Author: earthfirst

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UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
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1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, Oct/Nov 08
2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08
6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
6) Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
10) Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On recruit­ment stalls, 23.10.08
15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case
col­laps­es, 27.10.08
17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
18) Bris­tol Uni­ver­si­ty Death Fair
19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08

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UPCOMING EVENTS AND ACTIONS:
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1) RBS, E.ON and Shell uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment tours, OCT/NOV 08
Cli­mate crim­i­nals are recruit­ing now, in a Uni­ver­si­ty near you. Find out when and where, as they have kind­ly post­ed their itin­er­aries online.
www.makeitrbs.com/events/

www.shell.com/home/content/gbr/aboutshell/careers/students_and_graduates/calendar_of_events/calendar_of_events_30052008.html

www.eon-uk.com/Careers/Graduates/807.aspx

Stuck for a direct action idea? Check out Ris­ing Tide’s “15 ways to top­ple
the Fos­sil Fuel Empire” on our web­site.

2) Cli­mate Camp Nation­al Gath­er­ing, Brad­ford, 8/9.11.08
The next Cli­mate Camp gath­er­ing will be in Brad­ford on the 8th and 9th Novem­ber. Come along and get involved.This month we will be in the fair city of Brad­ford, based up at the stu­dent union. Food will be pro­vid­ed by the deli­cious Tree­house Cafe and crash space will be near­by.

Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing
Seeds for Change are run­ning a Large Group Facil­i­ta­tion Train­ing for Cli­mate Campers on Fri­day Novem­ber 7th in Leeds (just down the road from the gath­er­ing in Brad­ford), 11AM to 5.30 PM. Please email process at climatecamp.org.uk asap if you are inter­est­ed.

3) Remem­ber­ing Ken Saro-Wiwa, 10.11.08
Film screen­ing and fundrais­er at 7PM at LARC in Lon­don, 62 Fieldgate St, E1 1ES. On the 13th anniver­sary of the mur­der of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogo­ni 9 by the Niger­ian state in 1995, with Shell in close cahoots, we will be remem­ber­ing what they fought for and what they died for. We’ll also be hear­ing about the inspi­ra­tional resis­tance of peo­ple around the world to Shel­l’s unfor­tu­nate­ly far from unique brand of destruc­tion, duplic­i­ty and over­all may­hem in the chase for ever-greater prof­its. There will be film screen­ings of ‘Those Who Dance’ and ‘Shad­ows and Light: Oil, Pow­er, and the Niger Delta’, inspi­ra­tional art on the walls and food and drink. Funds raised will go towards Art Not Oil’s new cam­paign against the Shell-spon­sored Oedi­pus pro­duc­tion cur­rent­ly run­ning at the Nation­al The­atre.

4) Shared Plan­et Con­fer­ence, Birm­ing­ham, 21–23.11.08
The Uni­ver­si­ty of Birm­ing­ham — Shared Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent con­fer­ence on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment. It brings hun­dreds of stu­dents togeth­er for a week­end packed with big-name speak­ers, skills and issue based work­shops, debates, dis­cus­sions, film and a mas­sive par­ty! http://peopleandplanet.org/events/sharedplanet

5) 48 hours of action against E.On and new coal, 28/29.11.08

The UK Gov­ern­ment is call­ing for an 80% reduc­tion in car­bon emis­sions by 2050, we are call­ing for 48 hours of action against E.ON and new coal NOW. Join us in say­ing ‘No to New Coal’: get your friends togeth­er and plan an action for your area. Go stick­er­ing, blockad­ing, serv­ing direct action warn­ing notices at sup­ply chain premis­es, organ­ise an aware­ness rais­ing talk, hang a ban­ner, get cre­ative on the streets, the options are end­less. Get togeth­er, get cre­ative, and plan an action! For more infor­ma­tion vis­it — www.e‑onf-off.org — where a list of poten­tial tar­gets, action ideas and plen­ty of resources will fol­low short­ly.

6) Buy Noth­ing Day, 29.11.08
Sat­ur­day Novem­ber 29h 2008 is Buy Noth­ing Day. It’s a day where you chal­lenge your­self to switch off from shop­ping and tune into life. The rules are sim­ple, for 24 hours you will detox from con­sumerism and live with­out shop­ping. Any­one can take part pro­vid­ed they spend a day with­out spend­ing – bet­ter yet, get togeth­er with some friends and chal­lenge con­sumer cul­ture direct­ly!
www.buynothingday.co.uk

7) Nation­al Cli­mate March, 06.12.08
March on Par­lia­ment to demand that the gov­ern­ment acts on cli­mate now! The march this year goes to Par­lia­ment Square to demand that the gov­ern­ment act now on cli­mate. The march will start at Speak­ers Cor­ner, Hyde Park — assem­ble 12 noon. The march will be pre­ceed­ed by a cli­mate protest bike ride start­ing from Lin­col­n’s Inn Fields at 10.30 am: see more here. There will be an After-Par­ty in the Syn­er­gy Cen­tre from 5.00 pm till late.!
www.campaigncc.org/index.shtml

8) Earth First! Win­ter Moot, 6–8.02.09
The Earth First! Win­ter Moot is a week­end to reflect on where we are as a rad­i­cal ecol­o­gist move­ment and on where we are going. The moot will be about dis­cussing strat­e­gy, strength­en­ing the EF! net­work, secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ca­tions and action plan­ning. A ses­sion is also reserved for dis­cussing a UK mobil­i­sa­tion for the UN cli­mate con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen late 2009. The moot will be held in Brighton (t.b.c.). Please check this web­site near­er to the time for fur­ther details and email any items you would like to add an item to the agen­da to moot2009 at earthfirst.org.uk.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21557

9) Fos­sil Fools Day 2009, 01.04.09
Just in case you missed the news last month – Fos­sil Fools Day is back! Whether you’ve been look­ing for a chance to dip a toe into the grow­ing cli­mate action move­ment, or have had your kick-ass action planned since last year, now is the time to do it – what­ev­er it is. On April 1st, join the glob­al day of resis­tance and pull a prank that packs a punch. Call-out now avail­able on the web­site, so get spread­ing the word. Info and resources will be post­ed on the web­site soon, and look out for leaflets to dis­trib­ute in Decem­ber.
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday2009

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RECENT HAPPENINGS:
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1) Towards Copen­hagen 2009 – the first glob­al gath­er­ing, 13/14.09.08
The first social move­ments’ meet­ing was from 13–14 Sep­tem­ber 2008, in a free school in Nor­rberg, host­ed by the Dan­ish move­ment Cli­maX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 peo­ple present from 21 coun­tries around the world, and mobil­isa­ta­tions towards Decem­ber 2009 were well and tru­ly launched. For the call to action, trans­la­tions, and a per­son­al per­spec­tive on the meet­ing, see http://risingtide.org.uk/copenhagen. To get involved, send an email to cli­mate09-int-sub­scribe at list.riseup.net.

2) Coal pow­er sta­tion block­ad­ed in Vir­ginia, USA, 15.09.08
At 6:00am on Sep­tem­ber 15 around 40 peo­ple block­ad­ed the con­struc­tion site of Domin­ion Vir­gini­a’s Wise Coun­ty coal-fired pow­er sta­tion. Eleven pro­test­ers were arrest­ed after four hours. Pro­test­ers locked their bod­ies to eight large steel drums, two of which had oper­a­tional solar pan­els illu­mi­nat­ing a ban­ner that read “renew­able jobs to renew Appalachia.” In addi­tion, pro­test­ers held a 10’x30’ ban­ner, which said: “we demand a clean ener­gy future.”

3) Ross­port — Soli­taire leaves Irish waters with no pipeline laid! 20.09.08
On Fri­day the 20th Sep­tem­ber, the pipe lay­ing ship, the Soli­taire, final­ly left Irish waters. Dur­ing the ship’s time in Ire­land, Shell failed to lay any part of the off­shore pipe line. The depar­ture of the Soli­taire is a mas­sive vic­to­ry for the Shell to Sea cam­paign. Resis­tance in the past six weeks has tak­en many dif­fer­ent forms: fish­er­men pre­vent­ing the ship’s access to the bay by refus­ing to move from her path, site inva­sions by local peo­ple and the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, numer­ous water­borne actions to pre­vent work by sup­port­ers from oth­er parts of Ire­land and fur­ther afield, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actions and final­ly, an 11 day hunger strike by local cam­paign­er Mau­ra Har­ring­ton, that con­tin­ued until the ship left Irish waters. The events of the last 6 weeks have inspired not only those involved, but also many who wit­nessed them from afar, new links and friend­ships have been forged and many lessons learned. In the after­math, the Shell to Sea cam­paign can clear­ly be seen to have been revi­tal­ized, both local­ly and nation­al­ly. It is unclear when the ship will attempt to return to Broad­haven Bay. It is pos­si­ble it could still be this year if repairs are quick and a suit­able weath­er win­dow appears, or it may not be until next spring. How­ev­er, while it may be uncer­tain exact­ly when the ship will return, what is cer­tain, is that it will meet even greater oppo­si­tion upon its next arrival. Come and be part of it! The Ross­port com­mu­ni­ty is call­ing on peo­ple every­where to put pres­sure on Shell, Allseas (the com­pa­ny that owns the Soli­taire) and Irish embassies to demand that the Soli­taire leaves Irish waters imme­di­ate­ly.

4) Flash­mob against air­port expan­sion a suc­cess! 23.09.08
Over 100 cam­paign­ers staged a colour­ful flash­mob against air­port expan­sion at mid­day today out­side Man­ches­ter Town Hall. The group includ­ed Lon­don cam­paign­ers opposed to the expan­sion of Heathrow. The flash­mob was timed to coin­cide with the Labour Par­ty Con­fer­ence. At 12.45 pre­cise­ly the cam­paign­ers stripped off to reveal red t‑shirts with the words ‘Stop Air­port Expan­sion’ embla­zoned across them. They then lay down to form the words ‘TAKE TRAINS’ with their bod­ies. The protest marked the pub­lic launch of the recent­ly formed ‘Stop Expan­sion at Man­ches­ter Air­port’.

5) Cli­mate Camp polic­ing con­demned, 30.09.08 & 28.10.08
A spokesman for Med­way Trades Union Coun­cil said “We have decid­ed to hold an inquiry into the Polic­ing of the Cli­mate Camp because of our con­cern over the lev­el of polic­ing and var­i­ous inci­dents such as a police­man in riot gear assault­ing a pro­test­er with a riot shield, as shown on TV, and oth­er alle­ga­tions includ­ing local cam­paign­ers being sub­ject­ed to pep­per spray and a local coun­cil­lor being pushed to the ground”

Also, in the House of Com­mons, MPs accused police of unnec­es­sary aggres­sion towards cli­mate campers. Home Office min­is­ters were told that offi­cers “pro­voked vio­lence against peace­ful pro­test­ers” and even arrest­ed some­one for “aggres­sive­ly pick­ing up lit­ter”.
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/09/409732.htm

6)Boston (US) Ris­ing Tide pay Citibank a vis­it, 7/10/08
Four activists chained them­selves to the front entrance of the Citibank branch in Har­vard Square, Cam­bridge. The action start­ed as a protest in front of the Bank of Amer­i­ca branch a block away before march­ing down the street to Citibank, where the four activists had already chained them­selves to the front door, clos­ing the bank for a peri­od of time. Over 150 peo­ple attend­ed the protest, while many more onlook­ers gath­ered in Har­vard Square. The action, using the tag-line “Not With Our Mon­ey”, was intend­ed to raise aware­ness of the con­nec­tions between the cur­rent finan­cial cri­sis and the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Both Bank of Amer­i­ca and Citi Bank are respon­si­ble for fund­ing dirty coal pow­er that harms the envi­ron­ment, and engag­ing in preda­to­ry lend­ing prac­tices that are fuelling the fore­clo­sure cri­sis and have left fam­i­lies in Boston home­less. Sev­er­al groups were involved with the protest includ­ing Ris­ing Tide Boston and Rain­for­est Action Net­work, both envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice groups, and City Life/Vida Urbana, a ten­ants’ rights orga­ni­za­tion.

7) Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp dam, 10.10.08
A coali­tion of Kla­math Riv­er Indi­an tribes, fish­er­men, con­ser­va­tion­ists and local sup­port­ers (includ­ing Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing Tide) ramped up their cam­paign to remove four fish-killing dams on the riv­er today when they held a spir­it­ed protest in front of PacifiCorp’s head­quar­ters in Port­land. The “Day of Action Against Paci­fi­Corp” start­ed off at 8:30 a.m. on Sep­tem­ber 18th when local activists hung a ban­ner pro­claim­ing “War­ren Buf­fett Kills Salmon, Jobs and Com­mu­ni­ties” over Inter­state-84 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Tribes. Around 200 peo­ple con­verged in front of Paci­fi­Corp for a press con­fer­ence. After the con­fer­ence, 70 peo­ple occu­pied the area in front of the head­quar­ters, effec­tive­ly shut­ting down the front entrance to Paci­fi­Corp as com­pa­ny staff locked the doors.

8) Par­lia­ment rushed by cli­mate activists, 13.10.08
Demand­ing deeds not words from the gov­ern­ment, 500 Cli­mate Rush­ers gath­ered in Par­lia­ment Square to cel­e­brate 100 years to the day since the Suf­fragettes rushed par­lia­ment demand­ing votes for women. After shar­ing tea and cake on the lawn of Par­lia­ment Square, men and women dressed in Edwar­dian garb became a lit­tle less civilised, and the doors of to Par­lia­ment were locked as cli­mate activists rushed the main entrance. Although no one got in, the sounds of pro­test­ers strik­ing the doors were clear­ly audi­ble from the inside.
www.climaterush.co.uk

9) Oxford stu­dents just say no to BP jobs, 14.10.08
Activists infil­trat­ed an attempt by BP to woo Oxford grad­u­ates at a top-notch hotel on Octo­ber 14th. One inter­rupt­ed the cheesy BP PR man’s pre­sen­ta­tion as he claimed that he ‘loved the coun­try­side’ — while putting the gloss on oil and gas explo­ration, extrac­tion and financ­ing — to ask, why then, has BP spent more on its green sun­flower rebrand­ing than on its annu­al renew­able ener­gy bud­get? Activists then gave their own pre­sen­ta­tion of BP’s activ­i­ties around the world, why major oil com­pa­nies are counter-pro­duc­tive to cli­mate change solu­tions, and why any tempt­ed grad­u­ates should recon­sid­er their career options. A mem­ber of Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign gave a first hand account of BP’s com­plic­i­ty in envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion, sub­vert­ing peace­ful social move­ments and fund­ing death squads. A moment of stunned silence was fol­lowed by applause as the re-edu­cat­ed audi­ence aban­doned the shindig.

10)Art Not Oil vis­it the NT and hoax boss Hyt­ner, 15.10.08
After a vis­it to the the­atre (Dar­ling!), arty cli­mate activists cooked up a let­ter claim­ing to be from NT boss Nicholas Hyt­ner ques­tion­ing the use of oil spon­sor­ship in the arts. The NT were none too pleased about this and the ensu­ing row reached the let­ters pages of luvvie-week­ly “The Stage”(a first for the direct action move­ment?). Art not Oil ask: “We’re ask­ing peo­ple if they’re up for mak­ing an art­work of some kind as a response This could be an image, song, film or poem to appear on our web­site, or to be print­ed on a post­card or some­thing sim­i­lar. We’re open to ideas. (Unfor­tu­nate­ly, we aren’t able to pay for your work, but we have no wish to pos­sess it!) If this is of inter­est, we’d love to see it as soon as pos­si­ble, as ‘Oedi­pus’ runs until Jan­u­ary 2009 only.”
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/10/411200.html and
http://www.thestage.co.uk/features/feature.php/22157/chit-chat-hytner-miss-or-maybe-an-attack-

11) Pro­test­ers dis­rupt Euro­pean bio­fu­els sum­mit, 16.10.08
On World Food Day, 16th Octo­ber, activists from Action Against Agro­fu­els dis­rupt­ed the Bio­fu­els Expo in Newark, one of the largest bio­fu­el indus­try con­fer­ences in Europe. Four ban­ners were dropped, as pro­test­ers climbed on the roof out­side the main entrance and on a ledge inside the main exhi­bi­tion hall, where they remained for over three hours. Rape alarms were set off across the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre. Ban­ners read “Agro­fu­els for cars and pow­er plants wors­en cli­mate change”, “Land-grab­bing for agro­fu­els caus­es hunger”, “Agro­fu­els — a cli­mate crime” and “Green­wash­ing hunger and defor­esta­tion”. Sep­a­rate­ly, Leeds Uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents held a ban­ner and leaflet­ting protest out­side the con­fer­ence.

12) Scot­tish cli­mate activists tar­get Scot­tish First Min­is­ter, 16.10.08
At 4am, res­i­dents from Clyde­bank, Pais­ley, Kirk­lis­ton and Cra­mond peace­ful­ly set up a stereo and blast­ed aero­plane noise through the entrance of the First Min­is­ter’s pri­vate res­i­den­cy in Edin­burgh. The action stands as a protest ‘dawn cho­rus’ to high­light the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing life in the shad­ow of a grow­ing air­port. Iron­i­cal­ly, the stereo caused 110 deci­bels of noise — the equiv­a­lent of a jum­bo jet tak­ing off. For half an hour about ten res­i­dents sur­round­ed the build­ing dressed in bright paja­mas, night caps, clutch­ing ted­dy­bears, with ear defend­ers to dis­play the dan­ger­ous lev­els of noise pol­lu­tion endured by their fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties. Their plac­ards stat­ed “It’s time to wake up to the impacts of avi­a­tion” and “have a taste of your own med­i­cine”. The res­i­dents took these steps to state loud and clear to the First Min­is­ter, who holds ulti­mate say over the fate of the expan­sion plans, that he can­not ignore any of the effects of air­port expan­sion. These impacts include dan­ger­ous noise lev­els, ris­ing air pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change and increas­ing eco­nom­ic uncer­tain­ty dur­ing the cur­rent cred­it crunch.

13) Green­wash Guer­ril­las EDF Action, 22.10.08
Lon­don Ris­ing Tide’s Green­wash Gueril­las Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1, moved into action on Mon­day morn­ing, 22 Octo­ber, at 08:00 hours – tar­get­ing ener­gy cor­po­ra­tion Élec­tric­ité de France (EDF) at the cen­tral Lon­don head­quar­ters of their UK sub­sidiary EDF Ener­gy. EDF has recent­ly bought out British Ener­gy and have announced that they plan to build 4 new nuclear pow­er sta­tions in the UK in the com­ing years. Inspired by our coun­ter­parts in France demon­strat­ing against new nuclear pow­er, we chose to tar­get EDF’s attempts to mus­cle in their FALSE nuclear solu­tion to the loom­ing dis­as­ter of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate chaos. Our action (con­sist­ing of 12 Green­wash Gueril­las) high­light­ed the dan­gers of nuclear pow­er to the bios­phere, human­i­ty, and REAL renew­able ener­gy solu­tions.

14) Man­ches­ter stu­dents flash­mob RBS and E.On Recruit­ment Stalls, 23.10.08
A busy careers fair at Man­ches­ter’s GMex was inter­rupt­ed yes­ter­day by sev­er­al long whis­tle blasts. 30 or so pro­tes­tors sud­den­ly revealed their yel­low ‘Leave it in the Ground’ t‑shirts and sur­round­ed the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land stall, hold­ing ban­ners and chant­i­ng ‘leave it in the ground!’. A pro­tes­tor then read some extracts from the excel­lent report “Cash­ing in on Coal”, which shows that RBS is a cli­mate crim­i­nal, pour­ing mon­ey into new fos­sil fuel extrac­tion projects. The secu­ri­ty guards even­tu­al­ly began drag­ging pro­tes­tors out so they did­n’t get a chance to vis­it the E.ON stall. How­ev­er the protest con­tin­ued out­side where peo­ple hand­ed out leaflets explain­ing how E.ON (with a fat loan from RBS) plans to build the first new coal pow­er sta­tion in the UK in 30 years, while secu­ri­ty guards repeat­ed­ly threat­ened to have them arrest­ed for tres­pass­ing.

15) Bar­clays’ coal invest­ments tar­get­ed in Leam­ing­ton Spa, 25.10.08
Leam­ing­ton Ris­ing Tide took aim at a town cen­tre Bar­clays on Sat­ur­day 25 Octo­ber 2008 in protest at the bank’s heavy invest­ment in dirty coal. Ban­ners, leaflets and bal­loons let peo­ple know that ‘Bar­clays are fuelling glob­al warm­ing’. One of the ban­ners used an image of scales to demol­ish the myth that Bar­clays cares about cli­mate change: they invest a whop­ping 3,300 mil­lion invest­ed in coal against 15 mil­lion in renew­able tech on the oth­er. Over the last two years, Bar­clays has been involved in 17 sep­a­rate loans to the coal indus­try, and togeth­er with RBS and HSBC, has loaned $70 bil­lion to E.ON alone.

16) Pro­tes­tors stop work at Ship­ley open-cast; Ship­ley Bodge court case col­laps­es, 27.10.08
Pro­tes­tors from Earth First! stopped work at an open-cast coal site for over two hours – they ran onto the site and clam­bered on dig­gers & dumpers and held out ban­ners stop­ping the work safe­ly. Some of the dig­ger dri­vers were very friend­ly and were glad to have a break as they work very long shifts, from 7am‑6:30 with only lunch & half hour breaks at 10 & 3. Today work had not been able to start till 10 as nature was fight­ing its own cor­ner, with rain drown­ing the site, and it was stopped again at 1 for 3 hours due to the protest.

Mean­while, the first court case aris­ing from the evic­tion of Bodge House, Ship­ley, where pro­test­ers occu­pied the site of the pro­posed open cast coal mine from June until August, col­lapsed today after the pros­e­cu­tion admit­ted that it did­n’t have the evi­dence to sup­port its case. The crown pros­e­cu­tor asked for an adjourn­ment, the defence object­ed, the dis­trict
judge agreed with the defence and dis­missed the case. Let’s hope the oth­ers go the same way.

17) The Rain­bow War­rior goes to Kingsnorth, 29.10.08
The Green­peace flag­ship Rain­bow War­rior led a peace­ful arma­da of boats down the Med­way to Kingsnorth, and thir­ty cam­paign­ers, each car­ry­ing flags from 30 nations, dis­em­barked onto Kingsnorth’s jet­ty. E.on’s pro­posed new plant would emit as much car­bon diox­ide as the world’s 30 least pol­lut­ing coun­tries com­bined (hence the flags), dash­ing our chances of beat­ing cli­mate change and spelling dis­as­ter for mil­lions of fam­i­lies around the world. Mean­while, anoth­er group of vol­un­teers — includ­ing two of the Kingsnorth Six (recent­ly cleared of crim­i­nal dam­age to Kingsnorth’s smoke­stack using the defence of cli­mate change) – occu­pied a small, con­crete, E.ON-owned island just next to the jet­ty until they were forced to leave by a high court injunc­tion.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/vigil-ends-20081030

18) Bris­tohl Uni Death Fair, 29.10.08
This time it was the 4 horse­man of the apoc­a­lypse (well, 2 of them) who high­light­ed the real­i­ty behind the shiny facades of com­pa­nies like E.On and BAE Sys­tems.
http://westsideclimateaction.wordpress.com

19) Con­vey­er belt lock-on stops Aus­tralian coal pow­er sta­tion, 1.11.08
29 peo­ple from Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia have been arrest­ed after a cli­mate change protest at Bayswa­ter pow­er sta­tion today. Four peo­ple attached them­selves to machin­ery, stop­ping the con­vey­or belts that car­ry coal to Bayswater’s fur­naces for six hours while 25 oth­ers occu­pied the coal piles.
http://www.risingtide.org.au/node/802

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