by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 24, 2012 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying
By Ahni / Intercontinental Cry
A Federal judge has thrown out the Quechan Nation’s request for an injunction against the controversial Ocotillo Express Wind Project in western Imperial County, California.
The Quechan filed for the injunction on May 14, just three days after the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior, gave “fast-track” approval for the project. The Quechan complaint stated that the Department of Interior, in approving the project, “violated… federal laws, regulations, and policies including the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA); National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA); National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA); Administrative Procedures Act (APA); and the CDCA [The California Desert Conservation Area] Plan.”
The complaint went on to explain that the massive 10,150-acre project area contains 287 archaeological sites including geoglyphs, petroglyphs, sleeping circles and other sites of spiritual significance; thousands of artifacts, and at least 12 burial (an exhaustive survey has not been carried out).
Construction of the 112-turbine project would utterly devastate these sites.
Furthermore, the project jeopardizes the delicate desert ecosystem which is “home to the Federally endangered Peninsular bighorn sheep and the flat-tailed horned lizard, a perennial candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act,” says Chris Clarke, Director of Desert Biodiversity. “The turbines on the site would stand 450 feet tall with blades more than 180 feet long. With blades of that length, if the turbines spin at a leisurely 10 rpm the speed of the blade tips will approach 140 miles per hour, a serious threat to the region’s migratory birds — including the protected golden eagle,” he continues.
A day after filing for an injunction, on May 15, Quechan Tribal Council President Kenny Escalanti issued this statement outside the offices of Pattern Energy, the company behind the project.
He also spoke at a press conference alongside environmentalists and area residents in which he calls on President Obama to meet with tribal leaders and halt the destruction of sacred sites.
Robert Scheid, Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, spoke at the same press conference, calling on people across America to seek a national moratorium on industrial-scale energy projects on public lands. “Viejas leaders have asked to meet with President Barack Obama and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar”, reports East County Magazine “to share concerns over violations of laws that are supposed to protect tribal cultural resources; but have received no response”.
With the denial of the Quechan petition, Pattern Energy can now proceed with their construction plans without restraint. And they aren’t wasting any time. A new website documenting the daily destruction of the Ocotillo desert has just been launched: www.SaveOcotillo.picturepush.com.
If the construction is completed, the wind turbines will spin for no more than 30 years.
From Intercontinental Cry: http://intercontinentalcry.org/judge-denies-quechan-injunction-controversial-wind-project/
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 19, 2012 | Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay
Last month, three Guarani communities, the local Argentine government of Misiones, and the UK-based NGO World Land Trust forged an agreement to create a nature reserve connecting three protected areas in the fractured, and almost extinct, Atlantic Forest. Dubbed the Emerald Green Corridor, the reserve protects 3,764 hectares (9,301 acres) in Argentina; although relatively small, the land connects three protected other protected areas creating a combined conservation area (41,000 hectares) around the size of Barbados in the greater Yaboti Biosphere Reserve. In Argentina only 1 percent of the historical Atlantic Forest survives.
“The agreement that has been reached is truly ground-breaking,” John Burton the head of World Land Trust (WLT) said in a press release, “and it’s been heralded as such by the government of Misiones. In my view, it is probably the most important land purchase the WLT will ever make, because of the innovations involved and the wealth of biodiversity it protects.”
Once stretching along South America’s Atlantic coast from northern Brazil to Argentina, the Atlantic Forest (also known as the Mata Atlantica) has been fragmented by centuries of logging, agriculture, and urbanization. Around 8 percent of the Atlantic Forest still survives, most of it in Brazil, and most of it fragmented and degraded.
“The rainforest of Misiones is the largest remaining fragment of the Atlantic Rainforest of South America. It is full of unique plants and important animal species—it is vital to preserve the best sample of this ecosystem,” noted Sir Ghillean Prance, an advisor to the project and scientific director of the Eden Project, in a press release.
The establishment of the Emerald Green Corridor, which was purchased from logging company Moconá Forestal, ends 16 years of the Guarani communities fighting for their traditional lands. The land will now be considered Traditional Indigenous Lands, while the indigenous community is currently working on a conservation management plan to protect the forest and its species.
Read more: http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0517-hance-emerald-green-corridor.html#ixzz1vKfBacfM
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 18, 2012 | Lobbying, Toxification
By Amazon Defense Coalition
A new financial analysis has found that Chevron’s $18 billion Ecuador environmental liability poses a threat of “irreparable damage” to the oil major’s global operations if the plaintiffs make good on their promise to launch legal actions to enforce the judgment in countries where Chevron has billions of dollars in assets.
The report, by social investment analyst Simon Billenness, notes that the long-running case (Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco) “is reaching its most risky phase” for Chevron after an appeals court in Ecuador upheld the judgment in January and rendered it immediately enforceable. The report notes that Chevron’s defenses have been “severely compromised” because of a separate ruling by a New York federal appellate court that vacated a preliminary injunction purporting to bar worldwide enforcement of the judgment.
The Billenness Report also notes that Chevron has yet to disclose in its public filings that its own comptroller, Rex Mitchell, quietly submitted a sworn affidavit to U.S. federal court that concluded any enforcement of the judgment will cause “irreparable damage” to the company. Chevron has been trying to downplay the risk posed by the judgment in its public filings and press releases, concluded Billenness in the report, titled An Analysis of the Financial and Operational Risks to the Chevron Corporation from Aguinda v. ChevronTexaco.
“In sworn legal statements, Chevron has admitted that the company faces ‘irreparable injury’ to [its] business relationships’ [from any enforcement of the Ecuador case] yet has consistently refused to fully characterize these risks to its shareholders,” he wrote in the report. “Shareholders are rightly questioning whether the board and management are fulfilling their fiduciary duties to properly manage the significant risks to the company’s business and value.”
The report also concluded “the enormous breadth of Chevron’s global business operations makes the company particularly vulnerable to enforcement. There are many jurisdictions around the world in which the plaintiffs could seek court recognition and enforcement of the judgment, including many where Chevron has substantial reserves and that are of strategic importance.”
Key findings of the Billenness report include:
- The Ecuador judgment poses serious risks to Chevron’s worldwide operations, with the possibility of asset attachments and loss of social license to operate in new areas and markets;
- Chevron’s principal legal defenses against enforcement have either been severely compromised or have failed. These include the reversal of a preliminary injunction barring enforcement and the rejection by Ecuador’s government of a private investment arbitration that tried to halt the litigation;
- Chevron’s shareholders are stepping up calls for more transparent disclosure of the Ecuador liability, leading to increased pressure on management; and
- Chevron risks violating securities laws for withholding material information from shareholders.
Shareholders have been speaking out against Chevron management on the Ecuador issue for some time.
Last year, New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli blasted the company for “doing grave reputational damage” to itself by pursuing more legal proceedings “that only delay the inevitable…it’s time to face reality…[t]he entire case is looming like a hammer over shareholders’ heads.” And in a letter last May, several prominent institutional investors called on Chevron “to fully disclose … the risks to its operations and business from the potential enforcement” of the Ecuador judgment.
Chevron refused to even acknowledge or answer either the investor letter, according to the shareholders.
The plaintiffs have said they plan to enforce the judgment in various countries, but they have not announced any specifics other than to say Venezuela and Panama are being considered. Chevron has billions of dollars of assets in Australia, Kazakhstan, Singapore, Brazil, and Venezuela and operates in dozens of countries around the world, said Karen Hinton, the spokesperson for the Ecuadorians.
Billenness specializes in analyzing how environmental, social, and governance factors pose risks to shareholders. He has worked as an analyst and advisor to Trillium Asset Management and the Office of Investment of the AFL-CIO. He is a member of the U.S. Social Investment Forum and consults with entities that focus on social investing.
From Chevron Toxico: http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2012/0517-chevron-faces-irreparable-damage-from-18-billion-judgment.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 17, 2012 | Lobbying, Repression at Home
By the Associated Press
A judge on Wednesday struck down a portion of a law giving the government wide powers to regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists, saying it left journalists, scholars and political activists facing the prospect of indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights.
U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said in a written ruling that a single page of the law has a “chilling impact on First Amendment rights.” She cited testimony by journalists that they feared their association with certain individuals overseas could result in their arrest because a provision of the law subjects to indefinite detention anyone who “substantially” or “directly” provides “support” to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She said the wording was too vague and encouraged Congress to change it.
“An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so,” the judge said.
She said the law also gave the government authority to move against individuals who engage in political speech with views that “may be extreme and unpopular as measured against views of an average individual.
“That, however, is precisely what the First Amendment protects,” Forrest wrote.
She called the fears of journalists in particular real and reasonable, citing testimony at a March hearing by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Christopher Hedges, who has interviewed al-Qaida members, conversed with members of the Taliban during speaking engagements overseas and reported on 17 groups named on a list prepared by the State Department of known terrorist organizations. He testified that the law has led him to consider altering speeches where members of al-Qaida or the Taliban might be present.
Hedges called Forrest’s ruling “a tremendous step forward for the restoration of due process and the rule of law.”
He said: “Ever since the law has come out, and because the law is so amorphous, the problem is you’re not sure what you can say, what you can do and what context you can have.”
Hedges was among seven individuals and one organization that challenged the law with a January lawsuit. The National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law in December, allowing for the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism. Wednesday’s ruling does not affect another part of the law that enables the United States to indefinitely detain members of terrorist organizations, and the judge said the government has other legal authority it can use to detain those who support terrorists.
A message left Wednesday with a spokeswoman for government lawyers was not immediately returned.
Bruce Afran, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, called the ruling a “great victory for free speech.”
“She’s held that the government cannot subject people to indefinite imprisonment for engaging in speech, journalism or advocacy, regardless of how unpopular those ideas might be to some people,” he said.
Read more from The Wall Street Journal:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 13, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Protests & Symbolic Acts
By Malaysia Sun
George W. Bush and several other members of his administration have been found guilty of war crimes by the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War.
In a unanimous vote on Saturday the symbolic Malaysian war crimes tribunal, part of an initiative by former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, found the former US President guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Seven of his former political associates, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, were also found guilty of war crimes and torture.
Press TV has reported the court heard evidence from former detainees in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay of torture methods used by US soldiers in prisons run by the American forces.
One former inmate described how he had been subjected to electric shocks, beatings and sexual abuse over a number of months.
A high ranking former UN official, former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, who also attended the trial, later told Press TV that the UN had been too weak during the Bush administration to enforce the Geneva Conventions.
He said: “The UN is a weak body, corrupted by member states, who use the Security Council for their own interests. They don’t respect the charter. They don’t respect the international law. They don’t respect the Geneva Conventions…A redundant, possibly a dangerous, and certainly corrupted organization.”
Following the hearing, former Malaysian premier Mahatir said of Bush and others: “These are basically murderers and they kill on large scale.”
It was the second so-called war crimes tribunal in Malaysia.
The token court was first held in November 2011 during which Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair were found guilty of committing “crimes against peace” during the Iraq war.
From Malaysia Sun:
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | May 11, 2012 | Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Lobbying, Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Fawzia Sheikh / Inter Press Service
An indigenous group in the Amazon rain forest took its anti-oil message to Canada in a case rife with accusations of social and environmental damage that highlights the issue of securing consent prior to commencing exploration operations.
Peas Peas Ayui, president of the National Achuar Federation of Peru (FENAP), told IPS through an interpreter that Calgary-based Talisman Energy Inc. is operating within its ancestral territory, covering one million hectares, without first seeking approval. The Achuar people live on both sides of the Peru- Ecuador border in the rain forest.
“The communities affiliated with FENAP reject the presence of the company” and have no interest in the “additional help or benefits” that Talisman can offer at the risk of environmental contamination, Ayui said.
During three previous visits to Canada, the indigenous leader has issued this message, in some cases meeting directly with Talisman management. The most recent trip featured discussions with government opposition leaders and members who expressed “solidarity” with FENAP’s aim to shut down the Calgary firm’s venture into its homeland, noted Ayui, buoyed by legislators’ resistance to the activities in the Amazon.
The delegation was accompanied by Amazon Watch, a San Francisco-based non-profit organisation that supports indigenous people and aims to protect the rain forest. Discussions with key stakeholders and interested parties in Canada took place from April 21 to May 8.
Talisman, however, shot back at Ayui’s trespassing claim and pointed to the Peruvian government’s permission to engage in oil exploration in certain regions.
Moreover, FENAP lands are based 25 kilometres east of the oil company’s activity area known as Block 64, said media relations adviser Berta Gomez, adding that her employer has used about 115 hectares for exploration activities representing .015 percent of the total area. The oil giant started working in the block in 2004.
“We respect that some communities are opposed to oil development and we will not work there,” Gomez emphasised.
Obtaining consent
While Amazon Watch purports to represent the voice of the Achuar in Peru, it actually speaks only for the FENAP, an Achuar federation comprised of a number of communities opposed to Talisman’s activities, she argued.
Within Block 64, the energy interest has won the support and approval of the FASAM and OSHAM Achuar federations, added Gomez, referring to two new offshoot organisations. Overall, she said, Talisman has agreements with eleven organisations representing 66 directly and indirectly affected communities, more than 1,800 families and five different ethnic groups.
“We are committed to early and ongoing engagement with all stakeholders to share plans and address concerns,” including key authorities, the ombudsman and third-party representatives who act as observers, she said.
Ayui, the FENAP leader, said he has asked that Talisman President and CEO John Manzoni attend a meeting in the Amazon where his company is exploring, but the company has requested discussions be held in a nearby town, requiring the indigenous group to travel for three days.
Gomez confirmed that a March 30 meeting took place for the first time among Talisman’s country manager and corporate affairs manager and indigenous leaders against oil and gas development in San Lorenzo, Peru, with a promise to attend a local indigenous assembly, probably in May, to establish a final agreement regarding land boundaries.
The case spurs important questions about the nature of free, prior and informed consent, which is rooted in the United Nations (U.N.) Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, according to a 2011 report by Sustainalytics, a sustainability research and analysis company headquartered in Amsterdam.
The report questions what exactly constitutes the consent of affected indigenous communities – a band council resolution, a referendum, the agreement of community leaders or the approval of all constituents?
Complicating matters is the fact that the Peruvian government awarded concessions and blocks to oil companies without consulting or informing the Amazonian communities, which it has traditionally regarded as “second-class citizens”, states a report published last year by the Ottawa-based think tank, the North-South Institute.
Fostering strife among communities
Among the FENAP’s objections, moreover, is a claim that Talisman triggered social problems within the Amazon’s indigenous population.
FENAP leaders raised grievances with the Peruvian courts about Talisman’s creation of “conflicts and divisions” in connection to a May 2009 confrontation among Amazon groups that “almost ended in violence,” Ayui recalled, but there has been no response. Demands that the Peruvian Congress force the company to vacate the rain forest have also been unanswered.
In his view, the energy firm’s exploration operations have torn apart communities, as eight have opted to sign agreements granting permission to work on their land in exchange for development assistance, while 44 have not.
Based on the needs of federation leaders, Talisman offered “social contribution programs” to improve living standards, Gomez, the spokeswoman, said. Last November, she noted, Talisman signed social community agreements with 11 federations, providing $3 million in resources to fund education, health care, access to electricity, capacity building and local job-generation initiatives in 2012.
Despite the oil firm’s investment in communities, Gregor MacLennan, Amazon Watch’s Peru program coordinator, questioned its interpretation of gaining the free, prior and informed consent of indigenous peoples. He accused the company of winning approval in any way it can – even after indigenous groups initially say no – by presenting more money and resources.
For its part, Talisman has always engaged with all stakeholders in a direct and peaceful manner in full adherence to human rights principles, Gomez stated. However, she said, the oil firm also asks that “the rights of the people to choose to work with us, in an open and transparent fashion, also be respected”.
Talisman plans to maintain dialogue efforts with federations and communities opposing its activities.
Damaging the environment
Rounding out indigenous allegations against Talisman is environmental contamination. The Calgary firm touted new technologies with no risk of repeating the damage done by oil industry players operating in the Amazon in the 1970s and 1980s, but Ayui refuted the claim.
The exploratory wells have affected his community’s hunting and fishing grounds by producing waste which leaks into streams during the rainy season, he charged, and poisons birds and other animals. His people’s ancestors also died on the lands Talisman is now exploring, he added.
MacLennan told IPS that he addressed the drilling fluids issue during a February meeting with Talisman, which acknowledged the problem but explained it will take “several months” for the arrival of a subcontractor and the adequate equipment to undertake the clean-up to a specific standard, a task that includes correcting the poor waste-disposal job carried out by another oil company in the past.
Talisman meets, and in many cases surpasses, environmental regulations outlined by the Peruvian government, Gomez insisted. Waste products, or cuttings, are normally generated during drilling activities and have been “properly managed and stored according to environmental regulations and protection measurements” dictated under the oil firm’s environmental impact assessment, she said.
During the drilling of oil wells, the waste is stored in a “cuttings pit” complete with a roof to shield against rain water and a pit bottom protected with a “geomembrane” to prevent the direct contact of soil and waste, she noted, adding that the whole drilling pad is surrounded by an external ditch collecting fluid, mainly rain water, before it is released into the environment.
During Talisman’s drilling activities, known as SC3X and SN4X, there were no environmental incidents or claims from communities in the area of influence of its operations, Gomez said.
Talisman incorporates an indigenous environmental monitor from the local communities during the drilling projects. The monitor performs daily environmental inspections, immediately communicates problems, participates in monthly environmental monitoring and field environmental audits by regulatory agencies, helps to supervise the handling and shipping of waste and takes part in the abandonment activities and reclamation works, she added.
The company’s abandonment plan for the SC3X project, which details techniques for the treatment and final disposal of cuttings and an outline for re-vegetation and reclamation of the area, is awaiting Peruvian government approval, Gomez said.
Still, Amazon Watch and the FENAP are dissatisfied with Talisman’s environmental precautions and explanations. They dismissed oil companies’ tendencies to blame damage on subcontractors or on the challenges of working in the rain forest.
As the Canadian energy firm heads into a production phase within the next year, there are concerns that a potential spill due to human error would render the area “virtually irrecoverable”, MacLennan warned, spawning “an environmental disaster” destroying the livelihoods of thousands of people in the rain forest.
From Inter Press Service: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107718
