Category: Climate Chaos

A busy week here in Mayo

Work con­tin­ues in Glen­gad, but so does action resist­ing the pipeline. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is active and run­ning, so please come and vis­it! Come and see what is hap­pen­ing with your own eyes, and bring what­ev­er skills and tal­ents you would like to share. Here is a five day update.

Wednes­day 10 June

Rossport Solidarity Camp 2009Work con­tin­ues in Glen­gad, but so does action resist­ing the pipeline. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is active and run­ning, so please come and vis­it! Come and see what is hap­pen­ing with your own eyes, and bring what­ev­er skills and tal­ents you would like to share. Here is a five day update.

Wednes­day 10 June

Bel­mul­let Cour­t­house:
There was a packed cour­t­house in Bel­mul­let on Wednes­day with 31 Shell to Sea peo­ple up in court. The tim­ing of this court date is unde­ni­ably polit­i­cal, con­sid­er­ing 13 of the charges were from Sep­tem­ber 2008. Pre­sum­ably court has been timed to coin­cide with the immi­nent arrival of the Soli­taire. There was a new judge in place of Mary Devins, judge Denis Mclaugh­lan. Only one case was heard that day, and the rest of them had their cas­es adjourned until the 8th of July. The num­bers on camp grew on Wednes­day as many peo­ple who had to return for court remained on camp.

Truck action at GlengadTruck block­ade:
Around 5:30pm on Wednes­day, locals and sup­port­ers attempt­ed to block a con­voy of four trucks along the road to the Shell com­pound. Peo­ple moved plas­tic bar­ri­cades into the road by the grave­yard in Glen­gad, leav­ing enough room for cars but caus­ing the Shell trucks to have to stop in the road up by Kil­com­mon Lodge. The trucks were car­ry­ing grav­el and hard­core for build­ing the cause­way at the Shell com­pound on the beach in Glen­gad where the pipeline is pro­posed to come ashore. While the trucks were stopped, one per­son attempt­ed to speak with the dri­vers, engag­ing in heat­ed but civilised con­ver­sa­tion with one of them. The main argu­ment was that when peo­ple’s lives are at risk, it is no longer ‘just a job’. As this con­ver­sa­tion was going on, the truck at the front of the queue start­ed to move, and a pro­tes­tor jumped onto the back of it and climbed into the bed of the truck. After the dri­ver was informed that a pro­tes­tor was aboard the truck he slowed down a bit but con­tin­ued to dri­ve until final­ly com­ing to a stop after about 100 metres. The pro­test­er sat on top of the cab of the truck until the gar­dai arrived and after about 10–15 min­utes began to force­ful­ly remove the pro­test­er.

As this was hap­pen­ing on top of the truck two peo­ple climbed under­neath it. The gar­dai moved in and wres­tled one pro­tes­tor out from under the truck. As he was on the ground guards grabbed one of his feet and raised it above waist height, he was then dragged across the road in this posi­tion caus­ing a con­sid­er­able amount of pain. Sev­er­al gar­da then climbed under­neath the truck and vio­lent­ly dragged the oth­er per­son out. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly four gar­dai were remov­ing the per­son from the top of the truck, lift­ing him over their heads and slid­ing him down the side onto the road. Offi­cer MY2 made a ver­bal promise to the pro­test­er that he would take down the details of the truck dri­ver because of his reck­less dri­ving. Final­ly after 10–15 min­utes of being pinned to the ground with his arm twist­ed behind his back, the per­son on the ground was brought to a stand­ing posi­tion and arrest­ed, though none of the gar­dai would explain what he was being arrest­ed for when asked. He fell to the ground as he was being put into the police van, and had to be lift­ed into the van by sev­er­al gar­da.

Though the per­son who had been on top of the truck was not imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed, soon after­wards he was arrest­ed under three charges: obstruct­ing traf­fic, breach of the peace, and refus­ing to obey the orders of a gar­da. Both arrestees were held in cus­tody overnight and brought to court in West­port the next morn­ing before they’d recieved legal aid. The gar­dai attempt­ed to have them both put on remand, which means they’d be put in jail until the next court date on 8 July. They also have begun ask­ing for bail, from 100 euro to 500 euro, some­thing which has­n’t been done at all in the past sev­er­al years of the cam­paign. This seems to be a polit­i­cal move by An Gar­da Síochá­na in an attempt to repress the cam­paign. There is no rea­son to sus­pect peo­ple of flight risk, as there has nev­er been a prob­lem with peo­ple show­ing up to court in the past. When asked why they are doing this, the only expla­na­tion is that ‘this is the new pol­i­cy’. How­ev­er it is not clear whether this is the new pol­i­cy for any­one arrest­ed in Ire­land, or whether it is some­thing put in place strate­gi­cal­ly to deal with polit­i­cal pro­tes­tors. The two truck-block­ers were held until the next morn­ing, and brought to court the next day. One of them was forced to go to Cas­tle Rea prison to sign his 500 euro bail. He was released at 6pm on Thurs­day after being held for 24 hours for a sim­ple breach of the peace.

Thurs­day 11 June

Sink­ing of the Chief’s boat- Defin­i­tive account from Pat him­self:

Pat O’Don­nel­l’s fish­ing boat was board­ed by four masked men, two of whom were armed with guns, at approx­i­mate­ly 2am on 11 June whilst out at sea lay­ing pots. The two armed men held Mr O’Don­nell and his crew­man Mar­tin McDon­nell in the wheel­house of the boat while anoth­er two went below deck for 20 min­utes. These men returned to the deck and the two crew mem­bers were held for one and a half hours until the engine went out. At this point the masked men alight­ed onto an unknown ves­sel that took them away. None of the men spoke good Eng­lish. Mr O’Don­nell went down to the engine room and realised that the boat was sinking.The two fish­er­men put out a may­day sig­nal and attempt­ed to inflate their lifeboat. The infla­tion mech­a­nism failed a num­ber of times but even­tu­al­ly worked with only moments left to spare. Once onboard the lifeboat Mr O’Don­nell and Mr McDon­nell sent out a dis­tress flare. They were res­cued at 4.30am by the ‘Rachel Mary’, anoth­er boat owned by Pat O’Donnell and oper­at­ed by his son, fish­er­man, Jonathan O’Donnell. He then rang the Gar­dai at around 6am to inform them of the inci­dent.

Pat said “I was in fear for my life, is there no end to what these thugs will try to do? AIl I am try­ing to do is pro­tect my fam­i­ly and the seas that are our liveli­hood. I told Min­ster O’Cuiv in April that I need­ed pro­tec­tion by the state, but he would­n’t give it — now its time for the gov­ern­ment to pro­tect its peo­ple. I won’t be intim­i­dat­ed by this.”

Pat O’Donnell is a local fish­er­man with over thir­ty years expe­ri­ence in the waters off the coast of Ire­land. It is assumed that Pat O’Don­nell was tar­get­ed as he is one of the loud­est objec­tors to Shel­l’s Cor­rib Gas Project. As a fifth gen­er­a­tion fish­er­man his liveli­hood will be severe­ly affect­ed by pol­lu­tion from the cor­rib project into Broad­haven bay. Deter­mined to pro­tect the waters for future gen­er­a­tions of fish­er­men, Mr. O’Don­nell has con­sis­tent­ly refused to be paid off by Shell.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/92657

Ear­ly morn­ing water action:

At 4:30am, 14 kayak­ers set out to try and dis­rupt the works being car­ried out in prepa­ra­tion for the lay­ing of the off­shore pipeline in Broad­haven Bay. The gar­dai were quick­ly on the scene, and began arrest­ing peo­ple under pub­lic order charges, fail­ure to obey the instruc­tions of a gar­da. Over the course of an hour, work was sucess­ful­ly dis­rupt­ed and six peo­ple were arrest­ed. The gar­dai con­fis­cat­ed the six kayaks of the arrestees, slash­ing five of the inflat­able kayaks with knives. The gards have height­ened their intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, telling first offense arrestees that they may have to spend a week in prison sim­ply for a breach of the peace vio­la­tion. They are doing what­ev­er they can to dis­cour­age peo­ple from doing fur­ther actions against Shell, attempt­ing to put peo­ple on remand, charg­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate amounts for unnec­es­sary bail, and arbi­trar­i­ly attempt­ing to get peo­ple ‘banned’ from Broad­haven Bay. Alle­ga­tions that this ear­ly morn­ing action kept res­cue teams from respond­ing to Pat O’Don­nel­l’s dis­tress sig­nal are unfound­ed. The kayak action was unre­lat­ed to that inci­dent, and is fair­ly unim­por­tant com­pared to the seri­ous­ness of the attack on Pat and Mar­tin.

Fri­day 12 June

Ear­ly Fri­day morn­ing, a local bus dri­ver was fol­lowed by the gar­dai on his bus route, then arrest­ed in his own home after he had dropped the bus full of kids off at school. The gar­dai claimed to have video footage of him tak­ing part in the removal of nets. The ind­ci­dent hap­pened in April when near­ly 200 local res­i­dents and sup­port­ers went to take the nets down from the spe­cial area of con­ser­va­tion where the endan­gered sand mar­tins nest. How­ev­er the footage was unre­li­able and accord­ing to the per­son he was not even at the protest that day, so the gar­dai let him go with­out charg­ing him. To arbi­trar­i­ly arrest a per­son in their home near­ly two months after an event with­out sub­stan­tial evi­dence is plain ter­ror­ism.

At 10am Fri­day morn­ing, a local res­i­dent blocked Shell trucks from pass­ing his house by park­ing his car in the road. His house has been dam­aged due to the heavy traf­fic from Shel­l’s trucks on a road unsuit­able for haulage and after reciev­ing no response from the Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil, he took action. The trucks turned around, promis­ing that there would be no traf­fic for ‘a few days.’ The gar­dai were informed that this action was going to take place before­hand, and they did not try to arrest him. The local com­mu­ni­ty has vowed to con­tin­ue the block­ade once the trucks start up again.

Sun­day 14 June
Late Sun­day night a group of 7 kayak­ers set out to dis­rupt the dredg­ing going on in Broad­haven Bay, but were instant­ly met with a fleet of 9 motor­boats. Work was stopped for about 15 min­utes, and one kayak­er was cap­sized by one of the secu­ri­ty boats. They took the inflat­able kayak into their motor­boat and left the per­son swim­ming in the water. One of the secu­ri­ty guards grabbed hold of the per­son by the neck of his life­jack­et and dragged him through the water. When oth­er kayak­ers tried to inter­vene, they were vio­lent­ly dealt with by the secu­ri­ty boat who pro­ceed­ed to take one kayak­er’s pad­dle and aban­don her there. Despite this aggres­sive behav­ior on the part of the Shell secu­ri­ty, every­one made it back to shore safe­ly. Peo­ple are in high spir­its here at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, and the resis­tance will con­tin­ue as long as the work on this project does!

Greenwash Guerrillas confront the Guardian – Mon 15 Jun 09

Date­line: the­guardian CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT 2009, Hotel Rus­sell, Lon­don, UK, 08:30–09:30, Mon 15 Jun 09 – Despite cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON’s efforts to bag bil­lions of quid from the British State to build new filthy dirty coal fired pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, north Kent and else­where, the Guardian still too

Greenwash Guerillas at Guardian e.On climate conferenceDate­line: the­guardian CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT 2009, Hotel Rus­sell, Lon­don, UK, 08:30–09:30, Mon 15 Jun 09 – Despite cli­mate crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tion E.ON’s efforts to bag bil­lions of quid from the British State to build new filthy dirty coal fired pow­er sta­tions at Kingsnorth, north Kent and else­where, the Guardian still took its pol­lut­ed mon­ey in spon­sor­ing its Cli­mate Change Sum­mit. What­ev­er next?

* the­guardian MULTICULTURAL SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the BNP?
* the­guardian GEOGRAPHY SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Flat Earth Soci­ety?
* the­guardian ABORTION RIGHTS SUMMIT 2009, spon­sored by the Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Unborn Chil­dren?

The Green­wash Gueril­las, Lon­don Brigade, Detec­tion Pla­toon #1 could not let this obscen­i­ty go un-protest­ed!

Vidz at YouTube

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 1. Action
» youtube.com/watch?v=NzEASynZxck

• Green­wash Guer­ril­las – 2. Inter­views
» youtube.com/watch?v=M5A6NYpvArs

An excel­lent full colour spoof edi­tion of the Guardian, using the news­pa­per’s own arti­cles from the last year to expose the destruc­tive role E.ON is play­ing in the UK’s fight against cli­mate change, was avail­able en mass for dis­tri­b­u­tion to sum­mit atten­dees, and a cou­ple of plucky com­rades infil­trat­ed the venue ear­ly doors to dis­trib­ute them.

Green­wash Gueril­las actions work best with­out inter­fer­ence from the filth, but because this event had already attract­ed activist atten­tion…
• Green­wash Alert — Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (17 Apr 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/leedsbradford/2009/04/427737.html
…a Press Release was pub­lished in advance…
• Green­wash Guer­ril­las Tar­get­ing Guardian Cli­mate Change Sum­mit (14 Jun 09)
» www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/06/432268.html
…and sure enough Plod turned up mob-hand­ed.

How­ev­er… the cop-in-charge, a Sgt Salt­marsh – EK 10, was unlike any cop I’ve come across before – com­mu­nica­tive, co-oper­a­tive, open to com­pro­mise and nego­ti­a­tion, even charm­ing, while at the same being con­trol­ling and coer­cive. As we donned our white ‘green­wash haz­ard’ suits in leafy Rus­sell Square, he approached us and told us of the pen we’d be restrict­ed to, on the oppo­site cor­ner of a cross­roads from the sum­mit entrance to the Rus­sell Rooms in the Rus­sell Hotel, where­in the sum­mit was being held. But… although he men­tioned that our two infil­tra­tor com­rades were eject­ed from the venue, he said he’d made sure a copy of our spoof Guardian was on every atten­dees seat inside. Whether this was actu­al­ly so remains unver­i­fied. And… I found it easy to nego­ti­ate free­dom from being penned for media news gath­er­ers (myself and a video­g­ra­ph­er doc­u­men­tary film-mak­er), such that when a cou­ple of cop bot­tom-feed­ers tried to inter­fere with my record­ing the event on cam­era, I could say, “We’ve already secured a free­dom arrange­ment for media work­ers with your sergeant – you need to speak to him,” which ter­mi­nat­ed their inter­fer­ence and put them on the defen­sive.

We ini­tial­ly occu­pied the wide pave­ment space out­side the sum­mit entrance, and lashed our TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD ban­ner to the rail­ings flank­ing the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. A hotel man­ag­er emerged and began tak­ing it down – and in a lat­er con­fab with Sgt Salt­marsh, got his smug grin wiped off his face (oh, for a sen­si­tive rifle micro­phone!). While threat­en­ing us with arrests under Sec­tion 12, Pub­lic Order Act 1986, Sgt Salt­marsh agreed to com­pro­mise over the loca­tion of the pro­test­er pen, and got his under­lings to drag crash bar­ri­ers across Her­brand Street to oppo­site the Rus­sell Rooms entrance. And two non-haz­ard-suit­ed com­rades were “allowed” to hand copies of our spoof Guardian to sum­mit atten­dees as they arrived. But the modus operan­di rai­son d’être of Green­wash Gueril­las – con­sen­su­al­ly run­ning e‑scanners over arriv­ing sum­mit atten­dees, and inter­pret­ing the scan­ners’ “moop-moop-NEEK” noise as “TOXIC GREENWASH DETECTED”, as both a street-the­atri­cal per­for­mance AND a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion-starter – was com­plete­ly negat­ed by Sgt Saltmarsh’s impo­si­tions of Pub­lic Order Act con­di­tions.

But… in con­ver­sa­tions after­ward, he inti­mat­ed that his post-event intel­li­gence report would empha­sise how fluffy, peace­ful, and (if only under the coer­cive threats of mul­ti­ple Sec­tion 12 arrests) ulti­mate­ly co-oper­a­tive the Green­wash Gueril­las were on this occas­sion. Who knows – maybe in future he’ll have no grounds for pre-judg­ing our actions to entail a threat of “seri­ous pub­lic dis­or­der, seri­ous crim­i­nal dam­age or seri­ous dis­rup­tion to the life of the com­mu­ni­ty”, and we can protest with­out arrest threats? But I’m not hold­ing my breath, so to speak – bet­ter by far to only send advance Press Releas­es embar­goed until the action’s start time, or only send them at the action’s start time, so we’ve a high­er chance of peace­ful protest with­out ANY inter­fer­ence and obstruc­tion from the filth.

What­ev­er Next?
I rec­om­mend anoth­er Gov­ern­ment of the Dead protest pro­duc­tion:
“New” Labour Zom­bie Lunchtime Lurch
• Date: Thu 18 Jun 09, 13:00 & lurch­ing onwards to 15:00
• Ren­dezvous: “New” Labour Par­ty HQ, 39 Vic­to­ria St, Lon­don, SW1H 0HA
• Shout Out: Brown bare­ly sur­vived the Par­lia­men­tary Labour Par­ty meet­ing on Mon 08 Jun 09. Since he’s hang­ing on for grim death, we can look for­ward to a peri­od of “Zom­bie Dead Man Walk­ing” gov­ern­ment in the run up to an elec­tion. Can we take the pow­er to the streets? YES WE CAN!!
• Who-What: The Gov­ern­ment of the Dead will be send­ing a whole lurch of zom­bies down there to “New” Labour Par­ty HQ on Thu 18 Jun, from 13:00 lunchtime, when zom­bies could be hun­gry. Zom­bies are not known for their sense of direc­tion, so they could head off to Par­lia­ment and Down­ing Street at a slow shuf­fle, or they might end up stag­ger­ing across St James’ Park to Buck­ing­ham Palace, demand­ing to be dis­solved and put out of their mis­ery.
• Dress Code: this can be ordi­nary clothes, but torn up or blood­stained is a good look, espe­cial­ly with trendy blairite suits; on the oth­er hand, why not go for the goth­ic?
• Make­up: green/white pale skin, good healthy look for a zom­bie, blood, wounds, sores all rec­om­mend­ed; PVC glue gives good skin-peel effect.
• Loco­mo­tion: SLOW, gets there in the end.
» Loca­tion & Pub­lic Trans­port Map: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-map
» Face­book Event Page: tinyurl.com/NLZLL-FB
» Web: tinyurl.com/GotDead-future

World Naked Bike Rides UK (& Manchester Critical Mass)

Brighton:

In Brighton, organ­is­ers of the sev­en-mile ride were warned by Sus­sex Police last month that par­tic­i­pants could face pros­e­cu­tion if offi­cers received com­plaints about the nudi­ty.

But, after advice from civ­il lib­er­ties group Lib­er­ty, cyclists entered dis­cus­sions with local police chiefs and resolved the impasse.

Brighton:

In Brighton, organ­is­ers of the sev­en-mile ride were warned by Sus­sex Police last month that par­tic­i­pants could face pros­e­cu­tion if offi­cers received com­plaints about the nudi­ty.

But, after advice from civ­il lib­er­ties group Lib­er­ty, cyclists entered dis­cus­sions with local police chiefs and resolved the impasse.

Co-organ­is­er Dun­can Blinkhorn said: “This is a fun if out­ra­geous way to make the seri­ous point that we should not have to tol­er­ate roads, cities and a plan­et dom­i­nat­ed by the brutish­ness of cars that rou­tine­ly foul the air we all breathe, destroy lives and impov­er­ish the envi­ron­ment.”

—-

Lon­don:

On Sat­ur­day 12 June 2010 the sev­enth Lon­don World Naked Bike Ride will return to the streets of the cap­i­tal, allow­ing rid­ers to see the city sights from the com­fort of a bike or skates. The ride is easy and upbeat, and rid­ers dec­o­rate their bod­ies and bikes with mes­sages of protest against oil depen­den­cy and car cul­ture.

Around 1200 rid­ers turned out for the Lon­don World Naked Bike Ride on Sat­ur­day, com­plet­ing a 10km cir­cuit through some of the major tourist and shop­ping streets of the cap­i­tal and as in pre­vi­ous rides cre­at­ing quite a stir for the five min­utes or so while they passed.

Lon­don police, also on ped­al cycles but ful­ly clothed, accom­pa­nied the cyclists and eased their pas­sage through the traf­fic. Nudi­ty is not in itself an offence and police allow the now annu­al protest to take place.

Crowds sev­er­al deep lined the edge of the road in pop­u­lar tourist spots includ­ing Trafal­gar Square, and even many of the shop­pers in Oxford St stopped con­sum­ing to watch, although from the many com­ments I heard, many were unclear about the pur­pose of the event.

Some rid­ers did have slo­gans on their bod­ies, main­ly about oil and traf­fic, and some bikes car­ried A4 posters read­ing REAL RIGHTS FOR BIKE and CELEBRATE BODY FREEDOM or had flags stat­ing ‘CURB CAR CULTURE’ which made clear the pur­pose of the event to the care­ful onlook­er, but for most peo­ple it seemed sim­ply a spec­ta­cle of naked or near-naked bod­ies. Though of course also a rare treat for any bicy­cle spot­ters.

Rid­ers rode in a vari­ety of dress and undress. Apart from shoes — vir­tu­al­ly essen­tial on a bike — some wore noth­ing, while oth­ers added body paint, cycle hel­mets, hats, shorts or briefs, bras and often a cam­era; a few rode ful­ly dressed. As on pre­vi­ous events there were con­sid­er­ably more men than women, some­thing that isn’t ful­ly reflect­ed in my pic­tures. Although there were few­er women, more of them were in colour­ful body paint or oth­er­wise stood out from the crowd.

This is an event that many — rid­ers and watch­ers — enjoy and some­thing that real­ly does make thou­sands of peo­ple stop and stare, but as in pre­vi­ous years it seems to fail to get a clear mes­sage across, per­haps because those tak­ing part do so for such var­ied rea­sons. This isn’t essen­tial­ly a natur­ist ral­ly and nudi­ty alone just isn’t enough to get the point of the event across.

* Lon­don is the largest day­time WNBR event in the world. We had 1,200 par­tic­i­pants on Sat­ur­day 13 June 2009!!! Pre­vi­ous­ly we had 1,000 (2007 & 2008), 800 (2006), 250 (2005) and 58 (2004).

—-

Man­ches­ter:

The weath­er was per­fect, the rid­ers were excep­tion­al and the start­ing point was love­ly. We rode in joy and fun and lots of noise for almost the whole route and the crowds loved us. It all went a bit pear-shaped on Port­land Street when some well-inten­tioned but sad­ly ill-informed con­stab­u­lary stopped the ride and tried to make us get dressed. We undressed around the cor­ner any­way, and we did get a lot of won­der­ful media cov­er­age. It ain’t gonna hap­pen again folks, we’ll make sure of that! Next year’s going to have the best ride ever!

—-

Sheffield:

There were 18 naked rid­ers which was down from last year’s 27 par­tic­i­pants, although the weath­er was just as nice and sun­ny with a warm gen­tle breeze. The gold­en sun­shine and clear blue skies, made it a won­der­ful day for ever­body. This year, as it was our sec­ond annu­al ride, we were hop­ing for around one hun­dred naked rid­ers. How­ev­er, as the Lon­don WNBR was held in the after­noon, this may have low­ered the turn out as folk thronged to the Lon­don ride which had over one thou­sand rid­ers.

—-

Southamp­ton:

On a dry and ‘warm enough’ evening 150 rid­ers attend­ed. The con­voy was led in fine style by a pair of Pen­ny Far­things dat­ing from the 1890s. We felt that these vehi­cles from a time before the inter­nal com­bus­tion engine neat­ly debunked the fool­ish idea that roads are made for cars! Helped by the state­ly pace of the vin­tage bikes, the ride stayed close­ly bunched togeth­er which gave a sense of uni­ty. We were greet­ed warm­ly by bystanders as we passed, and most car dri­vers were tol­er­ant (though there were the odd few aggres­sive excep­tions). Though num­bers were about the same as last year, it seemed to me there was a greater show of naked­ness this time, so hoorah for Southamp­ton rid­ers!

—-

York:

AN 87-year-old woman was among the par­tic­i­pants in this year’s York Naked Bike Ride.

Mar­garet Dust­man, who lived in Acomb for more than 50 years before mov­ing to Mir­field, said she took part because she was against people’s devo­tion to petrol and fash­ion.

Mrs Dust­man cycled off in the alto­geth­er, but oth­ers were there in var­i­ous states of undress, wear­ing Indi­an head­dress, biki­nis and var­i­ous slo­gans daubed on their bod­ies.

Oth­er reports, pho­tos and things at http://www.worldnakedbikeride.org/uk/

—-

The Crit­i­cal Mass­es in Man­ches­ter have been attend­ed by well over 100 peo­ple each month, for the last cou­ple of years — hoorah!

Videos of May 2009 ride parts 1 2 3 4

See you there — every last fri­day of the month 6pm cen­tral library MCR

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Thugs Seek Jobs at Shell HQ

The main doors at Shells head­quar­ters were closed to staff at 9am today, 12 June as pro­test­ers dressed as ‘thugs’ turned up for a job inter­view. Shell secu­ri­ty locked all doors as pro­test­ers tried to enter the build­ing for what they said was a job inter­view “we hear Shell are hir­ing thugs to sink ships in Ire­land”.

Shell Thugs 4 HireThe main doors at Shells head­quar­ters were closed to staff at 9am today, 12 June as pro­test­ers dressed as ‘thugs’ turned up for a job inter­view. Shell secu­ri­ty locked all doors as pro­test­ers tried to enter the build­ing for what they said was a job inter­view “we hear Shell are hir­ing thugs to sink ships in Ire­land”.

Pro­test­ers tried to enter the Head­quar­ters but the doors were locked as they went in. The doors remained locked for about an hour and a half, despite the var­i­ous demon­stra­tions the pro­test­ers gave of their ‘thugery’ skills even sim­u­lat­ing how they coud hold a fish­er­man cap­tive why sink­ing his boat.

One of the pro­test­ers Saman­tha John­son said “Shell have been hir­ing hit squads to ter­rorise local pro­test­ers at their activ­i­ties abroad, as with the Ogo­ni peo­ple in the Niger Delta. Now, they have import­ed these meth­ods to Ire­land. Indeed, last month a for­mer Shell secu­ri­ty guard was iden­ti­fied as one of the mer­ce­nar­ies employed in an assas­si­na­tion plot in Bolivia”.

This protest is in response to an inci­dent in Ross­port, Ire­land at 2am yes­ter­day morn­ing where 4 masked men sunk a local fisherman’s boat, with the own­er and a crewmem­ber still on it. 2 of the men were armed and held the fish­er­men while the oth­ers went below deck to sink the boat.

One of the pro­test­ers today Sean Reil­ly said “This shows the extremes Shell go to, to get what they want. They are will­ing to put 2 men in hos­pi­tal for vocal­ly express­ing oppo­si­tion.

Indigenous anti-infastructure protesters murdered in crackdown on months-long blockade in Peru

For sev­en weeks tens of thou­sands of Ama­zon­ian Indi­ans blocked roads and rivers across east­ern Peru. They seized hydro­elec­tric plants and pump­ing sta­tions on oil and gas pipelines to try to force the repeal of decrees facil­i­tat­ing oil explo­ration, com­mer­cial farm­ing and log­ging in parts of the jun­gle.

For sev­en weeks tens of thou­sands of Ama­zon­ian Indi­ans blocked roads and rivers across east­ern Peru. They seized hydro­elec­tric plants and pump­ing sta­tions on oil and gas pipelines to try to force the repeal of decrees facil­i­tat­ing oil explo­ration, com­mer­cial farm­ing and log­ging in parts of the jun­gle. Petrope­ru, the state oil com­pa­ny, had to shut a pipeline that car­ries 40,000 bar­rels of oil each day. Amid threats of ener­gy rationing in east­ern towns, the gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cía this month ordered armed police to clear a stretch of road and retake a pump­ing sta­tion near Bagua, in Peru’s north­ern jun­gle

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THE BACKGROUND

Ear­ly this morn­ing (June 5th), Peru­vian police launched a vio­lent attack on a non­vi­o­lent road block­ade held by Ama­zon­ian indige­nous pro­test­ers oppos­ing 10 laws that would open up their ter­ri­to­ry to increased min­er­al, oil, gas and tim­ber exploita­tion. Police opened fire with live ammu­ni­tion, killing at least 28 peo­ple.

FMI:
http://www.rootforce.org/2009/06/05/peruvian-police-murder-indigenous-protesters-take-action/

WHY TAKE ACTION

The first rea­son to take action, of course, is sim­ply out of sol­i­dar­i­ty with our fel­low war­riors in the strug­gle for a just and sus­tain­able world. But why are we send­ing out this action alert as Root Force?

For near­ly two months, thou­sands indige­nous pro­test­ers have near­ly par­a­lyzed Peru’s Ama­zon region with block­ades of crit­i­cal trans­porta­tion and min­ing infra­struc­ture. They have sparked a nation­al dis­course over the lim­its to devel­op­ment and who owns nature, and have made it clear that they will not sur­ren­der any of their ances­tral home­lands.

At the heart of the issue are 10 laws passed by pres­i­den­tial decree that would great­ly facil­i­tate indus­tri­al exploita­tion of the Ama­zon. THIS IS CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE, intend­ed to sup­ply new raw mate­ri­als for the glob­al mar­ket. THIS IS ONE OF THOSE WEAK POINTS OF THE SYSTEM that we are always talk­ing about.

The indige­nous war­riors fight­ing for their lives have pushed this issue into the glob­al eye, and the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment has placed itself in a posi­tion of weak­ness by mur­der­ing unarmed pro­test­ers. Even before the recent killings, a con­gres­sion­al pan­el had already declared 2 of the laws uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, and only through pro­ce­dur­al tricks has the pres­i­den­t’s par­ty been able to stall debate on repeal­ing one of those laws.

This is one of those rare cas­es where SUSTAINED INTERNATIONAL PRESSURE COULD TIP THE SCALES. If these laws are repealed, it will be a major set­back for infra­struc­ture expan­sion plans in a tru­ly crit­i­cal region of the hemi­sphere.

HOW TO TAKE ACTION

You can email crit­i­cal peo­ple in the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment through this link, pro­vid­ed by Ama­zon Watch:

http://amazonwatch.org/peru-action-alert.php

You can also orga­nize protests at Peru­vian embassies or con­sulates, or take oth­er actions that you think stand a good chance of mak­ing it back to the deci­sion mak­ers in Lima.

Make sure to express your out­rage at the gov­ern­men­t’s strong arm tac­tics — even before the mur­ders, the gov­ern­ment had sus­pend­ed civ­il lib­er­ties in 5 provinces and was call­ing indige­nous peo­ple “ter­ror­ists” — and demand the repeal of the Free Trade laws and any law fur­ther open­ing the Ama­zon to min­er­al, oil, gas, tim­ber, hydro­elec­tric or agri­cul­tur­al exploita­tion.

In Sol­i­dar­i­ty,
Root Force

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Recent reports indi­cate as many as 84 peo­ple killed and 150 arrest­ed in clash­es stem­ming from an ear­ly morn­ing vio­lent raid by police on unarmed pro­test­ers on June 5. Police are report­ed to be burn­ing the bod­ies of the dead and dump­ing them into the riv­er.

Aston­ish­ing­ly — but not sur­pris­ing­ly — the gov­ern­ment is accus­ing the pro­test­ers of using tac­tics rem­i­nis­cent of the 1980s inter­nal con­flict. Deploy­ing racist imagery paint­ing indige­nous pro­test­ers as spear-wield­ing sav­ages, Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cia has vowed a tough “response.”

Fol­low­ing the ear­ly-morn­ing mas­sacre, pro­test­ers took 38 police hostage at a pump­ing sta­tion for the nation­al oil com­pa­ny, PetroPe­ru. A police raid to free the offi­cers result­ed in the deaths of nine of them. An Argen­tin­ian oil com­pa­ny, Plus­petrol, has halt­ed oil pump­ing in one unit and will soon halt pump­ing in anoth­er due to the unrest.

The gov­ern­ment has since issued an arrest war­rant for indige­nous leader Alber­to Pizan­go (who was elect­ed to rep­re­sent the indige­nous coali­tion by the lead­ers of 1,200 com­mu­ni­ties), charg­ing him with “sedi­tion.” Pizan­go has gone into hid­ing.

Please take action and urge the Peru­vian gov­ern­ment to halt the vio­lence and repeal the con­tro­ver­sial free trade laws that would open up indige­nous land in the Ama­zon to increased devel­op­ment. Con­tact the US gov­ern­ment and inter­na­tion­al agen­cies as well, and encour­age them to place pres­sure on Peru. The Peru­vian gov­ern­ment is in a seri­ous posi­tion of weak­ness right now and try­ing to cov­er it up with vio­lence, and this is one of those rare cas­es where inter­na­tion­al pres­sure could deal a major set­back to infra­struc­ture expan­sion plans.

Read the full Root Force action alert on this issue here.

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Indige­nous Lead­ers and Allies Call for an End to Vio­lence on All Sides

BAGUA, Peru — June 8 — In the after­math of Friday’s bloody raid on a peace­ful indige­nous road block­ade near Bagua in the Peru­vian Ama­zon, numer­ous eye­wit­ness­es are report­ing that the Spe­cial Forces of the Peru­vian Police have been dis­pos­ing of the bod­ies of indige­nous pro­test­ers who were killed.

“Today I spoke to many eye­wit­ness­es in Bagua report­ing that they saw police throw the bod­ies of the dead into the Marañon Riv­er from a heli­copter in an appar­ent attempt by the Gov­ern­ment to under­re­port the num­ber of indige­nous peo­ple killed by police,” said Gre­gor MacLen­nan, spokesper­son for Ama­zon Watch speak­ing.

“Hos­pi­tal work­ers in Bagua Chi­ca and Bagua Grande cor­rob­o­rat­ed that the police took bod­ies of the dead from their premis­es to an undis­closed loca­tion. I spoke to sev­er­al peo­ple who report­ed that there are bod­ies lying at the bot­tom of a deep crevasse up in the hills, about 2 kilo­me­ters from the inci­dent site. When the Church and local lead­ers went to inves­ti­gate, the police stopped them from approach­ing the area,” report­ed MacLen­nan.

Police and gov­ern­ment offi­cials have been con­sis­tent­ly under­re­port­ing the num­ber of indige­nous peo­ple killed by police gun­fire. Indige­nous orga­ni­za­tions place the num­ber of pro­test­ers killed at least at 40, while Gov­ern­ment offi­cials claim­ing that only a hand­ful of indige­nous peo­ple were killed. Also the Gar­cia Gov­ern­ment claims that 22 police offi­cers were killed and sev­er­al still miss­ing.

“Wit­ness­es say that it was the police who opened fire last Fri­day on the pro­test­ers from heli­copters,” MacLen­nan said. “Now the gov­ern­ment appears to be destroy­ing the bod­ies of slain pro­test­ers and giv­ing very low esti­mates of the casu­al­ty. Giv­en that the demon­stra­tors were unarmed or car­ry­ing only wood­en spears and the police were fir­ing auto­mat­ic weapons, the actu­al num­ber of indige­nous peo­ple killed is like­ly to be much high­er.”

“Anoth­er eye­wit­ness report­ed see­ing the bod­ies of five indige­nous peo­ple that had been burned beyond iden­ti­fi­ca­tion at the morgue. I have lis­tened to tes­ti­mo­ny of peo­ple in tears talk­ing about wit­ness­ing the police burn­ing bod­ies,” con­tin­ued MacLen­nan.

At least 150 peo­ple from the demon­stra­tion on Fri­day are still being detained. Eye-wit­ness reports also con­firm that police forcibly removed some of the wound­ed indige­nous pro­test­ers from hos­pi­tals, tak­ing them to unknown des­ti­na­tions. Their fam­i­lies expressed con­cern for their well being while in deten­tion. There are many peo­ple still report­ed miss­ing and access to med­ical atten­tion in the region is hor­ri­bly inad­e­quate.

The Orga­niz­ing Com­mit­tee for the Indige­nous Peo­ples of Alto Ama­zonas Province issued this state­ment: “It is appalling that polit­i­cal pow­ers have act­ed in such a cru­el and inhu­man man­ner against Ama­zon­ian Peo­ples, fail­ing to rec­og­nize the fun­da­men­tal rights and pro­tec­tions guar­an­teed to us by the Con­sti­tu­tion. We express deep grief over the death of our indige­nous broth­ers, of civil­ians and the offi­cers of the Nation­al Police.”

The gov­ern­ment expand­ed the State of Emer­gency and estab­lished a cur­few on all traf­fic in the region from 3 pm to 6 am. Indige­nous and inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions are wor­ried about plans of anoth­er Nation­al Police raid on a block­ade in Yurimaguas close to the town of Tara­po­to where thou­sands are block­ing a road.

Pres­i­dent Alan Gar­cia is being wide­ly crit­i­cized for foment­ing a cli­mate of fear mon­ger­ing against indige­nous peo­ples by draw­ing par­al­lels to the bru­tal Shin­ning Path guer­ril­la move­ment of the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s, and by vague­ly refer­ring to exter­nal and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic threats to the coun­try.

The Ama­zon­ian indige­nous peo­ples’ mobi­liza­tions have been peace­ful, local­ly coor­di­nat­ed, and extreme­ly well orga­nized for near­ly two months. Yet Gar­cia insists on call­ing them ter­ror­ist acts and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic. Gar­cia has even gone so far as to describe the indige­nous mobi­liza­tions as “sav­age and bar­bar­ic.” Gar­cia has made his dis­crim­i­na­tion explic­it, say­ing direct­ly that the Ama­zon­ian indige­nous peo­ple are not first-class cit­i­zens.

“These peo­ple don’t have crowns,” Gar­cia said about the pro­test­ers. “These peo­ple aren’t first-class cit­i­zens who can say — 400,000 natives to 28 mil­lion Peru­vians — ‘You don’t have the right to be here.’ No way. That is a huge error.”
Iron­i­cal­ly, Peru was the coun­try that intro­duced the Unit­ed Nations Dec­la­ra­tion on the Rights of Indige­nous Peo­ples on the floor of the Gen­er­al Assem­bly when it was adopt­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2007.

A coali­tion of indige­nous and human rights orga­ni­za­tions will protest in front of the Peru­vian Embassy in Wash­ing­ton D.C. on Mon­day, June 8 at 12:30 pm.

Indige­nous peo­ples have vowed to con­tin­ue protests until the Peru­vian Con­gress revokes the “free trade” decrees issued by Pres­i­dent Gar­cia under spe­cial pow­ers grant­ed by Con­gress in the con­text of the Free Trade Agree­ment with the Unit­ed States.

Among the out­pour­ing of state­ments con­demn­ing the vio­lence in Peru were those from Peru’s Ombudsman’s office, the chair of the Unit­ed Nations Per­ma­nent Forum on Indige­nous Issues, a coali­tion of 45 inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tions, Indige­nous orga­ni­za­tions from through­out the Amer­i­c­as, and the Con­fer­ence of Bish­ops of Peru. Also famous per­son­al­i­ties includ­ing Q’orianka Kilch­er, Ben­jamin Bratt, Peter Bratt, and Daryl Han­nah and Bian­ca Jag­ger called on the Peru­vian Gov­ern­ment to cease the vio­lence and seek peace­ful res­o­lu­tion to the con­flict.

AIDESEP, the nation­al indige­nous orga­ni­za­tion of Peru has called for a nation­wide gen­er­al strike start­ing June 11th.

Ama­zon Watch is con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ing pho­tographs, audio tes­ti­mo­ny, and video footage from Bagua on www.amazonwatch.org.

New­ly released b‑roll at http://amazonwatch.org/peru-protests-highres-photos.php

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The broad­en­ing influ­ence of the indige­nous move­ment was on dis­play Thurs­day in a gen­er­al strike that drew thou­sands of pro­test­ers here to the streets of Iqui­tos, the largest Peru­vian city in the Ama­zon, and to cities and towns else­where in jun­gle areas. Protests over Mr. Gar­cía’s han­dling of the vio­lence in the north­ern Bagua Province last Fri­day also took place in high­land regions like Puno, near the Boli­vian bor­der, and in Lima and Are­quipa on the Pacif­ic coast.

“The gov­ern­ment made the sit­u­a­tion worse with its con­de­scend­ing depic­tion of us as gangs of sav­ages in the for­est,” said Wag­n­er Muso­line Acho, 24, an Awa­jún Indi­an and an indige­nous leader. “They think we can be tricked by a maneu­ver like sus­pend­ing a cou­ple of decrees for a few weeks and then rein­tro­duc­ing them, and they are wrong.”

The pro­test­ers’ imme­di­ate threat – to cut the sup­ply of oil and nat­ur­al gas to Lima, the cap­i­tal – seems to have sub­sided, with pro­test­ers part­ly with­draw­ing from their occu­pa­tion of oil instal­la­tions in the jun­gle. But as anger fes­ters, indige­nous lead­ers here said they could eas­i­ly try to shut down ener­gy instal­la­tions again to exert pres­sure on Mr. Gar­cía.

Anoth­er wave of protests appears like­ly because indige­nous groups are demand­ing that the decrees be repealed and not just sus­pend­ed. The decrees would open large jun­gle areas to invest­ment and allow com­pa­nies to bypass indige­nous groups to obtain per­mits for petro­le­um explo­ration, log­ging and build­ing hydro­elec­tric dams. A stop­gap attempt to halt ear­li­er indige­nous protests in the Ama­zon last August failed to pre­vent them from being reini­ti­at­ed more force­ful­ly in April.

…

The author­i­ties are strug­gling to under­stand a move­ment that is crys­tal­liz­ing in the Peru­vian Ama­zon among more than 50 indige­nous groups. They include about 300,000 peo­ple, account­ing for only about 1 per­cent of Peru’s pop­u­la­tion, but they live in strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant and resource-rich loca­tions, which are scat­tered through­out jun­gle areas that account for near­ly two-thirds of Peru’s ter­ri­to­ry.

So far, alliances have proved elu­sive between Indi­ans in the Ama­zon and indige­nous groups in high­land areas, rul­ing out, for now, the kind of broad indige­nous protest move­ments that helped oust gov­ern­ments in neigh­bor­ing Ecuador and Bolivia ear­li­er in the decade.

In con­trast to some ear­li­er efforts to orga­nize indige­nous groups, the lead­ers of this new move­ment are them­selves indige­nous, and not white or mes­ti­zo urban intel­lec­tu­als. They are well orga­nized and use a web of radio sta­tions to exchange infor­ma­tion across the jun­gle. After one promi­nent leader, Alber­to Pizan­go [who explic­i­ty links the strug­gles there to glob­al cli­mate change every­where], was grant­ed asy­lum in Nicaragua this week, oth­ers quick­ly emerged to artic­u­late demands.

Two Fishermen in Hospital After Boat Boarded and Sunk by Masked Men in Ireland

The sit­u­a­tion in Erris Co. Mayo has esca­lat­ed into a sor­did state of affairs, with two fish­er­men being held by force by two men in bal­a­clavas at 2am on Thurs­day the 11th of June. The fish­er­men, Pat O’Donnell and Mar­tin McDon­nell, are both locals opposed to the con­tro­ver­sial Cor­rib gas project which is cur­rent­ly being over­seen by The Roy­al Dutch Shell Com­pa­ny.

The sit­u­a­tion in Erris Co. Mayo has esca­lat­ed into a sor­did state of affairs, with two fish­er­men being held by force by two men in bal­a­clavas at 2am on Thurs­day the 11th of June. The fish­er­men, Pat O’Donnell and Mar­tin McDon­nell, are both locals opposed to the con­tro­ver­sial Cor­rib gas project which is cur­rent­ly being over­seen by The Roy­al Dutch Shell Com­pa­ny.
The two fish­er­men were return­ing to Bal­ly­glass pier, hav­ing been fish­ing out at sea, when their boat was board­ed by four masked men. When Mr. O’Donnell and Mr. McDon­nell had been ren­dered help­less, the board­ers pro­ceed­ed to move below decks and sink the ‘Iona Isle’, the trawler belong­ing to Mr. O’Donnell. Both men are now being tend­ed to in Castle­bar gen­er­al hos­pi­tal.

These attacks come short­ly after rough­ly thir­ty Shell to Sea activists appeared in Bell­mul­let dis­trict court yes­ter­day for assort­ed acts of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence relat­ing to the pro­posed pipeline project. How­ev­er a num­ber of mem­bers of An Gar­da Síochan­na were also sum­moned by the judge for pos­si­ble acts of mis­con­duct, mis­use of author­i­ty and ille­gal behav­iour relat­ing to Shell to Sea protests.

The assaults car­ried out on the fish­er­men bear an uncan­ny resem­blance to that which occurred almost a month and a half ago on local farmer and Gold­man envi­ron­men­tal prize win­ner Willie Cor­duff.

The recent devel­op­ments here in Erris are becom­ing an increas­ing cause for con­cern for local peo­ple attempt­ing to halt Shell’s work in order to defend their own liveli­hoods. Many fam­i­lies here are com­plete­ly depen­dent on the local envi­ron­ment to pro­duce a source of income. Hav­ing fish­ing grounds pol­lut­ed by dredg­ing work, or pipelines dragged through one’s fields is like­ly to evoke strong protest. Albeit most local peo­ple who oppose the project ini­tial­ly felt that there was lit­tle or no chance of the sit­u­a­tion unrav­el­ling to the extent it would be so effort­less­ly com­pa­ra­ble to the Ogo­ni saga in Nige­ria.

More activists were arrest­ed yes­ter­day evening after they had assist­ed local men in bar­ri­cad­ing nar­row choke points of road which lead to the Shell com­pound at Glen­gad, which is still devoid of the suf­fi­cient plan­ning per­mis­sion. One man had hoist­ed him­self up onto the cab of a truck in an attempt to halt the ille­gal work, much to the sur­prise of local peo­ple and Gar­da present at the scene. The dri­ver elect­ed to accel­er­ate down a steep hill with the man still on top of the vehi­cle. Two Shell to Sea activists were vio­lent­ly appre­hend­ed on the road and brought to Bell­mul­let Gar­da sta­tion where they’ve been held all night. They have been brought to court this morn­ing with­out legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion and the state is attempt­ing to put them on remand. This means they will be held in jail until the next court hear­ing in July.

Also at half four ear­li­er this morn­ing four­teen peo­ple from the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp dis­rupt­ed work whilst kayak­ing in bay where Shell are cur­rent­ly dredg­ing. This result­ed in the arrest of six peo­ple and police also slashed kayaks. Over the past ten days dredgers have been board­ed on two occa­sions where activists climbed on top of dig­gers and stopped work. A num­ber of injuries have been sus­tained dur­ing water actions injuries at the hands of the IRMS secu­ri­ty, employed by Shell to trit­u­rate the cam­paign oppos­ing the theft of bil­lions of euro worth of gas.

The glob­al pres­sure has been mount­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly on Shell in recent times, with much media focus sur­round­ing the Wiwa fam­i­ly law­suits against them in New York. Shell was being sued for human rights abus­es in the Ogo­ni region of Nige­ria dat­ing back to the ear­ly nineties, how­ev­er Shell decid­ed to set­tle out of court to the sum of $15.5 mil­lion dol­lars.

In the face of one of the world’s biggest multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions backed by the state and a team of secu­ri­ty, many of whom are known fas­cists and mer­ce­nar­ies, the com­mu­ni­ty still stand strong in defence of their envi­ron­ment and liveli­hoods. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp is pro­vid­ing active sup­port to the com­mu­ni­ty, please come and help!

Plane Stupid stage ‘Corporate Takeover’ at London City Airport

June 10th: 5 eco activists have shut down oper­a­tions at Lon­don City Air­port. The group, who are wear­ing pin­striped suits and bowler hats entered at 2.30 am today.

City airport action 1City airport action 2City airport action 3June 10th: 5 eco activists have shut down oper­a­tions at Lon­don City Air­port. The group, who are wear­ing pin­striped suits and bowler hats entered at 2.30 am today. They cut through the perime­ter fence and formed a human wheel clamp around one of the airport’s busi­ness jet fleet at the west end of the run­way. The need to avoid sparks around high­ly flam­able avi­a­tion fuel could meen that the nor­mal process of cut­ting them out of their arm­tubes could be severe­ly ham­pered.

Check out the pho­tos on our Flickr pho­to­stream.

Video

The ‘eco-takeover’ puts the spot­light on the self­ish­ness of pri­vate jet use:

“Because of their low pas­sen­ger capac­i­ty, small jets emit between five and 10 times more car­bon per pas­sen­ger than com­mer­cial flights,” said spokes­woman Nan­cy Birch. “In an age where we face poten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, this is no longer an accept­able form of trans­port. It’s time that pri­vate jets were ground­ed for good.”

Until the down­turn, the pri­vate jet busi­ness was the fastest grow­ing seg­ment of the avi­a­tion sec­tor. Over the last ten years it has expand­ed by almost 50%.

“This is yet anoth­er exam­ple of the insane rush towards mas­sive air­port and flight expan­sion,” Birch con­cludes. “The avi­a­tion indus­try seems to think it can pol­lute its way out of cli­mate change. But any­one with half a brain will know that this is just plane stu­pid.”

Lon­don City air­port blights the lives of some of the poor­est peo­ple in Lon­don. Newham has been known to expe­ri­ence air pol­lu­tion lev­els which reg­u­lar­ly exceed EU safe­ty lim­its for high­t­ly tox­ic chem­i­cals such as Nitrus Oxide and has the high­est lev­els of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s in the UK from asth­ma, a mat­ter that Asth­maUK are cur­rent­ly inves­ti­gat­ing.

While it seems the group have suc­cess­ful­ly shut down the pri­vate Jet cen­tre part of the air­port, locals are report­ing that pub­lic flights start­ed run­ning from City from 7am. No one is claim­ing that the pro­test­ers have yet been arrest­ed or removed, which sug­gests that the Air­port are breach­ing health and safe­ty by con­tin­u­ing oper­a­tions in this restrict­ed area. If the five are still in posi­tion then they will have been locked on for 7 hours and a half hours now…

——

Police cut­ting teams weren’t sight­ed in the area at the time the press team were forced to leave. Acsess roads have now been shut down, and the woman with the phone in the arm­tube can’t take calls any­more, so it’s dif­fi­cult to get any news of what’s going on. More pho­tos are avail­able on the Plane Stu­pid web­site, check out the flickr stream.

——

Notes to the edi­tor

A total of 27 local and region­al air­ports around the UK are cur­rent­ly seek­ing to expand their activ­i­ties.

Lon­don City Air­port recent­ly received local author­i­ty per­mis­sion to expand its com­mer­cial flights from 80,000 to 120,000. The air­port aims to increase this total to 170,000 by 2030.

Activists tar­get­ed Lon­don City Air­port because it is one of the key dri­vers of the pri­vate jet busi­ness. The air­port cur­rent­ly sees an aver­age of 170 move­ments (take-offs and land­ings) per week. The airport’s Jet Cen­tre pre­dicts this fig­ure will increase to more than 530 a week by 2030.

Lon­don City Air­port was closed at the time of the eco-takeover. Secu­ri­ty was giv­en two hours’ warn­ing before the first flights of the day.

The airport’s Jet Cen­tre com­pris­es a mix­ture of pri­vate­ly-owned jets and a for-hire busi­ness jet oper­a­tion run by Pri­vate­Jet.

——
8:30am update & local group press release:

Locals are con­firm­ing that flights start­ed from city air­port at 7am. While the pri­vate Jet Cen­tre where the group are locked on does apear to have been sucess­ful­ly shut down, it is alarm­ing that the air­port is pre­pared to dis­re­gard health and safe­ty reg­u­la­tions and con­tin­ue to run flights in the area. There have been no reports that the group have been arrest­ed or removed so far. If they are still there then they have been locked on for 7 hours now…

For the local cam­paign group per­spec­tive see below-

PRESS RELEASE FIGHT THE FLIGHTS — LONDON CITY AIRPORT

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10 June 2009

FIGHT THE FLIGHTS RESPONSE TO PLANE STUPIDS ACTION AT LONDON CITY AIRPORT

Fight the Flights is not a direct action group, but we ful­ly appre­ci­ate the frus­tra­tion that the cli­mate change activists feel in get­ting their voic­es, and con­cerns heard on avi­a­tion expan­sion, and how avi­a­tion is one of the fastest grow­ing sources of CO2 emis­sions.

It is no won­der that some cam­paign­ers feel they are being pushed into tak­ing non vio­lent direct action because the sys­tem is fail­ing peo­ple of their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights to pro­tect their com­mu­ni­ties, futures and their envi­ron­ment from harm­ful ‘run­away’ air­port and flight expan­sion.

Just under a 100,000 res­i­dents in east and south east Lon­don will be affect­ed by the increas­ing exces­sive noise lev­els from Lon­don City Air­port upon expan­sion, and yet less than 10,000 were claimed to have been con­sult­ed by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. Most will not be enti­tled to any noise insu­la­tion. They will have to live with the con­se­quences every day of their lives, each time a flight takes off and lands. The major­i­ty do not have the option to move, and many lived in the area long before the air­ports cre­ation.

Ben­e­fits?

In just over 20 years the air­port has only man­aged to direct­ly employ 120 Newham res­i­dents out of the 406 direct­ly employed staff the air­port claim to employ.

Lon­don tax­pay­ers have also paid £24million for the air­ports secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed by the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police over the past 5 years, which the air­port refuse to pay.

In addi­tion the air qual­i­ty above Lon­don City Air­port exceeds EU direc­tive lev­els by 50% and was termed as ‘tox­ic’ but this was not acknowl­edged by the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham. In a bor­ough which has the high­est lev­el of mor­tal­i­ty in under 30s with asth­ma in the whole coun­try, Newham should be focussing on improv­ing air qual­i­ty, not adding to the pol­lu­tion by approv­ing fur­ther expan­sion at this res­i­den­tial­ly sit­u­at­ed air­port in the most dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed area of Eng­land.

Erod­ed Democ­ra­cy

Res­i­dents have been con­stant­ly thwart­ed and ignored by this gov­ern­ment and the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham when pro­vid­ing evi­dence against the expan­sion. Requests for a pub­lic inquiry into the planned 50% expan­sion of flights at Lon­don City Air­port was refused by Hazel Blears, Sec­re­tary of State in 2008, whilst the Lon­don Bor­ough of Newham showed no con­cern that 100s of homes in Green­wich will now be in the crash zone and failed to address the risk to res­i­dents and com­mu­ni­ties who live, work or trav­el through the crash zone in both Newham and Green­wich. How­ev­er in con­trast the gov­ern­ment and coun­cil appear to con­sis­tent­ly lis­ten to the avi­a­tion at the expense of the com­mu­ni­ties: this is expan­sion at any cost.

With a gov­ern­ment that does not lis­ten to local con­cerns on the effects of expan­sion on third par­ty safe­ty, increas­ing pol­lu­tion lev­els, the effect on res­i­dents health and children’s devel­op­ment, and the con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change, it is no won­der that we are see­ing actions such as this more fre­quent­ly.

The Pirates of Broadhaven Defeat Shell’s Armada (& contractor’s addresses)

For the sec­ond time in three days a Shell dredger has been board­ed and occu­pied by a Shell to Sea pro­test­er. As a result all the ships work­ing in the bay have ceased work and returned to har­bour. Reports con­firm that work has been aban­doned due to the action of the pro­test­ers!

Dredger occupation the second!For the sec­ond time in three days a Shell dredger has been board­ed and occu­pied by a Shell to Sea pro­test­er. As a result all the ships work­ing in the bay have ceased work and returned to har­bour. Reports con­firm that work has been aban­doned due to the action of the pro­test­ers!

A group of 11 kayak­ers set out at 5:30am on Fri­day, meet­ing instant resis­tance on the water from Shell secu­ri­ty boats and safe­ty boats. After avoid­ing the Shell pri­vate secu­ri­ty boats that were attempt­ing to cap­size the kayaks, one pro­test­er man­aged to board the dredger ‘Rezende Bol’ owned by Van Oord, who is sub­con­tract­ed by Shell to do the dredg­ing. This ves­sel along with anoth­er and mul­ti­ple sup­port and secu­ri­ty boats were dig­ging a trench in the seabed in prepa­ra­tion for the gas pipe-lay­ing ship Soli­taire. Work in the bay has been con­tin­u­ous 24 hours a day since Mon­day evening only stop­ping due to the pre­vi­ous dredger occu­pa­tion by Shell to Sea pro­test­ers which last­ed 10 hours. Dur­ing the attempts to board the dredger sev­er­al pro­test­ers were able to climb onto the side of the ves­sel. Exces­sive force was used to pre­vent them from board­ing; one pro­test­er had his thumb bent back­wards by a secu­ri­ty guard and lat­er was tak­en to the hos­pi­tal where tests revealed dam­aged lig­a­ments. Anoth­er pro­test­er who got on board the ship was vio­lent­ly pushed from the deck by two secu­ri­ty guards injur­ing his back, and fell over six feet from the deck into the water. Shell secu­ri­ty were kick­ing and stamp­ing fin­gers of pro­test­ers on the near side of the ves­sel, all the while one pro­test­er man­aged to board the ship on the oth­er side and climb up onto the same crane his friends had pre­vi­ous­ly occu­pied just three days ear­li­er.

The kayak sup­port team pre­pared for sim­i­lar shifts as Tues­day, antic­i­pat­ing a long-term occu­pa­tion. Four kayak­ers remained on the water to keep an eye on the pro­test­er while the rest went in to regain ener­gy. The reac­tion of the secu­ri­ty and safe­ty boats was very hos­tile, attempt­ing to cap­size kayaks and sep­a­rate peo­ple from each oth­er. The dri­ver of the Gall­tee (Shell’s pri­vate secu­ri­ty boat) repeat­ed his threat to sink kayaks, dri­ving extreme­ly aggres­sive­ly with no regard for the safe­ty of the kayak­ers.

After the dredgers were towed away, the Gar­da arrived and board­ed the ship in addi­tion to the Shell secu­ri­ty already on the ship. They threat­ened the pro­test­er on the crane arm with forced phys­i­cal removal. Fear­ing for his own safe­ty the pro­test­er jumped from the dredger arm onto the deck and dived into the water. The two sup­port­ing kayak­ers who were still in the water were arrest­ed despite their efforts to com­ply with the Gardai’s instruc­tions. In the water the crane pro­test­er man­aged to avoid cap­ture by the Gar­dai and Shell secu­ri­ty and get to the shore where he scaled a cliff to evade cap­ture. His where­abouts are now unknown but he is safe and well!

Shell claimed that they stopped work­ing in the bay due to a ‘swell’ but sources at Bal­ly­glass pier con­firmed that Van Oord, the sub­con­trac­tor run­ning the dredgers were unwill­ing to work with ongo­ing protest activ­i­ty and the exces­sive use of force by the IRMS (Inte­grat­ed Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices) .

Today’s actions are proof that resis­tance rocks!

Come to Mayo!

—-

Van Oord are involved as a main con­trac­tor on the Lim­er­ick Tun­nel project, which they’re hap­py to tell you about on their web­site, but there’s no men­tion at all of their involve­ment with the Cor­rib Gas Project. Maybe their green­wash is impor­tant to them some­how, and maybe they don’t fan­cy neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty. Why don’t we give them some then, eh?

Van Oord’s web­site home­page:
http://www.vanoord.com/gb-en/index.php

Head office postal address for gen­er­al mail:
Van Oord Dredg­ing and Marine Con­trac­tors BV
PO Box 8574
3009 AN Rot­ter­dam
The Nether­lands

Vis­it­ing address:
Van Oord Dredg­ing and Marine Con­trac­tors BV
Water­man­weg 64
3067 GG Rot­ter­dam
The Nether­lands
T 31 10 447844
F 31 10 4478100
E info@vanoord.com

This is a con­tact for their ‘news­room’, i.e. Media and PR:
A.G.M. (Bert) Groothuizen
Man­ag­er Mar­ket­ing & Pub­lic Rela­tions
T 31 10 4478234
F 31 10 4478100
E info@vanoord.com

On their ‘agen­da’ page there is men­tion of this fol­low­ing event. Maybe they are keynote speak­ers at this con­fer­ence, or that they will have a large trade exhi­bi­tion pres­ence there. Details from the con­fer­ence web­site are sketchy, so more research is need­ed. There are oth­er events for lat­er in the year at which they’ll either attend or par­tic­i­pate in, but I think the event at the end of this month may be a place where Van Oord can be shamed pub­licly about its involve­ment in Shel­l’s destruc­tion of Broad­haven Bay.

The Flood and Coastal Risk Man­age­ment Con­fer­ence 2009 — 30 June 2009 — 02 July 2009
The Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre, Telford, UK
(Telford is in Shrop­shire, west-cen­tral Eng­land, I think. Near­ish to Birm­ing­ham any­way. The risks in coastal man­age­ment must be enor­mous these days, if this con­fer­ence has to be held in a place as far from the sea as you can get on the island of Britain!)
http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/research/102626.aspx

Allseas are the com­pa­ny that own the Soli­taire. The Soli­taire is expect­ed to arrive with­in the next month. It would be good if peo­ple could also put pres­sure on them before they get here:

http://www.allseas.com/uk

Allseas UK Lim­it­ed
Address: Knyvett House The Cause­way
City: Staines, Mid­dle­sex
Post­code: TW18 3BA
Tele­phone: +44 1784 898038
Fax: +44 1784 898030

Shell security breached and work stopped in successful action at sea

On Tues­day, after the after­noon con­fronta­tion in Broad­haven Bay which result­ed in one man’s arrest and a cou­ple hours of halt­ed work for the dredgers, the Shell to Sea fleet of kayaks head­ed out on the water a sec­ond time around 6pm and two pro­test­ers man­aged to board one of the dredgers, climb­ing on to the neck of the c

Shell crane occupation in Broadhaven BayOn Tues­day, after the after­noon con­fronta­tion in Broad­haven Bay which result­ed in one man’s arrest and a cou­ple hours of halt­ed work for the dredgers, the Shell to Sea fleet of kayaks head­ed out on the water a sec­ond time around 6pm and two pro­test­ers man­aged to board one of the dredgers, climb­ing on to the neck of the crane, occu­py­ing it and halt­ing work for 10 hours.

Shell has been con­tin­u­ous­ly dredg­ing in the area since Mon­day evening, inter­fer­ing with pro­tect­ed fish­ing areas for local fish­er­men, defil­ing what was once a pris­tine marine habi­tat full of dol­phins, whales and oth­er marine life, and dis­turb­ing sleep for local res­i­dents. They have buoyed off an ‘exclu­sion zone’ in the pub­lic waters, with boats patrolling the area to make sure no one cross­es into it. There is a diverse assort­ment of ves­sels occu­py­ing the once pris­tine bay; the major­i­ty of these are either car­ry­ing out or assist­ing in the cur­rent dredg­ing and sur­veil­lance oper­a­tions. An Gar­da Siochana (police boat) have also been patrolling the work zone along with two black RIBs; The Lau­ra Emi­ly accom­pa­nied by its twin the Gall­tee, both brim­ming with men dressed in black mil­i­tary fatigues and video cam­eras for film­ing pro­test­ers. Oth­er small­er motor­boats accom­pa­nied the Shell crew, includ­ing ‘safe­ty boats’ and a large white motor launch. There were tug­boats for mov­ing the dredgers, barges for hold­ing the sand being removed from the seabed and, of course, the mas­sive dredgers them­selves.

A group of twelve Shell to Sea pro­test­ers in eight inflat­able kayaks, two hard kayaks, and two rub­ber dingys set out on the water at 6pm for the sec­ond time in one day on Tues­day 2nd June. Three of the kayaks man­aged to evade the secu­ri­ty boats and get close enough to board one of the dredgers. One pro­test­er began to climb the lad­der from her boat while anoth­er kayak­er blocked a secu­ri­ty boat from grab­bing her. The oth­er pro­test­er used the tires on the side of the dredger to board the deck. Once on the boat, both pro­test­ers were climb­ing onto the crane with­in sec­onds. They slid down into the neck of the crane mak­ing it impos­si­ble for the crew to remove them.

Loud cheers were heard from ashore where peo­ple were gath­ered at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, and the mood on the water was extreme­ly pos­i­tive. ‘Shell to hell’ chants were abound­ing, and there were even some play­ful exchanges between Shell to Sea kayak­ers and a cou­ple of motor­boats. There were vary­ing atti­tudes on dif­fer­ent boats, but not all of the gar­dai or safe­ty boats were unfriend­ly. Both inflat­able kayaks which had been left in the water where the two pro­test­ers had board­ed the dredger were quick­ly recov­ered. One was towed out of the ‘exclu­sion zone’ by a Shell to Sea pro­test­er, and one was brought on board the gar­dai boat and placed back in the water out­side of the exclu­sion zone. The rest of the Shell to Sea kayak­ers remained on the water to ensure the pro­test­ers were not going to be dan­ger­ous­ly removed, then began tak­ing shifts to stay close to them and pro­vide sup­port.

In a sur­pris­ing­ly hon­est con­ver­sa­tion between the kayak pro­test­ers and a work­er on one of the boats, the work­er stat­ed that he ‘admired the per­sis­tence’ of the local com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port­ers who are resist­ing the pipeline. He also said he thought the pipeline plan was ‘rel­a­tive­ly safe’ and assert­ed that some­times risks have to be tak­en. Unfor­tu­nate­ly with a kill zone of up to 200 meters and the uncer­tain­ty of nev­er hav­ing built such a high pres­sure pipeline through a res­i­den­tial area, the risk is high. This is why resis­tance to the pipeline is so strong; as one of the two pro­test­ers who occu­pied the dredger lat­er stat­ed, “Today we took this action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the local com­mu­ni­ty and to try to pro­tect this beau­ti­ful area from being rav­aged by Shell.”

The rotat­ing shifts of sup­port con­tin­ued on through the night, with small groups of kayak­ers keep­ing an eye on their friends long after the gar­dai had left around 12am. Once it was dark and the gar­dai had left, the mood at sea changed. The Shell secu­ri­ty and the safe­ty boat for the dredger were the only ones left. The Shell secu­ri­ty RIBs became increas­ing­ly aggres­sive towards the kayak­ers. They made mul­ti­ple attempts to cap­size them, and used intim­i­da­tion tech­niques such as turn­ing their lights off until they were up close then sud­den­ly shin­ing flood­lights, dis­ori­ent­ing and fright­en­ing them. One of the kayak crew report­ed feel­ing seri­ous­ly con­cerned that the sit­u­a­tion would esca­late. A secu­ri­ty guard even stat­ed his inten­tion was to sink the boats, a plau­si­ble threat giv­en the recent vicious attack by IRMS on Willie Cor­duff. It was report­ed that the ‘safe­ty boat’ also seemed con­cerned for the safe­ty of the kayak­ers, and may have been their only pro­tec­tion in the sit­u­a­tion.

By 4am, the two pro­test­ers on the dredger were feel­ing very cold and tired, and felt as if they had achieved a sig­nif­i­cant vic­to­ry. They vol­un­tar­i­ly climbed down from the crane, and were ille­gal­ly detained by IRMS secu­ri­ty and brought to Bal­ly­glass pier where they were arrest­ed and charged with loi­ter­ing in a pub­lic place.

Despite the severe dif­fi­cul­ties encoun­tered through­out the night the mood across the camp from the kayak­ing teams and all the sup­port crews was jubi­lant. Hav­ing breached Shell’s secu­ri­ty and made such a sig­nif­i­cant stop to dredg­ing work peo­ple at the sol­i­dar­i­ty camp remain in a defi­ant mood: watch this space for more resis­tance to the dev­as­ta­tion at sea and on the land.

Kingsnorth construction firm invaded by climate activists!

One of the com­pa­nies bid­ding for the con­tract to con­struct a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth has been tar­get­ed by cli­mate cam­paign­ers. Three peo­ple have locked on inside and two are up on a ledge out­side hav­ing dropped a ban­ner.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

5th June 2009. 10.30am

Nutall protestOne of the com­pa­nies bid­ding for the con­tract to con­struct a new coal fired pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth has been tar­get­ed by cli­mate cam­paign­ers. Three peo­ple have locked on inside and two are up on a ledge out­side hav­ing dropped a ban­ner.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

5th June 2009. 10.30am

For more infor­ma­tion, inter­views and pho­tographs con­tact 07932 096677 or press@climatecamp.org.uk

CLIMATE CAMPAIGNERS INVADE KINGSNORTH CONSTRUCTION FIRM

Major build­ing con­trac­tor BAM Nut­tall tar­get­ed due to poten­tial role in con­tro­ver­sial coal pow­er sta­tion

[Pho­to and film­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty at: BAM Nut­tall Head Office, St James House, Knoll Road, Cam­ber­ley, Sur­rey, GU15 3XW]

This morn­ing, thir­teen peo­ple invad­ed the offices of Sur­rey-based build­ing firm BAM Nut­tall. They have locked them­selves to fur­ni­ture, glued them­selves to desks, and are ask­ing to speak to Chief Exec­u­tive Mar­tin J. Rogers about the dis­as­trous impli­ca­tions of build­ing more coal-fired pow­er sta­tions. Sev­er­al pro­test­ers have also occu­pied an exte­ri­or ledge above the building’s entrance, with a ban­ner read­ing: “No New Coal: Build a Green­er Future”, and staff and passers-by are being giv­en leaflets and infor­ma­tion about the protest.

The cam­paign­ers, from Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action [1], are tar­get­ing BAM because the com­pa­ny is bid­ding for the con­tract to build a new coal pow­er sta­tion at Kingsnorth in Kent, for the giant ener­gy com­pa­ny E.ON [2]. This would be the first new UK coal pow­er sta­tion for 30 years, and would pro­duce around 7 mil­lion tonnes of CO2 per year, equiv­a­lent to the entire emis­sions of a coun­try like Ghana [3]. Accord­ing to a new report from Kofi Annan’s Glob­al Human­i­tar­i­an Forum, cli­mate change is already killing 300,000 peo­ple per year, and will get much worse unless we urgent­ly reduce our CO2 emis­sions [4].

One of the pro­test­ers, Xavier Perez, said: “BAM Nut­tall point to the intro­duc­tion of low ener­gy light­ing and improved heat­ing at their head office as exam­ples of how they are reach­ing their sus­tain­abil­i­ty goals. This con­ve­nient­ly over­looks the fact that they are hop­ing to con­struct a pow­er sta­tion reliant on the filth­i­est fos­sil fuel in exis­tence. This would be laugh­able if it were not for the fact that mil­lions of lives, liveli­hoods and species could be lost.” [5]

The Gov­ern­ment and E.ON are claim­ing that a new Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion would even­tu­al­ly include “car­bon cap­ture and stor­age” (CCS) tech­nol­o­gy, to catch 25% of its emis­sions and store them under­ground [6]. How­ev­er, the cam­paign­ers inside BAM Nut­tall point out that this is unproven tech­nol­o­gy that is still being test­ed, and won’t be avail­able until at least 2020 [7]. Cli­mate sci­en­tists say we need to make sharp car­bon cuts long before that date [8]. Even if CCS is one day installed, and works as planned, the plant would still pro­duce more CO2 than a gas pow­er sta­tion [9].

The Government’s oth­er favoured jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for build­ing new coal pow­er sta­tions – that the emis­sions would be includ­ed in the EU’s “car­bon trad­ing” scheme – has been wide­ly and heav­i­ly crit­i­cised [10]. Crit­ics say that this scheme is a com­plex and unwork­able dis­trac­tion from real cli­mate change solu­tions, that isn’t reduc­ing net emis­sions, and essen­tial­ly hands con­trol of the cli­mate over to the same bankers, bro­kers and pri­vate traders respon­si­ble for the glob­al finan­cial crash [11].

Anoth­er of today’s pro­test­ers, Sasha Good­win, said: “After last summer’s Cli­mate Camp at Kingsnorth, thou­sands of peo­ple pledged to take direct action to stop this pow­er sta­tion, and there is a huge wave of pub­lic sup­port for the cam­paign. Today’s action shows how peo­ple are ready to act on their words. Any com­pa­nies think­ing about get­ting involved in the Kingsnorth project should remem­ber the road protests of the 1990s, which cost con­trac­tors mil­lions of pounds and pre­vent­ed many pro­posed road projects from going ahead.

“BAM Nut­tall say they need this work because of the reces­sion, but this com­plete­ly miss­es the point. If we keep burn­ing coal, then we’ll lose a lot more than just our jobs – people’s homes, health, food sup­ply, and the sta­bil­i­ty of our soci­ety are all at risk from cli­mate change. Instead, we need to build a sus­tain­able soci­ety, pow­ered by renew­able ener­gy from the wind, sun and tides, which will lead to bet­ter ways to live and work. We need to make sure that this tran­si­tion is a fair one, active­ly involv­ing work­ers from the ener­gy indus­try. We’re hop­ing to have some inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions with BAM staff today about all of these issues!”

ENDS

Notes to Edi­tors

[1] TVCA is part of the Camp for Cli­mate Action net­work, which set up a week-long protest camp at Kingsnorth in August 2008 – see www.climatecamp.org.uk. Today’s action is part of a nation­al cam­paign, sup­port­ed by the Camp for Cli­mate Action, called the E.ON Face Off — see www.e‑onf-off.org.uk. Pre­vi­ous actions have includ­ed the occu­pa­tion of E.ON’s UK head office by pro­test­ers dressed as San­ta Claus, and actions at E.ON stalls at Uni­ver­si­ty recruit­ment events which led to the com­pa­ny aban­don­ing their grad­u­ate recruit­ment dri­ve.
[2] BAM Nut­tall is a con­struc­tion and civ­il engi­neer­ing firm owned by the Roy­al BAM Group
[3] Car­bon Diox­ide Infor­ma­tion Analy­sis Cen­ter: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/
[4] http://www.ghf-geneva.org/
[5] Roy­al BAM Group Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Report
[6] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8014295.stm
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/apr/23/carbon-capture-and-storage-coal
[8] http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/briefing_notes/bn17.pdf
[9] Gen­er­at­ing elec­tric­i­ty from coal pro­duces about twice as much CO2 per KWh than gen­er­a­tion from gas. There­fore, a 25% reduc­tion would still leave coal about one and a half times as pol­lut­ing as gas.
[10] See for exam­ple http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5257602.ece, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227046.200-carbon-trading-wont-stop-climate-change.html and http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/may/28/carbon-trading
[11] http://www.carbontradewatch.org/

Thames Val­ley Cli­mate Action

–

Lat­est — 10:30

Four cop vans, an ambu­lance (to deal with the per­son super­glued to the front door) and a police heli­copter now on the scene. Pass­ing Con­ser­v­a­tive coun­cil­lors milling about express­ing their out­rage that the boys in blue are doing this rather than catch­ing bur­glars.

–

1 arrest so far — 11:50

One per­son inside arrest­ed for aggra­vat­ed tres­pass — not giv­en the option to leave of his own accord… Those locked on/glued/perched on ledge still going strong.

–

Sev­er­al arrests, includ­ing one pass­er-by who wan­dered over to talk to the peo­ple up on the ledge and prompt­ly got nicked.