Author: earthfirst

South American dam news

2 Arrests in Home Depot Dam Protest; Take Action!

May 27th, 2009

2 Arrests in Home Depot Dam Protest; Take Action!

May 27th, 2009
Two activists were arrest­ed at a Home Depot in Glen­dale, CO, near Den­ver, after hang­ing a ban­ner off the build­ing that read, “Dam Home Depot, NOT Patag­o­nia!” Home Depot is under pres­sure from Inter­na­tion­al Rivers and allies for its ongo­ing finan­cial involve­ment with the main Chilean inter­est pro­mot­ing 5 dams in Chilean Patag­o­nia.

Home Depot has a share­hold­ers’ meet­ing com­ing up on Thurs­day, May 28 in Atlanta, Geor­gia. Con­tact them (before their May 28 share­hold­ers’ meet­ing if pos­si­ble, but cer­tain­ly dur­ing or after as well) and tell them to can­cel pur­chas­es of tim­ber from the Mat­te and Angeli­ni Groups (the com­pa­nies CMPC and Arau­co) for their involve­ment in plans to dam wild Patag­o­nia, and to drop the charges against Earth First! pro­test­ers in Ara­pa­hoe Coun­ty, Col­orado. Call 1–800-553‑3199 (press exten­sion # 5), or send an email direct­ly from this site.

For more back­ground on the issue, vis­it Inter­na­tion­al Rivers’ Patag­o­nia page.

—

More South Amer­i­can Dam News

Chilean Patag­o­nia: Inter­na­tion­al Rivers deployed two large ban­ners at Home Depot’s annu­al share­hold­er meet­ing in Atlanta, GA, USA, on May 28, demand­ing that the cor­po­ra­tion sev­er ties with the two com­pa­nies push­ing plans to dam 5 rivers in wild Patag­o­nia. Inside the meet­ing, pro­test­ers brought their demands direct­ly to the company’s board.

The action came only a day after 2 Earth First! activists were arrest­ed for drop­ping a sim­i­lar ban­ner off a Home Depot in Col­orado. For more infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign to Dam Home Depot and Save Patag­o­nia, vis­it Inter­na­tion­al Rivers’ Patag­o­nia page.

Brazil: At least 7 peo­ple were killed when a water stor­age dam burst, flood­ing the city of Cocal da Estação, pop­u­la­tion 30,000. Thou­sands were left home­less or with­out elec­tric­i­ty. Fol­low­ing the acci­dent, a Brazil­ian dam expert esti­mat­ed that 200 oth­er dams in the coun­try are at risk of fail­ure.

In bet­ter news, a fed­er­al judge has sus­pend­ed the envi­ron­men­tal per­mit for the Belo Monte dam on the Xin­gu riv­er, due to insuf­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion of the effects on indige­nous peo­ple. The Xin­gu dams have drawn a great deal of oppo­si­tion on both legal grounds and from indige­nous nations whose ter­ri­to­ry would be flood­ed or degrad­ed if they go through. They are part of a much larg­er plan to scale up Brazil’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture through the con­struc­tion of mas­sive hydro­elec­tric and nuclear plants.

Peru: The Cen­tral Ashanin­ka del Rio Ene (CARE), rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the indige­nous Ashanin­ka com­mu­ni­ties of the Ene Val­ley, declared its unequiv­o­cal oppo­si­tion to the planned Pak­itza­pan­go hydro­elec­tric dam stat­ing, that “the Ashanin­ka com­mu­ni­ties of the Ene riv­er … Repu­di­ate the use of the Ashanin­ka word Pak­itza­pan­go in light of its spir­i­tu­al and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance for the Ashanin­ka Peo­ple of Peru [and] Demand that any activ­i­ty such as research, pro­mo­tions, reports, meet­ings or pro­pos­als that sup­port or pro­mote the con­struc­tion of the Pak­itza­pan­go dam are imme­di­ate­ly called off. The Ashanin­ka of the Ene val­ley will NOT per­mit the entry of any insti­tu­tion car­ry­ing out any of the men­tioned activ­i­ties.”

Read the full dec­la­ra­tion.

UPDATE (June 4 2009): It appears that the dams planned for Ashanin­ka ter­riotry in Peru are intend­ed to sell elec­tric­i­ty to Brazil, pri­mar­i­ly for min­ing, met­al pro­cess­ing and indus­tri­al agri­cul­ture indus­tries in the East­ern Ama­zon.

Philippines: New Peoples Army seizes guns from mining company

On the evening of May 29, 2009, a pla­toon of the 3rd Pulang Bagani Com­pa­ny-NPA dis­armed anoth­er 1102nd Provin­cial Mobile Group-PNP squad assigned as a secu­ri­ty force of the APEX Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in Barangay Masara, Maco, Com­val.

On the evening of May 29, 2009, a pla­toon of the 3rd Pulang Bagani Com­pa­ny-NPA dis­armed anoth­er 1102nd Provin­cial Mobile Group-PNP squad assigned as a secu­ri­ty force of the APEX Min­ing Cor­po­ra­tion in Barangay Masara, Maco, Com­val. Swift­ly seized were five high-pow­ered rifles con­sist­ing of four (4) M16 armalites and one (1) M14 rifle after being sur­prised by the raid­ing NPA unit that entered the com­pa­ny com­pound. Since the tar­get PNP unit did not make any armed resis­tance, they did not have any casu­al­ty.

The min­ing firm which is owned by the Lon­don-based Crew Min­er­als Cor­po­ra­tion was pun­ished for the con­tin­u­ing envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion its oper­a­tion has caused. One such dev­as­ta­tion was the land­slide in Barangay Masara last year that caused deaths and dis­place­ment in two barangays. Also, the 1102nd PMG-PNP in Com­val forms part of the Invest­ment Defense Force (IDF) — the Arroyo regime’s armed com­po­nent that direct­ly pro­tects the inter­ests of large min­ing com­pa­nies and big agribusi­ness, and vio­lates the inher­ent rights of poor peas­ants and lumads to their liveli­hood and ances­tral lands.

from.…

http://www.philippinerevolution.net/cgi-bin/statements/stmts.pl?author=mac;date=090531;lang=eng

climate rush bike ride report — no arrests; meanwhile, campaign materials confiscated.…

1st June 2009
up to 200 cyclists joined the cli­mate rush bike ride tonight out­side chatham house where the cor­po­rate con­fer­ence “coal: an answer to ener­gy secu­ri­ty?” was being held.

Car? More a toilet than a convenience. - placard1st June 2009
up to 200 cyclists joined the cli­mate rush bike ride tonight out­side chatham house where the cor­po­rate con­fer­ence “coal: an answer to ener­gy secu­ri­ty?” was being held.

Cyclists assem­bled out­side chatham house, while an ener­getic krish­na band on wheels played rather good cov­ers of sex pis­tols and oth­er rous­ing tunes. a sec­ond sound sys­tem was used for short speech­es and announce­ments.

there were quite a few police around, includ­ing some for­ward intel­li­gence and pho­tog­ra­ph­er tak­ing snaps (which depen­dent on a pos­si­ble appeal to the house of lords by police, may soon be a point­less job if they can’t keep all their nice pics on a nice big data­base of inno­cent pro­test­ers).

slight­ly lat­er than planned (isn’t it always), the mass set off on it’s mys­tery bike ride to vis­it ‘cli­mate crime scenes’ and aim­ing to end with a pic­nic.

the ride took in BAA and E‑ON HQs among oth­er places, and after a few rounds of par­lia­ment square, set up a pic­nic on west­min­ster bridge.

—-

The ‘Bike Rush’ gath­ered around 5 pm out­side Chatham House, where ear­li­er in the day 5 Cli­mate Rush activists were arrest­ed when they tried to block the entrance to the con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: An answer to our ener­gy secu­ri­ty’ with a bike sculp­ture and a ban­ner read­ing ‘NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH’.

By 18.10 when the protest moved off there were almost 300 cyclists and a tan­dem pulled sound sys­tem. The rush toured the main streets of the West End includ­ing Pic­cadil­ly Cir­cus, Shaftes­bury Avenue, Oxford St, Regent St, St James St and The Mall, pass­ing Buck­ing­ham Palace and then cycling around Vic­to­ria before head­ing to the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and West­min­ster Bridge.

Some of the pro­test­ers rode in white dress­es and hats evok­ing the Suf­fragette era, and one came in black as a wid­ow, mourn­ing the end of coal. Many more wore red sash­es, copied from the pur­ple sash­es worn by the Suf­fragettes, but red, to sig­ni­fy­ing the we are at the high­est lev­el of dan­ger — and some car­ried the mes­sage ‘Cli­mate Code Red’. Oth­ers bore the suf­fragette mot­to, ‘Deeds Not Words’, and there were also sash­es say­ing ‘No Air­port Expan­sion’. ‘Action on Coal Now!, Trains Not Planes’ and ‘Ped­al Pow­er.’

Police on ped­al bikes rode with the pro­test­ers, stop­ping the traf­fic at some junc­tions so the ‘Rush’ could safe­ly and legal­ly go through red lights, and at sev­er­al points there were a cou­ple of police For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) beaver­ing away as usu­al behind their long-lens cam­eras and video col­lect­ing thou­sands of images of pro­test­ers and jour­nal­ists for the data­base they deny hav­ing. There were also police vans and more police out­side sev­er­al places occu­pied by ‘cli­mate crim­i­nals’, includ­ing the government’s clum­si­ly-named Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise & Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (BERR), respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing much of its anti-envi­ron­ment cli­mate warm­ing activ­i­ty.

The ‘Rush’ halt­ed out­side sev­er­al of these offices of com­pa­nies they accuse of crim­i­nal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty towards the envi­ron­ment, includ­ing BP in St James Square, the British Air­ports Author­i­ty at Vic­to­ria, and BERR. At each stop peo­ple came to the micro­phone to com­ment on the activ­i­ties of these organ­i­sa­tions and oth­ers we had passed, explain­ing how these com­pa­nies were harm­ing our envi­ron­ment.

Police on ped­al bikes rode with the pro­test­ers, stop­ping the traf­fic at some junc­tions so the ‘Rush’ could safe­ly and legal­ly go through red lights, and at sev­er­al points there were a cou­ple of police For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams (FIT) beaver­ing away as usu­al behind their long-lens cam­eras and video col­lect­ing thou­sands of images of pro­test­ers and jour­nal­ists for the data­base they deny hav­ing. There were also police vans and more police out­side sev­er­al places occu­pied by ‘cli­mate crim­i­nals’, includ­ing the government’s clum­si­ly-named Depart­ment for Busi­ness Enter­prise & Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (BERR), respon­si­ble for pro­mot­ing much of its anti-envi­ron­ment cli­mate warm­ing activ­i­ty.

The ‘Rush’ halt­ed out­side sev­er­al of these offices of com­pa­nies they accuse of crim­i­nal irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty towards the envi­ron­ment, includ­ing BP in St James Square, the British Air­ports Author­i­ty at Vic­to­ria, and BERR. At each stop peo­ple came to the micro­phone to com­ment on the activ­i­ties of these organ­i­sa­tions and oth­ers we had passed, explain­ing how these com­pa­nies were harm­ing our envi­ron­ment.

After cycling around Par­lia­ment Square, and stop­ping to express sup­port for the Tamils on hunger strike there, the mass of cyclists came to a halt on West­min­ster Bridge, and after a few min­utes, decid­ed to have the end of ride pic­nic in the mid­dle of it.

A very long ban­ner with the text ‘Remem­ber Remem­ber the 5th of Decem­ber’ — the date of the Cli­mate Demon­stra­tion — as well as a ref­er­ence to the man often claimed as the only per­son to have entered par­lia­ment with hon­est inten­tions, was hung briefly from both sides of the bridge and dis­played it on the road­way.

Police quick­ly cleared the cyclists from the south­bound car­riage­way, but when I left around 15 min­utes lat­er the pic­nic was still con­tin­u­ing on the north­bound side of the bridge, and no traf­fic was mov­ing across the bridge in either direc­tion.

——–

Police Abuse Pow­ers To Pre­vent FA Cup Cli­mate Protest

Police offi­cers unlaw­ful­ly con­fis­cat­ed cam­paign leaflets and T‑shirts from cli­mate pro­test­ers out­side the FA Cup final on Sat­ur­day, pre­vent­ing a legal demon­stra­tion from tak­ing place. Activists from the Camp for Cli­mate Action are call­ing this yet anoth­er exam­ple of over-the-top polic­ing designed to silence envi­ron­men­tal protest, and are redou­bling calls for an inde­pen­dent pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest.

On Sat­ur­day just after 12 noon, two police offi­cers stopped Alan Wen on his way to meet fel­low cli­mate cam­paign­ers out­side the match. Mr Wen and his fel­low cam­paign­ers had been plan­ning to hand out leaflets to match-goers, explain­ing how E.ON, the spon­sors of the FA Cup, are try­ing to build the UK’s first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in 30 years, which would have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the cli­mate [1]. Claim­ing to be act­ing under the Lon­don Local Author­i­ties Act, the two police offi­cers seized the fly­ers and T‑shirts – all bear­ing the spoof logo “E.ON: F.OFF” – and demand­ed Mr Wen’s name and address, threat­en­ing to arrest him if he did not com­ply. In fact, the offi­cers had no legal pow­ers to do any of these things, and Mr Wen was not break­ing any laws [2]. He is now con­sid­er­ing mak­ing a for­mal com­plaint.

A spokesper­son from the Camp for Cli­mate Action’s legal team said: “Have the police learned noth­ing from the G20 protests? This was yet anoth­er dis­grace­ful exam­ple of over-the-top polic­ing, designed to pre­vent envi­ron­men­tal protest from tak­ing place. Why are the police abus­ing their pow­ers to pro­tect the prof­its of a giant ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion?”

This inci­dent fol­lows wide­spread pub­lic crit­i­cism of heavy-hand­ed and aggres­sive police tac­tics at the April 1st G20 protests, as well as con­cern about inap­pro­pri­ate use of police sur­veil­lance and stop-and-search pow­ers against envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers [3]. A report by the Nation­al Police Improve­ment Agency, thought to be crit­i­cal of police tac­tics at last August’s Cli­mate Camp protest at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion, has been mys­te­ri­ous­ly kept out of the pub­lic domain [4]. Mean­while, the Cli­mate Camp’s legal team have slammed an upcom­ing review of the polic­ing of protest by Her Majesty’s Inspec­torate of Con­stab­u­lary (HMIC), brand­ing it a “white­wash” and refus­ing to be involved.

In an email to the HMIC explain­ing their deci­sion [5], the Cli­mate Camp’s legal team said “If a tru­ly inde­pen­dent, wide-reach­ing and influ­en­tial pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest were to be launched, we would con­sid­er becom­ing involved. How­ev­er, the HMIC review is like­ly to be a biased, tooth­less white­wash and so we believe that our time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the root caus­es of cli­mate change.”

The human rights organ­i­sa­tion Lib­er­ty have sim­i­lar­ly declined to be involved in the HMIC review.

ENDS

Notes for Edi­tors

[1] Ger­man ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion E.ON have applied for Gov­ern­ment per­mis­sion to build the first new UK coal-fired plant in thir­ty years at Kingsnorth in Kent. If built, this
pow­er sta­tion would pro­duce the same amount of car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined. If – as the Gov­ern­ment have sug­gest­ed – the new pow­er plant is fit­ted with a demon­stra­tion “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age” (CCS) device, this would only reduce its emis­sions by a quar­ter. This means that even if the tech­nol­o­gy worked (which is by no means cer­tain), Kingsnorth would still be far more pol­lut­ing than a gas pow­er sta­tion – let alone a switch to wind, solar, tidal, or wave, or sim­ply using less ener­gy in the first place, all of which are viable alter­na­tives.

[2] The Lon­don Local Author­i­ties Act
(see http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/localact1994/ukla_19940012_en_1#l1g4) gives police in Lon­don the pow­er to con­fis­cate lit­er­a­ture “which adver­tis­es, or con­tains or com­pris­es an adver­tise­ment, for com­mer­cial gain”. It only applies to com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing and does NOT give police the pow­er to seize cam­paign leaflets or T‑Shirts. It is per­fect­ly legal to dis­trib­ute free leaflets in a pub­lic place so long as noth­ing is for sale. The Local Author­i­ties Act also con­tains no pro­vi­sions for police to search peo­ple to look for “free lit­er­a­ture”, nor to take people’s names and address­es.

[3] See for exam­ple http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8061050.stm, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/henryporter/2009/mar/12/protest-kingsnorth and http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/apr/02/g20-climate-camp-protest-london-police-bishopsgate.

[4] http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2009/05/police-shelve-review-on-kingsnorth-protest/

[5] The full text of the email to the HMIC is copied below:

(Sent Fri­day 29th May 2009)

Dear HMIC,

We are writ­ing to for­mal­ly reject your offer of dis­cussing how we might be involved in the HMIC’s “Review of the Polic­ing of Pub­lic Protest”.

The dis­grace­ful police behav­iour at the G20 protests this April was part of a wor­ry­ing ongo­ing trend in the dis­pro­por­tion­ate and aggres­sive polic­ing of protest. At the Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth in 2008 we encoun­tered the indis­crim­i­nate use of stop and search pow­ers, the mass con­fis­ca­tion of per­son­al prop­er­ty, and aggres­sive behav­iour by police offi­cers on mul­ti­ple occa­sions. There is a des­per­ate need for a tru­ly inde­pen­dent pub­lic review into the polic­ing of protest — but this HMIC review will be no such thing, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

* Lack of inde­pen­dent mem­ber­ship: The HMIC is staffed large­ly by ex-police offi­cers, and despite its claims of inde­pen­dence retains strong ties with both the Home Office and the police. It can­not be trust­ed to car­ry out a full and fair review of police tac­tics.

* Nar­row­ness of scope: The pro­posed HMIC review aims to “Assess the effec­tive­ness and impact of pub­lic order tac­tics” and “iden­ti­fy dif­fi­cul­ties and bar­ri­ers” to their “suc­cess­ful imple­men­ta­tion”. The clos­est it will come to cri­tiquing these tac­tics will be to “exam­ine the over­all direc­tion of pub­lic order goals, strate­gies and tac­tics” with rela­tion to “the acknowl­edged prin­ci­ples of British polic­ing”. The review will not con­sid­er whether some or all of the tac­tics used by police at protests are in fact com­plete­ly inap­pro­pri­ate. It also con­tin­ues to con­sid­er protest as a form of pub­lic order offence — i.e. a form of crim­i­nal­i­ty — rather than a vital demo­c­ra­t­ic right in a free soci­ety.

* Lack of influ­ence: Even if this review were, against all the odds, to pro­duce a seri­ous cri­tique of police prac­tices we have lit­tle faith that its find­ings will lead to any sig­nif­i­cant shift in pol­i­cy or prac­tice. As a case in point, a sim­i­lar review by the NPIA into the polic­ing of the Kingsnorth protest seems to have been buried with­out any pub­lic expo­sure.

If a tru­ly inde­pen­dent, wide-reach­ing and influ­en­tial pub­lic review of the polic­ing of protest were to be launched, we would con­sid­er becom­ing involved. How­ev­er, this HMIC review appears like­ly to be a biased, tooth­less white­wash and so we believe that our time will be bet­ter spent cam­paign­ing against the root caus­es of cli­mate change. We note that the human rights organ­i­sa­tion Lib­er­ty have sim­i­lar­ly declined to be involved.

Yours sin­cere­ly,

The Camp for Cli­mate Action Legal Team

http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

Five Climate Suffragettes are arrested for blockading coal conference at Chatham

1st June 2009
The Cli­mate Rush geared up for their Ped­al Pow­er Bike Rush this evening by blockad­ing a con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: an answer to ener­gy inse­cu­ri­ty?’ by glu­ing them­selves to a giant bike sculp­ture. The Bike Rush is due to leave from that same place at 6pm sharp this evening.

Coal conference protest with bike lock-on1st June 2009
The Cli­mate Rush geared up for their Ped­al Pow­er Bike Rush this evening by blockad­ing a con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: an answer to ener­gy inse­cu­ri­ty?’ by glu­ing them­selves to a giant bike sculp­ture. The Bike Rush is due to leave from that same place at 6pm sharp this evening.

In prepa­ra­tion for a protest bike ride this evening, sev­en mem­bers of the envi­ron­men­tal action group, ‘Cli­mate Rush’, have obstruct­ed the main entrance to a coal con­fer­ence, ‘Coal: An answer to our ener­gy secu­ri­ty.’ The bike rush: ‘Cli­mate Rush presents Ped­al Pow­er’, will set off from out­side this coal con­fer­ence as it ends at 17:30.

On arriv­ing at Chatham House the Cli­mate Rush­ers held up a bike sculp­ture and a ban­ner that read ‘NO NEW COAL – CLIMATE RUSH’. They were aggres­sive­ly removed by the police and so far two young women, Yamu­na (22, stu­dent) and Han­nah (21, stu­dent) and three oth­ers have been arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass.

The group was demon­strat­ing against the build­ing of new coal fired pow­er sta­tions, recent­ly giv­en the go ahead by Ed Mil­liband MP. They had cre­at­ed a bike sculp­ture to rep­re­sent how we must look to alter­na­tive sources of ener­gy and trans­port if we are to avoid run­away cli­mate change.

A mem­ber of the group, Mari­na Pep­per, said:

“Our politi­cians are fail­ing us on cli­mate change, allow­ing multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions to con­tin­ue to sell us ener­gy from coal, because there’s a prof­it in it. Putting the desire for prof­its before the needs of peo­ple and our plan­et is moral­ly rep­re­hen­si­ble. This is why we take direct action and will keep tak­ing direct action”

The Bike Rush begins in St James Square at 17:00 and will end with a ceilidh and pic­nic in an undis­closed loca­tion.

climaterush@gmail.com
http://www.climaterush.co.uk

Eco-VIllage Occupation London 6th June Update + Other News.

Hel­lo friends,

In this report:

News of the upcom­ing Eco-Vil­lage occu­pa­tion tak­ing place on a dis­used piece of land near Ham­mer­smith start­ing on Sat­ur­day, 6th June (see attached e‑flyer for details).

Eco flyerHel­lo friends,

In this report:

News of the upcom­ing Eco-Vil­lage occu­pa­tion tak­ing place on a dis­used piece of land near Ham­mer­smith start­ing on Sat­ur­day, 6th June (see attached e‑flyer for details).

The lat­est from the Tyt­ing com­mu­ni­ty farm occu­pa­tion — infor­ma­tion on how you can get involved and sup­port the action.

And some inter­est­ing facts about the land in Britain.

ECO-VILLAGE OCCUPATION

The Eco vil­lage occu­pa­tion begins on the 6th June. Meet at Water­loo Sta­tion at 10AM under the clock. Please try to be on time.

********Please Note**********

If you are com­ing for the open­ing stage of the eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion, you will need to bring a tent, water and food sup­plies. If you have access to kitchen equip­ment and oth­er use­ful tat that you would be OK to loan, please bring it along too.

***************************

The Eco-Vil­lage Occu­pa­tion is about to begin. Infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties lie ahead; what will hap­pen depends on what we make it. By cre­at­ing a sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ty in the heart of the urban jun­gle, we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to raise the con­scious­ness of urban dwellers all around and shine a light on a way of liv­ing that goes far to solv­ing the prob­lem of the destruc­tion of peo­ple and plan­et.

Dur­ing the last pub­lic plan­ning meet­ing, we had con­sen­sus on the fol­low­ing issues:

- A no vehi­cle on site pol­i­cy. In order to max­i­mize liv­ing space and encour­age peo­ple to come to the vil­lage via sus­tain­able means.

- Acoustic music only. So that we don’t make ene­mies of the neigh­bours.

- All major deci­sions in the eco-vil­lage to be decid­ed via the con­sen­su­al deci­sion mak­ing of all the peo­ple in the eco-vil­lage.

Please come along and join us. Ide­al­ly, we are look­ing for com­mit­ted peo­ple who share in the vision of the eco-vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty and who are able to com­mit for an indef­i­nite peri­od, how­ev­er if you sim­ply want to stay for a night or two or even vis­it for a day, please feel free to come along.

This eco-vil­lage occu­pa­tion is inspired by The Land is Ours which cam­paigns peace­ful­ly for access to the land, its resources, and the deci­sion-mak­ing process­es affect­ing them, for every­one, irre­spec­tive of race, gen­der or age. for more infor­ma­tion, please vis­it:

www.tlio.org.uk

con­tact Car­olyn on: 01727 812369 or Gareth on: 07515 166011 or

diggers360@yahoo.co.uk

Tyt­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Farm Occu­pa­tion.

Six weeks ago a group of peo­ple (some fresh from the Raven’s Ait occu­pa­tion in Kingston) assert­ing their com­mon law right to live and grow food, com­menced the occu­pa­tion of Tyt­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Farm in Half Pen­ny Lane Guild­ford. (a pub­licly owned site which has been vacant for sev­er­al years).

Guild­ford coun­cil (the own­er of the prop­er­ty) has been try­ing with­out suc­cess and with much local oppo­si­tion to sell the com­mu­ni­ty farm off by divid­ing it into small­er lots.

The coun­cil were grant­ed an ‘inter­im pos­ses­sion order’ last Wednes­day (27th May) and threat­ened to send in the police to remove any­one still on the site. On Fri­day morn­ing, var­i­ous con­trac­tors arrived and board­ed up the farm­house (but no police).

Far from dent­ing their morale, the threat of force­ful evic­tion has sim­ply made those enjoy­ing life at the farm more deter­mined to stay their ground.

To see a video of what’s been hap­pen­ing at the farm please click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKe_uCHpokU

This occu­pa­tion is open to any­one who would like to be part of the com­mu­ni­ty, grow veg­eta­bles and live in a sus­tain­able way, whilst help­ing to retain com­mon rights to a valu­able and beau­ti­ful piece of com­mon land. If you want to get involved, sim­ply grab a tent and some food (plus some seeds if you have them) and come along. Here is a map of the loca­tion of the farm.

Facts about the land in Britain

did you know that.…

In Britain 70% of land is still owned by less than 1% of the pop­u­la­tion
Less than 8% of the coun­try is under con­crete
50% of the land in Eng­land and Wales remains unreg­is­tered
the Church of Eng­land has ‘mis­laid’ 1.5 mil­lion acres it owned 100 years ago
the Roy­al Fam­i­ly now own or con­trol the equiv­a­lent of an aver­age-sized coun­ty in Eng­land.

* infor­ma­tion cour­tesy of www.who-owns-britain.com

Shell compound breached in Glengad during RSC gathering

May 31, 2009
This after­noon at 5pm, over 200 peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Sum­mer Gath­er­ing attempt­ed to dis­man­tle Shel­l’s ille­gal com­pound at Glen­gad.

Trying to breach Shell compound at GlengadMay 31, 2009
This after­noon at 5pm, over 200 peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp Sum­mer Gath­er­ing attempt­ed to dis­man­tle Shel­l’s ille­gal com­pound at Glen­gad.

After a day of direct action train­ing, local peo­ple and their sup­port­ers walked to the south side of the com­pound where they attempt­ed to breach the fence in two places. They were met by strong oppo­si­tion from over six­ty Gar­dai, includ­ing many from the Pub­lic Order Unit.

At least five peo­ple who scaled the fence into the com­pound were held by secu­ri­ty guards and lat­er arrest­ed.

Lat­er in the after­noon, as the crowd were leav­ing, a fur­ther arrest was made when the Gar­dai tar­get­ed a promi­nent cam­paign­er and forcibly detained him for speak­ing out against the actions of the Gar­dai.

Today’s action comes the day after Mau­ra Har­ring­ton was released after 13 days in Mount Joy prison, Dublin for non-pay­ment of fines, includ­ing a one thou­sand euro con­tri­bu­tion to the Gar­da Benev­o­lent Fund.

Around 200 peo­ple are attend­ing the RSC sum­mer gath­er­ing. It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly sun­ny week­end and preper­a­tions are now well under way for anoth­er sum­mer of action against Shell in Mayo, on land and sea. Come and be part of it!

71 arrested in Copenhagen resisting the World Business Summit on Climate Change

24th May 2009

Our Climate - Not Your BusinessApproaching climate business summit24th May 2009
Pro­test­ers clashed with police in Copen­hagen today while attempt­ing to dis­rupt the World Busi­ness Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change, a gath­er­ing of the worlds largest cor­po­ra­tions and, not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, biggest pol­luters. Orga­nized by the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment, the Busi­ness Sum­mit gave cor­po­rate inter­ests unprece­dent­ed access to the ongo­ing UN cli­mate talks, includ­ing face time with UN Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Ban Ki-moon and so called cli­mate “hero” Al Gore.

The group of pro­tes­tors, lead by a ban­ner read­ing “Our Cli­mate is not Your Busi­ness” attempt­ed to breach police lines in order to dis­rupt the meet­ing. The live­ly group of activists want­ed high­t­light the dam­ag­ing and dis­rup­tive role that cor­po­ra­tions play in the inter­na­tion­al cli­mate talks. The list of cor­po­ra­tions attend­ing includ­ed #1 car­bon emit­ter in the world Shell Oil, Duke Ener­gy (#12 at last count), and BP among oth­er cli­mate crim­i­nals.

“The Dan­ish gov­ern­ment appears to be under the impres­sion that some of the world’s most pol­lut­ing com­pa­nies are going to put for­ward tough mea­sures to tack­le cli­mate change,” said Ken­neth Haar, a researcher with Cor­po­rate Europe Obser­va­to­ry. “But unfor­tu­nate­ly this doesn’t seem like­ly to be the case. The major­i­ty of the cor­po­ra­tions attend­ing the World Busi­ness Sum­mit on Cli­mate Change seem more intent on pur­su­ing busi­ness as usu­al – with the promise that future tech­nolo­gies will resolve the prob­lem at a lat­er date.

“Cor­po­rate lob­by­ists have been try­ing to influ­ence the UN cli­mate talks from the start. But now they are being invit­ed to set the agen­da before the nego­tia­tors have even sat down. If their demands are lis­tened to, we might as well give up the fight against cli­mate change now.”

The WBSCC draws into ques­tion the legit­i­ma­cy of the UN cli­mate talks. How can we trust a process that opens the door to the very cor­po­ra­tions that cre­at­ed the cli­mate cri­sis, while shut­ting out the worlds poor, indige­nous, and land based

peo­ples who are least respon­si­ble for cli­mate change, yet will bare the brunt of its impacts?

To get involved with the resis­tance to cor­po­rate con­trol over the talks check out:

www.klimakollektiv.dk

More Arrests on Coal River Valley as Actions Against Mountaintop Removal and Coal Sludge Dams Continue

Non-vio­lent Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence in Coal Riv­er Val­ley, WV: Sev­en­teen Arrest­ed in Three Sep­a­rate Actions

Non-vio­lent Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence in Coal Riv­er Val­ley, WV: Sev­en­teen Arrest­ed in Three Sep­a­rate Actions

May 23, 2009: Coal Riv­er Val­ley, WV More than sev­en­ty-five res­i­dents of the Coal Riv­er Val­ley and mem­bers of a coali­tion that includes Moun­tain Jus­tice and Cli­mate Ground Zero pick­et­ed the entrance to Massey Ener­gy’s Mar­fork min­ing com­plex today at noon. Sev­en peo­ple were arrest­ed. The actions were in protest of the com­pa­ny’s plans to blast 100 feet away from the Brushy Fork coal sludge impound­ment.

The demon­stra­tion began with a prayer and ser­mon by Bob “Sage” Rus­so of Chris­tians for the Moun­tains. Ref­er­enc­ing the Ser­mon on the Mount, he called upon cit­i­zens to be stew­ards of the Earth and to move towards sus­tain­able, sta­ble jobs.

Pro­tes­tors stood in front of the gates of the mine facil­i­ty with signs includ­ing “7 bil­lion spilled, 998 killed.”

“Passers­by on Route 3 were over­whelm­ing sup­port­ive with honks, waves, and thumbs up signs,” Rock Creek (Raleigh Coun­ty) res­i­dent Julia Sendor said.

Dur­ing the protest, sev­en peo­ple approached the entrance to the dam facil­i­ty and the Whitesville detach­ment of the West Vir­ginia State Police asked them to leave. When the sev­en refused, the State Police arrest­ed them. Dis­patch­ers say the activists were sent to the South­ern Region­al Jail near Beck­ley, but that infor­ma­tion has not been con­firmed. Bail was report­ed­ly set at $2,000 per per­son.

After the arrests, for­mer U.S. Con­gress­man Ken Hech­ler, a long­time oppo­nent of strip min­ing, gave a speech. He under­scored the respon­si­bil­i­ty of cit­i­zens to safe­guard their free­doms and stand up for their rights.

The protest came just hours after activists car­ried out two non-vio­lent direct actions to protest moun­tain­top removal and coal sludge impound­ments.

This morn­ing, at the Mar­fork facil­i­ty, two peo­ple wear­ing haz­mat suits and res­pi­ra­tors were arrest­ed after boat­ing onto the Brushy Fork impound­ment and float­ing a ban­ner that read, “No More Tox­ic Sludge.” State Police charged the activists with lit­ter­ing and mis­de­meanor tres­pass and trans­port­ed them to the South­ern Region­al Jail. Their bail has been set at $2,000.

At anoth­er action, six activists hung a “Nev­er Again” ban­ner and chained them­selves to a mas­sive dump truck on a Patri­ot Coal-owned moun­tain­top removal mine on Kay­ford Moun­tain. State Police arrived on site to find three peo­ple chained to the main axle of the truck and three oth­ers chained out­side the truck­’s cab. The police removed the six activists, who, along with two oth­ers sup­port­ing them, were trans­port­ed to the Madi­son Coun­ty Cour­t­house, where they were report­ed­ly processed and released.

The tox­ic lake at Brushy Fork dam sits atop a hon­ey­comb of aban­doned under­ground mines. Massey Ener­gy’s own fil­ings with the state Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion project a min­i­mum death toll of 998 should the sev­en-bil­lion-gal­lon dam break. Flood­wa­ters would reach 38.78 feet in height in the town of Pey­tona, 26.61 miles down­stream, with­in three hours and fif­teen min­utes of break­age.

—–

May 26, 2009: BECKLEY, W.Va. — Sev­en­teen moun­tain­top removal activists had no choice but to enforce the laws since all admin­is­tra­tive reme­dies have been exhaust­ed, said some of the activists and sup­port­ers at a press con­fer­ence today. The four still-jailed activists were released on their own recog­ni­zance by Judge Burn­side short­ly after the press con­fer­ence, which was held on the Raleigh Coun­ty Cour­t­house steps.

“I’ve lived in West Vir­ginia most of my life. I’m sick and tired of big busi­ness and the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment telling us what to do,” began Sid Moye of Mer­cer Coun­ty, who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Pick­et at Pet­tus. “They come in and they can take our land, they can ruin our water and they can take our resources. It’s not right and some­body has to do some­thing about it so we do the lit­tle things that we can.”

Eric Blevins, also arrest­ed in the Pet­tus action, said, “I asked the offi­cer arrest­ing me if Massey is going to be allowed to blast near the dam and he did­n’t want to talk about it. I asked him, does­n’t he have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to enforce the law, and he said ‘Not those laws.’ ”

“We locked down on the Kay­ford moun­tain­top removal site with mud from Min­go Coun­ty on our boots,” Ash­lee Hen­der­son said in a state­ment from the Kay­ford 8, “After we were arrest­ed we had the dust remains from Kay­ford Moun­tain added to that mud.”

“Just because a min­ing per­mit is applied for,” Deb­bie Jar­rell of Rock Creek, Raleigh Coun­ty asked the crowd, “Is there a law that states that it has to be grant­ed? If there’s a clean­er way to devel­op ener­gy, such as the Coal Riv­er Wind Project, should we not take advan­tage of it?”

Matt Louis-Rosen­berg point­ed out the absur­di­ty of the lit­ter­ing charges for the two indi­vid­u­als on the Brushy Fork Dam and the $2,000 bail for each of the pro­test­ers. He con­trast­ed the bail rate with the $1,800 fine Massey paid in 1999, when 14.5 miles of the Coal Riv­er were black­ened with slur­ry and the $15,000 A & G Coal paid for the death of three year old Jere­my David­son out­side of Appalachia, Vir­ginia in 2004.

“It was extreme­ly unjust that the mag­is­trate ille­gal­ly post­ed such a high bail, when our max­i­mum fine was only one hun­dred dol­lars,” said Lau­ra Steeple­ton of the Pet­tus 7, who was released this after­noon. “He jus­ti­fied his state­ment by telling us that we had no ties to the area. As a human being and a cit­i­zen of this coun­try I do not only have a tie to this area, but a respon­si­bil­i­ty to ensure secu­ri­ty for these moun­tains and the safe­ty for the peo­ple of this beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty.”

Bristol Co-Mutiny 12th — 20th Sept “Social Change Not Climate Change”

Cap­i­tal­ism and its pup­pet de‘mock’cracy are spi­ralling out of control:a self-cre­at­ed reces­sion, rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment, soar­ing nation­al debt, the ille­gal and unjust occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan & Iraq, apa­thy towards mas­sacres in Pales­tine and Sri Lan­ka, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of free move­ment, the police assaults and murde

Co-mutiny flyerCap­i­tal­ism and its pup­pet de‘mock’cracy are spi­ralling out of control:a self-cre­at­ed reces­sion, rock­et­ing unem­ploy­ment, soar­ing nation­al debt, the ille­gal and unjust occu­pa­tion of Afghanistan & Iraq, apa­thy towards mas­sacres in Pales­tine and Sri Lan­ka, the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of free move­ment, the police assaults and mur­ders of peo­ple on the streets, the con­struc­tion of larg­er air­ports and coal-fired pow­er sta­tions in the face of dev­as­tat­ing envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, the pri­vati­sa­tion of social hous­ing, the list goes on.

But there is hope. There are anti gov­ern­ment protests from Greece to Paris, and Chi­na to Lon­don, as well as fac­to­ry and school occu­pa­tions across the U.K. World wide there are grow­ing, active, and increas­ing­ly angry rad­i­cal & work­ing class move­ments stand­ing up and resist­ing cli­mate chaos, oppres­sion, pover­ty, inse­cu­ri­ty and state con­trol.

Hand-in-hand with these protests are grass­roots actions to build a new soci­ety and take con­trol of our own lives. Ordi­nary peo­ple are find­ing ways to help each oth­er in the face of the cred­it cri­sis cre­at­ed by the banks and cor­po­ra­tions. We are re-learn­ing old skills and learn­ing new ones for the tran­si­tion to a just soci­ety; enabling us to cre­ate com­mu­ni­ty gar­dens, estab­lish hous­ing, food and worker’s co-ops, and use new eco­nom­ics in the neigh­bour­hoods where we live

In Bris­tol and sur­rounds, a diverse bunch of enraged cre­ative, dream­ers and schemers, builders and gar­den­ers, work­ers, stu­dents and unem­ployed have been drawn togeth­er by the com­mon threads of our indig­na­tion at how a com­bi­na­tion of cor­po­rate greed, social injus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion is lead­ing us all towards cli­mate chaos and finan­cial col­lapse.

We invite you to con­verge on Bris­tol for an upris­ing of autonomous actions and events from 12th – 20th of Sep­tem­ber 2009.

The themes for those events and days of action are:

* Free­dom of move­ment (sur­veil­lance, migra­tion)
* Anti-mil­i­tarism (Sri Lan­ka, Afghanistan, Pales­tine, Fil­ton)
* Cli­mate jus­tice (Just tran­si­tion, financ­ing of cli­mate chaos, coal, air­ports)
* Finan­cial col­lapse / com­mu­ni­ty growth (role of banks, cre­at­ing a new econ­o­my)
* Work (Work­ers’ sol­i­dar­i­ty, co-oper­a­tive work­ing, work­place occu­pa­tions)
* Food (ani­mal rights, sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion, per­ma­cul­ture)
* Autonomous spaces (gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, hous­ing, squat­ting)

The Co-Muti­neers will be organ­is­ing actions and events but we need you to get involved, wher­ev­er you are from and what­ev­er your expe­ri­ence.

We encour­age autonomous actions. Come on down, join the mutiny, get in touch!

comutiny@riseup.net
http://comutiny.wordpress.com

Dates for your diary:
Sat 12th Sep­tem­ber – Bris­tol Anar­chist Book Fare
Sun 13th – Sun 20th Sep­tem­ber – CoMutiny Action Con­ver­gence – insert your rev­o­lu­tion here!
Fri 18th – Sun 20th Sep­tem­ber – Days of action in defence of squats and autonomous spaces.

Otaraua hapu save wahi tapu from oil pipeline in Aotearoa

28th May 2009
The Ota­raua hapu in Tarana­ki began pack­ing up their occu­pa­tion camp today after final­ly pro­tect­ing their wahi tapu, from Grey­mouth Petro­le­um’s new pipeline.

Greymouth occupation28th May 2009
The Ota­raua hapu in Tarana­ki began pack­ing up their occu­pa­tion camp today after final­ly pro­tect­ing their wahi tapu, from Grey­mouth Petro­le­um’s new pipeline.

After occu­py­ing the entrance to the well site and dis­rupt­ing work on the new well for more than two months, the hapu’s request to have Tiko­ran­gi Pa offi­cial­ly iden­ti­fied as a wahi tapu by the New Ply­mouth Dis­trict Coun­cil, was approved for an inde­pen­dent review last night.

After pre­vi­ous­ly demand­ing a writ­ten agree­ment from GMP, the hapu informed Grey­mouth Petro­le­um via fax yes­ter­day, stat­ing it was will­ing to accept a ver­bal state­ment by CEO Mark Dun­phy that GMP would not drill a pipeline through Tiko­ran­gi Pa. The hapu seem con­fi­dent that the Dis­trict Coun­cil review, due out in a few months, will pro­vide the pro­tec­tion they need for their pa.

Mr Door­bar said while the occu­pa­tion had brought the hapu togeth­er and clos­er to achiev­ing a com­mon goal, the fight was “not over”.

“It is impor­tant oil com­pa­nies who work in our com­mu­ni­ties under­stand the impact they have, not just on tan­ga­ta when­ua but on the wider farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty … for our­selves we feel we have achieved the out­comes of why we under­took this occu­pa­tion. Grey­mouth Petro­le­um did not drill through Tiko­ran­gi Pa. It remains to be seen whether or not we have to return to any form of peace­ful occu­pa­tion in the future.”

Updates: Day 11 | Day 17 | Day 55