Category: Oil

Report back from Anti Shell actions in London — Gluaiseacht, RoR, anonymous

Glu­aiseacht mem­bers along with Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers, friends and British sup­port­ers took part in 3 dif­fer­ent actions over the week­end of St Patrick in Lon­don. Here is a sum­ma­ry of their sto­ry!

Return the Pipe to Shell 7
Return the Pipe to Shell 1
Return the Pipe to Shell 3
Glu­aiseacht mem­bers along with Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers, friends and British sup­port­ers took part in 3 dif­fer­ent actions over the week­end of St Patrick in Lon­don. Here is a sum­ma­ry of their sto­ry!
..
Hav­ing start­ed at Ennis in Coun­ty Clare at 11am on Fri­day the 14th pick­ing up peo­ple along the way a full coach load of bewil­dered peo­ple arrived on Ram­part street home of the The Ram­part Social Cen­ter. It is soon to be evict­ed so we felt lucky to be there.

Hav­ing found a place to set up our var­i­ous air beds and sleep­ing mats some put the head down for a few hours kip while most went out and about look­ing to do some site see­ing, watch the rug­by or catch up with friends or rela­tions in Lon­don town.

The rest of the Day was made up of cook­ing food the mass­es and hav­ing plan­ning meet­ings for the week­ends actions.

THE ACTIONS

Hav­ing assem­bled at the giv­en point on Sun­day morn­ing for our part in the Parade it was decid­ed to keep our ban­ners fold­ed for the first few min­utes until the parade got under­way as he had received warn­ing that organ­is­ers weren’t hap­py with pro­test­ers in their parade and may ask police to con­fis­cate polit­i­cal ban­ners.

After about 5 mins of walk­ing we unveiled the ban­ners and began singing songs and pass­ing out leaflets to the crowds. We were well received for the most part and the songs stream­ing out from our many mega­phones seemed to lift the crowd on what was a wet and cold lon­don day.

Just as the parade was near its end police did indeed try to take out ban­ners but we were too fast for them. The were quot­ing the new SOCPA laws which pre­vent any protest at all with­in a mile of any point around West­min­ster Par­lia­ment build­ing.

We had heard that Enda ken­ny and John Gorm­ley were to make speech­es at Ken Liv­ingston’s St Patrick­’s par­ty in Trafal­gar square lat­er so we head­ed on up there. As we arrived Mr Gorm­ley was mak­ing his speech. We were unable to get near to the stage so instead unveiled ours pipeline and ban­ners at the top end of the square and some mem­bers of our group spoke on the mega phone to the assem­bled crowd about why they were there.

Wet but sat­is­fied we made our way back home to the Ram­part.

The SHELL HQ

The fol­low­ing morn­ing we head­ed over to Water­loo home of Shell in Lon­don. The pipe was unwrapped again and pre­sent­ed at the Door of Shell by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the dif­fer­ent sec­tions with­in our group. John from Mayo protest­ing the coer­cion of the local com­mu­ni­ty, Bro Antho­ny from Lim­er­ick protest­ing the Rob­bery Irish nat­ur­al resources and Lau­ra from Italy protest­ing Shells record of crimes and against human­i­ty and the envi­ron­ment world wide. Despite calls for a rep­re­sen­ta­tive to receive the pipe om Shells behalf none were forth­com­ing. Then the par­ty start­ed and musi­cians and mobile sound sys­tem cranked out the tunes and the crowd danced Irish jigs out­side the build­ing. This helped to keep us warm and our spir­its up.

Watch RTE footage here http://www.rte.ie/news/2008/0317/corrib.html

The SHELL INVESTORS MEETING

This meet­ing was one for Shell to sell them­selves to poten­tial investors. We decid­ed to remind these investors that it would be unwise to receive stolen prop­er­ty or to become acces­sories to world­wide human and envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion. With this in mind we went off to The Lon­don Tow­er bridge hotel where the meet­ing was to take place. The group repeat­ed the ear­li­er per­for­mance of music and danc­ing while parad­ing the pipeline out side the hotel and around the assem­bled police. Hav­ing found the con­fer­ence room where the meet­ing was tak­ing place mem­bers of the group advised any poten­tial investors of the record of shell world­wide and asked police to arrest those inside for there mur­der­ous activ­i­ties.

With that we all piled onto the bus again to head for home exhaust­ed but exhil­a­rat­ed at the same time.

http://www.gluaiseacht.ie
http://www.corribsos.com/
http://www.mayogasinfo.com/faq.html

Return the Pipe to Shell 2
Return the Pipe to Shell 4
Return the Pipe to Shell 5
Return the Pipe to Shell 6
Return the Pipe to Shell 8

—

old street shell garage evening of 17th march

Mem­bers of Rhythms of Resis­tance Sam­ba band vis­it­ed Shel­l’s old street petrol sta­tion around 8pm on the evening of 17th March to spread infor­ma­tion about the pipeline to passers by and dri­vers vis­it­ing the petrol sta­tion.
We decid­ed not to actu­al­ly block the entrance/exit but instead to play on the fore­court (love­ly accoustics!).
On arrival we noticed a tanker on the fore­court fill­ing up the pumps. As he atemped to leave we decid­ed to sand in front of his lor­ry and stop him leav­ing, and gave him a fly­er explain­ing why we were present.
Sev­er­al times the irate dri­ver moved his vehi­cle for­ward attaempt­ing to squash/scare those peo­ple stand­ing in front of the lor­ry.
Even­tu­al­ly when he failed in run­ning us over he decid­ed to make a phone call instead,(we pre­sumed to the police), and at this point we moved away from in front of the lor­ry but he just con­tin­ued to sit there.
At this point we decid­ed to leave before the police arrived and return once he had left and the police had been and gone.

On our return some 20 minu­ites lat­er we again went onto the fore­court and com­menced drum­ming, but this time two police appeared with­in some minu­ites.
We were asked to move to the pave­ment and com­plied, all the time drum­ming.
Soon the police returned from their car again and asked us if we’d promise to not go back onto the fore­court so they could leave and deal with 5 rob­beries!?
We said yes, of course.
So they left.
We con­tin­ued for a while longer, wit­ness­ing a ‘biodiesel’ taxi enter the fore­court and fill up with reg­u­lar diesel.
On talk­ing to the dri­ver he told me ‘you got­ta put diesel in it and there’s nowhere to buy biodiesel’ and when i said ‘so the fact it says on the side “run on biodiesel” is a lie then?’ he replied “yes’.

Shell Sells Sui­cide
Some words:

there’s a bird dressed in black
there’s a world near­ly cracked
there is me, there is you
what the hell shall we do?

it’s not hard to explain
all the ways we can gain
from a world with­out oil
no more spills, no more spoils

Shell smells sweet gas off the seashore in Mayo
they think it’s theirs just ‘cos the gov­ern­ment says so
but they for­got about the will of the peo­ple
and the peo­ple of Mayo say ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no -
it’s Shell that’s got to go!’

Shell sells sui­cide on the fore­court
Shell sells sui­cide
Shell sells sui­cide with such fore­thought
or
Shell smells sweet gas over in Ross­port
or
Shell smells sweet oil in Port Har­court
Shells sells eco­cide

Shell buys South Bank silence com­plete­ly
Shell sells wild lies
Shell kills wildlife and still smiles so sweet­ly
Shell kills wildlife (and some­where the future qui­et­ly dies…or is reborn?)

here’s a bird dressed in black
there’s a world near­ly cracked
there is me, there is you
what the hell shall we do?
— can we start anew?
— say farewell to Shell
— say no to oil etc.

—
D-locked petrol pumps
From an anony­mous tipoff call very ear­ly in the morn­ing two Shell ser­vice sta­tions were found to have been D‑locked and shut down for sev­er­al hours on the morn­ing of Mon­day 17 March 2008.

To coin­cide with the Shell Day of Action and vis­it­ing mem­bers of the Shell To Sea cam­paign from Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land, although no con­nec­tion apart from sol­i­dar­i­ty, some activists took it upon them­selves to shut down two of Shel­l’s garages.

The ser­vice sta­tions remained closed for sev­er­al hours as frus­trat­ed staff used hack saws to remove the D‑locks clamped around petrol pumps.

The Day of Action also saw Irish pro­tes­tors deliv­er 20 metre pipeline to Shell HQ on South­bank Lon­don, and gave a live­ly protest.

Shell recent­ly declared record prof­its for the sec­ond year run­ning, the sec­ond time the cor­po­ra­tion has bro­ken all UK records for prof­it made by a British com­pa­ny, this year declar­ing £13.9 bil­lion.

But the dam­age from this com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to span the globe from Coun­ty Mayo in Ire­land, where the unfin­ished gas refin­ery con­struc­tion has pol­lut­ed the local water sup­ply with high lev­els of alu­mini­um, to the con­tin­u­ing eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion of the Niger Delta, where death and dis­ease from pol­lu­tion and pipeline acci­dents has become a week­ly occur­ance.

Direct Action and Rally at Chevron Richmond Refinery, USA

On Sat­ur­day March 15th, activists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers protest­ed the war in Iraq, envi­ron­men­tal racism and glob­al warm­ing by blockad­ing the Chevron oil refin­ery in Rich­mond, CA.

Chevron refinery lock-on barrel blockadeOn Sat­ur­day March 15th, activists and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers protest­ed the war in Iraq, envi­ron­men­tal racism and glob­al warm­ing by blockad­ing the Chevron oil refin­ery in Rich­mond, CA. A coali­tion which includes health, envi­ron­men­tal and anti-war orga­niz­ers had called for peo­ple to shut down the Chevron refin­ery for the day in sup­port of com­mu­ni­ty efforts to stop Chevron from expand­ing its Rich­mond refin­ery. An expan­sion will increase pol­lu­tion and cause asth­ma, can­cer and ris­ing death rates in sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

Chevron was shut down all day in antic­i­pa­tion of the protest. Pro­test­ers marched to one of the main gates of the refin­ery and peo­ple laid out lock down tubes and bar­rels and up to 50 peo­ple locked them­selves down. Bands played, and there was street the­ater and food. The police had the entrance blocked with bar­ri­cades. After sev­er­al hours, the lock­down was end­ed. Pro­test­ers held a cir­cle gath­er­ing then quick­ly moved the bar­ri­cades and went toward Chevron. Police were star­tled but formed a line and peo­ple sat down. Oth­er peo­ple took down the rest of the bar­ri­cade and put it out in the inter­sec­tion to keep the street closed. Peo­ple sat in front of the police for sev­er­al more hours. Even­tu­al­ly the police arrest­ed 25 peo­ple. Protest orga­niz­ers say that Chevron is dri­ving the war and occu­pa­tion in Iraq, refin­ing over a mil­lion bar­rels of stolen Iraqi oil in Rich­mond a month, and active­ly lob­by­ing for the pri­va­ti­za­tion of Iraq’s oil fields.
Pho­tos: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | Video: 1 | 2 | Audio

Chevron has a long and high­ly prof­itable his­to­ry with Iraq—one it wants to see sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand­ed. Most recent­ly, Chevron has teamed-up with Total to bid on Iraq’s fourth largest oil field, the Majnoon field. Chevron hopes to pro­duce oil in the field under the terms of the Iraq Oil Law. It has con­tin­ued reg­u­lar nego­ti­a­tions with Iraq’s lead­ing gov­ern­ment offi­cials in pur­suit of the best con­tract deals pos­si­ble, while the Bush admin­is­tra­tion pres­sures the Iraqis to pass the Iraq Oil Law.

In Rich­mond, a city with a pop­u­la­tion of about 100,000, the vast major­i­ty of whom are low-income peo­ple of col­or, 17,000 peo­ple live with­in just three miles of the Chevron refin­ery, includ­ing in two pub­lic hous­ing projects. Built in 1902, the Chevron Rich­mond Refin­ery is one of the old­est and largest refiner­ies oper­at­ing in the U.S. To refine its capac­i­ty of 87.6 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil per year—240,000 bar­rels a day—the refin­ery pro­duces over two mil­lion pounds of cli­mate-poi­son­ing, smog-form­ing and tox­ic air and water pol­lu­tants each year.

Bristol Activists to join international day of action against Shell on St Patrick’s Day

Pro­test­ers will be pick­et­ing Shell garages in Bris­tol on St Patrick­’s Day. The actions are part of an inter­na­tion­al day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with res­i­dents of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are fight­ing the oil com­pa­ny’s plan to build a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing onshore oil refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Pro­test­ers will be pick­et­ing Shell garages in Bris­tol on St Patrick­’s Day. The actions are part of an inter­na­tion­al day of action in sol­i­dar­i­ty with res­i­dents of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land who are fight­ing the oil com­pa­ny’s plan to build a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing onshore oil refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

The pick­ets are tak­ing place on Mon­day 17th March, at the York Road Shell garage in Bed­min­is­ter, from 7.30am until 9.30am and the Muller Road Shell garage, junc­tion 2, of the M32, from 5pm until 7pm to coin­cide with rush hour. Please do come along. Musi­cians who play Irish music and Irish dancers will be par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come. If you can­not dance brief lessons will be avail­able at the Muller Road Shell on the day.

For more infor­ma­tion text Ris­ing Tide on 07917383517

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This year´s St Paddy´s day (Ireland’s nation­al day), the 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step. Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The Lon­don shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1) right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project to build this poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate and the dev­as­ta­tion shell projects have caused around the world.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

Earth First! summer gathering date change & contact details

The dates of the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing have been changed, to work bet­ter with oth­er events hap­pen­ing over the sum­mer such as the Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp and the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

The new dates are Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008.

This should give us all the space to recov­er & reflect, and to plot & plan onwards and upwards.

Rabbit with spanner & Earth First!The dates of the EF! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing have been changed, to work bet­ter with oth­er events hap­pen­ing over the sum­mer such as the Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp and the Camp for Cli­mate Action.

The new dates are Wednes­day 27th August to Mon­day 1st Sep­tem­ber 2008.

This should give us all the space to recov­er & reflect, and to plot & plan onwards and upwards.

The new con­tact details for the EF!SG col­lec­tive is summergathering@earthfirst.org.uk

You can down­load pub­lic­i­ty — 2 posters & leaflet all in one: (front & back)

Watch this space for more info near­er the time.

Shell Shuts Up in Nottingham

7.03.2008

7.03.2008
Stu­dent activists raised issues such as cor­po­rate cor­rup­tion and cli­mate change at a Shell-run event. Shell employ­ees only com­ment­ed “I do not have an opin­ion on this sub­ject” when asked how they respond to these polem­i­cal mat­ters.

Leaflet used on the night

A huge­ly suc­cess­ful disruption/complete dom­i­na­tion of the Shell “Recruit­ment Event” took place last night.

A group of sev­en Not­ting­ham stu­dent activists utilised the even­t’s exer­cise of iden­ti­fy­ing “risks” Shell might face when drilling for oil of the coast of a West African island to raise aware­ness amongst poten­tial Shell grad­u­ate employ­ees and send a mes­sage to Shell that they are not wel­come in Not­ting­ham. The activists employed vary­ing tac­tics with some pre­fer­ring to employ a high­ly effec­tive “Yes Men” style, some sport­ing anti-shell cloth­ing, oth­ers dis­trib­ut­ing leaflets about the cor­po­ra­tion and oth­ers still opt­ing for out­right, heat­ed debates with (rather dis­heart­ened and dispir­it­ed) Shell employ­ees. Despite the fact that stu­dents tack­led Shell dif­fer­ent­ly, an impres­sive sense of uni­ty was achieved as four out of the five groups’ pre­sen­ta­tions end­ed with harsh crit­i­cism of the cor­po­ra­tion. Such crit­i­cism includ­ed a con­dem­na­tion of Shell’s pre­vi­ous bru­tal, cor­rupt, mur­der­ous and pol­lut­ing his­to­ry in West Africa, the corporation’s impli­ca­tion in peak oil, cli­mate change and the neces­si­ty of the rejec­tion of the glob­al eco­nom­ic sys­tem which has led to cli­mate change and absolute pover­ty in the first place. Dur­ing the ques­tion and answer sec­tion at the end of the pre­sen­ta­tions the need for real solu­tions to the cli­mate change chal­lenges was raised — not “green wash”, not “Cor­po­rate Respon­si­bil­i­ty” and not bio fuels. Despite there being a bio-fuels “expert” from Shell present, whilst all of these issues were being raised by the stu­dents the corporation’s employ­ees remained strange­ly qui­et.

Along with the envi­ron­men­tal dis­cus­sions, the stu­dent activists high­light­ed the fact that cor­po­ra­tions like Shell are con­tent to fund vio­lent dic­ta­tor­ships and pri­vate armies (e.g MoPol in the case of Nige­ria) to repress local oppo­si­tion to their exploita­tion of nat­ur­al resources. The response from the major­i­ty of stu­dents attend­ing the cor­po­rate event was one of inter­est, as they did not know of Shell’s sin­is­ter past, whilst Shell employ­ees almost uni­ver­sal­ly denied knowl­edge of the corporation’s links to the hang­ing of inno­cent envi­ron­men­tal activists in the Niger Delta.

Before leav­ing, the activists made it clear that a bet­ter world is pos­si­ble cit­ing the envi­ron­men­tal­ist/an­ti-glob­al­i­sa­tion, non-hier­ar­chi­cal, grass-roots move­ments spring­ing up all around the world that “will con­tin­ue to grow until cor­po­ra­tions like Shell do not exist”.

Numer­ous oth­er harsh threats to the corporation’s mul­ti-bil­lion pound exis­tence were met with silence from the cor­po­rate employ­ees. Sur­pris­ing as it may seem, Shell con­sis­tent­ly reject­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to put a cor­po­rate spin on the charges made against them – even when direct­ly asked to do so.

Fossil Fools Day — 1 Month to Go!

Whether you’ve been plot­ting for months or have just been inspired, there’s plen­ty of time left to plan your action. Read on for loads of resources and sup­port…

FFD frontWhether you’ve been plot­ting for months or have just been inspired, there’s plen­ty of time left to plan your action. Read on for loads of resources and sup­port…

With one month to go until April 1st, actions are being plot­ted up and down the coun­try and around the world, rang­ing from street the­atre and town cen­tre demon­stra­tions to high pro­file direct actions tar­get­ing indus­try oper­a­tions and head­quar­ters. Net­works from Earth First! to Peo­ple and Plan­et have got on board in help­ing to spread the word. Nation­al press have been in touch and are plan­ning to cov­er the day. Peo­ple are email­ing from around the coun­try ask­ing for more info on plan­ning their prank, and look­ing for local actions to get involved in.

We are in the mid­dle of an unstop­pable rise of cre­ative, rad­i­cal, nec­es­sary direct action against cli­mate change… be part of it, on Fos­sil Fools Day and beyond.

Whether you’ve been plot­ting for months or have just been inspired, there’s plen­ty of time left to plan your action. Read on for loads of resources and sup­port… and what­ev­er you do, make sure to call or email us on the day so we can add your action to our end-of-day round up, and show the world what grass­roots action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try can achieve.

Hap­py Fos­sil Fools Day every­one!

CONTACTS
www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday
info@risingtide.org.uk
0796 191 7535

RESOURCES AND SUPPORT

Resources avail­able at www.risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday (get in touch if you’d like any­thing mailed to you in hard copy):
‑actions book­let with 15 ideas for action against the fos­sil fuel indus­try, includ­ing plan­ning tips, tar­get loca­tions, exam­ples of suc­cess­ful actions and more
‑posters, leaflets and graph­ics to make your own mate­ri­als
‑com­ing soon: a gener­ic leaflet you can adapt to hand out on the day and a Q&A sheet for answer­ing media ques­tions

Want to find an action to get involved in?
If you’re look­ing to get involved where you live, get in touch and we may be able to link you up with some­thing in your local area… or give you advice on get­ting your own action off the ground… or put you in touch with a local group for future actions!

Pub­lic­i­ty
If you’re plan­ning a pub­licly announced action, let us know ASAP and we can help spread the word.

Media
We’ll be send­ing out a nation­al press release and may be able to direct jour­nal­ists to you on the day if you wish, so any info you can let us know in advance will be real­ly help­ful – and/or a phone num­ber to con­tact you on the day if that’s pos­si­ble. And call or email us as soon as your action’s hap­pened so we can include it in the end-of-day actions round-up, which we’ll be press releas­ing as well. Get in touch if you’d like help writ­ing and/or send­ing your own press release — there’s a great guide here:
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/toolkit/press_and_media/guides_for_using_the_mainstream_media/short_guide_to_the_media.pdf

And if your action’s all sort­ed and you just can’t get enough of FFD… Help spread the word!
• Send an email or let­ter to every­one who might be inter­est­ed, or who sup­ports your group, let­ting them know about Fos­sil Fools Day and where to find out more.
• Post a Fos­sil Fools Day link or event descrip­tion on your web­site, or to any oth­er lists, blogs or web­sites you can think of.
• Dis­trib­ute Fos­sil Fools Day leaflets and put up posters wher­ev­er you can — mailed to your local groups, in your com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, office, pubs, book­shops, cafes, library, wher­ev­er you can think of. Just let us know how many you need and we’ll send them out to you!

And one last time… the call-out:

FOSSIL FOOLS DAY, April 1st 2008
Pull a prank that packs a punch.

Roll up, roll up! The cli­mate cir­cus is in town. Cli­mate change threat­ens our very sur­vival, but the fools at the head of the fos­sil fuel empire con­tin­ue to plun­der the earth, with gov­ern­ments the will­ing court jesters at their side.

They would have us believe that we can escape cli­mate change with tech­no-fix­es, mar­ket mech­a­nisms and off­set schemes – all tech­no­crat­ic acro­bat­ics that dis­tract us from the truth: the only real solu­tion to cli­mate change is to keep fos­sil fuels in the ground.

For over a cen­tu­ry the fos­sil fuel indus­try has been fool­ing with our lives. From extrac­tion to com­bus­tion they have poi­soned our air, pol­lut­ed our water and ruined our cli­mate. On April 1st, 2008, we’re going to turn the tables and show them who the real fools are.

Find a local fos­sil fool – the coal-min­ing clown, the off­set con­tor­tion­ist, the avi­a­tor trip­ping on the high wire, the super­mar­ket food mile freak show, the oily strong man, or any oth­er fool that deserves your atten­tion – and take direct action to end the fos­sil fuel empire.

On Fos­sil Fools Day, bring the spir­it of car­ni­val and mis­chief to the fight for cli­mate jus­tice.

PS. Don’t for­get, Fos­sil Fools Day kicks off a sea­son of action…
3 MONTHS, 3 DAYS OF ACTION
April 1st: Fos­sil Fuels
May 1st: False Cap­i­tal­ist Solu­tions
June 3rd: Food and Cli­mate Change
www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk
www.daysofclimateaction.org.uk

and…
August 4–11: Camp for Cli­mate Action 2008
www.climatecamp.org.uk

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 77, MARCH 2008

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS – INT’L, 1.5.08

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS – INT’L, 1.5.08
3) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — INTERNATIONAL, 3.6.08
4) “PEOPLE ARE STILL THE SAME” — BRECON, 8.3.08
5) PADDY’S DAY OF ACTION AGAINST SHELL — IRELAND AND BEYOND, 17.3.08
6) BIKES NOT BOMBS TOUR — LONDON TO ALDERMASTON, 22–24.3.08
7) TERMINAL 5 FLASHMOB — HEATHROW, 27.3.08
8) CLIMATE BILL PUBLIC MEETING — LONDON, 22.4.08
9) COIN WORKSHOPS — NATIONAL, MARCH-APRIL 2008
10) NATIONAL CLIMATE FORUM — LONDON, 14–15.6.08
11) EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING — GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 12–26.7.08
12) ENVIRONMENT CAMPAIGNER AWARD – 2008
13) LILI COURSES IN APRIL — BUCKS/LONDON/SHEFFIELD

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE EMERGENCY AT HEATHROW, THEN WESTMINSTER — 25.2.08 / 27.2.08
2) RATCLIFFE ACTION VERDICT — NOTTINGHAM, 25.2.08
3) BP AMERICA, EXXON MOBIL AND CO. IN THE DOCK — ALASKA, 27.2.08
4) HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL! ACTIONS — UK AND NETHERLANDS, 23.2.08
5) EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES POWER PLANT CONSTRUCTION — FLORIDA, 18.2.08
6) RTNA/EARTHFIRST! PIPELINE ACTION — PORTLAND, U.S. 23.1.08
7) SABOTAGE AT GLENSANDA — YORKSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2008
8) PLANKTOS DUMPING SCHEME DEFEATED BY ANTI-WHALERS — MADEIRA, 14.2.08
9) COMMUNITY HALTS SHELL — IRELAND, 12.2.08
10) CRITICAL MASS HERO CLEARED — BRISTOL, 7.2.08
11) KLIMAX SURGE ON! — SWEDEN, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2008
12) TARA CAMPAIGN UPDATE — FEBRUARY 2008
13) 15 ACTIONS TO TOPPLE THE FOSSIL FUEL EMPIRE — FEBRUARY 2008
14) RISING TIDE POP-ED RESOURCE PACK — FEBRUARY 2008
15) “RISING TO THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE” BOOKLET — FEBRUARY 2008
16) “BURNING CAPITAL” — FEBRUARY 2008
17) SPIRIT OF FREEDOM — FEBRUARY 2008
18) CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS CENTRE — FEBRUARY UPDATE 2008
19) “THE AGE OF STUPID” — FEBRUARY 2008
20) AIRPORT WATCH BULLETIN — FEBRUARY 2008
21) CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE — WEBSITE 2008

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) FOSSIL FOOLS DAY — INTERNATIONAL, 1.4.08
Roll up, roll up…the cir­cus is com­ing to town, and it’s going to be big!
For over a cen­tu­ry the fos­sil fuel indus­try has been fool­ing with our lives. From extrac­tion to com­bus­tion they have poi­soned our air, pol­lut­ed
our water and ruined our cli­mate. On April 1st, we’re going to turn the
tables and show them who the real fools are. Ris­ing Tide’s call has been
backed by Net­work for Cli­mate Action, Glob­al Exchange and Rain­for­est
Action Net­work. There are actions planned across the coun­try and around
the world — let us know what you get up to! (Or tell us in advance if you
can and we’ll help spread the word, get media atten­tion, etc.) Con­tact
local groups or just do it your­self. Show the fos­sil fool clowns what you
think of their freak­show — It’s time to Pull a Prank that Packs a Punch!
Resources and ideas are avail­able from;
http://risingtide.org.uk/fossilfoolsday/resources
http://www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk/
Also see; http://www.fossilfoolsday.org/
and; http://risingtide.org.uk/node/241
Con­tact no: 07961 917 535

2) MAYDAY! MAYDAY! INVASION OF THE CLIMATE SNATCHERS — INTERNATIONAL, 1.5.08
From bio­fu­els to nuclear pow­er, car­bon-trad­ing to hydro­gen fuel cells,
dump­ing urine in the ocean to car­bon cap­ture — every­where cor­po­ra­tions are
seek­ing the elu­sive elixir which allows them to con­tin­ue with busi­ness as
usu­al. All these tech­nolo­gies are a dis­trac­tion from the real solu­tions -
a mas­sive reduc­tion in our con­sump­tion and far-reach­ing social change. On
May 1st, Inter­na­tion­al Work­ers Day, we will chal­lenge these false
solu­tions to cli­mate chaos.
http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk

3) CLIMATE ACTION WITH A BITE! — INTERNATIONAL, 3.6.08
Cli­mate action starts on your din­ner plate, in the super­mar­ket, at the
food pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres, on the farm, in your allot­ment
or your back yard. The foods we eat are respon­si­ble for about a third of
our green­house emis­sions. It’s time for us to switch to plant-based,
organ­ic, sea­son­al and local­ly pro­duced food. Whether you’re into local
food, per­ma­cul­ture, ani­mal rights, allot­ments, human­i­tar­i­an issues, food
pol­i­tics or trans­port cam­paign­ing, make the links and take action to
high­light the role of the food indus­try in cli­mate chaos.
http://networkforclimateaction.org.uk

4) “PEOPLE ARE STILL THE SAME” — BRECON, 8.3.08
A one-day event show­cas­ing art­works cre­at­ed in response to inter­views,
dia­logues and doc­u­men­ta­tion of the con­struc­tion of the South Wales gas
pipeline.
From 3pm till dusk: Cur­rent State Dystopia — a video pro­jec­tion in the
tun­nel under­neath the A40 road and: Books — a sound and slide instal­la­tion
in Din­gle Wood. 6pm: Going Home — pro­jec­tion and music in Pen­pont Church.
RSVP morag@cooptel.net or tele­phone 01874 636269 www.penpont.com

5) PADDY’S DAY OF ACTION AGAINST SHELL — IRELAND AND BEYOND, 17.3.08
This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an
Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple
of Ross­port. Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show
their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on
Shell´s front door step.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20124
http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress

6) BIKES NOT BOMBS TOUR — LONDON TO ALDERMASTON, 22–24.3.08
Bikes not bombs are plan­ning a bicy­col­o­gy bike tour from Lon­don to
Alder­mas­ton Atom­ic Weapons Estab­lish­ment to mark the 50th anniver­sary of
the Alder­mas­ton Peace March. The ride is expect­ed to take 3 days
(22nd-24th March). More than 5000 peo­ple are expect­ed to attend the
“Sur­round The Base” event at Alder­mas­ton on the 24th. If you are
inter­est­ed please email; info@bikesnotbombs.org.uk
Also see www.cnduk.org/aldermaston

7) TERMINAL 5 FLASHMOB — HEATHROW, 27.3.08
Be at T5 Inter­na­tion­al Arrivals at 11am to put on (or strip to reveal)
your bright­ly coloured “Stop Air­port Expan­sion” t‑shirt: a vis­i­ble
pres­ence of pub­lic oppo­si­tion to the mad­ness of air­port expan­sion. Wan­der
round for a bit, have a cof­fee, leave when you like. Wear­ing a t‑shirt is
not (yet) a crime!
Order your free T‑shirt today: stopairportexpansion@gmail.com or 0845 458
2564.
The Government/BAA see the open­ing day of Ter­mi­nal Five (the biggest
ter­mi­nal ever built in the UK, and the sub­ject of the longest Pub­lic
Inquiry in British his­to­ry) as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to put the case for fur­ther
air­port expan­sion. Join the flash mob to high­light the real prob­lems that
air­port expan­sion caus­es: cli­mate change, noise, air pol­lu­tion and
com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion.
http://www.t5flashmob.com/

8) CLIMATE BILL PUBLIC MEETING — LONDON, 22.4.08
Friends Meet­ing House, Euston, Lon­don, 7.30pm. A chance to attend a pub­lic
meet­ing with Hilary Benn MP (Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary) and Peter Ainsworth
(Shad­ow Envi­ron­ment Sec­re­tary) and join the calls for a strong cli­mate
change law.
More info: howard.whitehead@foe.co.uk

9) COIN WORKSHOPS — NATIONAL, MARCH-APRIL 2008
(a) Cli­mate Change Con­densed will be hap­pen­ing in Chel­tenham on the 6th
March.
(b) Cli­mate Action Groups match­mak­er evening, Tue 11th March 4:30 -
7:30pm, The Envi­ron­ment Coun­cil, Lon­don. Any­one who has attend­ed any of
the COIN/TEC series of train­ings can attend this for free.
© Do you work for the NHS? COIN is offer­ing a tai­lored Cli­mate Change
Speak­er Train­ing in Lon­don on March 14th. See;
www.healthandsustainability.net
(d) Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Cli­mate Change, a one-day work­shop, in part­ner­ship with
Vale
Roy­al Bor­ough Coun­cil on Fri­day, April 11th.
Fur­ther train­ings com­ing soon in Birm­ing­ham, Man­ches­ter and Scot­land.
Would you like COIN to run train­ings in your local area? — give Mim a call
on 01865 727911 or email mim@coinet.org.uk
See the COIN web­site for details on all the above; www.coinet.org.uk

10) NATIONAL CLIMATE FORUM — LONDON, 14–15.6.08
This event offers a wide range of work­shops and sem­i­nars all deal­ing with
dif­fer­ent aspects of the cli­mate change cri­sis, prob­a­ble solu­tions and
future devel­op­ments in nation­al and inter­na­tion­al cli­mate poli­cies. Venue;
South Cam­den Com­mu­ni­ty School, Lon­don. Fol­low the link below to look at
the pro­gram and speak­ers from last year cli­mate con­fer­ence.
http://www.campaigncc.org/conference.shtml

11) EARTH ACTIVIST TRAINING — GLOUCESTERSHIRE, 12–26.7.08
A per­ma­cul­ture design course and more for activists! Learn the skills to
trans­form a piece of land, a com­mu­ni­ty, and our polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic
sys­tems.
COSTS: (Includ­ing tuition, two weeks accom­mo­da­tion and all meals) £150 -
£500 slid­ing scale accord­ing to income. If you are inter­est­ed in tak­ing
part in the course, down­load an appli­ca­tion form from:
http://www.earthactivisttraining.org/
Or write to: Earth Activist Train­ing, c/o 59 Chelsea Park, Bris­tol, BS5 6AH.

12) ENVIRONMENT CAMPAIGNER AWARD
The Envi­ron­ment Awards (organ­ised by the Sheila McK­ech­nie Foun­da­tion) are
an oppor­tu­ni­ty for grass­roots cam­paign­ers to receive a bespoke pro­gramme
of sup­port and skills devel­op­ment designed to help them take their
cam­paign to the next lev­el. See www.sheilamckechnie.org.uk for details of
how to apply.

13) LILI COURSES IN APRIL — BUCKS/LONDON/SHEFFIELD
Low-Impact Liv­ing Ini­tia­tive: (01296) 714184 www.lowimpact.org

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) CLIMATE EMERGENCY AT HEATHROW, AND THEN WESTMINSTER — 25.2.08 / 27.2.08
On the 27th, cam­paign­ers opposed to Heathrow expan­sion scaled the roof of
the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and hung protest ban­ners from the build­ing. The
pro­test­ers also made paper aero­planes out of con­fi­den­tial White­hall
doc­u­ments and flew them into the MPs’ car park below! The doc­u­ments –
obtained under the Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act — prove that air­port
oper­a­tor BAA wrote parts of the con­sul­ta­tion doc­u­ment and that the
gov­ern­ment has already decid­ed to build a 3rd run­way and 6th ter­mi­nal at
the world’s biggest inter­na­tion­al air­port.
http://www.planestupid.com/?q=content/plane-stupid-scales-parliament
Two days ear­li­er Green­peace cam­paign­ers had climbed on to one of
Heathrow’s short-haul flights and cov­ered the tail­fin of the plane with a
huge protest ban­ner that read “CLIMATE EMERGENCY – NO 3rd RUNWAY”.
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/climate-campaigners-bring-peaceful-protest-to-heathrow-20080225
Also on the 25th, the Heathrow end-of-con­sul­ta­tion ral­ly at West­min­ster
was a packed-out suc­cess, with thou­sands of res­i­dents, politi­cians and
envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers pledg­ing to resist plans to extend Heathrow -
http://www.airportwatch.org.uk/
The dis­tri­b­u­tion of 50,000 leaflets and the actions of anar­chist art troop
Weird Load helped make the ral­ly such a suc­cess:
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20050

2) RATCLIFFE ACTION VERDICT — NOTTINGHAM, 25.2.08
Fol­low­ing their attempts to halt oper­a­tions and thus dimin­ish CO2
emis­sions at the Rat­cliffe-on-Soar pow­er sta­tion last April, 10 activists
were recent­ly back in court. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the defen­dants’ defence of
envi­ron­men­tal neces­si­ty was reject­ed and they were found guilty. The judge
had ear­li­er said that he wished to com­pli­ment all the defen­dants on the
pre­sen­ta­tion of their case.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392323.html

3) BP AMERICA, EXXON MOBIL AND CO. IN THE DOCK — ALASKA, 27.2.08
Mean­while, in Alas­ka, lawyers for the native coastal vil­lage of Kivali­na
have filed a suit argu­ing that 5 oil com­pa­nies, 14 elec­tric util­i­ties and
the coun­try’s largest coal com­pa­ny were respon­si­ble for the relo­ca­tion of
vil­lagers because of flood­ing caused by the chang­ing Arc­tic cli­mate.
“There has been a long cam­paign by pow­er, coal and oil com­pa­nies to
mis­lead the pub­lic about the sci­ence of glob­al warm­ing,” the suit says.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/us/27alaska.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Flooded+Village+Files+Suit%2C+Citing+Corporate+Link+to+Climate+Change+&st=nyt&oref=slogin

4) HANDS OFF IRAQI OIL! ACTIONS — UK AND NETHERLANDS, 23.2.08
In sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Iraqi peo­ples’ strug­gle against the plun­der of
their oil reserves, there were actions in Birm­ing­ham, Lon­don, Liv­er­pool,
Wrex­ham, Coven­try and Ams­ter­dam.
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392315.html

5) EARTH FIRST! BLOCKADES POWER PLANT CONSTRUCTION — FLORIDA, 18.2.08
Dozens of con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from Palm Beach Coun­ty and across
the States put their bod­ies on the line to halt con­struc­tion of a mas­sive
gas-fired pow­er plant. A dozen activists locked them­selves togeth­er
through met­al pipes as 200 sup­port­ers ral­lied around them. The block­ade
stopped work on the con­struc­tion site for six hours before a total of 27
peo­ple were arrest­ed.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/02/19/blockade-shuts-down-south-florida-power-plant-construction-27-arrested/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20038

6) RTNA/EARTHFIRST! PIPELINE ACTION — PORTLAND, U.S. 23.1.08
The above block­ade fol­lowed anoth­er com­bined action where Cas­ca­dia Ris­ing
Tide joined forces with Stump­town Earth First! to hold an action and ral­ly
at the Port­land office of NW Nat­ur­al in protest at their involve­ment in
Liq­ue­fied Nat­ur­al Gas pipelines, which threat­en to clear-cut strips of
for­est through­out Ore­gon for new fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture. Activists
piled trees around the office entrance and hung a large ban­ner which read
— “There’s noth­ing Green about Clear-cuts, No new pipelines”.
http://www.risingtidenorthamerica.org/wordpress/2008/01/23/cascadia-rt-organizes-anti-lng-action-at-nw-natural/

7) SABOTAGE AT GLENSANDA — YORKSHIRE, FEBRUARY 2008
An aggre­gates pro­cess­ing plant on the edge of the York­shire Dales Nation­al
Park has been sab­o­taged. 20% of the stone extract­ed will go to major road
net­work con­struc­tion across Europe. The plant in York­shire was entered and
vehi­cles, includ­ing all bull­doz­ers, had holes drilled in vital parts of
their engines and their tires. Both con­trol rooms were bro­ken into and all
com­put­ers and instru­ment pan­els were smashed. Keys to all build­ings and
machin­ery were removed from the site. The mes­sage “Stop Glen­san­da” was
left.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20043

8) PLANKTOS DUMPING SCHEME DEFEATED BY ANTI-WHALERS — MADEIRA, 14.2.08
Plank­tos, the Cal­i­for­nia com­pa­ny try­ing to turn a prof­it by fer­til­iz­ing
the ocean with iron dust, has pulled the plug on planned field tests. On
the com­pa­ny’s web-site, a sim­ple notice blamed the shut­down on a “high­ly
effec­tive dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign waged by anti-off­set cru­saders.” In
Novem­ber 2007, the anti-whal­ing ship Sea Shep­herd con­front­ed the Plank­tos
ves­sel and forced it to move onto Madeira. And there it stayed until its
recall last month.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19989

9) COMMUNITY HALTS SHELL — IRELAND, 12.2.08
The Erris com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ues to pro­tect the land — sur­vey work was
stopped and trucks were blocked. Local peo­ple pre­vent­ed Shell from ille­gal
work for 4 hours until Gar­dai forced through work­ers, injur­ing pro­test­ers.
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1686
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19977

10) CRITICAL MASS HERO CLEARED — BRISTOL, 7.2.08
In May last year, some­one stood in the road and tried to stop a car that
had hit a Crit­i­cal Mass cyclist, from dri­ving away. For that he was
arrest­ed for obstruct­ing the high­way, thrown to the floor by his neck
whilst hand­cuffed, and then — sur­prise sur­prise — also arrest­ed for
assault­ing a police offi­cer.
After 9 months of ner­vous wait­ing, he was final­ly cleared of all charges,
as Bris­tol Mag­is­trates Court accept­ed a sub­mis­sion that the police
evi­dence was at best ‘severe­ly flawed’ and at worst, fab­ri­cat­ed, and the
tri­al was stopped.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19971

11) KLIMAX SURGE ON! — SWEDEN, JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2008
Groups of activists con­nect­ed to Kli­max, Sweden’s direct action move­ment
against the root caus­es of cli­mate change, struck repeat­ed­ly last month.
At Malmö Air­port, sev­en activists were appre­hend­ed when try­ing to break
into the run­way, some of them dressed as polar bears. Some 30 activists
put up a block­ade in the mid­dle of the high­way run­ning through Umeå, the
largest city in north­ern Swe­den.
A sim­i­lar num­ber staged a protest out­side the office of Swedish Meat, a
major meat cor­po­ra­tion, to high­light the severe effects the indus­try is
hav­ing on our cli­mate. Anoth­er 50 activists marched into the traf­fic on
one of the major streets in inner city Stock­holm, seiz­ing it for 15
min­utes. The action was direct­ed against a planned mega-high­way, to be
built in the west­ern parts of the cap­i­tal.
http://klimatet.org/2008/02/17/action-report/
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20019
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20035

12) TARA CAMPAIGN UPDATE — FEBRUARY 2008
Lock-ons and dig­ger-div­ing, plus protest camp con­tact.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19996
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20126

13) 15 ACTIONS TO TOPPLE THE FOSSIL FUEL EMPIRE — FEBRUARY 2008
Ris­ing Tide’s newest resource, on why and how to take direct action
against the fos­sil fuel indus­try… includ­ing plan­ning tips, tar­get
loca­tions, exam­ples of suc­cess­ful actions and more. Email us for a hard
copy or down­load it here:
http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

14) RISING TIDE POP-ED RESOURCE PACK — FEBRUARY 2008
A pop­u­lar edu­ca­tion resource packed with tools to help you run engag­ing,
inter­ac­tive work­shops on all aspects of cli­mate change for a wide range of
peo­ple. Down­load it here: http://risingtide.org.uk/resources/other

15) “RISING TO THE CLIMATE CHALLENGE” BOOKLET — FEBRUARY 2008
Cli­mate change myth-bust­ing book­let designed to help peo­ple cut through
the fog of con­fu­sion and mixed mes­sages about cli­mate change and to be a
use­ful resource for com­mu­ni­ty groups and indi­vid­u­als all over Scot­land.
Down­load from the web­site at www.sead.org.uk

16) “BURNING CAPITAL” — FEBRUARY 2008
This com­pelling series of short films explores the role of Britain’s
largest cor­po­ra­tion in the grow­ing cli­mate cri­sis. Burn­ing Cap­i­tal is a
video voy­age through the murky world of oil giant BP, who kind­ly deliv­ered
1.3 bil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide to the atmos­phere last year.
Watch the films now at; http://www.platformlondon.org/burning

17) SPIRIT OF FREEDOM — FEBRUARY 2008
Earth Lib­er­a­tion Pris­on­ers Sup­port Net­work newslet­ter. They’re in there
for us out here — Please write!
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/19960

18) CLIMATE CHANGE SOLUTIONS CENTRE — FEBRUARY UPDATE 2008
A group of envi­ron­men­tal and com­mu­ni­ty-based organ­i­sa­tions in the South
West have made a bid to found an inde­pen­dent, inter-dis­ci­pli­nary ‘Cli­mate
Change Solu­tions Cen­tre’, on the site of an ex-agri­cul­tur­al col­lege
cur­rent­ly owned by Ply­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty. For more details, and infor­ma­tion
on how to sup­port the plans, please see; www.climatechangecentre.co.uk

19) “THE AGE OF STUPID” — FEBRUARY 2008
A cli­mate change doc­u­men­tary for the big screen from Fran­ny Arm­strong
(McLi­bel) and John Battsek (One Day In Sep­tem­ber). Mix­ing doc­u­men­tary
footage, dra­ma and cut­ting-edge ani­ma­tion, and star­ring Pete Postleth­waite
as an old man liv­ing in the dev­as­tat­ed world of 2055. As he watch­es
‘archive’ footage from 2007, he asks him­self: Why did­n’t we stop cli­mate
change when we had the chance? http://www.ageofstupid.net

20) AIRPORT WATCH BULLETIN — FEBRUARY 2008
For infor­ma­tion about the cam­paigns against sui­ci­dal expan­sion at
Heathrow, Bris­tol, Lon­don City, Lydd, Carlisle, Newquay and oth­er air­ports
see; www.airportwatch.org.uk

21) ‘CAUSES CLIMATE CHANGE’ WEBSITE
Sub­ver­tis­ing ideas and resources.
http://www.causesclimatechange.blogspot.com/

———-

Please send any­thing you’d like includ­ed in this news sheet to:
newssheet@risingtide.org.uk

To view pre­vi­ous edi­tions of the Ris­ing Tide News Sheet, vis­it the News
Sheet Archive at http://risingtide.org.uk/newssheet

This News Sheet was brought to you by Ris­ing Tide, a grass­roots net­work
of groups and indi­vid­u­als com­mit­ted to tak­ing action and build­ing a
move­ment against cli­mate change.

For more infor­ma­tion…
email: info@risingtide.org.uk
Phone: +44 (0)845 458 8923 / +44 (0)7708 794665
Address: 62 Fieldgate St, Lon­don, E1 1ES
Web site: http://risingtide.org.uk

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Paddy´s Day of Action Against Shell

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

This year´s St Paddy´s day, 17th March, has been called as an Inter­na­tion­al day of action against shell, in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Ross­port.

Peo­ple from all over Ire­land are set to join forces and show their unit­ed strength by going all the way to Lon­don to demon­strate on shell´s front door step.

Glu­aiseacht, the Irish envi­ron­men­tal net­work organ­is­ing the trip, are call­ing for peo­ple to join them at the shell head office in Lon­don, or there is also a call out to take sol­i­dar­i­ty actions at shell garages and offices, St Paddy´s day parades and Irish embassies all over the world to coin­cide with the vis­it from 15th-17th March.

The shell cen­tre is locat­ed on the South Bank in front of Jubilee Gar­dens (SE1)
right next to Water­loo train sta­tion and across from the Lon­don Eye.

What´s Wrong With shell? — The Cor­rib Pipeline Project

Since 2000 the small rur­al com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port, Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land have been engaged in an epic bat­tle try­ing to pre­vent Shell, Sta­toil, and Marathon from build­ing a poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing tox­ic onshore gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in their remote and envi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive region.

Shell are the biggest stake­hold­er and ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the project, so have there­fore been the main tar­get of protest.

Com­mu­ni­ty Strength

From the sum­mer of 2005 mass pick­ets shut down the refin­ery con­struc­tion site after five Ross­port res­i­dents were impris­oned for refus­ing to allow Shell’s
sub-con­trac­tors access to their and their neigh­bours’ small farms which the pipeline is to go through. But in Octo­ber 2006 the Irish state came to the aid of shell by bring­ing in a mas­sive two hun­dred strong police unit to phys­i­cal­ly force a path for Shell to com­mence work. A large police pres­ence, con­sist­ing of Gar­dai (Irish police) from all over Ire­land, has stayed at the site to aid the work to con­tin­ue undis­rupt­ed.

The costs to the Envi­ron­ment, Com­mu­ni­ty & Health

Since shell start­ed build­ing the refin­ery, Car­row­more Lake, which is a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion as well as the local water sup­ply to 10,000 peo­ple, has been pol­lut­ed with dan­ger­ous­ly high lev­els of alu­mini­um com­ing from the build­ing site.

The gas pipeline is to oper­ate at such high pres­sure that accord­ing to the
government’s safe­ty study if rup­tured could poten­tial­ly kill peo­ple and destroy build­ings for hun­dreds of metres around.

The waste from the refin­ery is to be dumped into Broad­haven bay, where 220 sight­ings of sev­en whale and dol­phin species, plus sight­ings of two seal species have been record­ed.

This is all not to men­tion the irrepara­ble dam­age fos­sil fuels, like gas, are hav­ing on desta­bil­is­ing the glob­al cli­mate.

Although the resis­tance to shell in Coun­ty Mayo is strong, the Irish state & shell´s tac­tics of bru­tal­i­ty, repres­sion and intim­i­da­tion has paid a price on the peo­ple fight­ing the pipeline project.

So mark St Paddy´s day by show­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with their fight!

For more info:

http://www.indymedia.ie/mayo — Reports of news and actions about the pipeline
http://www.struggle.ws/rsc — Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp set­up to aid the cam­paign against shell
http://www.corribsos.com — Cam­paign group Shell to Sea

http://gluaiseacht.nologic.org/wordpress — Glu­aiseacht web­site

Latest details: Earth First! Winter Moot 2008 — February 22nd – 24th 2008 — Nottingham

Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

EF! fist tree 1Join us for
Activist skill share
Plan­ning rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change,
Shar­ing ideas for the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing
Oppo­si­tion to the UK genet­ic crop tri­als and mega-dams in Ice­land
a chance to share info on your own cam­paign

Arrive from 5pm, Fri­day Feb­ru­ary 22nd 2008, with din­ner at 7 o’clock.
Open to all those who have been involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action and to those who just want to find out more.

Cost: £15 (to include accom­mo­da­tion and food)
Crèche and dis­abled access both avail­able,
but please call to let us know if you need either or if you have oth­er needs.

At The Sumac Cen­tre, Glad­stone Street Not­ting­ham, www.veggies.org.uk/sumac
For more info call 01508 531636 (num­ber not avail­able dur­ing the event)

Fri­day late after­noon and evening will be a chance to arrive, and for intro­duc­tions, plus a G8 talk & film, and an Intro­duc­tion to EF!

We’ll be kick­ing off ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing (9am break­fast) — start­ing with all shar­ing the most impor­tant rea­sons why we’ve come to Not­ting­ham, we’ll get on with some prac­ti­cal dis­cus­sions around the EF! Action Update, the web­site, and the sum­mer gath­er­ing.
From what we’ve all said, we’ll be able in the after­noon to move on to ‘where next?’, plus shar­ing cam­paigns we’re involved with & see­ing what they need, and get­ting togeth­er local­ly and region­al­ly with oth­er folk who are there.

On Sun­day we’ll move into groups to con­crete­ly take the ideas for­wards from the Sat­ur­day, from the cam­paigns we’re already work­ing on and what we want to do togeth­er. We’ll fin­ish at 4pm, after hav­ing shared what we’ve come up with. Hoorah.

Earth First! is not an organ­i­sa­tion, but a way of using non-hier­ar­chi­cal organ­i­sa­tion 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. For fur­ther info check out www.earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/

Plus
All day Fri­day 22nd Feb­ru­ary, Sav­ing Ice­land UK meet­ing, also at the Sumac Cen­tre. Open to those inter­est­ed in trav­el­ling to Ice­land or tak­ing part in sol­i­dar­i­ty actions against the con­struc­tion of large, wilder­ness wreck­ing dams in Ice­land.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion and essen­tial book­ing con­tact 01508 531636 or savingiceland@riseup.org

Community halts Shell

Feb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

BroadhavenFeb­ru­ary 12 2008

Sur­vey work was halt­ed
This morn­ing sur­vey work stopped when mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty ques­tioned Ollie Mur­ray (Shell Com­mu­ni­ty Lia­son Offi­cer) on whether he had the nec­es­sary per­mis­sion. He is a man of few words and our ques­tions were met with his mantra of ‘I don’t know, con­tact RPS’. ‘’Do you have the RPS num­ber? No. ‘’. It was a beau­ti­ful day and whilst we were wait­ing for the RPS engi­neer to ring back with details (at 22.00pm he still hasn’t), the sur­vey­or admired the view of the pris­tine bay in Glen­gad. No sur­vey work was under­tak­en. The bore hoels ille­gal­ly con­struct­ed 5 months ago are still there, despite Min­is­ter John Gorm­ley order­ing their removal asp.

Blockad­ing of trucks
Of course the com­mu­ni­ty are still attempt­ing to slow down con­struc­tion on the Shell refin­ery site. Block­ades hap­pen as much as pos­si­ble; last week work­ers were once again block­ad­ed and today lor­ries were blocked from enter­ing. When the author­i­ties fail to pro­tect the com­mu­ni­ty and the Spe­cial Pro­tect­ed Area, the com­mu­ni­ty have no choice but to active­ly do it our­selves. For rea­sons of health, safe­ty and envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, we can­not let this refin­ery be built at Bal­linaboy.

’Peo­ple are enti­tled to a healthy and pro­duc­tive life in har­mo­ny with nature. Envi­ron­men­tal issues are best han­dled with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of all con­cerned cit­i­zens. Devel­op­ment today must not under­mine the devel­op­ment and envi­ron­men­tal needs of present and future gen­er­a­tions.’ Local Agen­da 21

————–

12.2.08 Local peo­ple block Shell from ille­gal work in a SAC at Glen­gad, Erris for 4 hours until Gar­dai force through work­ers, injur­ing pro­test­ers.

At approx 8am this morn­ing, local res­i­dents became aware of a Shell con­tract­ed sur­vey team in the Glen­gad area on the SAC. To work in this area we under­stand that per­mis­sions must be obtained pri­or to any work being under­tak­en by Shell. Shell have still yet repaired the ille­gal work done last Octo­ber.

To our knowl­edge, they are only enti­tled to remove the ille­gal bore­holes, as ordered by Min­is­ter Gorm­ley. Our requests for evi­dence of oth­er per­mis­sion con­tin­ues to be ignored by both Shell, RPS and NPWS. Today’s sur­vey­ing had noth­ing to do with repair­ing the dam­age how­ev­er, despite claims to the con­trary by secu­ri­ty staff.

Despite con­tact­ing Shell’s sup­posed pub­lic lia­sons offi­cer in the last few days no attempt has been made by Shell to clar­i­fy if they have any oth­er of the required per­mis­sions.

A group of local peo­ple were forced to enter upon the land to stop this ille­gal work. Work was halt­ed between 8am until approx 12 noon when a force of over a dozen Gar­dai came to escort the sur­vey team back onto the SAC.

Despite explain­ing why the local com­mu­ni­ty had rea­son­able excuse to stop fur­ther dam­age being done, the Gar­dai very force­ful­ly removed all pro­test­ers from the entrance gate, ush­er­ing in the sur­vey team. In their zeal­ous pur­suit of Shell’s best inter­ests, the Gar­dai assault­ed many of the approx 10 pro­test­ers present at the time. 1 man was arrest­ed after being shoved onto a barbed wire fence, cut­ting his arm in sev­er­al places before hav­ing his head banged off the ground by sev­er­al Gar­dai. Oth­ers were dragged off, received kicks, shoves, had hair pulled, while the Gar­dai simul­ta­ne­ous­ly obstruct­ed the only cam­era from film­ing. The man who was arrest­ed was lat­er released with­out charge.