Polley Mine tailings spill –  the largest mining disaster in British Columbia history. So far they have not cleaned up their toxic tailings spill and have resumed mining operations.

RCMP tried unsuccessfully to shield shareholders from questions and comments from the crowd. Land Defender Kanahus Freedom was denied entry to the meeting despite having the proper documentation to attend.

Activists and members of Indigenous Land Defenders, Ancestral Pride, Secwepemc Women’s Warrior Society and No One Is Illegal confronted shareholders outside the meeting.

Organizers say Imperial is “engaging in mining practices and operations that are in direct oppostion to the protocols and inherent rights and title of the Secwepemc, Ahousaht, Tla-o-qui-aht, Wet’suwet’en, and Tahltan First Nations.”

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Germany: The Eviction of LAUtonomia Forest Occupation, A Trail of Destruction

translated from LAUtonomia (German blog)

It hurts to see how weeks of work in the shortest time is nullified.

It hurts again to see that power profit interests is placed far above all living beings who live in this forest.

It hurts to know that people who are close to us be put in jail because they have placed themselves in the way Vattenfall.

But the heart is a muscle, the size of a fist! We will be back!

Viva LAUtonomia!

from LAUtonomia (English blog)

triggerwarning: text contains police brutality

I woke up to the sound of cops arround the treehouse.

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Indonesia: 10 Years Since Natural Gas Drilling Disaster Started Mud Floods

by Stan Cox & Paul Cox / Counterpunch

Ten years ago this Sunday, one of the weirdest and most controversial disasters of the 2000s struck a densely populated area just outside the city of Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia. At 5:00 that morning, a slurry of dark gray mud burst from the soil and began oozing slowly across the landscape. Since that day, the flow of mud has never stopped or even paused.

Now, a decade into the eruption, an area of almost three square miles has been buried in mud up to sixty feet deep. At the center of a vast gray mudscape, the volcano continues to spew. More than forty thousand people have lost their houses, businesses, and land, and they can never go home.

In the wake of most volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, or other phenomena that are typically lumped under the contested “natural disaster” label, a tenth anniversary can be a good time to look back at how the recovery and healing happened.

But today seems more like the tenth anniversary of an exceptionally bad marriage. There has been no opportunity to heal, because the mud eruption—a highly unnatural disaster, a human-made tragedy—is still unfolding with no end in sight. And as with many such tragedies, the perpetrators managed to dodge responsibility for years by claiming that the whole thing was perfectly natural.

 

Stress and fault

The day before the eruption, there was a drilling accident in a natural gas exploration well 160 yards to the east. The prevailing hypothesis is that an insufficiently shielded drill fractured a deep rock formation, triggering a fault slip and allowing boiling-hot groundwater to gush upward through a thick clay formation called the Kalibeng and bring the endless stream of mud to the surface.

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Mexico: Current Campaigns in Defense of Mother Earth

from Defensa Madre Tierra

translated by Earth First! Journal

On April 10, 179 towns and organizations from 17 states publicly launched the National Campaign in Defense of Mother Earth and Territory. Today, that figure has grown to 215 registered communities and towns in total, including 43 academics, musicians, theatrical and religious actors–all together making up the Committee for Mother Earth.

So-called “progress and development” are permanent threats to the people and their natural assets. There are 97 conflicts which our communities face: Power Generation Projects 34%; Mines and mining project 32%; Privatization of water 15%; Transport infrastructure 12%; Construction 11%; Water extraction 7%; tourist developments 7%; Environmental pollution 6%; Logging 4%; Lack of land regularization 4%; Water management 4%; and GMO Soy 1%.

Since the launching of this campaign, the following 11 campaigns have grown more tense:

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Shell Spills Again: Pipeline Leaks 20,000 Gallons of Oil in Northern California

by Ryan Schleeter / Greenpeace

Less than two weeks after dumping nearly 90,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Shell Oil is at it again. The company’s San Pablo Bay Pipeline, which transports crude oil from California’s Central Valley to the San Francisco Bay Area, leaked an estimated 21,000 gallons into the soil near in San Joaquin County this week.

Responders are on the scene to clear oil that’s reached the surface, which county officials say covered roughly 10,000 square feet of land. As of today, Shell representatives claim the pipeline has been repaired, but have not resumed operations.

Local government officials and Shell responders are investigating the cause of the leak, and currently report that no oil has entered drinking water sources or populated areas.

While two large oil spills in two weeks may seem like a pretty epic failure — particularly for a company that just said “no release [of oil] is acceptable“ — in reality this is what business as usual looks like for an industry built on polluting our environment and driving climate disaster.

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France Set To Grind To A Halt As Strikes Spark Fuel Shortages

by Henry Samuel / Telegraph.co.uk

France was facing transport meltdown on Tuesday as a tense standoff between unions and the government over labour reform saw oil refineries blocked and a fifth of its fuel pumps run dry.

Just three weeks before the Euro 2016 football tournament and days before the British half-term holidays, when thousands of motorists cross into France, at least seven out of eight of the country’s refineries were cut off, fuel shortages looked set to worsen and a string of rail and air strikes are looming.

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Who are the Niger Delta Avengers? Deep Sea Divers, Sophisticated Explosives, and Sabotage

from Earth First! Newswire

Oil production has been cut by 40 percent, and is now at a 22-year low in Nigeria as a new wave of militants strike oil platforms, pipelines, and terminals throughout the polluted Niger River Delta.

Today, May 26, a blast destroyed a power line to Chevron’s Escravos terminal in Nigeria, shutting it down for the time being. “It is a crude line which means all activities in Chevron are grounded,” a source told Reuters.

This comes less than a week after the Escravos trunkline was sabotaged, according to IGBeret and just over a week after militants attacked a different Chevron platform in the Delta.

Most of the recent spate of attacks have been claimed by a group called the Niger Delta Avengers, which has given oil companies two weeks to abandon operations in the region, end pollution, and redistribute oil wealth. (more…)

Nigeria: Niger Delta Avengers Shut Down Chevron Oil Facility

by Ruth Maclean / The Guardian

Members of the Nigerian militant group the Niger Delta Avengers have shut down facilities owned by one of the world’s biggest oil companies.

People living near Chevron’s Escravos terminal in the oil-rich southern Nigerian region of the Niger delta reported hearing a loud blast during the night. Chevron confirmed on Thursday morning that the attack, which was on its main electricity power line, had shut down all its onshore activities.

“It is a crude line which means all activities in Chevron are grounded,” a company source told Reuters.

It was the latest in a string of attacks by the Avengers, who have demanded that foreign oil companies leave the Niger delta before the end of the month, and say they are fighting to protect the environment and to win locals a bigger share of the profits.

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DPS Commissioner Served Eminent Domain Notice, Home Property “Hydro Fracked”

from Earth First! Newswire

Randolph, VT (25th May, 2016) – Early this morning, members of the People’s Department of Environmental Justice (PDEJ) served notice of eminent domain at the home of VT Public Service Department Commissioner Chris Recchia.

Just before 7:00 am PDEJ Members, dressed in hard hats and high visibility vests approached Recchia with a Notice of Eminent Domain. The notice stated, “the land belonging [to] Commissioner Recchia is now under the legal jurisdiction of those most severely impacted by the permitting of the VGS Fracked Gas pipeline project.” It continued, “If Recchia will not take any accountability for his role in rubber stamping extreme energy projects that accelerate the climate crisis, exploit first nations communities and harass the public here in Vermont, the People’s Department of Environmental Justice will continue ongoing education development projects on this property.”

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