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
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 20, 2012 | Toxification
By John Vidal / The Guardian
Air pollution is prematurely killing 13,000 people a year in Britain compared with fewer than 2,000 deaths a year from road accidents, a major study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has concluded. Of these, cars and lorries are thought to be responsible for 7,000 deaths, aviation almost 2,000, power plants 1,700 with the rest coming from shipping, factories and domestic emissions.
But the report suggested that environment secretary Caroline Spelman may have been wrong to say earlier this year that the most likely cause of a major air pollution event at the London Olympic games in August would come from dirty air drifting in from the continent. The report calculated that about 60% of the polluted air breathed by Britons comes from domestic sources, the rest coming from air crossing the channel from mainland Europe. The researchers estimated for the first time that air polluted outside Britain may kill 6,000 people a year prematurely, but dirty British air drifting the other way is killing 3,100 people a year in mainland Europe.
“One-third of premature mortalities in the UK caused by combustion emissions are due to emissions from other EU member states, and UK combustion emissions cause one third again as many early deaths in the rest of the EU as they do in the UK,” says the report.
The findings also pinpointed where most of the deaths happen: 2,200 a year in Greater London, 630 in both Greater Manchester and West Midlands and more than 1,000 across all Yorkshire and Humberside.
The study is embarrassing for the government which is coming under the international spotlight this summer ahead of the Olympics and the Queen’s diamond jubilee. Air pollution in London hit record levels last month in the heatwave and Britain already faces EU fines for consistently breaching air pollution laws.
Earlier this year, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) claimed that the costs of meeting EU pollution targets may not match the benefits, but the MIT study estimated that air pollution was costing at least £6bn a year and as much as £60bn. Most of it is from the cardiac and respiratory diseases caused by inhaling the minute sooty particles emitted from car exhausts.
Britain has some of the worst air pollution in Europe, but has consistently failed to meet targets and timetables to reduce both the quantity of soot in the London air (known as PM10s) and of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a gas emitted mainly from burning diesel fuel. Faced with draconian European fines, it has argued successfully in Europe that it needs more time to meet deadlines.
The authors proposed that car makers reduce the amount of black carbon emitted in car exhausts and try to reduce nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, but say that investment in public transport, or taking cars off the road altogether – as suggested by Green party mayoral candidate Jenny Jones – would be most effective. They used data provided by the British government for 2005 and simulated temperature and wind fields using a weather research and forecasting model similar to those used to predict short-term weather.
A Defra spokeswoman said: “We want to keep improving air quality and reduce the impact it can have on human health and the environment. Our air quality has improved significantly in recent decades and is now generally very good, and almost all of the UK meets EU air quality limits for all pollutants. There are some limited areas where air pollution remains an issue but that’s being dealt with by the air quality plans, which set out all the important work being done at national, regional and local levels to make sure we meet EU limits as soon as we can.”
From The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/20/air-pollution-killing-13000-people-year
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 18, 2012 | Climate Change
By Fiona Harvey / The Guardian
Britons’ consumption of goods such as TVs and mobile phones made in China has “outsourced” the UK’s greenhouse-gas emissions, and is leading to a net increase in global emissions, according to a report from an influential committee of MPs.
While the UK’s own greenhouse-gas emissions have been tumbling, people and businesses have been buying an increasing proportion of manufactured products from overseas, where regulations on carbon emissions are often much weaker than within the EU. As a result, the increase in carbon emissions from goods produced overseas that are then used in Britain are now outstripping the gains made in cutting emissions here.
Tim Yeo, chairman of the energy and climate change committee, said: “Successive governments have claimed to be cutting climate-changing emissions, but in fact a lot of pollution has simply been outsourced overseas. We get through more consumer goods than ever before in the UK, and this is pushing up emissions in manufacturing countries like China.”
However, while China has become the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse-gas emissions, it has also become the world’s second biggest economy on the back of the enormous exports from its vast manufacturing sector. This means that, in effect, consumers from developed countries have paid China to take on responsibility for more greenhouse-gas emissions.
The Chinese government is reluctant to deal with the problem, insisting that China is taking on voluntary emissions-reduction targets, but is resistant to moves that would force Chinese manufacturers to obey stricter emissions limits.
This can put developed-world manufacturers at a disadvantage, which encourages the production of goods in areas with lax carbon controls, and thus pushes up emissions globally. Simon Harrison, chair of energy policy at the Institution of Engineering and Technology, said: “It’s about how you price imported goods – do you take account of the emissions involved in their production?”
When goods are manufactured in the UK and other European countries, the companies that make them are subject to strict emissions controls. For instance, they have to pay for the carbon they produce, and pay a surcharge on energy to subsidise renewable forms of generation. But overseas exporters in countries such as China and India are not subject to such stringent regulation, and often their manufacturing processes and energy generation are more carbon-intensive than the same processes here.
The government is in a quandary over what to do about the situation. Though importing carbon-intensive goods from overseas helps the UK to cut its overall emissions, it does not help to cut emissions globally, but just shifts the problem elsewhere. However, to slap import tariffs on goods from overseas that are produced in a carbon-intensive manner – which some UK manufacturers have said they would welcome – would be difficult under the World Trade Organisation’s rules.
Some green campaigners are urging the government to take responsibility for the emissions produced in the manufacture of imported goods. Andrew Pendleton, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth, said: “One of the main reasons why nations such as China have soaring carbon emissions is because they are making goods to sell to rich western countries. This report highlights the UK’s role in creating this pollution. The government can’t continue to turn a blind eye to the damaging impact that our hunger for overseas products has on our climate. We need to tackle the problem, not shift it abroad.”
Read more from The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/18/britain-outsourcing-carbon-emissions-china
