Last week the annual RWE share-holders meeting took place with numerous protest actions taking place inside of the event, outside of the convention center and through out Essen. Numerous activists groups converged from around Germany, Europe and far away places such as Columbia and Siberia where RWE Blood Coal is being extracted with thousands dying(over 5000 killed in Columbia by Paramilitaries openly paid by RWE’s contractors Prodeco and Anadarco)
Several people were detained from a street action group staging a performance in front of the convention center and released. Numerous activist also delivered and displayed large Red Cards for RWE inside of the meeting. There was also a RWE critical discussion in front of Essen City Hall.

The event and its spectacle was also an exposure of RWE’s massive deception about having had profit making year last year for the first time in 3 years when in reality it did not and the first dividends it was able to pay its shareholders and vested municipalities came from €1.7 billion to be exact – paid back by German government ordered by a court in June to pay back nuclear-fuel taxes collected from utilities between 2011 and 2016. This represents not just a huge hidden subsidy to a failing FossilFool corp but also a financial support for one of the largest CO₂ polluters on the planet dumping over 150 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere being paid from public funds to continue its dirty deadly business. This financial trick is very reminiscent of government bailouts of “too big to fail” banks in 2008 that was responsible for global austerity programs and world-wide protests and occupations. This time also having to pay for the mistakes and destruction of global corporation the price will be even higher in deepening repression, the police laws being changed to bring the full “Green Scare” dynamic to Germany while not addressing solutions but continuing the “business as usual” dynamic of global climate, ecological and social disintegration.

Before this hidden subsidy and in effect huge tax write-off for RWE that the German public, which’s majority is for a Coal Exit, was forced to pay to prop up failing RWE, its share price dropped from a high of more than €100 ($122) in 2008 to a low of €9.20 in 2015. Loonnosing a record €5.7 billion in just one year.

Now this hidden bail out is used to keep onboard cities and investors that were about to jump ship by paying a 50 cents per share for 2017 and a “special dividend” of €1 per share(of 1 billion) as an apology for the rough goings these past few years. This is the exact sum given back by the German government absolving RWE and it toxic nuclear branch of any financial responsibility and used to keep it Climate Killing Lignite operations continuing its destructive impact on the whole planet.

The road now continues to be rocky for RWE and the biggest risk on its horizon besides, cheap renewable energy coming online, mass protest action and forest occupations that it is addressing with mass propaganda campaign and Rhine Energie board of advisors police chief of Rhineland with his repression, the next big risk on the horizon is the continuing pressure for Coal Exit. RWE response to continue its older especially polluting and inefficient plants operational that were to be closed first was to claim that forcing them to close would infringe on their constitutional rights as a property owner. This tactic was promised from the pulpit of Stock Holders Meeting by RWE CEO to block the already delayed coal exit. This is not the only RWE strategy to delay and block the Kohle Ausstieg called for by not just Hambi and Anti Lignite supporters but by the majority. It is also very interesting that property rights, the holly grail of capitalism is given special constitutional references as new police laws being put in place to fight the anti RWE Climate Justice movement in Rhineland will erode a large subset of constitutional civil rights protections allowing the police to detain people from present 48 hrs to 7 days to determine their identity, for a month as a preventative measure and be able to exclude them from whole regions of the country with special restraining orders and not just passively conduct electronic surveillance but be able to modify their content, possibly bricking a phone and crashing activists’ computers. Just another price of Climate Chaos Late Disaster Capitalism beginning to resemble more and more corporate feudalism as some constitutional protections put in place to prevent the reality of National Socialist crimes from repeating are being removed while the reality of Climate Holocaust and ecocide is forcefully imposed this time not on just single Continent but irreversibly on a whole Planet.

The other less publicized method to block the Coal Exit is the attempt by the RWE co-opted state premiers of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Brandenburg, Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt influencing and making statements to the national government to the effect that the “special commission on growth, structural economic change and employment” should consist of at least two envoys from each coal state, from affected municipalities, the industry, labour unions, scientists while excluding environmental organisations and experts from being part of the commission, even though they are mentioned in the federal government’s coalition treaty. The commission is supposed to find an end date for coal power in Germany in 2018 and define ways to manage the structural change. That is what happens when ecology is equated with terrorism: the State and Corporate Planetary Terrorists get a chance to “decide” for the rest of us.

This corruption, cynicism and co-option by the planet destroying Lignite RWE machine working hand in hand with the “Parliamentary Democracy” of CDU and SDP industry apologists is another call to the people, to the activists, and grass roots organization that is one of the last wake up calls to the reality that the future of the Planet is in our hands and is our responsibility. A call for action for the numerous Climate Actions planned for this year to oppose the System of Climate Chaos and Repression. To oppose it with “X+2” Reoccupation of Hambach Forest 2 weeks after this years imminent evictions, to oppose it by taking part in mass planed Climate Actions across Germany and Europe planned for this summer and fall, to oppose it at all hot-spots of extractionism world wide in Siberia, Columbia, Apalachia and Pont Valley and countless other hotposts of resistance to extractionism. And to finally also resist it in Hamacher Forest for Mobilization this fall from October to March against this coming cutting season to expand RWE’s largest Coal Mine by cutting some of the last portions of Millenarian Hambach Forest.( New Mobi Video is about to drop – help spread it!)

SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!!
HAMBI BLEIBT!! HAMBI STAYS!!

…we are not just fighting for our and others lives but for Life on this Planet as we know it!