Mexico: Telmex Destruction For Earth and Animal Liberation

from Contra Info

translated by It’s Going Down

As we have well known, Telmex is a company that not only promotes bullfights, damages and destroys the planet with its telephone antennas, promotes massive lazy stupidity with its internet cables, and gives people cancer with its telephones and telephone antennas; Telmex also builds private prisons and prisons with private-federal investors in Mexico. Carlos Slim, the owner of this Mexican monster is also owner and co-owner of other companies that participate in megaprojects of urbanization, gentrification and environmental destruction, companies such as ICA, for example.

In this country, some federal prisons called CEFERESOs (Federal Centers for Social Readaptation) have been built with so-called “private initiative” money now that locking people up seems to be a profitable business for businesspeople and corporations. In total, ten more federal prisons are planned, adding up to 29 along with the existing ones. The “staff” working in the new CEFERESOs, which are in fact a new federal penitentiary system, are being trained by U.S. military and police personnel with funds from the Mérida Initiative. The conditions inside these “new” prisons are without a doubt barbaric for the prisoners, which doesn’t meant that they aren’t also in prisons for lower-profile prisoners. However, in federal prisons the prisoners are exposed to various psychological tortures – such as solitary confinement – with the goal of degrading them but using the argument that as dangerous prisoners they must be controlled. Enter into this game of power groups such as the American Correctional Association (ACA), who are charged with certifying that “all is well” and that prisoners receive the proper treatment – according to their status as prisoners.

Through their actions, groups like ACA justify and perpetuate prisons. In federal prisons, prisoners only have the right to visit with direct relatives, they rarely even see their lawyers – due to the restrictions imposed on prisoners, but also because many prisoners are not from the area where they are being held but instead are sent to prisons farther away. In addition, prisoners have a kind of bank account administered by the prison system itself, where relatives can deposit a certain amount of money. In some prisons it is the same partner companies or the state who administer the money, while in others it is banks like BBVA who participate in the business. These prisons have cutting-edge technology provided by the partner company…which is the same one that the federal and Mexico City governments get security cameras from. To ensure the proper functioning of these federal and state prisons, the National Academy of Prison Administration was opened in Xalapa, Veracruz in May 2009, where 252 prison guards and employees have been trained in how to repress. All told, federal prisons are definitely a lucrative business for businesspeople and companies, but are also a pillar of support maintaining the state, authority and power.

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North Dakota: Support Urgently Needed at Sacred Stone Camp

from It’s Going Down

Attention! Urgent! Support needed at Camp of the Sacred Stones in Treaty Territory. Stop the Dakota Access Pipeline!

Survey crews are working on the west side of the Missouri, north of the camp. Construction equipment is staged nearby. River crossing permit expected next week. We need all hands on deck ASAP.

Now is the time! Pray. But come and stand for the lives of the next 7Generations.

Call:
701-301-2238

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Chile: Butcher Shops Sabotaged in Santiago

from Contra Info

translated by Earth First! Journal

“…with simple materials we sabotaged the locks so that the owners of this so-called ‘job’ can have it clear in their heads that there are subjects that do not want and do not respect the commercialization of humiliation, suffering and death of animals.”
–Javier Recabarren affiliate cell of ALF

The ALF assumes the low-scale sabotage committed during the night of July 28 in the periphery of Santiago against 2 butcher shops, 1 private dwelling (butcher owner’s house), 1 access fence into the butcher and other shops, and lastly, 1 shop selling chicken.

The flow of commercialization in the shops selling dead animals was interrupted as we filled tens of their locks with liquid steel, which the bastard owners discovered later that morning with surprise. In the following days, we left a message on paper, making it very clear why this action was committed.

We undertook this action because we position ourselves against the exploitation of any species; we do not tolerate the commercialization of death for some human’s palate tasting who doesn’t question for one minute their rotten lives aligned with this capitalist system–a system that sees everything in terms of profit and who’s citizens blindly enjoy. This also is the least we can do to contribute to the fight for animal liberation, moved by anarchist ideas, and, let it be clear, we have always had our eye on going further with boycotts and sabotage.

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Day of Action Against Bank of America’s Enbridge Investments

from Creative Resistance

The Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands (MICATS), is currently taking action across the state to put pressure on Bank of America to drop their investment in notorious pipeline company Enbridge!

– In East Lansing protesters are slowing business by forming an endless line inside a bank branch. They will stop business-as usual by making miniscule transactions in-person with bank tellers for the remainder of the business day.
– In Detroit and Ann Arbor local MICATS organizers are delivering letters to bank managers and talking to them about their concern with investing in a deadly company like Enbridge!

Bank of America, though claiming environmental and humanitarian concerns as a part of its ethics, continues to invest in the highly destructive and carbon emissive extraction of tar sands in Alberta, Canada on land stolen from indigenous groups. BOA owns substantial stock in Enbridge, the company responsible for the 2010 Kalamazoo River oil spill, the ageing Line 5 running under the Mackinaw Bridge that threatens to contaminate the Great Lakes, and the controversial Line 6b that has destroyed Michigan farmland in its stretch across the state. Enbridge in turn transports tar sands oil from Canada through Michigan to refineries farther south.

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Lelu Island: A Conversation with Land Defender Goot Ges

By Natalie Knight / The Volcano

When the Indigenous land defense of Lelu Island began in 2015, Goot Ges was among the first organizers to commit to protecting Lax U’u’la, also known as Lelu Island. On a sunny July afternoon, I met Goot Ges and her three kids at Grandview Park on Commercial Drive to talk about her experiences as a land defender at Lax U’u’la and beyond.

Lax U’u’la is near the mouth of the Skeena River near Prince Rupert in northern British Columbia. The island, and the juvenile salmon that live in eel grass, are under threat from the proposed $11.4 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, a project that also includes a $1.2 billion payout to the Lax Kw’alaams community if they allow the development.

Last year, Goot Ges spent two months protecting Lax U’u’la with land defenders from the local community and allied First Nations. This year, Goot Ges lived for another three months on Lax U’u’la. She would wake early to patrol the docks and monitor employees from Petronas, the company proposing the LNG facility, and Stantec, an engineering firm.

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Over 130 Organizations Challenge EPA to Consider Prisoners in Environmental Justice Plan

From PrisonEcology.org

The Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) submitted a public comment to the Environmental Protection Agency today that provides input on the agency’s final draft of the EJ 2020 Action Agenda, highlighting the lack of consideration for environmental justice among the millions of prisoners in the United States. The comment was co-signed by 138 social justice, environmental and prisoners’ rights organizations from across the country.

Last year, HRDC submitted a 10-page comment signed by 93 organizations during the comment period for outlining the initial “framework” for EJ 2020, and later joined with the Sierra Club to generate over 12,000 emails of support for their position. Despite this advocacy, the EPA failed to include any mention of prisoners in the EJ 2020 final draft.

As a result, HRDC has further built on its efforts to make this a priority for the EPA by adding new heavy-hitting national organizations such as Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, as well as prominent individuals including Sylvia Hood Washington, editor-in-chief of the Environmental Justice Journal, and Dr. Robert Bullard, considered to be the “Father of Environmental Justice.” (more…)

Rally for Pipeline Accountability In Saskatchewan

from Media Coop

Saskatchewan Legislature, Saturday July 30, 4 PM

4:00pm
– 5:30pm
Saturday July 30 2016

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Protesters Lock Down at Spectra Gas Pipeline Construction Site, Boston

by Julie M. Cohen / Dedham Wicked Local

ROSLINDALE – Several people were arrested after locking and gluing themselves together at 9:50 a.m. on Saturday to block two construction sites of Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral gas pipeline, according to Alyssa Lee of Resist the West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline.

Lee said six people were arrested, however, Boston Police said four were arrested in the area of 2365 Centre St., West Roxbury. Police said that three were charged with trespassing and disturbing the peace and a fourth person was charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace and hindering a police officer.

Bound at the waist and ankles using chains and superglue, Lee said the group aimed to stop the project from endangering the community and disrupting the climate.

The West Roxbury Lateral runs under Grove and Centre streets, and the Metering and Regulating Station is right across the street from West Roxbury Crushed Stone, a quarry where there is active blasting.

Protester Trevor Culhane, of Cambridge, said, “This pipeline would irresponsibly lock us into decades of climate pollution and community disruption. We need to keep fossil fuels in the ground and transition to a just and renewable economy without fracked-gas.”

This was the latest in a series of ongoing protests and arrests at the site. Last week more than 100 people participated in the 43-mile “People Over Pipelines” march that started in Medway and ended by occupying the grand staircase of the Massachusetts State House on Monday, July 18.

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France ALF Sabotages Hunting Towers: Eight Total in July

from Bite Back

anonymous report:

“In North-East France Alsace-Lorraine region, 4 more Hunting towers have been destroyed raising the total this month to 8 towers.

Graffiti on them showed ALF signs.

Join by individual or collective actions NOW to save some animals from the hunt.”

[EF!J editor’s note: read about ALF’s earlier attack on hunting towers here.]

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Arson in Brazil Against Machines of Earth Destruction

from Agência de Notícias Anarquistas (A.N.A.)

translated by Earth First! Journal

We mark the change into the 2016 winter solstice with warm celebrations and nighttime fires, with the hostile flames of the fire destroying the tools of the dominating system–tools used to dominate and control, used to destroy the land, water, and air…

On the cold dawn of May 30, Sunday into Monday, we visited Net Sul’s (1) installations in the Petrópolis neighborhood, “noble air” in the city of Porto Alegre (happy port). We broke the protection panel there, giving free access to transmission antennae. The security staff didn’t notice a thing until the fire broke out.

The information flow from TV, computers, cell phones, and tablets are substitutes for many people [instead of] the open fire, conversations from face-to-face, the smells, the stars–but not for us.

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