by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 21, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Indirect Action, Mining & Drilling
By Claire Stewart-Kanigan / The Dominion
“Eco-consciousness” and “green living” are centrepieces of product branding for the Toyota Prius. But that feel-good packaging has rapidly worn thin for members of the Algonquin Nation and residents of Kipawa, Quebec, who are now fighting to protect traditional Algonquin territory from devastation in the name of hybrid car battery production.
In 2011, after nearly two years of negotiations, Matamec Explorations, a Quebec-based junior mining exploration company, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Toyotsu Rare Earth Canada (TRECan), a Canadian subsidiary of Japan-based Toyota Tsusho Corporation. The memorandum confirmed Matamec’s intention to become “one of the first heavy rare earths producers outside of China.” In pursuit of this role, the company plans to build an open-pit Heavy Rare Earth Elements (HREE) mine directly next to Kipawa Lake, the geographical, ecological, and cultural centre of Kipawa.
Rare earths are a group of 17 elements found in the earth’s crust. They are used to produce electronics for cell phones, wind turbines, and car batteries. Rare earths are notorious for their environmentally costly extraction process, with over 90 per cent of the mined raw materials classified as waste.
Toyota has guaranteed purchase of 100 per cent of rare earths extracted from the proposed Kipawa mine, for use in their hybrid car batteries, replacing a portion of Toyota’s supply currently sourced out of China.
Over the last seven years, China has reduced the scale of its rare earths exports via a series of annual tonnage export caps and taxes, allegedly out of concern for high cancer rates, contaminated water supply, and significant environmental degradation. Despite China’s stated intention to encourage manufacturers to reduce their rare earths consumption, the US, the EU and Japan have challenged China’s export caps through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and are seeking new deposits elsewhere for exploitation. Toyota and Matamec are seeking to make Kipawa part of this shift.
Kipawa is a municipality located on traditional Algonquin territory approximately 80 kilometres northeast of North Bay, Ontario, in what is now known as western Quebec. The primarily Indigenous municipality is home to approximately 500 people, including members of Eagle Village First Nation and Wolf Lake First Nation, of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin Nation. The town of Kipawa lies within the large Ottawa River Watershed, a wide-branching network of lakes, rivers and wetlands. Lake Kipawa is at the heart of the Kipawa region.
Lifelong Kipawa resident and Eagle Village First Nation member Jamie Lee McKenzie told The Dominion that the lake is of “huge” importance to the people of Kipawa. “We drink it, for one….Everyone has camps on the lake [and] we use it on basically a daily basis.” This water network nourishes the richly forested surroundings that make up the traditional hunting and trapping grounds of the local Algonquin peoples.
“Where the proposed mine site is, it’s my husband’s [ancestral] trapping grounds,” said Eagle Village organizer Mary McKenzie, in a phone interview with The Dominion. “This is where we hunt, we fish, I pick berries….We just want to keep our water.” Jamie Lee and Mary McKenzie also emphasized the role of lake-based tourism in Kipawa’s economy.
The Kipawa HREE project would blast out an open-pit mine 1.5 kilometres wide and 110 meters deep, from the summit of a large lakeside hill. It would also establish a nearby waste dump with a 13.3 megatonne capacity. Rock containing the heavy rare earth elements dysprosium and terbium would be extracted from the pit via drilling and explosives, processed at an on-site grinding and magnetic separation plant, and then transported by truck to a hydrometallurgical facility 50 kilometers away for refining.
Matamec confirmed in its Preliminary Economic Assessment Study that some effluence caused by evaporation and precipitation is inevitable, especially during the snowmelt period. A community-led presentation argued that this could create acid mine drainage, acidifying the lake and poisoning the fish.
“There’s going to be five [truckloads of sulfuric acid transported from pit to refinery] a day….[I]n a 15-year span, that’s 27,300 truckloads of sulfuric acid,” said Mary McKenzie. “We’re worried about spills and the environment….They’re talking about neutralizing [the acid], when a spill does occur, with lime. I have [sources that say] lime is also a danger to the environment.”
In a 2013 presentation in Kipawa, Matamec stated that while “some radioactivity [due to the presence of uranium and thorium in waste rock] will be present in the rare earth processing chain,” its effects will be negligible. Yet these reassurances ring hollow for some, who point to cancer spikes observed in communities near rare earths projects in China. In the project’s economic assessment, Matamec itself indicated that waste rock is too dangerous for use in concrete and dikes.
“Whatever goes up in the air [from blasting and evaporation] comes down….A lot of those particles are radioactive,” said Mary McKenzie. “Our animals eat this [plant matter potentially affected by the mine]….We depend on our moose, we depend on our fish, so that’s a scary situation.” The refining process also uses strong acids and bases.
While Matamec stated in the Assessment that “most” of the water used in processing will be recycled, a portion of the post-processing solution will be directed into the lake or tailings ponds. The mine is intended to be operational for 13 years, but tailings ponds would require maintenance for generations, and leaching is always possible. Adding to this risk, Matamec has “assumed that [certain] tailings will not be acid generating or leachable” and will therefore only use watertight geomembrane for a portion of the tailings ponds.
With the approval process being accelerated by both public and private factors, production could begin as early as 2015. Quebec’s regulations call for provincial environmental impact assessments only when projects have a daily metal ore production capacity that is considerably higher than the national standard—7,000 metric tons per day versus 3,000 in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. What’s more, by categorizing HREE in the same regulatory group as other metals, these tonnage minimums fail to reflect the higher toxicity and environmental costs of heavy rare earths extraction.
Because of this, the Kipawa project does not trigger a provincial-level assessment. It only requires clearance from the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency and a certificate of authorization granted by the provincial Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks.
On the private side, the assessment process has been fast-tracked by a series of multimillion-dollar payments from TRECan to Matamec ($16M as of April 2013). According to Matamec president André Gauthier in a July 2012 press release, this makes Matamec “the only rare earth exploration company to have received funds to accelerate and complete a feasibility study and an environmental and social impact assessment study of a HREE deposit.”
The chiefs of Eagle Village and Wolf Lake First Nations have been demanding a consent-based consultation and review process since the project was quietly made public in 2011—one that exceeds “stakeholder” consultation standards and acknowledges the traditional relationship of the Algonquin people to the land. Residents only became widely aware of Matamec’s plans following the company’s community consultation session in April 2013.
Jamie Lee McKenzie has not been impressed by Matamec’s consultations. “They come in and they have a meeting…and they tell us all the good things about the mine,” McKenzie told The Dominion. “[They say,] ‘It will give you jobs. We need this to make batteries for green living,’ but that’s it.”
Local organizers told The Dominion that a Matamec-chaired community focus group had been cancelled during the early summer after one local participant asked that her critical questions be included in the group’s minutes. Following what many residents see as the failure of Matamec and provincial assessment agencies to meaningfully engage with Kipawa residents, the community has taken matters into their own hands.
In the summer of 2013, Kipawa residents began to organize, with the leadership of Eagle Village and Wolf Lake members. Petitions containing over 2,500 signatures were sent to provincial ministers, demanding a provincial environmental assessment as well as “public hearings to review the Mining Act…to strengthen rare earth environmental monitoring.” As of late November, there had been no official responses to the petitions, and no positive response to letter-writing campaigns directed at the office of the federal Minister of Environment. (Quebec adopted a new Mining Act in early December, as this article went to print.)
But demands have grown beyond calls for review. “We’re not okay with the BAPE [provincial assessment]; we’re not okay with the mine,” said Mary McKenzie. “We’re against the [project] 100 per cent.” In September, McKenzie helped organize a 100-person anti-mine protest on the shores of Kipawa Lake. In November, the resistance network formalized their association as the Lake Kipawa Protection Society, committed to stopping the mine through regional education, local solidarity, and creative resistance strategies like a “Tarnish Toyota” day of action.
The Kipawa HREE project, if approved, would open doors for the numerous other companies exploring the watershed—such as Globex, Fieldex, Aurizon, and Hinterland Metals—as well as for heavy rare earths mining in the rest of Canada.
“We have mining companies all over in our area here,” said Mary McKenzie. “Matamec is the most advanced, but it’s not just Matamec: we want all the mining out of our region.”
The mine is not the only project on the fast-track: Algonquin and local resistance efforts are picking up momentum, and backing down on protecting the water and land is not on the agenda.
“This is ancestral ground,” McKenzie stressed. “We can fight this.”
Claire Stewart-Kanigan is a student, Settler, and visitor on Haudenosaunee territory.
From The Dominion: http://dominion.mediacoop.ca/story/toyota-prius-not-so-green-after-all/20373
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jan 13, 2014 | Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying
By Natalia Ruiz Diaz / Upside Down World
The Sawhoyamaxa indigenous community in Paraguay have spent over 20 years fighting to get back their land, which they were pushed off by cattle ranchers.
They started the new year by collecting signatures to press Congress to pass a bill that would expropriate their ancestral territory from ranchers, in order for the state to comply with a 2006 ruling by the Inter-American Court of Justice ordering the restitution of their land.
“More than 20 years after being expelled from our ancestral land and living [in camps] along the side of the road, watching the cows occupy the place where we used to live, we decided to return because that land is ours,” the Sawhoyamaxa said in a message accompanying the petition drive.
“Che rohenói, eju orendive, aldeia unida, mostra a cara” (I am calling you, come with us, the people united, show your face) thousands of people sang at the “Todos con (everyone with the) Sawhoyamaxa” intercultural festival in Asunción in mid-December.
The event launched the start of their new crusade demanding enforcement of the Inter-American Court sentence, which ruled that they be given back their territory and that they be provided with basic services, such as medical care and clean water.
The “Che rehenói” chorus was heard over and over again in a mix of Guaraní (one of Paraguay’s two official languages, along with Spanish) and Portuguese, sung by the hip hop ban Brô MC’S, whose members belong to the Jaguapirú Bororó indigenous community from Brazil.
The goal set by the Sawhoyamaxa leaders is to gather 20,000 signatures, to pressure Congress to approve the expropriation of the land.
The epicentre of the community’s two-decade struggle is the Santa Elisa settlement, where the largest group of families are camped out along the side of the road 370 km north of Asunción en Paraguay’s semiarid Chaco region.
They are living “in extreme poverty, without any type of services, and waiting for the competent bodies to decide on the land claim they filed,” according to the 2006 Court ruling.
The Sawhoyamaxa form part of the Enxet linguistic family. There are 19 indigenous groups belonging to five language families in Paraguay, spread out in 762 communities mainly in the east of the country and the Chaco region, a vast dry forest area.
According to the 2012 census, 116,000 of Paraguay’s 6.7 million people – or 1.7 percent of the population – are indigenous, with over half of that group belonging to the Guaraní people. However, the overwhelming majority of the population is “mestizo” – people of mixed European (principally Spanish) and native (mainly Guaraní) descent.
The Sawhoyamaxa, who had no title deeds to the land where they had always lived, were displaced from their land, which was taken over by large cattle ranchers.
“They don’t want us to progress in our way of life,” the leader of the community, Carlos Cantero, told IPS. “We want the land to dedicate ourselves to our ancestral activities, like hunting and gathering in the forest.”
He was referring to the powerful cattle industry, which has successfully lobbied to block implementation of the 2006 binding sentence handed down by the Inter-American Court, an autonomous Organisation of American States (OAS) body.
Cantero said it was important for the situation to be resolved immediately because “there is still a little forest left on our land, some swamps and streams; but if the state does not take a stance on this soon, those reserves are going to disappear.”
Cattle ranchers have steadily advanced on Paraguay’s Chaco region, where in November 549 hectares a day were deforested, according to the local environmental organisation Guyra Paraguay.
The Chaco scrub forest and savannah grassland, which covers 60 percent of Paraguay but accounts for just eight percent of the population, makes for good cattle pasture.
Since the 19th century, the worst dispossession of indigenous people of their lands in this landlocked South American country occurred in the Chaco, especially after the 1932-1935 Chaco War with Bolivia, when the government sold off huge tracts of public land to private owners.
Today, less than three percent of the population owns 85 percent of Paraguay’s arable land, making this the Latin American country with the greatest concentration of land ownership.
The Sawhoyamaxa community is fighting for 14,404 hectares of land.
In a largely symbolic move, when the final deadline set by the Inter-American Court expired in March, the native community began to “recover” their land, setting up small camps on the property to which they are waiting to be awarded a collective title.
Their fight for the return of their ancestral lands dates back to the early 1990s. After exhausting all legal recourse available in Paraguay, they took the case to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in 2001, which referred it to the Court.
The Sawhoyamaxa case is one of three in which the Inter-American Court has handed down rulings against the Paraguayan state in defence of the country’s native people. None of the resolutions has been fully complied with.
After the 2006 sentence, the government attempted to acquire the land in question in order to live up to the resolution and return the property to the native community. But it failed, due to the refusal by the rancher who holds title to the property, Heribert Roedel, whose 60,000-hectare estate includes the land claimed by the Sawhoyamaxa.
“The other route for expropriation is through the legislature, for which a bill was introduced, currently being studied in the Senate,” said Oscar Ayala, a lawyer with Tierraviva, which supports indigenous communities in Paraguay.
This local non-governmental organisation and Amnesty International Paraguay are the main civil society supporters of the cause of the Sawhoyamaxa.
The bill Congress is debating was presented by the government in August for the expropriation of the land, in order to fulfil the Inter-American Court order.
According to Ayala, there is a more positive environment than in the past. “The impression we have is that there is greater openness” for an eventual solution and for justice to be done in the case, he said.
On Dec. 18, the Senate commission for audit and oversight of state finances pronounced itself in favour of expropriation of the land.
“This first favourable ruling is a good indicator; these questions are always complex because caught up in the middle is that deeply rooted economistic view of land, but in this case those issues are no longer in debate,” Ayala said.
The bill will now go to the agrarian reform and finance commissions and then on to the Senate floor, before being sent to the lower house.
Some 120 families – around 600 people, half of them children and adolescents – are living in the Santa Elisa settlement.
The Court also ordered the state to provide food and healthcare assistance to the community. But while the situation in this respect has improved in the new settlements, much more needs to be done.
“We have a health promoter but no health post,” Cantero said. “The worst affected are the children, who are suffering from dehydration because of the bad quality of the water.”
The settlements receive clean water every month, but it is not enough, and they depend on rainwater, which is scarce in the semiarid Chaco.
To find a solution, Sawhoyamaxa men and women have been knocking on doors everywhere, showing people papers that describe the history of their community, their struggle, and the Court ruling, in search of support.
“We won’t stop until we are living on our land; our very survival depends on that,” Cantero said.
From Upside Down World: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/paraguay-archives-44/4629-sawhoyamaxa-battle-for-their-land-in-paraguay
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 30, 2013 | Building Alternatives
The following account comes to us from DGR allies based in the Philippines, who recently packed up supplies and traveled to the regions of their country hardest hit by Typhoon Haiyan (called Typhoon Yolanda in the Philippines) to provide disaster relief and embody the spirit of mutual aid. You can learn more about their resistance community at http://onsiteinfoshopphilippines.wordpress.com/
Leyte Mission Two
Mobile Anarchist School volunteers and its immediate network have no time to rest; right after our first mission, we came back to Manila just to complete the requirements for “Climate Crises and Direct Action Forum” where we shared the details of our initiative in Leyte.
We able to gather resources enough to support six volunteers for 15 days action. We discussed the details of our second mission and carefully outlined our plan based on our experience.
Background
More than a month after super typhoon “Yolanda” pummeled Visayas, the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC) reported on Thursday morning that the death toll has slightly increased to 5,982 from 5,959 reported Wednesday. The number of people injured and missing
remained at 27,022 and 1,779, respectively.
Affected cities: 57; affected provinces: 44. Number of people/families affected: 12.191 million people/ 2.582 million families number of people displaced: 3.98 million people/ 869,742 families in evacuation centers: 21,669 families/ 93,814 people.
The number of damaged houses decreased to 1.192 million, nearly half of which were totally destroyed. To date, power outage is still being experienced in some provinces and municipalities of Mimaropa, Bicol,
Western Visayas, Central Visayas, and Eastern Visayas.
Based on the latest inspection of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP), a total of 1,959 transmission facilities have been damaged. Electricity has already been restored in Ormoc City, Leyte and in the municipalities of Anilao, Banate, Barotac Viejo, and Ajuy, all of which are in Iloilo.
Solar Guerrilla Autonomous Response Team – Mobile Anarchist School
As mentioned earlier, we focused our initiative in Barangay Libtong, municipality of San Miguel. There was no casualty or injury reported but the damage based on estimate of barangay captain is so extensive; in fact rice fields, coconut trees, infrastructures such as rice mills, market, tele-communications and among others are destroyed.
When we arrived there for our second mission, we see signs of very slow recovery process. The relief is scarce; families have no means to access government support to rebuild their homes. Communication is difficult, prices of basic commodities and services are still double and power restoration is far from completion.
On our first day we upgraded the capacity of our solar set-up. We installed 300 watts solar panels with 30 amperes solar control charger and two units of 12 volts batteries (3SM deep cycle 70 amperes and 2SM 50 amperes). We set-up the team to effectively carry-out charging operations, medicine and relief distribution, food not bombs and stress de-briefing activities.
Two volunteers handled the charging operations, and another was assigned in medicine distribution. The other three volunteers distributed tasks in handling food preparations.
Charging and medicine distribution operated on the daily basis (from second to eleventh day).
Barangay Central activities: we conducted art workshop, series of games, food not bombs and gifts sharing for kids and youth. Around 60 children participated the event that last for three hours.
Activities in “Iskwater”: we organized the same pattern of activities with different variations; we did not expect more than a hundred of children swarmed our event. Due to the time constraint and limitation of supplies and materials, we felt so sad to see many of them did not able to participate and did not able to get food.
We repacked our limited relief to double the number of families who will receive the goods. We focus our effort in charging and medicine distribution while the two volunteers spontaneously organized games for
kids who were always around the area of our campsite. Actually, the tandem always does this activity every afternoon during our stay except during bad weather.
We organized workshops, food not bombs, games and gift sharing to children in Pikas. Kids there are relatively small in number compare to Barangay Central and in Squatter; but they are very warm just like the places we had previously visited.
Limited supply obliged us to prioritize families without houses. We distributed relief in Iskwater, Barangay Central and Olputan areas.
These activities were carried-out in our 14-day mission including two ways travel time.
Reflections
In our ten years of operating food not bombs, free market and similar activities we are used to positive impressions from the people and communities.
School teacher is highly respectable career in many municipalities in the archipelago. A school teacher with her two daughters showed-up in one of our events all of them were wearing black shirts. Afterwards, the teacher told the reason why they are wearing black, because they respect the people who preferred to wear black color.
The community treats us good and with respect, perhaps it is natural for the people to treat us this way as long as we provide service or share supplies. On the other hand they also asked why institutions are not working efficiently and creatively to provide support. We are not supposed to be here if the government is doing its job.
In general, it’s not normal to see strange looking people providing or sharing things services essential to our daily lives without asking anything in return. Strange looking would mean heavily tattooed, body
pierced, weird hairstyles and preferring black over the other colors. Likewise, it is really odd to see these strange looking people who has no boss and privilege less but active in the front line of disaster to extend solidarity to the victims.
Our appearance raised curiosity which made people come, mingle and inter-act with us. They are expecting “formal” and “decent” people to come to help in exchange of political allegiance or spiritual favor. They are really surprise to know that strange looking people like us are here to share base on our capacity without asking anything in return.
For us this is not a heroic act, we believe that helping is a normal and common relationship in many organisms. Currently, human being is essentially guided by the idea of competition reinforce by capitalism and statism. The idea of supremacy, hierarchy, uniformity and centralized pattern distorted our values. Our relationship with nature, to our self and with others is now characterized by domination and control that eventually resulted to inequality, poverty, ignorance, patriarchy and ecological destructions.
Mutual Aid can be effective if delivered directly.
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 16, 2013 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy
By Diana Parker / Mongabay
Nearly 150 homes were reportedly destroyed in the latest incident in a long-standing conflict between indigenous Batin Sembilan residents and former Wilmar unit PT Asiatic Persada.
Indonesian security forces allegedly stormed several villages inside a Sumatran palm oil plantation concession last weekend and earlier this week, accompanying company staff and hired thugs accused of destroying dozens of homes and looting residents’ property.
Witnesses said the raids began when members of the Indonesian military (TNI) and the police mobile brigade (Brimob) descended on Padang Salak hamlet in Bungku village at 4 p.m. on Dec. 7 together with PT Asiatic Persada personnel and local thugs paid by the company.
“That day [Dec. 7], they destroyed the homes of [Padang Salak residents] Budi and Peheng,” Norman, a resident of nearby Pinang Tinggi hamlet, told Mongabay-Indonesia by phone on Monday. “The next day, they returned and destroyed around 50 homes of residents.”
Norman estimated that as many as 1,500 staff, thugs and security forces were involved in the raids on Saturday and Sunday, a figure also reported in multiple Indonesian news outlets covering the attack.
According to a report on Monday by the Indonesian news portal beritasatu.com, some residents tried to stand their ground but were overwhelmed by the size of the mob. At one point on Sunday, according to the report, the clash came to blows and security forces fired shots into the air.
Norman also told Mongabay-Indonesia that police and military had fired shots during the conflict and that company security officers and thugs armed with knives and machetes had tried to attack residents.
Around 70 residents who had tried to fight back to prevent the demolition eventually fled.
One community member was seriously injured when his hand was cut, Norman said, adding that several motorbikes owned by residents were also destroyed and a box containing cash and jewelry was stolen.
On Sunday, some members of the community living inside the concession reportedly responded by burning a guard post and company warehouse in Padang Salak. Two residents were arrested after the incident, and, as of Dec. 14, remain in detention. Norman added that police were also attempting to arrest community leaders.
Troubled history
These evictions are the latest incident in a more than 25-year conflict between PT Asiatic Persada, which until earlier this year was owned by palm oil giant Wilmar, and the indigenous Batin Sembilan community living inside the company’s concession in Jambi province on the island of Sumatra.
Wilmar had earlier been accused of destroying the homes of 83 families living inside the concession in 2011 following another violent clash – also involving Brimob forces – over allegations that members of the community were stealing palm fruits from the company.
After the 2011 incident, human rights groups helped the community file complaints with the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the World Bank Group’s private sector lender the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – both of which have standards in place designed to prevent member companies or borrowers from violating the rights of local communities.
Wilmar is a member of the RSPO and received financing from the IFC, and in response to the complaints the IFC’s Compliance Advisor Ombudsman eventually stepped in to mediate talks between the company and members of the affected community.
However, earlier this year, Wilmar sold PT Asiatic Persada to two non-RSPO companies that do not receive IFC financing – meaning they are not bound by the same commitments to resolve the dispute. One of the buyers, PT Agro Mandiri Semesta (AMS), is a unit of the Ganda Group, a business group owned by Ganda Sitorus, the brother of Wilmar founder Martua Sitorus.
The IFC formally withdrew from the case in October after the new owners decided not to continue the IFC-mediated talks. Now it appears that PT AMS is resorting to the same tactic used by Wilmar in 2011 and forcibly evicting residents.
Evictions continue
According to multiple reports from victims and members of Suku Anak Dalam 113 – a group composed of members of the indigenous Batin Sembilan community who claim to hold the rights to over 3,500 hectares of land inside the concession – the evictions continued throughout the week and into the next weekend as company personnel and hired thugs, escorted by government security forces, destroyed homes and drove residents from at least two more hamlets in the concession.
Basron, a 41-year-old resident of Pinang Tinggi, was in his home on Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. when he felt his house shake. He went outside to see his home surrounded by plainclothes thugs and PT Asiatic Persada employees wearing green shirts, escorted by several TNI and Brimob members.
“We are from the integrated team,” a member of the mob said, according to Basron. “Quickly clean up your things. All the homes will be evicted today.”
Basron told Mongabay-Indonesia that the thugs and company personnel were armed with sharp weapons such as knives, axes and machetes, while military and police carried firearms. They had driven to the hamlet in dozens of Mitsubishi pickup trucks, also bringing heavy equipment including an excavator, which they used to destroy the homes.
In total, Basron estimated around 700 people came as part of the “integrated team,” splitting into several groups to carry out the evictions. Each group was composed of dozens of thugs and PT Asiatic Persada employees and escorted by police and military personnel.
After removing his possessions, Basron watched as a member of the team used the excavator to destroy his home. Once the house was destroyed, he said they instructed him to quickly clean up the debris.
“If it’s not clean, we will come again tomorrow. We will burn it all,” they said, according to Basron.
Basron said they also looted his livestock, taking away a chicken and several other birds worth Rp 600,000 ($50). Other Pinang Tinggi residents also reported members of the eviction team stealing livestock, cash and other valuables.
“My cash box was filled with Rp 6 million and they dismantled it and took what was inside,” Daim, another Pinang Tinggi resident, told Mongabay-Indonesia, while showing the broken box.
“Diesel fuel and oil, they spilled,” Daim added. “If they had been able to lift it, they would have even taken my generator.
Victims also reported having their cell phones destroyed when they tried to photograph the evictions. “Don’t take pictures of our actions,” an integrated team member allegedly told Meldi, a 25-year-old Pinang Tinggi resident, shortly before destroying his phone.
Meldi was still able to snap several photos of the raid using another cell phone, but villagers said they have little documentation of the evictions while they were taking place since they were told not to take pictures or use their phones.
Basron said the integrated team destroyed 109 homes in Pinang Tinggi on Wednesday. Another 31 homes were reported destroyed during evictions in Padang Salak on Dec. 7 and 8, while six homes were reported leveled in Terawang hamlet.
In total, victims said the teams destroyed 146 houses over three days. Reports also indicate evictions were carried out on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Tanah Menang hamlet, where another 600 homes are located, however Mongabay-Indonesia has yet to confirm how many houses were destroyed in those raids.
From Mongabay: “Indonesian palm oil company demolishes homes and evicts villagers in week-long raid“
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 2, 2013 | Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
By Murray Bush / Vancouver Media Co-op
COAST SALISH TERRITORY – Activists blocked access to the federal Port of Vancouver for an hour early this morning as part of an International Day of Action in Support of Elsipogtog Land Defenders in New Brunswick.
Access to the Port at the foot of Clark Drive was blocked for an hour. Traffic was backed up as far as as the eye could see. The adhoc coalition of activists blocked the road with a banner reading Solidarity with Elsipogtog and #ShutDownCanada. The group said it condemns fracking for poisoning water and boosting carbon emissions and decries “the brutality of the RCMP response, and their ongoing collusion with corporate interests.”
“We stand in solidarity with Land Defenders everywhere – from the Mi’kmaq in New Brunswick to the Unis’tot’en in British Columbia – who are fighting rampant and reckless resource extraction, which is the face of modern colonialism. We denounce the assertion that this destruction and the associated corruption, deceit, and violence are necessary. And today we shut down a key piece of the infrastructure of this ideological machine.”
The Mi’kmaq Territory encampment which saw standoff’s between Mi’kmaq peoples protecting water and RCMP protecting corporate interests, requested the global support. More support actions are planned in BC today including rallies in Vancouver and Victoria.
From Vancouver Media Co-op: http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/photo/elsipogtog-solidarity-action-shuts-vancouver-port/20175
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Dec 1, 2013 | Movement Building & Support
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
If the political Left was what I thought it was growing up, I would want nothing to do with it. It’s not what I thought it was, however; at least not in its true form. A Left worth the name is less a sold-out party line and more a grassroots revolutionary force of the kind we’ve not seen for far too long. No matter what we want to call that force, now is the time to build it again.
It starts with political. I know the connotations: we think charades of Presidential elections and we think the textbook spectrum to which we’ve never been able to relate. We all know that the political system is boring, pointless, and corrupt (and did I mention boring?). Politics, however, is not the political system.
That which shapes the world we live in, from the most global to the most intimate sense; that which determines who has power and who doesn’t, who has wealth and who doesn’t, who eats and who doesn’t; this is the real meaning of the political. The term comes from the Latin politicus, meaning “of, for, or relating to citizens.” Need I say that this concerns and should be important to us?
To ignore politics or revile it is to do nothing more than sit on the sidelines as society unfolds. Decisions will be made, whether or not we participate. Thus, we have two choices: concede power over our own lives to the powerful or take that power back for our communities and landbases.
I have, at different times, been both apolitical and anti-political. Like so many who dream of a saner way to live, I placed no more faith in the Left than I did the Right to take us there. It’s all the same, I convicted; sad but true.
But there’s something deeper in that word: the Left. What if, instead of being one end of a spectrum, one pillar of the status quo, it could sink that spectrum and topple those pillars? What if the real meaning of the Left is a culture of resistance: a fiery populist radicalism potent enough to shake the power elite with even the smallest dose?
“Left” has become a dirty word even amongst those ostensibly most aligned with its values. For some it comes on too strong; it’s too political, too confining. For others, it’s too weak; it reflects but one arm of a wholly corrupt machine. In either case, when we wash our hands of the political Left, we wash our hands of the potential for a better world. Neither best wishes nor fierce posturing will cut it.
There is no American Left. Once upon a time there was, but it died long ago: stamped down by force, kept there by fear.
Its remnants are pitiful: one part those who act nothing like a Left, but call themselves such, and one part those who have the potential to build a Left, but can’t get over the name to get together; the essence of modern liberals and radicals.
I’m not sure Leftists know our own history. It starts with revolution in France. Within the Estates General, a political assembly, those opposed to the monarchy and in favor of revolution sat on the left side of the room. Old Regime heads occupied the right.
Since that time, “Left” has been applied to a vast array of worthy movements: anti-colonialism, anarchism, socialism, lesbian and gay liberation, environmentalism, anti-racism, feminism, anti-imperialism, and so on. What bound them together—and should still bind them together—was one simple thing: opposition to the ruling class.
Read that again. The Left, in its original and most honest meaning, is an opposition to the ruling class. Not a loyalty to it. Not an indifference to it. Not even a hatred of it. But an opposition. And in our case, it means an opposition to capitalism. This is why there is no Left in America. This is why we so desperately need one.
Devoid of any meaningful political opposition to join, potential activists are diverted instead into the benign, the fringe, and the bizarre. Each one heads in a unique direction, but in any case it’s never one that leads to the transformation of society.
Some want to remain in the center. They want to take from both the established Left and the established Right to find bipartisan solutions. But the problem is bipartisanism itself: Democrats and Republicans are for more alike than they are different. The only real political party in this country is the capitalist one. How can any well-meaning person want to be in the center of that?
Some imagine themselves radical beyond the Left. It’s called post-Leftism, pitting itself against traditional Leftist values like organization, political struggle, and morality. At its core, this is merely a cult of the individual. No matter how righteous those individuals imagine themselves to be, social change is a group project.
Some wander into conspiracy theory. Obscure schools of thought masquerading as movements appeal to those privileged enough to imagine that social control happens largely in the head rather than through grinding poverty and oppression. Yes, there exists those who are conspiring against us, but they’re called multi-national corporations, not “the new world order.”
The task before us now is to rebuild a home for these would-be Leftists. We must make it the common-sense avenue for resistance. Moreover, we must be a reminder that the political is important. We must be a reminder that the world can be changed, that there is an organized opposition capable of making that happen.
Until then, we have the indifferent and the disillusioned to work with.
I have friends who are silent revolutionaries. Their bones shake enough at every injustice to make even Che Guevara proud. They don no labels or political affiliations, but passionately desire a better way of life; one without systemic atrocity; one worth living in. These friends know things are bad and are just continuing to get worse. They know we need some force of nature to change that. But they don’t imagine that they, themselves, would make up such a force. They simply don’t know it’s possible.
Similarly, I have friends who are outspoken militants. But they, too, don’t see themselves as part of the Left. Why? Two words: Red Scare. It was but fifty years ago that the most passive and compromised of the Left stabbed in the back their active and steadfast counterparts. “[W]riters, actors, directors, journalists, union leaders, government employees, teachers, activists, and producers,” were fired, deported, or otherwise crushed by those in power, writes Chris Hedges in Death of the Liberal Class. “The purge,” he writes, “was done with the collaboration of the liberal class.” Indeed, it was a gleeful bloodlust. So much for solidarity.
Our energy is diffuse, but vast amongst these pools of the disenfranchised. It’s up to us to give common people, in the words of Hedges, “the words and ideas with which to battle back against the corporate state.” And it’s up to us to rescue our opposition from the status quo of the ruling class, where it became “fearful, timid, and ineffectual,” says Hedges. He continues, “It created an ideological vacuum on the left and ceded the language of rebellion to the far right.”
It’s impossible to say exactly what an actual Left would look like in today’s America. Certainly, the project won’t be easy. We won’t always agree. But our debates could be held behind that shared banner, our unwavering Leftist vision of opposition to the ruling class. There’s a chance it won’t work. But right now that ruling class is driving our world to ruin. A Left that means it could put a stop to it once and for all. That chance is worth it.
Beautiful Justice is a monthly column by Ben Barker, a writer and community organizer from West Bend, Wisconsin. Ben is a member of Deep Green Resistance and is currently writing a book about toxic qualities of radical subcultures and the need to build a vibrant culture of resistance. He can be contacted at benbarker@riseup.net.
