Author: earthfirst

A protest site has been set up to defend anoth­er beau­ti­ful wood­land from unnesse­cary destruc­tion. We have been build­ing defences but the site is in its very ear­ly days. The road is extreme­ly high pri­or­i­ty and the trees are con­tract­ed to be felled in the next two weeks. We urgent­ly need help and sup­port. A site phone num­ber and more infor­ma­tion will be put up soon, but if you want to come to site then your best going to Bil­ston Glen Anti Bypass Protest Site (they are only four miles apart) as there is a van going between the two sites on a dai­ly basis.

For direc­tions see: Http://www.bilstonglen-abs.org.uk

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Dalkei­th Park is sit­u­at­ed between the town of Dalkei­th and the A1. The Park is part of the Edin­burgh Green Belt.

It is a well-used ameni­ty, eas­i­ly accessed by foot, cycle, car or bus. Use of the park has increased steadi­ly over the years and it now attracts more than 50,000 vis­i­tors annu­al­ly. An area of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty, it is a pop­u­lar retreat for wildlife enthu­si­asts, cyclists, fish­er­men, horse-rid­ers, ori­en­teer­ing groups and walk­ers.

This ‘lit­tle piece of heav­en’ was obtained by our Scot­tish Exec­u­tive under a ‘com­pul­so­ry pur­chase’ so that they can build a bypass right through it!

The Park is a haven for wildlife includ­ing brown hare, roe deer, fox­es, heron, buz­zards, goshawks, otters, bad­gers and king­fish­ers to name but a few.
In fact the Riv­er Esk Val­ley is a list­ed wildlife site.

The pro­posed bypass will cost in the region of £30m to £40m.

For more infor­ma­tion chek out the local cam­paigns web­site:
Http://www.save-dalkeith-park.org.uk

This week­end, at a venue in Forest­fields peo­ple from accross the coun­try came togeth­er to dis­cuss the issues and ways of opos­ing the expan­sion of heavy indus­try in Ice­land.

The expan­sion of the alu­mini­um indus­try in Ice­land and the pro­posed flood­ing of thou­sands of square miles of nat­ur­al wilder­ness, which is to pro­vide resevoirs for the Dams that are being built, affects us all.

The build­ing of the dams is destroy­ing the largest unspoilt nat­ur­al wilder­ness area in West­ern Europe, Polu­tion from the Alcoa and Alcan alu­mini­um smelters will ruin marine and land habi­tats and they will polute the atmos­phere. Silt from the resevoir will dry and blow accross the sur­round­ing rur­al areas deves­tat­ing the remain­ing veg­e­ta­tion. Thus desta­bils­ing fur­ther, an already frag­ile envi­ron­men­tal eco sys­tem. These are just a few of the many detremen­tal facts which the Ice­landic gov­er­ment along with its part­ners in heavy indus­try are sup­port­ing.

The gath­er­ing in Not­ting­ham was well attend­ed by peo­ple from around coun­try. It dis­cussed ways in which this envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion can be opposed; looked at this years protest camp, and actions an protests thus far. The gath­er­ing will con­vene again in Jan­u­ary, details of which will be announced near­er the time.

An infor­ma­tion tour is tak­ing to the road and will vis­it Oxford, Cam­bridge, Bris­tol, Lon­don and Cardiff show­ing films and high­light­ing the issues and how they fit into the big­ger envi­ron­men­tal pic­ture.

A sucess­ful protest camp at the site of the Karanuhj­ka Dam this year has attract­ed much sup­port from the ice­landic com­mu­ni­ty and made peo­ple realise that they can protest against gov­er­ment poli­cies. The camp is hoped to be repeat­ed next year in Ice­land with thou­sands of peo­ple attend­ing through­out the sum­mer.

For more infor­ma­tion regard­ing the cam­paign and to make a dona­tion to the cam­paign, vis­it the web­site.
www.savingiceland.org

Road protest site into its fifth week. Come down and help out, check out the web­site.

We are now work­ing hard to con­sol­i­date our posi­tion on site, to make it as defend­able as pos­si­ble, and to make it ready for the com­ing win­ter.

On Mon­day after­noon, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from both Parklife/Camp Bling and nation­al lob­by­ing body Road Block met with the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT), to state our case once again, and to get the lat­est devel­op­ments on the sit­u­a­tion regard­ing road F5 and the deci­sion mak­ing process.

Need­less to say we made our posi­tion quite clear: That we intend to make Bling one of the largest and most sig­nif­i­cant road camps in the coun­try. We also intend to make any evic­tion of us from the land as expen­sive and pro­tract­ed as pos­si­ble, to deter any deci­sion in favour of the road.

Accord­ing to the DfT, it would now seem that any deci­sion to fund the road by cen­tral gov­ern­ment is not like­ly till the new year at the very ear­li­est. We are there­fore going to sit it out, and in order to do so we still need your sup­port to get through the ini­tial win­ter peri­od.

Things we need (cheeky maybe but nec­es­sary), and on a reg­u­lar basis are:

Finan­cial dona­tions
Build­ing materials/tools
Sub­stan­tial tar­pau­lins (canvass/plastic)
Paving slabs
Scaf­fold­ing
Vegan/vegetarian food.

Addi­tion­al­ly, we still need you to get peo­ple to:

Check out www.savepriorypark.org
Post com­ments on the ‘Bling Blog’(on web­site)
Write to deci­sion mak­er Karen Buck (details on web­site)
Write to your local MP to request a Min­is­te­r­i­al response
Write to your local paper’s let­ters col­umn
Vis­it the camp (details on web­site)

Address:

Camp Bling
1 King’s Bur­ial
Pri­o­ry Cres­cent
Southend on Sea
Essex
SS2 6JZ

To get info check out: www.savepriorypark.org
Camp Bling line 1 07817 182 394 /line 2 07739 189 165
Voice­mail 01702 340 099
Press line 1 07929 595 761 /line 2 07929 595 766
e‑mail: priory_parklife @ yahoo.co.uk

A PROTEST against the destruc­tion of Tit­nore Woods in Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, went ahead this after­noon (Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 29), despite police attempts to crush it. One man was arrest­ed but at the time of writ­ing is not known to have been charged with any offence.

A cam­paign of intim­i­da­tion in the local press was fol­lowed up by mas­sive over-polic­ing, with around 60 pro­test­ers faced by the same num­ber of cops, some of whom had been draft­ed in from as far away as Hast­ings in East Sus­sex, 50 miles away. The event was billed as a vig­il for the death of democ­ra­cy, because of the way over­whelm­ing local oppo­si­tion to the 875-home estate and asso­ci­at­ed road widen­ing has been bull­dozed out of the way by the local coun­cil, and a “cof­fin” bear­ing the corpse of democ­ra­cy was parad­ed.

But the title has proved high­ly appro­pri­ate in anoth­er way, as Sus­sex Police proved once again how far we have pro­gressed towards a police state, with protest vir­tu­al­ly regard­ed as a crim­i­nal act. Local peo­ple arriv­ing ear­ly for the vig­il at the Tit­nore Lane round­about on the A259 were told by police that they would not be allowed to stay there after 2pm — the adver­tised start of the vig­il. Cops tried to hand pieces of paper to every­one arriv­ing, out­lin­ing restric­tions on where peo­ple could protest.

It seems the police were plan­ning to force the vig­il away from the high­ly vis­i­ble round­about and into an “autho­rised” protest zone where they could not be seen. But when the num­bers swelled and they realised any heavy-hand­ed­ness would be embar­rass­ing­ly vis­i­ble to queues of motorists, they backed down and did not enforce this pol­i­cy. With video-cam­era wield­ing “evi­dence gath­er­ers” cre­at­ing a mood of intim­i­da­tion, the police began their famil­iar pet­ty games of provo­ca­tion. Peo­ple were giv­en con­stant­ly shift­ing instruc­tion as to where they were “per­mit­ted” to stand. Some­times they were not allowed to cross the road and some­times they had to.

A group of peo­ple who decid­ed to use the foot­bridge over the A259 were told this was not per­mit­ted because it rep­re­sent­ed a traf­fic haz­ard. Ear­li­er on, these same peo­ple had been direct­ed to use the bridge by police. Even­tu­al­ly, a man who declined to cross over a road and rejoin the main demon­stra­tion was arrest­ed and bun­dled into a police van, to the anger of fel­low pro­test­ers.

He is cur­rent­ly still being held at Wor­thing Police Sta­tion in Dur­ring­ton, but had not been charged with any­thing yet, accord­ing to lat­est infor­ma­tion. After the arrest, police moved in rein­force­ments from around the cor­ner some­where and adopt­ed a more aggres­sive stance, forc­ing peo­ple away from the side of the road and form­ing a line in front of them, osten­si­bly to “stop an acci­dent” but clear­ly to stop the plac­ards being seen by motorists, many of whom hoot­ed their sup­port. When the vig­il end­ed at 4pm, evi­dence gath­er­ers fol­lowed a group of pro­test­ers to Gor­ing sta­tion and con­tin­ued film­ing them until they board­ed the train towards Wor­thing.

Police appear to have formed some kind of exclu­sion zone around Tit­nore Woods them­selves, per­haps fear­ing a land occu­pa­tion and protest camp, and there were reports this evening that some Tit­nore Lane res­i­dents who had been on the protest were stopped from return­ing to their own home after­wards.

Update on arrest

The arrest­ed man was released on bail ear­li­er this evening, hav­ing been charged with “fail­ure to obey con­di­tions imposed on a pub­lic assem­bly”, with a court date of Wednes­day Novem­ber Novem­ber 9 at Wor­thing Mag­is­trates Court. Mean­while, there are sug­ges­tions that the “Sec­tion 14” order imposed on the event by the police may have been ille­gal…

Five peo­ple locked togeth­er using lock-on tubes block­ing the only access road and deny­ing entry to vehi­cles sup­ply­ing equip­ment essen­tial in the infra­struc­ture and oper­a­tion of the smelter. The block­ade start­ed at the begin­ning of the morn­ing shift change and last­ed for almost five hours.

Alcan are a tar­get because of their involve­ment in the destruc­tion of the beau­ti­ful Ice­landic wilder­ness. They are specif­i­cal­ly sup­port­ing con­struc­tion of a huge new dam at Thjor­sarv­er which is to pow­er expan­sion of their exist­ing plant just out­side Reyk­javik and increase alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion. Great areas of wilder­ness will be destroyed and the sub­se­quent envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty will be beyond mea­sure.

Five peo­ple were arrest­ed and have been charged with Breach of the Peace.

The cam­paign con­tin­ues against the indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion of Ice­land’s nat­ur­al wilder­ness and the expan­sion of heavy indus­try.

On ALCAN see http://www.savingiceland.org/node/278

and http://www.savingiceland.org/node/68

Alcan’t — The strug­gle against Alcan in India:
http://www.saanet.org/alcant/intro_en.html

Press state­ment:
“Our protest is designed to express our oppo­si­tion to the pro­posed expan­sion of the alu­mini­um smelters at Straumsvík (ALCAN) and Grun­dar­tan­gi (Cen­tu­ry), as well as the con­struc­tion of an anode fac­to­ry at Katanes (R&D Ltd.) and yet anoth­er Cen­tu­ry smelter at Hel­gu­vik. We find it whol­ly unac­cept­able that the Fax­aflóa­hafnir bay should become the most high­ly pol­lut­ed area in North­ern Europe, yet this is what will hap­pen if these plans go ahead.

The addi­tion­al sac­ri­fices of Ice­land’s most pre­cious nat­ur­al jew­els, the Ram­sar pro­tect­ed wet­lands of Thjor­sarv­er and one of Europe’s most beau­ti­ful lakes, Langisjor, to facil­i­tate the expan­sions of the ALCAN and Cen­tu­ry smelters are com­plete­ly unac­cept­able.

We also wish to show our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple who have suf­fered from ALCAN’s immoral and inhu­man work­ing prac­tices around the world; from the work­ers at Straumsvík who have con­tact­ed us to describe their unac­cept­able work­ing con­di­tions and the abuse of employ­ees’ rights, to the inhab­i­tants of the Kashipur dis­trict of India who have been fight­ing for twelve years against a planned baux­ite mine and ALCAN alu­mini­um plant which will force at least 20,000 peo­ple to leave their farm lands and will pol­lute their water sup­ply (see www.saanet.org/alcant), not for­get­ting the res­i­dents of Haf­nar­fjörður in Ice­land who are demand­ing a local ref­er­en­dum on the expan­sion of the ALCAN plant.

We urge the Ice­landic press to bet­ter inform them­selves about the envi­ron­men­tal impact of the planned build-up of heavy indus­try around Fax­aflóa­hafnir bay, and equal­ly about the record and work­ing prac­tices of the for­eign com­pa­nies that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to eulo­gize and acclaim as the sav­iors of Ice­land.”

The Alcan Song:

ALCAN the Alu­mini­um Man
The Alu­mini­um Man with the Alu­mini­um Plan
For mak­ing lots of alu­mini­um
Out of oth­er peo­ples land!

Will this Man of Alu­mini­um
Real­ize what he’s done,
Once he’s done what he is about to start?
He’s got alu­mini­um, but he’s got no heart!

In Birm­ing­ham, 13 cam­paign­ers met up at mid­day, and staged demos out­side all 4 of McDis­eased city cen­tre stores.

The tour start­ed with the McDev­as­ta­tion store on The Pal­lasades ramp, just off New Street. A large ban­ner was unfold­ed and plac­ards held aloft. Sev­er­al McD‘s staff were insis­tent that we couldn‘t protest out­side their store, but after 10 min­utes, they came back inform­ing us that we could protest after­all, so long as we didn‘t block the door­way! Well, how kind of them to let us protest!! Did they real­ly think we were going to move on just because they didn‘t want us there?!!

After half an hour, the protest turned mobile as we marched down New Street, to the store on High Street. They seemed equal­ly keen to see us! Whilst some pro­test­ers held up posters, oth­ers dis­trib­uted ‘What‘s wrong with McDon­alds‘ and ‘go veg­gie‘ leaflets to the mass­es. Our next stop was the McDeath store inside Par­adise Forum, where we exposed McDom­i­neer­ing for anoth­er half an hour.

The tour end­ed up at the McDeath store on Cher­ry Street, where we were soon joined by anoth­er 6 cam­paign­ers from Food Not Bombs, who set up a free food stall, right out­side!! Free food on offer includ­ed veg­gie burg­ers, fruit and lots more. The protest con­tin­ued along­side the food stall until 4pm. Well over 1,000 leaflets were hand­ed out in total dur­ing anoth­er great day of action which will be repeat­ed again soon!

For more infor­ma­tion about the cam­paign against McDeath, includ­ing how cam­paign­ers won a mam­moth court vic­to­ry against them ear­li­er this year, check out the McSpot­light web­site http://www.mcspotlight.org/
See also http://www.foodnotbombs.net/

West Mid­lands Ani­mal Action
e‑mail: wmids_animalaction@yahoo.co.uk
Home­page:http://www.geocities.com/wmids_animalaction/

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On Octo­ber 16th 2005 Food Not Bombs par­tic­i­pat­ed with oth­er groups in an action out­side McDon­alds near Pigeon Park (St. Phillip’s Cathe­dral) in Birm­ing­ham City Cen­tre. Birm­ing­ham Food Not Bombs believes that food should be a right not a priv­i­lege and reg­u­lar­ly serves free food in the city cen­tre to any­one who wants it, home­less or oth­er­wise. Food Not Bombs is an inter­na­tion­al move­ment and also cam­paigns on issues such as pover­ty, home­less­ness, war & mil­i­tary spend­ing, the envi­ron­ment, and glob­al­i­sa­tion.

The day of action was to high­light a vari­ety of issues con­cern­ing the McDon­alds cor­po­ra­tion. Free veg­gie-burg­ers and fruit were served right out­side McDon­alds to lure peo­ple away from buy­ing McDon­alds food, and to engage them in con­ver­sa­tion about the hot McDon­alds issues. The place looked quite emp­ty and we had a lot of sup­port from passers by and some McDon­alds employ­ees! To alle­vi­ate their poor cus­tomer turnout, we thought it would only be fair to lend them sup­port by ask­ing peo­ple to enjoy their veg­gie-burg­ers in the com­fort of their restau­rant..

http://www.mcspotlight.org/

“I feel bad­ly about what I’ve done with young peo­ple. I was the hap­py face on some­thing that was hor­ren­dous.”
‑Geof­frey Gul­liano, for­mer Ronald McDon­ald who lat­er embraced veg­e­tar­i­an­ism.

 

“For the last eight years I have doc­u­ment­ed coer­cion, threats, intim­i­da­tion and manip­u­la­tion by McDon­ald’s and Leo Bur­nett Adver­tis­ing against me due direct­ly to my work as Ronald McDon­ald.” Joe Mag­gard, for­mer Ronald actor, 2003.

Although McDon­alds are not the only cul­prit when it comes to the fol­low­ing issues, their prof­li­gate atti­tude and shame­less adver­tis­ing to young peo­ple has made them stand out from the crowd in the world of cor­po­rate mis­con­duct..

Poverty

Water, ener­gy, and land for crops are resources which can be used to alle­vi­ate pover­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the pro­duc­tion of meat uses up to ten times the amount of these resources as the pro­duc­tion of crops for human con­sump­tion. McDon­alds are now exploit­ing mar­kets in poor­er coun­tries which cul­tur­al­ly do not con­sume large quan­ti­ties of meat. This expan­sion is like­ly to exac­er­bate glob­al pover­ty by increas­ing demand for these already scarce and con­trolled resources. There is often enough land and resources to feed the pop­u­la­tion of a poor coun­try but nation­al debt repay­ment oblig­a­tions force these coun­tries to grow cash crops (for export to wealthy coun­tries) rather than food for the local peo­ple. Eth­i­cal­ly, land should be used to feed peo­ple in pover­ty, not ani­mals for peo­ple in rich coun­tries.

Employment

World­wide, McDon­alds pay many of their work­ers a poor wage and are known for their hos­til­i­ty to trade unions. Even in the UK, the phrase “McJob” has recent­ly been coined to describe any bor­ing, repet­i­tive, soul-destroy­ing, and poor­ly paid job. McDon­alds could do much to alle­vi­ate pover­ty world­wide by pay­ing their work­ers a decent wage.

The environment

The mas­sive and unnec­es­sary amount of (un-biodegrad­able) pack­ag­ing used for McDon­alds meals is pre-req­ui­site for them to oper­ate serv­ing a high turn­around of cus­tomers. Not only is this bad for the envi­ron­ment but it fos­ters waste­ful habits in chil­dren, who McDon­alds relent­less­ly tar­get with their adver­tis­ing cam­paigns.

http://www.ronald.com/

Globalisation

The vora­cious spread of chain stores across the west­ern world (in recent years this activ­i­ty has been coined ‘glob­al­i­sa­tion’) has oust­ed many small­er busi­ness­es who can­not com­pete with mass adver­tis­ing and the economies of scale which such large mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­nies can ben­e­fit from. Although this is the result of free trade and com­pe­ti­tion, increas­ing­ly peo­ple are feel­ing that they have less con­sumer choice, and that their local com­mu­ni­ty or city cen­tre lacks char­ac­ter and indi­vid­u­al­i­ty. We are see­ing the bleach­ing of the human rain­bow in our pub­lic spaces.

Healthy Eating

McDon­alds adver­tis­ing tries to pur­vey their food as healthy and ‘nutri­tious’ (all food is nutri­tious) and have recent­ly start­ed serv­ing sal­ads which iron­i­cal­ly are almost as unhealthy as their burg­ers. A high fat diet is direct­ly linked with can­cer and heart dis­ease. The con­cern is that con­sumers are lead to believe that eat­ing McDon­alds meals fre­quent­ly can be ‘healthy’.

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Manchester:

updates from Man­ches­ter’s anti-McDon­alds week­end: crit­i­cal mass and stink-bombs

On Fri­day evening, a crit­i­cal mass of about 20–25 cyclists stopped at 2 McDon­ald’s out­lets for a lit­tle street dance to a mobile sound sys­tem. When they even­tu­al­ly drew the atten­tion of the police to them, the cylists end­ed their tour with a din­ner of deli­cious veg­an burg­ers.

On Sat­ur­day lunch time, at least 3 (pos­si­bly more) McDon­ald’s out­lets in the city cen­tre were stink-bombed. But McDon­ald’s cus­tomers seemed to be sur­pris­ing­ly immune to the stench.

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McDonalds, Nottingham.

After the Crit­i­cal Mass Bike Ride around Not­ting­ham, a few folks went down to the local McDon­alds, to hand out leaflets and the tell passers by, about the court suc­cess of the McLi­bel Two.

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Day of Action against McDonald’s

A bunch of peo­ple and Ronald McD him­self, turned out to protest against McDon­alds at the bot­tom of Exchange Walk in Not­ting­ham. They bought ban­ners, hand­ed out leaflets, and informed the passin’ pub­lic about the issues: nutri­tion [lack of it], envi­ron­men­tal issues, fast food lit­ter, their busi­ness prac­tices and not least, work­ers rights .…..

McDs leaflet:http://www.mcspotlight.org/campaigns/current/wwwmd-uk.pdf

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AntiMcDonald’s Daze in Israel

16th Octo­ber 2005

Some recent his­to­ry, and a report of a high­ly suc­cess­ful day’s protests

(for more pic­tures, see URL at the end)

McDonald­s has been met in Israel with a cer­tain degree of resis­tance ever since it opened its first restau­rant in Ramat-Gan (a Tel-Aviv sub­urb) in 1993, when a group of Anar­chists chained them­selves to the doors and blocked the entrance.

For some rea­son, anti McDonald­s sen­ti­ments here have revolved almost exclu­sive­ly around the issue of ani­mal rights, and only in the last two years or so are we see­ing eco­log­i­cal, con­sumerist & health-ori­ent­ed groups join­ing the cam­paigns (the work­ers’ angle is still miss­ing, sad­ly).

In the ear­ly nineties, the “What’s Wrong with McDon­alds ?” leaflet was trans­lat­ed into Hebrew in a joint effort by the ani­mal rights orga­ni­za­tion “Anony­mous” (nowa­days a derad­i­cal­ized, main­stream, some­what wel­fare-ori­ent­ed orga­ni­za­tion) and an Anar­chist group call­ing them­selves sim­ply “Anar­chist Move­ment”.

How­ev­er, the Inter­na­tion­al Anti McDonald­s Day has been decent­ly observed only in the last 4 years, main­ly through the ini­tia­tives of the Tel-Aviv based group “One Strug­gle”, a Human/Animal Rights Anar­chist group quite sim­i­lar in char­ac­ter to “Green­peace Lon­don”. This group used to hold a reg­u­lar, week­ly vig­il in front of McDonald­s for over a year (quite an achieve­ment in a place like this), and pro­duced a bet­ter, more didac­tic ver­sion of the Hebrew Anti McDon­alds fly­er.

In 2003, One Strug­gle — with the help of oth­er groups orga­nized a crit­i­cal mass bike ride through cen­tral Tel-Aviv, car­ry­ing signs and stop­ping at var­i­ous McDonald­s restau­rants to leaflet passers-by. The bike ride, about 30 peo­ple strong, end­ed in a big­ger demo out­side a cen­tral McDon­alds restau­rant, with 60–70 peo­ple car­ry­ing ban­ners, signs, set­ting up lit­er­a­ture tables and serv­ing free veg­an food.

The 2004 event, although bet­ter orga­nized and includ­ing vig­ils in Israel’­s three main cities (Tel-Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem), saw a more or less equal amount of peo­ple take to the streets, but was almost unan­i­mous­ly ignored by all media (gen­er­al­ly, it is worth not­ing that Israel is a very polit­i­cal place as far as con­ven­tion­al Left/Right or Nation­al­ist pol­i­tics are con­cerned, but it has a strong ten­den­cy to down­play and brush aside more glob­al issues, like McDon­alds, which do not fit neat­ly into Israeli Left/Right cat­e­gories).

In 2005, dur­ing the week­end of the 14th-16th of Octo­ber, we orga­nized the most suc­cess­ful Israeli anti McDon­alds Day yet.

In Tel-Aviv, where the main event took place, we gath­ered at noon in the small gar­den on Shenkin st. — one of Tel Aviv’s cen­tral streets, packed with peo­ple on Fri­day after­noons for a gen­er­al anti McDonald­s ‘hap­pen­ing’. It includ­ed activ­i­ties for kids (cre­ative games, street the­ater), free screen print­ing shirts with antiM­c­Don­alds slo­gans, free veg­an food, infor­ma­tion stalls, a big pic­ture gallery dis­play­ing the hor­rors of McDon­alds con­nec­tion to fac­to­ry farm­ing, pol­lu­tion etc, and more. After a cou­ple of hours we marched around 50–60 peo­ple — to the near­by McDonald­s restau­rant on Shenkin st., with signs, bull­horns, drums, ban­ners and fes­tive cos­tumes, and from there to a sec­ond McDonald­s at Dizen­goff Square. The num­ber of passers-by who asked ques­tions and showed inter­est in our mes­sage was encour­ag­ing, and only a hand­ful of peo­ple actu­al­ly entered the restau­rants while we demon­strat­ed and hand­ed out fly­ers out­side.

After the Sab­bath, on Sun­day the 16th, there were anti McDon­alds vig­ils in four dif­fer­ent cities (Haifa, Jerusalem, Kfar Saba and Hert­zliya, where local Green Par­ty activists joined the AR activists). All vig­ils were well-attend­ed, and coor­di­nat­ed by a new ani­mal rights group called She­vi (acronym of Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Israel). In the evening, there was free veg­an food plus a screen­ing of the doc­u­men­tary McLi­bel 2005 with Hebrew sub­ti­tles at the Salon Mazal Rad­i­cal Infos­hop in cen­tral Tel Aviv, with a big turnout as well.

The most sur­pris­ing aspect of the 2005 events, in com­plete con­trast to pre­vi­ous years, was a lot of nation­al media atten­tion regard­ing these protests. The two major Israeli dai­ly news­pa­pers, Yediot Aharonot and Ma­ariv, both ran arti­cles about the events and the gen­er­al world­wide protests against McDonald­s, in their print­ed as well as online edi­tions. Ma­ariv, the sec­ond largest news­pa­per in Israel, with hun­dreds of thou­sands of read­ers, even devot­ed the main arti­cle of its Busi­ness sec­tion, cov­er and all, to the protests. There were inter­views with activists on tele­vi­sion pro­grams — includ­ing one on chan­nel 2, Israel’­s lead­ing chan­nel — and also on sev­er­al radio sta­tions, includ­ing Galei Tza­al­s eco­nom­ic report (that’­s the IDFs radio sta­tion and the most pop­u­lar one in Israel).

We do not know what caused this minor media fren­zy, but we tried our hard­est to take advan­tage of it, and are sat­is­fied that a record num­ber of Israelies have now heard that there is indeed some­thing very wrong with McDonald­s. The cor­po­ra­tion, by the way, main­tained a ‘no com­ment’ pol­i­cy to all reporters regard­ing our actions and our claims.

All in all, we feel these events were fruit­ful, pos­i­tive & enjoy­able, and that a crys­tal-clear mes­sage of resis­tance to the McDonaldiza­tion of the plan­et was con­veyed.

For pic­tures of the var­i­ous Israeli 2005 vig­ils, fly­ers, posters, press cut­tings etc.:
http://photobucket.com/albums/a100/xzoidbergx/Israel%20AntiMcDonalds%20D…

For a sam­ple of Israeli main­stream mediaís report of the events:
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L‑3155577,00.html
(from the Yediot Aharonot site)

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact One Strug­gle at:
vegan_politics@yahoo.com /http://www.onestruggle.org
or She­vi at:shevi_liberation@yahoo.com /http://www.free.org.il

The Save Swal­low’s Wood Cam­paign held a protest on Fri­day 14th Octo­ber out­side the nation­al park author­i­ty head­quar­ters in (Aldern House, Bakewell).

Peak Dis­trict Nation­al Park Author­i­ty mem­bers were greet­ed by local cam­paign­ers who are urg­ing them to recon­sid­er their sup­port for the A628 bypass and sup­port instead an HGV ban.
A pre­lim­i­nary study into the poten­tial for an HGV ban has been com­mis­sioned by the Cam­paign to Pro­tect Rur­al Eng­land. The study, com­piled by inde­pen­dent trans­port pro­fes­sions MRTU (the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Trans­port Research Unit, con­clud­ed that the HGV ban would bring sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to jus­ti­fy the costs, even with­out tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion the spe­cial char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Nation­al Park Land­scape.

Mon­ster hous­es being built on rare mead­ow flood­plain by not­ting­hams rich­est man whilst 600,000 res­i­den­tial homes lay emp­ty in not­ting­hamshire alone.

South of Not­ting­ham near Clifton Bridge in Wil­ford, the com­pa­ny vot­ed the UK worst house­builder is cur­rent­ly destroy­ing a mead­ow & cut­ting down trees for mon­ster 4 storey hous­es on a flood­plain. Locals have voiced dis­sent, but to no avail. Trees, hedges & rare Not­ting­ham cro­cus­es have been main­tained by locals includ­ing yours tru­ely for many years, roman remains have been found, this has helped save some of the trees & cro­cus­es, but flood­plain & mead­ow which are being destroyed are very rare.
Vehi­cles on site have been reg­u­lary made safe & trees pro­tect­ed in var­i­ous by clever mon­ster fox­es & bad­gers using var­i­ous hand tools.
Recy­cle the emp­ties & build eco­homes in the right area for the peo­ple made envi­ron­men­tal­ly out of straw­bale etc, maybe even bricks mould­ed with resin from the waste cur­rent­ly burnt at East­croft. If we don’t then it maybe Not­ting­ham fac­ing a cri­sis like New Orleans, mean­while the wildlife of Sher­wood & Charn­wood are already express­ing their opin­ion with action.

A VIGIL for the “death of dem­co­ra­cy” is to be held on Sat­ur­day Octo­ber 29 by cam­paign­ers fight­ing to save ancient wood­land in Sus­sex.

The protest is to be staged from 2pm at the junc­tion of Tit­nore Lane, Dur­ring­ton, Wor­thing, and the A259 Lit­tle­hamp­ton Road.
The round­about, near North­brook Col­lege, is just five min­utes’ walk from Gor­ing rail­way sta­tion, served by direct trains from Brighton, Lon­don and Portsmouth.
In June Tory-run Wor­thing Bor­ough Coun­cil gave out­line per­mis­sion for a 875 home devel­op­ment plus road widen­ing, which will see more than 200 trees felled in one of the last patch­es of ancient wood­land on the coastal plain.
This was despite mas­sive pub­lic oppo­si­tion and years of peti­tion rais­ing, march­ing and meet­ings.
On Sep­tem­ber 4 pro­test­ers blocked busy Tit­nore Lane with a burn­ing effi­gy of John Prescott, whose depart­ment had just refused to call a pub­lic inquiry into the high­ly unpop­u­lar scheme, claim­ing it was not of region­al or nation­al sig­nif­i­cance.
The protest, togeth­er with a live­ly stage occu­pa­tion at the coun­cil meet­ing where the plans were passed, fea­tured on a recent edi­tion of ITV’s “Tonight With Trevor McDon­ald”.
Coun­cil offi­cers claim work on the site may now start in “ear­ly spring” but the cam­paign­ers have pledged to fight the bull­doz­ers every inch of the way and are appeal­ing for help from out­side Wor­thing.

POW (Pro­tect Our Wood­land)

SCAR (South Coast Against Road­build­ing)

On the 16th of June 2005, “Blooms­day” the 5 were still free, and protest­ing. That was the morn­ing the Cor­duf­f’s aban­doned break­fast was pho­tographed and we read of how Shell had ille­gal­ly entered the lands in Ross­port to begin ille­gal work on an ille­gal pipeline.

The Ross­port five have been released FOR NOW from Clover­hill prison. The court­room was packed with sup­port­ers as the deci­sion became clear.There was a group of up to 100 out­side dur­ing the dura­tion of the hear­ing which last­ed about an hour.

The men could still face jail how­ev­er as there will be a hear­ing regard­ing theis­sue of civ­il ver­sus crim­i­nal con­tempt and the puni­tive nature or not of each on the 25th of October.More details are to emerge on this issue…

The nation­al demo in ire­land is to go ahead as planned tomor­row and the hope is with all the media atten­tion todays announcem­net will attract that the num­bers could be very big indeed!

The men vowed to fight on as they were sur­round­ed by rav­en­ous jour­nal­ists at the gates of the Court(and flanked by politicians,many of whom have been absent on the entire issue).The rain could not damp­en the spir­its of the men and their sup­port­ers though as they defend­ed their actions and pledged to con­tin­ue in the same vein.

more info on www.indymedia.ie

a bat­tle won today but the war far from over