Protesters clamor in Harrisburg on eve of trial for Pa. voter ID law

HARRISBURG - Calling the state's yet-to-be implemented voter ID law a thinly veiled attempt at voter suppression, more than 100 people rallied in the state Capitol Thursday, just days before a trial on the controversial law is set to begin.

Protesters Gather at Keystone XL Site in Texas

Here, among the woods and farmland, what might be one of the last pitched battles over the Keystone XL oil pipeline has been unfolding for weeks now, since construction of the controversial project’s southern leg began in August.

As bulldozers and diggers churn up a 50-foot-wide path for the pipeline — this portion will run from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast — a small group of environmental activists have taken to the towering trees in its way.

And with the blessing of some landowners who live here, and whose property the pipeline will cross, the protesters have fashioned a web of tree houses, structures and pulleys in a last-ditch effort to keep the enormous project from rumbling forward.

“Initially, a lot of the environmental movement on a national scale had kind of written this fight off,” said Ron Seifert, a spokesman for the Tar Sands Blockade, a group of environmental activists who have gathered near Winnsboro and contend that the oil sands crude that the pipeline will carry is especially toxic.

“But we have awakened folks from that slumber,” he said. “I think now there is an understanding that people are not going to give this up.”

TransCanada, the company behind the project, said construction had not been impeded in most cases, proceeding safely around where some activists have remained perched in the oaks for nearly three weeks. The tree sitters, as they are known, have survived on canned food and water and spent much of their time reading.

But at times, the company acknowledged, the situation has become dangerous. “In one case, protesters jumped underneath a truck and tied themselves to the rear axle with plastic,” Shawn Howard, a TransCanada spokesman, said by e-mail. “They were fortunate that the driver saw them go under — if he had not, it could have had very serious consequences for everyone.”

Mr. Howard said the company was making sure that work sites were safe, “even for those who are breaking the law and trespassing on these locations.”

Still, as protesters have staked out positions in tree platforms 70 feet high and along a 100-foot-long wall lashed together with timber, tensions in East Texas have risen along the route of the pipeline — slated for completion next year.

Off-duty police officers, hired by a TransCanada contractor, patrol the perimeter of construction sites day and night. This month, one man chained himself to a concrete capsule buried in the dirt before police managed to disconnect and arrest him, Mr. Seifert said.

And on Oct. 4, the actress Daryl Hannah was arrested alongside a local landowner, Eleanor Fairchild, 78, after they blocked heavy equipment clearing a path through Ms. Fairchild’s property.

Both women were taken to the Wood County Jail on criminal trespassing charges and released, according to jail records. Ms. Hannah also faces resisting arrest charges.

Sheriff Bill Wansley of Wood County did not respond to a request for comment. Mr. Seifert said 21 protesters had been arrested since the end of August.

It is not by accident that environmental activists chose Winnsboro, about 100 miles east of Dallas, to make their stand. They have found an unlikely ally in the battle-weary Texas families here who have fought the project for years.

One landowner, Susan Scott, said she had no idea the pipeline would carry oil sands crude, and signed over a right of way to TransCanada only because she feared a lawsuit.

Ms. Scott, 62, has since taken the $22,000 she was compensated and buried it in a fruit jar on her 60-acre property.

“I don’t care if it rots. It’s tainted money,” she said, staring at a thick scar that now skirts her land. “I felt like I was guilty of destroying my farm.”

Mr. Howard said TransCanada understood that some landowners were not in favor of the pipeline and that the company was respectful of those people whose land it needed.

“We have always been up front about the materials that are going into the pipeline,” he said.

At some level, the standoff also belies a deeper sense of inevitability around Keystone XL.

This year, after saying TransCanada must reroute the project around environmentally delicate areas in Nebraska, President Obama encouraged the company to submit a fresh application to the State Department.

And he embraced the less controversial southern portion of Keystone XL, which received final permits from the Army Corps of Engineers this summer.

A particularly crushing blow for opponents came in August, when a Lamar County judge ruled that TransCanada could use eminent domain to condemn private land to build the pipeline.

In another setback, TransCanada recently sued a leading pipeline opponent, a Texas landowner, David Daniel, for refusing to recognize a 2010 easement agreement he reached with the company, his lawyer said.

Mr. Daniel, 45, a soft-spoken carpenter, has since settled the lawsuit and asked the protesters to leave his property.

“It’s actually out of respect for David Daniel that we stay,” Mr. Seifert said. “I stand by the fact that protecting his forest is the best thing for him, the best thing for the community, the best thing for the Planet Earth.”

On a recent day on Mr. Daniel’s land, off-duty police officers warmed themselves by a campfire, as a protester used a rope to shimmy from platform to platform through the oak canopy above them.

Mr. Daniel was there, too. He gazed up at a tree house he built — now being used by the protesters — turned around and walked quietly back toward his home.

Greek Protesters Await Angela Merkel on Athens Visit

Ms. Merkel was to meet with Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, President Karolos Papoulias and with Greek and German entrepreneurs on a six-hour visit expected to be accompanied by rowdy demonstrations against Germany’s perceived leading role in pushing Greece to impose more pain on its citizens in exchange for rescue financing.

Eager to give Europe’s most powerful leader a warm and safe reception, Greek authorities are mounting the biggest security operation since 1999 when President Bill Clinton visited Athens amid furious protests at NATO airstrikes against the former Yugoslavia.

Some 7,000 police officers, many brought to the capital from the provinces for the day, will be on standby along with rooftop snipers and protests have been banned in much of downtown Athens.

Security will be particularly heavy outside the Parliament and the German Embassy. The police may resort to the use of water cannons if rallies get out of hand. The precautions reflected the desire of Greece’s fragile coalition government, embroiled in difficult talks with Greece’s so-called troika of foreign lenders on a $17.4 billion dollar austerity package, to contain its citizens’ rage at Ms. Merkel, who has been cast here as the arch-villain of the euro crisis.

Ms. Merkel’s visit comes only days after her main rivals, the Social Democratic Party, announced that Peer Steinbrück would run against her in next year’s general election.

Mr. Steinbrück served as Ms. Merkel’s finance minister in her government from 2005 to 2009, and his party has been more lenient in its discussion of Greece’s future prospects in the euro zone, arguing the time lost by the government between elections earlier this year must be taken into account when considering aid to the country.

The Social Democrats criticized Ms. Merkel’s visit to Athens as coming too late. The chancellor was last in Athens in 2007. Carsten Schneider, a finance expert with the Social Democrats criticized the chancellor in comments Tuesday to ARD public broadcaster as “only giving advice from behind a desk in Berlin” since the outbreak of the crisis in 2009.

Even within Ms. Merkel’s own Christian Democratic party there are differences of opinion on how to handle Greece. While the chancellor has in recent months shifted her rhetoric from stressing the importance of austerity and come out more strongly in favor of keeping Greece in the euro zone, her current finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble has upheld a tougher line on Athens.

“We want to help Greece to build up an efficient bureaucracy and an efficient economy, but at some point, Greece needs to stand on its own two feet,” Mr. Schäuble told RBB public broadcaster on Monday . “It is pointless to help a bottomless pit.”

Ms. Merkel’s government has said her visit is intended as a clear signal of solidarity with the Greeks and will not interfere with the forthcoming report by the troika of lenders — the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Commission.

Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, told reporters in Brussels on Tuesday that no decisions would be taken on Greece until the report is produced, but he warned that “regarding reforms, more needs to be done” in Greece, Reuters reported.

In Greece, civil servants, including teachers and doctors, are walking off the job for three hours starting at noon to protest Ms. Merkel’s visit and have prepared banners reading “Don’t cry for us Mrs. Merkel” and “Merkel you are not welcome here” to wield during rallies.

Daily speculation in the local media about the outcome of Greek negotiations with the troika, aimed at securing a $40.8 billion dollar loan without which the country faces default in late November, was eclipsed on Tuesday by anticipation of the German leader’s visit.

Headlines in center-right newspapers read, “A message of support,” “A decisive visit by Merkel” and “We are staying in the euro.” Others, more skeptical, declared “Merkel is bringing no gifts” and “A day of anger.”

This anger was echoed by a nurse heading into the center to join fellow protesters. “This is pure provocation, we have to answer back,” said the nurse, Christina Amanti, 37. “It’s like she’s visiting her protectorate. What’s she going to do, pat us on the back and tell us to keep getting poorer, that it’s good for us?”

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Strasbourg, France.