Fish Numbers Plummet in Warming Pacific

Geoffrey Lean,
UK Independent

Disappearance of plankton causes unprecedented collapse in sea and
bird life off western US coast

A catastrophic collapse in sea and bird life numbers along America's
Northwest Pacific seaboard is raising fears that global warming is
beginning to irreparably damage the health of the oceans.

Scientists say a dramatic rise in the ocean temperature led to
unprecedented deaths of birds and fish this summer all along the
coast from central California to British Columbia in Canada.

Anarcho writes:

Solidarity South Pacific

The following was written by a British activist who has been involved in Solidarity South Pacific since its beginning. The opinions expressed are his and cannot be viewed as an agreed SSP policy, however it is probable that most of what is said would find broad agreement within SSP.

“Solidarity South Pacific aims to provide active solidarity with tribal and ecological struggles, mainly in the Philippines, West Papua and Bougainville. (A brief background to the situation in these places is given in the boxes below). We are a network based mainly in Britain and the U.S but with other contacts elsewhere in the world. We are very much a part of the radical ecological movement, viewing our solidarity work as an extension of our ecological and liberation struggles at home. We are not an NGO and have no paid staff.

SSP can almost be viewed as 3 separate solidarity campaigns operating under the same name and it may seem strange that we choose to do this. From our point of view though it makes sense to organise like this as much of the work takes a similar form and we are able to share information, experience and resources. Also, although we recognise that situations vary hugely within and between countries, our desire to act in solidarity with tribal struggles and to protect eco-systems applies to them all. In their relations with the land and with each other, tribal communities can be an inspiration to anarchists and ecologists. Their fight against destruction is linked to our own.”

Click Here 2 read more www.a-manila.org

Japan Sending Radioactive Toxins to Utah

Material Ruled 'Ore' Instead of Waste

Judy Fahys, Salt Lake Tribune

Five-hundred tons of uranium-contaminated soil from Japan is headed to Utah's southeastern desert.

That's good news for International Uranium Corp.'s White Mesa mill, which has not processed ore for six years.
But, for environmental activists, the shipment signals that the state has opened a Pandora's box, making Utah not just a national destination for radioactive discards but now a global one.

"It's the precedent," said Claire Geddes, pointing out that the state already has the nation's largest privately owned and operated low-level radioactive waste site and that a high-level storage facility also is planned. "This [Japanese waste] is a scenario for a nightmare to me."

"Apocalypse Now:

How Mankind Is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth"

Maria Gilardin, Dissident Voice

This headline appeared in the London Independent in early February of 2005, following a conference at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, England, where 200 of the world’s leading scientists issued the most urgent warning to date: that dangerous climate change is taking place today, and not the day after tomorrow.

Floods, storms, and droughts. Melting polar ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. Scientists from the fields of glaciology, biology, meteorology, oceanography, and ecology reported seeing a dramatic rise over the last 50 years of all the indicators of climate change: increase in average world temperatures, extreme weather events, in the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, and in the level of the oceans.

"Global Warming Hits 'Tipping Point':

Siberia Feels the Heat"

Ian Sample, The Guardian

It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting

A vast expanse of western Sibera is undergoing an unprecedented thaw that could dramatically increase the rate of global warming, climate scientists warn today.

Researchers who have recently returned from the region found that an area of permafrost spanning a million square kilometres — the size of France and Germany combined — has started to melt for the first time since it formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age.

"The Death of 'Gypsy' Chain"

Shunka Wakan

March 17th, 2005
To: Humboldt County Sheriff's Dept.

From: Shunka Wakan, eyewitness

Re: Investigation into the death of David Chain, Sept. 17th, 1998

My name is Shunka Wakan. I was and am an eyewitness to what I believe was
the murder of David Chain, on September 17th, 1998, in the Grizzly Creek/Van Duzen
River watershed, near Grizzly Creek State Park.

As an eyewitness, I personally heard the threats made by the Maxxam/PL worker,
A.E. Ammons, just before he began falling trees in our direction. Within the hour, David
Chain was dead, crushed beneath a tree that had been intentionally fallen in our direction.

Social Ecologist Transformation writes:

Turkey: "People Against Dams" Flowed Like a River

From Istanbul to Dersim, Action for Munzur! People against Dams flowed like a river against global murderer corporations. For action photos:

Munzur is Life!

ISTANBUL — Against the global murderer corporations’ dam projects in Munzur Valley and gold mining with cyanide, about 300 people flowed like a river with slogans “Munzur will flow freely”, “Munzur is Life! The stream of life can not be stopped!”.

For the International Day of Action for Rivers on 14th of March, with the action call of Munzurun Delileri (the Mad of Munzur), Sosyal Ekolojist Dönüþüm (Social Ecologist Transformation), Munzur Çevre Derneði (Munzur Environmental Association), Hozatlýlar Derneði (Hozatlýlar Association), on the 13th of March, hundreds of people marched in Beyoglu-Istanbul.

Activists Hope Nun's Slaying in Amazon Is Catalyst for Change

Henry Chu, LA Times

RIO DE JANEIRO — As mourners laid her bullet-riddled body to rest Tuesday, environmentalists and colleagues of slain missionary Dorothy Stang seesawed between fragile optimism and angry skepticism over a question they had hoped never to consider.

Would the slaying of the silver-haired American nun, who devoted her life to fighting land grabbers and loggers in the Amazon, galvanize action and world opinion the same way the killing of legendary Brazilian rubber tapper Chico Mendes did 16 years ago?

Officials and activists are already drawing comparisons between Mendes, a national hero here, and Stang. The 73-year-old nun was gunned down Saturday in the jungles of northern Brazil, a region beset by land disputes and growing lawlessness. Authorities say the Ohio-born Stang was ambushed by hit men contracted by a local rancher, just as Mendes was assassinated on the orders of a wealthy landowner he had opposed.

Oread Daily writes:

"Global Warming and Inuit Human Rights"

Oread Daily

The United States is about to be charged with human rights
violations for contributing substantially to global warming. The Inuit, whose homeland stretches from the northeastern tip of
Russia across Alaska and northern Canada to parts of Greenland, plan
to seek a ruling from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
saying that the actions of the US are threatening their existence.

The Inuit plan is part of a broader shift in the debate over human-
caused climate change evident among participants in the 10th round
of international talks taking place in Buenos Aires aimed at
averting dangerous human interference with the climate system. Inuit
leaders said they planned to announce the effort at the climate
meeting today. Representatives of poor countries and communities —
from the Arctic fringes to the atolls of the tropics to the flanks
of the Himalayas — say they are imperiled by rising temperatures
and seas through no fault of their own. They are casting the issue
as no longer simply an environmental problem but as an assault on
their basic human rights.

E. Heroux writes:

"Apocalyptic Christian and Anti-Earth"

E. Heroux

Bill Moyers retired, but he's not yet tired. Writing in yesterday's Star Tribune Moyers reports that "millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed -- even hastened -- as a sign of the coming apocalypse."

In the article, "There is No Tomorrow," Moyers begins by observing that "one of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington." This theology is as bizarre as it is dangerous.