Category: Genetics

Animal Rights Case Concern to Environmentalists & call out for 19th January — updated with CW analysis

While the case of 4 ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers found guilty on “con­spir­a­cy to black­mail” charges in rela­tion to con­tract test­ing com­pa­ny Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) that tests on ani­mals may seem unre­lat­ed to the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment the case has direct rel­e­vance to all rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

While the case of 4 ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers found guilty on “con­spir­a­cy to black­mail” charges in rela­tion to con­tract test­ing com­pa­ny Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) that tests on ani­mals may seem unre­lat­ed to the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment the case has direct rel­e­vance to all rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists. The activists were con­vict­ed for their part in the now famous SHAC (Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty) cam­paign that’s stat­ed aim is to close down the com­pa­ny.

Fol­low­ing their con­vic­tions the media lam­bast­ed the activists for numer­ous unlaw­ful and intim­i­dat­ing actions tak­en against Hunt­ing­don and asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies. Many of these actions will be dis­taste­ful to some and there are many dif­fer­ing views on ani­mal research in the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment how­ev­er this case has wider impli­ca­tions for activists across the board.

After a recent nation­al media arti­cle claim­ing a lone extrem­ist might be plan­ning an attack aimed at pop­u­la­tion reduc­tion was pub­lished, which NETCU appear to have had a hand in, some feel that NETCU (Nation­al Extrem­ism Tac­ti­cal Co-ordi­na­tion Unit) could be turn­ing their spot­light on the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment. Addi­tion­al­ly the polic­ing tac­tics expe­ri­enced at Cli­mate Camp indi­cate that ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers aren’t the sole focus of NETCU. If the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment is the new tar­get of NETCU this judge­ment should be tak­en seri­ous­ly by all envi­ron­men­tal­ists.

This case seems to imply that the “organ­is­ers” of rad­i­cal cam­paigns are ful­ly respon­si­ble for every­one that tar­gets the com­pa­ny that they are cam­paign­ing against. Indeed it is the case some cam­paign­ers act­ing against HLS and asso­ci­at­ed com­pa­nies used direct action and it’s true that the defen­dants did not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­demn this type of action either. How­ev­er what is being said is there is no evi­dence that the defen­dants were involved in or even incit­ed the actions list­ed in the media and which it seems they have been held liable for in court.

So what is to be under­stood by this case is that a rad­i­cal cam­paign, such as SHAC, Earth First or Cli­mate Camp is ful­ly respon­si­ble for the actions of all its sup­port­ers. It seems that a cam­paign is expect­ed to ‘con­trol’ activists and speak out against every ille­gal action they make or be faced with respon­si­bil­i­ty for the oth­er activist’s actions.

This will be a prob­lem for net­works and groups like Earth First and Cli­mate Camp the police need only arrest the group organ­is­ing the EF! gath­er­ing, the peo­ple who pro­mote Cli­mate Camp etc. and then hold them respon­si­ble for the actions of any­one cam­paign­ing on the same issue or using the cam­paign name, any­one tak­ing action against GMOs or who attacked the pow­er sta­tion dur­ing Cli­mate Camp.

The police no longer need to find and arrest the per­son who com­mit­ted the rel­e­vant action but can sim­ply imply that the cam­paign is respon­si­ble espe­cial­ly if the cam­paign sup­ports direct action or car­ries reports on such actions on their web­site.

On Mon­day 19th Jan­u­ary there has been a call out for a Nation­al Anti-Vivi­sec­tion Day of Action/Freedom to Protest Day of Action in sup­port of the SHAC activists that are being sen­tenced on that day. Because of the direct rel­e­vance of this case to envi­ron­men­tal­ists I ask that regard­less of your indi­vid­ual view­point on the SHAC cam­paign or ani­mal test­ing you do some­thing to sup­port the free­dom to cam­paign. This could be as sim­ple as ded­i­cat­ing an already planned envi­ron­men­tal action to the cam­paign­ers or hold­ing a small protest.

FREEDOM TO PROTEST NOW!

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State repres­sion of Anti-Cor­po­rate Dis­sent: Ani­mal right activists con­vict­ed of ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’

On Decem­ber 23rd, 4 out of 5 activists on tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court were found guilty of ‘Con­spir­a­cy to Black­mail’ at Win­ches­ter Crown Court after a 3 and a half month long show tri­al. The world’s media, prompt­ed by police press offi­cers, were quick to con­demn activists by point­ing to harass­ment against the employ­ees of Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences (HLS) and their cus­tomers, share­hold­ers and investors. Actions against HLS, not linked to those con­vict­ed, such as hoax bombs, let­ters alleg­ing pae­dophil­ia, and threats were point­ed to as evi­dence of the defen­dants’ extrem­ism. Police spokes­men and the Nation­al Extrem­ist Coor­di­na­tion Unit (NETCU), the branch of the police set up to deal with the AR move­ment and oth­er expres­sions of the pub­lic’s dis­sent, hailed the con­vic­tions as a vic­to­ry. (For more infor­ma­tion on NETCU see here and here.

What was not exam­ined in the media was the wor­ry­ing devel­op­ment of the repres­sive use of the law which lead to the con­vic­tion of the four defen­dants.

Cor­po­rate Watch has fol­lowed the progress of the tri­al at Win­ches­ter since the begin­ning. The rea­son we were con­cerned about the tri­al is that we see it as part of a larg­er attack on the ani­mal rights move­ment moti­vat­ed by the state’s desire to pro­tect pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions against dis­sent. Since the ani­mal rights move­ment began to effec­tive­ly chal­lenge the prof­its of those involved in vivi­sec­tion and the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try the state has repeat­ed­ly respond­ed with new repres­sive mea­sures. In May this year Sean Kirt­ley, an activist involved with Stop Sequani Ani­mal Tor­ture (SSAT), was sen­tenced to four and a half years in prison for updat­ing a web­site with news about a legal, non­vi­o­lent cam­paign to close down Sequani lab­o­ra­to­ries in Led­bury. Kirt­ley was con­vict­ed of ‘Con­spir­a­cy to inter­fere with the con­trac­tu­al rela­tions of an ani­mal research facil­i­ty under sec­tion 145 of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act’ (SOCPA 145) . His only crime was to protest law­ful­ly against the lab and to update a web­site.

NETCU, how­ev­er, was not sat­is­fied with see­ing ani­mal rights activists banged up for four and a half years and chose to charge cam­paign­ers asso­ci­at­ed with Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty (SHAC) with ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’, an offence car­ry­ing up to 14 years in prison. In May 2007, police arrest­ed 32 peo­ple in raids dubbed ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’. Since then, 15 peo­ple have been charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy’ and are being tried in two sep­a­rate tri­als, of which this was the first.

The charges relate to over four years of con­cert­ed cam­paign­ing against HLS, the largest con­tract test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry in Europe. The defen­dants includ­ed peo­ple who had been involved in SHAC from the out­set. How­ev­er, two of the defen­dants, Ger­rah Sel­by and Dan Wad­ham, had been in their ear­ly teens at the begin­ning of the peri­od con­cerned and had only been involved for a short time. Wad­ham was only 17 when his part of the alleged con­spir­a­cy alleged­ly occurred.

SHAC, an inter­na­tion­al cam­paign group call­ing for the clo­sure of HLS, has been paint­ed by the police and the press as a ‘crim­i­nal organ­i­sa­tion’ dup­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic con­cerned with ani­mal abuse into donat­ing their mon­ey to fur­ther ‘a cam­paign of black­mail’. SHAC’s activ­i­ties, how­ev­er, have been over­whelm­ing­ly law­ful: the cam­paign pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion about ani­mal abuse inside HLS labs, reports cam­paign­ing activ­i­ties and issues action alerts call­ing on sup­port­ers to write polite let­ters to com­pa­nies work­ing with HLS and ask them to desist. If those com­pa­nies con­tin­ue to do busi­ness with HLS, protests would usu­al­ly fol­low. All mate­r­i­al on the SHAC web­site is checked by a bar­ris­ter and police are giv­en pri­or notice of their demon­stra­tions.

Cus­tomers, sup­pli­ers and share­hold­ers in HLS have also been the sub­ject of some direct action. Slo­gans have been daubed at com­pa­ny premis­es and employ­ees homes; cars have been painstrip­pered; hoax bombs have been sent and employ­ees have been accused of being pae­dophiles. How­ev­er, these actions are not direct­ly linked to the SHAC cam­paign and have only ten­u­ous links to the defen­dants, whose faces were spashed across many tabloid front pages after their con­vic­tions at Win­ches­ter.

Dur­ing the sum­mer, three defen­dants, com­mit­ted cam­paign­ers against HLS, plead guilty to charges of ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’. Dur­ing the tri­al, evi­dence recov­ered from the cam­paign PCs and activists’ per­son­al com­put­ers was pre­sent­ed. Police had found many doc­u­ments believed to have been per­ma­nent­ly delet­ed or shred­ded by their authors. This includ­ed a spread­sheet detail­ing names and address­es of peo­ple work­ing for com­pa­nies linked to HLS, details of direct actions car­ried out against them and a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing a pri­vate chat between activists appar­ent­ly talk­ing about direct action. This evi­dence may sug­gest that some activists had decid­ed to take direct action against com­pa­nies linked to HLS, but the evi­dence link­ing the defen­dants found guilty on 23rd Decem­ber to these doc­u­ments was cir­cum­stan­tial and, in some cas­es, non-exis­tent. Even if some activists linked to SHAC did decide to take direct action, this does not make every­body asso­ci­at­ed with the cam­paign guilty by asso­ci­a­tion. The pros­e­cu­tion case was that that the entire SHAC cam­paign was aimed at clos­ing down HLS, which is true, and that SHAC cam­paign­ers attempt­ed to per­suade com­pa­nies not to work with HLS, which is also true. The pros­e­cu­tion argu­ment, how­ev­er, went on to imply that, when com­pa­nies did not agree to cease trad­ing with HLS, they were the sub­ject of direct action. Often direct action did occur but this was not under the ban­ner of SHAC. More­over, SHAC did not pub­lish any infor­ma­tion about com­pa­nies that was not already in the pub­lic domain. But because some activists, some­times under the ban­ner of the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF), did take direct action, the pros­e­cu­tion argued that the SHAC cam­paign was facil­i­tat­ing direct action and giv­ing it its tac­it appo­val. The police went one step fur­ther and said SHAC and the ALF were one and the same thing!

Much of the evi­dence in the three-month tri­al was in rela­tion to law­ful demon­stra­tions against com­pa­nies linked to HLS. This was par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant in the instances of defen­dants who could not be linked to the uncov­ered com­put­er evi­dence. In sev­er­al cas­es, the only evi­dence was what they had said at demon­stra­tions. Com­ments made by defen­dants dur­ing protests in earshot of the police were por­trayed as link­ing them to the ‘con­spir­a­cy’. Com­ments, such as “we know where you live”, were tak­en as proof that defen­dants were par­ty to the con­spir­a­cy. In any oth­er con­text, such spur-of-the-moment com­ments would have, at most, lead to minor charges in the Mag­is­trate’s Court. Equal­ly impor­tant was the fact that some of those con­vict­ed were linked per­son­al­ly to the defen­dants who plead­ed guilty. Heather Nichol­son and Ger­rah Sel­by had both shared hous­es with them. This was obvi­ous­ly a fac­tor in find­ing them guilty by asso­ci­a­tion.

So what does this mean for free speech and anti-cor­po­rate dis­sent in the UK? By the same log­ic, an anti-war cam­paign that pub­lish­es infor­ma­tion on the where­abouts of a mil­i­tary base or arms fac­to­ry and calls for its clo­sure could be put in the frame for the same crime if that base was then the sub­ject of an arson attack. All it would take would be for the police to imply that the peo­ple run­ning the pub­lic cam­paign are linked to those involved in direct action. Con­se­quent­ly, cam­paign­ers might feel com­pelled to pub­licly dis­tance them­selves from acts of direct action lest they find that, unbe­known to them, those respon­si­ble for the covert actions are involved in pub­lic action too and the whole move­ment is charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy’. In fact, the use of such charges is a clas­sic police tac­tic aimed at spread­ing para­noia and con­vict­ing as many activists as pos­si­ble for acts car­ried out by only a few. The aim is also to min­imise pub­lic sup­port for ille­gal actions by har­rass­ing and crim­i­nal­is­ing those who speak up in sol­i­dar­i­ty.

NETCU have already inti­mat­ed, for exam­ple in the recent Mark Townsend arti­cle on ‘eco-ter­ror­ists’, that envi­ron­men­tal or anti-gm pro­test­ers might be their next tar­get.

The con­vict­ed activists are now long peri­ods in jail, they will be sen­tenced on Jan­u­ary 19th. Heather Nichol­son, who was remand­ed after her arrest in May 2007, has already spent over 19 months in jail, longer than some con­vict­ed of seri­ous assaults or sex crimes would spend in prison. In May this year, Sean Kirt­ley, who was impris­oned for his role in anoth­er ani­mal rights cam­paign, was sen­tenced to four and a half years in prison on the same day that men who beat a man until he was blind received two years. Since ‘Oper­a­tion Achilles’, the police have been pat­ting them­selves on the back for putting the ani­mal rights move­ment into ‘dis­ar­ray’. A NETCU source told the Observ­er in Novem­ber 2008 that the ani­mal rights move­men­t’s ‘ring­lead­ers’ had ‘either been pros­e­cut­ed or were await­ing pros­e­cu­tion.’ One may sus­pect that com­ments like these are more to do with main­tain­ing NETCU’s fund­ing than real­i­ty (see this Cor­po­rate Watch com­men­tary for more details).

In fact the attack on ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers does not seem to have lim­it­ed their capac­i­ty to take action. Reg­u­lar demon­stra­tions are still tak­ing place against com­pa­nies linked to HLS, with one planned for 29th Decem­ber.The ALF, which does not seem to be in need of ‘lead­ers’, has recent­ly freed 70 turkeys from a UK farm. If any­thing, the glob­al ani­mal rights move­ment seems to be grow­ing steadi­ly.

The deci­sion to try these cam­paign­ers for ‘con­spir­a­cy to black­mail’ was evi­dent­ly a polit­i­cal one. Huge amounts of police resources have been poured into this pros­e­cu­tion, and oth­ers like it, at the behest of the Labour gov­ern­ment. This is due to the effec­tive­ness of the ani­mal rights move­ment in con­fronting and chal­leng­ing the pow­er of cor­po­ra­tions involved in ani­mal abuse. The demon­i­sa­tion of ani­mal rights cam­paign­ers in the media, facil­i­tat­ed by NETCU press releas­es, only makes it eas­i­er for the state to repress them with­out pub­lic out­cry. The con­vic­tion of the defen­dants at Win­ches­ter is yet anoth­er nail in the cof­fin of the pub­lic’s right to voice their anger and dis­sent against cor­po­rate crime.

For more info see Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty — www.shac.net

NETCU Watch — http://netcu.wordpress.com/

SCHnews — www.schnews.org.uk

Wee demo in Glasgow against Monsanto CEO Hugh Grant. He will be back in June 09. Will you also you here?

Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant came to Glas­gow today. He and Scot­tish Enter­pris­es were not so hap­py to find out that a few con­cerned cit­i­zens were there and were leaflet­ing the staff call­ing for his dis­missal from his role on the inter­na­tion­al advi­so­ry board. see press release below for some details. He comes twice a year for these meet­ings.

Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant came to Glas­gow today. He and Scot­tish Enter­pris­es were not so hap­py to find out that a few con­cerned cit­i­zens were there and were leaflet­ing the staff call­ing for his dis­missal from his role on the inter­na­tion­al advi­so­ry board. see press release below for some details. He comes twice a year for these meet­ings. Prob­a­bly the only time aside from Mon­san­to AGMs (in St Louis, US) that any­one who wants to have a word with him knows when and where he will be. The next mtg is in June 09. We will be there to greet the Mon­san­to CEO. Will you join us the next time? Con­tact details at end of the PR, Cheers!

Press release: Com­mon Action Scot­land: Tues­day 4 Novem­ber 2008, Glas­gow

Con­tro­ver­sial Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant in Glas­gow this week

Con­tro­ver­sial Mon­san­to Chief Exec Hugh Grant is expect­ed to be in Glas­gow this week in his role as an advi­sor to the Scot­tish Enter­prise Agency. How­ev­er civ­il soci­ety group Com­mon Action Scot­land are demand­ing that Scot­tish Enter­prise boss­es dis­miss the Mon­san­to CEO from its advi­so­ry board and are chal­leng­ing Mr Grant to attend a pub­lic meet­ing to answer for the dam­age caused by his com­pa­ny and its busi­ness prac­tices.

Lind­say Keenan spokesper­son for Com­mon Action Scot­land said today:
“It is not appro­pri­ate to have the Chief Exec­u­tive of Mon­san­to as an advi­sor to Scot­tish Enter­prise. Hugh Grant rep­re­sents a com­pa­ny that has lied and cheat­ed and that has caused can­cers, birth-defects and deaths in order to save a dol­lar. Today Mon­san­to prod­ucts con­tribute direct­ly to inflat­ed prices of food on the glob­al mar­ket and to world hunger. Hugh Grant and Mon­san­to are an inter­na­tion­al dis­grace not a role mod­el for Scot­tish Enter­pris­es. We have asked Jack Per­ry the head of Scot­tish Enter­prise and Jim Math­er MSP, the Scot­tish Enter­prise Min­is­ter to imme­di­ate­ly dis­miss Hugh Grant from his advi­so­ry role”.

Mr Grant is due in Glas­gow this week for a meet­ing of the Scot­tish Enter­prise Inter­na­tion­al Advi­so­ry Board. Despite a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request Scot­tish Enter­prise have refused to con­firm exact­ly which day the meet­ing will take place but did con­firm it is expect­ed to be in Glas­gow in the first week of Novem­ber. Mr Grants office con­firmed that he is expect­ed to attend. Hugh Grant was born in Larkhall Glas­gow and grad­u­at­ed from Glas­gow and Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ties. Since 2003 he has been the Chair­man, Pres­i­dent and CEO of the US based chem­i­cals and genet­ic engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny Mon­san­to. Based in St Louis, US he trav­els the world rep­re­sent­ing Mon­san­to and vis­its Glas­gow twice a year for these meet­ings.

Keenan cont’d, “Mr Grants com­pa­ny, Mon­san­to, has in the past been respon­si­ble for pro­duc­ing some of the worlds most tox­ic chem­i­cals includ­ing PCBs and Agent Orange. Amongst oth­er seri­ous crimes it has pre­vi­ous­ly been caught fal­si­fy­ing sci­en­tif­ic reports and brib­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Today Mon­san­to is the worlds largest chem­i­cal com­pa­ny and is respon­si­ble for more than 90% of the genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied seeds sold in the world. Mon­san­to prod­ucts and Monsanto’s way of doing busi­ness destroy soil health, destroy food secu­ri­ty and con­tribute sub­stan­tial­ly to world hunger and envi­ron­men­tal dam­age”.

Hugh Grant uses his role with Scot­tish Enter­prise as part of his CV pre­sum­ably because it opens doors for him and helps to give Mon­san­to what it most craves, the pub­lic accep­tance that despite its great wealth and pow­er it is oth­er­wise denied. Mr Grants posi­tion with Scot­tish Enter­prise gives the impres­sion that Mon­san­to is sup­port­ed in Scot­land when in fact the evi­dence of pub­lic, farmer, food indus­try, polit­i­cal and sci­en­tif­ic opin­ion over the last ten years makes it absolute­ly clear that there is no place for Mon­san­to or its prod­ucts in Scot­land (or indeed in Europe).

Keenan cont’d, “Hugh Grant is the smooth talk­ing face of a very ugly cor­po­ra­tion. His smooth talk­ing style and his Glasgow/Edinburgh/transatlantic brogue has charmed the US stock mar­kets and politi­cians on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr Grant has helped pushed up prof­its for Mon­san­to and for him­self but at what price to real peo­ples lives and to the envi­ron­ment?

Com­mon Action Scot­land has tried on a num­ber of occa­sions to get Mr Grant to agree to attend a pub­lic meet­ing in Glasgow/Scotland. How­ev­er he shows no signs of being will­ing to be held pub­licly account­able. We note that if he is not will­ing to attend a pub­lic dis­cus­sion despite the glob­al impor­tance of his com­pa­ny to the health and food secu­ri­ty of so many peo­ple then this should pro­vide fur­ther evi­dence of his unsuit­abil­i­ty to be an advi­sor to a Scot­tish tax pay­er fund­ed pub­lic body. “What does Hugh Grant/Monsanto have to hide?”

There is an over­whelm­ing body of evi­dence avail­able to sup­port the case that Mon­san­to and its CEO are not good role mod­els for Scot­tish busi­ness. Amongst a wealth of oth­er pub­licly avail­able fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion the recent­ly released doc­u­men­tary called the World Accord­ing To Mon­san­to by direc­tor Marie Monique Robin sums up the real­i­ty behind Mon­san­to.

The crimes Mon­san­to has com­mit­ted, the lives it has dam­aged, the lies its spokes­peo­ple and exec­u­tives have told and the mas­sive influ­ence that it has are laid out clear­ly. And it is per­haps the first doc­u­men­tary that real­ly gets behind the approval process for GM foods in the US and reveals the manip­u­lat­ing hand of Mon­san­to at all lev­els. A copy can be obtained from French film­mak­ers ARTE www.arteboutique.com
It can also be found in 10 parts on Utube at
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=CMleWZXhi6s

We would rec­om­mend that Jack Per­ry and Jim Math­er view this doc­u­men­tary to get some under­stand­ing of Mon­san­to. We fur­ther rec­om­mend that it be screened at the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment and on Scot­tish TV so that we all may judge. Mon­san­to refused to be inter­viewed for the doc­u­men­tary but the direc­tor Marie Monique Robin has indi­cat­ed to Com­mon Action Scot­land that she would be will­ing to attend a pub­lic meet­ing in Scot­land to dis­cuss her find­ings with Mr Grant, if he is will­ing.

For more infor­ma­tion please con­tact:

Lind­say Keenan (Direc­tor)
Com­mon Action Scot­land
1 Cun­ning­hame Road, Kil­barchan, Scot­land, PA10 2EE
Office: 0141 577 0057 Mobile: 0750 392 0125
Email: commonactionscotland@yahoo.co.uk

Paraguan resistance to GM soya plantings — evictions & violence

28 Octo­ber 2008
Peas­ant organ­i­sa­tions are resist­ing against the begin­ning of the GM soya sea­son all over the coun­try of Paraguay. They demand access to land, land reform and the stop of the pes­ti­cide spray­ing which impacts on their com­mu­ni­ties. Despite the new gov­ern­ment, many camps have been evict­ed and vio­lence has tak­en place: 2 lead­ers have been mur­dered and hun­dreds of peas­ants have been arrest­ed. Please sign the let­ter below to put pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment and put a stop to vio­lence!

San Marco eviction28 Octo­ber 2008
Peas­ant organ­i­sa­tions are resist­ing against the begin­ning of the GM soya sea­son all over the coun­try of Paraguay. They demand access to land, land reform and the stop of the pes­ti­cide spray­ing which impacts on their com­mu­ni­ties. Despite the new gov­ern­ment, many camps have been evict­ed and vio­lence has tak­en place: 2 lead­ers have been mur­dered and hun­dreds of peas­ants have been arrest­ed. Please sign the let­ter below to put pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment and put a stop to vio­lence!

San Mar­co evic­tion & video­clip show­ing what hap­pened when a large group of campesinos halt­ed fumi­ga­tion trac­tors of Brazil­ian soy pro­duc­ers. Paraguay, com­mu­ni­ty of Yvypé all at http://www.lasojamata.org/en/node/230

In Paraguay, GM soya mono­cul­tures are today the main cause of defor­esta­tion, the destruc­tion and pol­lu­tion of oth­er ecosys­tems, of vio­lence and the evic­tion of small farm­ers and indige­nous peo­ples. Paraguay has near­ly 2,6 mil­lion hectares of soy plan­ta­tions for ani­mal feed exports and, more recent­ly, for agro­fu­el. A jour­nal­ist who vis­it­ed the coun­try in 2007 described the impact of soya mono­cul­tures as fol­lows:
“Rur­al east­ern Paraguay used to be full of jun­gle, small farms, schools and wildlife. Now it is a green sea of soy­beans. The fam­i­lies, trees and birds are gone. The schools are emp­ty. The air is filled with the tox­ic stench of the pes­ti­cides like paraquat and 2,4‑D used to pro­tect the soy crops” [http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3093].

The rem­nants of Paraguay’s Atlantic For­est and of the Alto Parana for­est, as well as wet­lands, grass­lands and rivers are being destroyed and pol­lut­ed by the expan­sion of immense RR soya fields. Defor­esta­tion is wors­en­ing glob­al warm­ing and also caus­ing severe region­al warm­ing and droughts. It has con­tributed to the worst fire sea­son ever record­ed in Paraguay last year, and prob­a­bly to the severe drought which is cur­rent­ly affect­ing the south of the coun­try. More than 100,000 small peas­ant fam­i­lies have been evict­ed for soya plan­ta­tions and over 100 peas­ant lead­ers have been mur­dered since the late 1990s in con­flicts over access to land. Agro-chem­i­cal (glyphosate, 2,4D, and oth­ers) spray­ing of soya plan­ta­tions severe­ly affects the health of peo­ple liv­ing in soy region, in some cas­es lead­ing even to deaths, and also destroys people´s food crops. Hunger and mal­nu­tri­tion are increas­ing as less and less land is avail­able to farm­ers for grow­ing food.

In August this year, a new gov­ern­ment took office and the new pres­i­dent, Fer­nan­do Lugo, promised to sup­port small farm­ers against pes­ti­cide poi­son­ing and soya expan­sion. How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment has giv­en con­flict­ing sig­nals by also sup­port­ing increased soya exports at the same time. Also, the police and juridi­cal forces have been sup­port­ing soya busi­ness­es in sup­press­ing the peas­ant move­ment in their fight against pes­ti­cide spray­ing and the expan­sion of soy mono­cul­tures.

This month, at the start of the new soya plant­i­ng sea­son, small farm­ers’ organ­i­sa­tions have mobilised to stop pes­ti­cide spray­ing and to pro­tect peas­ant agri­cul­ture and the envi­ron­ment against fur­ther destruc­tion. They have set up around 130 law­ful camps at the mar­gins of soya ‘lat­i­fun­dios’ (large estates). In recent weeks, they have been increas­ing­ly sub­ject­ed to vio­lence, with two mur­ders of peas­ant lead­ers, unlaw­ful arrests and deten­tions. Also, var­i­ous camps have been vio­lent­ly evict­ed, with use of increas­ing num­bers of para­mil­i­taries. Many peas­ant lead­ers are receiv­ing death threats. The civ­il secu­ri­ty guards that for­mer gov­ern­ment organ­ised ‘Comi­sion Gar­rote’ are the main actors behind this threats.

The ten­den­cy seems to be that the vio­lence and repres­sion against the peas­ant move­ment will inten­si­fy. For many in the move­ment, this year is their last chance to stop soya expan­sion and to pro­tect what remains of Paraguays’ forests and wet­lands, sus­tain­able peas­ant agri­cul­ture, and small farm­ers and indige­nous people?s future.

Please write to the author­i­ties in Paraguay and urge them to ful­ly sup­port small farm­ers and their demands for pro­tec­tion from pes­ti­cide spray­ing, from evic­tions, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion and pol­lu­tion, for food sov­er­eign­ty and land reform.

See last action report — farms occu­pied — at http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/21753/

See also:
Video about the 2 evic­tions in Alto Parana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYEBsk0jtG4
Video about the camp against the pes­ti­cide spray­ing in Caaguazú
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4xnXaZGjS8
Peas­ant com­mu­ni­ty in San Pedro against the pes­ti­cide spray­ing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfLEXvipkJw

Arti­cles about the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Paraguay:
http://www.lasojamata.org/

LETTER (send the Span­ish ver­sion that is below)

Dear Sir/Madam,

Re: Please pro­tect Paraguay’s com­mu­ni­ties and envi­ron­ment against soya
mono­cul­tures

I was very pleased to hear about Pres­i­den­t’s Lugo’s stat­ed com­mit­ment to
pro­tect small farm­ers against soya plan­ta­tions, includ­ing against
pes­ti­cide spray­ing and to stop defor­esta­tion. How­ev­er, I am deeply
con­cerned to hear about the increas­ing vio­lence against peas­ant
organ­i­sa­tions that are mobil­is­ing against pes­ti­cide spray­ing in the soya
mono­cul­tures, while argu­ing for a new agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy that pro­tects
small farm­ers and food sov­er­eign­ty as well as the envi­ron­ment.

Two peas­ant lead­ers ? Sin­dul­fo­Martínez mem­ber of the organ­i­sa­tion MCP and
Bien­venido Mel­gar­e­jo of the organ­i­sa­tion ASAGRAPA have recent­ly been
mur­dered. There are reports of a ‘hit list’ with the names of fifty
peas­ant lead­ers who fear that they could be mur­dered next. In the past
weeks, the courts and the police have been involved in the evic­tion of
peas­ant camps which have been law­ful­ly set up on the mar­gins of, not on,
soya plan­ta­tions, resort­ing to laws which exist to pre­vent crim­i­nal
offences. Peo­ple have been unlaw­ful­ly evict­ed, detained, crim­i­nalised and
tor­tured.

With this let­ter, I want to show my strong sup­port to the main demands of
peas­ant move­ments and civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions in Paraguay: that
pes­ti­cide spray­ing of soy mono­cul­tures must be banned and effec­tive­ly
stopped. The lands ille­gal­ly sold to agribusi­ness com­pa­nies must be
returned to the land­less Paraguayan peas­ants.

I urge you to stop the evic­tion orders and repres­sion against peas­ant
mobil­i­sa­tion. The two recent mur­ders and all reports of police vio­lence
and tor­ture must be ful­ly inves­ti­gat­ed and those respon­si­ble must be held
to account. The fam­i­lies of those who have been mur­dered must receive
finan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

The gov­ern­ment must take imme­di­ate action and inves­ti­gate the death
threats against peas­ant lead­ers. The first step for this is to dis­solve
the so called ?Cit­i­zen Secu­ri­ty Com­mis­sions?, com­mon­ly called ?Gar­rote
Com­mis­sions?. These groups are the main actors of the para-police vio­lence
against social organ­i­sa­tions in the rur­al areas.

In front of the urgent sit­u­a­tion of pover­ty and envi­ron­men­tal dev­as­ta­tion
in Paraguay, the gov­ern­ment must ini­ti­ate a pro­gramme to sup­port peas­ant
farm­ing and food sov­er­eign­ty, rather than fur­ther sac­ri­fic­ing Paraguay’s
com­mu­ni­ties and envi­ron­ment to pro­duce ani­mal feed and agro­fu­els for
export.

Please let me know what your plans are for address­ing this urgent
sit­u­a­tion, in order to avoid more vio­lence and human rights vio­la­tions,
includ­ing more killings of peas­ants, and to pro­tect com­mu­ni­ties and the
envi­ron­ment from soya mono­cul­tures.

Thank you,

Yours faith­ful­ly,
Asun­to: Por favor, pro­te­ja a las comu­nidades paraguayas y al medio
ambi­ente de los monocul­tivos de soja

Esti­ma­da Sra., Esti­ma­do Sr.,

Ha sido muy sat­is­fac­to­rio para mí, saber acer­ca del com­pro­miso del
Pres­i­dente Lugo para pro­te­ger a los pequeños campesinos en con­tra de las
planta­ciones de soja, así como de las fumi­ga­ciones con pes­ti­ci­das y la
defor­estación. Sin embar­go, me pre­ocu­pa seri­amente cuan­do escu­cho acer­ca
de la escal­a­da de vio­len­cia dirigi­da hacia las orga­ni­za­ciones campesinas
que se mov­i­lizan en con­tra de las fumi­ga­ciones de pes­ti­ci­das sobre las
pobla­ciones y a favor de una nue­va políti­ca agraria que pro­te­ja a los
pequeños campesinos, la sober­anía ali­men­ta­ria y el medio ambi­ente.

Dos líderes campesinos ‑Sin­dul­fo­Martínez de la orga­ni­zación, Movimien­to
Campesino Paraguayo- MCP (Vía Campesina-PY) y Bien­venido Mel­gar­e­jo de la
orga­ni­zación Aso­ciación de Agricul­tores de Alto Paraná- ASAGRAPA han
sido recien­te­mente asesina­dos. Hemos tenido noti­cias acer­ca de una ?lista
negra? con nom­bres de unos cin­cuen­ta líderes campesinos que temen ser los
próx­i­mos asesina­dos. Jue­ces y la policía han esta­do en estas últi­mas
sem­anas impli­ca­dos en el des­man­te­lamien­to de cam­pa­men­tos campesinos
estable­ci­dos legal­mente en las már­genes, y no den­tro, de las planta­ciones
de soja, amparán­dose en leyes de pre­ven­ción del crimen. Los campesinos han
sido ile­gal­mente expul­sa­dos, detenidos, crim­i­nal­iza­dos y tor­tu­ra­dos.

Con esta car­ta quiero demostrar mi enér­gi­co apoyo a las dos prin­ci­pales
deman­das de los campesinos y las orga­ni­za­ciones de la sociedad civ­il de
Paraguay: Las fumi­ga­ciones con agrotóx­i­cos de los monocul­tivos de soja
deben ser pro­hibidas y detenidas de man­era efec­ti­va. Las tier­ras ven­di­das
irreg­u­lar­mente a los agroem­pre­sar­ios deben ser devueltas a los campesinos
sin­tier­ras paraguayos.

Exi­jo fre­nar la actu­al ola de desa­lo­jos y repre­sión a las mov­i­liza­ciones
campesinas. El desa­lo­jo por recur­sos de amparo pre­ven­ti­vo es una medi­da
jurídi­ca irreg­u­lar. Los dos recientes asesinatos y todos los reportes de
vio­len­cia poli­cial y tor­tu­ra deben ser inves­ti­ga­dos a fon­do, y sus
respon­s­ables deben ser penal­iza­dos. Las famil­ias de los asesina­dos deben
ser com­pen­sadas económi­ca­mente.

Así tam­bién el gob­ier­no debe actu­ar de for­ma inmedi­a­ta y fre­nar las
ame­nazas de muerte que pen­den sobre los diri­gentes campesinos. El primer
paso para ello es aten­der a las deman­das de las orga­ni­za­ciones de
desar­tic­u­lación de las ?Comi­siones de Seguri­dad Ciu­dadana?, común­mente
denom­i­nadas ?Comisión gar­rote?. Estos gru­pos son los prin­ci­pales
pro­tag­o­nistas de vio­len­cia para­poli­cial con­tra las orga­ni­za­ciones sociales
en el cam­po.

Frente la urgente situación de pobreza y dev­astación ambi­en­tal del cam­po
paraguayo, el gob­ier­no debe ini­ciar inmedi­ata­mente un pro­gra­ma de apoyo a
la agri­cul­tura campesina y la sober­anía ali­men­ta­ria. Bas­ta ya del
sac­ri­fi­cio de las comu­nidades campesinas e indí­ge­nas del Paraguay y del
medio ambi­ente para man­ten­er un mod­e­lo agroex­por­ta­dor sojero que sólo
pro­duce ali­men­to para ani­males y agro­com­bustibles.

Por favor, deme a cono­cer sus planes para con­tener esta urgente situación
y para evi­tar más vio­len­cia y vio­la­ciones de dere­chos humanos, incluyen­do
más asesinatos de campesinos en su país, y para pro­te­ger a las comu­nidades
y al medio ambi­ente de los monocul­tivos de la soja.

Muchas gra­cias por ade­lan­ta­do y un aten­to salu­do.

ADDRESSES / DIRECCIONES

1. Pres­i­den­cia de la Repúbli­ca del Paraguay
Exce­len­tísi­mo Don Fer­nan­do Lugo Mén­dez, Pres­i­dente de la Repúbli­ca del
Paraguay
Pala­cio de Gob­ier­no
El Paraguayo Inde­pen­di­ente e/Ayolas y O´leary
Cen­tral tele­fóni­ca 4140000 (RA)
web­site: www.presidencia.gov.py
e‑mail: presidente@presidencia.gov.py
webmaster@presidencia.gov.py

Sec­re­taria Gen­er­al
S. E. Miguel Angel López Per­i­to
Min­istro, Sec­re­tario Gen­er­al y Jefe del Gabi­nete Civ­il de la Pres­i­den­cia
de la Repúbli­ca
Tel 4140288, fax 4140310

2. Sec­re­taria del Ambi­ente (SEAM)
S. E. José Luís Casac­cia , Min­istro, Sec­re­tario Ejec­u­ti­vo
Avda. Madan Lynch 3500 y Reservista de la Guer­ra del Cha­co.
Tel + 595 21 615803/4, fax + 595 21 615807
casac­cia jcasaccia@hotmail.com

3. SENAVE, Ser­vi­cio Nacional de Cal­i­dad y Sanidad Veg­e­tal y de Semi­l­las
Ing. Agr. Luis Llano Imas , pres­i­dente
Ofic­i­na cen­tral del SENAVE: Edif. PLANETA I. Humaitá Nº 145 c/ Ntra. Sra.
de la Asun­ción. Tele­fax: + 595 21 445 769 /+ 595 21 441 549, Asun­ción -
Paraguay
presidencia@senave.gov.py
secretaria_general@senave.gov.py

S. E. Rafael Fil­iz­zo­la, Min­istro
Chile y Man­du­virá
Tel + 595 21 493 661, fax: + 595 21 450.027
ministro@mdi.gov.py
vmseguridad@mdi.gov.py
sgeneral@mdi.gov.py
5. Min­is­te­rio de Jus­ti­cia y Tra­ba­jo
S. E. Blas Llano, Min­istro
Gas­par Rodríguez de Fran­cia y Esta­dos Unidos
Tel + 595 21 447010, + 595 21 493209, fax + 595 21 208469
mjt@mjt.gov.py

6. Min­is­te­rio de Agri­cul­tura y Ganade­ria
S. E. Can­di­do Vera Bejara­no, Min­istro
Pres­i­dente Fran­co 479
Tel + 595 21 441036, cen­tral + 595 21 451316/ 447304
Vicem­i­nis­te­rio de Agri­cul­tura: vagricultura@mag.gov.py
Sec­re­taría Gen­er­al: secretariagral@mag.gov.py

7. Fis­calía Gral. del Esta­do
Dr. Rubén Can­dia Amar­il­la
fiscaliageneral@ministeriopublico.gov.py

Spirit of Freedom (October 2008) — support the eco-prisoners

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Pro­duced by EARTH LIBERATION PRISONERS SUPPORT NETWORK

“The whole expe­ri­ence has been tough, but all the kind and strength­en­ing words and wise thoughts from strangers made it much eas­i­er!” (For­mer Swedish Ani­mal Rights Pris­on­er)

Wel­come to the Octo­ber 2008 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. The last month has been a month of mixed emo­tions for ELP. On the one hand we heard the bril­liant news that the Dutch ani­mal rights activist, Ger­ben Jan, was found not guilty of assault­ing a police offi­cer, caus­ing the offi­cer to break his leg, dur­ing an ani­mal rights demo in Swe­den. Instead Ger­ban was found guilty of resist­ing arrest for which he was fined and deport­ed. Also in an unex­pect­ed move, all the Aus­tri­an Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers were released from prison pend­ing their tri­al! Plus, the Amer­i­can veg­an, Nathan Kno­erl, was grant­ed bail in his case where he is accused of involve­ment in an anti-vivi­sec­tion protest. Fol­low­ing Nathans release a sup­port cam­paign has been set up to try and help raise mon­ey for Nathan’s forth­com­ing legal case. For more info please e‑mail supportnathan@gmail.com. How­ev­er, just as ELP start­ed to think our pris­on­er lists might start to go down, we received news of fur­ther police raids in Aus­tria. ELP also learnt that, due to Frank Ambrose, grass­ing every­one up, the Amer­i­can’s Marie Mason, Stephanie Lynne Fultz, and Aren Burth­wick, have all had to enter Plea Bar­gains and admit some of the charges set against them. In Marie’s case she has admit­ted her direct role in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing involved with GM crop tests, whilst Stephanie and Aren have admit­ted not report­ing a fire (Stephanie has admit­ted cut­ting Marie’s hair which was burnt fol­low­ing the arson). We don’t know what sen­tences Stephanie and Aren are like­ly to receive, but Marie is look­ing at 15 to 20 years and has been remand­ed into cus­tody. This is real­ly bad news, espe­cial­ly as it was hoped Marie might remain free until her sen­tenc­ing ear­ly next year. Around the world, peo­ple are being impris­oned for stand­ing up for what they believe in and try­ing to
help the ani­mals and the earth. So please, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers. And no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth.

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Tre Arrow, #70936–065, (in tran­sit), USA. Serv­ing 78 months for his involve­ment in two ELF arsons. 1) an arson on log­ging trucks 2) an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. (Tre is a raw ener­gy veg­an — He has asked that his let­ters of sup­port are writ­ten on scrap paper or tree-free paper).

Grant Barnes #137563, San Car­los Cor­rec­tion­al Facil­i­ty, PO Box 3, Pueblo, CO 81002, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. The let­ters ELF were spray paint­ed onto all of the vehi­cles. (Grant is a veg­an).

Nathan Block, #36359–086, FCI Lom­poc, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 3600 Guard Road, Lom­poc, CA 93436, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land. Serv­ing 18 years. 1) Ten years for using explo­sives to destroy elec­tric­i­ty pylons lead­ing from nuclear pow­er sta­tions. 2) Eight years for the mur­der of a Swiss Bor­der Guard whilst on the run. In ’02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy. (Mar­co is a meat eater who encour­ages organ­ic liv­ing).

Daniele Casali­ni, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Burla 59, 43100 Par­ma, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Daniele is a veg­an).

Rod­ney Coro­n­a­do #03895–000, FCI El Reno, PO Box 1500, El Reno, OK 73036, USA. Serv­ing one-year impris­on­ment after he informed peo­ple how to make an incen­di­ary device dur­ing a speech at an ani­mal rights gath­er­ing. (Meat eater).

Francesco Gioia, C.C. Sol­lic­ciano, Via Giro­lamo Min­ervi­ni 2/R, 50142 Firen­ze Sol­lic­ciano (FI), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy. (Francesco is a veg­e­tar­i­an and Straight Edge).

Pao­la Gori, Via delle Mac­chie 9, 57124 Livorno, Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist await­ing tri­al accused of allow­ing her house to be used to plan ille­gal activ­i­ty. (Pao­la is a veg­an).

Bryan Lefey #38664–086, FDC SeaT­ac, Fed­er­al Deten­tion Cen­ter, P.O. Box 13900, Seat­tle, WA 98198, USA. On remand accused of an ELF action that saw the dam­ag­ing of GM trees and the dam­ag­ing of US Forestry Ser­vice vehi­cles. (Diet unknown).

Jef­frey Luers, # 13797671, CRCI, 9111 NE Sun­der­land Ave, Port­land, OR 97211–1708, USA. Serv­ing 10 years for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck. The orig­i­nal sen­tence was 22 years & 8 months, but was reduced on appeal. (Diet unknown).

Marie Jeanette Mason, Neway­go Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 845, White Cloud, MI 49349, USA. Await­ing sen­tenc­ing hav­ing plead­ed guilty to involve­ment in ELF arson against a Uni­ver­si­ty build­ing car­ry­ing out Genet­i­cal­ly Mod­i­fied crop tests. Marie also plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to car­ry out ELF actions and also admit­ted involve­ment in 12 oth­er ELF actions. Marie is expect­ed to receive a sen­tence of between 15–20 years. (Marie is a veg­an).

Eric McDavid, 16209–097. FCI Vic­torville Medi­um II, PO BOX 5700, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 19 years & 7 months for plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants. At the point of his arrest no crim­i­nal dam­age has actu­al­ly occurred. (Eric is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, USP Mar­i­on, US Pen­i­ten­tiary, PO Box 1000, Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an old growth log­ging cor­po­ra­tion. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Daniel is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Jonathan Paul — See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Bri­ana Waters 36432–086, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route 37, Dan­bury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing six years for involve­ment in an ELF arson on a Uni­ver­si­ty. (Diet unknown).

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #36360–086, FCI Dublin, 5700 8th St.- Camp Parks- Unit F, Dublin, CA 94568, USA. Serv­ing 7 years & 8 months for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against an SUV deal­er­ship. Also admit­ted her role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Diet unknown).

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS
(All Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers fol­low a min­i­mum veg­e­tar­i­an diet and most are veg­an).

Jon Able­white TB4885, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Jon is a veg­an).

Dan Amos VN7818, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land.
On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Dan is a veg­an)

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter, SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Gregg is a veg­an).

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand hav­ing plead­ed guilty to con­spir­a­cy to black­mail Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences. (Nat is a veg­an).

Mel Broughton TN9138, HMP Wood­hill, Tat­ten­hoe Street, Mil­ton Keynes, Bucks MK4 4DA, Eng­land. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson and black­mail cam­paign against an Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty vivi­sec­tion estab­lish­ment.
(Mel is a veg­an).

Jacob Con­roy #93501–011, FCI Vic­torville Medi­um I Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5300, Ade­lan­to, CA 92301, USA. Serv­ing 48 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Jake is a veg­an).

Don­ald Cur­rie A3660AA, HMP Parkhurst, New­port, Isle of Wight, PO30 5NX, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS. (Don is a veg­an).

Lau­ren Gaz­zo­la #93497–011, FCI Dan­bury, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, Route #37Danbury, CT 06811, USA. Serv­ing 54 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Lau­ren is a veg­an).

Joshua Harp­er #29429–086, FCI Sheri­dan Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, P.O. Box 5000, Sheri­dan, OR 97378 USA. Serv­ing 36 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Josh is a veg­an).

Sean Kirt­ley WC 6977, HMP Stafford, 54 Gaol Road, Stafford, ST16 3AW, Eng­land. Serv­ing four and a half years for run­ning an anti-vivi­sec­tion cam­paign web­site. (Sean is a veg­an).

Kevin Kjon­aas #93502–011, FCI Sand­stone, PO Box 1000, Sand­stone, MN 55072 USA. Serv­ing 72 months impris­on­ment for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Kevin is a veg­an).

Daniel McGowan — See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

Heather Nichol­son VM4859, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign. (Heather is a veg­an).

Jonathan Paul, #07167–085, FCI Phoenix, Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, 37910 N 45th Ave., Phoenix, AZ 85086, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy. (Jonathan is a veg­an).

John Smith, TB4887, HMP Lind­holme, Bawtry Road, Hat­field Wood­house, Don­cast­er, DN7 6EE, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (John is a veg­an).

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, USP Mar­i­on, P.O. Box 1000 Mar­i­on, IL 62959, USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign. (Andrew is a veg­an).

Ker­ry Whit­burn TB4886, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion. (Ker­ry is a veg­an).

Sarah White­head, VM7684, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx, TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Serv­ing two years for: 1) res­cu­ing a pup­py from hor­rif­ic con­di­tions. 2) res­cu­ing over 100 ani­mals from a pet breed­er who was lat­er pros­e­cut­ed for ani­mal abuse. Also await­ing tri­al for SHAC activ­i­ty. (Sarah is a veg­an)

PLOUGHSHARES PRISONERS

Helen Wood­son, 03231–045, FMC Car­swell — Admin. Max. Unit, POB 27137, Ft. Worth, TX 76127, USA. Serv­ing 8 years 10 months for actions that focused on the inter­re­la­tion­ship of war & the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al world. The actions includ­ed pour­ing red paint over the secu­ri­ty desk of a fed­er­al court and mak­ing threat­en­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Pre­vi­ous­ly Helen had served 20½ years for: 1) Using a ham­mer to dis­arm a nuclear mis­sile silo. 2) Burn­ing $25,000 on the floor of a bank whilst denounc­ing war, envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion & eco­nom­ic injus­tice. 3) Mail­ing warn­ing let­ters with bul­lets attached to Gov­ern­ment & cor­po­rate offi­cials. (Diet unknown).

THE LECCE DEFENDANTS
The Lec­ce Defen­dants have been charged with “sub­ver­sive asso­ci­a­tion” accused of dam­ag­ing Esso petrol pumps to oppose the War on Iraq; sab­o­tag­ing the cash machines of a bank which funds an immi­gra­tion cen­tre; and tar­get­ing the multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Benet­ton in sup­port of Mapuche land rights activists in Chile. All of the defen­dants are cur­rent­ly either under house arrest or released on bail.

ANTIFA PRISONERS

Vah­tang Devitlidze, ul. Libbedo­va 42, UO 68/2, otryad 14, briga­da 142, g. Hagyshen­sk, Krasnodarskiy Kray, 352680 Rus­sia. Serv­ing 2½ years for stab­bing a neo-nazi in the leg whilst defend­ing him­self from attack. (Diet unknown).

Fabio Milan, C.C. via Pianez­za 300, 10151 Tori­no, Italy. On remand accused of fight­ing with the police after an anti-fas­cist protest. (Diet unknown).

Andrea Neff, Bnr: 746/07/2, Jus­tizvol­lzugsanstalt fur Frauen in Berlin, Arkonas­trasse 56, 13189 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 14 months for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ty. (Diet unknown).

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, Bnr: 441/08/5, JVA Plötzensee, Lehrter­str. 61, 10557
Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties. (Diet unknown).

Tomasz Wiloszews­ki, Zak­lad Karny, Orze­chowa 5, 98–200 Sier­adz, Poland.
Serv­ing 15 years for acci­den­tal­ly killing a neo-nazi whilst defend­ing him­self. (Tomasz is a veg­e­tar­i­an).

Yuri Yure­vich Milevskiy, SIZO #7 kam­era 38, g. Brest, ul. Kar­la Mark­sa 86, 224000 Belarus. On remand for fight­ing with neo-nazis. (Diet unknown).

OTHER PRISONERS

Olga Alek­san­drov­na Nevskaya, UU163/5, 7 Otryad, pos. Dzerzhin­skiy, Mozhaysk 140090 Moskovskaya oblast, Rus­sia. Eco-activist serv­ing 6 years for arson, crim­i­nal dam­age and caus­ing explo­sions in protest at the war in Chech­nya. Due for release in 2009. (Diet unknown).

Vagge­lis Botzatzis, Komo­ti­ni Juridi­cal Prison (“Dikastikes Fylakes Komo­ti­nis”), T.K. 69100, Greece. On remand accused of set­ting fire to two com­pa­ny cars owned by a energy/power com­pa­ny. It is believed that the per­son or per­sons unknown who car­ried out the arson did so in protest at the destruc­tion of the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment and in sup­port of two work­ers who died at the pow­er plant. Vagge­lis is also accused of set­ting fire to a bank and start­ing a fire inside a car yard. (Meat Eater).

Richard Sills (Address Unknown, USA). Serv­ing 15 months for bomb hoax­ing a Uni­ver­si­ty say­ing they would be tar­get­ed by the ALF if they didn’t stop their ani­mal exper­i­ments. (Diet unknown).

Michael W. Sykes, 696693, 3855 Coop­er St, Jack­son, MI 49201, USA. Youth held on remand accused of anti-sprawl arsons, crim­i­nal dam­age, spray-paint­ing an anar­chist sign and burn­ing the Amer­i­can flag. (Diet unknown)

Fran Thomp­son, #1090915 HU 1C, WERDCC, PO Box 300, Van­dalia, MO 63382, USA. Serv­ing Life for killing, in self-defence, a stalk­er who had bro­ken into her home. Before her impris­on­ment Fran was an eco, ani­mal & anti-nuke cam­paign­er. (Fran is a veg­an).

MOVE

MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. All move pris­on­ers describe them­selves as veg­e­tar­i­ans. There are cur­rent­ly eight MOVE activists in prison each serv­ing 100 years after been framed for the mur­der of a cop in 1979. 9th defen­dant, Mer­le Africa, died in prison in 1998.

Deb­bie Simms Africa (006307), Janet Hol­loway Africa (006308) and Janine Philips Africa (006309) all at: SCI Cam­bridge Springs, 451 Fuller­ton Ave, Cam­bridge Springs, PA 16403–1238, USA.

Michael Davis Africa (AM4973) and Charles Simms Africa (AM4975) both at SCI Grater­ford, PO Box 244, Grater­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), SCI Mahanoy, 301 Morea Rd, Frackville, PA 17932, USA.

William Philips Africa (AM4984) and Del­bert Orr Africa (AM4985) both at SCI Dal­las Draw­er K, Dal­las, PA 18612, USA.

Mumia Abu Jamal, (AM8335), SCI Greene, 175 Progress Dri­ve, Way­nes­burg PA 15370, USA. In 1981 Mumia, for­mer Black Pan­ther and vocal sup­port­er of MOVE, was framed for the mur­der of a cop. He was orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced to death but is cur­rent­ly await­ing re-sen­tenc­ing fol­low­ing a court hear­ing in 2001.

STATEMENT ON VIOLENCE
Some peo­ple list­ed in this newslet­ter have car­ried out vio­lent actions. ‘Spir­it of Free­dom’ does not con­done vio­lence. But we are also against cen­sor­ship & believe peo­ple can decide for them­selves who they wish to sup­port.

ABOUT E.L.P. SUPPORT NETWORK
ELP is an inter­na­tion­al eco-pris­on­er sup­port net­work found­ed, in Britain, in 1993 to sup­port jailed eco-activists. We sup­port the pris­on­ers by pro­duc­ing var­i­ous reg­u­lar pris­on­er lists:

Spir­it of Free­dom is ELP’s inter­na­tion­al month­ly pris­on­er list­ing which is cir­cu­lat­ed by e‑mail.

Urgent ELP! Bul­letin is an e‑mail ser­vice that dis­trib­utes the names of any new eco-pris­on­er as soon as ELP gets their details. For more info e‑mail ELP4321@hotmail.com

On-Line Newslet­ters — ELP has a num­ber of web­sites that pro­vide news, pris­on­er lists and addi­tion­al info about ELP & the pris­on­ers.

Eng­lish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

Greek lan­guage ELP Web­site
http://greekelp.blogspot.com

North Amer­i­can ELP Web­site
www.ecoprisoners.org

Turk­ish lan­guage ELP Web­site
www.geocities.com/yesilanarsi/elp.htm

ELP Extra is an e‑mail group that cir­cu­lates the details of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers, ELP learns about, who do not fall with­in the remit for sup­port by ELP. To sub­scribe to the list e‑mail ELP4321@Hotmail.com

Aus­tralian ELP.SN is our Aus­tralian con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp4321@hotmail.com

Bel­gium ELP.SN is our Bel­gium con­tact. For more info e‑mail elp_bel@hotmail.com

Ger­man ELP.SN is a pris­on­er led ini­tia­tive run by eco-pris­on­er Mar­co Camenisch. For more info con­tact Mar­co Camenisch, Post­fach 3143, CH-8105 Regens­dorf, Switzer­land.

Greek ELP.SN is our Greek con­tact. For more info e‑mail greekelp@yahoo.gr

North Amer­i­can ELP is our North Amer­i­can con­tact. For more infor­ma­tion e‑mail naelpsn@mutualaid.org

Turkey ELP.SN is our Turk­ish con­tact. For more info e‑mail
yesilanarsi@yahoo.com

Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work
elp4321@hotmail.com
http://spiritoffreedom.org.uk

CAMPESINOS FIGHT AGAINST GM SOY — PARAGUAY

9.10.2008
Farm­ers occu­py large Brazil­ian-owned farms to block the entry of genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied soy.

Campesinos in the depart­ment of San Pedro occu­pied Brazil­ian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to block the entry of trans­genic soy, and began plant­i­ng oth­er crops such as sesame and yuc­ca on the plots.

Biohazard (red)9.10.2008
Farm­ers occu­py large Brazil­ian-owned farms to block the entry of genet­i­cal­ly-mod­i­fied soy.

Campesinos in the depart­ment of San Pedro occu­pied Brazil­ian-owned farms on Oct. 1 to block the entry of trans­genic soy, and began plant­i­ng oth­er crops such as sesame and yuc­ca on the plots.

Some 120 campesinos occu­pied two 600-hectare (1,480 acre) farms, accord­ing to local media reports.

Cristi­no Per­al­ta, the San Pedro cor­re­spon­dent of the dai­ly ABC Col­or, said that the farm­ers imme­di­ate­ly began plant­i­ng the sesame and yuc­ca after occu­py­ing the plan­ta­tions.

”There was no law enforce­ment inter­ven­tion,” he said. ”The group´s leader Flo­ren­cio Martínez said that the occu­pa­tion marked the start of the recov­ery of Paraguayan ter­ri­to­r­i­al sov­er­eign­ty.”

San Pedro is con­sid­ered Paraguay´s best farm­land, but it is also the country´s poor­est depart­ment. Pres­i­dent Fer­nan­do Lugo worked as a bish­op there for a decade.

Land is con­cen­trat­ed in the fewest hands in Paraguay than in any oth­er Latin Amer­i­can coun­try. Only 351 landown­ers hold 9.7 mil­lion hectares (24 mil­lion acres), while, accord­ing to civ­il soci­ety orga­ni­za­tions, there are more than 350,000 fam­i­lies with insuf­fi­cient quan­ti­ties of land or no land at all.

The demon­stra­tors said that they took over the Brazil­ian-owned plan­ta­tions in protest of what they called the government´s fail­ure to imple­ment land reform. Paraguay has also seen oth­er campesino protests against trans­genic soy plan­ta­tions and the indis­crim­i­nate use of farm­ing chem­i­cals.

Lugo had request­ed that the campesinos give his gov­ern­ment 100 days start­ing Aug. 15 to seek financ­ing for land reform. The peri­od ends on Nov. 22.

Accord­ing to campesino leader Elvio Benítez, the gov­ern­ment ”con­tin­ues with­out find­ing a solu­tion to the lack of land of thou­sands of our com­pa­tri­ots, while the Brazil­ians´ pres­ence is get­ting big­ger and big­ger. We can´t do any­thing else but occu­py the Brazil­ian-owned hacien­das because the soy crops are caus­ing defor­esta­tion, elim­i­nat­ing nat­ur­al forests and con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing peo­ple with its pes­ti­cides.”

Earth First! Winter Moot — last update

Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

EF! Winter Moot poster 2009Brighton, Feb­ru­ary 6–7‑8th 2009

The Earth First! Win­ter moot is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple who feel affil­i­a­tion with the ideas behind Earth First! to net­work, dis­cuss and reflect on the eco­log­i­cal direct action move­ment and to plan for the future. In con­trast with the year­ly EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing, which is held out­side for around five days, the win­ter moot is a short­er week­end meet­ing, inside, less aimed at skill shar­ing and more at look­ing where we are at as move­ment and where we want to be going.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a ban­ner for non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing and the use of direct action to con­front, stop and even­tu­al­ly reverse the forces that are respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Earth and its inhab­i­tants.

Top­ics that have been raised include (Updat­ed):
— the Copen­hagen cli­mate sum­mit with a num­ber of peo­ple from Den­mark com­ing over to talk about logis­tics, tac­tics and mobil­i­sa­tion
— the G20 sum­mit in Lon­don
— Leave it in the ground / coal
— GM
— Ross­port
— Strength­en­ing the EF net­work: com­mu­ni­ca­tion and secu­ri­ty, actionup­date and gath­er­ings
— Impli­ca­tions of the cri­sis
— Cli­mate and migra­tion / eco-activism and Nobor­der net­works
— Heathrow expan­sion
— UK Bio­fu­els
— Nan­otech­nol­o­gy
— Water-based actions

There will not be work­shops on any of these top­ics — please inform your­self on top­ics of your inter­est before the moot. We will be focus­ing on dis­cussing strat­e­gy and action plan­ning.

There will be a Sav­ing Ice­land meet­ing on the Fri­day after­noon before the gath­er­ing.

Please con­tact the orga­niz­ing col­lec­tive (moot2009@earthfirst.org.uk) know if you want to add any­thing, want to help with facil­i­ta­tion or have any oth­er queries. You are wel­come to use our PGP key below.
Sug­ges­tion: read the activist secu­ri­ty guide on http://www.activistsecurity.org/

There will be sleep­ing places arranged and food avail­able at cost price from Fri­day evening. The pro­gram will start on Sat­ur­day at 10 AM. Please be on time.

Venue: Cow­ley Club, 12 Lon­don Road.
http://www.cowleyclub.org.uk/
(Please do not con­tact the Cow­ley Club phone nr. with infor­ma­tion requests).
Click for direc­tions

Please note:
— No dogs please
— The week­end is not open to jour­nal­ists

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So, here’s the low­down on what the Dan­ish peo­ple com­ing over for the EF! Win­ter Moot will be talk­ing about.

*Copen­hagen Cli­mate Sum­mit*
Do we cheer them on, block them in, or close them down?

*When?*
*Where?*
*What?* Dan­ish Kli­max activists will kick off a dis­cus­sion about the move­ment to stop cli­mate change.
*Why?* The UN talks in Copen­hagen this Decem­ber are sup­posed to be the place where world lead­ers agree a new inter­na­tion­al deal to stop cli­mate change.
But progress so far has been under­mined by cor­po­rate lob­by­ing and false, mar­ket-based solu­tions. When activists from across Europe hit the streets of Copen­hagen, should we be call­ing on gov­ern­ments to do bet­ter, blockad­ing them in until they come up with a good deal, or be say­ing they are so flawed we should try to close them down?

Most peo­ple now agree that we need to do some­thing about cli­mate change. But there isn’t agree­ment on what. For cor­po­ra­tions and most gov­ern­ments its a form of green (or maybe green­washed) cap­i­tal­ism and before we even get there it will prob­a­bly be too late. In oppo­si­tion to this cor­po­rate agen­da, social move­ments in the South have pro­posed ‘cli­mate jus­tice’, a tran­si­tion to a sus­tain­able world which sees the rich minor­i­ty who caused cli­mate change pay to put it right, not try and push the costs onto the poor major­i­ty.

With­in this more pro­gres­sive agen­da pro­pos­als range from a ‘green new deal’ of state-led invest­ment for social and envi­ron­men­tal goals, to those who argue that only a grass­roots anti-cap­i­tal­ism can get us out of this mess. This is the polit­i­cal back­ground to the mobil­i­sa­tion around the Copen­hagen cli­mate talks and the strate­gic and tac­ti­cal deci­sions activists are try­ing to make about it.

This is a chance for activists who are less and more involved in cli­mate cam­paign­ing to come togeth­er and dis­cuss all these issues. We can also talk about how we mobilise for what may be one of the most impor­tant events since the ‘bat­tle’ of Seat­tle exact­ly 10 years pre­vi­ous­ly.

Support Portuguese anti-GM activists.

All over Europe, cit­i­zens engage into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and direct action in resis­tance against cul­ti­va­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops. Only in Por­tu­gal, peo­ple that have applied this strat­e­gy are offi­cial­ly labeled as ter­ror­ists. Please help pulling the Por­tuguese activists out of their iso­lat­ed posi­tion and express your sol­i­dar­i­ty by sign­ing the peti­tion!

SIGN PETITION

All over Europe, cit­i­zens engage into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and direct action in resis­tance against cul­ti­va­tion of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crops. Only in Por­tu­gal, peo­ple that have applied this strat­e­gy are offi­cial­ly labeled as ter­ror­ists. Please help pulling the Por­tuguese activists out of their iso­lat­ed posi­tion and express your sol­i­dar­i­ty by sign­ing the peti­tion!

SIGN PETITION
———————
http://gopetition.com/online/21252.html

ON WEBSITE
——————–
http://solimove.liveinfo.nl/
On our web­site you find arti­cles exam­in­ing clos­er the action of Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia and the results it pro­duced. We also elab­o­rate on the ques­tion of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and ter­ror­ism, and pro­vide infor­ma­tion about the shape of resis­tance against GM in Europe. We invite every­one, both por­tuguese cit­i­zens and mem­bers of the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in our dis­cus­sion. Our web­site has por­tuguese and eng­lish trans­la­tion.

CONTACT US
——————–
solimove@googlemail.com
If you have ideas for sup­port or have ques­tions, please do not hes­i­tate to con­tact us.

BACKGROUND
———————–
One year ago, the Por­tuguese Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia (MVE) went into an action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence. In a sym­bol­ic but deter­mined act they destroyed less than 1 hectare of the first field of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied corn in the region of the Algarve, pre­vi­ous­ly declared GMO Free Zone by local author­i­ties.

In the days fol­low­ing the action, the wide media atten­tion MVE received insti­gat­ed a large polemic, res­onat­ing into lay­ers of the gen­er­al pub­lic, the envi­ron­men­tal move­ment itself, aca­d­e­mics and even the gov­ern­ment. Nev­er did any envi­ron­men­tal action achieve so much atten­tion in the recent his­to­ry of Por­tu­gal.

The ini­tial media high­lights were not so much on the sub­ject of the action, the pres­ence of GMO in Por­tu­gal, but rather on the spec­tac­u­lar nature and the ille­gal aspect of it. How­ev­er in a sec­ond phase atten­tion shift­ed as well to the debate on GMO, and its dan­gers. For that rea­son alone, the action of MVE was con­sid­ered by many peo­ple with envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns as a great suc­cess.

Because of that suc­cess, the cur­rent Por­tuguese gov­ern­ment respon­si­ble for a pol­i­cy in favour of GMO has respond­ed strong­ly in an attempt to iso­late the activists of MVE and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions strug­gling against GMO, through a strat­e­gy of crim­i­nal­iza­tion. This strat­e­gy came to the point of even label­ing the action as a ter­ror­ist act (Europol EU Ter­ror­ism Sit­u­a­tion and Trend Report 2008). Some peo­ple that have been brought in rela­tion to the case by the police are there­fore fac­ing the risk of being pros­e­cut­ed with­in this con­text of ter­ror­ism. In gen­er­al, it became hard­er to act against GMO in Por­tu­gal. Indi­vid­u­als or orga­ni­za­tions who attempt, run a high risk of being under sus­pi­cion and sur­veil­lance by author­i­ties.

One year lat­er, the oppor­tu­ni­ty of the anniver­sary of this con­tro­ver­sial but influ­en­tial action is used to launch SoliMoVE, Grupo de Sol­i­dariedad com o Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia. The objec­tives of Solimove are:

* To show all actors involved in the debate that the action of MVE is not an iso­lat­ed case in the Por­tuguese his­tor­i­cal con­text, and cer­tain­ly not in the cur­rent inter­na­tion­al con­text, where these types of actions are com­mon, par­tic­u­lar­ly against the cul­ti­va­tion of GMOs.
* To build under­stand­ing of the term civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, its val­ue as an active and engaged form of civ­il soci­ety par­tic­i­pa­tion, and its neces­si­ty in safe­guard­ing the peo­ple and the envi­ron­ment from the threat of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.
* To pro­vide an inter­na­tion­al plat­form for any indi­vid­ual or orga­ni­za­tion, wish­ing to express its moral sup­port towards MVE and its action.
* To defend the free­dom of expres­sion of all cit­i­zens against GMOs.

solimove@googlemail.com
http://solimove.liveinfo.nl/

ELF vandalises Seminis Office in Melbourne, Australia

The Mel­bourne office of Sem­in­is, a com­pa­ny which sells GM fruit and veg­etable seeds, and is owned by Mon­san­to, was van­dalised on the morn­ing of the 27th of August by the ELF.
The ELF cov­ered the build­ing in slo­gans declar­ing Sem­in­is as ‘scum’ and Earth rapists.

The Mel­bourne office of Sem­in­is, a com­pa­ny which sells GM fruit and veg­etable seeds, and is owned by Mon­san­to, was van­dalised on the morn­ing of the 27th of August by the ELF.
The ELF cov­ered the build­ing in slo­gans declar­ing Sem­in­is as ‘scum’ and Earth rapists.

A week of free workshops, discussions & skill-sharing in London

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago.

The plan­ning for the Lon­don FreeSchool week is going well with con­firmed work­shops and the such like start­ing to appear on the web­site. Bowl Court Social Cen­tre, the orig­i­nal loca­tion for the weeks event, was sad­ly evict­ed a cou­ple of weeks ago. How­ev­er, the event lives on and has moved to the ram­pART ( http://www.rampart.co.nr) and LARC ( http://www.londonarc.org.) After all a free school should not be lim­it­ed and con­tained by con­crete walls!

The dead­line for work­shops is soon approach­ing so if you are up for facil­i­tat­ing some­thing over the week drop us a line ( deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net) with a brief descrip­tion of the event, how long you will need, your avail­abil­i­ty between the 1st and 7th Sep­tem­ber and if you have any spe­cial require­ments (e.g. Tools / equip­ment). If you do this by mon­day then we can include it in the timetable.

If you want to know what is hap­pen­ing over the week and when, you are unfor­tu­nate­ly going to have to wait until the full timetable has been released next Wednes­day. But here’s a lit­tle taster…

MONDAY 1st SEPTEMBER 12:30pm – 1:30pm
Wel­come to Lon­don FreeSchool!
Come along, have some lunch, meet each oth­er and find out about the week ahead.

GENDER & AUTONOMOUS SPACES
Autonomous spaces are not immune from the kind of casu­al sex­ism that is still com­mon in the wider cul­ture but the prob­lem is rarely dis­cussed. One solu­tion has been to set up women only spaces but many peo­ple feel that these avoid the prob­lem rather than address­ing it. This work­shop will be about explor­ing how peo­ple feel about ques­tions of gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in the con­text of rad­i­cal activism and how we can find ways to address the issues.

SAFER SPACES
Its about acknowl­edg­ing that oppres­sive behav­iours and ideas are still with in our ‘rad­i­cal’ activist com­mu­ni­ties, no mat­ter how ‘rad­i­cal’ we think we are. The point of the work­shop is to get peo­ple to think and talk about this, find ways to deal with this in their com­mu­ni­ties and work to stop their own oppres­sive behav­iours.

GETTING RID OF EDUCATION: COMMUNITIES FOR LEARNING
No ones needs to be edu­cat­ed. We all learn all the time. What peo­ple need are resours­es and sup­port to help them get where they want to go. What does this sort of an organ­i­sa­tion look like and how can you start one? Come and find out!
Leslie Bar­son (Safran) home edu­cat­ed her two chil­dren and found­ed and runs The Oth­er­wise Club, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre for fam­i­lies choos­ing not to send their chil­dren to school, in NW Lon­don since 1993.

SCHOOL PRIVATISATION
A dis­cus­sion on school pri­vati­sa­tion in the UK and the Wem­b­ley Tent City Occu­pa­tion ( http://www.tentcityoccupation.co.uk/) with Hank Roberts.

A PRACTICAL INTRODUCTION TO FOOD BUYING GROUPS
Have you ever thought of get­ting togeth­er with a group of peo­ple to buy food in bulk? Come and meet oth­er folks who’d like to do the same, to find out more and start plan­ning your food-buy­ing group. Cheap­er food, autonomous organ­is­ing, stronger links with­in our com­mu­ni­ties, and no more
super­mar­kets: let’s make the best of the reces­sion!
Please bring pens and paper, espe­cial­ly mark­ers and flipchart-like paper, to share if you have any

FOOD NOT BOMBS…
is a net­work of inde­pen­dent direct action groups. They all use food that is being thrown away, cook deli­cious veg­an meals and serve it for free to any hun­gry per­son! Come with us for a bit of skip­ping (get­ting food from the bins!), veg­an cook­ing, serv­ing and clean­ing! It’s polit­i­cal, fun and empow­er­ing!

BASICS OF GENETICS
what’s a cell? what’s a chro­mo­some? what’s the DNA? what’s a gene? what’s a genome? what’s a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied organ­ism? what’s cloning? etc.
Have you ever asked your­self these ques­tions?
We’ll try to talk about all that togeth­er!

INTERNET ARCHITECTURE / PHILOSOPHY
The idea for the dis­cus­sion is to look at the way the tech­ni­cal aspects of the inter­net have polit­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal impli­ca­tions. Some of these are well known, oth­ers not so well known. Start­ing
from a few tech­ni­cal points I hope the group can dis­cuss gen­er­al ideas around the hack­er cul­ture that has shaped the inter­net, as it applies to social net­works and polit­i­cal engage­ment. Some sam­ple prin­ci­ples from inter­net engi­neer­ing cul­ture:
“Be con­ser­v­a­tive in what you do; be lib­er­al in what you accept from oth­ers.” (Jon Pos­tel)
“We reject: kings, pres­i­dents and vot­ing. We believe in: rough con­sen­sus and run­ning code.” (David D. Clarke)

deschooling_society@lists.riseup.net
http://londonfreeschool.wordpress.com

Earth First! gathering — programme and travel directions

Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:

Earth First! Gathering 2008 - print sizeEarth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Eco­log­i­cal Direct Action with­out Com­pro­mise
27 Aug — 1 Sept 2008, Nor­folk
Join us for 5 days of work­shops and plan­ning actions

Trav­el direc­tions:
The gath­er­ing this year will be held at Woolsey­bridge Farm — a love­ly site in Nor­folk with lots of trees and a lit­tle stream. It’s approx­i­mate­ly 1.5 miles NNE of Diss. Diss has reg­u­lar train ser­vices and a whole­food shop. The Grid Ref­er­ence of the site is TM130819. The post code is IP22 5SY.

The site is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble by pub­lic trans­port, you can get the train either to Diss or Nor­wich and then catch the bus route no 1 (Sim­monds) from Diss to Nor­wich or vice ver­sa — this route goes right past the site and we’ll be ask­ing the local bus com­pa­ny if they will stop right out­side the site on request. Or you could walk or cycle — it’s only 1.5miles away from Diss train sta­tion. Please come by pub­lic trans­port if at all pos­si­ble! .
We will run pick-ups from the train sta­tion for any­body who can’t use the bus ser­vice or for larg­er groups of peo­ple. If you need a lift please let us know well in advance (and not in the mid­dle of the night, when you’re at a train sta­tion some­where!). Ring the Gath­er­ing mobile on 07789 331857

For a map and fur­ther details on trav­el includ­ing bus times and direc­tions for dri­vers check out http://earthfirstgathering.org.uk/2008/where.html

Pro­gramme
This year’s pro­gramme focuss­es on info and plan­ning for actions, direct action skills as well as spaces to dis­cuss how we can respond to and deal with the widen­ing eco­log­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and soci­etal crises. We hope there’s some­thing for every­one.
We rec­om­mend that you arrive Tue evening, as work­shops will start on Wednes­day morn­ing and run until Sun­day evening

For more info about the gath­er­ing check out our web­site or email us (though we won’t be able to answer email after 21 Aug, as we’ll be on site set­ting up)

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk

The work­shops

Wednes­day

12:00
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the gath­er­ing
Deal­ing with the main­stream media — how to get your mes­sage across
Basic electrics — for squats and homes.
Cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change — how to make the links vis­i­ble in actions
Queer net­work­ing ses­sion

2:30
Self-defence — mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting FAQ — shar­ing tips and tricks
Action Recon­nais­sance for begin­ners
Intro­duc­tion to the root caus­es of eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and an explo­ration of alter­na­tives
Advanced Nav­i­ga­tion

4:30
Sav­ing Ice­land — Intro­duc­tion to the cam­paign
Nuclear waste and nuclear weapons
Con­sen­sus Deci­sion-mak­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Ecol­o­gy
Con­fronting Abu­sive Behav­iours with­in our Com­mu­ni­ties — with­out the police/prison.

6:00
Library Space: Nego­ti­at­ing Safer Sex: tips on putting the the­o­ry into prac­tice, and mak­ing your sex life more fun as well as safer!

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Talk with video on resist­ing rain­for­est destruc­tion in Tas­ma­nia

Thurs­day

10:30
Deal­ing with Pub­lic Order sit­u­a­tions — under­stand­ing police tac­tics and how we can deal with to them/turn them to our advan­tage (runs until lunch)
State and cor­po­rate oppres­sion of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­ines
Action recon­nais­sance — advanced skill­share, share your most clever tips and tricks for get­ting info for actions
Prac­ti­cal plant iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (begin­ners)
Activist trau­ma and recov­ery

12:00
Sav­ing Ice­land — an eval­u­a­tion of the camp this sum­mer
Secu­ri­ty for Activists Part I: Do’s and don’ts of organ­is­ing action, from arrang­ing to meet, plan­ning and what hap­pens after
Arrest sup­port for actions — how to pro­vide sup­port for your affin­i­ty group, medi­um sized actions or mega camps and gath­er­ings.
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing

2:30
Wom­en’s self-defence — intro­duc­to­ry ses­sion
Food and Cli­mate Action: info for action
How to plan an action
Police liai­son for actions — what it is, its uses and lim­i­ta­tions and how to make it work.
Chang­ing light bulbs or smash­ing the sys­tem. Shar­ing +/- expe­ri­ences of work­ing within/outside the sys­tem

4:30
Oppos­ing nuclear expan­sion: plan­ning for action
How to plan and run a suc­cess­ful medi­um to long-term cam­paign
Night time skills Part I: intro­duc­tion (fol­lowed by prac­tise ses­sion at 8.30pm)
Legal and arrest work­shop
Intro­duc­tion to anar­chist history/potted anar­chist his­to­ries

6:00
Library space: open dis­cus­sion ?Direct action or pub­lic­i­ty stunt??
8:00

Cin­e­ma: Seashep­herd film and talk
8:30

Night time skills Part II — prac­tice your skills in the field.

Fri­day

10:30
Blockad­ing tac­tics
Cli­mate Camp debrief: a crit­i­cal look at the cli­mate camp, its achieve­ments and pol­i­tics
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Com­put­er Secu­ri­ty for the non-tech­ni­cal
Prison Abo­li­tion: what’s wrong with prison? what do we mean by abo­li­tion and how can we make it hap­pen?

12:00
Food and cli­mate change: action and cam­paign plan­ning
Self-defence mixed prac­tise ses­sion
Squat­ting to resist — occu­pa­tions to resist the pow­ers of dark­ness
His­to­ry of Earth First!

2:30
The Earth First! Action Update and web­site: feed­back and get­ting involved
Resist­ing agro­fu­els — update on the sit­u­a­tion and action plan­ning
Sea Shep­herd — an intro to its cam­paigns and how to support/get involved.
Grow your own food — share you skills and expe­ri­ence
Queer Activist Forum: Rad­i­cal queers organ­ise for the future!

4:30
Queer Self-Defence: an intro to basic self-defence skills (ver­bal and phys­i­cal)
Set­ting up new direct action groups
Sav­ing Ice­land ? plan­ning actions for the com­ing year
Tech­no-fix­es and cli­mate change ? report by Cor­po­rate Watch
Urban self-reliance and self-suf­fi­cien­cy

7:30
Library: Pris­on­er Sup­port — An infor­mal get togeth­er to dis­cuss the state of pris­on­er sup­port in our move­ments, find out news and get advice on writ­ing to pris­on­ers, as well as mak­ing and writ­ing cards to send to pris­on­ers.

8:00
Cin­e­ma: A talk and film by a trib­al activist from Oris­sa oppos­ing min­ing

Sat­ur­day

10:30
Cam­paigns and Actions Round-up: UK and inter­na­tion­al news (no oth­er work­shops)

12:00
Wom­en’s self-defence prac­tise ses­sion plus run­ning along­side — intro­duc­tion to wom­en’s self-defence
Stop­ping GM test fields — dis­cus­sion on future campaign/actions
Research and destroy — how to research cor­po­ra­tions
Future mod­els of soci­ety — find­ing a path to sus­tain­able liv­ing
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! and the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Using tripods for blockad­ing

2:30
Leave it in the ground — build­ing resis­tance to new coal min­ing and pow­er sta­tions
Facil­i­ta­tion of meet­ings
Activist Secu­ri­ty Part III: doing actions with­out leav­ing traces
Restora­tion Ecol­o­gy
Cre­at­ing safer spaces
Vis­it to Burston Strike School

4:30
Region­al meet­ings and action plan­ning (no oth­er work­shops)

6:00
Library Space: Work­ing with­out lead­ers — dis­cus­sion about core val­ues of anar­chism

8:00
Cin­e­ma: Smash Edo film and talk

Sun­day
11:00
Self defence mixed prac­tice ses­sion
Sort­ing out ways of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with­in EF!
Using radios on actions
Intro­duc­tion to Earth First! And the sum­mer gath­er­ing
Fences: get­ting over them/taking them down

12:15
The sum­mer gath­er­ing: feed­back on this year’s and get­ting involved in organ­is­ing the next one

2:30
Con­doms, cap­i­tal­ism and cli­mate change
Smash Edo
Intro­duc­tion to nav­i­ga­tion
What’s new in the world of law?
Fem­i­nist Health
Climb­ing trees, lamp posts and any­thing else

4:30
Rad­i­cal pol­i­tics in the age of col­lapse
The Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and Fos­sil Fuel Financ­ing
Get­ting your elec­tric­i­ty from solar pow­er and wind
Rad­i­cal Par­ent­ing
Look­ing after our men­tal health — shar­ing ideas and expe­ri­ences

8:00
Cin­e­ma: films — cli­mate camp footage, ready steady skip etc

Mon­day
Take-down: please stay for a day or two to help take down the site. If you’ve got access to a vehicle/van, it’d be great if you could help trans­port­ing mar­quees, recy­cling etc to the places they need to go. Cheers!

More info about the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
EF! is about direct action to halt the destruc­tion of the Earth. It’s about doing it your­self rather than rely­ing on lead­ers, gov­ern­ments or indus­try.
Direct action is at the heart of it, whether you’re stand­ing in front of a bull­doz­er, shut­ting down an open-cast mine or rip­ping up a field of GM crops.
We’re a loose net­work of peo­ple, groups and cam­paigns com­ing togeth­er for eco­log­i­cal direct action.
Join us for 5 days of work­shops, net­work­ing and plan­ning actions, run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along. The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of low-impact eco-liv­ing and non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­is­ing.

http://www.earthfirst.org.uk, sum­mer­gath­er­ing _ AT _ earthfirst.org.uk