Author: earthfirst

Japanese Whaling Fleet Confronted By Sea Shepherd + Interview With Nottingham Activist On Board

3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

rotten butter throwing Sea Shepherd style3.03.2008 — Aboard the M/Y Steve Irwin South­ern Oceans —The crew on the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin engaged in a con­fronta­tion with the Japan­ese fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru this morn­ing between 0800 and 1000 Hours. The Nis­shin Maru can­not out­run the Steve Irwin. After a 12 hour chase the Sea Shep­herd ship closed the gap and passed along­side the Nis­shin Maru. The crew deployed over two dozen bot­tles of rot­ten but­ter send­ing a stench through­out the whale killing ship that will remain for days. The crew also threw pack­ets of a slip­pery chem­i­cal onto the deck of the Nis­shin Maru. This will make it very dif­fi­cult to cut up whales. The sub­stance becomes even more slip­pery with water so it will be dif­fi­cult to wash it off the decks.

“I guess we can call this non-vio­lent chem­i­cal war­fare,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “We only use organ­ic, non-tox­ic mate­ri­als designed to harass and obstruct ille­gal whal­ing oper­a­tions.” Four armed Japan­ese Coast Guard offi­cers clear­ly iden­ti­fied in their uni­forms video­taped the con­fronta­tion.

The Cap­tain of the Nis­shin Maru played a tape over and over again with a wom­an’s voice say­ing “Warn­ing, warn­ing, this is the Nis­shin Maru cap­tain. Stop your destruc­tive actions imme­di­ate­ly. If you dare to board this ves­sel you will be tak­en into cus­tody and restrained as ille­gal intrud­ers under Japan­ese law.”

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son radioed the Nis­shin Maru to inform them that they had no author­i­ty in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­ry. Cap­tain Wat­son ordered the Japan­ese cap­tain to cease all whal­ing oper­a­tions and to com­ply with the Aus­tralian Fed­er­al Court rul­ing that pro­hibits the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet from killing whales in the Aus­tralian Antarc­tic Ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters.

The con­fronta­tion took place at 63 Degrees 17 Min­utes South and 126 Degrees and 20 min­utes east. This is 175 miles off the Ban­zare Coast inside the Aus­tralian Eco­nom­ic Exclu­sion Zone. The Steve Irwin has fall­en half a mile off to the star­board side of the Nis­shin Maru. “It stinks too bad to remain any clos­er,” said Todd Emko 32, of New York City.

Not a sin­gle whale has been killed since the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin returned to harass the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the Aus­tralian Whale Sanc­tu­ary. “They will not be get­ting their quo­ta this year and that is a cer­tain­ty,” said Jeff Han­son 35, from Fre­man­tle, West­ern Aus­tralia. “In fact I don’t think they will be get­ting half their quo­ta.” In total the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety has shut down ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing oper­a­tions for over four and a half weeks.

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Inter­view With Not­ting­ham Activist In South­ern Ocean On Board Sea Shep­herd Ship

Dan is an activist from Not­ting­ham who has joined the crew on board the Sea Shep­herd ves­sel Steve Irwin in a bid to stop the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties of the Japan­ese near Antar­ti­ca. The mis­sion, named Miga­loo, start­ed last Decem­ber and after refu­elling in Mel­bourne last month, the Sea Shep­herd crew is back in the oceans, have man­aged to track down the whal­ing fleet and have been in hot per­suit of its main ves­sel, the Yushin Maru No. 2 for the last week. Accor­ing to one of the crew onboard the ship “the weath­er is get­ting cold­er and we are get­ting many hours of dark­ness now. The Antarc­tic win­ter is creep­ing up on us. The seas are get­ting rougher and we are get­ting bliz­zards.” We joined Dan via sat­telite phone to ask him about his adven­tures..

Inter­view 28/02/08

Dan: Hel­lo?

Q: Hel­lo?

Dan: Eh up, how is it going?

Q: Yeah, I’m fine, how are you?

Dan: Good mate.

Q: And you thought you’d get away with not doing an inter­view with us? 🙂 (Dan left ear­li­er than antic­i­pat­ed)

Dan: I knew you’d catch up with me even­tu­al­ly..

Q: So how is it going?

Dan: Yeah, I’m alright. We’re in the mid­dle of the south­ern ocean right now. In a big storm at the moment with things fly­ing around every­where..

Q: I read some stuff about the seas being real­ly rough, var­ied at times it would be like sun­ny and then bliz­zards and things..

Dan: Yeah, I mean we’ve got about 4 meter waves and I’m not sure what the wind­speed is..

Q: But you’re all cop­ing with it?

Dan: Yeah, we did­n’t expect it to be this bad, from the weath­er reports we were get­ting. But its here now..

Q: Could you explain a lit­tle bit about what it is that you guys are doing there at the moment?

Dan: Right now we are chas­ing the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet around the coast of Antar­ti­ca. We’d like to catch up with them and stop them. By con­stant­ly chas­ing them we’re hop­ing to reduce their abil­i­ty to whale. […] They’re cer­tain­ly not whal­ing in this weath­er. The last cou­ple of days they haven’t killed any whales at all.

Q: You’ve been on the chase for a num­ber of days. Is there an end in sight? How long is this gonna go on for?

Dan: I mean depend­ing on the weath­er and stuff we will car­ry on until our fuel runs out. Thats still a good few weeks yet, which should bring us to the end of the whal­ing sea­son actu­al­ly. We should be leav­ing the same time as the [whal­ing] fleet.

Q: Whats your job on the ship?

Dan: Every­one has their set role on the ship. I’m in charge of the deck depart­ment. I am also in charge of all the ships clean­ing duties, mak­ing sure the toi­lets are clean. Also look­ing after all the equip­ment on deck, like the crane and the anchors. I’m also in charge of the inflat­able boats which we use on our actions. Mak­ing sure they are in good work­ing order and get­ting peo­ple trained up to use them. So thats my job. We’ve got nav­i­ga­tors, we’ve got peo­ple in the gal­ly cook­ing, we got peo­ple in the engine room mak­ing sure we have the pow­er and [there is] also a com­mu­ni­ca­tions offi­cer, who keeps us in touch with email etc, lots of dif­fer­ent jobs.

Q: Why did you decide to join the Sea Shep­herd more than any oth­er organ­i­sa­tion, for exam­ple Green­peace?

Dan: I’m inter­est­ed in the Sea Shep­herd because of its direct action angle. We don’t do any protest­ing. We actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly try­ing to stop [the whal­ing fleet]. Not real­ly inter­est­ed in just protest­ing, done that before.. I’m con­cerned with sav­ing [ani­mals] from the seas and end­ing whal­ing for­ev­er. Its the Sea Shep­herd direct angle I’m attract­ed to..

Q: Because at the moment there are a lot of laws pro­tect­ing whales.. A lot of laws have been passed, inter­na­tion­al treaties and all sorts which basi­cal­ly pro­hib­it the whal­ing, but no one to enforce them and that that is the task that the Sea Shep­herd has tak­en on.

Dan: In this sit­u­a­tion the Sea Shep­herd is actu­al­ly play­ing the role of the Aus­tralian navy or coast­guard. We’re in Aus­tralian waters and Aus­tralian ter­ri­to­ry. The Aus­tralian [Fed­er­al] Court ruled [recent­ly] that the Japan­ese whal­ing [oper­a­tions] inside their ter­ri­to­ry is ille­gal and that it should be restrained. There just isn’t the polit­i­cal will to do that. Japan and Aus­tralia are impor­tant trad­ing part­ners. There are numer­ous laws which are pro­tect­ing the whales down here, I’m not an expert on all of them, but there is the Con­ven­tion Inter­na­tion­al Trade In Endan­gered Species, the UN World Char­ter for Nature, which is actu­al­ly empow­eres [ordi­nary] peo­ple to enforce these laws, the Inter­na­tion­al Whal­ings Com­mis­sion Mora­to­ri­um on Com­mer­cial Whal­ing, and the Antarc­tic Treaty pro­tects whales. So they are real­ly bla­tent­ly break­ing a whole bunch of laws. So it is a case of law enforce­ment, more so that protest­ing.

Q: Yeah, because I guess there could be a whole load of laws, but if there is no one to enforce them..

Dan: Yeah, its only worth as much as the piece of paper its writ­ten on.. These treaties should either not be agreed on or be enforced.

Q: You’re obvi­ous­ly doing a great job down there, is there any­thing peo­ple can do on land to sup­port the stuff you’re doing down there?

Dan: When you go to the Sea Shep­herd web­site there are numer­ous peo­ple you can con­tact to [con­front] them about their inac­tion. There is Sea Shep­herd UK who are con­stant­ly rais­ing funds. This ship con­sumes huge amounts of diesel and then the main­te­nance and repair. Peo­ple can be sure that any mon­ey they donate will be used direct­ly to [con­front] the whalers.

Q: Is there any­thing you’d like to say to the peo­ple in Not­ting­ham, some who you know and will be read­ing this?

Dan: Hel­lo to every­one I know. Take care of your­selves back there. I’m a bit cold and wet, but yeah, safe so far and I’ll see you all in a few weeks.

Q: Well we wish you all the best, you’re doing a great job down there and there are tonnes of peo­ple who real­ly sup­port the stuff you’re doing and we all know its very impor­tant so keep up the good work!

Dan: Yeah, cheers mate, take care.

Operation Migaloo (Sea Shepherd)

Sea Shep­herd Aussie Crew Pre­pared to Be Tak­en as Pris­on­ers to Japan

Hunt Chaos in Derbyshire

Chaos in Monyash — 01/03/2008

On Sat­ur­day the 1st March the High Peak Hunt meet at 11.30am at the Bulls Head Inn at Monyash, Der­byshire.

Dur­ing the course of the next three hours the hunts­man lost con­trol of his pack on numer­ous occa­sions. This result­ed in them caus­ing chaos on the roads and in the fields around the area.

Chaos in Monyash — 01/03/2008

On Sat­ur­day the 1st March the High Peak Hunt meet at 11.30am at the Bulls Head Inn at Monyash, Der­byshire.

Dur­ing the course of the next three hours the hunts­man lost con­trol of his pack on numer­ous occa­sions. This result­ed in them caus­ing chaos on the roads and in the fields around the area.

The footage below shows one event where the pack can be seen run­ning back and forth across a main road. Also dur­ing this clip you can see the pack look­ing for the scent of a hare they had been chas­ing, all this with­out the hunts­man in the area.

Sabs where the only ones present where they pro­ceed­ed to slow down the cars dri­ving along the road, thus pre­vent­ing any loss of life. They also made sure the hunt did not chase any hares they were after.

30 min­utes lat­er the same occurred again, with the same result. This time one of the hounds went astray.

When the hunt final­ly called it a day they were still miss­ing a hound, which even­tu­al­ly came run­ning down the road to the meet 20 min­utes after the hunts­man had put away the rest of his pack.

To watch the three and a half minute video clip just fol­low the link off our front page www.nwhsa.org.uk

How can all this hap­pen if they were ‘fol­low­ing a scent’?

info@nwhsa.org.uk

A Climate Camp visits the Government Office in Leeds

29.2.2008
Res­i­dents from flood strick­en areas of York­shire and Hum­ber­side today block­ad­ed the Gov­ern­ment Office in Leeds to protest at its con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of air­port expan­sion. Inspired by last year’s camp for cli­mate action at Heathrow, the pro­tes­tors from Hull, South York­shire and the Calder Val­ley used pop-up tents to set up camp out­side the main entrance.

Yorkshire RSS protest29.2.2008
Res­i­dents from flood strick­en areas of York­shire and Hum­ber­side today block­ad­ed the Gov­ern­ment Office in Leeds to protest at its con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of air­port expan­sion. Inspired by last year’s camp for cli­mate action at Heathrow, the pro­tes­tors from Hull, South York­shire and the Calder Val­ley used pop-up tents to set up camp out­side the main entrance.

This morn­ing, con­cerned and mod­er­ate local peo­ple have block­ad­ed the entrance to their Gov­ern­ment Office. Their mes­sage; that with its con­tin­ued sup­port for expan­sion of air trav­el in the region, the Gov­ern­ment is fly­ing in the face of sci­ence.

Res­i­dents from flood strick­en areas of York­shire and Hum­ber­side today block­ad­ed the Gov­ern­ment Office at 8 City Walk, Leeds to protest at its con­tin­ued pro­mo­tion of air­port expan­sion.

The tim­ing of the protest coin­cid­ed with the final stages in the adop­tion of the Region­al Spa­tial Strat­e­gy (RSS) – the area’s fif­teen year devel­op­ment plan which is cur­rent­ly on the desk of gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Baroness Andrews, await­ing final approval. The plan allows for a three­fold expan­sion of pas­sen­ger flights from York­shire and Hum­ber­side. Bizarrely, voic­es which you might have expect­ed to argue against this mad­ness seem all to eager — Friends of The Earth made a sub­mis­sion to the RSS sug­gest­ing that an expan­sion of air trav­el was accept­able. (Maybe they should rename them­selves Foes of the Earth?)

Gov­ern­ment trans­port poli­cies were sin­gled out for crit­i­cisim by the plan’s Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Appraisal, which com­ment­ed that any pos­i­tive impacts of pro­posed changes to the RSS might not be able to counter wider neg­a­tive trends.

The pro­tes­tors made a for­mal pre­sen­ta­tion of a sci­en­tif­ic brief­ing for con­sid­er­a­tion by Baroness Andrews and issued the fol­low­ing state­ment::-

“We are con­tin­u­al­ly bom­bard­ed with mes­sages ask­ing us to “do our bit”, but this should go for gov­ern­ment too. It is shame­ful that their pol­i­cy to expand avi­a­tion and unsus­tain­able eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment is total­ly at odds with their stat­ed pol­i­cy to reduce CO2 emis­sions.

They are fly­ing in the face of sci­ence, and under­min­ing any hope of pre­vent­ing cli­mate change accel­er­at­ing beyond con­trol. York­shire and Hum­ber­side will be par­tic­u­lar­ly hard hit, because of our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty to coastal ero­sion and flood­ing. This will spell mis­ery for hard work­ing fam­i­lies through­out the region”.

It’s clear that Baroness Andrews needs to insti­gate a major revi­sion of the region­al trans­port plan ele­ment of the RSS to remove the empha­sis on air­port growth, and to ensure a sig­nif­i­cant decrease in car­bon emis­sions from our area. A fif­teen year plan that ignores its own sus­tain­abil­i­ty appraisal is a bad fif­teen year plan, but maybe sci­ence and com­mon sense aren’t enough on their own when Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy is made in the board­rooms of multi­na­tion­als like BAA?

Limagrain Moves GM Tests To The US due to French ban & decontaminations

FRANCE: Feb­ru­ary 29, 2008
PARIS — Europe’s largest seed coop­er­a­tive Lima­grain said on Thurs­day it had moved its research tests into genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) crops to the Unit­ed States, put off by France’s hos­til­i­ty to GMs and the destruc­tion of test fields.

FRANCE: Feb­ru­ary 29, 2008
PARIS — Europe’s largest seed coop­er­a­tive Lima­grain said on Thurs­day it had moved its research tests into genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) crops to the Unit­ed States, put off by France’s hos­til­i­ty to GMs and the destruc­tion of test fields.

Chair­man Pierre Pagesse said Bio­gem­ma, Lima­grain’s grain and oilseed research unit, would car­ry around 1,000 tests on GM crops this year in Illi­nois, in the US corn belt.

Lima­grain has a 70 per­cent stake in the world’s fourth-largest seed mak­er Vil­morin.

“We have decid­ed to trans­fer our tests to the Unit­ed States this year,” Pagesse told Reuters in an inter­view at the Paris farm show.

“It is with a heavy heart,” he added. “For the first time we will move out­side France and even out­side the Euro­pean Union to car­ry out our tests and this due to the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in our coun­try,” Pagesse said.

While GM crops are com­mon in the Unit­ed States, France and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries are dubi­ous about using the new genet­ic tech­nol­o­gy in agri­cul­ture.

France decid­ed in Decem­ber to sus­pend the cul­ti­va­tion of the sole GM crop grown in the Euro­pean Union, a maize devel­oped by US biotech giant Mon­san­to, and noti­fied the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion ear­li­er this month that it was extend­ing the ban.

Pagesse said the expa­tri­a­tion of the GM tests to the Unit­ed States, was also prompt­ed by the repet­i­tive attacks car­ried out by anti-GM activists on Bio­gem­ma’s test fields.

CONTRADICTION

The deci­sion, although not irre­versible, will inevitably affect the work­ing of Lima­grain, which owns 55 per­cent of Bio­gem­ma and total­ly relies on the com­pa­ny for its GM research, he said.

“I know that to move the intel­lec­tu­al part of the group is to move the group’s epi­cen­tre in time,” he said, stress­ing that the com­pa­ny had prob­a­bly wait­ed too long to make the move.

Lima­grain would keep doing non-GM tests in France but all biotech research, car­ried out through Bio­gem­ma, would be done in the Unit­ed States, which in the end could penalise Europe as seeds may not be adapt­ed to Euro­pean soil and pests, he said.

“The com­pa­ny keeps its knowl­edge but it’s the French peas­ants who are going to lose out,” he said.

Pagesse argued there was a con­tra­dic­tion between the French ban on the grow­ing of GM maize and mas­sive­ly import­ing genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied ani­mal feed.

“Either it is bad and we should hur­ry ban­ning imports or we con­sid­er that it’s good for con­sumers, includ­ing through ani­mal feed, then we should let French farm­ers use the tech­nolo­gies that we think are bet­ter adapt­ed,” he said.

A gov­ern­ment-appoint­ed com­mit­tee of sci­en­tists, farm­ers, politi­cians and non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions said in Jan­u­ary “seri­ous doubts” remained over whether the MON 810 was safe.

The main wor­ry men­tioned in the report, which trig­gered the gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion on the ban, con­cerned dis­sem­i­na­tion to oth­er crops and bio­di­ver­si­ty, not human health.

Stop Heathrow Expansion: Terminal 5 flashmob

ON THE OPENING DAY OF HEATHROW TERMINAL 5

11am on the dot, Thurs­day 27 March
Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals (Ground Lev­el), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5

T5 flashmob flier front smallON THE OPENING DAY OF HEATHROW TERMINAL 5

11am on the dot, Thurs­day 27 March
Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals (Ground Lev­el), Heathrow Ter­mi­nal 5

www.stopairportexpansion.org

Be at T5 Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals at 11am to put on (or strip to reveal) your bright­ly coloured ‘STOP AIRPORT EXPANSION’ t‑shirt: a vis­i­ble pres­ence of pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the mad­ness of air­port expan­sion. Wan­der round for a bit, have a cof­fee, leave when you like.

ORDER YOUR FREE T‑SHIRT TODAY: stopairportexpansion@gmail.com or 0845 458 2564.

The Gov­ern­ment and BAA see the open­ing day of Ter­mi­nal Five – the biggest ter­mi­nal ever built in the UK, and the sub­ject of the longest Pub­lic Inquiry in British his­to­ry — as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the case for fur­ther air­port expan­sion. Join the flash mob* on 27 March to high­light the real prob­lems that air­port expan­sion caus­es: cli­mate change, noise, air pol­lu­tion and com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion.

Down­load the fly­er

* Flash Mob: ‘A large group of peo­ple who assem­ble sud­den­ly in a pub­lic place, per­form an unusu­al action for a brief peri­od of time, then quick­ly dis­perse’ (Wikipedia).

www.t5flashmob.com

PLEASE NOTE: Almost every­thing is against the Heathrow byelaws, but wear­ing a t‑shirt is not a crime. So as long as you’re not demon­strat­ing, you’re not break­ing the law!

Parliament rooftop protest against Heathrow 3rd runway

27th Feb­ru­ary 2008

Paper planes on parliament 1Plane Stupid on parliament 227th Feb­ru­ary 2008
Cli­mate cam­paign­ers hang ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’ ban­ner before PMQs

Cam­paign­ers opposed to Heathrow expan­sion have scaled the roof of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and hung protest ban­ners from the build­ing before Prime Min­is­ter’s Ques­tions is due to begin.

The three men and two women from cli­mate action group, Plane Stu­pid, opened an out­side door before walk­ing along the roof and drop­ping two ban­ners. The non-vio­lent direct action comes on the day a gov­ern­ment con­sul­ta­tion into Heathrow expan­sion ends. The pro­test­ers are mak­ing paper aero­planes out of con­fi­den­tial White­hall doc­u­ments that reveal the process is fixed, and glid­ing the planes into the MPs’ car park below.

The doc­u­ments – obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act — prove that air­port oper­a­tor BAA wrote parts of the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment and that the gov­ern­ment has already decid­ed to build a 3rd run­way and 6th ter­mi­nal at the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port.

One of the ban­ners, fac­ing Par­lia­ment Square, brands the House of Com­mons ‘BAA HQ’ while the oth­er says ‘NO 3rd RUNWAY’. Richard George, 27, from Lon­don is on the roof. He said:

I’m stand­ing on the roof of Par­lia­ment because the demo­c­ra­t­ic process has been cor­rupt­ed. The avi­a­tion indus­try has tak­en full advan­tage of a weak Prime Min­is­ter to get the Heathrow con­sul­ta­tion fixed. It does­n’t even con­sid­er glob­al warm­ing, despite every­thing Brown has said about the envi­ron­ment and despite the mas­sive impact that avi­a­tion has on the cli­mate.

He con­tin­ued:

This Prime Min­is­ter does­n’t even have the courage to ask Lon­don­ers the very sim­ple ques­tion, do you want a third run­way? Instead his gov­ern­ment pub­lished a con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment full of gob­bledy­gook and indus­try spin. Now the con­sul­ta­tion is over we can safe­ly ignore the fixed result and get on with the job of stop­ping this new run­way being built. A huge coali­tion of local res­i­dents, Lon­don­ers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists is com­ing togeth­er, sup­port­ed by all the major may­oral can­di­dates, to stand against Gor­don Brown and say ‘no more’.

BAA and Brown want to see a sixth ter­mi­nal and third run­way built over homes, schools and church­es in the vil­lages of Sip­son and Har­mondsworth. This would increase the num­ber of flights from 480,000 a year to at least 702,000. Two mil­lion Lon­don­ers face increased lev­els of noise, while CO2 emis­sions from the air­port would shoot up despite claims by Brown that he’s com­mit­ted to fight­ing cli­mate change.

The rooftop occu­pa­tion comes two days after Green­peace pro­test­ers scaled an Air­bus A320 which had just touched down at Heathrow from Man­ches­ter.

The pro­test­ers have brand­ed Par­lia­ment ‘BAA HQ’ because of the extra­or­di­nary lev­el of col­lu­sion between the avi­a­tion indus­try and gov­ern­ment. Secret doc­u­ments obtained under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion leg­is­la­tion reveal the exis­tence of a pre­vi­ous­ly unknown body called the ‘Heathrow Deliv­ery Group’ – com­prised of gov­ern­ment and BAA offi­cials. The group is charged with get­ting the new run­way through the con­sul­ta­tion process and neu­tral­is­ing ‘risks’ to the project such as Lon­don­ers who oppose Brown’s avi­a­tion pol­i­cy.

BBC news video 1

BBC news video 2

http://video.publico.es/videos/0/4705/1/recent

15 Actions to Topple the Fossil Fuel Empire

Ris­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

Topple Fossil Fuel Empire coverRis­ing Tide has just fin­ished pro­duc­ing two new resource book­lets …

1 — 15 Actions to Top­ple the Fos­sil Fuel Empire — per­fect to help plan your action for up and com­ing Fos­sil Fools Day — more on that at http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241

2 — Cli­mate Action Pop­u­lar Edu­ca­tion Pack — packed with tools to help you run engag­ing, inter­ac­tive work­shops on all aspects of cli­mate change for a wide range of peo­ple.

Both resources can be down­loaded from http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

On site reports from the trenches at Rath Lugh

Mon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Rath Lugh destructionMon­day 25th Feb­ru­ary:
There are fences across the pro­posed route each side of the Rath Lugh woods. At around 8am this morn­ing a mem­ber of the Rath Lugh camp heard machin­ery pass­ing by the rath. 6 of us went out and saw 2 dump trucks and 2 dig­gers out­side the fence, com­ing from the Baron­stown direc­tion. Each dig­ger was 40 tonnes, and want­ed to dri­ve though at the same time! A large crowd of SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros work­ers were present, 2 mem­bers of the Gar­da Siochana were also present, both in incom­plete uni­forms; they did­n’t wear hats, one of them was­n’t dis­play­ing his ID num­ber on his shoul­der. We explained no machin­ery would be pass­ing by Rath Lugh, that the area is pre­served and it is a crim­i­nal offence to inter­fere with or dam­age a nation­al mon­u­ment. The weight and vibra­tions of the machin­ery will affect the mon­u­ment on the esker, and so endan­ger all of Rath Lugh. The work­ers took absolute­ly no heed of any­thing we told them.

Pro­test­ers climbed onto the machin­ery to peace­ful­ly block­ade their path. The rest of us stood in front of the machines. The Gar­dai took our names and address­es. acThe pro­test­ers on the machin­ery climbed off the machines, because one con­struc­tion work­er tried to for­ca­bly pull a male pro­test­er off the dig­ger. The female pro­test­er was walk­ing towards the Rath, when she was man­han­dled by the Gar­da with no hat, car or ID num­ber on his shoul­der. The Gar­dai did­n’t give her a cau­tion but arrest­ed her straight away. He hand­cuffed her and when we ques­tioned him, he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK. He then attempt­ed to drag her to Mark Cleary’s jeep, as there was no squad car to be seen. We imme­di­ate­ly object­ed to this ille­gal arrest, but the Gar­dai kept pulling her, even through she was vis­i­bly upset. There were no female Gar­dai present, we expressed our con­cerns about a young female being tak­en off site by 2 extreme­ly unpro­fes­sion­al Gar­dai and dri­ven off in a vio­lent man’s jeep (Mark Cleary’s. Pho­tos of this man can be seen on this site, or Indymedia.ie, his dri­ves a white jeep and his reg­is­tra­tion plate is 07 D 60531).

The Gar­dai final­ly seemed to under­stand our wor­ries about this ille­gal arrest, and decid­ed to walk her off the site and take her to Navan Gar­da Sta­tion in their squad car, which for some unknown rea­son was parked down the route near Baron­stown. I walked with the female pro­test­er and the 2 Gar­dai towards Baron­stown. She was hand­cuffed behind her back, and when the wind was blow­ing dust in her eyes, they would­n’t free her so she could wipe the dust out. It’s worth not­ing that this site has had its top­soil removed and is com­pact­ed earth with lime to dry out the ground. They joked rather insen­si­tive­ly I should wipe her eyes instead! When I asked the Gar­da with no ID why he men­tioned OPERATION BEDROCK, he refused to com­ment. Final­ly we arrived at their squad car, but a Pad­dy Wag­on was there, and around 8 men in plain clothes wear­ing Gar­da Siochana wind cheater jack­ets. When I asked them why they weren’t in full uni­form they explained they were plain clothes Gar­dai. I again expressed my con­cerns about this dodgy crowd tak­ing one of our young female pro­test­ers away, and request­ed I come with her, for her own health and safe­ty. They refused imme­di­ate­ly, one Bean Gar­da was extreme­ly snap­py, explain­ing the female pro­test­er would be safe with her. I said this was exact­ly what I was wor­ried about and asked would they hand­cuff me so I could accom­pa­ny my col­leage. The same Bean Gar­da said I have often made my own way to Navan in the past when need­ed be. The Gar­da did­n’t uncuff my col­leage in the back of the car, so when they braked sud­den­ly she hurt her back and now needs med­ical atten­tion.

We made our way back to the front line at Rath Lugh and were about to head into the Gar­da Sta­tion in Navan when we got an urgent phone call from the front line. A doz­er was at the left fence, com­ing from Baron­stown direc­tion. A small­er dig­ger was work­ing on a spoil heap a few feet away from the esker. We imme­di­ate­ly block­ad­ed the machin­ery peace­ful­ly to pre­vent them work­ing. All of the SIAC, Fer­rovial and Wills Bros were sit­ting in their jeeps as it was hail­ston­ing and extreme­ly windy. A Gar­da jeep approached from Lis­mullen, with the same 2 Gar­dai who arrest­ed my col­leage an hour ear­li­er. The bald Gar­da with­out his ID num­ber ear­li­er now had his ID dis­played, obvi­ous­ly he realised he made an ille­gal arrest ear­li­er. We hand­ed them the Rath Lugh Preser­va­tion Order, which they accept­ed. The Gar­da who dis­played his ID num­ber explained the doz­er would be pass­ing throught to Lis­mullen, but he was stop­ping the dig­ger from work­ing until the mat­ter of the Preser­va­tion Order is clear­er. We blocked the esker from being harmed as the doz­er passed by s to the Lis­mullen site. When asked about the plain clothes Gar­dai, the Gar­da denied their exis­tence. When I remind­ed hiym I spoke to the plain clothes Gar­dai myself, he cor­rect­ed him­self. He said they were on stand­by. On stand­by for what we asked, explain­ing our own health and safe­ty is of para­mount impor­tance. He refused to com­ment fur­ther.

6 con­struc­tion work­ers approached the front line ben­der, took mea­sure­ments around the perime­ter fence of the ben­der, using sur­vey­ing equip­ment. Con­struc­tion work­ers in jeeps attempt­ed to dri­ve past Rath Lugh again from Baron­stown to Lis­mullen, but the Gar­dai refused them per­mis­sion, until the Preser­va­tion Order mat­ter is clear­er.

I am now on going to bring the female pro­test­er who got released to hos­pi­tal for med­ical atten­tion.

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Update lunchtime:

Sit­u­a­tion Crit­i­cal as more machin­ery is arriv­ing. 4 machines were allowed pass Rath Lugh in sin­gle file ear­li­er en route to Lis­mullin. They have cho­sen this route to enter onto the Henge. Now 3 machines are sta­tioned at Rath Lugh threat­en­ing to begin work in that area. There has been no reply from Gorm­ley’s office despite sev­er­al requests this morn­ing in regard to the Tem­po­rary Preser­va­tion Order and for con­fir­ma­tion of the bound­aries of same ‚which seem now to be unclear.

Please sup­port , BE PRESENT, con­tact all inter­est­ed bod­ies, make com­plaints, spread the word, do what you can but do it Now!

The female Pro­tec­tor has been released. No details of charges yet.

Rath Lugh Camp Phone : 0861537146

Vig­il Camp Phone: 0861758557

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Video of Stand­off at Rath­lugh today and the arrest of a pro­tes­tor.

Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1)
right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s
sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the
government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Manchester Critical Mass and after party!!!

Crit­i­cal Mass Bicy­cle Ride
Fri­day 29th Feb­ru­ary
6pm Cen­tral Library M1
Bike ride around the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle

7.30pm-Midnight Cafe Saki (opp EBC)
with…
GO LEBANON!
BLACK VELVET BAND

Crit­i­cal Mass Bicy­cle Ride
Fri­day 29th Feb­ru­ary
6pm Cen­tral Library M1
Bike ride around the city to cel­e­brate the bicy­cle

7.30pm-Midnight Cafe Saki (opp EBC)
with…
GO LEBANON!
BLACK VELVET BAND
CLEG
and DJ’s play­ing a
mix­ture of ska, reg­gae, punk, dis­co.

FREE
(Dona­tions to I Bike MCR
Fes­ti­val appre­ci­at­ed)

www.ibikemcr.org.uk