by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 14, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Direct Action, Repression at Home
By Shiv Malik / The Guardian
A veteran anti-whaling campaigner has been arrested in Germany on charges relating to an incident in 2002 when the boat he was piloting attempted to stop poachers illegally killing sharks.
The environmental activist organisation Sea Shepherd said Paul Watson had been detained at Frankfurt airport to answer a Costa Rican extradition warrant for “violating ships traffic”.
The incident took place in Guatemalan waters a decade ago when Watson’s boat, the Farley Mowat, encountered an illegal shark-finning operation run by a Costa Rican ship, the Varadero. Crew on the Varadero accused Watson of attempting to ram their boat and Watson was charged by Costa Rican authorities with attempted murder.
Watson’s charges were subsequently dismissed when a video of the incident filmed by a documentary crew was shown to the Costa Rican prosecutor. However, the charges were later re-investigated by a newly appointed prosecutor.
Established by Watson in Malibu, California, Sea Shepherd – which has had a number of celebrity backers such as Pierce Brosnan and Martin Sheen – has been involved in numerous anti-whaling and environmental protection actions in international waters.
In 2006 Watson was involved in a “daunting chase” when his boat for weeks pursued a Japanese whaling fleet over 4,000 miles along the Antarctic coastline.
Sea Shepherd said: “Captain Paul Watson was arrested on 12 May and has made contact from Frankfurt airport jail. He has been given periodic access to his mobile phone and is being treated well.
“A fisherman accused Paul of trying to kill him, although it is evident that Paul did not and that evidence is on film. He said the warrant dates back to an event in 2002.”
The statement added that Watson was scheduled to appear before a judge on Tuesday morning, and that it was unclear why the warrant had been re-issued.
Sea Shepherd said Watson was being assisted by Daniel Cohn Bendit, co-president of the Greens/Free European Alliance group in the European parliament, and José Bové, a group member.
“With Costa Rica’s rich biodiversity, it would be a travesty for them not to stand up for sharks, which sit at the highest levels of the food chain assuring balance among ecological communities in the ocean,” Sea Shepherd said.
“Paul is very touched by the concern on Facebook and Twitter and finds it very encouraging.”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/14/paul-watson-arrested-germany-sea-shepherd
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 8, 2012 | Lobbying, Mining & Drilling
By Der Spiegel
Germany has put the brakes on plans to use hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, to extract natural gas in places where it is difficult to access, such as shale or coal beds. Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen and Economy Minister Philipp Rösler have agreed to oppose the controversial process for the time being, SPIEGEL has learned.
Sources in the German government said that the ministers were “very skeptical” about fracking, which injects chemicals as well as sand and water into the ground to release natural gas. “There are many open questions which we will first have to carefully examine,” Rösler told close associates.
With their stance, the two ministers are opposing plans by energy companies to use the fracking process to tap into deposits of natural gas in shale, especially in northern and eastern Germany. In order to access the gas, the shale needs to be fractured using a mixture of hot water, sand and chemical additives, some of which are poisonous. Environmental groups reject the use of the technology, saying that the chemicals used can contaminate drinking water.
Local Protests
Last week, the energy giant ExxonMobil presented a study by the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research, in which researchers expressed their support for test drilling in the states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.
Local environmental groups in the affected regions have already got into gear, setting up citizens’ initiatives to collect signatures for petitions and organize protests in a bid to block the fracking plans. Activists fear that the chemicals could pollute the local groundwater.
Fracking has been widely used in the US, where production of natural gas has sharply increased in recent years as the use of hydraulic fracturing becomes more widespread. Earlier this month, President Barack Obama’s administration unveiled new regulations to improve transparency on the chemicals used during fracking on public land.
From Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/germany-rejects-fracking-to-tap-natural-gas-a-831764.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 3, 2012 | Toxification
By Rob Edwards / The Guardian
Hundreds of sites across England and Wales could be contaminated with radioactive waste from old military bases and factories, according to a new government report.
Up to 1,000 sites could be polluted, though the best guess is that between 150 and 250 are, says a report on contaminated land by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc), released last month, but previously unreported.
This is far higher than previous official estimates, with evidence from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) last December suggesting that there were just 15 sites in the UK contaminated with radium from old planes and other equipment.
The MoD has come under fire from former prime minister Gordon Brown for trying to evade responsibility for cleaning up the contamination it has caused. His constituency in Fife, north of Edinburgh, includes one of the most notorious examples of radioactive pollution at Dalgety Bay.
In the past year, the MoD has realised that there are others areas of radioactive contamination across the country that may need to be cleaned up, Brown said. “They’ve started to use their lawyers to get out of what is, in the first place, I think, a moral responsibility and in the second place, will become a legal responsibility.”
The MoD has begun a year-long investigation of the contamination at Dalgety Bay to try and avoid it becoming the first place in the UK to be legally designated as radioactive contaminated land. More than 2,500 radioactive hotspots have been found on the foreshore in the past 22 years, one-third of them since last September.
Brown has also criticised the failure to act on a 1958 Cabinet report uncovered by BBC Radio 4’s Face the Facts, to be broadcast at 12.30pm on Wednesday. The previously secret report by a group of radiation experts urged ministers to control the disposal of the radium painted on dials of military planes to make them visible in the dark.
“There may be undesirably high levels of radiation near these dumps,” warned the Cabinet report. “Records of burials and of burial sites should be kept and handed on to future users of the land.”
But this was not done at Dalgety Bay, Brown said. “The truth is that, at that point, someone did know that there was a potential problem. Someone should have then passed it to the Ministry of Defence, and urged them to take the appropriate action.”
Former environment minister Michael Meacher MP said he ordered officials to identify and produce clean-up plans for all the contaminated sites in 1997. “I am astonished and deeply concerned that that does not appear to have happened,” he told the BBC.
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/02/radioactive-waste-contaminating-uk-sites
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 28, 2012 | Human Supremacy, Reclamation & Expropriation
By Giornale Di Brescia
They broke through or climbed over the gate networks. They made their way inside the farm and opened the cages, taking away puppies, pregnant mothers, and all the little beagle puppies they could find. It was a raid organized by Occupy Green Hill to demand the closure of the mill.
The procession started at the parking lot of PalaGeorge, and was attended by about 1000 people from all over North Italy and also from the center. By way of the action Sepentone deflected, and instead of going towards Via San Zeno, the main road leading farm where he was deployed the cordon of police, groups of protesters cut through the fields and the lanes, coming close to the fences.
From then on, the situation has become confused with groups of demonstrators who tried to open gates in the perimeter and teams of mobile riot police and police deployed to contain them. On the side of the gates, however, the protesters opened a breach in the fence and broke into the farm, going into the sheds and taking away at least thirty dogs.
By the end of the day, police had arrested 12 people from the local police station Montichiari, and transferred them to Desenzano. Some protesters said they had suffered violence by officials.
Green Hill 2001 is a company located in Montichiari (Brescia), which breeds beagle dogs to vivisection labs. From this farm, more than 250 dogs each month end in the enclosures, in the hands of vivisectors and on operating tables. Dogs there are born to die and sentenced to suffer.
After the collapse of the other Italian breeder of laboratory beagle dogs, the Morini Stefano di San Polo d’Enza, it is likely that Green Hill has had a greater demand, expanding and becoming one of the main breeding dogs in the European market research animals.
Inside the Green Hill 5 huts are locked up to 2500 adult dogs, plus several litters. A lager made of animal shelters closed, aseptic, without open spaces without natural light or air. Rows and rows of cages with artificial lighting and ventilation system are the environment in which these dogs develop before being loaded onto a truck and shipped to hellish laboratories.
Among the clients of Green Hill, there are university laboratories, pharmaceutical companies and renowned trial centers as the notorious Huntingdon Life Sciences in England, the largest animal torture laboratory in Europe.
Who derives profit from this pain?
For some years now Green Hill was acquired by an American firm called Marshall Farms Inc. Marshall is a name infamous throughout the world as it is the largest “factory” dog lab in existence. The Marshall beagle is actually a standard variety.
Marshall’s dogs are shipped by air all over the world, but with the purchase of Green Hill as the European headquarters and the construction of a huge farm in China, Marshall is pursuing a plan of expansion and market monopoly.
In this it must also be seen that the expansion project includes the construction of other shelters in Montichiari, which would provide Green Hill with 5,000 dogs, making it the largest beagle dog breeder in Europe.
For a price from $600 to $1200 you can buy dogs of all ages. Those willing to pay more can also buy a pregnant mother.
Green Hill Farm and Marshall also offer its customers surgical treatments on demand, including the cutting or removal of the vocal cords.
For Green Hill and Marshall Farm animals are just merchandise, objects to breed and sell, without the slightest scruple about pain and suffering – mental and physical – that they will suffer.
From Negotiation is Over!
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 24, 2012 | Education, Repression at Home
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans, and the anti-Nazi resistance group the White Rose Society, is an example we all should look to in resisting the unjust and murderous culture in power. After watching the film based on their story, Sophie Scholl: The Final Days, my heart is broken at their sacrifice and inspired by their courage to act.
Executed by Hitler’s regime for their effectiveness, the White Rose Society wrote and distributed pamphlets denouncing the Nazis, their wars and atrocities. Their organization operated secretly underground, working late at night in a private office space with printing equipment.
The Scholl siblings understood the risks they were taking by acting against the Nazis, and this was shown through every step of their interrogation and trial. Upon confessing their involvement in the resistance group and position against the Nazis, they held firm to their sentiments and were proud of them.
Courage is a great in concept, yet often difficult to have in life-threatening matters, but Sophie Scholl and members of her group show that doing what is right is more important than any one of our lives alone. This may be the most important lesson that can be learned from their story and words.
Hans and Sophie Scholl were quite young, seeking to encourage similar resistance amongst their peers. By their age, it could be guessed that they were extremely passionate and willing to fight, but the virtue of discipline may not be assumed. Their seriousness and discipline is clear from their story, and embodied in quotes like this (from Hanz): “Keep a strong spirit and a tender heart.”
After all they had done to support resistance to Hitler and the Nazis, the Scholl siblings were hung. Their spirit of resistance must not be in vain. We must speak out and act now, even if it seems no one else is doing the same. As Sophie said in what were some of her last words: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”
Original pamphlets by the White Rose Society can be found and read here.
From Kid Cutbank: http://kidcutbank.blogspot.com/2012/03/recommended-film-sophie-scholl-final.html
