Author: earthfirst

On Tuesday, the 29th June, 2005, in Dublin, Ireland, 5 farmers from Rossport, Co. Mayo,Ireland were sent to Mountjoy Prison in Dublin, for violating an order imposed by the High Court to stop blocking Shell access to their lands to constuct the onshore section of the Corrib Gas Field pipeline.

The men have appeared in Court several times since that date and have been asked whether or not they wish to purge their contempt and agree to obeying the injunction,a request the have flatly refused on each occasion.

A Nationwide campaign of Boycotts,Blockades,Pickets,Fundraisers,Large -Scale Demos,Occupations and sit-ins, Solidarity gatherings as well as a permanent activist camp and blockade at the remote site of the proposed pipeline has exploded in Ireland since the men’s jailing.

The Irish Government has given Shell carte blanche with Ireland’s energy resources. Shell and statoil plan to build the world’s first-ever onshore gas processing plant in Mayo, and can now have the courts imprison anyone who tries to get in their way.

The High Court has jailed five people at the request of Shell for attempting to stop the multinational from laying a controversial, high-pressure, “offshore” gas pipeline through their land in Rossport, Co Mayo. The judge ordered that the five men – four small landowners and a local supporter – be imprisoned “until they purge their contempt”, meaning they will not be released until they have promised to allow Shell to dig up their land.

The pipeline is proposed to run alongside the men’s homes as well as those of many other local residents at several times the normal pressure of such operations due to the distance thegas must travel form the sea-source to the onshore refinery.Shell have built 3km of the pipeline without planning permission and have told the Minister they are reporting to-Mr Noel Dempsey,of the right wing Fianna Fail party,that they will be “more careful@ in future”

The jailing comes 10 years after the execution of nine Ogoni activists for their opposition to Shell’s operation in Nigeria.
The supply pipeline will be carrying raw, unprocessed gas at high pressure, in close proximity to houses and through a protected estuary. The processing plant will burn waste oil on site and discharge it into the atmosphere, and will dump toxic waste directly into the estuary, which is a habitat for rare marine life. The Co. Mayo coastal area itself is a Whale and Dolphin sanctuary.

This issue raises again the incredible situation whereby the fabulous gas wealth off the coast of Co. Mayo has been given by the Government to Shell and Statoil for not a penny in royalties to the Irish people and with huge tax write offs against the cost of exploiting it. The alternative is that the gas would be treated and purified in a completely different way to the present proposals by Shell and Statoil. The fact is that the intense pressure of raw gas mixed with condensate oil and water, which is proposed to be brought through the disputed pipeline, is unprecedented by world standards and gives rise to potential unprecedented risks for the local community. To have residents exposed to this kind of pressure to facilitate a multinational corporation is intolerable.

The Irish people are rising up against these corporate thiefs and the corrupt government that gifted them our natural resources!
Like so many other issues we stuggle on,this is and has become more so an Internationational issue of corporate repression with state assistance!
The campaign is escalating and shall do so until the 5 men are released and receive justice for themselves and their families and until Shell have been stripped of the resources they have stolen from the Iirsh people!

BOYCOTT SHELL AND STATOIL!

More info,statistics,campaigns,how to get involved—
www.shelltosea.com
www.indymedia.ie
www.indymedia.ie/mayo

On Tuesday 19th July 2005.a group of approximately 20 of us hiked to the main junction approaching the site. Four of our group locked on to a pick up truck and a HUGE caterpillar construction vehicle. We managed to block 2 other access roads and hault work on the site for three hours. This was a first in Icelandic history:the police had to make up a word for lock-on. Thirteen of us were detained, apparently arrested, and later released without charge….with the warning that Impregilo were looking at this incident with grave eyes and were likely to make a civil case. Impregilo have since changed their mind. For a change, the media did report that the protesters were friendly!

We have gathered to protest the continuing devastation of global ecology in the interest of corporate profits. The struggle to save our planet, like the struggle against inhumanity, is global, so we have to be too. We are here to prevent the Karahnjukar Dam project from destroying Western Europe’s last great wilderness.

Dodgy Italian construction conglomerate Impregilo, is in charge of building most of the dam . One of Impregilo’s consultants has already been found guilty in 2003 of offering bribes to a Lesotho hydro-electric firm, and the company itself will face another hearing before the Lesotho courts in April 2005. Impregilo were also involved in building the Argentina’s Yacyreta dam, which went almost $10 million over budget and was labeled by President Carlos Menem ‘a monument to corruption’ . Impregilo were also one of the firms planning to build the infamous Ilisu dam in Turkey which, had it gone ahead, would have made 30,000 Kurds homeless and drowned the world historic site of Hasankeyf..

Aluminium smelters emit enormous quantities of greenhouse gases. In 2001, super-clean Iceland was able to negotiate a 10% increase in permitted emissions under the Kyoto protocol – the biggest increase in the world. In effect, Alcoa is buying Iceland’s licence to pollute, as well as cheap electricity. The ministry of environment also gave Alcoa a licence to emit 12 times the level of sulphur dioxide the World Bank expects from modern smelters. SO2; and fluoride, the most dangerous pollutants in terms of public health and land damage, will be pumped directly into the air via giant chimneys.

Many geologists fear catastrophic results, especially as construction is on a substructure weakened by geothermal fissures. Thorsteinn Siglaugsson, a risk specialist, prepared a recent independent economic report on Karahnjukar for the Icelandic Nature Conservation Agency. It states that the project would never have attracted private finance: “Karahnjukar will never make a profit, and the Icelandic taxpayer may well end up subsidising Alcoa.” A respected figure of the Icelandic university sent out an email declaring that it will take the Icelandic government 250 years simply to recoup the financial costs of the dam (which is unlikely to be operational by that time). Nobody will be making a profit except for Alcoa. The only explanation for this project is one which confirms the findings of the 2001 Greco (EU anti-corruption group) report, that “the close links between the government and the business community [in Iceland] could generate opportunities for corruption”. This project is corrupt to the core, and it is the first of many planned for the future. Iceland’s unique beauty is-literally- to be sacrificed to power the corporate machine.

The parade started at the Irish embassy, and moved along early in the streets of Edinburgh. It was a colorful and relaxed protest despite the police taking photographs.

The protest was partly against the Shell pipeline being built in Mayo, Ireland, but also highlights shell appauling human rights and enviromental record.

More information at:
http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php?region=mayo
http://www.shellfacts.com

Today at 07:30, 2 petrol stations were shut down in Edinburgh. The first was a BP station on Calder Road, and the second was a Shell station on Comiston Road. All pumps were put out of action with bike locks, and oil spills at the forecourt entrances meant no more business as usual for a while.

The oil industry, like the G8 is the epitome of capitalism and it’s ills. It places wealth and power in the hands of the few at massive expense to this planet’s environment and peoples.

Oil exploration and production destroys wilderness and maims ecosystems. 10,000’s of tonnes of oil are routinely dumped in rivers and oceans, poisoning aquatic life and water supplies.

In the U.K. alone, 24,000 people die prematurely each year from emissions from vehicles and refineries, and many more are killed or crippled on the roads.

Against this background, the vested interests of the oil industry fund academics to hide the causal link between greenhouse gases emissions from burning fossil fuels and spiralling climate change. Global temperatures are the highest in 2,000 years – we are facing an environmental meltdown crisis.

No amount of corporate PR exercises can hide how the oil industry helps make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Most of the top 20 petroleum corporations are based in G8 countries, with a revolving door of top jobs between their governments and the industry. These corporations set the global agenda, reaping massive profits as the majority world are crushed by poverty characterised by a lack of clean water, food, health care and education.

Workers in the oil industry suffer long arduous hours in dangerous condition, for poor pay. Easily preventable accidents are common. Attempts to unionise and organise for better conditions are met with intimidation, sackings and violence.
Oil multinationals literally call the shots, as they routinely back ruthless dictatorships across the world, from Sudan to Columbia, Angola to Indonesia. The death squads do their dirty work. Hand in glove with the ruling elites, they make sure that nothing stands in the way of their pipelines and profits. Should oil producing regimes not toe the line or comply with corporate interests, invasion is always an option, with the military might of the U.S. and U.K. as the enforcers.Tens of thousands were killed in Iraq to secure access to the world’s second largest oil reserves.

For all the G8’s talk of cancelling debt and promoting “development” (ha ha ha!), the existence of the oil industry and the capitalism which it drives condemns millions to hellish lives and is pushing life on earth to the brink of environmental and social catastrophe. Everything it touches dies. The G8, the oil industry and capitalism cannot be reformed. They must be dismantled and destroyed if there is to be any hope of a better world. This is why we take direct action, to dent their profits and to oppose their world of power and profit. The power and the odds against us are enormous, but we can never give up. Fight for a new world in any way you can.The oil industry is the epitome of capitalism and it’s ills. It places wealth and power in the hands of the few at massive expense to this planet’s environment and peoples.

Oil exploration and production destroys wilderness and maims ecosystems. 10,000’s of tonnes of oil are routinely dumped in rivers and oceans, poisoning aquatic life and water supplies.

In the U.K. alone, 24,000 people die prematurely each year from emissions from vehicles and refineries, and many more are killed or crippled on the roads.

Against this background, the vested interests of the oil industry fund academics to hide the causal link between greenhouse gases emissions from burning fossil fuels and spiralling climate change. Global temperatures are the highest in 2,000 years – we are facing an environmental meltdown crisis.

No amount of corporate PR exercises can hide how the oil industry helps make the rich richer and the poor poorer. Most of the top 20 petroleum corporations are based in G8 countries, with a revolving door of top jobs between their governments and the industry. These corporations set the global agenda, reaping massive profits as the majority world are crushed by poverty characterised by a lack of clean water, food, health care and education.

Workers in the oil industry suffer long arduous hours in dangerous condition, for poor pay. Easily preventable accidents are common. Attempts to unionise and organise for better conditions are met with intimidation, sackings and violence.
Oil multinationals literally call the shots, as they routinely back ruthless dictatorships across the world, from Sudan to Columbia, Angola to Indonesia. The death squads do their dirty work. Hand in glove with the ruling elites, they make sure that nothing stands in the way of their pipelines and profits. Should oil producing regimes not toe the line or comply with corporate interests, invasion is always an option, with the military might of the U.S. and U.K. as the enforcers.Tens of thousands were killed in Iraq to secure access to the world’s second largest oil reserves.

For all the G8’s talk of cancelling debt and promoting “development” (ha ha ha!), the existence of the oil industry and the capitalism which it drives condemns millions to hellish lives and is pushing life on earth to the brink of environmental and social catastrophe. Everything it touches dies. The G8, the oil industry and capitalism cannot be reformed. They must be dismantled and destroyed if there is to be any hope of a better world. This is why we take direct action, to dent their profits and to oppose their world of power and profit. The power and the odds against us are enormous, but we can never give up. Fight for a new world in any way you can. See you on the streets…

Local community requests help from activists to fight a Shell/Statoil/Marathon gas pipeline that will threaten their lives and be ecologically devastating for an isolated, beautiful area of Ireland

The local community of Rossport, Co. Mayo is threatened with unprecedented human and ecological devastation by a collusion of the Irish State and a hydrocarbon consortium, led by Royal Dutch Shell. The consortium plan an unprecedented raw gas pipeline that will run over boggy land, within 70m of farmer’s houses and through a landslide prone area to a refinery, also built on bogland. The Irish State granted Shell Compulsory Acquisition Orders, which threaten the landowners with prison if they refuse to sell their land. There was also an injunction placed upon the landowners from preventing Shell employees access to their land.

Today, in the midst of a week-long blockade of the roads to the refinery building site by locals and activists, the High Court has ruled to imprison all five defendants for breaking the injunction (ie. refusing to allow Shell employess access to land). It looks like the Court will attempt to imprison everyone who gets in the way of this pipeline.

The area, Rossport in north Co. Mayo is one of incredible natural splendour. Broadhaven Bay, into which Shell would pump magnesium oxide, arsenic, lead etc. is a breeding ground for whales, basking sharks, dolphins (including the very rare Rizo’s dolphin) and salmon. A camp was first established at an early June solidarity weekend and there are now calls for its revitalisation. For photos of the solidarity weekend, go here:http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=70173

For photos of the area, see here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mayogas/

This campaign is winnable, but it needs committed activists. I am currently in London, but will be heading to Mayo immediately after the G8. I hope to spend the time until then informing people about this situation and getting people to go to the camp in Mayo. If you’d like to learn more, I’ll be at the gig in RampArts tonight; glasses, black hair, short and slightly silly Irish accent. Otherwise, I’ll be on the train on Friday. Please talk to me if you’d like to get involved so we can sort out logistics with the people in Mayo now.

e-mail: info@shelltosea.com
Homepage: http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo

Today we finally received the high court verdict regarding the classification of the quarries at lees cross and endcliffe. the quarries are now (or still) officially dormant. This means that the quarries cannot re open until the peak park have agreed a set of working conditions for them. Stancliffe Stone still have the permission to quarry from 1952, and the peak park still have the power to revoke the permission, or to impose such restrictions that the re opening of the quarries would be financially unviable. Our protest site must and will continue to exist in order to protect our beautiful hillside (in the second most visited national park on the planet), as it is still quite possible that this awesome natural heritage of ours could be destroyed. Please dont let the media convince you that this is a victory on our behalf. Please send your comments on the proposals to re-open Lees Cross and Endcliffe quarries to The Peak Distric National Park Planning Authority and Lord Edward Manners of ‘Haddon Hall’ (who owns the land) or come and visit our protest community. Thank you (and a happy nearly-solstice) from the 9-ladies collective! x x x