July, 03 2018, 12:00am EDT
Climbers Blockade Trans Mountain Oil Tanker Traffic
The message to pipeline companies and banks watching the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline resistance is clear: the people do not want new tar sands pipelines to be built
VANCOUVER, CANADA
Greenpeace Canada launched 12-person aerial bridge blockade in the path of a tar sands oil tanker currently docked at Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain pipeline terminal. Seven people rappelled from Vancouver's Ironworkers Memorial Bridge in a courageous act of resistance to stop the Trans Mountain Expansion pipeline and tanker project (TMX). Five more climbers are reinforcing the blockade from the bridge catwalk.
Images from the action are available here: https://media.greenpeace.org/collection/27MZIFJWLMBUH
"This act of resistance shows the urgency of the issue. These climbers have put their bodies on the line to send a powerful message to global leaders, the oil industry and the banks that provide finance for oil projects--and message is that we are running out of time to preserve a liveable environment that supports life. We are deeply concerned about the future of this planet in terms of clean drinking water, healthy ecosystems, and a stable climate. We must act now, all of us, to stop financing and building dirty oil pipelines that puts water and oceans at risk of oil spills and pushes the climate over the brink," said Molly Dorozenski, Campaign Lead at Greenpeace U.S.A.
The climbers forming the blockade are from the U.S. (Washington State), the Coast Salish community, the U.K., Mexico, and the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, and Ontario.
The climbers are planning to raise six banners reading "Protect Water #StopPipelines," "Protect Water," and "Protect the Salish Sea" in different languages. The banners highlight the threats to clean water posed by oil spills from the TMX pipeline and the 400 tankers it could bring each year to the Salish Sea (off the Washington and British Columbia coasts) to refineries all along the U.S. coast [1] [2].
The climbers will also raise a banner reading "Don't bank on pipelines", which extends to thebuilders and financiers of other controversial oil pipelines across North America, including any considering backing TMX. The seven climbers now suspended below the bridge are flying vibrant red and teal streamers emblazoned with artwork by celebrated Indigenous artists resisting the pipeline project, including Jackie Fawn, whose resistance art during Standing Rock quickly became iconic [3].
Greenpeace U.S.A. recently released a report [4] documenting the threat that the Trans Mountain Expansion Project poses to local communities along the Pacific Coast. Greenpeace released the report while the historic ship, the Arctic Sunrise, sailed the Salish Sea near Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, San Juan Island, and Port Townsend. The ship followed the route that would experience a seven-fold increase in tar sands oil tanker traffic if the pipeline expansion is completed. The report documents the communities threatened by the Trans Mountain Expansion Project, which would worsen the effects of global warming, risk poisoning water, jeopardize the hundreds of thousands of jobs that depend on clean coasts, violate Indigenous sovereignty, and threaten the extinction of the Southern Resident Orca Whale, of which only 75 remain.
Will George, an Indigenous Coast Salish member joined the blockade as a climber. He is also the spokesperson and leader ofKwekwecnewtxw. He said: "I will remain the fierce opposition. It is in my blood to protect the water. Our Indigenous rights are being completely ignored, the safety of our water is being ignored, and most of all, my son's future is at stake. I will do whatever it takes to protect the water and my family and your family."
Mike Hudema, a Greenpeace Canada spokesperson and climber based in Vancouver, said: "Prime Minister Trudeau is standing on the wrong side of history. Climate leaders don't choose to buy pipelines. World leaders cannot be allowed to approve projects that violate the rights of Indigenous Peoples. The world is watching the choices you make next, Mr. Justin Trudeau."
Mary Lovell, a Greenpeace Canada spokesperson and climber from Seattle, Washington, said: "We urgently need to protect water because this tanker superhighway threatens the entire coast down to California. We are taking action today to defend water, health, and the climate--and we aren't alone. Hundreds of thousands of people from around the world are standing with us."
Victoria Henry, a blockade member living in the U.K. who helped turn the Canadian High Commission in London into"Crudeau Oil HQ" in April, said: "As a Canadian living in London, U.K., I've witnessed first-hand, the damage Trudeau's choices have done to our global reputation. People are concerned about the risks the pipelines he supports pose to our climate. I'm here helping to represent the voices of people around the world who have a message for politicians, pipeline companies and the banks financing pipelines: Not in our name, and not with our money will any new pipeline be built."
The Indigenous-led movement against pipelines continues to win victories and gain momentum across North America. In May, energy company Kinder Morgan abandoned its Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion Project after it faced an overwhelming wave of protests and negative press across Canada and in the Pacific Northwest United States. It announced it would be selling the project to the Canadian government, which is preparedto spend billions of dollars of public money purchasing TMX and is currently seeking a new buyer for it.
In recent weeks, more than 200,000 people from around the world have joined Greenpeace's global campaign calling on 12 major global banks ("the Dirty Dozen") to commit to stop financing dangerous tar sands pipelines and Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. This includes pipelines that would expand Canada's tar sands (e.g. TMX, TransCanada's Keystone XL, Enbridge's Line 3) and those proposed by Energy Transfer Partners, which has launched a meritless$900 million lawsuitagainst Greenpeace U.S.A, Greenpeace International and other groups, designed to intimidate and silence critics.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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'Their Blood Is on Gene Block': UCLA Students Injured in Violent Police Raid
Officers in military gear fired flash-bang munitions and used batons to clear a nonviolent encampment calling for an end to Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza.
May 02, 2024
Los Angeles police wearing riot gear launched a violent attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA early Thursday, using flash bangs and firing impact munitions at students demanding an end to their university's complicity in Israel's war on Gaza.
Video footage posted to social media by reporters present at the scene shows officers firing multiple "less lethal" munitions and sound-concussive devices at student demonstrators as they closed in on the encampment, which UCLA's leadership has declared unlawful.
Police reportedly arrested dozens of students as they advanced on the encampment.
"They'd rather shoot kids than stop this genocide," said one observer.
Police fire multiple impact munitions at protestors. 4:38am pic.twitter.com/960I4iVMtt
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA, told the university's student newspaper early Thursday that police officers "violently dragged" students from the Gaza solidarity encampment and that some demonstrators were "visibly injured."
"Their blood is on Gene Block and the UC administration's hands for a series of catastrophic decisions over the last two days," said Blair, referring to UCLA's chancellor. "It did not need to be this way."
Blair said UCLA professors inside the encampment "plan to be arrested alongside students who have done nothing but talk about a genocide taking place in Palestine."
Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, told the Los Angeles Times that "our job is to stand up for their First Amendment rights, their rights on their own campus."
Police arrest protestor 4:55am pic.twitter.com/udgS0Terc9
— Sergio Olmos (@MrOlmos) May 2, 2024
The police raid came 24 hours after Los Angeles officers and campus security stood by as a pro-Israel mob violently attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Dozens of students were reportedly taken to hospitals for treatment following the assault.
The Daily Bruin, whose student journalists were on the scene, reported Thursday that police "continued to detain protesters in the encampment as the clock struck 4:00 am, marking one week since the initial erection of the solidarity encampment by the UC Divest Coalition and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA."
"At 4:05 am, a slew of loud noises presumed to be flash bangs went off," the newspaper added. "Dozens of protesters exited the encampment by climbing through the bushes near Powell Library onto the Janss Steps lawn. Protesters chanted, 'Gene Block, you can't hide, we charge you with genocide' and, 'We are students' as smoke from the presumed flash bangs thickened above Dickson Plaza."
The police crackdown at UCLA is part of a broader wave of police repression on campuses nationwide as universities refuse to grant their student's calls for divestment from companies profiting off Israel's assault on Gaza. More than 1,000 student demonstrators have reportedly been arrested across the U.S. so far.
"It is no accident that this indefensible police crackdown comes in service of an indefensible war," The Intercept's Natasha Lennard wrote in a column Wednesday following the violent police raid at Columbia University in New York. "The very extremity of protest repression speaks to desperation on the part of institutions of the American establishment."
"Israel's decimation of Gaza has—at least for millions more people—given lie to the redemptive myths of the post-World War II political liberal order," Lennard added. "Young people, even the children of the elite, even children of Zionists, are standing with Palestine. Their peaceful acts of protest count as disruptive because they count as un-American—which should be a badge of honor amid a U.S.-backed genocide."
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"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
May 02, 2024
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
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"An offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable."
May 01, 2024
Dozens of U.S. House Democrats on Wednesday joined Congresswomen Pramila Jayapal and Madeleine Dean in pressuring President Joe Biden to prevent a full-scale Israeli assault on Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip that's now full of over a million displaced Palestinians.
"We write with urgency to say: an offensive invasion into Rafah by Israel in the upcoming days is wholly unacceptable," states the letter from Jayapal (D-Wash.), Dean (D-Pa.), and 55 other members of Congress. "We welcome your administration's efforts to dissuade the Israeli government from this military operation, which would deepen both the humanitarian catastrophe for people in Gaza and the strategic challenges that regional and global stakeholders face in this conflict."
"We now urge you to enforce U.S. law and policy by withholding certain offensive weaponry or other military support that can be used for an assault on Rafah, including the offensive weaponry and aid already signed into law," the letter continues.
The Democrats highlighted how Israel's retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack has impacted the city:
Rafah has become one of the most overcrowded places in the world. With shelters too full and insufficient, many families now live on the streets. The collapsed health infrastructure, in addition to sewage overflow and the scarcity of food, water, and medicine, has accelerated the onset of severe malnutrition and the spread of communicable diseases. Acute food insecurity is endemic in Rafah, even as the international community circulates credible reports that famine is setting in elsewhere in Gaza—all as a result of six months of military operations that you have described as "indiscriminate." In addition, we know in fact that Israeli strikes on Rafah have already occurred, including one on April 20th that killed 18 people, including 14 children.
Across the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces have killed 34,568 people and wounded another 77,765—mostly women and children—while leaving thousands more missing in the rubble of bombed buildings, including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Biden has resisted mounting global pressure to limit or fully cut off military aid to Israel, which the International Court of Justice in January concluded is "plausibly" committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. That case is ongoing.
"In addition to the catastrophic civilian toll—and risk to as many as 130 hostages, including as many as six or more Americans—an offensive in Rafah would ultimately undermine the Israeli and U.S. governments' strategic interests," the Democrats argued. "Israeli and U.S. military bases in the region have recently been the targets of repeated drone and missile attacks—a dangerous indication of how unstable the Middle East has become as a result of the Gaza war."
"An Israeli offensive in Rafah risks the start of yet another escalatory spiral, immediately putting the region back on the brink of a broader war that neither Israel nor the United States can afford," they warned. Along with calling on the president to withhold aid to Israel to protect civilians in Rafah, the lawmakers urged Biden to keep working "toward achieving a lasting cease-fire that will bring hostages home and build a path toward safety and security for all."
They also said that "it is of the utmost importance that both Hamas and Israel immediately come to the table with the international community for a mutually agreed ceasefire deal that can secure the safe return of hostages, full resumption of humanitarian aid, and the space for a negotiated, long-term peace in the region."
The letter comes a week after Biden signed a foreign aid package that included $26 billion for Israel and passed both chambers of Congress with bipartisan support. Jayapal and three dozen other Democrats opposed the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, which ultimately passed.
In a joint statement last month, the Washington Democrat and 18 of her colleagues said that "our votes against H.R. 8034 are votes against supplying more offensive weapons that could result in more killings of civilians in Rafah and elsewhere."
Israeli Prime Minister "Benjamin Netanyahu appears willing to sacrifice the hostages while inflicting extraordinary suffering on the people of Gaza. He is willing to expand this conflict to preserve his power at the expense of Israel's safety," they continued, noting concerns about an invasion of Rafah. "When faced with the question of whether to provide offensive aid to further this conflict, we believe there is a moral imperative to find another path."
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