Author: earthfirst

Vandalism at subway station (Athens, 13/6/2008)

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

Protest halts Drax coal train as summer of discontent against coal continues…

Media — Inter­views are avail­able with pro­tes­tors: call 07944 367755 Pho­tos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/ Pro­tes­tors have halt­ed a coal train car­ry­ing fuel for Drax pow­er sta­tion in York­shire, the sin­gle biggest source of CO2 in the UK. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion … Con­tin­ue read­ing “Protest halts Drax coal train as sum­mer of dis­con­tent against coal con­tin­ues…”

Coal train stopped over river
Coal train banner
Coal train climber
Coal train stopped
Media — Inter­views are avail­able with pro­tes­tors: call 07944 367755
Pho­tos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/

Pro­tes­tors have halt­ed a coal train car­ry­ing fuel for Drax pow­er sta­tion in York­shire, the sin­gle biggest source of CO2 in the UK. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion — which will also high­light how using coal to sup­ply ener­gy will be a dis­as­ter for the plan­et.

Dressed in white over­alls and canary out­fits, they used safe­ty sig­nals to stop the train on a bridge over­look­ing the pow­er sta­tion, before climb­ing on board and dump­ing coal off onto the tracks.

The train has been stopped on a branch line used exclu­sive­ly for deliv­er­ing coal to Drax. Pro­tes­tors have used a net­work of climb­ing ropes to sus­pend them­selves under the bridge from the train — mean­ing any move­ment while the protest con­tin­ues is impos­si­ble.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Updates at http://thecoalhole.org/

To find out what hap­pened next, go to http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20903

Squat news — London, Cambridge

12.06.2008

Bowl Court Social Cen­tre Days Are Num­bered — Lon­don

12.06.2008

Bowl Court Social Cen­tre Days Are Num­bered — Lon­don

The court­ing hear­ing today ruled in favor of the prop­er­ty devel­op­ers claim­ing own­er­ship of the derelict ware­house in Bowl Court that has been used as a rad­i­cal social cen­tre since open­ing 23rd March. The David vs Goliath case was clear­ly moti­vat­ed by Ham­mer­sons desire to pre­vent the new social cen­tre becom­ing a hub for the local cam­paigns against their pro­posed devel­op­ment for the area, the biggest devel­op­ment in Lon­don since Dock­lands in the eight­ies.

The vic­to­ri­an social cen­tre is locat­ed in the Shored­itch Street Con­ser­va­tion area and pre­vi­ous attempts to obtain plan­ning con­sent for demo­li­tion have been refused. The neigh­bor­ing ware­house was knocked down with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion by Gam­ma City Devel­op­ments which was pur­chased by Ham­mer­son, along with vast tracts of lands ear­marked to become a for­est of glass sky­scrap­ers over the next ten years. Num­ber 6 Bowl Court was left emp­ty for years with a gap­ing hole cut in the roof and deep exca­va­tions dug around it’s exter­nal walls, appar­ent­ly with the aim of speed­ing up it’s decay to jus­ti­fy future appli­ca­tions for demo­li­tion.

Although at least two oth­er squat­ters occu­py near­by prop­er­ties which Ham­mer­son claim to own, the attempts to evict Bowl Court came about only as it became appar­ent that the social cen­tre was becom­ing involved in the local cam­paigns against the rede­vel­op­ment plans for the area. The com­pa­ny had been informed of the occu­pa­tion on the 24th March but only made moves to repos­sess the prop­er­ty three weeks ago.

In court, the defen­dants ques­tioned the evi­dence pre­sent­ed by the claimants regard­ing own­er­ship. Their land reg­istry title was con­tra­dict­ed by titles known to be held by oth­er com­pa­nies. There was also issue over whether the notice of the pro­ceed­ings had been cor­rect­ly served as res­i­den­tial prop­er­ty requires five days clear notice but only three had been giv­en. With no pro­fes­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the defen­dants were unable to put togeth­er a robust defense and also found them­selves threat­ened with over £21,000 in costs. How­ev­er, the judge also con­sid­ered the costs to be out­ra­geous­ly inflat­ed an choose to award just £2,500 in costs.

The future of the social cen­tre is now obvi­ous­ly in doubt but in the mean­time events con­tin­ue as nor­mal. See http://www.bowlcourt.co.nr for details.

——-

Mill Road Social Cen­tre May Stay For Flip­pin’ Ages — Cam­bridge

A pos­ses­sion order was grant­ed to Tesco today in court, yet rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Mill Road Social Cen­tre had appar­ent con­fir­ma­tion of indef­i­nite leave to remain from Tesco’s solic­i­tors.

About 20 social cen­tre groupies went to court today dressed in all our wet fin­ery and had a friend­ly bit of ban­ter with the Tesco legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive and the judge. The judge decid­ed that, although we point­ed out in our defense that their claim was­n’t accu­rate and so should be thrown out, she was hap­py to quick­ly amend it in court. This meant that we no longer had a defense as that was the only way our legal assis­tance had found for reject­ing the claim. So, the judge award­ed Tesco the pos­ses­sion order, as we thought they might.

We raised the issue of Tesco stat­ing that they did­n’t want to apply the pos­ses­sion order imme­di­ate­ly, they just want­ed hold of it. The solic­i­tor again con­firmed that this was the case.

SO, net result, as far as we know, we can remain in there doing fun things until Tesco want to get the builders in, hope­ful­ly some­time nev­er. Obvi­ous­ly it’d be use­ful to keep open some kind of dia­logue with Tesco about when they’re going to move in and we’ll look into that, how­ev­er the ear­ly hope is that we actu­al­ly have the space for a num­ber of weeks and can get crack­ing in earnest to make it even more love­ly and use­ful.

The solic­i­tor said in court that “Tesco has no use today for the premis­es.” to which the judge replied “So they are in no posi­tion to com­mence rede­vel­op­ment at this moment?”, and the solic­i­tor answered “No.”. So if that’s right, and if they do want to wait on the plan­ning process before try­ing to evict us, it could be a long long time. Hur­rah! 🙂 It also means they were fib­bing when they said they could open a store “tomor­row” in the evening news. Cheeky blighters.

millroadsocialcentre@lists.riseup.net
http://millroadsocialcentre.wordpress.com

—

social cen­tre attacked (again)

15.06.2008
At about half 1 this morn­ing the mill rd social cen­tre was attacked for the sec­ond time in a week. Thugs armed with an iron bar smashed win­dows and dam­aged vehi­cles in attempt to intim­i­date the occu­pants, then drove off. No Pasaran.
———-

New autonomous and cre­ative social space in South Lon­don

The Chapel project is an autonomous and cre­ative social space sit­u­at­ed in the heart of Nun­head. The space is used for all kinds of cre­ative and social­ly mind­ed work­shops and events. Our main aim is to pro­vide afford­able cul­tur­al activ­i­ties to peo­ple, pro­mot­ing cre­ative inter­ac­tion and there­fore social change.

Come and get involved. What­ev­er ideas, mate­ri­als or pos­i­tive ener­gies you can share would be great whether its run­ning a work­shop, show­ing your art work, or just spread­ing the word. We hope to see you soon.

http://www.chapelproject.com

Action day for persecuted eco-activists in the US

This Sat­ur­day (14th June), there will be an inter­na­tion­al action day for the, by now numer­ous, eco-activists who are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in the US.

green scareThis Sat­ur­day (14th June), there will be an inter­na­tion­al action day for the, by now numer­ous, eco-activists who are cur­rent­ly impris­oned in the US.

The repres­sion against peo­ple car­ry­ing out direct actions in the Unit­ed States con­tin­ues to rise. The most recent con­vic­tion in a series of sen­tences is that of Eric McDavid, who was sen­tenced to more than 19 years in prison ( http://supporteric.org/). He has actu­al­ly nev­er car­ried out any actions, but was alleged­ly part of a group that (accord­ing to a police infor­mant) was plan­ning them. He was sen­tenced on grounds of a wit­ness state­ment of this police infor­mant, who had not only infil­trat­ed but actu­al­ly steered the group, and received at least 75.000 USD for her “work”. Eric is 19 years old. Because he refused to “con­fess” or coop­er­ate in the inves­ti­ga­tion, he received this incred­i­bly high sen­tence.

Eric’s con­vic­tion is only one of many exam­ples. Many more peo­ple are per­se­cut­ed and pros­e­cut­ed and con­se­quent­ly threat­ened with life in prison. The pros­e­cu­tions start­ed when North Amer­i­can author­i­ties start­ed an offen­sive against the rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal move­ment; the result­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and pros­e­cu­tions were lat­er referred to by activists as “green scare” (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Scare). A court case is cur­rent­ly held against Marie Mason, for exam­ple ( http://freemarie.org/). Bri­ana Waters has already been found guilty and is await­ing her sen­tenc­ing in prison ( http://supportbriana.org). Tre Arrow ( http://trearrow.org/) is also fac­ing tri­al after he was extra­dit­ed from Cana­da. Although Tre Arrow “con­fessed”, in the hope for a low­er sen­tence, he has refused to pro­vide the author­i­ties with infor­ma­tion about oth­ers.

Many are already sen­tenced and impris­oned, many oth­ers could face new inves­ti­ga­tions and pro­ce­dures at any point in time. The threat for rad­i­cal activists is enor­mous, espe­cial­ly when con­sid­er­ing that home secu­ri­ty leg­is­la­tion has turned the US into a police state (see www.greenscare.org for back­ground infor­ma­tion).

Direct action

Those pros­e­cut­ed are accused of hav­ing tak­en part in actions car­ried out in the col­lec­tive names of ELF (Earth Lib­er­a­tion Front) or ALF (Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front), see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Liberation_Front. No one ever got hurt in any of the actions, which were gen­er­al­ly relat­ed to fight­ing cli­mate change and the intro­duc­tion of genet­ic tech­nol­o­gy.

The 14th of June has been declared inter­na­tion­al day of action by the cam­paign sup­port­ing the first eco-activist to be impris­oned, Jef­frey ‘Free’ Luers. His cam­paign also shows that inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty actu­al­ly works. He was ini­tial­ly sen­tenced to a hor­ren­dous 22 year impris­on­ment (his “crime”: set­ting fire to three SUVs owned by a car deal­er). In appeal, the sen­tence was reduced to ten years. Jef­frey, who has been in prison since 2001, is expect­ed to be released at the end of 2009! (see http://freefreenow.org/ for more infor­ma­tion).

One of the biggest prob­lems in resist­ing this extra­or­di­nary lev­el of repres­sion by the state is the Amer­i­can jus­tice sys­tem, which rewards peo­ple who make state­ments incrim­i­nat­ing them­selves and oth­ers. Some of those accused also did this, and part of this “evi­dence” has been proven to be incor­rect, and yet was reward­ed with con­ces­sions in sen­tenc­ing. Some of these snitch­es are there­fore either not sen­tenced, or free after a short­er prison term, even though they were accused of the same “crimes” as those who are spend­ing decades in prison. These peo­ple are of course not sup­port­ed by sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns.

Oth­ers have decid­ed to con­fess and coop­er­ate in the pro­ce­dure against them, yet have refused all oth­er form of judi­cial coop­er­a­tion. And then there’s the brave ones, who have denied all charges and all forms of coop­er­a­tion. These peo­ple are of course faced with the harsh­est forms of repres­sion, and are in most need of sup­port.

What to do?

Those accused, their friends and their fam­i­ly wel­come inter­na­tion­al sol­i­dar­i­ty very much. Pub­lic­i­ty about their plight is also very impor­tant. It should be con­sid­ered, how­ev­er, that those accused, espe­cial­ly when they are in the mid­dle of a tri­al, are some­times not wait­ing to be linked to wild actions which are used by the pros­e­cu­tion to crim­i­nalise them even fur­ther. Finan­cial sup­port is also wel­come, for the indi­vid­ual tri­als as well as for the gen­er­al cam­paigns. A small cam­paign office that man­ages a high work load with lit­tle means is the CLDC ( http://cldc.org/).

Daniel McGowan ( http://suportdaniel.org), one of the many vic­tims who was sen­tenced (to sev­en years), declares in one of his newslet­ters why the work of the CDLC is so impor­tant ( http://supportdaniel.org/blog/?p=33).

Fur­ther­more, it is impor­tant to send let­ters, post­cards and books to the pris­on­ers. The North Amer­i­can prison con­di­tions are, how­ev­er, very strict (and here also, pris­on­ers might not want to be linked to ille­gal polit­i­cal actions). Also, do not for­get to pro­tect your own pri­va­cy ( http://security.resist.ca/).

And 14 & 15 June is time for sol­i­dar­i­ty actions!
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2008/05/375753.shtml

More infor­ma­tion:

http://greenscare.org/
http://midwestgreenscare.org
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/greenscare/
http://www.ecoprisoners.org/
http://www.greenisthenewred.com/blog/
http://www.anarchistblackcross.org/
http://breakthechains.info/
http://www.earthfirstjournal.org/
http://www.whosarat.com/

Women and Trans DIY-SQUATTING Weekend in London, 28th-29th June

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

This is a call­out to all women and trans-folk that would like to be involved in a week­end of work­shops around diy-squat­ting

We plan to take advan­tage of all the usu­al chal­lenges that semi-derelict build­ings pose as a plat­form for shar­ing our knowl­edge, skills, and expe­ri­ence in all the tasks relat­ed to open­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy and hap­py squat!

These are all the areas that we’ve thought of so far, but more ideas are always wel­come:

* Elec­tric­i­ty
* Plumb­ing
* Gas
* Secu­ri­ty- doors/locks etc
* Bar­ri­cad­ing
* Legal
* Deal­ing w/ cop­s/own­ers- talk about experience/share tac­tics
* Women/Trans squat­ting- open dis­cus­sion on expe­ri­ence of squat­ting from a wom­en/­trans-per­spec­tive.
* Sus­tain­able ener­gy

All lev­els of expe­ri­ence in any of the above areas are wel­come, and even if you have no expe­ri­ence in any of the prac­ti­cal, diy-relat­ed areas, we hope to have a plat­form to share
expe­ri­ences, sto­ries and advice relat­ed to all aspects of squat-liv­ing from a trans/woman’s per­spec­tive.

Please get in touch if you’d like to help out at all in organ­is­ing this week­end — We’ll need help find­ing a suit­able space and prepar­ing it for the week­end, pub­li­cis­ing the gath­er­ing, and then run­ning work­shops on the week­end itself, as well as col­lect­ing and prepar­ing food.
We also hope to pro­vide child­care (on a rota-basis), so please let us know if you can help with that.

This gath­er­ing will be held on the week­end of the 28th — 29th June.

You can e‑mail us at diy_squatting@riseup.net

Please spread the word!

**Let us know if you would like to be sent leaflets**

Action update Australia

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak.

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak. The let­ter, signed by the E.L.F., declared that his prop­er­ty, includ­ing his and his wife’s lux­u­ry cars, amongst a detailed list of oth­er per­son­al items, would not remain safe so long as ANZ con­tin­ued its financ­ing of the pro­posed Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill in Tas­ma­nia.

The pro­posed pulp mill, run by Gunns- Tas­ma­ni­a’s forestry cor­po­ra­tion which holds a vir­tu­al monop­oly over the state, would con­tribute great­ly to glob­al warm­ing, it would spew 64,000 tonnes of efflu­ent into the Bass Straight every day, bring the Tas­man­ian wedge-tailed eagle, the spot­ted tail Quoll, and the giant fresh­wa­ter cray­fish to extinc­tion, and would turn the ancient old growth forests of the Great West­ern Tiers, the North East High­lands, and the Ben Lomond forests into pulp.

The same night, veg­an piz­zas from numer­ous mul­ti-nation­al chains were deliv­ered unsus­pect­ed­ly to the doorstep of Mike’s fam­i­ly home.

By strange coin­ci­dence, the fol­low­ing week ANZ with­drew its sup­port for financ­ing the $2 bil­lion Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill project.

This effec­tive­ly puts the pulp mil­l’s future in a dire sit­u­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments of Aus­tralia still con­tin­ue their back­ing of the eco-cidal project.

9th June Noise Demo at UK Coal Head Office Protest — next one 14th July

UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

UK Coal 1st noise demo 1UK Coal 1st noise demo 2UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

On arrival the police were there as expect­ed, but did lit­tle to engage us and a lit­tle lat­er in the day a 2 police officer’s with a cam­era and a video did appear in a daft attempt to intim­i­date us. UK Coal had there own secu­ri­ty at the gate who just stood there more bored than the police.

The day was hot and very sun­ny at the bleak entrance of UK coals Head Office, a soul less place with noth­ing that said they were very proud of their com­pa­ny, no ornate plants, flow­ers or trees, just a big main­tained hedge for their pri­va­cy. It is no won­der they are hap­py to destroy beau­ti­ful coun­try­side for the dirty coal.

Every one was in high spir­its and chilled as we all made noise for the after­noon in the sun. The plod just looked bored and there faces were get­ting red­der by the hour under the fluro’ jack­ets and hel­mets.

We were fine of course, as we occu­pied the UK Coals sign for the only bit of shade while the plod kept roast­ing; we also sat around eat­ing cake, pasties and sausage roles all from Veg­gies in a take out form, while still mak­ing a din.

At times the noise sound­ed good and they delib­er­ate­ly had to try and play bad­ly just so it was annoy­ing, after all it was no pic­nic. Ban­ners were also hung and a police offi­cer told us we could tie them to a lamp post, not that we need­ed his per­mis­sion. Dri­vers com­ing in or out were also leaflet­ed and many motorists pass­ing the entrance beeped in sup­port (prob­a­bly ex min­ers who hate open cast­ing with a pas­sion)

It’s not just the local open cast, peo­ple are oppos­ing of course but also the UK pol­i­cy on coal that is now out­dat­ed as cli­mate change looms in front of our eyes. Burn­ing coal is threat­en­ing the glob­al envi­ron­ment and all our futures and UK coal are cash­ing in on cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion and destruc­tion. The Lodge House site in Der­byshire is just one of 7 sites and Lodge house will have 1 mil­lion tonnes of coal ripped out of a 122 hectare area in 5 years

Local media had turned out and radio inter­views were done over the phone and there is more stuff to fol­low check http://leaveitintheground.org.uk and http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com for the lat­est infor­ma­tion

derby@earthfirst.org.uk

Next event: noise demo out­side UK Coal on Mon­day 14th July 2008 — meet 3:30 at Don­cast­er train sta­tion, or 4pm at UK Coal

Reclaim Hulme Park — every Friday — Manchester

Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it.

Hulme Park reclaimed 1Hulme Park reclaimed 2Local res­i­dents reclaimed Hulme Park in Man­ches­ter on Fri­day for an hour by clos­ing down the road that runs through it. Leaflets had been dis­trib­uted and posters stuck around invit­ing peo­ple to reclaim the park — “one love, one park!!” Peo­ple played games, ate and drank, and gen­er­al­ly sat around in the street chat­ting to old friends and new. The police turned up in fair num­bers on time, but sen­si­bly — shock hor­ror — just left enough of them and PCSOs to help direct traf­fic away, and left us to it.

When the Cres­cents got knocked down in the 90s, to sani­tise the com­mu­ni­ty action and cre­ativ­i­ty that was rife through­out Hulme, these high-den­si­ty cres­cents of flats were replaced with a new park, and the land around sold to devel­op­ers for swanky hous­es and flats on new exclu­sive streets with (s)wanky names like The Sanc­tu­ary.

The prob­lem with old Hulme, as described by the coun­cil regen­er­a­tion stooges, was that peo­ple and cars did­n’t have to mix and were large­ly kept sep­a­rate. New Hulme — a mix of old coun­cil hous­ing (just sold off), hous­ing asso­ci­a­tion, a big hous­ing co-op, pri­vate rent­ed & pri­vate sold – would be safe for the city cen­tre to expand into the space left as com­mu­ni­ties were bro­ken up and shipped out to over­spill estates around Man­ches­ter.

So what this park need­ed, right, was a road right through the mid­dle of it (as well as on all sides), to keep the chil­dren safe because “the head­lights of cars would act as cat’s eyes and pre­vent dan­ger”.

Well, we’ve had enough.

Every Fri­day, 5–6pm, until we…Reclaim Hulme Park!

and

Close down the part of Royce Road that sep­a­rates the two halves of Hulme Park.

Bring fris­bees, balls, bikes.

Demonstrators tear down privatisation fencing bars (Thessaloniki, Greece, 7/6/2008)

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria.

What hap­pened is a demon­stra­tion of hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Kala­maria (a large sub­urb of Thes­sa­loni­ki by the sea) and Thes­sa­loni­ki on the seafront of Kala­maria. There, pri­va­ti­za­tion works fence the one open area after the oth­er, so, after a deci­sion of a res­i­dents assem­bly, the demon­stra­tors tore down the fenc­ing bars of the local mari­na that pre­vent free access to the sea­side. This action was wel­comed with applause from local peo­ple.

Texts in greek and a lot of pho­tos can be found here:
http://indy.gr/ or here http://athens.indymedia.org/ or there: http://diexodos.blogspot.com/.

$3.5 million luxury home torched in South Carolina

6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

Charlotte luxury house burning6.06.2008
Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na, U.S. — 16 par­tial­ly or recent­ly con­struct­ed lux­u­ry homes have been inten­tion­al­ly burned down in south­east Char­lotte, west­ern Union Coun­ty, and Lan­cast­er Coun­ty, South Car­oli­na since 2001. Author­i­ties have yet to find who is respon­si­ble for the fires, but now believe that rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists may be behind the arsons. The most recent devel­op­ment to go up in smoke was a $3.5 mil­lion man­sion destroyed Mon­day evening, see pic­tures below.

More pic­tures: http://www.charlotte.com/multimedia/galleries/gallery/651704.html

The fire at 8407 Winged Bourne Dri­ve, south Char­lotte, start­ed about 7:30 p.m. in a sec­ond floor hall­way and spread quick­ly, shoot­ing flames hun­dreds of feet into the air. The three-sto­ry man­sion off Gle­nea­gles Road near Quail Hol­low Club had ply­wood floors and stud­ded walls and was about 60% com­plete. By Tues­day inves­ti­ga­tors had ruled out all pos­si­ble acci­den­tal caus­es.

“The only dif­fer­ence is this burned dur­ing day­light,” said Char­lot­te’s Chief Fire Inves­ti­ga­tor David Low­ery said, declin­ing to elab­o­rate.

See also:

ELF Burn Down Lux­u­ry Homes (March 3rd)
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20859