Author: earthfirst

Pixeing & a game of chicken at t’peat works

On Sun­day the 12th August, about 15 peo­ple vis­it­ed the peat works unan­nounced, find­ing it almost desert­ed and wan­der­ing around for about 15 min­utes before find­ing any work­ers.

Dur­ing this time, all the keys from the key safe and igni­tion keys for most of the machines dis­ap­peared and end­ed up at the bot­tom of drains and the engine of one of the two peat-mov­ing trains got sand in the petrol tank.

After com­ing across work­ers and real­is­ing the police had been called, we decid­ed to head off across the moor in an attempt to get away.

How­ev­er the police used their heli­copter to try and head us off, bring­ing it about 6 feet off the ground in front of us and engag­ing in a game of chick­en. How­ev­er we pressed on regard­less and the police chick­ened out first, but not before police on foot had caught up with some of the group and escort­ed them off site after tak­ing anoth­er set of details. They then set off with the heli­copter and dogs to find the rest of the group who man­aged to hide and escape from the moors with­out being spot­ted.

Peat works shut down for 3 days

An action was planned to coin­cide with the EF! Gath­er­ing at the start of August.
A group of about 30 peo­ple head­ed off to the peat works after anoth­er action against prison labour in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mark Barns­ley.

The action was announced in the morn­ing meet­ing at the gath­er­ing, and when we arrived police (with hors­es) had occu­pied the works. Speak­ing to work­ers after the event we were told that the police had claimed that 100 vio­lent anar­chists had planned to come and destroy the works.

How­ev­er this was our most suc­cess­ful action to date, because an advert on a board claim­ing we would be going back on Mon­day after the gath­er­ing caused the police to shut down the works for 3 days and leave 300 police there for the whole of that peri­od.

Another mass trespass to protect the peat bogs of midgy Yorkshire

We met up the night before for a brief­ing, giv­ing out infor­ma­tion about exact­ly what is at stake and the most effec­tive things that can be done to dis­rupt work.

We camped for the night in the nature reserve just round the cor­ner, get­ting eat­en alive by small fly­ing bit­ing things.

This time the police turned up in rather larg­er num­bers and sur­round­ed the works to pre­vent any dis­rup­tion.

How­ev­er, after com­ing to tell us what we could and could­n’t do over break­fast, they left us and wait­ed at the works entrance, so we drove round to the back of the moor and entered from there.

You can eas­i­ly see how beau­ti­ful the site could be, when you see the sur­round­ing area, which sup­ports a great diver­si­ty of wildlife (appar­ent­ly 5000 species) from dart­ing drag­on­flys to beau­ti­ful cot­ton grass­es. We even noticed a birds nest in the heav­i­ly worked drainage chan­nels on the site.

While wan­der­ing the site it was easy to see that the peat pix­ies had been busy tying to save their home­lands. Drainage chan­nels appreared to have been filled in while oth­ers had dams block­ing them. Rumours were abound of fisti­er pix­ies get­ting to the machin­ery and work­ings of the site, but I can not com­firm this at all.

We found some work going on, which stopped when we arrived. It did­n’t take long for the police heli­copter to arrive and fol­low us around for the day, but they had no oth­er police any­where near us and the heli­copter had to leave at some point to refu­el, dur­ing which time quite a lot of dam­age occurred. A cou­ple of machines that were left out were pushed into drainage ditch­es, every drainage ditch we passed was filled in and handy crow­bars were used to pull up the rail­way track, hope­ful­ly caus­ing mas­sive delays as they would have had to check the whole rail net­work for dam­age.

When we left the moor we found the police wait­ing for us and being remark­ably friend­ly. They request­ed every­one’s name and address, so instead of delay­ing and let­ting them find out what dam­age had occurred a whole load of false names and address­es were giv­en, includ­ing Mr C. Cret and Clare­mont Road.

Please ask your local gar­den cen­tre to not stock scotts com­post as they are destroy­ing a beau­ti­ful and ireper­a­ble habi­tat to get it. Whats more leaf mould actu­al­ly works bet­ter than peat in com­post for route­ing prop­er­ties (this is why peat is used as it has no nutri­tion­al val­ue for plants). Leaf mould is made by pil­ing up atum­nal leaf fall and turn­ing it occa­sion­al­ly. In a years time you will have the per­fect sub­stance to mix with com­post from your veg waste to make a pot­ting mix­ture.

This sense­less maddness and destruc­tion must stop.

For more info, http://www.peatalert.org.uk

Scotts stop peat extraction message delivery and onto the moor

This event was timed to coin­cide with the start of the peat-cut­ting sea­son, which can only begin when the peat has dried out enough.

All morn­ing Leeds & Sheffield Friends of the Earth and oth­ers col­lect­ed mes­sages from the peo­ple of Thorne and the sur­round­ing area, on cards, plac­ards and bal­loons. They got a real­ly good response from the local pop­u­la­tion who are well aware of the dam­age being done to their moors. At the same time activists from the north were tak­en on guid­ed tours of the site and learnt as much as they could about the peat-cut­ting process.

After lunch every­one gath­ered at a friend­ly pub and then set off in a pro­ces­sion to the peat works. Some of the (small­er) mes­sages col­lect­ed dur­ing the morn­ing were hand­ed in to a pok­er-faced secu­ri­ty guard and then around 50 peo­ple strolled into the pro­cess­ing plant, past him and the four or five bum­bling police offi­cers. They had a good look round the vast site and inside lots of build­ings, they con­ga’d through the piles of stacked up com­post bags and ceilid­hed along­side the rail­way line.

There were no arrests as we danced out of the site and back to the pub. After a love­ly day we decid­ed to have a big­ger, bet­ter and longer tres­pass of the site and the moors on Tues­day 25th June, with some camp­ing avail­able the night before — more details avail­able from Leeds EF!

Oth­er actions will of course be going on all the time!

Mass trespass to protect peat

Scotts stop peat extraction message delivery and onto the moor

This event was timed to coin­cide with the start of the peat-cut­ting sea­son, which can only begin when the peat has dried out enough.

All morn­ing Leeds & Sheffield Friends of the Earth and oth­ers col­lect­ed mes­sages from the peo­ple of Thorne and the sur­round­ing area, on cards, plac­ards and bal­loons. They got a real­ly good response from the local pop­u­la­tion who are well aware of the dam­age being done to their moors. At the same time activists from the north were tak­en on guid­ed tours of the site and learnt as much as they could about the peat-cut­ting process.

After lunch every­one gath­ered at a friend­ly pub and then set off in a pro­ces­sion to the peat works. Some of the (small­er) mes­sages col­lect­ed dur­ing the morn­ing were hand­ed in to a pok­er-faced secu­ri­ty guard and then around 50 peo­ple strolled into the pro­cess­ing plant, past him and the four or five bum­bling police offi­cers. They had a good look round the vast site and inside lots of build­ings, they con­ga’d through the piles of stacked up com­post bags and ceilid­hed along­side the rail­way line.

There were no arrests as we danced out of the site and back to the pub. After a love­ly day we decid­ed to have a big­ger, bet­ter and longer tres­pass of the site and the moors on Tues­day 25th June, with some camp­ing avail­able the night before — more details avail­able from Leeds EF!

Oth­er actions will of course be going on all the time!

2,000 Women Protest Against GM Food, Blockade Supermarket in Brazil

Amidst widescale protests against cor­po­rate con­trol of the food chain 2,000 Brazil­ian women block­ad­ed a super­mar­ket 800 miles south of Brasil­ia in a protest against genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered food

BRASILIA, Brazil: Women farm­ers through­out Brazil demon­strat­ed Thurs­day on Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day to protest world­wide eco­nom­ic poli­cies they say are unfair.

Some 700 women mem­bers of Brazil’s Land­less Rur­al Work­ers Move­ment occu­pied a McDonald’s restau­rant in Por­to Ale­gre, some 1,600 kms (1,000 miles) south of Brasil­ia.

They burned flags bear­ing the fast-food chain’s logo, crit­i­cized eco­nom­ic glob­al­iza­tion and called the Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment a slave to “world neolib­er­al­ism.” Thursday’s protest was inspired by the anti-glob­al­iza­tion efforts of French activist Jose Bove a sheep farmer who shot to fame for ran­sack­ing a McDonald’s restau­rant in France and was arrest­ed in Brazil last Jan­u­ary after he joined the work­ers move­ment in a mas­sive protest.

Also on Thurs­day, some 2,000 women blocked access to a super­mar­ket in Flo­ri­a­nop­o­lis, 1,300 kms (800 miles) south of Brasil­ia, claim­ing it sold genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered food.

And in Belo Hor­i­zonte, some 600 kms (380 miles) south­east of Brasil­ia, a group of women protest­ed in front of the local city coun­cil cham­bers demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment speed up agrar­i­an reform.

Farmers take animals to Milan McDonald’s for GM protest

The man­ag­er of a McDon­ald’s restau­rant in Milan was injured Sat­ur­day when farm­ers — along with a cow, a pig and two chick­ens — staged an impromp­tu protest over genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied food prod­ucts. The cow slipped on the restau­rant floor, acci­den­tal­ly hit­ting the man­ag­er with a hoof, Ansa news agency report­ed. The uniden­ti­fied farm­ers left the scene a few min­utes lat­er in a van.

McDon­ald’s staff lat­er report­ed the inci­dent to the police, while the man­ag­er was tak­en to see a doc­tor. It was not imme­di­ate­ly clear why the farm­ers tar­get­ed the US fast-food chain but GM food ingre­di­ents are wide­ly on sale in North Amer­i­ca.

They are banned or shunned in oth­er coun­tries, espe­cial­ly in west­ern Europe, amid fears that the engi­neered crops could pose as yet unknown health risks. Genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied organ­isms are crops to which genes have been added in a bid to improve yields or their resis­tance to pests. The most pop­u­lar GM crops are corn, cot­ton, pota­toes, soy­beans and toma­toes.

Protesters break into farm lab, make off with suspected GMO samples

ROME, — Agence France Presse 3 March 2001

Mil­i­tants opposed to research into genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­isms (GMOs) broke into a farm lab­o­ra­to­ry in north­east Italy Sat­ur­day as Group of Eight (G8) envi­ron­ment min­is­ters met in Tri­este to find a com­pro­mise over a UN treaty on glob­al warm­ing.

Some 50 pro­test­ers in white coats broke open the doors to the lab, run by a region­al agency for agri­cul­tur­al devel­op­ment at Poz­zuo­lo del Friuli near Udine where stud­ies and exper­i­ments on trans­genic seeds were said to be car­ried out. Seed sam­ples, notably of maize, that were tak­en
by mil­i­tants would be ana­lyzed by inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­to­ries, Ansa news agency cit­ed one of the mil­i­tants, Beppe Cac­cia, as say­ing. Police did not inter­vene dur­ing the 15-minute protest and no fur­ther inci­dents were report­ed.

Demon­stra­tors held ban­ners read­ing “Stop GMOs” and “Stop Franken­food exper­i­ments” in Ital­ian. A region­al envi­ron­men­tal leader, Pao­lo Ciani, lat­er called the protest a “seri­ous act”. Ciani, who is also deputy pres­i­dent of the north­east­ern region around Tri­este and Udine, said that no trans­genic exper­i­ments had been car­ried out at Poz­zuo­lo del Friuli for the last three years, at the spe­cif­ic request of the region­al gov­ern­ment in Tri­este.

But Cac­cia said that pro­test­ers would not be gagged. “The protest this morn­ing is a slap in the face of the mon­strous and dis­pro­por­tion­ate secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus set up for the G8 envi­ron­men­tal
meet­ing,” he added. “Biotech­nolo­gies are okay if they serve to improve life as in the bio­med­ical sec­tor but they are unac­cept­able in farm­ing where there is no need to pro­duce more,” he said. “Today’s out­put is huge; it’s the dis­tri­b­u­tion between rich and poor coun­tries in the world
which is unbal­anced.”

FARMERS STORM MONSANTO/BURN + PULL UP GE CROPS ROUND THE WORLD

As the West tries to bul­ly Third World gov­ern­ments into using GM crops, peas­ant farm­ers around the world are denounc­ing prod­ucts that would increase eco­nom­ic depen­den­cy, destroy the liveli­hoods of all but a priv­i­leged few farm­ers, and replace local­ly con­trolled food pro­duc­tion with cor­po­rate-con­trolled mono­cul­ture for export.

On 29th Novem­ber 2000 Fil­ipino farm­ers held mas­sive demon­stra­tions at Mon­san­to’s offices in Min­danao at the end of the Con­ti­nen­tal Car­a­van 2000 — a series of protests across India and Bangladesh.

They were joined by farm­ers from Indone­sia, Thai­land, Japan and Korea. Habibur Rah­man, a farmer rep­re­sent­ing Nayakr­ishi Andolon (New Agri­cul­ture Move­ment), stat­ed: “the Bangladeshi farm­ers reject genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered rice and I am pleased to learn about the strong resis­tance here in the Philip­pines.”

On 3rd Jan­u­ary 2001 Indi­an farm­ers relaunched their ‘Cre­mate Mon­san­to’ cam­paign as 300 vol­un­teers of the new­ly formed ‘Hasiru Sene’ (Green Brigade), part of the Kar­nata­ka State Farm­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, pulled up and burned Mon­san­to’s tri­al of GM cot­ton.

On 26th Jan­u­ary over 1200 Brazil­ian farm­ers stormed a Mon­san­to research sta­tion and pulled up GM corn and soya tri­als. The occu­pa­tion was timed to coin­cide with the inter­na­tion­al protests against glob­al­i­sa­tion at the meet­ing of the World Eco­nom­ic Forum in Davos, Switzer­land.

“We’re stay­ing here indef­i­nite­ly,” said Solet Cam­po­lete from the Land­less Work­ers Move­ment, “these seeds trick farm­ers and cre­ate depen­den­cy on seeds pro­duced by a big multi­na­tion­al.” They scrawled on the walls, ‘Mon­san­to is the end of farm­ers!’ but per­haps they got that the wrong way round!