earthfirst – Page 163

Anti Heathrow campaigners target Architect awards

6 November 2009
Plane Stupid activists along with three residents from Heathrow this evening targeted one of the potential third runway designers at this years Architects of the Year Awards held at London’s Intercontinental Hotel.

Architect group Pascall and Watson, nominated for Transport Architect of the Year have been at the forefront of airport expansion since the early 1960’s.*

The activists stormed the podium and gave a short speech** before offering Pascall and Watson the “We don’t give a Shit” award in protest at their 50 year aviation portfolio including expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Birmingham, Manchester, Dublin and Abu Dhabi airports. Other activists handed out leaflets to the audience. Once the award had been presented the activists left of their own accord.

Tracy Howard, 35 year old mother and long term resident of Sipson said:

“We’re here today to let the architectural world know about the diverse and growing movement against the Third Runway and airport expansion across the country.

“Those involved with airport expansion will have to include this growing opposition in their designs and in their budget”.

Joe Ryle, 18, Plane Stupid activist and Heathrow resident said:

“Architects such as Pascall and Watson involved with airport expansion should expect to see a lot more of us. We presented them with the ‘We don’t give a Shit’ award, both to recognise their contribution to destroying our homes and to say that trying to build a green airport is like trying to polish a turd”.

Contact: Plane Stupid Press Line 07847 204469

Video

apex drilling visited – MAINSHILL SOLIDARITY action

apex drilling @ bridgend sabotaged by anti opencast activists.

In the early hours of tuesday 3rd november, anti opencast activists visited Apex Drilling based near Bridgend. They are integral to the expanding opencast monster and are currently active at Mainshill in Scotland.

apex drilling @ bridgend sabotaged by anti opencast activists.

Cameras were disabled, containers and vehicles had their locks glued, windscreens were etched with ‘No opencast’, wires and pipes were cut on heavy vehicles, fuel systems were contaminated, anti opencast graffiti sprayed all over the compound and the main site gate locked shut.

This company and others will be repeatedly targeted until they are put out of business.
No compromise in defence of mother earth.

Mainshill Camp Gathering round-up: workshops, walks, sabotage and lock-ons

The past weekend saw numbers swell at the Mainshill Solidarity Camp, with people travelling from far and wide to support the ongoing struggle to stop Scottish Coal opencasting Mainshill Wood.

The past weekend saw numbers swell at the Mainshill Solidarity Camp, with people travelling from far and wide to support the ongoing struggle to stop Scottish Coal opencasting Mainshill Wood. The number of people occupying the site reached numbers seen at Mainshill when the Camp for Climate Action set up on the site in August, showing how this issue is not going away.

Community Walk

On Saturday afternoon as the sun shone down on the Douglas Valley, residents of the camp, supporters and activists from local communities came together to witness the changes that Mainshill Wood has seen over the past few months. The tour took in the parts of the site that have been occupied, defended and heavily fortified for nearly 5 months, leading up to areas that have been most recently felled and cleared.

The walk then went down to the far corner of the site where Scottish Coal and various contractors have set up a compound, surrounding machinery in fencing, floodlighting and security guards. The walk then passed through the huge area of clearfell, and down through the field on which the Camp for Climate Action took place, past more defences, treehouses and tunnels. The tour ended with tea and biscuits in the communal, and discussions on where the campaign is going, and how the camp and communities can continue to support each other in their struggle to stop Scottish Coal.
Workshops

After the walk, a group from the camp walked into the clearfell to plant native trees, in a symbolic effort to reforest the area, with indigenous tree species. Although Scottish Coal flout their plans to restore the site using native species after coaling, history and common sense tells us that the site will not be restored. Take a walk across the valley to Dalquandy, which was Europe’s largest mine at 20 million tonnes and stopped producing years ago. It has been left as it was, a dangerous moonscape, leaking toxics into groundwater and polluting surrounding environments.

Other workshops skill-shared on tree-climbing, tree-house building, lock-on building and generally resisting Scottish Coal’s plans for the area.

Sabotage

A report posted on Indymedia Scotland reads:

Activists sabotaged a specialist drilling rig and other machinery in Mainshill Wood on Saturday night.

Cables were cut, controls damaged, levers busted, locks glued, windows broken, lights smashed. There were no injuries or arrests.

The specialist drilling rig, owned by Apex Drilling Services, is performing an essential role for Scottish Coal. This action may stop their work for a considerable time while repairs are made.

The drilling rig takes core samples of the rocks under the woods, to determine rock types and amounts of minerals present. This is work that needs to be completed before coal can be excavated from Mainshill.

Scottish Coal have agreed to pay for any damage to the contractors expensive machinery while working at the Mainshill site.

This action to stop the work carried out by Scottish Coal or its contractors is one of many acts of sabotage at Mainshill over recent weeks.

Lock-ons

No work took place on the site throughout the weekend, and the harvesting machine had been taken off-site on the back of a flatbed lorry on Friday, probably so that it couldn’t get damaged over the weekend as has happened in the past. So a large group decided to stop the harvester from being brought on-site on Monday morning.

Using New Mains Home Farm as its access to the site and compound, the flatbed drove in with the harvester at around 7am, quickly followed by people from the camp. The harvester was just off the flatbed when it was chased and surrounded, with people climbing on it.

The driver put up quite a fight in an effort to get his machine on site, putting lives at risk by recklessly driving the machine and then violently trying to remove people from it. However, a camper managed to scale the crane-like arm of the harvester, and locked-on to it with a bicycle D-lock.

Violent responses from the workers is becoming an all too common reaction to actions at Mainshill where people try to peacefully used their bodies to stop machinery – people have been pushed, kicked in the head, grabbed, nearly run over, and had their campers taken off them and thrown into the mud.

Although a lot of this has been documented and definitely constitutes assault, even attempted murder in some instances, the fight of the Mainshill Solidarity Camp is with the bosses, landlords and decision-makers. The Scottish Coal and Scottish Woodlands executives sit in their offices, drive their fancy company cars to their fancy homes, and tell the contractors or subcontractors they employ that they wont get any trouble from the Solidarity Camp. They tell them that they won’t be given any more work until they have finished at Mainshill Wood. They put working people, with families to feed and no choice but to carry out the contracts they’ve been given, in between themselves and the community and Solidarity Camp activists.

We say that these bosses act cowardly, paying others with blood money to carry out their dirty work. We appeal to contractors to stand in solidarity with the camp and community and not accept contracts for work at Mainshill. We appeal to the Scottish Coal technical directors, the Estates Manager, the Scottish Woodlands directors, the councillors responsible for passing this project and Lord Home to come do the work themselves, get their overalls dirty for a change and see how long they last.

The action lasted for five hours, with the camper locked-on at the neck throughout that time. Eventually a V-division support unit from Glasgow with the Mountain Rescue team arrived, and in true V-division style rigged up a pallet on a farm tractor as a “makeshift cherry-picker”. Earlier in the day the Inspector present had said that Health and Safety rules for how close machinery can operate to people on site were “guidelines” – it must be the same for removing people from lock-ons!

The camper was removed from the harvester arm, arrested for a Breach of the Peace, held over night at Bellshill police station and then taken to court in Lanark the next morning, where she plead guilty and will be sentenced in six months, pending good behaviour.

This action was a victory for the camp and took the resistance into New Mains Home Farm, where the Douglas and Angus Estates Office is, and where a community of people will live only some two hundred metres from the excavation works. The action also saw a down-scaled police response. Where at previous actions some 25 officers had been in attendance, this time there were only 4 for the most part, and support was only moved away right at the end. Is Strathclyde Police getting sick of being used as Scottish Coal’s private security force?

In Conclusion…

As well as some superb evening entertainment, the weekend’s events and the people that came through and saw the camp has strengthened the resistance to the ongoing work at Mainshill, and given people new energy to fight these corrupt councillors, fat-cat land-owners and greedy corporate types with everything we’ve got.

mainshill@riseup.net
http://mainshill.noflag.org.uk/

Blockade of UN’s Climate Change Conference in Barcelona

Wednesday 4th November in the morning – Eco Activists block for one hour the main entrance to the UN’s Climate Change Conference taking place in Barcelona.

This morning more than forty activists blocked the entrances to the main halls of the conference centre where the BARCELONA CLIMATE TALKS are taking place. Their action involved shutting and locking many of the main entrances, taping building tape X´s across shut doors, placing stickers on doors saying entrances closed. Their action had a banner that read that “Without a drastic reduction, there is no solution.”

There was quite a lot of press coverage, including Catalan TV3 and Japanese national TV. They chanted songs about climate change, read out statements and spoke from the heart as to the reasons for their actions in Catalan, Spanish and English. At one point an excellent eco rap tune was sung.

Amongst other things mentioned was the following; the fact that Africa feel they have to boycott the talks due to lack of seriousness from the rich countries, the fact that people were there to speak on behalf of indigenous in Bagua, Peru who are defending their land, which has been sold off by Peruvian state along with 70 of the countries Amazonian rainforest area, all communities in struggle around the planet, trying to defend their resources and communities against multinational climate injustice, including the Rossport community in North Western part of Ireland.

There was no police or security attempts to remove the activists. After an hour they stood up and left. They had much support and were applauded from people outside.

The action was organised by the group ‘El Clima no esta en Venda” (Climate is not for Sale)

More info: http://www.elclimanoestaenvenda.wordpress.com

UN climate delegates Barcelona dinner spoilt – no carve up with dam execs!

3.11.09

3.11.09
This evening there was a protest outside a posh restaurant where delegates were meeting with hydropower corporations. Delegates & execs were harangued as they made their way from their buses & posh cars to dine together. Banners added to the yelling of ‘no more dams no more lobbies, climate justice!’, that quite spoilt the appetite of those trying to carve up the environment inside. Eventually the police came and tried to ID everyone, but we stayed a bit longer, and a bit more, till they left and we decided to move on…

Press release:

On the occasion of the Barcelona summit 2 to 6 November, the last preparatory session of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen (COP15)

Under the slogan “Dams kill rivers and people, they are not a Clean Development Mechanism!” activists denounce corporate lobbying in climate change negotiations

· Dams and reservoirs are important generators of greenhouse gases, and responsible for almost one quarter of the methane emissions caused by humans

· Nasa’s leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned that corporate lobbying is gravely undermining democratic attempts to curb carbon emissions.

Barcelona, 03 November. The aim of today’s action against corporate lobbyists is to make noise to wake the world up, to express outrage at the questionable legitimacy of today’s meeting between major hydro-electrical corporations (Richard Taylor, Executive Director, International Hydropower Association and Jose Maria Calvo-Sotelo, Senior Vice President Regulation and Corporate Development, Endesa Latinoamérica) and delegates from the negotiations in parallel to the official UNFCC.

According to Olivier Hoedeman from lobbying watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory “From Washington DC to Ottawa, Brussels to Tokyo, the most influential governments in the climate negotiations are facing an unprecedented corporate lobbying offensive, aiming to weaken greenhouse gas reduction targets.”

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a market-based tool that allows industrialized nations – obliged to reduce their emissions by the Kyoto Protocol -to avoid cutting excess emissions by paying developing countries to make the emissions reductions in the form of supposedly ‘clean energy’.

The creation of an artificial ‘climate’ market means large corporations are able to buy carbon credits issued by the UN. Thus, business groups that are expected to reduce emissions are linked to questionable projects in developing countries in the name of “sustainable development” and continue to pollute in developed countries.

The CDM actually increases emissions because the credited projects often do not deliver the expected emissions reductions. Companies represented by corporate lobbyists such as the International Hydropower Association are receiving billions of dollars through this instrument.

Hydroelectric projects have quickly become the number one technology in the CDM, despite their high climate impact. Dams and reservoirs are important generators of greenhouse gases, besides being responsible for almost one quarter of the methane emissions caused by humans, specifically 104M tonnes, corresponding to 4 -5% of all induced warming.

Another terrible consequence is the displacement of over 80M people, an overwhelming number of victims, flooding of many places of great social and cultural value, in addition to the irreversible destruction of river ecosystems.

Today we denounce the death and destruction caused by large dams, and promoted by prominent lobbyists in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Today we say, NO MORE DAMS! LOBBIES OUT OF OUR CLIMATE! THE CLIMATE IS NOT FOR SALE!

Rossport update

‘Gagged’ protest highlights lack of democracy in Mayo Forum

3 November 2009

‘Gagged’ protest highlights lack of democracy in Mayo Forum

3 November 2009
This morning An Bord Pleanala have announced that they are deferring the decision on the onshore section of the Corrib Gas pipeline. Bord Pleanala says that approximately 5.6km (or 62% of the whole onshore pipeline) is considered unacceptable because of its proximity to dwelling houses located within its hazard range should a pipeline failure occur. See the latest RTE news report on this here: http://www.rte.ie/news/2009/1103/corrib.html or Irish Times report: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/1103/…0.htm
More on the Bord Pleanala decision will follow later, this is a report on yesterdays People’s Forum in Belmullet and Minister’s Forum in Corran Buí.

Yesterday morning, saw the return of the People’s Forum to Belmullet, which was attended among others by a representative of the Garda Ombudsman. During, this members of the community who oppose the imposition of the Corrib Gas Project on the area, outlined some of the issues they have had with the policing of the protests and the subsequent efforts and failures of the Garda Ombudsman. In the afternoon, the community moved and went to hold a silent protest at the Ministers Forum. Some people taped their mouths shut to show how the community have been silenced to facilitate Shell. This forum is officially called the “North West Mayo Development Forum” but is known locally as the “Funny Forum” and it certainly lived up to this local name, and it truly was cringe worthy to see some of supposedly most powerful people in the Mayo and the country perform in this charade.

The point has been made numerous times that the Funny Forum is purely for media spin and to project the image to the wider public that the powers that be are addressing the concerns of the community. However nothing could be further from the truth. In the Mayo News today, a quote from a spokeswoman for Eamon Ó Cuív stated “The ministers were delighted that Shell to Sea attended the forum, even if they had their mouths taped and did not participate”. Perhaps what she could have really added was “This is exactly the type of participation we really want from the community”. See: http://www.mayonews.ie/index.php?option=com_content&tas…id=38

In a joint statement from Pobal Chill Chomáin and Pobal le Chéile, they state “the so-called forum is completely ignoring the health and safety issues surrounding the Corrib gas project, yet these are the specific issues that are continuing to give rise to conflict and disagreement in Erris’. It continued: “The Ministers’ forum is widely regarded within our community as a sham, and is being used not as an instrument of conflict resolution but as an instrument for Corrib project advancement.”

The Ministers forum had a presentation from Dept of Energy & Natural Resources as well as the Garda Ombudsman, a short speech from Eamon Ó Cuív about the money they have given recently to the area. Finally Denise Horan who has recently joined Shell’s PR team from the lofty post of Editor of the Mayo News then gave a presentation of the bribes Shell had also handed out.

The Garda Ombudsman presentation, was given by the Ombudsman’s head of communications Kieran FitzGerald and he told the Minister’s Forum that 111 complaints had been received in relation to the Corrib protests. Of these 78 were deemed admissible and 33 were deemed inadmissible for investigation. Some 55 files were “closed”– i.e. the investigation had been completed – and 23 cases were still open. However his presentation was met with more or less silence from the assembled forum members. This was in marked contrasts with the earlier People’s Forum.

The People’s Forum got off to a slow start, but when Graham Doyle, communications officer for the Garda Ombudsman arrived things livened up. He was a last minute stand in for head of the communications for the Ombudsman Kevin Fitzpatrick (who mysteriously was able to make the “Funny Forum”), and as such didn’t have any of the statistics about complaints relating to the Corrib Gas Project. Mr Doyle did engage well with the forum, however it became clear very quickly that a lot of the people present were overall fairly disillusioned with the effectiveness of the Garda Ombudsman. A lot of the speakers present made the point that the Garda Ombudsman seems to be trying investigate the complaints but at the end of the weren’t achieving any results. A few people quoted cases where they’re was very strong evidence (one had 5 eyewitness and partial video evidence of an assault, another had clear forensic evidence of criminal damage) and that the Ombudsman had sent the cases forward to the DPP for prosecution however the DPP refused to prosecute. This bottleneck at the DPP, who refuse to prosecute with any cases against Gardaí involving Shell to Sea protests seem to be a particular point of contention. Mr Doyle admitted that the Garda Ombudsman had a lot of work to do to prove their credibility.

One, very moving speech came from Winfred Macklin, who spoke of her involvement in the aftermath of a gas explosion in Scotland of a pipeline which was running at between 4 & 9 bar pressure. The Corrib Gas Pipeline is designed to run up to 345 bar pressure until Glengad and up to 144 bar between Glengad and Bellanaboy. Ms Macklin also urged the Ombudsman to speak out against the Garda violence and quoted Mandela who said that “silence is collaboration”. See a clip from Ms Macklin speech here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w21g0QVOio

The Ombudsman representative told the forum that they had sought permission to investigate the policing of crowds under Section 106 of the Garda Síochána Act, however this had been refused by the Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern. After Mr Doyle stated that he didn’t want to comment on individual cases, one contributor state that people weren’t asking the Ombudsman to comment on individual cases but they should be commenting on the overall violence of the Gardaí and that silence thus far by the Ombudsman Commission was reprehensible.

One point made was that the way the Ombudsman was initially set up, they were constricted on all sides from the DPP, the Minister for Justice, Garda Commissioner and then informally by pressure brought to bear by the Garda Representative Association.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/1103/1224257962988.html

More photos at http://www.indymedia.ie/article/94646

apple action at the earth centre

Earlier today a group of activists took apple action and liberated a haul of delicious fruits from the abundant forest gardens at the derelict earth centre. Weeks of meaningless promises and blatant lies from Doncaster Council led the group of harvesters to take action. They had been told by local authorities that the fruit was infected by wasps and the MOD would be using the space for 3 weeks so access denied!

This may seem like a small feat but as numbers and support grows the move to reclaim the land at the earth centre is getting closer!

Work Stopped Again at Mainshill Wood

2.11.2009

2.11.2009
Work was halted yet again at Mainshill today, starting at around seven a.m., when a group of about 17 people surrounded the harvester machine used for taking down large trees and one person managed to lock herself on with a D-lock to the arm of the tractor. The police and then Strathclyde Mountain Rescue and V Division cutting crew were called in, the latter two not arriving until approximately eleven a.m. Activists passed the time waiting in the cold and the rain playing games, much to the amusement of police and workers, who were incidentally no fun at all. People were told to vacate the premises upon the arrival of the cutting crew, but once there they cut out the locked-on person relatively quickly, and work was able to resume around noon. This action makes today the third day out of six working days that work has been successfully halted for a time.

mainshill@riseup.net
http://coalactionscotland.noflag.org.uk/?page_id=415

Earth First! Roma, waiting Copenaghen… II act

To the dawn of Friday 30 October a group of activists of Earth First!

To the dawn of Friday 30 October a group of activists of Earth First! Rome have continued the campaign in view of the vertex on the climate that will have been to Copenaghen since November 30 to December 10. The select place, piazzale degli Eroi, has been carpeted from posters and two banners from 4 meters have been set on the advertising placards: “Copenaghen is near…dye of green the city!” and “Stadium, bridges, nuclear…where the air to breath?”
To the dawn the central fountain of the plaza resulted to be dyed of green.

Protest at Danish anti-climate protest law

Write to the Danish Ambassador or phone or email to protest at the planned repression of climate activists in Copenhagen.

His excellency Birger Riis-Jørgensen
Embassy of Denmark
55 Sloane Street
London SW1X 9SR

Tel: 0044 (0)20 7333 0200
Fax: 0044 (0)20 7333 0270
E-mail: lonamb@um.dk

Write to the Danish Ambassador or phone or email to protest at the planned repression of climate activists in Copenhagen.

His excellency Birger Riis-Jørgensen
Embassy of Denmark
55 Sloane Street
London SW1X 9SR

Tel: 0044 (0)20 7333 0200
Fax: 0044 (0)20 7333 0270
E-mail: lonamb@um.dk

‘We write to express our concern about the proposed “hoodlum” law which is planned by your government. The bill that will be put before the Danish parliament, in a few weeks, has serious implications for anyone who is intending to demonstrate, or protest in any way, during the COP15 summit in Copenhagen this December.

It is clear from the timing, that your government intends this bill to become law by the time of the summit. We understand that the proposed bill will greatly increase the Police’s powers of arrest. Among its main provisions: the extension of the period of “preventative” arrest from six to twelve hours; an increase in maximum sentence for obstructing a police officer of up to fourty days, even for a first offence; as well as a host of measures which greatly increase the penalties for breaking the law regarding public protests. These measures,if approved, will effectively criminalise protests involving any degree of peaceful civil disobedience. At the same time, a climate of fear is being generated by certain elements of the Danish media about the prospect of thousands of climate activists descending on Copenhagen. We think this is no coincidence. It is therefore clear that the law is aimed at the many thousands of climate activists, from all over the globe, who will be coming to Copenhagen. It appears to us that the Danish government and media is hostile to both the protesters and their message. We therefore call upon the Danish government not to persue this legislation and to allow protesters to demonstrate and congregate without police harassment.’

Spread the word

Background here http://de.indymedia.org/2009/10/263838.shtml