Skillshares Camp in Progress

This year’s Fall Skillshare Camp has been filled with numerous workshops on the diverse subjects ranging from anarcho feminist theory and practice to multiple direct action skills and strategies. Like always it has offered all those resisting capitalist exploitation of the planet and numerous communities a chance to come together and connect, share and ispire each other.

Yesterday for example concluded with a spoken word session dealing with topics from alienation and resistance to musical concert with many of the works being about the Hambacher Forest struggle itself.

Additional 3 days of the Skillshare camp remain so pack a backpack and hit your closest highway on-ramp and put a thumb up in the direction of Hambi…now or during the whole cutting season as the occupation with its constant climbing workshops and sharing of knowlege could be considered one extended skillshare camp.

Continue ReadingSkillshares Camp in Progress

„Tripod“ Live-In Barricade Repression Resistance Action

On September 19th at 8 o’clock in the morning approx 100 cops entered the millenarian Hambacher Forest, occupied for last six years blocking the expansion of RWE’s open cast lignite mine, to remove the “The Tripod”, a live-in barricade. The official state line was that it was to keep the roads open for emergency vehicles in case of accident occurring in the forest. The emergency vehicles are the harvesters, bulldozers and loaders of this years cutting season which will begin on Oct. 25 and the “accident” is the global climate chaos, millions of premature deaths a year, and irreplaceable habitat loss to which Hambacher (cynically named after the forest its destroying) Mine: single largest net CO2 emitter in Europe, is not an innocent bystander to but rather a culprit extending its effect through emission and pollutants and through RWE Global Power Conglomerate machine impacting and destroying communities and ecosystem from Colombia, England and Germany to Siberia.
When the police entered the forest they at first surrounded the Tripod to prevent supporters joining in the two blockaders, one of whom was locked on the ground to a concrete lock-on and the second who was in the top of the tripod which in its mid level included a platform with a tent. Through walkway from a neighbouring tree additional person was still able to join those on the inside. For the next 5 hours the cops massed up around the barricade as large bulldozers removed the barricades leading into the heart of the forest(each year a 500 meter swath which is cut to enlarge the mine) followed by back loaders loading the scrap metal and tarps which comprises left over material from the ocupation and performing a function of trash removal for the struggle. The barricade clearing was also immediately followed by peeps emerging from the forest and rebuilding the barricades behind the heavy equipment often with cops still in sight. During this time the forest resonated with animal calls and music from the approx. 40 forest defenders. As forest roads turned into parking lots for long lines of forces of repression paint and bottles of bitumen were thrown at the police vehicles. Pigs responded with snatch attacks at the people singing and playing drums in solidarity around the Tripod. All together 5 people were grabbed and later released.

By 1 oclock cops begun to cut the barbed wire connecting the wood stocked around the ground level of the Tripod and got to the forest activist locked on under the table of Tripod’s kitchen. For over 2 hours they went at it with their power tools. And as concrete cutting tools echoed in the forest, climbing cops started to get on to the tree with the walkway ropes attempting to cut the lines and cut off the activist who descended into the tripod and was doing support to the people inside. Lower branches were being cut off and ladders attached to the tree giving enough time to make it back across and into the crown of the tree where the two climbing cops followed. Holding out for over an hour in the thin top branches the two climbing cops a meter and a half below attempted to convince the climber that they were just concerned with the person safety and that the activist needed to be removed before proceeding to the tripod. Eventually they gave up and descended from the tree to the tripod where for over an hour they tugged, pulled and then stepped on the tripod defender and later had a hard time removing him as he lay limp in the fork of the tripod. Once on the ground popo attempted to use pain compliance bullshit to try to get him to walk but that did not work either and he was dragged and then carried to the cop car.
Overall this has been one of the longest road barricade evictions with over 9 hours of struggle and when the cops left the forest the barricade building and food sharing resumed in full.

This year especially is an important time for the Defense of the Hambacher Forest as the new wave of deforestation is about to ensue during this winters cutting season and as another Direct Action Skillshare Camp will take place in the forest from Semptember 25th to Oct1. October 1st would have been the official start of this years cutting season which has just been postponed to October 25 as RWE is forced to appear in Administrative Court in Cologne on October 17 by a law suit initiated by Bund fur Natur as a response to the company’s lack of enviromental assesment studies, its lack of studies of costs of post extraction clean up and last but definitevely not least: two colonies of endangered bats being discovered in this year’s cutting zone. In November COPP summit will also take place in Bonn which is in the middle of North Rhine Westfalia coal region. That in itself is not an accident as the coal industry is heavily coopting the negotiations and framing coal as a transition energy source. Next COPP is also scheduled to take place in Katowice, Poland the centre of the Silesian Coal Mining Region.

Climate Justice Struggle in Hambacher Forest and in countless other locations around the world is a response to the Neo-Liberal Extractionist Agenda of Disaster Capitalism and a call to preserve every community every organism being paramount to protecting Planet as a whole.

Join US!!
FOR THE EARTH!!!!

Continue Reading„Tripod“ Live-In Barricade Repression Resistance Action

A compensation of 1 million for all 8,000 RWE employees …

german

We received this e-mail:

„… and then in two years: the end of the Rhenish lignite mining.

1,000,000 compensation per employee × 8,000 employees = 8,000,000 × 1,000 = 8,000,000,000 = 8 billion euros compensation for all 8,000 employees in total = profit of RWE Power AG from the lignite in the next 2 years.

The profit from the lignite in the amount of EUR 8 billion required for this measure is still below the profit of EUR 8.5798 billion (= EUR 4.2899 billion x 2 years), which RWE actually is going to achieve in the next 2 years from the lignite. See our previous article: 116 billion € profit from the lignite ….

In no case in North Rhine-Westphalia “the lights will go out” go out after these 2 years! According to the latest figures published by the Energy Agency of the state of NRW, 178.8 Terrawatt hours of electricity are generated per year in NRW, but only 138.8 Terrawatt hours per year are consumed, corresponding to an overproduction of electricity in NRW in the amount of 40.0 Terrawatt hours per year. From the Hambach lignite estimated approximately 18.5 Terrawatt hours of electricity per year, from the Garzweiler lignite roughly estimated perhaps 18.5 Terrawatt hours of electricity. Possible flanking measures: No export of lignite electricity to France and the Netherlands nor even to outside NRW.

The electricity generated from the Hambach lignite of 18.5 Terrawatt hours of electricity was calculated quite complexly from RWE Power AG’s application for the approval of the 3rd framework plan for Hambach, as this information was missing in this application.

The reduction of 1,500 jobs announced today by RWE in the next 2 years corresponds to only 18.75% of the possible reduction of 8,000 jobs in the next two years against a compensation of one million euros per employee.
Sept 14, 2017

Kurt Claßen

Continue ReadingA compensation of 1 million for all 8,000 RWE employees …

Deep Ecology Afternoon in Gallien, Saturday 2PM

Join us for a meal and get involved in liberating small samplings of beeches, oaks, maples and aspens from the frontline where this winter again we can expect hundreds of riots cops and RWE harvesters and bulldozers attempting to make sure that biodiversity that survived for over last 12,000 years will be eliminated. Trees are a keystone species on which countless other organisms depend so this action gives a chance for some of this biodiversity to be preserved. Started this spring tens of trees from Hambi have been planted at public, collective and individual spaces all across Europe. These trees are a silent testimonial to the extinction of the Hambacher Forest habitats and with small info boards informing of where they have come from they patiently await for their seeds to grow through the cracks of concrete and asphalt that surround them at the moment.

During this Deep Ecology Get Together aditional bird habitats will also be made out of zero waste items such as mid size containers. There will also be discussion of species and biodiversity present in the Hambacher Forest followed by Hambacher Forest Tshirt printing. Join us and tell your friends.

The additional items that could be of use that you could contribute to this project would be small buckets, shovels, and large hiking boots and rubber boots as well as large cooking oil containers and small beer cegs for the bird habitats. Feel free to also bring extra shirts, jackets on which you will be able to print some cool Hambi art.

This is also an ongoing project so if you can not make it tomorrow but are still interested in participating in propagating some of endangered trees and even seeds please get in touch with fnord.andromeda at riseup.net.

Continue ReadingDeep Ecology Afternoon in Gallien, Saturday 2PM