*NEWS*FXEROX,RICOH,CANON DESTROY TAZMANIA

[Anonymous]

Global Outcry Over Falling Forests, Failing Democracy on Australia’s Island State of Tasmania
major recipients from products of its old-growth woodchips with US markets include Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Canon.
      
SAN FRANCISCO, March 06 — Outraged world citizens today protested at
Australian embassies and consulates in America, Canada, Japan and the
United Kingdom to decry the destruction of old-growth forests and the
undermining of democracy in the country’s island state of Tasmania by
Forestry Tasmania and Gunns, Ltd., a rogue billion-dollar logging giant
whose practices rank among the world’s worst according to recent
reports. The IUCN compares Gunns’ operations to rampant illegal logging
in the Third World.
       Demonstrators delivered a letter signed
by leading international sustainability groups to Prime Minister John
Howard demanding that the government act in accordance with scientific
recommendations to protect Tasmania’s virgin forests from a
well-documented arsenal of logging tactics deployed by Gunns and
industry-controlled Forestry Tasmania. In the wake of massive clearcuts
by Gunns, the industry routinely scorches the Earth with napalm
firebombs to eradicate all remaining life.
       Gunns has also
killed hundreds of thousands of native mammals using carrots poisoned
with Compound 1080, a lethal super-toxin listed as a biological weapon
by both the Canadian and US governments. Gunns CEO John Gay has
publicly stated that it is okay that his company kills endangered
animals because “there’s too many of them.” Tasmania’s forests are
currently being clear-cut at an unprecedented rate equivalent to
approximately 44 football fields per day. The vast majority of
Tasmania’s priceless ancient trees are being processed into woodchips
by Gunns to make disposable paper products destined for landfills in
America and Asia.
       The worldwide call for action today echoed
a dozen of Australia’s leading scientists who signed a 2004 statement
of support for the protection of Tasmania’s forests calling for the
“urgent need for Australian government intervention.” The effort to
protect Tasmania’s forests is one of the largest environmental issues
in Australian history, and according to a 2004 opinion poll by
Newspoll, over 85 percent of Australian citizens favor full protection
for Tasmania’s pristine forests.
       Carrying signs reading “Stop
Gunns” and “Save Tassie’s Trees,” forest defenders around the world
protested with “GUNNS” taped over the mouths(c) in solidarity with 20
silenced citizens in Australia who are currently being sued by Gunns
for speaking out against the company’s attacks on environmental
treasures and public health. Likened to McDonald’s “McLibel” lawsuit,
Web sites like Gunns20.org and McGunns.com are evidence of a growing
global grassroots movement to protect free speech, reassert democracy
and save old-growth forests. The Gunns 20 lawsuit has also been
condemned by leading human rights lawyers in the UK. For the Tasmania
Forest Campaign, Rainforest Action Network and its allies today
launched TreesNotGunns.org http://www.treesnotgunns.org/ to organize future worldwide action.
      
At the Australian High Commission in London today, British MP and
Deputy Environmental Minister Norman Baker met with the Deputy High
Commissioner to deliver the NGO letter and spoke about the atrocities
he witnessed on his visit to Tasmania last month. Over 100 members of
the British Parliament recently signed a motion condemning Gunns’
actions and calling for an international boycott of woodchips and paper
sourced from Tasmania’s old-growth forests.
       The global outcry
comes just days before a March 9th hearing when lawyers will argue for
the Gunns 20 case to be thrown out of court for a third time and two
weeks before a March 18th Tasmanian election when an record Green vote
may force the current government into a minority coalition or from
office altogether.
       According to the US National Cancer Institute,
Tasmania — marketed to tourists as “The Island of Rejuvenation” — has
some of the highest overall cancer incidence rates in the world.
According to a report by the University of Tasmania and the Tasmania
Department of Health and Human Services, the age-standardized incidence
of all cancers combined — excluding non-melanocytic skin cancers —
increased 37.6 percent in Tasmania during the 23-year period from 1978
to 2000. In a recent letter to the Tasmanian Times, local farmer Paul
de Burgh-Day wrote, “I came to live in Tasmania with my family largely
because I believed the ‘Clean and Green’ marketing image. We have been
here long enough now to realize that this is, sadly, no more than
illusion … I have no doubt that Tasmania and its people could thrive
if it set about becoming what the slogan implies.”
  Spearheaded by
San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, the worldwide day of
protest expands one of the largest environmental protection campaigns
in Australian history to global economic centers including Houston,
London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Vancouver and
Washington, D.C. The letter to Prime Minister Howard was signed by
coalition of US and European-based groups including Forest Ethics
(ForestEthics.org), Friends of the Earth International (FOE.org),
Global Exchange (GlobalExchange.org), Global Response
(GlobalResponse.org), International Forum on Globalization (IFG.org),
Native Forest Network (NativeForest.org), Pacific Environment
(PacificEnvironment.org), Rainforest Action Network (RAN.org), Ruckus
Society (Ruckus.org) and the Sierra Club (SierraClub.org).
       GUNNS AND FORESTRY TASMANIA
 With
annual revenue of over $700 million in 2005, Gunns is the largest
logging company in Australia, where it holds a virtual monopoly in
Tasmania. Gunns operations have resulted in convictions and fines for
breaching the Forest Practices Code and causing major environmental
damage to a Tasman Peninsula waterway. Out-of-control napalm burns
started by Forestry Tasmania and Gunns have incinerated areas of
national parks, World Heritage sites and private land, and are intense
enough to create massive mushroom clouds typically associated only with
atomic weapons. Under the legal protection of special exemptions from
national and state laws granted by the government’s Regional Forest
Agreement, Gunns has routinely ordered the destruction of pristine
areas identified for permanent protection by the United Nations World
Heritage Bureau. Under current Tasmanian law, the company is not
required to file environmental impact statements.
    The revolving
door between Gunns and the government includes former Tasmanian Premier
Robin Gray who currently sits on the company’s board of directors.
Gunns collusion with Forestry Tasmania has essentially eliminated
citizen oversight and has led to a breakdown of democracy in the state.
Despite being Tasmania’s largest landowner, less the 15 percent of the
company’s record profits stay in Australia’s poorest state. Gunns
largest customers are Japanese paper companies Nippon, Oji, and Daio
and major recipients from products of its old-growth woodchips with US markets include Fuji-Xerox, Ricoh and Canon.
       COMPOUND 1080
      
Compound 1080 (sodium monofluoroacetate), a super-toxin with no known
antidote, was first developed by Nazi military chemists for biological
warfare during World War II. The FBI and Air Force as well as the
Canadian Security Intelligence Service have publicly listed Compound
1080 as a chemical agent terrorists could use to poison water supplies.
A new CIA report includes photographic evidence that Compound 1080 was
recently recovered by coalition forces in Iraq. Because of its danger
to humans, Compound 1080 has been banned in Brazil since 1982. One
teaspoon of the tasteless, odorless white power is enough to kill 100
people.

       SUPPORTING STATEMENTS
      
“Gunns does not act alone,” said Ilyse Hogue, director of the Global
Finance Campaign at Rainforest Action Network. “They are backed by
investors and commercials banks both in their everyday operations and
projects like the unpopular Bell Bay Pulp Mill proposal. As the
trajectory of the global finance sector moves toward a sustainable and
just economy, banks like ANZ that continue to fund rogue corporations
like Gunns will find themselves forced to account for their decision to
their customers.”
       “Gunns operations are more like chemical
warfare than logging,” said Brant Olson, director of the Old Growth
Campaign at Rainforest Action Network.
       “The world is
witnessing a total breakdown of democracy in Tasmania resulting in the
wholesale destruction of the island state’s priceless primordial
forests. Despite tens of thousands of Australians taking to the street
in protest and polls showing that a vast majority favor full
protection, the government still continues to support and subsidize
Gunns wholesale conversion of Tasmania’s life giving natural forests
into deadly toxic tree farms.”
       “Everything about the
situation on the ground in Tasmania defies belief for anyone who
respects democracy and values the rule of law,” said David Lee, a
campaigner with the Tasmanian Forest Campaign at Rainforest Action
Network.
       “Tasmania’s world-class trees like the giant
Eucalyptus — the tallest hardwoods in the world — are up there with
the Great Barrier Reef and the Galapagos Islands and worth far more to
humanity as forests than woodchips. Gunns is trashing a global treasure
in Tasmania to make disposable paper products and turning paradise into
a toxic Hell on Earth in the process.”
ABOUT RAN: Rainforest Action
Network campaigns for the forests, their inhabitants and the natural
systems that sustain life by transforming the global marketplace
through education, grassroots organizing and non-violent direct action.
For more information on RAN, please visit RAN.org. For information on
the Tasmania Forest Campaign, please visit http://www.TreesNotGunns.org

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March 20, 2006 at 11:11 AM