Author: earthfirst

Climate reclaim the streets in Malmo, Sweden

19 Jan­u­ary. Some 60 activists from Kli­max-Malmö staged the third “cli­mate col­li­sion” dur­ing the group’s short exis­tence (it was formed in Novem­ber last year), seiz­ing a street in the cen­tral parts of the city.

Malmo climate RTS 1Malmo RTS 219 Jan­u­ary. Some 60 activists from Kli­max-Malmö staged the third “cli­mate col­li­sion” dur­ing the group’s short exis­tence (it was formed in Novem­ber last year), seiz­ing a street in the cen­tral parts of the city. Some dressed as con­struc­tion work­ers, they declared the street a “zone for cli­mate work”.

Sea Shepherd Hostages Return Back to Steve Irwin — Lack of Cooperation May Kill the Whales

Japan­ese Poach­ers Release Sea Shep­herd Hostages
18/01/08 http://www.seashepherd.org

Ben­jamin Potts and Giles Lane were trans­ferred from the Yushin Maru No. 2 to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking ear­ly in the morn­ing at 0200 Hours Mel­bourne time (1300 Hours GMT). The two men were trans­ferred to the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin at 0930 Hours Mel­bourne time (2030 Hours GMT).

Sea Shepherd hostages returnJapan­ese Poach­ers Release Sea Shep­herd Hostages
18/01/08 http://www.seashepherd.org

Ben­jamin Potts and Giles Lane were trans­ferred from the Yushin Maru No. 2 to the Aus­tralian Cus­toms ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking ear­ly in the morn­ing at 0200 Hours Mel­bourne time (1300 Hours GMT). The two men were trans­ferred to the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin at 0930 Hours Mel­bourne time (2030 Hours GMT).

Both men were hap­py to be reunit­ed with their ship­mates and eager to return to chas­ing the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet in the South­ern Oceans. Both men report­ed that although they were roughed up when they first board­ed the whal­ing ship, that they were treat­ed well dur­ing their time onboard. The only injury was a bruised wrist suf­fered by Giles Lane.

“It did not take long before the whalers real­ized that they made a huge pub­lic rela­tions mis­take in keep­ing us on their ship,” said Ben­jamin Potts. “We made it clear to them that Sea Shep­herd was com­mit­ted to stop­ping their ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ties.”

“Although we appre­ci­ate the con­cern that peo­ple have expressed for our wel­fare, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that this is not about us.” said Giles Lane. “It’s about stop­ping this cru­el and ille­gal whale hunt. The treat­ment that we received was triv­ial in com­par­i­son to the suf­fer­ing that the whales expe­ri­ence at the hands of the Japan­ese whalers. They may have been rough with us but at least we were not har­pooned, elec­tro­cut­ed and muti­lat­ed. This is not about us, it’s about the whales.”

The Steve Irwin is con­tin­u­ing its pur­suit of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet. “This is the 8th day that whales have not been killed,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “Every day that we stop the whalers is a vic­to­ry. We will con­tin­ue to inter­vene, harass, block, and obstruct the whalers at every oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

The Steve Irwin is present­ly at 59 Degrees 46 Min­utes South and 85 Degrees 59 Min­utes East and on the tail of the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet.
http://www.seashepherd.org/migaloo/video/2008–01-18_video_clip_05_Sea_Shepherd_crew_members_released_back_to_the_Steve_Irwin.wmv

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“With “allies” like the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment and Green­peace, it is becom­ing increas­ing dif­fi­cult to keep the Japan­ese fleet from killing whales,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “Aus­tralian Cus­toms delib­er­ate­ly led us away from the fleet and Green­peace is guard­ing the coor­di­nates like the crown jew­els to pre­vent us re-locat­ing the fleet.”

Lack of Coop­er­a­tion May Kill the Whales
From onboard the Steve Irwin in the South­ern Oceans (18/01/08)

The Aus­tralian Cus­toms and Fish­eries Patrol ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking has thrown the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin off the trail of the Japan­ese fleet.

After pick­ing up the two Sea Shep­herd crewmem­bers from the Yushin Maru No. 2 the Ocean­ic Viking noti­fied the Steve Irwin to head for a ren­dezvous point a few hours away.

This was unusu­al con­sid­er­ing that the Yushin Maru No. 2 was only about ten miles away at the time. The Steve Irwin was forced to stop tail­ing the Yushin Maru No. 2 to meet up with the Ocean­ic Viking. This allowed the whaler to head off in an unknown direc­tion to rejoin the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru.

After drop­ping off Ben­jamin Potts and Giles Lane, the Ocean­ic Viking head­ed off in a direc­tion away from the Japan­ese fleet. The fleet then appar­ent­ly changed course and has now been lost from Sea Shep­herd. Green­peace tag­ging along with the Nishin Maru has report­ed that the catch­er boats have met back up with the main fleet.

Although Sea Shep­herd has been relay­ing the posi­tion of the catch­er boats to the Green­peace ship Esper­an­za for the last three days, Green­peace refus­es rec­i­p­ro­cate and refus­es to reveal the present loca­tion of the fleet.

“With “allies” like the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment and Green­peace, it is becom­ing increas­ing dif­fi­cult to keep the Japan­ese fleet from killing whales,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “Aus­tralian Cus­toms delib­er­ate­ly led us away from the fleet and Green­peace is guard­ing the coor­di­nates like the crown jew­els to pre­vent us re-locat­ing the fleet.”

Com­pli­cat­ing the search is the fact that the Japan­ese have sent a new ship the Fukoyoshi No. 68 to shad­ow the Steve Irwin at all times. The ves­sel is not part of the whal­ing fleet. It’s a large Japan­ese drag trawler. It does not have any fish­ing gear onboard and seems to have more elec­tron­ic gear than nor­mal for a fish­ing ves­sel. This ship is appar­ent­ly report­ing the Steve Irwin’s posi­tion to the Japan­ese fleet.

Sea Shep­herd has shut down whal­ing for a week. Unless the Steve Irwin can find the fleet soon, the killing will begin again. The Ocean­ic Viking will take pic­tures of dying whales and Green­peace will hang ban­ners, take pic­tures and con­tin­ue on with their inef­fec­tive stunts. They will not stop the killing.

“If whales begin to die with­in the next few days, I will hold Green­peace and the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment respon­si­ble,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “They know we can stop the killing because whales don’t die when Sea Shep­herd arrives. By lead­ing us off the tail of the whalers and refus­ing to coop­er­ate on coor­di­nates they are delib­er­ate­ly help­ing the whalers to escape from Sea Shep­herd and to resume the slaugh­ter of the whales. I under­stand that Green­peace needs kill footage and images of “hero­ic eco-war­riors” buzzing about in inflat­a­bles but that does not stop the har­poons. Our very pres­ence will deter the Japan­ese from killing whales. Sea Shep­herd is the best weapon that Green­peace can use to stop the resump­tion of whal­ing. By with­hold­ing coop­er­a­tion they are con­tribut­ing to the death of the whales. If any whales are killed with­in the next week I will hold Green­peace respon­si­ble for their deaths because they have the pow­er to coop­er­ate with Sea Shep­herd to pre­vent the killing from con­tin­u­ing.”

The Steve Irwin is con­duct­ing heli­copter sur­veil­lance patrols to re-locate the whal­ing fleet. The fleet should be with­in two hun­dred miles of Sea Shep­herd.

http://seashepherd.org

Friday 11th jan 08 Soldier Hill & the next Friday actions

Anoth­er suc­cess­ful day as the cam­paign con­tin­ues, activists occu­pied one of the last remain­ing tree’s on the route from 6.30am onwards on the com­pul­so­ry pur­chase line at sol­dier hill.

Solders Hill last treeAnoth­er suc­cess­ful day as the cam­paign con­tin­ues, activists occu­pied one of the last remain­ing tree’s on the route from 6.30am onwards on the com­pul­so­ry pur­chase line at sol­dier hill.

Fri­day 11th jan 08

Two of them hung a ban­ner from the tree in an attempt to make it clear that the protest will be con­tin­u­ing for the fore­see­able future, whilst oth­ers on the ground hung more ban­ners in order to raise aware­ness of our con­tin­u­ing defi­ance of this cor­rupt and crooked route. activists were over­joyed at the over­whelm­ing sup­port from mem­bers of the pub­lic, and local media cov­er­age.

As the new year begins we are wit­ness­ing more activ­i­ty from local and inter­na­tion­al activists all bold­ly defend­ing our cul­tur­al her­itage and nat­ur­al resources.

Report just in, 4.30pm, A con­cerned mem­ber of the pub­lic has just informed us that SIAC work­ers have been spot­ted mov­ing toward’s the tree with chain­saws, we need more peo­ple to attend the ongo­ing protest at sol­dier hill each fri­day so we can halt the increas­ing destruc­tion of this sacred land­scape once and for all.

http://www.tarapixie.net

»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»»

Please attend demo Fri 3pm Soldier@ Hill. You will see us there. We will be the ones with the ban­ners !
Save Tara banner
Fri­day 18th action report:

The high winds and rain did not damp­en our spir­its at Sol­dier’s Hill today. In fact it all helped to add to the laugh­ter as we tried not to set sail with our ban­ners 🙂

Thanks to all who beeped their sup­port.

Update from Rozbrat Polish squat

Rozbrat squat alarm — Com­mu­nique from 16/01/2008

Rozbrat Col­lec­tive would like to thank every­one who in the last days expressed their sup­port and their readi­ness to defend our place. We’ve received hun­dereds of e‑mails, tele­phone calls, let­ters, both from ind­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, social move­ments from Poland and from abroad.

Rozbrat logoRozbrat squat alarm — Com­mu­nique from 16/01/2008

Rozbrat Col­lec­tive would like to thank every­one who in the last days expressed their sup­port and their readi­ness to defend our place. We’ve received hun­dereds of e‑mails, tele­phone calls, let­ters, both from ind­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions, social move­ments from Poland and from abroad.

In gen­er­al, after the vis­it of the bailiff last week (8/01/2008), noth­ing sig­nif­i­cant has hap­pened, noth­ing that would change our sit­u­a­tion. We’re still under the threat of evic­tion, but the date is real­ly hard to pre­dict. We’re still analysing our legal sit­u­a­tion, con­sid­er­ing both the orga­ni­za­tions and ini­tia­tives that are active at Rozbrat, and the peo­ple liv­ing here for years. With­in next 2 or 3 weeks our legal sit­u­a­tion should be clear and we will pub­lish anoth­er com­mu­nique. How­ev­er, we would like to state that we will defend Robrat both with all legal means and with all means nec­es­sary.

So far, Rozbrat is still active! We invite all of you for the events that will be orga­nized in Jan­u­ary and Feb­ru­ary: gigs, exhi­bi­tions, lec­tures, film screen­ings and so on… We invite you to vis­it our Anar­chist Library and our Infos­hop, where you can get some use­ful pam­phlets, leaflets, posters, or bor­row a book. Please vis­it our web­site www.rozbrat.org — in the announce­ments (in Pol­ish “zapowiedzi”) sec­tion we will be announc­ing all the cul­tur­al, social and polit­i­cal activ­i­ties that we orga­nize and we will inform you about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion of Rozbrat.

Strug­gle con­tin­ues!
08.01.2008 — ALARM AT ROZBRAT!

Today, around 10 a.m. bailiff togeth­er with cops came to Rozbrat squat. The police­men drilled the lock of the gate, the bailiff had a court’s per­mis­sion to come in and esti­mate the price of the ground. The mid­dle part of Rozbrat squat (includ­ing both con­cert halls, gallery, bars, library and part of the liv­ing area) was indebt­ed for a long time by a com­pa­ny that does­n’t exist any­more. The ground price eval­u­a­tion today means that the ground can be auc­tioned wit­thin one or two months — that can mean the end of Rozbrat squat — the longest occu­pied space in Poland.

We’ll keep you informed. We count on you being ready to orga­nize sol­i­dar­i­ty actions by you and your groups!

We’re not gonna give up with­out fight!

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His­to­ry of and wide range of activ­i­ties at Rozbrat, Pos­nan — see http://www.rozbrat.org/english.htm

500-per­son strong Crit­i­cal Mass­es: http://www.rozbrat.org/english/english_more.htm#cr

Shell to Sea revisit RPS office

Thurs­day Jan­u­ary 17th 2008

Unite against raw gasAgainst raw gas wallThurs­day Jan­u­ary 17th 2008

Yes­ter­day, over 30 local peo­ple again vis­it­ed the RPS office in Bel­mul­let to again let it be known that under no cir­cum­stances would they accept raw gas run­ning through their com­mu­ni­ty. Even though RPS group direc­tor PJ Rud­den claimed recent­ly to media that he was “pleas­ant­ly sur­prised” by the reac­tion to the short list­ed routes, he will be in no doubt what the major­i­ty of peo­ple in Kil­com­mon parish think of the routes fol­low­ing this most recent vis­it. Four mem­bers of the group went in to the RPS offices to out­line some of their objec­tions to the cur­rent pipeline pro­pos­als. They also hand­ed in a peti­tion signed by mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty stat­ing their objec­tions to putting their pipeline any­where through the Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC) in Glen­gad or the Spe­cial Pro­tec­tion Area of Broad­haven Bay.

It also emerged recent­ly that the Coun­ty Coun­cil are once again doing their utmost to assist Shell in any­way they can. This time they have put in a plan­ning pro­pos­al to upgrade the road from the refin­ery site back to Glen­gad (via the Leanamore road). The upgrade of the road will cease imme­di­ate­ly after the gate down to land­fall leav­ing no doubt who the insti­ga­tors of this upgrade are. Approx­i­mate­ly 6 kilo­me­tres of the road will be widened while the whole of the road upgrade will be strength­ened with wire mesh to with­stand the increase traf­fic that the coun­cil forsee. This is yet anoth­er slap in the face to the local com­mu­ni­ty, who hav­ing been wait­ing for road repairs for years but must watch their Coun­cil spend their tax­es on Shel­l’s infra­struc­ture.

It also seems that Shell are con­tin­u­ing with their long held strat­e­gy of blam­ing any prob­lems they have on pro­tes­tors actions.

Dur­ing the Afri Hedge School that was held in Erris in ear­ly Novem­ber, a talk was giv­en by Fr Kevin O’Hara (who found­ed the Cen­tre for Social and Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­i­ty, which mon­i­tors oil com­pa­nies in Nige­ria). He stat­ed that in one case of an oil spill at which he was present, a Shell engi­neer upon turn­ing up at the spill loca­tion was straight away able to point out to oth­er employ­ees what had caused the oil spill as it had been a reoc­cur­ring prob­lem. How­ev­er offi­cial­ly of course the Shell excuse was that sab­o­tage had caused the oil spill. The only prob­lem for Shell was that the Shell engi­neer had been caught on film direct­ing the employ­ees to the fault in the pipeline, which was the true cause of the spill.

It seems as if Shell are using a sim­i­lar tac­tic here in Mayo. In the lat­est refin­ery ‘Envi­ron­men­tal Report’ (18th Dec 07) that Shell has com­piled, they admit­ted that one of their 4 dust col­lec­tion points showed a read­ing that was well above their lim­it for dust depo­si­tion (mea­sured 530mg/m2/day where 350mg/ m2/day is the lim­it). The dust col­lec­tion pots were in place for over a month how­ev­er Shell blame the high lev­el of dust record­ed on the fact that pro­tes­tors “pos­si­bly van­dalised” the dust gauge dur­ing an incur­sion on to the site on the 9th of Novem­ber.

See the Envi­ron­men­tal Reports (sic) here:
http://www.mayococo.ie/en/News/GasTerminal/Environmenta…2007/

Whalers Hand Activists Over To Australia’s Ship

17th Jan­u­ary: the activists — Aus­tralian Ben­jamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35 — were detained Tues­day after board­ing the har­poon ship to protest Japan’s whal­ing pro­gramme. They were hand­ed over to Aus­tri­ali­a’s ‘Ocean Viking’ ear­li­er today.

Operation Migaloo (Sea Shepherd)
Steve Irwin Sea Shepherd boat & helicopter
17th Jan­u­ary: the activists — Aus­tralian Ben­jamin Potts, 28, and Briton Giles Lane, 35 — were detained Tues­day after board­ing the har­poon ship to protest Japan’s whal­ing pro­gramme. They were hand­ed over to Aus­tri­ali­a’s ‘Ocean Viking’ ear­li­er today.

A Japan­ese whal­ing ship late Thurs­day hand­ed over to an Aus­tralian cus­toms ves­sel two anti-whal­ing activists who climbed aboard two days ear­li­er, an offi­cial from Japan’s Fish­eries Agency said.

Aus­tralia sent the cus­toms ship, the Ocean­ic Viking, to the Japan­ese whal­ing ship in a bid to end the stand-off involv­ing the activists of the mil­i­tant Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety.

“Two Sea Shep­herd activists who intrud­ed onto the Yushin Maru No 2 and have been in cus­tody on the ship were hand­ed over to the Ocean­ic Viking char­tered by the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment,” Hidea­ki Oka­da, a whal­ing offi­cial at the Fish­eries Agency in Tokyo, told AFP ear­ly Fri­day.

More at http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gzy-7LzEluJCEYZWmJXa_MiYpOcQ and http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7193212.stm

Hope­ful­ly they will be returned back to Sea Shep­herd’s ‘Steve Irwin’ very soon, that is the plan.

Back to destroy­ing whal­ing…

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Sea Shepherd pirates
Antarc­tic Whale Defense Cam­paign
Oper­a­tion Miga­loo 07–08

For more details, see http://www.seashepherd.org/migaloo/index.html

Climate camp set up outside court — Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station action necessity

Cli­mate Change Tri­al Opens

The tri­al of the eleven cli­mate change activists who shut down Rat­cliffe-on-Soar pow­er sta­tion on April 10th 2007 began today Mon­day 14th Jan at Not­ting­ham Mag­is­trates Court

Racliffe-on-Soar camp at court caseCli­mate Change Tri­al Opens

The tri­al of the eleven cli­mate change activists who shut down Rat­cliffe-on-Soar pow­er sta­tion on April 10th 2007 began today Mon­day 14th Jan at Not­ting­ham Mag­is­trates Court

Over 30 peo­ple, con­cerned about cli­mate chaos, held a demon­stra­tion out­side the court in sup­port of the defen­dants at 9.30 this morn­ing

BBC and ITN cam­era crews were there to film and inter­view.

The pros­e­cu­tion com­plet­ed giv­ing its evi­dence today and the evi­dence for the defence will be heard tomor­row.

The Tri­al is being heard before a Dis­trict Judge and is expect­ed to last 3 days.

http://www.eastsideclimateaction.org.uk

Day 1 report
Day 2 report
Day 3 report

Judge­ment expect­ed 25th Feb­ru­ary.

Orig­i­nal action report and as part of Spring into Action.

Anti-whaling hostages — update & solidarity demo reports: Berlin, London, Barcelona, New York, Washington DC

17/1/2008
Sea Shep­herd Shuts Down Antarc­tic Whale Hunt
The Japan­ese hunt for endan­gered whales in the South­ern Oceans Whale Sanc­tu­ary has been shut down.

Yushin Maru 2 whaler17/1/2008
Sea Shep­herd Shuts Down Antarc­tic Whale Hunt
The Japan­ese hunt for endan­gered whales in the South­ern Oceans Whale Sanc­tu­ary has been shut down.

“All whal­ing activ­i­ties have come to a halt,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son from onboard the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ship Steve Irwin. No whales have been killed since Jan­u­ary 11th. The Japan­ese whal­ing fleet has been denied a sol­id week of whal­ing activ­i­ty. Our task now is to make that two weeks and then three weeks.”

As long as the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety and Green­peace keep the Japan­ese whal­ing fleet on the run, there will be no whal­ing activ­i­ty.

“I wish that Green­peace would be more coop­er­a­tive,” said Cap­tain Paul Wat­son. “How­ev­er we will con­tin­ue to feed them the coor­di­nates for the rest of the fleet as they tail the fac­to­ry ship Nis­shin Maru. If we can­not work with Green­peace direct­ly we will work with them indi­rect­ly. The strength of any move­ment is in diver­si­ty.”

Jan­u­ary 17th found the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin chas­ing the whal­ing sup­ply ves­sel Ori­en­tal Blue­bird and three oth­er whal­ing ships east­ward along the line of Lat­i­tude of Six­ty Degrees South near the Eighty Six Degree East line of lon­gi­tude. This is approx­i­mate­ly 2000 miles from Fre­man­tle, Aus­tralia.

The Japan­ese whalers con­tin­ue to hold Aus­tralian cit­i­zen Ben­jamin Potts 28 and Giles Lane 35 of Great Britain. The Japan­ese gov­ern­ment has ordered their release but the whalers are defy­ing that order and refus­ing to release their hostages until Sea Shep­herd agrees to their demands. One of the demands is for Sea Shep­herd to dis­con­tin­ue oppos­ing whal­ing activ­i­ties. Cap­tain Wat­son respond­ed by refus­ing to acknowl­edge their demands and demand­ing instead that the hostages be released with­out con­di­tions.

The Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin will con­tin­ue to pur­sue ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing activ­i­ties for as long as pos­si­ble.

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Aus­tralia to inter­cede in Safe Return of Sea Shep­herd activists

After two days being held hostage on the Yushin Maru No 2, two Sea Shep­herd anti-whal­ing activists may be returned with­in the next day to the Sea Shep­herd ship Steve Irwin by the autho­ri­sa­tion of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment to use the Cus­toms and Fish­eries patrol ves­sel Ocean­ic Viking as an inter­me­di­ary.

Aus­tralian For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Stephen Smith said “What is required now to trans­fer those two men is the agree­ment of the Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment, which we have, the agree­ment of the Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment, which we have,” Mr Smith said. “We now need the full and com­plete coop­er­a­tion of the two ves­sels, the two cap­tains and the two men con­cerned.”

Sea Shep­herd were refus­ing to meet the con­di­tions stip­u­lat­ed by the Cap­tain of the Yashin Maru No 2 to stop inter­fer­ing with the whal­ing fleet oper­a­tions for the trans­fer of the two crew mem­bers, with Cap­tain Paul Wat­son say­ing on the ABC 7.30 report “I don’t acqui­esce to ter­ror­ist demands and that’s what that is. Hold­ing hostages and mak­ing demands is a ter­ror­ist tac­tic.”

Asked to jus­ti­fy two mem­bers of his crew board­ing anoth­er ves­sel with­out autho­ri­sa­tion, which the Japan­ese have accused as an act or ter­ror­ism or pira­cy, Paul Wat­son replied “You can run around the ocean jump­ing on poacher’s ves­sels. They’re tar­get­ing endan­gered species and whale sanc­tu­ar­ies, in vio­la­tion of a glob­al mora­to­ri­um. The Unit­ed Nations’ world char­ter of nature on sec­tion of imple­men­ta­tion under Sec­tion 21 E allows for non-gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions to uphold inter­na­tion­al con­ser­va­tion law. So, we are autho­rised to do that. These are poach­ers, I’m try­ing to get that through to peo­ple. They are poach­ers.”

Sec­tion 21 E of the World Char­ter for Nature, passed by the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly in 1982, states that “States and, to the extent they are able, oth­er pub­lic author­i­ties, inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions, indi­vid­u­als, groups and cor­po­ra­tions shall .…(e) safe­guard and con­serve nature in areas beyond nation­al juris­dic­tion.”

Sec­tion 24 of the char­ter says that “Each per­son has a duty to act in accor­dance with the pro­vi­sions of the present Char­ter; act­ing indi­vid­u­al­ly, in asso­ci­a­tion with oth­ers or through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the polit­i­cal process, each per­son shall strive to ensure that the objec­tives and require­ments of the present Char­ter are met.”

Accord­ing to the Aus­tralian For­eign min­is­ter, Stephen Smith on the ABC 7.30 Report, “the only con­di­tions that will be imposed here are con­di­tions that will be imposed by the Aus­tralian author­i­ties and the ‘Ocean­ic Viking’, and those con­di­tions will go to the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of this oper­a­tion.

It was report­ed by AAP that the trans­fer may take place in the next 24 hours. Accord­ing to Kim McCoy, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety, on board the Steve Irwin “We have just spo­ken very recent­ly with an agent on board the Ocean­ic Viking cus­toms ves­sel,” she said. “We have received offi­cial con­tact from them stat­ing that they’re just wait­ing for the Japan­ese to con­firm that they’re will­ing to accept those terms.”

“My under­stand­ing is that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment is not going to impose any con­di­tions on us to stop harass­ing the whal­ing, because the whal­ing is ille­gal. The only con­di­tion that the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment wants to impose is the safe trans­fer, and of course we’re going to have to facil­i­tate a safe trans­fer, we don’t want to jeop­ar­dise any­one’s safe­ty dur­ing the trans­fer of Giles and Pottsy (Ben­jamin Potts) to our ship.

“Beyond that they’ve told us that there will be no addi­tion­al con­di­tions. In oth­er words, we are going to con­tin­ue inter­ven­ing against the ille­gal whal­ing activ­i­ty of the Japan­ese.” she said.

Cap­tain Paul Wat­son told Ali Moore from the ABC 7.30 Report “We’re not protest­ing their whal­ing oper­a­tions, we’re not protest­ing them. What we are doing is inter­fer­ing with ille­gal activ­i­ties. This is an inter­ven­tion­ist oper­a­tion not a protest organ­i­sa­tion.”

Sources:

* ABC 7.30 Report — Jan 17, 2008 — Govt con­sid­ers send­ing ‘Ocean­ic Viking’ to the res­cue
* ABC 7.30 Report — Jan 17, 2008 — Sea Shep­herd cap­tain reports from the high seas
* ABC News — Jan 17, 2008 — Sea Shep­herd will only accept ‘uncon­di­tion­al’ Govt help
* news.com.au, Jan 17, 2008 — Anti-whalers con­tact­ed over detainees
* Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­by 1982 World Char­ter for Nature

Repost from report on Syd­ney Indy­media, that con­tains all source links.
http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/story/australia-intercedes-safe-return-sea-shepherd-activists

——
Sea Shep­herd Sol­i­dar­i­ty Protest at Japan­ese Embassy, Berlin

16.1.2008
Peo­ple went to put pres­sure on offi­cials at the Japan­ese Embassy at Hiroshi­mas­trasse in Berlin today. They hung ban­ners on the fences of the Embassy demand­ing the imme­di­ate and uncon­di­tion­al release of the two Sea Shep­herd crew mem­bers tak­en hostage on 15 Jan­u­ary by the Japan­ese
Whal­ing Fleet.

For updates, see www.seashepherd.org

——

Sea Shepherd Hostage London Solidarity Demo
Sea Shep­herd Hostage Lon­don Sol­i­dar­i­ty Demo
16/1/08

Fifty pick­et the Japan­ese embassy in Lon­don in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sea Shep­herd hostages (see pre­vi­ous posts). The embassy staff were not hap­py. Ban­ners read ‘Free the Hostages’, ‘Stop the the Whale Slaugh­ter’ and ‘Defend the Wild’. The pick­et got a lot of media cov­er­age with mul­ti­ple TV crews includ­ing one from Japan.

Updates post­ed here and at www.seashepherd.org

——

Sea Shep­herd demo, Barcelona
17.1.2008
Demon­stra­tors today held a protest out­side the Japan­ese Con­sul in Barcelona, also deliv­er­ing a let­ter to the Gen­er­al Con­sul demand­ing the imme­di­ate release of two Sea Shep­herd crew mem­bers cur­rent­ly held hostage by Japan­ese whalers.

A group of Sea Shep­herd sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed out­side the Japan­ese Con­sulate in Barcelona today, to call for the imme­di­ate release of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts, cur­rent­ly held hostage aboard a Japan­ese whal­ing ship.

Inside, two peo­ple deliv­ered a let­ter to the Con­sul con­demn­ing the hostage tak­ing and demand­ing Japan­ese inter­ven­tion. Out­side, 150 leaflets were hand­ed out to work­ers and passers­by.

The Mossos turned up but every­thing was qui­et. Sol­i­dar­i­ty to Sea Shep­herd!

—–

NYC Protest for Sea Shep­herd Hostages

17.01.2008
Activists braved the cold of New York City today to protest yes­ter­day’s kid­nap­ping of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts by an ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing ship. They were released ear­li­er today to the Ocean Viking (Aus­trali­a’s ship).

VIDEOS
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk1AKVRbR8I
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb7IM9VNY48

Activists braved the cold of New York City today to protest yes­ter­day’s kid­nap­ping of Giles Lane and Ben­jamin Potts by an ille­gal Japan­ese whal­ing ship.

The duo are cur­rent­ly being held hostage on the ship, and demon­stra­tions and protests at Japan­ese embassies and con­sulates across the globe are being held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Sea Shep­herd crew.

Japan, we demand you stop the bloody slaugh­ter of inno­cent whales and dol­phins and return the kid­napped activists IMMEDIATELY with­out harm!

http://www.war-online.org

—–

17/01/08

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO2I38jBo‑E

Activists from NYC band­ed togeth­er with activists from Wash­ing­ton D.C. to protest the kid­nap­ping and hostage tak­ing of Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety mem­bers Giles Lane (UK) and Ben­jamin Potts (Aus­tralia).

Ani­mal lovers and envi­ron­men­tal­ists gath­ered out­side the Japan­ese embassy and demand­ed the release of Potts and Lane, who are regard­ed as heroes, and also demand­ed an end to the slaugh­ter of beau­ti­ful whales and dol­phins that go to feed Japan­ese bel­lies.

At the end of yes­ter­day’s protest activists received the call: The Sea Shep­herd heroes had just been released.

Indigenous Action Against Mining Hold Australian Firm At Bay in the Philippines

2008-01-17
NUEVA VIZCAYA, Philip­pines- Trib­al vil­lagers up north Luzon block­ad­ed the Aus­tralian min­ing com­pa­ny from fur­ther explor­ing min­er­als in their com­mu­ni­ty, Fri­day noon, and forced the min­ing firm to leave the vil­lage.

Rabbit under fence2008-01-17
NUEVA VIZCAYA, Philip­pines- Trib­al vil­lagers up north Luzon block­ad­ed the Aus­tralian min­ing com­pa­ny from fur­ther explor­ing min­er­als in their com­mu­ni­ty, Fri­day noon, and forced the min­ing firm to leave the vil­lage.

Accord­ing to reports, hun­dred dozens of indige­nous res­i­dents in Kasi­bu town ‚“pushed away employ­ees of a for­eign min­ing firm and their earth-mov­ing equip­ment that were sup­posed to start explo­ration in their com­mu­ni­ty”, said Inq.Net. The action held by local peo­ple has lead to an indef­i­nite oper­a­tion shut down of OceanaGold Philip­pines Inc.- an Aus­tralian com­pa­ny.

Indige­nous res­i­dents were only pro­tect­ing the Papaya water­shed that feed the Alimudin, Mal­ong and Pah­d­u­an rivers. These are the main sources of irri­ga­tion for about 150,000 fruit trees in Mal­abing Val­ley, which has six vil­lages. But the min­ing firm came in with­out con­sent among the vil­lagers and threat­en their means of exis­tence.

This is what the Aus­tralian Min­ing Com­pa­ny has said in their media release:
“OceanaGold offi­cials insist they no longer need proof of con­sent from the com­mu­ni­ty since they have a Finan­cial and Tech­ni­cal Assis­tance Agree­ment (FTAA) grant­ed by the gov­ern­ment in 1994 to Cli­max Min­ing Ltd.”

Biofuel week of action — 26th January-2nd February 2008

Bio­fu­el­watch are call­ing for a nation­al week of local action on agro­fu­els between 26th Jan­u­ary and 2nd Feb­ru­ary 2008. Rather than organ­is­ing one cen­tral protest, UK groups and cam­paigns are encour­aged to organ­ise local protests and actions – which could involve a ban­ner protest out­side a Tesco or BP petrol sta­tion or out­side an agro­fu­el refin­ery (click for map of bio­fu­el refiner­ies), leaflet­ing and/or street the­atre in the city cen­tre, a press release, a pub­lic film show, etc. Please email us at info[at]biofuelwatch.org.uk if you can help in any way, or if you would like to find out if any­thing is already planned in your area.

Acme Biofuel/palm oilBio­fu­el­watch are call­ing for a nation­al week of local action on agro­fu­els between 26th Jan­u­ary and 2nd Feb­ru­ary 2008. Rather than organ­is­ing one cen­tral protest, UK groups and cam­paigns are encour­aged to organ­ise local protests and actions – which could involve a ban­ner protest out­side a Tesco or BP petrol sta­tion or out­side an agro­fu­el refin­ery (click for map of bio­fu­el refiner­ies), leaflet­ing and/or street the­atre in the city cen­tre, a press release, a pub­lic film show, etc. Please email us at info[at]biofuelwatch.org.uk if you can help in any way, or if you would like to find out if any­thing is already planned in your area.

If you are plan­ning a local event and would like us to put the details on our web­site, then please email us at info[at]biofuelwatch.org.uk.

Click here for details of events in Lon­don, Tee­side, Chel­tenham and Aberdeen.

Click here for resources!