Author: earthfirst

DSEI protest convergence space

Con­ver­gence space for DSEI protest now open — all wel­come.

St. Mar­garet’s House Set­tle­ment
21 Old Ford Road
Beth­nal Green
E2 9PL

We have tak­en the above space (a for­mer Veg­an restau­rant) and have opened it as a con­ver­gence space for next weeks DSEI protests. All wel­come.

Please bring sleep­ing bags and an open mind­ed atti­tude to how we can close DSEI this year.

Con­ver­gence space for DSEI protest now open — all wel­come.

St. Mar­garet’s House Set­tle­ment
21 Old Ford Road
Beth­nal Green
E2 9PL

We have tak­en the above space (a for­mer Veg­an restau­rant) and have opened it as a con­ver­gence space for next weeks DSEI protests. All wel­come.

Please bring sleep­ing bags and an open mind­ed atti­tude to how we can close DSEI this year.

There are cur­rent­ly 20 of us and we expect to have over 30 oth­ers arriv­ing Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, we are not work­ing with the ‘fluffy’ demos of Dis­arm DSEI and CAAT, we are about stop­ping DSEI.

Occupy! Manchester — 2nd October Tory Party Conference

From 2–5 Octo­ber 2011 the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty are com­ing to Man­ches­ter to hold their annu­al con­fer­ence. All eyes will be on this city as the Tory’s analyse their progress in imple­ment­ing their dis­as­trous pro­gram of pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing cuts, and reveal plans for the years ahead. This con­fer­ence should not go unop­posed. We intend to make the oppo­si­tion to the cuts and the wide­ly shared belief in a bet­ter alter­na­tive future vis­i­ble, and we’d like to do this with you!

From 2–5 Octo­ber 2011 the Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty are com­ing to Man­ches­ter to hold their annu­al con­fer­ence. All eyes will be on this city as the Tory’s analyse their progress in imple­ment­ing their dis­as­trous pro­gram of pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing cuts, and reveal plans for the years ahead. This con­fer­ence should not go unop­posed. We intend to make the oppo­si­tion to the cuts and the wide­ly shared belief in a bet­ter alter­na­tive future vis­i­ble, and we’d like to do this with you!

Tories not wel­come!

We have been inspired by the large and vibrant stu­dent protests that took place last win­ter, by the dynam­ic and high-impact actions of UK Uncut, and by the pop­u­lar demon­stra­tions we are wit­ness­ing across North Africa, the Mid­dle East, Spain and Greece. The times are chang­ing and peo­ple are speak­ing out against injus­tice and inequal­i­ty.

What are you plan­ning to do?

We need to try new forms of oppo­si­tion. We have marched in our tens of thou­sands at pre­vi­ous par­ty con­fer­ences, and in our hun­dreds of thou­sands in Lon­don. Cru­cial as they are, more march­es in big­ger num­bers will not be enough. As the anti-war protests of 2003 showed, the gov­ern­ment finds them easy to ignore. As anger at the Con-Dem cuts grows we need to make it more vis­i­ble.

The cuts are for the ben­e­fit of the rich – we refuse to pay for their cri­sis!

The TUC have called a nation­al demon­stra­tion to be held in Man­ches­ter on Sun­day Octo­ber 2nd. That after­noon anti-cuts pro­tes­tors will occu­py Albert Square to cre­ate an assem­bly of protest on the doorstep of the Tory’s con­fer­ence, a sym­bol of the mass oppo­si­tion to the cuts and a place for real
debate and dis­cus­sion about the alter­na­tives and the pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Come ready to make noise, and stay for the long haul!

Occupy!MCR

Sup­port­ers so far:

* Bak­ers Food and Allied Work­ers Union – Man­ches­ter and Mersey­side.
* Edu­ca­tion Activist Net­work.
* Geoff Brown, Sec­re­tary of the Man­ches­ter TUC (pc).
* Man­ches­ter Book Bloc.
* The Man­ches­ter Green and Black Cross.
* Man­ches­ter UKun­cut.
* Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Staff against the Cuts.
* Man­ches­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Stu­dent Union.
* Queer Resis­tance North-West.
* Real Democ­ra­cy Man­ches­ter.
* Shift Mag­a­zine.
* Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty.
* Social­ist Work­er Stu­dent Soci­ety.

German coal blockade during climate camp

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

30.08.2011
Since 10.30 this morn­ing a group of over 50 activists have been blockad­ing a coal trans­port rail­way in the Cologne area. The action takes place at the same time as the near­by inter­na­tion­al Cli­mate Camp, protest­ing the open-cast min­ing of brown coal (www.klimacamp2011.de)

The activists peace­ful­ly blocked the line ear­ly this morn­ing, erect­ing ban­ners and green­wash­ing the rail­way tracks. The protest is aimed at ener­gy giant RWE, which oper­ates a num­ber of pow­er sta­tions in the area and is respon­si­ble for about 10% of Ger­many’s car­bon diox­ide emis­sions.

The protest is being kept well-sup­plied with blan­kets and food by mem­bers of the cli­mate camp, and is cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for a night on the tracks.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp is sit­u­at­ed in the vil­lage of Man­heim which is sched­uled to be destroyed in order to enlarge a brown coal strip mine. Brown coal, or lig­nite, is a less pure form of coal and is there­fore much less ener­gy-effi­cient and cre­ates greater emis­sions than reg­u­lar coal.

The inter­na­tion­al cli­mate camp includes guests from as far afield as Colom­bia and Azer­bai­jan and aims to build links with­in the inter­na­tion­al cli­mate jus­tice move­ment, call­ing for urgent sys­tem change, not cli­mate change.

Genetically Modified Papaya Farm Sabotaged in Hawaii

8.9.11

Accord­ing to Hawaii Coun­ty police, thou­sands of GE papaya trees were sab­o­taged last month, appar­ent­ly by machete on the Big Island.

8.9.11

Accord­ing to Hawaii Coun­ty police, thou­sands of GE papaya trees were sab­o­taged last month, appar­ent­ly by machete on the Big Island.

“It’s hard to imag­ine any­body putting that much effort into doing some­thing like that,” said Delan Per­ry, vice pres­i­dent of the Hawaii Papaya Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “It means some­body has to have pas­sion­ate rea­son.”

Workshop for Actions and Alternatives — all-year-climate-camp

There’s some­thing strange about cli­mate change: It’s well-known, there’s no need for gen­er­al edu­ca­tion. Every­body sup­ports approach­ing the prob­lem and stop­ping human-caused cli­mate change.

There’s some­thing strange about cli­mate change: It’s well-known, there’s no need for gen­er­al edu­ca­tion. Every­body sup­ports approach­ing the prob­lem and stop­ping human-caused cli­mate change.
Although gov­ern­ments promise answers and solu­tions, we’re just watch­ing a rapid increase of the cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. Thus the sus­pi­cion comes to mind, that the right solu­tions haven’t been found – or rather that they’re not accept­able for econ­o­my and gov­ern­ments.
The ques­tion aris­es, if our world can wait for a solu­tion. Peo­ple in regions, where it comes to food short­age, scer­tain­ly not. At first, peo­ple in poor regions won’t be able to adapt to changes. Droughts or floods will force them to flee. Most­ly var­i­ous rea­sons urge peo­ple to flight, yet cli­mate change will play an increas­ing­ly impor­tant role.
This fact by itself ques­tions the dis­tri­b­u­tion of raw mate­ri­als and food on this world – or why the poor­est, who con­tributed the small­est part of cli­mate-rel­e­vant green­house-gas­es so far, shall bear most of the dam­age.
Europe guards itself: Legal bar­ri­ers for flee­ing per­sons are intol­er­a­bly high and on the Mediter­ranean Sea, the Euro­pean police force “fron­tex” pro­vides a hard­ly pass­able block­ade. We see this sit­u­a­tion as cyn­i­cal and dis­sat­is­fy­ing – for the flee­ing it’s rather fatal. On the basis of this exam­ple we want to illus­trate that it’s about more than ener­gy-sav­ing lamps and recy­cled paper. Nei­ther do we see the nuclear phase­out in Ger­many, linked to a half-heart­ed ener­gy tran­si­tion, as a solu­tion. There’s a lot to do…

This fly­er address­es to all per­sons, who are not will­ing to wait for a solu­tion “from above” any­more. The aim shall be to take the ini­tia­tive your­self, to see your­self as an active per­son in this “polit­i­cal pow­er game”, in which we usu­al­ly just should move as con­sumers. Let’s cre­ate deter­mined, pro­gres­sive pol­i­tics togeth­er from below – for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent cli­mate.

Why in the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing region?
In this region, brown coal is mined in three open­cast mines, main­ly for six gigan­tic coal-fired pow­er sta­tions, where­by the vast bulk of CO2 in Europe is emit­ted. What “Wend­land” is for nuclear ener­gy, the Rhen­ish brown coal-min­ing region has to become for car­bon ener­gy. We want to work togeth­er with con­cerned locals – whole vil­lages are forced to reset­tle – in sol­i­dar­i­ty against destruc­tion.
We want to present a live­ly counter-image to cap­i­tal­ist destruc­tive­ness! Here, exper­i­men­tal liv­ing of a cli­mate-neu­tral future, over there the tear-off edge, the hole – square-kilo­me­tres of destruc­tion. Decide now!

Space for learn­ing
Cours­es and sem­i­nars shall be pro­vid­ed in a Do-It-Your­self cul­ture. Themes turn around cli­mate-neu­tral life, non-hier­ar­chi­cal meth­ods and forms of organ­i­sa­tion, diverse kinds of the­o­ret­i­cal stuff and meth­ods of resis­tance. And since we nei­ther belief in homo­ge­neous con­cepts from above against cli­mate change, nor find them desir­able, we con­sid­er a debate from below nec­es­sary. A debate, in which every­one is invit­ed to take part, which isn’t build up on expert’s hier­ar­chies, which doesn’t seek uni­fi­ca­tion, but which can stand dif­fer­ent posi­tions, in hope that there will arise syn­the­ses out of ten­sions in between.

And action…
The work­shop shall serve as a plat­form for dif­fer­ent actions against destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment and liv­ing space. There­by we focus on devel­op­ing putting into prac­tice meth­ods of actions, which we togeth­er do with per­sons from there and else­where, which aim at the eman­ci­pa­tion of the sin­gle indi­vid­u­als.

The Work­shop for Actions and Alter­na­tives is being built up from Sep­tem­ber (2011) on in
52355 Düren, Kalls­gasse 20

How to get there and lat­est infos:
waa.blogsport.de

If you feel appealed by this text, there are diverse pos­si­bil­i­ties how you can take part:
— Come and see what we’re doing
— Con­tribute your ideas and tal­ents (of organ­i­sa­tion for exam­ple)
— Get in touch if you want to teach or learn some­thing
— Dis­trib­ute this fly­er
— Offer your abil­i­ties: Lay-out­ing, writ­ing, do research
— Dona­tions of mon­ey would also help:
account of dona­tion:

Red women on green rampage – Women’s wing of CPI(Maoist) tells Giridih to stop felling trees

Forests of Pir­tand in Giridih dis­trict have new best friends in the form of CPI(Maoist) women’s wing, Nari Muk­ti Sangh.

Forests of Pir­tand in Giridih dis­trict have new best friends in the form of CPI(Maoist) women’s wing, Nari Muk­ti Sangh.

Since one week, around 70 women of the rebel out­fit are tak­ing out hour-long road­shows in the after­noon across the block, exhort­ing peo­ple not to cut trees. If they do, they bet­ter pay up a fine of Rs 1,000 or face some unspec­i­fied pun­ish­ment, which is like­ly to involve beat­ings. It is green activism that takes itself seri­ous­ly.

“Jun­gle bachana hi hoga var­na aane wale vinaash ke liye hum khud hi zim­me­war honge (we have to save forests at any cost now, oth­er­wise we will be respon­si­ble for nat­ur­al calami­ties),” thun­dered Neela Devi, one of the lead­ers of the out­fit.

The women, armed with axes, sticks and spades, move from vil­lage to vil­lage with grim deter­mi­na­tion, spread­ing the mes­sage of afforesta­tion.

Not only are they slo­ga­neer­ing, they are also tak­ing out ral­lies and stag­ing nukkad (neigh­bour­hood) meet­ings in dif­fer­ent vil­lages of the Maoist strong­hold.

Sources said unlike their male coun­ter­parts, the women don’t believe in vio­lence. But if any­one felling trees is caught red-hand­ed, he might be roughed up, as the women mem­bers have “threat­ened dire con­se­quences” if peo­ple dam­age the area’s green cov­er.
When the women rebels are not issu­ing threats, they are also inform­ing peo­ple about the impor­tance of trees.

“Forests are our real assets. Please realise their impor­tance and save trees. They absorb poi­so­nous gas­es and are the best friends of man and wildlife,” said Devi at a ral­ly on Mon­day.

Vil­lagers, slight­ly bemused, are how­ev­er turn­ing up in large num­bers to hear the women speak.

“We have had good response. Vil­lagers have promised not to fell trees indis­crim­i­nate­ly. But the Sangh will keep its eyes open,” said Devi.

On Mon­day, the Sangh’s road­show passed through dif­fer­ent vil­lages includ­ing Mas­no­tand, Pand­natand, Chil­ga and Pal­gunj, with around 70-odd women armed with pick­ax­es, spades and bam­boo sticks chant­i­ng pro-green slo­gans and hold­ing impromp­tu meet­ings.

At every spot, tens of vil­lagers lis­tened in pin-drop silence that would have been the envy of any green NGO.

http://revolutionaryfrontlines.wordpress.com/2011/09/02/18848/

ASS needs you!

The Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters releas­es its first newslet­ter… and wants your help!

The hard­work­ing bunch at the Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters have just released their annu­al report in the form of a newslet­ter.

Its full of as much infor­ma­tion, juicy gos­sip and as many requests for help that you can fit on two sides of A4!

The Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters releas­es its first newslet­ter… and wants your help!

The hard­work­ing bunch at the Advi­so­ry Ser­vice for Squat­ters have just released their annu­al report in the form of a newslet­ter.

Its full of as much infor­ma­tion, juicy gos­sip and as many requests for help that you can fit on two sides of A4!

have a look here!: http://ompldr.org/vYTU5Zg/final-for-viewing.pdf

There are arti­cles on the con­sul­ta­tion papers, under­cov­er infil­tra­tors and the ASS’s opin­ion on an ex-mem­ber’s new anti-squat com­pa­ny.

They are also ask­ing for assis­tance! ASS cur­rent­ly need vol­un­teers for office shifts, vol­un­teers for tasks out­side the office and CASH!!!

If you can help with:

vol­un­teer­ing to do some time in the office
putting on a ben­e­fit gig/cafe/cinema etc
trans­la­tion (doc­u­ments to print or com­mu­ni­ca­tions)
print­ing
archiv­ing

…or in any oth­er way you can think of then drop us a line at friendsoftheass@gmail.com

Please dis­trib­ute!!

Final for print­ing (3MB): http://ompldr.org/vOXo0eA/final-for-printing.pdf

Rossport round-up

Shell Con­trac­tor Quar­ry Shut Down For Day
Barret’s Quar­ry in Ban­gor Erris shut down by pro­test­ers

Shell Con­trac­tor Quar­ry Shut Down For Day
Barret’s Quar­ry in Ban­gor Erris shut down by pro­test­ers

On Wednes­day 31st August at 8am 15 peo­ple entered Barrett’s quar­ry, just out­side Ban­gor Erris in Co. Mayo and stopped work for the whole day, leav­ing at 5:30pm. Barrett’s is a sub­con­trac­tor on the Cor­rib Gas Project, cur­rent­ly bring­ing truck­loads of grav­el and hard­core to Shell’s site in Augh­oose.

Enter­ing the quar­ry site Wednes­day morn­ing was easy, as there were only a cou­ple secu­ri­ty guards and there is no fenc­ing around the site aside from the front gate. Once peo­ple were on site work was halt­ed pret­ty quick­ly as peo­ple climbed up onto dig­gers and oth­er machin­ery.

No attempt to remove the pro­test­ers was made, and the day was pret­ty calm. Folks even got up to play­ing were­wolves and cha­rades while on the machin­ery in order to pass the time.

At 5:30 after all the work­ers had gone home and there was no chance of them resum­ing their deliv­er­ies to the Shell site, all the pro­test­ers left through the front gate.

Pro­test­ers have been tar­get­ing Barrett’s lor­ries on the pub­lic road over the last few weeks as they were try­ing to make their stone deliv­er­ies to the Shell com­pound, by stop­ping them and climb­ing on top of them. This occu­pa­tion of the quar­ry itself is a mes­sage to all con­trac­tors work­ing for Shell on this project.

Near­by Lennon’s Quar­ry also sup­ply mate­r­i­al to the site and have also had many of their vehi­cles occu­pied in recent weeks. Shell to Sea spokesper­son Ter­ence Con­way said today: “Both busi­ness­es will con­tin­ue to be a tar­get of the cam­paign until they end all work at Shell sites.”

—-

Cor­rib protests – if Tues­day was not mad enough try today
26.8.11
MEP assault­ed, work halt­ed for six hours, cam­paign­ers dri­ve into refin­ery and bounced back out again four hours lat­er

Local Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers and their sup­port­ers at Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp are rest­ing after anoth­er bizarre day of lows, highs and out­right idio­cy dur­ing their ongo­ing protest against Shell in co. Mayo.

The day start­ed unpromis­ing­ly with a 6am sor­tie against the com­pound at Aghoos seek­ing to exploit a cou­ple of weak points in the fence. Shel­l’s con­trac­tors Road­bridge and Shevlins are rac­ing to fin­ish the first bit of work in con­struct­ing the fenc­ing and new entrance way. Every moment is count­ing for them. This left a cou­ple of promis­ing gaps which peo­ple from the camp sought to exploit in their dawn raid.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it was not to be. Secu­ri­ty from IRMS were aggres­sive from the begin­ning and were drag­ging peo­ple across hard-core and the road. Though the main tar­get failed, a sec­ondary one saw two peo­ple get in. As oth­er weak points were probed, one pro­test­er who was on the road was delib­er­ate­ly charged from behind, trip­ping them face-first onto the road. This was all pho­tographed; a com­plaint to a Sergeant import­ed from Gal­way was nat­u­ral­ly treat­ed with dis­dain, the gar­daí hap­pi­ly tak­ing their place as part of Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty. This has already been report­ed to the Amnesty/Frontline human rights observ­er in the area and will be pur­sued.

Peo­ple returned to camp to get a bit of rest and recu­per­ate. Just before mid­day, Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy (of the Social­ist Par­ty) and a num­ber of sup­port­ers turned up. They were shown the camp and giv­en an update as to how the cam­paign has been going.

While this was hap­pen­ing a group of peo­ple wait­ed near the junc­tion near Gle­n­amoy, a key turn­ing point for the vehi­cles com­ing between the refin­ery at Bel­linaboy and the Aghoos com­pound. Most trucks and trac­tors along this route are escort­ed by gar­daí, who have placed offi­cers along this route, and whose vans reg­u­lar­ly fol­low peo­ple walk­ing it.

Despite all this atten­tion from gar­daí, quick think­ing meant that one per­son was able to jump on top of a Bar­retts Quar­ry truck – the firm pro­vid­ing much of the hard-core – at around 1pm. It was a beau­ti­ful moment. Campers, locals, Paul Mur­phy & co all con­verged on the site. A good natured protest ensued, with peo­ple laugh­ing, jok­ing, singing, chil­dren mak­ing water bal­loons and the per­son on top of the truck giv­ing us a ren­di­tion of “Which Side Are You On”, re-word­ed to take in Shell.

In the refin­ery a back­log of trucks and oth­er vehi­cles began to build up. The pub­lic order team turned up with their cher­ry pick­er to remove the per­son on top of the truck. Those in the road sat down and formed two lines wrap­ping arms and legs around each oth­er with the aim of stop­ping the cher­ry-pick­er com­ing in. The thugs from the pub­lic order team wad­ed in, as ever, drag­ging peo­ple out, rip­ping cloth­ing and using pres­sure points on the ear. Paul Mur­phy, who was involved in the line was among those assault­ed in this fash­ion. Nat­u­ral­ly he was livid. Word is that the sto­ry is going ‘viral’.

Not to be deterred, after the per­son on the truck was removed and arrest­ed, peo­ple decamped to the front of the refin­ery. Num­bers grew to over 50 as more locals came to sup­port. It was fan­tas­tic to see old faces again, some­thing that real­ly boost­ed the campers. It was clear there was a buzz despite the rain that came on. There was more play­ing in front of the gates, and a deter­mi­na­tion to resist in the air. For those who had been at the morn­ing protest, it was such a lift. Gar­daí and secu­ri­ty stayed clear; the line of trucks backed up inside the refin­ery grew longer. The per­son who had been arrest­ed was charged, released and came to join the protest.

Even­tu­al­ly Shell caved in. They parked up the trucks and shut up shop at Aghoos at 6.30pm. Though hav­ing pushed their work­ers to keep to the exist­ing timetable, the day was lost to the cam­paign­ers. Fear­ing that they might try and take some of the vehi­cles out the back gate, peo­ple drove around, dri­ving up close to the back gate. Two of these cars dri­ven by locals (well known to secu­ri­ty) and con­tain­ing just as recog­nis­able peo­ple were waved through the refin­ery gates by secu­ri­ty. So, we sus­pect, heads are going to roll. One car drove around and back out again with­out secu­ri­ty actu­al­ly being aware of this. The oth­er stayed in and drove around the refin­ery, two fin­gers up to all who think they can run rough-shod over the peo­ple of Erris. Nat­u­ral­ly, the gar­daí, late to the par­ty this time, then began stop­ping work­ers going in. It was a great turn around to a long day. Now, for anoth­er plan­ning meet­ing…

For Paul Mur­phy’s own account:
I was just about to fin­ish this report when we heard… two IRMS (Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty) minibus­es were blocked for an hour. And the car was still in the refin­ery as of 8pm. So down we head again, bare­ly fin­ish­ing inner. Secu­ri­ty had sur­round­ed the car at the inner perime­ter fence as it was try­ing to leave. For some very bizarre rea­son they would not let the car leave by the gate direct­ly in front of it, but want­ed it to go all the way to the back gate.

The occu­pants refused that option as they were wor­ried they would be ambushed. A trac­tor was brought and attached to the back of the car by a rope. For the next hour and a half the car was bounced back­wards across the site. The idio­cy of the peo­ple doing this meant that the car was con­stant­ly bounc­ing and knock­ing against the back of the trac­tor. Once occu­pant phoned the gar­daí for help but the per­son answer­ing the 999 call laughed. It is not hard to see why the gar­daí in Erris are not trust­ed by the peo­ple who live there.

By 9pm a crowd of locals and peo­ple from the camp had assem­bled out­side the back gate in sup­port. Num­bers swelled to forty by 10pm when the trac­tor final­ly brought the car out — gar­daí and secu­ri­ty filled out into the road — the secu­ri­ty clear­ly act­ing like cops again – push­ing con­cerned friends and fam­i­ly away. It was a relief to see our friends safe again.

A long, exhaust­ing day, but amaz­ing in so many unex­pect­ed ways. Wel­come to Mayo.
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

—-

Mayo Road Block­ad­ed in Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest
August 26 2011
From 6.00am to 9.30am this morn­ing, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes. This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.
From 6.00am to 9.30am this morn­ing, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes. This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

*FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:*
Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp 085 1141170

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see
Relat­ed Link: http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.org

—–

Dai­ly Protests in Mayo, Num­bers Build­ing
Actions are con­stant, some­times 3 or 4 in a day

Between lock-ons, mass tres­pass­es, lor­ry climb­ing and a breach of secu­ri­ty at Shel­l’s refin­ery, this week brought a lot of peo­ple out protest­ing. Locals who haven’t been out on the roads in years have come out this week, and momen­tum is build­ing.

Here are some pho­tos from Wednes­day 24th August that haven’t been post­ed. Tues­day and Thurs­day were so full of events that these pho­tos did­n’t make it up. But things are hap­pen­ing every day, keep look­ing at the shelltosea.com web­site, twit­ter, and indy­media to stay post­ed.

Wednes­day’s events began with a 6am tres­pass onto Shel­l’s com­pound in Augh­oose. Soon after a few peo­ple went to join the locals who are at the refin­ery gates every morn­ing, and 6 peo­ple sat down in the road wrap­ping arms and legs around each oth­er to stop a trac­tor. Gar­dai dragged peo­ple out of the road for the trac­tor to pass. After this one per­son man­aged to climb on top of a truck deliv­er­ing bog­mats out­side the refin­ery. The per­son stayed up for about 10 min­utes but when a gar­da climbed onto the lor­ry and wres­tled her D‑lock away, pre­vent­ing her from lock­ing on, she came down and was not arrest­ed.

Lat­er that day Shell ille­gal­ly extend­ed their Augh­oose com­pound into the pub­lic road, using har­ris fenc­ing to reduce the road to one lane. Shel­l’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty then stood in the pub­lic road, and work­ers yet again stopped traf­fic when­ev­er a deliv­ery was being made to the com­pound (which hap­pens 3–4 times an hour and can mean 5–30 min­utes of road clo­sure). When peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp saw them putting up fenc­ing in the road peo­ple went down to take advan­tage of the nar­row road for the next trac­tor deliv­ery. How­ev­er once again Gar­dai and IRMS worked togeth­er to push peo­ple into ditch­es, con­tain peo­ple, and clear the road.

Hon­est to god direct quote from MY 31 Sergeant Richard Maho­ny, explain­ing why peo­ple must clear the road, “For your own health and safe­ty, or we’ll throw you in the ditch.”

Apolo­gies for the belat­ed­ly post­ed pho­tos, it is not easy keep­ing up with media stuff when actions are hap­pen­ing con­stant­ly! There is plen­ty to do that does­n’t involve protest­ing as well, includ­ing tend­ing to the three gar­dens, cook­ing the com­mu­nal meals, main­tain­ing the wind tur­bines, and every­thing else it takes to main­tain the camp!

The camp is locat­ed in a field over­look­ing the Shell com­pound in Augh­oose, between Bel­lan­aboy and Pul­lath­omas. Come for a vis­it any­time! Con­tact the camp at rossportsolidaritycamp[at]gmail[dot]com or 085 114 1170

—-

Mayo Road Block­ad­ed in Inter­na­tion­al Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest
From 6.00am to 9.30am Fri­day 26th August, three cam­paign­ers occu­pied Aghoos Road, as part of the ongo­ing protests against the con­tro­ver­sial Shell refin­ery at Bel­linaboy. They formed a tri­an­gle in the mid­dle of the road using a set of espe­cial­ly made arm-tubes.

This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100407 and
This action fol­lows on from yes­ter­day, which saw the Gar­dai assault Dublin MEP Paul Mur­phy dur­ing a sit-down protest at the same part of the road. The protest stopped a num­ber of Shel­l’s con­struc­tion vehi­cles reach­ing their des­ti­na­tion at Aghoos. All three have been arrest­ed and tak­en to Bel­mul­let.

One of those occu­py­ing the road said, “I’m doing this in sup­port of a sim­i­lar protest that took place in Broome Com­mu­ni­ty, Aus­tralia last night. This is a pow­er­ful way to show that strug­gles from Ogo­ni­land in Nige­ria, to the Tar Sands in Cana­da, Aus­tralia, to Erris, Mayo and now to Aus­tralia are linked in com­mon cause. Once we heard about the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty actions we had to show sol­i­dar­i­ty. It feels real­ly pow­er­ful to be part of this.”

The Broome Com­mu­ni­ty are oppos­ing a gas project that par­al­lels the sit­u­a­tion in north-west Mayo. Like Mayo, Shell is one of the com­pa­nies being resist­ed by local com­mu­ni­ties. Links between the two com­mu­ni­ties are being estab­lished, and award win­ning film “The Pipe”, which doc­u­ments the Mayo sit­u­a­tion is being shown at events in Aus­tralia.

Yes­ter­day saw a series of events tar­get­ing the Shell refin­ery in Aghoos and Bel­linaboy. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was vis­it­ed by Paul Mur­phy, MEP who came to learn more about local com­mu­ni­ty resis­tance to the project. While tak­ing part in a peace­ful sit-down protest in front of a truck he was assault­ed and had his clothes torn by gar­dai.

Con Cough­lan, from the Camp said, “The deter­mi­na­tion we are feel­ing is incred­i­ble; know­ing that peo­ple in Aus­tralia were doing their protests while we were doing ours was inspir­ing for us all. We send our best wish­es out to them.”

ENDS

Notes
1. For more infor­ma­tion on the Broome Com­mu­ni­ty protests see http://handsoffcountry.blogspot.com/

2. For reports of events on Thurs­day, 25th August, see above, or
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/100407 and
http://www.paulmurphymep.eu/breaking-news-how-the-gardai-assaulted-me-and-other-peaceful-protestors-in-rossport

Oxford social centre gets stay of execution

25.08.2011
The squat­ted social cen­tre known as “Plebs’ col­lege” was in court this morn­ing for an evic­tion hear­ing.

About 10–15 sup­port­ers crowd­ed into the pub­lic gallery while a cou­ple sat at the front to address the court.

There were, of course, the usu­al com­e­dy moments that occur when a large group of peo­ple is forced to remain seri­ous at a for­mal-but-slight­ly-ridicu­lous event.

25.08.2011
The squat­ted social cen­tre known as “Plebs’ col­lege” was in court this morn­ing for an evic­tion hear­ing.

About 10–15 sup­port­ers crowd­ed into the pub­lic gallery while a cou­ple sat at the front to address the court.

There were, of course, the usu­al com­e­dy moments that occur when a large group of peo­ple is forced to remain seri­ous at a for­mal-but-slight­ly-ridicu­lous event.

The judge claimed that none of our defences amount­ed to a valid legal defence, and informed us with an affa­ble demeanour that “you might be doing some­thing very worth­while and mer­i­to­ri­ous with the place, but you don’t have a right to be there” and “you may very well be home­less but you can’t stay on some­one else’s prop­er­ty”.

Still, we had appar­ent­ly gained his sym­pa­thies; he sug­gest­ed to the own­er’s solic­i­tor that they under­take not to make use of the pos­ses­sion order for at least 7 days, and point­ed out that it would like­ly take anoth­er 7 days beyond that to arrange bailiffs.

They agreed, and so we have the place for anoth­er 1–2 weeks.

One down-side is that the judge agreed to allow the own­ers to apply to the High Court for enforce­ment if nec­es­sary; which means if they need to they can send bailiffs with more pow­ers (though they are also more expen­sive for the own­er).

The judge fin­ished with the com­ment: “I hope you find some­where else”. Incite­ment and encour­age­ment to con­tin­ue the project in anoth­er squat­ted space? Well, per­haps…

—
From pre­vi­ous report from 14th August:
An emp­ty indus­tri­al work­shop in East Oxford has been squat­ted by a group plan­ning to use it for com­mu­ni­ty and social events, an organ­is­ing base for local rad­i­cals and liv­ing space too.

We had our first vis­it from the cops today. To cut a long sto­ry short, they man­aged to coerce their way in by wav­ing around bat­ter­ing rams and threats of arrest. But after wan­der­ing around and fail­ing to find any evi­dence of theft or dam­age, they left.. leav­ing us pleas­ant­ly mys­ti­fied. Not sure why they did­n’t kick us out when they phys­i­cal­ly had the chance; there are many the­o­ries.

Still, now that first encounter is out of the way we can now get down to busi­ness. A freeshop, book­swap library, com­mu­ni­ty meals and freeschool events are some ideas we have for starters, but we want your ideas too! If you have an idea for an event or project, get in touch or come and chat.

We’re at 55 Ran­dolph Street, which is here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=51.745114&mlon=-1.234634&zoom=16
…unfor­tu­nate­ly at the moment get­ting in involves hop­ping over the front wall to get into the court­yard. This can be done using the neigh­bours’ front wall (luck­i­ly the folks in that house seem to be pret­ty sym­pa­thet­ic). If you need a hand with this give us a wave from the road.

Use­ful things you could bring:
‑mat­tress­es or bed­ding
‑elec­tri­cal or plumb­ing skills
‑food and/or water

If you don’t have time to vis­it us in per­son you can reach us at:
oxsquat@riseup.net

The Black Fish is looking for crew members

The marine pro­tec­tion organ­i­sa­tion The Black Fish is look­ing for peo­ple to join its direct action team and future ship’s crew.

The marine pro­tec­tion organ­i­sa­tion The Black Fish is look­ing for peo­ple to join its direct action team and future ship’s crew. “In order to be effec­tive in our marine con­ser­va­tion cam­paigns, we need to be out at sea, oppos­ing the most destruc­tive fish­ing and hunt­ing activ­i­ties, where they hap­pen away from the pub­lic eye.” For this rea­son The Black Fish is work­ing towards the pur­chase of an ocean going ves­sel and is look­ing for crew mem­bers.

“There are pos­si­bil­i­ties open­ing up to us which might see us get­ting access to a ves­sel in the near future. We need a crew for the ini­tial over­haul of this ship and prepar­ing it for its first cam­paign.” accord­ing to Wietse van der Werf, spokesper­son for the organ­i­sa­tion.

The Black Fish has launched a crew appli­ca­tion page where peo­ple can apply for vol­un­tary crew posi­tions. “We are look­ing for peo­ple with sail­ing expe­ri­ence but this is not a neces­si­ty for the entire crew. Will­ing­ness and ded­i­ca­tion to com­mit time and hard work to make future cam­paigns of The Black Fish a suc­cess, that is a must.”

Any ques­tions relat­ed to crew­ing with The Black Fish, please see the crew­ing page on our web­site or con­tact the crew­ing coor­di­na­tor at crew@theblackfish.org

We look for­ward to your appli­ca­tion!

http://www.theblackfish.org/