Category: Genetics

Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Playing with Fire: The Story of Daniel McGowan, “eco-terrorism” and the Green Scare

Grow­ing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pol­lu­tion fogged the air and fouled the beach­es in some of the city’s poor­est com­mu­ni­ties, set­ting him on a life­long path of envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice. But how he end­ed up drenched in gaso­line and set­ting fire to Oregon’s Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in 2001 and was lat­er tar­get­ed as a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” is the sto­ry of some­one who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Playing with Fire coverGrow­ing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pol­lu­tion fogged the air and fouled the beach­es in some of the city’s poor­est com­mu­ni­ties, set­ting him on a life­long path of envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice. But how he end­ed up drenched in gaso­line and set­ting fire to Oregon’s Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in 2001 and was lat­er tar­get­ed as a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” is the sto­ry of some­one who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Born in Brook­lyn and raised in Queens’ Rock­away Beach, Daniel McGowan grew up sand­wiched between asphalt and the sky, in a for­est of build­ings and buzzing streets. Until Dec. 7, 2005, the 33-year-old with a round face and a chip­munk smile was most­ly known in local cir­cles for his involve­ment in a vari­ety of activist projects. Today, after a near­ly two-year legal bat­tle that saw him labeled an “eco-ter­ror­ist” by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, McGowan is serv­ing a sev­en-year sen­tence at a fed­er­al prison in Min­neso­ta on 15 counts of arson, attempt­ed arson and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit arson against two pri­vate com­pa­nies in Ore­gon in 2001.

McGowan, whose arrest shocked his fam­i­ly and friends, and his case was lumped togeth­er with nine oth­ers as part of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Investigation’s Oper­a­tion Back­fire, which pro­duced 65 indict­ments for actions at 17 tar­gets, includ­ing pri­vate com­pa­nies, uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties across five states from 1996–2001, in what the FBI called a “cam­paign of domes­tic ter­ror­ism.” The actions were all claimed by the Envi­ron­men­tal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) or the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF), an under­ground, decen­tral­ized move­ment of rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists, which McGowan par­tic­i­pat­ed in between 1999 and 2001 while liv­ing in Eugene, Ore­gon.

“At a cer­tain point, I got involved in the ELF,” McGowan told The Indypen­dent at his Brook­lyn home in June, a few weeks before report­ing to prison. “At the time it seemed like a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion, but it also coin­cid­ed with my increas­ing grief and rage I was feel­ing about the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion I saw. I went to Ore­gon and I couldn’t believe how okay peo­ple were with what was going on. We’d dri­ve to the edge of town and you saw the log­ging mills, or you went into the for­est and stum­bled upon a clear cut. It just blew me away. I had to find a way to chan­nel that grief and rage.” The dilem­ma McGowan faced has trou­bled activists for gen­er­a­tions. When you try every form of “accept­able” advo­ca­cy to make change with lit­tle suc­cess, what do you do?

“A Cam­paign of Domes­tic Ter­ror­ism” In the mid­dle of the night on May 21, 2001, McGowan found him­self in the vehi­cle shop of Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in of Clatskanie, a small town in north­west Ore­gon on the Colum­bia Riv­er. He had just fin­ished lay­ing out soaked gaso­line sheets and tow­els con­nect­ed to a home­made incen­di­ary device, designed to set fire to a fleet of SUVs and the com­pa­ny office. The pri­vate­ly owned facil­i­ty had been select­ed as an ELF tar­get because McGowan and his accom­plices believed it was involved in genet­ic research by grow­ing a hybrid vari­ety of poplar-cot­ton­wood trees that would help tim­ber com­pa­nies replace the region’s old-growth forests with com­mer­cial tree farms.

“We torched Jef­fer­son Poplar because hybrid poplars are an eco­log­i­cal night­mare threat­en­ing native bio­di­ver­si­ty in the ecosys­tem,” the sabo­teurs wrote in a com­mu­nique that was released after the action. “Our forests are being liq­ui­dat­ed and replaced with mono-cul­tured tree farms so greedy, earth-rap­ing cor­po­ra­tions can make more mon­ey.”

“At some lev­el, I thought it [ELF actions] was effec­tive,” McGowan said. “If I would have writ­ten a state­ment that I think genet­ic-engi­neered trees are bad and old­growth log­ging is bad and sent it to every media out­let in the coun­try, it wouldn’t have been paid atten­tion to,” he explained. “There is some­thing real­ly strange about when you attach a state­ment to an arson it sud­den­ly becomes news­wor­thy … it is like pro­pa­gan­da with teeth.”

For McGowan, the actions were part of his search for the right mix of tac­tics to make pos­i­tive change.

“For me, the actions were not grotesque or not about destroy­ing things. I had a hard time get­ting into the mind set to destroy oth­er people’s stuff or even liv­ing [genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied] organ­isms,” he said. “I would get sick before actions, get ner­vous — it was real­ly dif­fi­cult. But I did it because I felt that the oth­er things weren’t work­ing, and that while there was a pre­pon­der­ance of oth­er tac­tics being tried, these tac­tics weren’t being tried and I thought that maybe there is some­thing we can do to help the issue.”

Between 1996 and 2001, an under­ground cell of activists based in Eugene, Ore­gon, called “the Fam­i­ly” in gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments, tar­get­ed fed­er­al and uni­ver­si­ty research facil­i­ties, meat and lum­ber com­pa­nies, a car deal­er­ship, wild horse cor­rals and oth­er “earth rap­ers,” as described by com­mu­niques released at the time.

Accord­ing to the FBI, the string of high pro­file actions that hit 17 tar­gets in the Pacif­ic North­west in the late 1990s caused near­ly $80 mil­lion in prop­er­ty dam­age. These actions are only a few of the more than 600 inci­dents claimed by the ELF and ALF nation­wide since 1996. “I think that’s real­ly what all these actions are about — is real­ly get­ting pub­lic atten­tion to some of these issues,” said Jim Fly­nn, a Eugene-based envi­ron­men­tal­ist in a July 2007 USA Today arti­cle. “If we were able to affect pol­i­cy change through more legal means, then cer­tain­ly that’s the way these peo­ple would go. Nobody enjoys being under­ground, and that lifestyle.”

TO CONTINUE READING ARTICLE, VISIT: http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/enemy-of-the-state/

SIDEBAR ARTICLES:

Why Green Makes the Right See Red
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/why-green-makes-the-right-see-red/

The Birth of a Buzz­word: “Eco-ter­ror­ism”
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/the-birth-of-a-buzz-word-eco-terrorism/
NOTE: See Ron Arnold’s response)

The Net Widens: Free Speech on Tri­al
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/the-net-widens/

Under­ground Eco-defend­ers
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/underground-eco-defenders/

Please leave com­ments on the arti­cles if you want!

THE INDYPENDENT is the news­pa­per of the NEW YORK INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER — www.indypendent.org

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For his address to write to, oth­er eco-pris­on­ers, tips for writ­ing etc, go to http://www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk

GM Actions in France (13/9/2007)

EXTRACT: many actions… were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

EXTRACT: many actions… were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

—

Mes­sage from Guy Kastler, Reseau Semences Paysannes (Peas­ant Seeds Net­work)
11 Sep­tem­ber 2007
http://www.gmfreeireland.org/news/index.php

The offi­cial reg­istry of the French Min­istry for Agri­cul­ture only indi­cates the total sur­face of GMO cul­ti­va­tions in each region.

Green­peace has shed light on the exis­tence of a GMO par­cel of land that the Min­istry’s reg­istry failed to pub­lish. There­by Green­peace has demon­strat­ed the gov­ern­men­t’s inca­pa­bil­i­ty in ensur­ing pub­lic infor­ma­tion, sur­veil­lance on GMOs and coex­is­tence.

This action made a lot of noise as Green­peace has good com­mu­ni­ca­tion ser­vices. But this is only one among the many actions that were organ­ised in France this Spring and Sum­mer:

Field clear­ings, sym­bol­ic clear­ings that deposit­ed GMO plants in front of police sta­tions or Mon­san­to offices, pol­li­na­tion of GM fields with non-GM pollen, occu­pa­tion of offi­cial plant pro­tec­tion offices, exper­i­ments show­ing the real­i­ty of con­t­a­m­i­na­tions …

We (REseau Semences Paysannes) are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing the sec­ond stage (mid-Octo­ber) of the mora­to­ri­um — I (Guy) will keep you updat­ed and soon send you infos about it.

Green­peace dis­cov­ers an ille­gal GM field, files a suit and calls for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tion

Press release — source not indi­cat­ed), Sep­tem­ber 5th, 2007

Bez­er­il (Gers), France

Start­ing this morn­ing at 9h30, Green­peace activists mark an ille­gal GM corn field with red food col­orant: this field is not pub­lished on the pub­lic reg­istry of the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry, as cur­rent rules in force would require.

Accord­ing to the offi­cial reg­istry, the Samatan region is sup­posed to be total­ly GM free. Through this action, Green­peace demon­strates that GM corn cul­ti­va­tions are uncon­trol­lable — in terms of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, tox­i­c­i­ty and legal­i­ty. The Gov­ern­ment must imme­di­ate­ly impose a mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tions.

“We have come to denounce a crime and to file a suit with the State Attor­ney of Auch,” declares Mag­a­li Rin­goot, Green­peace GMO cam­paign­er. “We are ask­ing Gov­ern­ment Author­i­ties to ascer­tain the infrac­tion, to open an inquiry and to pro­ceed with an imme­di­ate pre­ven­tive har­vest.”

Since last March, GM cul­ti­va­tions — that is of MON810 maize, the only GM crop autho­rised in France — must com­pul­so­ri­ly be declared at the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture in order for them to be inven­to­ried by region on a pub­lic reg­istry (acces­si­ble at: http://ogm.gouv.fr).

The dead­line for dec­la­ra­tions was May 15th, 2007.

“Regard­ing open-field GM cul­ti­va­tions, France is cur­rent­ly in a total legal vac­u­um: the decrees issued last March make no men­tion in terms of lia­bil­i­ty, infor­ma­tion trans­paren­cy or the oblig­a­tion to inform one’s neigh­bours — not even on the dis­tances to keep between GM and non-GM fields,” an indig­nant Arnaud Apotek­er reports, Green­peace GMO cam­paign­er. “The Gov­ern­ment is total­ly inca­pable of mak­ing sure the rules it has estab­lished are kept, that is the oblig­a­tion to declare one’s GMO par­cel of land.”

It was pos­si­ble to detect this ille­gal field thanks to the mark­ing work car­ried out on the ter­rain by Green­peace’s “field detec­tives”. “By mark­ing this ille­gal field with red colour, our goal is not to attack the field own­er, but to put an end to this enor­mous hypocrisy that keeps repeat­ing that GMO are con­trol­lable in open fields,” con­tin­ues Mag­a­li Rin­goot. “GMOs are not con­trol­lable: on the one hand, because GMOs con­t­a­m­i­nate the envi­ron­ment, and on the oth­er, because one would need to place a police per­son in each field to know where GMOs are plant­ed exact­ly.”

“This sum­mer, under the pre­text of not want­i­ng to recon­sid­er the deci­sions tak­en before the elec­tions, the gov­ern­ment allowed the cul­ti­va­tion of over 20’000 hectares of GM maize. Result: the ill-ease in the coun­try­side grew and the cli­mate of trust nec­es­sary to pre­pare the tra­di­tion­al gov­ern­ment-CSOs meet­ing on envi­ron­men­tal issues (Grenelle de l’en­vi­ron­nement) was spoiled too,” notes Arnaud Apotek­er. “Giv­en the mas­sive pub­lic oppo­si­tion, new emerg­ing sci­en­tif­ic analy­ses show­ing tox­i­c­i­ty risks and this lat­est evi­dence that GMOs are not con­trol­lable, it would be absurd if the Gov­ern­ment did not imme­di­ate­ly decree a mora­to­ri­um on open-field cul­ti­va­tions, even before the tra­di­tion­al Grenelle meet­ing.”

Fur­ther­more, at the Euro­pean Union lev­el, France is increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed. Italy, Greece, Poland, Aus­tria and Hun­gary have already banned open-field GM cul­ti­va­tion on their ter­ri­to­ries. Apart from Spain, France is the only Euro­pean coun­try today with large scale GM cul­ti­va­tions. In Roma­nia, Green­peace activists are today block­ing access to an ille­gal GM soy field. Roma­nia banned open-field GM soy cul­ti­va­tion in Feb­ru­ary 2006, after grant­i­ng autho­ri­sa­tion for eight years.

GM quarantine in Romania

5 Sep­tem­ber 2007

How’s this for a cre­ative and excit­ing exam­ple of direct action — it’s a block­ade but with a dif­fer­ence.

GM decontamination in Romania5 Sep­tem­ber 2007

How’s this for a cre­ative and excit­ing exam­ple of direct action — it’s a block­ade but with a dif­fer­ence.

Ear­li­er this morn­ing in Roma­nia, Green­peace vol­un­teers quar­an­tined a whole island where GM soya crops are being grown, which is ille­gal under EU law. Vehi­cles leav­ing Braila island were hosed down by peo­ple wear­ing white bio­haz­ard suits to pre­vent genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion spread­ing to the main­land. Even a don­key and cart were washed and made GM-free!

As well as soya, maize and sun­flow­ers are also grown there and the har­vest has just begun, so the cam­paign­ers in Roma­nia want­ed to stop any GM crops leav­ing the island and end­ing up in the food chain. Dri­vers were appar­ent­ly warned that they could­n’t leave the island with­out pass­ing through the ‘decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion sta­tion’ so there have been no reports of any soya-laden trucks try­ing to leave.

GM crops have popped up in Roma­nia before and since the coun­try joined the EU ear­li­er this year, they’re now ille­gal. There’s also a flour­ish­ing black mar­ket in GM seeds and the wide­spread pres­ence of GM food in Roman­ian mar­kets. But now these ille­gal crops have been exposed in such an eye-catch­ing man­ner, envi­ron­men­tal stan­dards offi­cers on the scene have told the media that they will take care of the sit­u­a­tion.

GM-spot­ters have been at work in France, paint­ing a field of GM maize bright red to mark its posi­tion. This crop — with the snazzy name MON810 — is also ille­gal as nei­ther the farmer nor the French gov­ern­ment have noti­fied the rel­e­vant author­i­ties that it has been plant­ed.

And apart from both being GM and ille­gal, what links these two agri­cul­tur­al inci­dents? Why, it’s our old friend, Mon­san­to, devel­op­er of the vari­eties of soya and maize in ques­tion. Fun­ny that.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/gm/gm-quarantine-in-romania-20070905

Movimento Verde Eufémia mows first GM Field in South Portugal

On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

Portugal GM decontamination 1Portugal GM decontamination 2On the 17th of August the “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia” went into action of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, tar­get­ing the first trans­genic field in the Algarve GMO Free Zone in South Por­tu­gal. 65 mow­ers entered the field and were able to mow a hectare of GM corn in less than 20 min­utes. The action received sup­port from a parade of an extra 60 peo­ple.

POLITICAL BACKGROUND
This year the first GMO field ever has been plant­ed in the Algarve Region in Por­tu­gal. Already years before the plant­i­ng of his GM corn there has been strong oppo­si­tion from civ­il soci­ety against the cul­ti­va­tion of GMOs in the Algarve. This includes social and envi­ron­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions, farm­ers and a pub­lic opin­ion who is in gen­er­al against the cul­ti­va­tion and con­sump­tion of GM crops. Also from the polit­i­cal field oppo­si­tion was made. As a result the Algarve was the first GMO free zone in Por­tu­gal declared by the Jun­ta Met­ro­pol­i­tana do Algarve already in 2004. On the lev­el of the munic­i­pal­i­ties over time motions have been passed reject­ing the cul­ti­va­tion of GM crops on their ter­ri­to­ry.

Despite the strong oppo­si­tion with­in lay­ers of civ­il soci­ety and from local author­i­ties against GMOs the poli­cies of the Por­tuguese Gov­ern­ment and the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion con­stant­ly dis­re­spect the moral and demo­c­ra­t­ic right of those oppos­ing actors to ban GMOs from their fields and their plates.

MOVIMENTO VERDE EUFEMIA
For rea­sons described in the pre­vi­ous para­graph, an infor­mal group of peas­ants, ecol­o­gists and
con­cerned cit­i­zens have gath­ered to take direct action with the aim to re-estab­lish the demo­c­ra­t­ic, moral and eco­log­i­cal order. The move­ment that we are now start­ing will go under the name “Movi­men­to Verde Eufémia”, in homage to the peas­ant strug­gle against the for­mer por­tuguese fas­cist regime.

The strug­gle of Cate­ri­na Eufémia and the peas­ant move­ment of which she was part aimed at defend­ing the rights and the well-being of peas­ant com­mu­ni­ties. Our move­ment will con­tin­ue this strug­gle in the con­text of new appear­ing threats, name­ly the agro-biotech­nol­o­gy sec­tor and their pow­er­ful lob­by.

THE ACTION
The direct action involved 65 mow­ers, destroy­ing 1 hectare of the 50 hectare GM corn field in less than 20 min­utes around mid­day. The activists took the well con­sid­ered risk to announce the action before­hand in the media. This was done for rea­sons of receiv­ing the high­est media cov­er­age for the largest direct action since the post rev­o­lu­tion­ary peri­od in Por­tu­gal. How­ev­er, the activists were aware of risks of com­pro­mise that this deci­sion would bring along.

After 10 min­utes, the own­er and his col­leagues noticed the action. About 8 farm­ers attacked the group of mow­ers using phys­i­cal vio­lence. The mow­ers took a defen­sive stand by using their high­er num­ber but did not use vio­lence in return. One farmer fired shots from an alarm pis­tol and the activists were threat­ened with poi­son sprayers. One police patrol arrived short­ly after. All mow­ers abort­ed the action after 20 min­utes and moved on the pub­lic road to mix up in the parade. The 10 police offi­cers that were in the area could not do any­thing else but reg­u­lat­ing the traf­fic for the parade then count­ing more than 120 peo­ple, mov­ing towards the near­est vil­lage of Poço Bar­reto. 3 iden­ti­fi­ca­tions were made by the police, this involved the police speak­ers and the media spokesper­son. The whole group was picked up by busses and the action end­ed in all order.

Know­ing that the activist were hit­ting the prop­er­ty of a farmer, even though it was a big one they announced that they would pro­vide com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­age inflict­ed. In the end the activists intend­ed no harm towards the farmer him­self who for one or anoth­er rea­son choose to cul­ti­vate GM crops. The activists pro­posed that they would pro­vide the farmer with organ­ic seeds for the sur­face (50 hectares) which is cur­rent­ly being plant­ed with GM corn.

THE AFTERMATH
Now, five days after the action, the name Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia is still front­page news. All tele­vi­sion sta­tions and radio sta­tions give con­tin­u­ous updates on the case. Major polit­i­cal par­ty lead­ers are now involved in the debate. The Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture and the Min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion are main actors in the debate while the Pres­i­dent has com­ment­ed on the issue as well on tele­vi­sion.

The dis­course from the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture is one that main­ly evolves around state­ments con­firm­ing sup­port towards the farmer in the legal pros­e­cu­tion of the activists and point­ing out that the activists hit a ‘poor farmer’ and they should be pun­ished for tres­pass­ing and destruc­tion of pri­vate prop­er­ty. An esti­ma­tion from the Min­istry after the min­is­ter vis­it­ed the field under huge media atten­tion, he came to the con­clu­sion that the dam­age counts up to around 4000 euros. How­ev­er the Order of Lawyers issued a press release yes­ter­day stat­ing that that deliv­ery of legal finan­cial sup­port to from the min­istry would be an ille­gal act as it would mean gov­ern­men­tal inter­fer­ence in a civ­il court case. As a reply to that the min­istry back off stat­ing that ‘obvi­ous­ly’ they meant to sup­port the farmer win the paper work and in the devel­op­ment of his legal dis­course in the court. Next to that, the min­is­ter of agri­cul­ture takes a com­plete­ly out­bal­anced pro-GMO posi­tion, say­ing that: “There is no prob­lem, this is sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven”. This can be con­sid­ered as a com­plete invalid state­ment since the sci­en­tif­ic world is at least very divid­ed on the mat­ter of GMOs.

The dis­course of the Min­istry of Inter­nal Admin­stra­tion, being the head of police, devel­ops main­ly around the goal to crim­i­nal­ize Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia and its last action. On one of the main tele­vi­sion sta­tions in a news stu­dio inter­view he labelled the action as ‘soft’ eco ter­ror­ism. The dis­course of the min­is­ter receives addi­tion­al­ly a lot of sup­port from the Pres­i­dent.

How­ev­er it is not all bad news. Now that the media have almost exhaust­ed all vari­a­tions on head titles stretch­ing over two pages, they also start to go more in debt, cov­er­ing the dif­fer­ent opin­ions and posi­tion on GMOs and explain for exam­ple the sta­tus of GMO Free Zones. Through their press releas­es, MVE has invit­ed all asso­ci­a­tions in Por­tu­gal to use the media space cre­at­ed to voice their argu­ments against GMOs. In a reac­tion to that, some main actors in the GMO debate, who ini­tial­ly dis­tanced them­selves from the action, and still do, they have now tak­en up the oppor­tu­ni­ty to voice their con­cerns on GMOs. For that rea­son and oth­er reac­tions that the action has pro­voked from the polit­i­cal field the MVE has expressed their con­tent see­ing that their action has result­ed in an open­ing of the debate on GMOs

INVESTIGATION
Now, for the activists involved in the action it is clear that they should be very care­ful in their cur­rent steps. The min­is­ter of Inter­nal Admin­is­tra­tion him­self is, as announced in the media, involved in the coor­di­na­tion of the inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by the Infor­ma­tion and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) and the Police Jus­tice Depart­ment (PJ). Their aim is to uncov­er the net­works of activists that were involved in the action in order to run legal pros­e­cu­tion.

KNOW MORE
MVE has cur­rent­ly a blow where you can fol­low up on the devel­op­ment of the case. The link is http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

ARGUMENTS AGAINST GMOs
The argu­ments against GMOs are sit­u­at­ed on dif­fer­ent lev­els. For the con­sumer, the few inde­pen­dent stud­ies that were car­ried out, indi­cate that they can induce aller­gic reac­tions, can­cer and oth­er long term neg­a­tive effects, which have not been stud­ied pro­found­ly yet. Intro­duc­ing GM crops in agri­cul­ture pro­duces effects that are irre­versible. The mod­i­fied genes quick­ly start appear­ing in oth­er crops, on oth­er field and in oth­er species, a process which is impos­si­ble to pre­vent. Besides that the cul­ti­va­tion of trans­genic may induce cumu­la­tive effects, rang­ing from the appear­ance of weed resis­tant to her­bi­cides and insects resis­tant to insec­ti­cides until the death of organ­isms that do not form any dan­ger to the agri­cul­tur­al crops. These effects go along with the appear­ance of mul­ti­ple forms of eco­log­i­cal insta­bil­i­ties. The major study about the effects of trans­genic in the envi­ron­ment was pub­lished by the British gov­ern­ment in 2003. It came to the con­clu­sion that cul­ti­vat­ing GMOs is a lot worse to wild life than con­ven­tion­al agri­cul­ture. North-Amer­i­can farm­ers that chose to cul­ti­vate GMOs already under­stood the dis­ad­van­tages: high­er expens­es on seeds, more con­sump­tion of pes­ti­cides, clos­ing inter­na­tion­al (and even local) mar­kets, prod­ucts that are less prof­itable because they are GMOs. Because of genet­ic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, bio­log­i­cal farm­ers are forced the emi­grate or change pro­fes­sion. Insur­ance com­pa­nies are not will­ing to secure trans­genic cul­tures because of the high risks involved. Lloyds, one of the major insur­ance com­pa­nies allo­cat­ed GMOs in the same finan­cial risk lev­el as acts of ter­ror­ism. The use of GMOs implies that farm­ers are for­bid­den to use sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds pro­duced by their own crop. This is an asser­tion for the seed sell­ing com­pa­nies to con­tin­ue their busi­ness the next year.
Already tens of farm­ers in the US and Cana­da have already been con­vict­ed in tri­bunal, hav­ing used sec­ond gen­er­a­tion seeds with­out autho­riza­tion.

Movi­men­to Verde Eufemia
http://eufemia.ecobytes.net/

Spirit of Freedom (August 2007) — 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)

“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 August 2007 edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom. Reg­u­lar read­ers of Spir­it of Free­dom will notice that this issue of the newslet­ter is slight­ly dif­fer­ent to pre­vi­ous issues. As long-term ELP sup­port­ers will be aware, back in 2000, after the arrests & remand­ings of a group of Irish anti-road pro­test­ers ELP launched its e‑mail “Urgent ELP!” ser­vice. Over the years this ser­vice has proven very pop­u­lar with most of our sup­port­ers now receiv­ing their news via e‑mail with very few peo­ple receiv­ing the newslet­ter in its paper ver­sion. With that in mind, ELP has decid­ed to end its paper ver­sion of its newslet­ter. And because most of the “Court Reports & Legal Updates” news con­tained in Spir­it of Free­dom has already been cir­cu­lat­ed via e‑mail we are drop­ping this from our newslet­ter and from now on “Spir­it of Free­dom” will sole­ly be a pris­on­er list­ing pub­li­ca­tion. How­ev­er, to remind every­one of all the pris­on­ers we do sup­port we will be cir­cu­lat­ing the “Spir­it of Free­dom” pris­on­er list­ing on a month­ly basis, to give every­one a reg­u­lar reminder of all the pris­on­ers we sup­port. Whilst look­ing through the list, if you notice an error, please con­tact ELP and we will cor­rect it imme­di­ate­ly. In the mean­time, remem­ber, no mat­ter where you are in the world, sup­port the eco-pris­on­ers and no com­pro­mise in defence of Moth­er Earth!

ECO-DEFENCE PRISONERS

Fadal­la Idris Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Mohamed Ahmed Ala­jaimy (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Tre Arrow, CS# 05850722, Van­cou­ver Island Region­al Cor­rec­tion Cen­ter, 4216 Wilkin­son Rd., Vic­to­ria, BC, V8Z 5B2, Cana­da. On remand accused of involve­ment with an arson on log­ging trucks and an arson on vehi­cles owned by a sand & grav­el com­pa­ny. Both arsons occurred in the USA. Tre is fight­ing his extra­di­tion to the USA.

Grant Barnes #1533241 22, Den­ver Coun­ty Jail, PO Box 1108, Den­ver, CO 80201, USA. Serv­ing 12 years for set­ting fire to a num­ber of SUV vehi­cles. On one of the vehi­cles the let­ters ELF was spray-paint­ed.

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.

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 Board­er Guard whilst on the run. In ‘02 Mar­co com­plet­ed a 12-year sen­tence in Italy for destroy­ing elec­tric­i­ty pylons in Italy.

Ibai Eder­ra, Car­cel de Pam­plona, C/San Roque. Apdo. 250, 31080 — Iruñez –Pam­plona, Navar­ra (España), Spain. Serv­ing just under 5 years for sab­o­tag­ing machin­ery at the con­tro­ver­sial Itoiz dam con­struc­tion site.

Bet­ty Kraw­czyk, Alou­ette Cor­rec­tion­al Cen­tre for Women, P.O. Box 1000, Maple Ridge, BC, V2X 3K4, Cana­da. Serv­ing 10-months for protest­ing against the devel­op­ment of the Win­ter Olympics site on tra­di­tion­al Squamish ter­ri­to­ry

Jef­frey Luers, #13797671, OSP, 2605 State St. Salem, OR 97310, USA. Serv­ing 22 years & 8 months for arson on a SUV deal­er­ship & the attempt­ed arson of an oil truck.

Ali Mohamed Alhas­sen Mas­sad (address unknown). Sudan anti-dam pro­test­er on remand accused of Wag­ing War against the State for protest­ing against the con­struc­tion of a dam.

Eric McDavid X‑2972521 4E 231A, Sacra­men­to Coun­ty Main Jail, 651 “I” Street, Sacra­men­to, CA 95814, USA. On Remand accused of plan­ning to destroy the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Forestry Ser­vice, mobile phone masts and pow­er plants.

Daniel McGowan, #63794–053, MDC Brook­lyn Met­ro­pol­i­tan Deten­tion Cen­ter, PO Box 329002, Brook­lyn, NY 11232, USA. Serv­ing 7 years for an ELF arson against a Poplar Tree Farm and an ELF arson against a lum­ber com­pa­ny. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

Jonathan Paul – See details in Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers List.

Costan­ti­no Ragusa, Casa Cir­con­dar­i­ale, Via Prati Nuovi 7, 27058 Voghera (PV), Italy. Il Sil­vestre activist serv­ing 2½ years. 1) 18-months for bur­gling and fire­bomb­ing a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. 2) 12-months for organ­is­ing an anti-GM protest. Costani­no is also await­ing tri­al accused of using explo­sives to dam­age an elec­tric­i­ty pylon in protest at nuclear ener­gy.

Joy­an­na Zach­er, #0707300576, San Bernardi­no CDC, 630 E. Rial­to Ave., San Bernardi­no, CA 92415, 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.

ANIMAL LIBERATION PRISONERS

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.

Gregg Avery TA7450, HMP Win­ches­ter, Rom­sey Road, Win­ches­ter SO22 5DF, Eng­land. On remand accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to his involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Natasha Avery NR8987, HMP Bronze­field, Woodthor­pe Road, Ash­ford, Mid­dx. TW15 3JZ, Eng­land. Jailed for breach­ing her parole con­di­tions imposed on her for telling a fox hunt­ing mur­der­ing scum what she thought of them. Also await­ing tri­al accused of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail, in rela­tion to her involve­ment with the SHAC cam­paign.

Nathan Block – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

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.

Don­ald Cur­rie TN4593, HMP White­moor, Longhill Road, March, Cambs, PE15 OPR, Eng­land. Serv­ing an Inde­ter­mi­nate Sen­tence, of not less than six actu­al years, for car­ry­ing out arsons against tar­gets asso­ci­at­ed the vivi­sec­tion indus­try includ­ing HLS.

Dar­ius Fullmer #26397–050, FCI Fort Dix Satel­lite Camp, P.O. Box 1000, Fort Dix, NJ 08640 USA. Serv­ing 12 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

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.

Sarah Gis­borne, LT5393, HMP Cookham Wood, Rochester, Kent, ME1 3LU, Eng­land. Serv­ing 5½ years for con­spir­a­cy to cause crim­i­nal dam­age fol­low­ing the dam­ag­ing of 8 vehi­cles owned by peo­ple linked to Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ence.

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.

Joseph Har­ris TN5728, HMP Bulling­don, Patrick Haugh Road, Arn­cott, Nr. Bices­ter, Oxon, OX25 1WD, Eng­land. Serv­ing 2 years for dam­ag­ing the prop­er­ty of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences.

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

Josephine Mayo PR6508, HMP Drake Hall, Eccle­shall, Staffs, ST21 6LQ, Eng­land. Serv­ing 4 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

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.

Jonathan Paul, c/o Friends of Jonathan Paul, PMB 267, 2305 Ash­land St., Ste. C, Ash­land, OR 97520, USA. Sen­tenced to 51 months for an ALF arson on a horse meat plant. Also admit­ted his role in an ELF/ALF con­spir­a­cy.

John Smith TB4887, HMP Lowd­ham Grange, Lowd­ham, Not­ting­ham, NG14 7DA, Eng­land. Serv­ing 12 years for attempt­ing to black­mail a farmer who sup­plied guinea pigs for vivi­sec­tion.

Andrew Stepan­ian #26399–050, FCI But­ner Medi­um II Fed­er­al Cor­rec­tion­al Insti­tu­tion, PO Box 1500, But­ner, NC 27509 USA. Serv­ing 36 months for help­ing organ­ise the SHAC-USA cam­paign.

Mark Tay­lor TT6636, HMP YOI Onley, Rug­by, Wark­wick­shire, CV23 8AP, Eng­land. Serv­ing four years for organ­is­ing loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

Suzanne Tay­lor, TM7154, HMP Fos­ton Hall, Fos­ton, Der­by, Der­byshire, DE65 5DN, Eng­land. Serv­ing two and a half years for help­ing organ­ise loud demon­stra­tions out­side the offices of com­pa­nies with links to HLS.

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.

Joy­an­na Zach­er – See details in Eco Defence Pris­on­ers List.

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.

OTHER ANTI-WAR PRISONERS

Bren­dan Walsh 12473–052, FCI/FSL Elk­ton, PO Box 10, Lis­bon, OH 44432 USA. Serv­ing 5 years for an arson on an army recruit­ment office in protest at the War on Iraq.

THE LECCE FIVE
The Lec­ce Five 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

Lasan­dra Bur­well W063658, Ohio Refor­ma­to­ry for Women, 1479 Collins Ave. Marysville, OH 43040, USA. Serv­ing 5 years for tak­ing part in an anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tion which turned into a riot.

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.

Augustin Kraus, Vazeb­ni veznice, PP‑1, Lit­o­merice, 41 201, Czech Repub­lic. Serv­ing 14 months for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in attacks against local neo-nazis. His charge was “bod­i­ly harm”. He speaks Czech, Slo­vak and Pol­ish. You can also write him short post­cards in Eng­lish.

Chris­t­ian Süm­mer­mann, BNR: 727/07/7, JVA Tegel, Sei­del­str. 39, 13507 Berlin, Ger­many. Serv­ing 40 months for breach­ing the peace whilst serv­ing a sus­pend­ed sen­tence issued for anti-fas­cist activ­i­ties.

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

OTHER PRISONERS

Oscar San­ta Maria Caro, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. The exact charges against Oscar are unknown but Oscar is a mem­ber of RATA, a known ani­mal rights group.

Sacra­men­to Delfi­no Cano Her­nan­dez, CERESO, Miahu­at­lan de Por­firio Diaz, Oax­a­ca en Hall B, Cell 5., Mex­i­co. On remand. Co-defen­dant of Oscar San­ta Maria Caro.

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.

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.

MOVE
MOVE is an eco-rev­o­lu­tion­ary group who car­ried out protests in defence of all life. 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 Grate­ford, PO Box 244, Grate­ford, PA 19426–0244, USA.

Edward Good­man Africa (AM4974), 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

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

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.

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

North Amer­i­can ELP Pris­on­er Fund. The North Amer­i­can ELP group has set up a fund where peo­ple can pay mon­ey, for North Amer­i­can Eco-Defence and Ani­mal Rights pris­on­ers, which will then be dis­trib­uted to the North Amer­i­can pris­on­ers. For infor­ma­tion about the Fund and how to make a dona­tion please con­tact naelpsn@mutualaid.org

DEDICATION
This Edi­tion of Spir­it of Free­dom is ded­i­cat­ed to Bill ‘Aval­on’ Rodgers, the Amer­i­can ‘Ore­gon Defen­dant’ who end­ed his own life in Decem­ber 2005 whilst on Remand.

New Earth First Action Update OUT NOW!

The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

EF! AU logo 1The print­ed EF! Action Update is back again! After a bit of a lull a new edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive is in place and ready to roll. We have just pro­duced a sum­mer edi­tion in time for the Camp for Cli­mate Action, where you can pick up print­ed copies.

The Action Update is pro­duced quar­ter­ly to aid the shar­ing of news, infor­ma­tion and ideas amongst those inter­est­ed in tak­ing action. The next newslet­ter will be out in Novem­ber. If you’ve got news to share about your groups, cam­paigns and actions post them straight onto this web­site and we’ll make sure they’re includ­ed in the next edi­tion.

You can also down­load and print out the PDF of the Action Update by click­ing here.

Protesters decontaminate the UK’s last remaining GM potato trial

Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

Biohazard (red)Dur­ing the night of Fri­day 6th July, a group of activists con­verged on Britain’s last remain­ing GM tri­al site just out­side Cam­bridge. They scaled the secu­ri­ty fences and destroyed the crop of genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied pota­toes.

The pota­to plants were already flow­er­ing, spread­ing genet­ic con­ta­gion into the sur­round­ing coun­try­side.

A sim­i­lar tri­al planned in Hull was aban­doned ear­li­er this year after a strong cam­paign and mas­sive con­cern from near­by farm­ers. With the destruc­tion of the Cam­bridge crop, Britain is once again GM free.

Pub­lic con­cern and demon­stra­tions had failed to sway NIAB, the Nation­al Insti­tute for Agri­cul­ture and Botany, who are car­ry­ing out the five-year tri­al on behalf of BASF, a multi­na­tion­al chem­i­cal cor­po­ra­tion. Many feel that if cor­po­ra­tions refuse to lis­ten to pub­lic opin­ion it is nec­es­sary to take direct action.

Fri­day’s action fol­lows the lat­est in a series of protests, on the pre­vi­ous Sun­day (July 1st), when demon­stra­tors marched on the pota­to field. On that occa­sion, they were met by over­whelm­ing num­bers of police and two par­tic­i­pants were arrest­ed.

This time, how­ev­er, no such obsta­cles were met, and the activists were able to suc­cess­ful­ly decon­t­a­m­i­nate the field.

If this tri­al had been allowed to run full term it could have led to a whole new gen­er­a­tion of GM crop tri­als in this coun­try. Fri­day night’s events show that pub­lic con­cern about GM food and will­ing­ness to take direct action to keep Britain GM free remain high.

Cambridge GM potato demo report & photo series & court update (with added video)

There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.

Cambridge GM protest 3Cambridge GM protest 8Cambridge GM protest 4There was a protest today against the last remain­ing GM pota­to tri­al in the UK just out­side of Cam­bridge.

Despite being heav­i­ly out­num­bered by the police & Chubb secu­ri­ty guards, pro­test­ers were able to make their way right up to the twen­ty metre perime­ter fence sur­round­ing the tri­al site (with elec­tric fence inside). Two demon­stra­tors were arrest­ed, one for attempt­ing to breach the fence and anoth­er some dis­tance from the site.
Cambridge GM protest 1
Pro­test­ers played fris­bee and ate a pic­nic at the site but, due to being out­num­bered, were not in a posi­tion to get through the fence to decon­t­a­m­i­nate the site.
Cambridge GM protest 5
Cambridge GM protest 6
Cambridge GM protest 7
Cambridge GM protest 2

Full write up of protest and some back­ground

One knew right from arriv­ing at the start point of this protest in Gir­ton that the police were going to be total­ly in con­trol. Pro­test­ers were great­ly out­num­bered. Also there were no main­stream jour­nal­ists present at all. There were lines of police pho­tog­ra­phers with big cam­eras and long lens­es posi­tioned all around the cen­tre of the vil­lage. This was clear­ly a way of warn­ing any locals who might wish to become involved that they would be treat­ed as poten­tial crim­i­nals even though it was a very fluffy protest. Pro­test­ers set off along the road, turned off onto a pub­lic foot­path towards the site, escort­ed and watched all the way by dozens of police on foot and in vehi­cles. Police made a token attempt to stop every­one from leav­ing the foot­path but the deter­mined pro­test­ers quick­ly nipped through a gap in the hedge and straight onto the cor­po­rate land that was alleged­ly pro­tect­ed by a hur­ried­ly obtained injunc­tion. From there, one could see the test plot in the dis­tance across corn fields with many expen­sive police 4X4s sur­round­ing it. Pro­test­ers then walked care­ful­ly along the head­lands so as not to be accused of dam­ag­ing the adjoin­ing (hope­ful­ly non GM) wheat and bar­ley crops and then set­tled down to pic­nic right next to the block and mesh fence that had only just been erect­ed around the pota­to test site. Many of the pic­nicers lunch box­es seemed to con­tain pota­to sal­ad! One very brave pro­test­er man­aged to leap over this fence when most of the yel­low jack­ets were dis­tract­ed but was imme­di­ate­ly arrest­ed. A lit­tle while lat­er a very polite man from Chubb secu­ri­ty came to announce that an injunc­tion had been obtained and that every­one was with­in the injunct­ed area and that he would be very great­ful if every­one were to leave soon. After con­fer­ring amongst them­selves, pro­test­ers realised that because they were so out­num­bered by both police and pri­vate secu­ri­ty guards and because a six foot fence stood between them and the much despised crop, the protest could only be a sym­bol­ic one and so they upped and left.

The pupose of this genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied crop tri­al is alleged­ly to eval­u­ate the resis­tance of a new GM pota­to vari­ety to late blight in the field. I real­ly can­not see why this exper­i­ment has to be done in the open coun­try­side rather than inside a closed lab­o­ra­to­ry. Blight needs par­tic­u­lar con­di­tions of tem­per­a­ture, humid­i­ty and air cir­cu­la­tion in order to strike. These con­di­tions would be easy to sim­u­late in a large cli­mat­i­cal­ly con­trolled green­house but out in a field, the cor­rect con­di­tions may not be achieved from one year to the next despite the fos­sil fuel cor­po­ra­tion’s best/worst attempts to change our cli­mate. Not only that but the grow­ing pota­toes were vis­i­bly in flower, there­fore pro­duc­ing GM pollen and I did indeed see at least two bee hives pre­sum­ably installed and main­tained by BASF about 300 metres away near the hedge. Since it would be eas­i­ly pos­si­ble to pinch out the GM pollen pro­duc­ing flow­ers on such a small plot (doing this actu­al­ly INCREASES pota­to yield by about 15%) and since the flow­ers had­n’t been removed, one has to con­clude that BASF delib­er­ate­ly want to spread GM pollen around Cam­bridgeshire as part of their open-air exper­i­ment. Pity any local hon­ey pro­duc­ers as they could lose their organ­ic sta­tus over this. I’m won­der­ing if BASF have any mon­i­tor­ing hives 3km away rather than just 300m as bees can eas­i­ly trav­el this dis­tance in search of flow­ers or maybe BASF don’t want to know such a fact?

Being a keen pota­to fanci­er and grow­er, I have a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in this blight issue. Pota­to late blight is a par­tic­u­lar­ly dev­as­tat­ing fun­gus that spreads faster than any oth­er plant dis­ease.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_blight
This is the same dis­ease that caused the famous 1845 Irish pota­to famine that claimed a mil­lion lives. (In fact it would be more accu­rate to say that the British gov­erne­ment caused the deaths by com­plete­ly ignor­ing the famine and suf­fer­ing that they knew was occur­ring.) Blight, being a fun­gus, thrives in warm damp still weath­er. Last year’s very wet ear­ly autumn weath­er caused my own pota­to crop to dra­mat­i­cal­ly suc­cumb to blight in just two days. In that short peri­od, the foliage changed from healthy green to a black putre­fy­ing slime and the only rem­e­dy at that stage is to attempt to remove every scrap of infect­ed mate­r­i­al from the soil, lift all the tubers from the ground and dry the intact ones as quick­ly as pos­si­ble before stor­ing them. It’s not over then — one has to fre­quent­ly check the stored pota­toes for months and pull out the con­sid­er­able num­ber that con­tin­ue to go putrid before the tuber blight spreads to the entire sack. As a rule, fun­gal dis­eases can only be con­trolled by spray­ing with quite strong chem­i­cals. The only per­mit­ted (just) organ­ic con­trol is Bor­deaux mix­ture — cop­per sul­phate and lime. This is only mod­er­ate­ly effec­tive — rather use­less under severe con­di­tions like last year as, since cop­per suphate is sol­u­ble, it has to be reap­plied after each heavy rain by which time, the dis­ease may have become unstop­pable. So you can see that inor­gan­ic pota­to grow­ing can require strong chem­i­cals and organ­ic grow­ing is real­ly quite prob­lem­at­ic. In these days of unsta­ble weath­er, my over­rid­ing cri­teri­um for choos­ing pota­to vari­eties to grow now is no longer flavour or out­ra­geous colour but blight resis­tance. I would tru­ly love a 100% blight resis­tant pota­to to grow myself. How­ev­er I can­not see myself trust­ing an injunc­tion wield­ing GM cor­po­ra­tion’s cre­ation any fur­ther than I could throw that entire cor­po­ra­tion uphill. As I see it their over­rid­ing inter­est is not to help strug­gling farm­ers or alle­vi­ate world famine. It is prof­it and the wish to mono­plise and dom­i­nate the pota­to seed mar­ket with just a very few expen­sive patent­ed-up-to-the-hilt vari­eties.

If you go to the super­mar­kets, you’ll see on dis­play just six or so vari­eties of pota­toes. In fact world­wide there are an amaz­ing 5000 dif­fer­ent vari­eties, 800 or so vari­eties in this coun­try and about 150 of these are eas­i­ly avail­able com­mer­cial seed vari­eties. The con­se­quences of any mar­ket dom­i­nat­ing GM vari­ety could cause the grad­ual extinc­tion of many irre­placa­ble her­itage vari­eties. Being bru­tal­ly hon­est, the few her­itage vari­eties that I’ve tried grow­ing myself have been too sus­cep­ti­ble to blight for me to con­tin­ue to grow them organ­i­cal­ly. How­ev­er tucked in amongst all those thou­sands of vari­eties there could be some almost for­got­ten about ones that have nat­u­ral­ly high resis­tance. Not only that but this huge repos­i­to­ry of vari­eties can be used in tra­di­tion­al selec­tive breed­ing pro­grams to pro­duce new non GM vari­eties that have much high­er resis­tance. This year I am try­ing Sár­po Mira, Sár­po Axona and Ver­i­ty which are all new vari­eties recent­ly cre­at­ed in just this way and that are claimed to have excep­tion­al resis­tance. So the point I am mak­ing is that there are clear and hope­ful­ly viable alter­na­tives to genet­ic manip­u­la­tion with­out the risks.

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GM pro­test­er court news

Two pro­test­ers were in court this morn­ing hav­ing been arrest­ed on Sun­day dur­ing protests at the site of the UK’s only GM tri­al — pota­toes.

Both were charged with Crim­i­nal Dam­age. One pled not guilty, and that tri­al will resume in 4 weeks. The oth­er pled guilty and was fined.

Ted­dy Bears Pic­nic — video/quicktime 31M

GM Victory! Hull down! One more pota’t’go! — Sunday July 1st

Fol­low­ing exten­sive local and nation­al resis­tance, BASF (the com­pa­ny tri­al­ing the GM pota­toes), announced last month that they would not be con­duct­ing a GM pota­to tri­al in York­shire this year!

Last month the gov­ern­ment approved the BASF appli­ca­tion for a GM tri­al in Hedon, East York­shire. Fol­low­ing the ruber stamp­ing by DEFRA, the com­pa­ny announced that it would not pro­ceed with the tri­al this year, but said they may do so in the future.

This means the BASF/NIAB site in Cam­bridge (plant­ed around the begin­ning of May) is now the only loca­tion in Britain where GM crops are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the coun­try­side…

One down, one to go — let’s keep Britain GM free!

It’s not too late to stop GM spuds. Join us for a walk to see the tri­al site and a protest pic­nic.

Spud u hateFol­low­ing exten­sive local and nation­al resis­tance, BASF (the com­pa­ny tri­al­ing the GM pota­toes), announced last month that they would not be con­duct­ing a GM pota­to tri­al in York­shire this year!

Last month the gov­ern­ment approved the BASF appli­ca­tion for a GM tri­al in Hedon, East York­shire. Fol­low­ing the ruber stamp­ing by DEFRA, the com­pa­ny announced that it would not pro­ceed with the tri­al this year, but said they may do so in the future.

This means the BASF/NIAB site in Cam­bridge (plant­ed around the begin­ning of May) is now the only loca­tion in Britain where GM crops are con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing the coun­try­side…

One down, one to go — let’s keep Britain GM free!

It’s not too late to stop GM spuds. Join us for a walk to see the tri­al site and a protest pic­nic.

Bring cos­tumes, fam­i­lies, footwear and cloth­ing for a coun­try stroll and your favourite pota­to-based dish. Start­ing from Gir­ton Parish Church, Gir­ton, Cam­bridgeshire.

12 Noon, Sun­day July 1st

See www.mutatoes.org for direc­tions, help with trans­port and more detailed infor­ma­tion on the cam­paign.

Back­ground

BASF announced on the 14th May that they would not go ahead with the Hedon tri­al this year. When the tri­als were orig­i­nal­ly announced in March 2007, bee­keep­ers expressed con­cerns to the bor­age farm­ers about the pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of bor­age hon­ey with GM pollen and point­ed to their indus­try’s guid­ance that required hives to be a min­i­mum of 6 miles from the near­est GM site.

It was report­ed that the own­er of the pro­posed GM site near Hull want­ed the bor­age farm­ers con­cerns had to be dealt with before he final­ly agreed to the tri­al going ahead. BAS­F’s u‑turn on going ahead with the tri­al in 2007 sug­gests that attempts to reas­sure bor­age farm­ers con­cerns were unsuc­cess­ful. How­ev­er, the statu­to­ry approval grant­ed to BASF is valid until 2011.

The case has wider impli­ca­tions for GM crops. Last year Defra’s con­sul­ta­tion on the coex­is­tence of GM, con­ven­tion­al and organ­ic crops did not include bee­keep­ers in the list of peo­ple who would be statu­to­ri­ly required to be informed by a farmer intend­ing to com­mer­cial­ly grow a GM crop.

Pete Riley of GM Freeze said: “The can­cel­la­tion of the Hedon GM pota­to site is warm­ly wel­comed — we could nev­er see the point of allow­ing this com­mer­cial devel­op­ment tri­al to go ahead when we already have a grow­ing num­ber of blight resis­tant pota­to vari­eties pro­duced by con­ven­tion­al plant breed­ing. Con­sumers don’t want GM pota­toes and the pota­to proces­sors have said they will not use them. We hope this is the end of GM tri­alling in Hedon and the rest of the UK.……The impact of the tri­als on hon­ey and bee­keep­ers has been cen­tral to the can­cel­la­tion. If any GM crops are ever approved for com­mer­cial grow­ing in the UK this type of prob­lem could become com­mon place. Defra have repeat­ed­ly tried to ignore the impact of GM crops on bee­keep­ers and the poten­tial eco­nom­ic impacts but at Hedon they have been stung. The eco­nom­ic and agri­cul­tur­al impor­tance of hon­ey bees can no longer by side­lined by Defra’s GM poli­cies. Min­is­ters need to learn the les­son of the deba­cle over the Hedon site and pro­tect beep­ers from GM con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the future”.
http://www.mutatoes.org