Author: earthfirst

Blockade of Monsanto office in The Netherlands (& GM being grown this year in the UK)

Update: no arrests made, Mon­san­to closed for whole day, work­ers sent home, and some of the cor­po­rate sculp­tures got a re-paint!

On Mon­day 17 May a group of 50 peo­ple from the group “Roundup Mon­san­to” block­ad­ed the Mon­san­to office at Bergschen­hoek in the Nether­lands.

Monsanto Netherlands blockade 1Monsanto Netherlands blockade 2Monsanto Netherlands blockade 3Monsanto Netherlands blockade 4Update: no arrests made, Mon­san­to closed for whole day, work­ers sent home, and some of the cor­po­rate sculp­tures got a re-paint!

On Mon­day 17 May a group of 50 peo­ple from the group “Roundup Mon­san­to” block­ad­ed the Mon­san­to office at Bergschen­hoek in the Nether­lands.

Verdelg Mon­san­to

Press Release: Block­ade of Mon­san­to’s Bergschen­hoek Loca­tion in The Nether­lands

Bergschen­hoek, Mon­day, May 17 — Since 6 o’clock this morn­ing, 50 per­sons of the action group ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’ are block­ing both gates of the Mon­san­to seed com­pa­ny near Rot­ter­dam. ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’ wants Mon­san­to to back out of the seed mar­ket, and demands an end to patents on seeds and liv­ing organ­isms. Mon­san­to and oth­er agro-chem­i­cal multi­na­tion­als are lob­by­ing the Dutch gov­ern­ment and the EU for leg­isla­tive changes that would make it eas­i­er for large com­pa­nies to take con­trol of the seed mar­ket and food production.[1]

The block­ade is tak­ing place at the for­mer De Ruiter Seeds, acquired by Mon­san­to in 2008, where research lab­o­ra­to­ries, offices, green­hous­es, and a cen­tral stor­age for seeds and seedlings are to be found.

The chem­i­cal com­pa­ny Mon­san­to has 23% of the world­wide mar­ket of com­mer­cial seeds in its hands. In the last 5 years, the com­pa­ny has bought up three large inter­na­tion­al­ly active seed com­pa­nies in the Nether­lands: De Ruiter Seeds, West­ern Seeds, and Sem­in­is. As a result, Mon­san­to now dom­i­nates the world mar­ket for veg­etable seeds and seedlings. In addi­tion, Mon­san­to is the mar­ket leader in genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered soy, corn, sug­ar beets, and cot­ton, and has a large mar­ket share in pes­ti­cide sales. “Farm­ers and veg­etable grow­ers are becom­ing increas­ing­ly depen­dent on these big seed com­pa­nies and patent­ed seeds will make the sit­u­a­tion even worse,” says Flip Vonk, an organ­ic farm employ­ee present at the action.

Mon­san­to is a chem­i­cal com­pa­ny which has grown large due to the pro­duc­tion of pes­ti­cides, Agent Orange, and PCBs. [2] After count­less scan­dals revolv­ing around these chem­i­cal sub­stances, the com­pa­ny found a new mar­ket strat­e­gy: devel­op­ment and sales of genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops. These crops are cul­ti­vat­ed in enor­mous mono­cul­tures, with exces­sive use of fer­tilis­er and pes­ti­cides. Mon­san­to rep­re­sents a destruc­tive mod­el of chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture.

The cur­rent sys­tem of agri­cul­ture, based on mass import and export, is com­plete­ly depen­dent on the con­sump­tion of fos­sil fuels. Chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture is respon­si­ble for a quar­ter to a third of the release of all the green­house gas­es. Over 80% of the cul­ti­vat­ed GMOs are pes­ti­cide resistent, the remain­ing 20% pro­duce insec­ti­cide inside the plant. This form of food pro­duc­tion is extreme­ly harm­ful to peo­ple, nature, and the cli­mate. Genet­i­cal engi­neer­ing will not con­tribute any solu­tion to cli­mate change.

Genet­ic engi­neer­ing is often pre­sent­ed as a solu­tion to the glob­al food ques­tion. But in spite of 15 years of cul­ti­va­tion of genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops, 2009 wit­nessed a record amount of star­va­tion. GM crops have not increased yields. “The food prob­lem requires com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent solu­tions. We need to dras­ti­cal­ly change course, away from large-scale chem­i­cal agri­cul­ture, towards local food pro­duc­tion in har­mo­ny with nature, with­out pes­ti­cides and with­out genet­i­cal­ly manip­u­lat­ed crops. A world with­out Mon­san­to is a good step in that direc­tion,” accord­ing to Miran­da de Boer from ‘Roundup Mon­san­to’.

The two most impor­tant access doors to the Mon­san­to ter­rain have been closed off. The action group put up ban­ners with the mes­sage “Imag­ine, monop­oly of food, poi­so­nous agri­cul­ture, The World accord­ing to … Mon­san­to”, adbust­ing the com­pa­ny’s logo. It has also adjust­ed the giant cucum­ber and toma­to on the lawn to Mon­san­to’s manip­u­lat­ed real­i­ty. Employ­ees and cus­tomers are greet­ed with cof­fee, tea, and back­ground infor­ma­tion on arrival.

**********
to the edi­tors:
action loca­tion: Leeuwen­hoek­weg 52, Bergschen­hoek (North of Rot­ter­dam)
con­tact: verdelg-monsanto@riseup.net

[1] For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the devel­op­ment of patent law and breed­ers’ rights, con­sult a press release from A SEED Europe about the sub­ject: http://www.aseed.net/kwekersrecht-vs-patentrecht

[2] See the film ‘The World Accord­ing to Mon­san­to’

More back­ground infor­ma­tion can be found at:
— http://www.gentech.nl
— http://www.gmwatch.org
— http://www.no-patents-on-seeds.org
— http://www.aseed.net/monsanto
— http://www.combat-monsanto.co.uk
— http://www.toxicsoy.org

Action video — http://www.vimeo.com/12529960

——
Two GM pota­to tri­als this year

The UK gov­ern­ment in their GM mad­ness have just (7.4.10) approved a new GM pota­to tri­al to go ahead at the Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty farm near Tad­cast­er. It is also like­ly that they will approve a sec­ond, dif­fer­ent tri­al by the Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­wich.

These tri­als are exper­i­men­tal tri­als, and not part of an appli­ca­tion to grow the pota­toes on a com­mer­cial scale. The GM pota­toes are still in the devel­op­ment stage and these tri­als are designed to find out whether the genet­ic manip­u­la­tion works in field con­di­tion. If this is con­firmed then they might go on to be devel­oped for com­mer­cial grow­ing.

Despite mas­sive pub­lic resis­tance and grow­ing evi­dence that GM does not increase yields, is extreme­ly dam­ag­ing to the envi­ron­ment and impov­er­ish­es farm­ers around the world, our gov­ern­ment is push­ing GM onto our plates. GM con­tin­ues to be very lucra­tive for multi­na­tion­al bio­chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tions… while farm­ers around the world are ris­ing up in protest against this tech­nol­o­gy of con­trol.

The lat­est con pro­mot­ed by the GM spin­ners is that GM will pro­vide the answer to cli­mate change. Rather than cut­ting car­bon emis­sions, stu­pid…

Leeds tri­al:
The Cen­tre for Plant Sci­ences at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Leeds has been giv­en con­sent by Defra to con­duct field tri­als of GM pota­toes engi­neered to resist pota­to cyst eel­worm or pota­to cyst nema­tode (PCN).

This is a dif­fer­ent GM pota­to to the one pre­vi­ous­ly tri­alled in 2008 and dif­fer­ent to the pota­toes pro­posed to be tri­alled in Nor­folk, but many of the prob­lems are the same.

The tri­als com­mence from 1 May to 3 Novem­ber 2010 and con­tin­ue for 3 years until 2012. They take place at the Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty Farm at Tad­cast­er, North York­shire cov­er­ing not more than 1,000 square metres with up to 4,000 GM plants per year.

They are engi­neered to be resis­tant to nema­todes, a pest affect­ing pota­toes that can effec­tive­ly dealt with through good farm­ing prac­tis­es

There is no need for GM to address this pest, nor is there any mar­ket for GM pota­toes, so the tri­al should not go ahead.

Full details of the tri­al can be found here (includ­ing grid ref­er­ences)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/gm/regulation/registers/consents/index.htm

Nor­wich tri­al
The Sains­bury Lab­o­ra­to­ry at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­wich has applied to Defra to con­duct field tri­als of GM pota­toes engi­neered to resist late pota­to blight. These pota­toes con­tain genes from a pota­to rel­a­tive from South Amer­i­ca and have been engi­neered to be resis­tant to blight, a pota­to dis­ease. They are dif­fer­ent from the genes in BAS­F’s GM blight resist pota­toes field test­ed near Cam­bridge in 2007 and 2008. The BASF tri­al was aban­doned last year, for unknown rea­sons.

The release of GM pota­toes would com­mence from 1 May 2010 and run to 30 Novem­ber 2010 and con­tin­ue for a fur­ther 2 years until 2012. The release would take place at the John Innes Cen­tre, Nor­folk, in an area of 1,000 square metres with 200 square metres used each year for GM pota­toes with not more than 200 GM plants per year.

The deci­sion is expect­ed in the next cou­ple of weeks.

A detailed brief­ing on the GM spuds can be down­loaded from

http://www.gmfreeze.org/page.asp?ID=417&iType=1083

The full appli­ca­tion to Defra can be found here (includ­ing grid ref­er­ences)

http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/quality/gm/regulation/registers/applications/index.htm

Lib­er­ate the fields!

Coal Action Network website relaunched!

Check out http://coalaction.org.uk/ for the updat­ed and re-vamped Coal Action Net­work web­site and detailed coal maps of the UK. It is hoped that this web­site will be a use­ful resource to any­one tak­ing action – or think­ing of tak­ing action – to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­ments and the cli­mate sys­tem from coal projects.

Check out http://coalaction.org.uk/ for the updat­ed and re-vamped Coal Action Net­work web­site and detailed coal maps of the UK. It is hoped that this web­site will be a use­ful resource to any­one tak­ing action – or think­ing of tak­ing action – to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­ments and the cli­mate sys­tem from coal projects.

The CAN web­site will be kept up-to-date with recent news from cam­paigns and the indus­try. Have a look at The Coal Maps – map­ping coal across the UK, con­tacts page for cam­paigns and groups active on coal, use­ful resources for cam­paign groups, argu­ments against new coal, upcom­ing events and links to infor­ma­tion and oth­er issues. You can get in touch to con­tribute updates and infor­ma­tion and sign up to the CAN email list.

Through this web­site we aim to help link com­mu­ni­ty strug­gles and arm our­selves with the infor­ma­tion we need to resist new open cast coal mines and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions.

party at the pumps

15 May 2010
The shell garage on upper street in isling­ton was closed for sev­er­al hours this after­noon by more than a hun­dred pro­tes­tors.

Shell garage closedShell pumps15 May 2010
The shell garage on upper street in isling­ton was closed for sev­er­al hours this after­noon by more than a hun­dred pro­tes­tors.

at lunchtime around 50 peo­ple gath­ered at oxford cir­cus, watched by quite a large police pres­ence with sev­er­al van-loads on stand-by. the sta­tion was briefly closed ‘due to sheer weight of num­bers’ but re-opened after ten min­utes, and they set off for high­bury and isling­ton.

mean­while, around 40 cyclists met at mar­ble arch and, fol­lowed by a cou­ple of police vans, they took a cir­cuitous route through hyde park, down past buck house, and then for a tri­umphal lap round par­lia­ment square, shout­ing out sup­port over the mobile sound sys­tem to the democ­ra­cy vil­lage and to the decade-long protest by bri­an haw.

the mass then car­ried on up to angel, and then along upper street to the shell garage, which had already been well and tru­ly closed down by the foot-sol­diers and by the rhythms of resis­tance sam­ba band (most­ly deputised by soas mem­bers).

the shell garage looked great! sev­er­al peo­ple held a huge “dan­ger — keep out” ban­ner across one access. a sim­ple “closed” ban­ner was strung across the oth­er. above, anoth­er ban­ner declared “stop shel­l’s tar sands hell”, and some activists found a route up to the roof to drop anoth­er “stop tar sands” ban­ner from there.

a head-count num­bered 125 at one point. an excel­lent turn-out on a day with when there were sev­er­al oth­er protests in town, and most encour­ag­ing, there were many new faces, keep­ing the fit team and police pho­tog­ra­ph­er, neil, busy.

police-wise, there were about a dozen offi­cers around mak­ing notes, and one FIT team. down the road were anoth­er ser­i­al wait­ing in a van, and anoth­er van of TSG fur­ther out of sight.

activists hand­ed out hun­dreds of fliers, and pub­lic response was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive.

More pho­tos

European Squatting Meeting

Next 17, 18, 19, and 20 of June, a Euro­pean Squat­ting Meet­ing will be held in the “CSO La For­sa” (Aveni­da de la Fama, 41, Cor­nel­la de Llo­bre­gat — Barcelona), so we are con­tact­ing groups across Europe who are inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pate.

To join the meet­ing and / or sub­mit­ting infor­ma­tion, you can get in con­tact with us at: jornadaskny010@riseup.net

Pro­gram

Wednes­day 16 June

Next 17, 18, 19, and 20 of June, a Euro­pean Squat­ting Meet­ing will be held in the “CSO La For­sa” (Aveni­da de la Fama, 41, Cor­nel­la de Llo­bre­gat — Barcelona), so we are con­tact­ing groups across Europe who are inter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pate.

To join the meet­ing and / or sub­mit­ting infor­ma­tion, you can get in con­tact with us at: jornadaskny010@riseup.net

Pro­gram

Wednes­day 16 June

Arrival & Wel­come: Food, Drinks & Live Music (Txaranga)

Thurs­day 17 June

Morn­ing Pro­gram

Open­ing: Pre­sen­ta­tion of the dif­fer­ent squats presents
• His­tor­i­cal Con­text: Begin­ning of the squat move­ment in Europe
• Polit­i­cal Con­text: Legal frame­work, repres­sion and response strate­gies (Con­tacts and agree­ments with the state, response on the street, assim­i­la­tion of evic­tions … )
• Present and Future
• Con­nex­ions with oth­er strug­gles

We´d like that every col­lec­tive could make a lit­tle scheme of this to tack­le it bet­ter.

Evening Pro­gram

Dis­cus­sion:
We would like to expose dif­fer­ent strate­gies against repres­sion fol­lowed in dif­fer­ent spaces and places and their long-term effects: legal­iza­tions, agree­ments, dif­fer­ent kinds of direct response against evic­tions and its effects of the activ­i­ties of the spaces (such as the recep­tion of chil­dren, sup­port groups out­lawed …)

Fri­day 18 June

Morn­ing Pro­gram

Speak­ings:
Exhi­bi­tion of dif­fer­ent par­tic­u­lar cas­es of ways of act­ing against evic­tions try­ing to accom­mo­date the exist­ing diver­si­ty.
(To Be spec­i­fied but we want cas­es suf­fi­cient­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive into the direct action)

Evening Pro­gram

Dis­cus­sion:
Con­se­quences of dif­fer­ent types of reac­tion to evic­tions: Legal, per­son­al and move­ments long-term effects?…

Sat­ur­day 19 June

Morn­ing Pro­gram

Open Air: Food & The­ater

Demon­stra­tion

Evening Pro­gram

Speak­ings:
Exhi­bi­tion of dif­fer­ent strug­gles with the squat move­ment as a cat­a­lyst or as a sup­port for their devel­op­ment.

Sun­day 20 June

Morn­ing Pro­gram

Dis­cus­sion:
Police repres­sion and dif­fer­ent meth­ods of repres­sion, see if there is an under­ly­ing polit­i­cal pur­pose at the Euro­pean lev­el and seek to form a gen­er­al pic­ture of it for a Euro­pean legal per­spec­tive of the map and the nation­al and local nuances (Com­mon­al­i­ties and dif­fer­ences between coun­tries and areas …) Any trends in com­mon? Are they using the same meth­ods of repres­sion? (Increased penal­ties, penal­ties of areas not pre­vi­ous­ly leg­is­lat­ed sen­tences, fines penal­ties, tight­en­ing of the evic­tions, more or less aggres­sive or spec­tac­u­lar of these, pro­pos­als for legal­iza­tion and recov­ery of the spaces …)

Evening Pro­gram

Speak­ing-Dis­cus­sion:
Police and Euro­pean police net­works, how they affect us, devel­op­ment and effec­tive action (DNA, data­bas­es, files police activists, agreed the clo­sure of bor­ders …)

Con­clu­sions and future pro­pos­als

Clos­ing Event: Drinks and Live Music

Both ses­sions in the morn­ing as the after­noon will be divid­ed into two blocks with a break in the mid­dle. We pro­vide simul­ta­ne­ous inter­pre­ta­tion.

http://www.faunanocturna.net/press/jornadeseuropeesdokupacio

Robin Wood Protest at Unilever’s General Assembly

12 May 2010

Fol­low­ing protests in Rot­ter­dam and Ham­burg yes­ter­day,  ROBIN WOOD activists protest­ed today dur­ing Unilever’s gen­er­al assem­bly in Lon­don against trop­i­cal rain­for­est destruc­tion for palm oil. A ban­ner with the mes­sage “Unscrupu­lous Destruc­tion of Rain­for­est and Com­mu­ni­ty for Palm Oil” was unfurled in front of the entrance to the Queen Eliz­a­beth Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. The activists addi­tion­al­ly dis­trib­uted infor­ma­tion to the share­hold­ers and demand­ed that they not absolve the board of direc­tors of their eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties con­cern­ing com­pa­ny pur­chas­es.

Unilever12 May 2010

Fol­low­ing protests in Rot­ter­dam and Ham­burg yes­ter­day,  ROBIN WOOD activists protest­ed today dur­ing Unilever’s gen­er­al assem­bly in Lon­don against trop­i­cal rain­for­est destruc­tion for palm oil. A ban­ner with the mes­sage “Unscrupu­lous Destruc­tion of Rain­for­est and Com­mu­ni­ty for Palm Oil” was unfurled in front of the entrance to the Queen Eliz­a­beth Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. The activists addi­tion­al­ly dis­trib­uted infor­ma­tion to the share­hold­ers and demand­ed that they not absolve the board of direc­tors of their eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ties con­cern­ing com­pa­ny pur­chas­es.

The Dutch-British com­pa­ny Unilever is the largest pur­chas­er of palm oil world­wide, most com­ing from plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia. This cheap fat is an ingre­di­ent in prod­ucts from Unilever brands such as Rama, Lang­nese and Knorr. Approx­i­mate­ly 9.4 mil­lion hectares of land have already been trans­formed into palm oil plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia and this area is increased every year by approx­i­mate­ly 600,000 hectares. The palm oil boom has dras­tic con­se­quences due to the destruc­tion of trop­i­cal rain­forests which are irre­place­able for bio­di­ver­si­ty and the world­wide cli­mate.

Addi­tion­al­ly, land­grab for giant mono­cul­tur­al plan­ta­tions threat­ens the liveli­hoods of mil­lions of peo­ple. “We want to put a stop to the palm oil boom. Unilever is the largest pur­chas­er of palm oil world­wide and there­fore a key play­er” said Peter Ger­hardt, ROBIN WOOD’s rain­for­est cam­paign­er. “For this rea­son in an open let­ter to CEO Paul Pol­man we demand­ed that Unilever require its sup­pli­ers to imme­di­ate­ly cease expan­sion of their palm oil plan­ta­tions. Oth­er­wise the com­pa­ny will remain com­plic­it in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, cli­mate change, and human rights vio­la­tions.”

One of Unilever’s largest sup­pli­ers of palm oil is Wilmar Intl. Wilmar Intl. owns huge palm oil plan­ta­tions in Indone­sia, plans to expand fur­ther, and does­n’t shy away from the use of vio­lence in order to suc­ceed in their expan­sion plans. “Dur­ing our research trip to the Indone­sian province of Jam­bi in 2009, local vil­lagers told us of instances where Wilmar’s hench­men threat­ened them with weapons in order to get them to give up their land for new palm oil plan­ta­tions,” reports Ger­hardt. These are not iso­lat­ed instances. The World Bank dis­con­tin­ued fund­ing of palm oil plan­ta­tions in part due to mas­sive land con­flicts between local vil­lagers and Wilmar Intl. “We demand a ban on the estab­lish­ment of new palm oil plan­ta­tions,” said Nordin, an Indone­sian envi­ron­men­tal activist work­ing togeth­er with ROBIN WOOD. “We are depen­dent on the for­est for pro­tec­tion against flood­ing, ecosys­tem sta­bil­i­ty, and for our own liveli­hoods and food.”

Unilever attempts to appease its crit­ics and cus­tomers with a promise to buy more RSPO-cer­ti­fied palm oil. Palm oil would be cer­ti­fied by the RSPO (Round­table for Sus­tain­able Palm Oil) when it is alleged­ly pro­duced in a sus­tain­able man­ner. How­ev­er, the stan­dards required to receive RSPO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion are uncon­vinc­ing­ly lenient. For exam­ple, log­ging of rain­for­est for the estab­lish­ment of new plan­ta­tions is even allowed. Most palm oil com­pa­nies which are involved with the RSPO fol­low an aggres­sive course of expan­sion to the detri­ment of unique nat­ur­al ecosys­tems.

(The open let­ter to Unilever’s CEO and ROBIN WOOD’s report from the research trip to Indone­sia can be found at http://www.robinwood.de/tropenwald)

Con­tact email: presse@robinwood.de

Manchester anti-arms-trade activities

On 17th Jan­u­ary 2009, as the bombs rained down on Gaza, six peo­ple entered the EDO fac­to­ry in Brighton, which makes parts for weapons that have been used against the peo­ple if Iraq, Afgan­istan and Pales­tine. They threw com­put­ers and fil­ing cab­i­nets out of the first floor win­dow and took ham­mers to machin­ery used for weapons pro­duc­tion.

On 17th Jan­u­ary 2009, as the bombs rained down on Gaza, six peo­ple entered the EDO fac­to­ry in Brighton, which makes parts for weapons that have been used against the peo­ple if Iraq, Afgan­istan and Pales­tine. They threw com­put­ers and fil­ing cab­i­nets out of the first floor win­dow and took ham­mers to machin­ery used for weapons pro­duc­tion. Their aim was to dis­able the war machine and to take action against those who prof­it from the aer­i­al bom­bard­ment of Gaza. The offices were out of action for a month and hun­dreds of thou­sands of pounds of dam­age was report­ed.

The EDO Decom­mis­sion­ers always intend­ed to go to tri­al – not as the accused but as the accusers mak­ing the case that their action was law­ful because they were dis­arm­ing an arms fac­to­ry which is com­plic­it in war crimes.

The tri­al date has been moved on a num­ber of occa­sions, and it is now due to start on June 7th. In the run-up to this, Tar­get Brimar are call­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty with the EDO Decom­mis­sion­ers in Man­ches­ter. On Mon­day 17th May at 12.30 pm we’ll be leaflet­ing out­side Bar­clays on Mosley Street in Man­ches­ter City Cen­tre; please join us.

There has been a five year long cam­paign of direct action against EDO MBM/ITT aimed at per­suad­ing them to stop pro­duc­ing weapons com­po­nents in Brighton. EDO’s com­po­nents are used by the US and UK in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel in Pales­tine.

As ITT’s mar­ket mak­er, Bar­clays act as a ‘mid­dle man’, pur­chas­ing shares from a sell­er and hold­ing them until such a time as a buy­er becomes avail­able. This ensures the sta­bil­i­ty of ITT’s share price by allow­ing share­hold­ers to sell off their assets at any time, even when a a buy­er is not imme­di­ate­ly avail­able, and vice ver­sa. Bar­clays also prof­its from this enter­prise by sell­ing ITT’s shares at a markup.

———

We’d also like to remind peo­ple in the North West about our own home-grown arms com­po­nent man­u­fac­tur­er, Brimar in Chad­der­ton, which sells com­po­nents to the Israeli air force and to the British and US for use in Iraq and Afghanistan . Tar­get Brimar holds a vig­il at the fac­to­ry at 4pm on the first Wednes­day of every month and it would be great to see you there on 2nd June, 7th July and 4th August.

We will also be hold­ing a let­ter-writ­ing ses­sion at Nexus Cafe on Dale Street in Man­ches­ter on Sun­day June 20th, 11am-1pm. We’ll have form let­ters to local MPs, MEPs, coun­cil­lors and news­pa­pers rais­ing the issue of an arms fac­to­ry on their patch, so please drop by to sign up and send some off. There will also be mate­ri­als if you want to write per­son­al let­ters to some of the pro­test­ers who have been giv­en unjust and racist sen­tences for demon­strat­ing against the inva­sion of Gaza in Jan­u­ary 2009.

For more infor­ma­tion see:
http://www.targetbrimar.org.uk
http://www.smashedo.org.uk
http://gazademosupport.org.uk/
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=102652103115133&ref=mf#!/event.php?eid=102652103115133&ref=mf

News from EF! Italy

News from Earth First! Italy:

News from Earth First! Italy:

After the nation­al gath­er­ing of April 1 to 4 in Umbria are form­ing new groups in cen­tral and north­ern Italy. Now very active 4 groups: Rome, Pra­to, Pad­ua, Turin. The site con­tin­ues to be fol­lowed by more than 500 vis­its a month and many activ­i­ties are car­ried out. On 5 June in Rome there will there will be an EF! night with dis­cus­sions, din­ner, film screen­ing and music in sup­port of ongo­ing cam­paigns. In Turin active “guer­ril­la gar­den­ing”. Pad­ua oper­ates main­ly on the face of ani­mal lib­er­a­tion. In Pra­to they are orga­niz­ing cam­paigns against incin­er­a­tors and cement.

More infor­ma­tion: http://earthfirstitalia.blogspot.com

Ffos-y-Fran Coal Train Blockade — Action Report (and ‘Pictures’)

An action report as promised.
All cam­eras were seized by police — instead sketch­es have been drawn to doc­u­ment the action.

An action report as promised.
All cam­eras were seized by police — instead sketch­es have been drawn to doc­u­ment the action.

A group of indi­vid­u­als who met through the Ris­ing Tide net­work and were inspired to take direct action against the route caus­es of cli­mate change. They main­tain an 8‑hour block­ade of coal trains car­ry­ing fuel from Ffos-y-Fran open-cast coal mine to Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion.
Ffos-y-Fran Coal Train Blockade 1
An aer­i­al view of the mine, the protest groups and the police response

ACTION

On 26th April 2010 in the ear­ly after­noon a group of indi­vid­u­als made their pres­ence known to staff and secu­ri­ty at Ffos-y-Fran open-cast coal mine in Merthyr Tyd­fil. Hav­ing ensured their pres­ence around the tracks was known and no trains would be leav­ing until they were removed, they pro­ceed­ed to lock them­selves to the train track using chains and super glue. This sin­gle track is used to trans­port train-loads of mined coal to Aberthaw pow­er sta­tion, and the first and only train for the day was due to leave soon after. Legal observers and sup­port were present.

It took a long time for police to make the lengthy jour­ney from the near­est police sta­tion, how­ev­er they sent their friend­ly neigh­bour­hood heli­copter on plen­ty of point­less gas-guz­zling jaunts around the area. Once the police prop­er­ly arrived they imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed the four sup­port peo­ple, placed them in hand­cuffs and made them wait beside the track while a cut­ting team arrived to remove the group who had locked on to the rails. Despite the hand­cuffs, the sup­port team con­tin­ued to pro­vide food and water to the lock-on team. Lat­er the police also arrest­ed the legal observ­er who was clear­ly on the oth­er side of the fence and not on the track. After approx­i­mate­ly 4 and a half hours of lengthy response times and a paper-chain of police bureau­cra­cy that group was removed and arrest­ed.

Ffos-y-Fran Coal Train Blockade 2The first group locked on com­plete with wash­ing-line ban­ner

As this group of peo­ple were being led off the train tracks they informed the police of some incred­i­bly irri­tat­ing news. A sec­ond group had been hid­ing just round the cor­ner and were as they spoke emerg­ing and lock­ing onto the tracks with heavy duty lock-on tubes. Clear­ly too exhaust­ed from their hard work oper­at­ing bolt crop­pers to take a quick stroll down the line to check this out, the heli­copter took to the skies once more. One quick swoop con­firmed what it had failed to notice on its many swoops ear­li­er — four pro­test­ers with a legal observ­er and sup­port, cheer­ful­ly wav­ing from the train track before, now final­ly sure their pres­ence had been not­ed, calm­ly tak­ing their places on roll mats and rugs and lock­ing on inside two lock-on tubes placed in con­ve­nient gaps under the rail­way line. By this point it was 5.00pm.

A net­work rail engi­neer ran a cou­ple of hun­dred metres down the tracks to check upon the new group. The police drove. Again on arrival they imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed the legal observ­er and sup­port, who were cheer­ful­ly read­ing a nov­el to those locked. Despite fail­ing to pro­duce on demand a Risk Assess­ment of the cut­ting oper­a­tion (but plen­ty of whing­ing about how dan­ger­ous it is) it took the cops until 8pm to cut open the tubes — one of which was mul­ti-lay­ered, and the oth­er of which had a very thick met­al lay­er. A spe­cial groan was reserved for when they realised the pro­test­ers had not just chained but also super­glued their hands togeth­er inside the tubes and had to send for some indus­tri­al glue remover.

Ffos-y-Fran Coal Train Blockade 3The sec­ond group flag­ging down the chop­per before lock­ing on

All arrest­ed were tak­en to Ystrad Mynach Police Sta­tion. This includ­ed four peo­ple who were enjoy­ing a nice day out in the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ing coun­try­side, who the police arrest­ed out of some kind of belief that they were in some way involved. In total 18 were arrest­ed and spent 24 hours in the cells. It is believed that no coal left Ffos-y-Fran that day.

Ffos-y-Fran Coal Train Blockade 4The sec­ond group in posi­tion

CONSEQUENCES

All arrest­ed were tak­en to Ystrad Mynach Police Sta­tion. This includ­ed four peo­ple who were enjoy­ing a nice day out in the beau­ti­ful sur­round­ing coun­try­side, who the police arrest­ed out of some kind of belief that they were in some way involved. In total 18 were arrest­ed and spent 24 hours in the cells.

It appears that legal observers and sup­port roles were orig­i­nal­ly arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of con­spir­a­cy, how­ev­er they were sub­se­quent­ly charged with the same charge as those who had locked on. All 18 were even­tu­al­ly charged with “Unlaw­ful Act With Intent To Obstruct The Rail­ways” con­trary to sec­tion 35 of the Mali­cious Dam­age Act 1861. This rather quaint law designed to pro­tect the inter­ests of pri­vate landown­ers over 150 years ago car­ries a rather less quaint max­i­mum sen­tence of life in prison. How­ev­er the pro­test­ers have stat­ed that they are not antic­i­pat­ing any­thing approach­ing that kind of sen­tence as the law is obvi­ous­ly out of date and ample safe­ty mea­sures were tak­en to ensure there would be no dan­ger to the train, the train dri­ver, the police or the pro­test­ers.

All were bailed to return to Merthyr Tyd­fil Mag­is­trates Court at 10am on 10th May 2010. All were bailed “not to be upon or allow your­self to be upon any prop­er­ty owned, leased or rent­ed by British rail net­work”. They were allowed to trav­el home by train that day how­ev­er any future train trips had to be cleared by arrest­ing offi­cers. Those who gave fixed address­es were bailed to reside at those address­es. Those who did not give fixed address­es were bailed to reside at con­tact address­es, despite mak­ing it clear they did not have any per­mis­sion to live there and had no con­nec­tion with those address­es oth­er than being able to receive post from those address­es. Some were also bailed to sign in reg­u­lar­ly at local police sta­tions. One of those arrest­ed was bailed to reside in Corn­wall but sign in dai­ly at Bath Police Sta­tion with­out the use of trains!

Black Cat Centre (Bath) Illegally Evicted

7.05.2010
The Black Cat, Bath, has sad­ly been evict­ed this morn­ing from the Porter Butt build­ing on Lon­don Road.

We lost in court this morn­ing, and rather than wait for an evic­tion order to come through, the land­lords came right round the house and barged in with the full sup­port of local police.

7.05.2010
The Black Cat, Bath, has sad­ly been evict­ed this morn­ing from the Porter Butt build­ing on Lon­don Road.

We lost in court this morn­ing, and rather than wait for an evic­tion order to come through, the land­lords came right round the house and barged in with the full sup­port of local police.

We’re cur­rent­ly nego­ti­at­ing for the release of our pos­ses­sions from the build­ing, and are intend­ing to keep fair­ly qui­et until those nego­ti­a­tions are con­clud­ed in our favour. Once that’s done, thought — or if it does­n’t hap­pen — then we’re going to raise some mer­ry hell!

Sat­ur­day’s Open Mic may find a new home, so keep your eyes peeled for that.

Thanks to all our sup­port­ers, and apolo­gies to those of you who should have got emails about this, rather than hav­ing to see it on indy — the only per­son who can spell our email pass­word is off play­ing D&D…

Sol­i­dar­i­ty and Strug­gle,
The Black Cat Col­lec­tive

Bristol Eco Villager hospitalised after tripod demolition

5th May 2010

5th May 2010
After enter­ing the Eco Vil­lage site this morn­ing, bailiffs per­sist­ed through the day in their attempts to evict all Eco Vil­lagers from the St Wer­bergh’s site. Local res­i­dents joined vil­lagers in an increas­ing­ly des­per­ate attempt to pre­vent this. Although a cher­ry pick­er was turned away, a dig­ger was final­ly brought on site. Attempts had been made to pre­vent this by climb­ing onto it, but the dig­ger oper­a­tor evad­ed this by aggres­sive dri­ving, throw­ing at least one per­son to the floor.

A mound of earth was then pushed against the build­ing giv­ing bailiffs access to non-tri­pod sit­ting vil­lagers. The bailiffs then pro­ced­ed to low­er the tripods whilst the sit­ters were still in them, with no regard for their well being and safe­ty, As a result of this treat­ment one tri­pod sit­ter was sun­se­quent­ly tak­en to hos­pi­tal with poten­tial­ly seri­ous injuries to his legs.

Dur­ing all of this police ignored cries of pain and calls for help, they did, how­ev­er, act to pre­vent vil­lagers attempt­ing to re-enter the site over the fence.

The bailiffs then pro­ced­ed to demol­ish the on site build­ing, ignor­ing requests to damp­en the earth to pro­tect the native endan­gered newt pop­u­la­tion.

The site own­er has since con­tact­ed local res­i­dents to talk about non indus­tri­al use of the land.

The bailiffs firm act­ing on behalf of the High Court were Con­stant & Co.

Con­stant & co. are respon­si­ble for the some of the most vio­lent and hor­rif­ic evic­tions across the coun­try, spe­cial­iz­ing in bru­tal­iz­ing Gyp­sy, Roma, and Trav­eller com­mu­ni­ties. (one quick exam­ple, but there are loads more out there: http://www.wombles.org.uk/article2009075558.php)
One could inform them in a vari­ety of for­mats that their activ­i­ties are oth­er than desir­able mak­ing use of the details below:

Con­stant & Com­pa­ny
66 Harpur Street,
Bed­ford,
MK40 2RA

(t) 01234 340091
(f) 01234 301299

bedford@constantandcompany.co.uk

–

Eco Vil­lager Hos­pi­talised: update and request for footage and wit­ness­es

Just a quick update to you all on Kevs con­di­tion and a few details about what actu­al­ly hap­pend. Six bailiffs ille­gal­ly low­ered the tri­pod he was on, crush­ing him bitweed the polls. They then pro­ceed­ed to sit on him to pre­vent peo­ple from seeing/filimng what was going on, caus­ing the polls to act like giant blunt scis­sors and bad­ly dam­ag­ing the left side of his body.

Whilst try­ing to remove him, they also yanked his left leg vio­lent­ly from side to side, caus­ing bad lig­a­ment dam­age to a pre­vi­ous knee injury. The docs at the hos­pi­tal have giv­en him some pret­ty hefty pain killers and hes com­plet­ly zonked out next to me as I type.

If any­one has any footage of what hap­pend, or would like to act as a wit­ness, could you please please please get in con­tact with us as we WILL be press­ing charges.