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Without Your Walls : Time for transition
Dear Without Your Walls reader,
For three years Without Your Walls has been reporting from the front lines of climate justice with 20,000 visits to the site since it all began.
Without Your Walls is very happy to announce that it will be undergoing some exciting changes over the next month or so, so its out with the old and in with the new, which is going to include new contributors for original articles about climate justice, interviews with people actively fighting for climate justice and lots more.
Fingers crossed, the transition will be a smooth one, and your email subscription will stay intact. The website will likely be down for periods of time.
Along with the new name will come a new web address, stronger focus on the climate justice movement in Aotearoa [New Zealand] and lots of new sections to the website including links to getting active and access to lots of good solid climate justice related information as before. Please encourage your friends to sign up for email updates.
Thanks for all your interest, encouraging comments and especially your ACTION in the real world over the past three years.
See you on the other side in a few weeks!
Kia Kaha
-withoutyourwalls
Action Alert : Maori fishing skipper detained on navy warship for defending ancestral waters from Deep Sea Oil Drilling
Police, bottom left, move in to arrest the San Pietro skipper.
This is an Action Alert from Peace Movement Aotearoa :
Please forward on through your networks
Act now: Iwi fishing skipper detained on navy warship 23 April 2011
This action alert has four sections: what happened today, background information, what you can do, and where you can get more information. This message is available on-line at http://www.facebook.com/PeaceMovementAotearoa
What happened today
Elvis Teddy, skipper of the Te Whanau a Apanui tribal fishing boat San Pietro, was arrested at sea and detained on a navy warship while fishing in Te Whanau a Apanui ccustomary fishing grounds in the vicinity of the Orient Explorer, the deep sea oil survey ship ship currently conducting seismic testing in the Raukumara Basin on behalf of Brazilian oil company Petrobras. The arrest came the day after Maritime NZ withdrew the exclusion orders that police officers, assisted by the navy, issued to boats in the vicinity of the Orient Explorer last week.
This morning, Rikirangi Gage, CEO of Te Rununga o Te Whanau (Te Whanau a Apanui), radioed the Orient Explorer from the San Pietro as follows: “This is the San Pietro calling the Orient Explorer. You are not welcome in our waters. Accordingly and as an expression of our mana in these waters and our deep concern for the adverse effects of deep sea drilling, we will be positioning the Te Whanau a Apanui vessel directly in your path, approximately one and a half nautical miles in front of you. We will not be moving, we will be doing some fishing. We wish to reiterate that this is not a protest. We are defending tribal waters and our rights from reckless Government policies and the threat of deep sea drilling, which our hapu have not consented to and continue to oppose. We have a duty to uphold the mana of our hapu here in our territorial waters.” – the radio broadcast is available here
In response, two navy warships – HMNZS Taupo and HMNZS Hawea – sent inflatables with navy personnel and police officers to board the San Pietro and threatened to arrest all on board. Elvis Teddy was arrested, detained on one of the navy vessels, and taken to Tauranga while the others on board were left to crew the San Pietro.
Background information:
On 1 June, the government awarded Brazilian oil company Petrobras a five-year exploration permit for oil and gas in the Raukumara Basin.
The first two stages of exploration involve seismic surveying – firing compressed air from the surface to the seabed, and measuring the acoustic waves bouncing back to the sonar array trailing 10 kilometres behind the Orient Express. Seismic surveying can have an adverse impact on marine life, especially marine mammals. The current surveying is taking place during the season of whale migration along the East Coast.
The permit includes permission for Petrobras to drill an exploratory well. The massive oil and gas spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year, which took three months to cap and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the ocean, was from an exploratory well at a depth of 1500 metres.
In the Raukumara Basin, the proposed depths for drilling an exploratory well range from 1500 to 3000 metres. The Raukumara Basin sits on a major and active fault line, and a simple search of geonet – shows there are frequent earthquakes in the area. It is therefore particularly risky to place any sub-sea installation, such as an oil well, there.
Te Whanau a Apanui were not consulted about the exploration permit, nor did they give their consent for the seismic survey.
What you can do
Contact your local MP as soon as possible and express your concern about the exploration permit, the lack of consultation with Te Whanau a Apanui, the arrest of the skipper of a vessel exercising customary fishing rights, and the protection of the interests of a foreign oil company at the expense of the rights of the local iwi.
Contact details for all MPs are here
Where you can get more information
You can get more information on the No Drilling site, at the Te Whanau a Apanui page here and the Stop the Drilling on Our East Coast here
Some photos from the Te Whanau a Apanui protest in Wellington on 20 April are athere
Wave of protest across Aotearoa marks anniversary of the BP Gulf Oil spill
New Zealanders from Dunedin to Auckland led globalised protests to commemorate the one-year anniversary of BP’s Gulf Oil Disaster by demanding an end to the environmental destruction and climate destabilization created by fossil fuel and other extractive industries. Communities of Aotearoa stood alongside environmental, climate, and social justice groups all over the world in an International Day of Direct Action Against Extraction.
New Zealanders in Taranaki, Wellington, Dunedin, Whanganui, Nelson, Auckland, the East Cape and more were joined by Gulf Coast residents fighting offshore drilling, Appalachians resisting mountaintop removal coal mining, Pennsylvania and New York residents opposing natural gas hydrofracking, Canadians fighting tar sands mining in Alberta and more across the globe.
Reports of global activities are being compiled by Rising Tide North America at the www.extractionaction.net website.
Looks like we’ve got a movement on our hands…
Aotearoa
Anniversary of the BP oil spill | Camp For Climate Action Aotearoa
New Zealand Wakes Up To The Global Day Of Action Against Extraction | Voxy.co.nz
Wellington.scoop.co.nz » Protestors deliver anti-mining message to Wellington businesses
Group rallies at Mount Maunganui against sea drilling
Oil spill remembrance marked by city march » The Gisborne Herald
Protest against oil exploration in New Zealand – Wellington | Demotix.com
Gisborne, NZ actions | Act Against Extraction
Disaster marked with drilling protest | Stuff.co.nz
Gisborne hikoi against East Cape oil prospect
Global day of Action | Protest raises the dangers of oil spill
International [more updates coming through at www.extractionaction.net]
Gas stations have hoses locked in apparent anti-oil protest | abc7news.com
Flyover, vigils mark Gulf oil disaster anniversary – Action 3 News – Omaha, Nebraska News, Weather,.
Anti-BP Activists Stage Nude Lie-In, Pour Oil at Tate Britain
Protest Held In North Philadelphia To Mark Anniversary Of BP Oil Spill
Fishermen protest BP spill in Biloxi, MS | Act Against Extraction
Washington, DC: Activists tie up BP office doors with banner | Act Against Extraction
Photos and Video
Photo Essay: Apanui Iwi Protest Deep Sea Oil Drilling in NZ | Scoop News
Ahi Ka Action Group | Demotix.com
Wellington protest against oil drilling
anti drilling campaign 20th April
Outside the Brazillian Embassy
Flickr: The Day of Action against deep sea oil Pool
Taranaki in Solidarity – Global Day of Action Against Extraction
Rio +20: Resisting market environmentalism and strengthening rights and social-environmental justice
The Potential of Rio + 20
In June 2012 Rio de Janeiro will host an event that may symbolize the end of a period and the beginning of a new one. Rio + 20 is expected to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the 1990s UN conferences beginning with Rio 92 and including the conferences on population, human rights, women, social development and the urban agenda. It is also during 2012 that the Kyoto Protocol will expire.
The United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development / Rio +20 proposes to discuss three issues: assessment of compliance with the commitments agreed to in Rio 92, the green economy and the institutional architecture for sustainable development. Rio + 20 therefore, has the potential to be a moment to, at the same time, assess the successes and failures of the past two decades and also identify a new agenda of struggles ahead.
Gary Cranston
without your walls 