Category: Action Reports

Peru indigenous blockades win repeal of land laws

18th June 2009: Peru­vian Con­gress Votes 82 – 12 to Repeal Two Con­tro­ver­sial Laws

Gov­ern­ment Urged to Drop Crim­i­nal Charges Against Indige­nous Lead­ers and Allow Inde­pen­dent Inves­ti­ga­tion into Vio­lent Inci­dents in Bagua

18th June 2009: Peru­vian Con­gress Votes 82 – 12 to Repeal Two Con­tro­ver­sial Laws

Gov­ern­ment Urged to Drop Crim­i­nal Charges Against Indige­nous Lead­ers and Allow Inde­pen­dent Inves­ti­ga­tion into Vio­lent Inci­dents in Bagua

Lima, Peru – The Peru­vian Con­gress vot­ed today 82 – 12 to repeal two of nine con­test­ed laws in an attempt to end wide­spread indige­nous protests that have been par­a­lyz­ing trans­porta­tion and com­merce in the Peru­vian Ama­zon for 70 days. In a com­plete shift of dis­course, Pres­i­dent Gar­cia admit­ted that “there were a series errors and exag­ger­a­tions” in the gov­ern­men­t’s han­dling of this con­flict and asked Con­gress to repeal decrees 1090 and 1064, which were passed in 2008 as part of a pack­age of new laws to facil­i­tate the imple­men­ta­tion of the Free Trade Agree­ment with the Unit­ed States.

Hav­ing wit­nessed the vote in the Peru­vian Con­gress, Daysi Zap­a­ta, act­ing Pres­i­dent of AIDESEP, Peru’s nation­al Ama­zon­ian indige­nous orga­ni­za­tion wel­comed the Pres­i­den­t’s com­ments and declared: “Today is a his­toric day. We are grate­ful that the will of the indige­nous peo­ples has been heard and we only hope that in the future gov­ern­ments lis­ten and attend to indige­nous peo­ples, and not leg­is­late behind their backs.”

Zap­a­ta said that AIDESEP it is call­ing on our base orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ties to end their block­ades and protests while also call­ing on the gov­ern­ment to enter into a good faith and trans­par­ent dia­logue.

Primer Min­is­ter Simon, who has been a lead nego­tia­tor to the indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, said Tues­day that he would resign after bring­ing the cur­rent con­flict clos­er to res­o­lu­tion. The Peru­vian Gov­ern­ment has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cized for the June 5 attack to quell non­vi­o­lent protests by Ama­zon­ian indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties, which result­ed in dozens of deaths of both pro­test­ers and police and left 150 of indige­nous demon­stra­tors injured.

In addi­tion to decrees 1090 and 1064, AIDESEP points to at least sev­en oth­er laws that con­tin­ue to pose a threat to their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly guar­an­teed rights. In addi­tion to the repeal of all these con­tro­ver­sial laws, indige­nous peo­ple are demand­ing that the Peru­vian Gov­ern­ment lift the State of Emer­gency, in effect since May 9 in sev­er­al regions through­out the Ama­zon. AIDESEP is also call­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to drop crim­i­nal charges against Alber­to Pizan­go and five oth­er indige­nous lead­ers. Pizan­go was giv­en safe pas­sage to leave the coun­try and is now exiled in Nicaragua.

In the Unit­ed States, fif­teen human rights and envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tions recent­ly sent a let­ter to Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton and oth­er top Admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials urg­ing the Unit­ed States to take imme­di­ate steps towards address­ing the polit­i­cal cri­sis in Peru. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from this coali­tion met with the U.S. Trade Rep­re­sen­ta­tive’s office on Wednes­day to again urge the U.S. Gov­ern­ment to pub­licly clar­i­fy if Peru would be penal­ized for revok­ing the pack­age of “free trade laws.”

The dra­mat­ic shift in the Gar­cia Admin­is­tra­tion’s dis­course is like­ly due to the unprece­dent­ed inter­na­tion­al and domes­tic con­dem­na­tion of the attacks on peace­ful demon­stra­tions on June 5 in Bagua. Tens of thou­sands protest­ed in cities through­out Peru on June 11 in sup­port of Peru’s indige­nous peo­ples. Peru­vian con­sulates and embassies world­wide have been the site of repeat­ed vig­ils and protests. Tens of thou­sands have sent let­ters to Peru­vian and US gov­ern­ment offi­cials. Celebri­ties includ­ing Q’o­ri­an­ka Kilch­er and Ben­jamin Bratt, both part Peru­vian as well as Nobel Prize Lau­re­ate Rigob­er­ta Menchu, have pub­licly con­demned the vio­lence in Peru while call­ing for a peace­ful solu­tion.

Lead­ing inter­na­tion­al human rights bod­ies includ­ing the Inter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Human Rights, the Unit­ed Nations Per­ma­nent Forum on Indige­nous Issues, and the Inter­na­tion­al Labor Orga­ni­za­tion have pressed the Gar­cia Admin­is­tra­tion to end repres­sion and uphold the rights of indige­nous peo­ples. Yes­ter­day, James Anaya, the UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur of Human Rights and Fun­da­men­tal Free­doms of Indige­nous Peo­ple arrived in Peru for a 3‑day vis­it to gath­er infor­ma­tion about the vio­lent inci­dent in Bagua.

Ama­zon Watch’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, Atossa Soltani, react­ed to the news with the fol­low­ing state­ment: “The Peru­vian Con­gress’s repeal of the two decrees is a wel­come first step in bring­ing indige­nous rights in Peru back to where they were before the decrees were pro­mul­gat­ed in 2008. The con­flict has become a water­shed moment for Peru’s poli­cies in the Ama­zon and has invig­o­rat­ed nation­al debate about deep-root­ed vio­la­tions of indige­nous peo­ples rights. Today’s good news notwith­stand­ing, indige­nous peo­ples are like­ly to con­tin­ue to be at risk by Gar­ci­a’s poli­cies to open up the Ama­zon to extrac­tive indus­tries.”

Since 2006, the gov­ern­ment has autho­rized oil and gas con­ces­sions cov­er­ing over 70 per­cent of the Peru­vian Ama­zon, much of it on indige­nous lands (see Peru­petro map at http://mirror.perupetro.com.pe/exploracion01‑e.asp).
For more infor­ma­tion, see http://www.amazonwatch.org/peru-protests.php

Ear­li­er arti­cle on block­ade crush­ing & mas­sacre here

Mainshill Wood Occupied

19.6.09
URGENT: No Open Cast Here! Join the fight against open cast coal min­ing, cli­mate chaos and com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion! Come to the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

Last night activists occu­pied the site of Main­shill Wood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the UK suf­fer­ing from the impacts of open cast­ing and resist­ing new mines.

Mainshill open cast19.6.09
URGENT: No Open Cast Here! Join the fight against open cast coal min­ing, cli­mate chaos and com­mu­ni­ty destruc­tion! Come to the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

Last night activists occu­pied the site of Main­shill Wood in sol­i­dar­i­ty with com­mu­ni­ties in the UK suf­fer­ing from the impacts of open cast­ing and resist­ing new mines.

Scot­tish Coal have been giv­en per­mis­sion to mine 1.7 mil­lion tonnes of coal from Main­shill in South Lanark­shire, a deci­sion by South Lanark­shire Coun­cil and lat­er Scot­tish Min­is­ters that enraged local res­i­dents who for years have cam­paigned against this mine. There are four oth­er mines in the area, mak­ing it one of the most heav­i­ly mined areas in Europe.

This new coal mine is only one of 20 such oth­ers to have recent­ly been giv­en plan­ning per­mis­sion in Scot­land. If we are to have any chance of lim­it­ing dan­ger­ous cli­mate change and pro­tect­ing com­mu­ni­ties from car­bon-inten­sive indus­tries we must take mat­ters into our own hands.

We have tak­en this autonomous and free space for those who wish to cre­ate pos­i­tive, cre­ative and
egal­i­tar­i­an solu­tions to eco­log­i­cal col­lapse, cli­mate change and envi­ron­men­tal injus­tice. Prof­i­teer­ing com­pa­nies, land own­ers and gov­ern­ments will not mine for new coal here!

Sup­port Us

We need:
Peo­ple – to hold this site we need peo­ple to join us. The site has a safe spaces pol­i­cy and wel­comes all who share our desire to live in a space free from hier­ar­chy, oppres­sion, dis­crim­i­na­tion and coal mines!
Climb­ing equip­ment – any you can donate will be put to good use
Build­ing mate­ri­als — suit­able bits of wood, rope, polyprop, pal­lets
Food — lots of it!
Mon­ey — run­ning a camp can be expen­sive, if you can donate to us please do
Oth­er equip­ment — head torch­es, tools, con­tain­ers, tarps, water­proofs, sleep­ing bags

How to get to the camp:
Bus­es run to Dou­glas from Lanark and Hamil­ton. Both Lanark and Hamil­ton have train and bus sta­tions and are easy to get to from either Glas­gow Cen­tral Train Sta­tion or Buchan­non Street Bus Sta­tion. From South of the bor­der, going to Glas­gow is the eas­i­est way to get to Dou­glas. Bus­es from Lanark to Dou­glas are much more fre­quent!

Bus from Lanark:

The Ser­vice Num­ber 9 (William Stokes & Sons) runs from Lanark — Gle­spin, stop­ping in Dou­glas (ser­vice every 49mins past each hour). Get off at the Egger­ton Bridge stop just before Dou­glas — you’ll see the camp on your left just after the M74 under­pass!

Bus from Hamil­ton:

The X50 (Hen­der­son Trav­el — http://www.henderson-travel.co.uk/) Hamil­ton-Gle­spin runs Hamil­ton, Inter­change — Les­ma­hagow, Church Hall — Rig­side — Dou­glas, leav­ing Hamil­ton at 17:05 (one ser­vice per day)

From Dou­glas:

The bus will stop before Dou­glas at Egger­ton Bridge and you will see the camp on your left after the M74 under­pass. If you miss this stop get off in Dou­glas and walk North East back up the A70 for 1km and the camp will be on yout right just before the M74.

Hitch­ing:

If you hitch, the camp is right next to the M74 which runs from Glas­gow to Carlisle. Get dropped of at junc­tion 12 and walk South West down the A70 towards Dou­glas and the camp is a few hun­dred metres on your left. Hap­pen­don ser­vices are close to junc­tion 12 — if you end up there­walk South down the B7078, turn right onto the A70 towards Dou­glas, which takes you under the M74 and as above.

If you need a ride…

…from some­where close by call the site phone and we’ll try to sort you out.

Con­tact Us

Call the site phone on: 07806 926 040

ELF sabotage digger & arson solidarity with Peru

ELF SABOTAGE DIGGER (Italy)

anony­mous report:

“ROME ITALY We cut wires and the oil tube of a dig­ger used to defor­est. unfor­tu­nate­ly there were men at work so we could not destroy the cab Earth lib­er­a­tion front”

»

ARSON ATTACK AGAINST POLICE VEHICLE IN SOLIDARITY WITH INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE IN PERU (Mex­i­co)

anony­mous com­mu­nique (trans­la­tion):

ELF SABOTAGE DIGGER (Italy)

anony­mous report:

“ROME ITALY We cut wires and the oil tube of a dig­ger used to defor­est. unfor­tu­nate­ly there were men at work so we could not destroy the cab Earth lib­er­a­tion front”

»

ARSON ATTACK AGAINST POLICE VEHICLE IN SOLIDARITY WITH INDIGENOUS RESISTANCE IN PERU (Mex­i­co)

anony­mous com­mu­nique (trans­la­tion):

“On the night of June 8, we, the Frente de Lib­eración de la Tier­ra, along with some anar­cho-Insur­rec­tion­al indi­vid­u­als who are com­mit­ted to con­stant con­flict with the state and its insti­tu­tions, decid­ed to car­ry out an action togeth­er in the city of Ecate­pec in Mex­i­co State. This time our main objec­tive was the machines that belong to author­i­ties in that city that are used to rip up trees from their roots and to cov­er the earth with con­crete; the machines were hid­den under the bridge over Aveni­da More­los and López Por­tillo.

When we arrived there we real­ized that the earth-destroy­ing own­ers’ slaves were inside the machines, and that they sure­ly would­n’t be leav­ing until the fol­low­ing day, to work and to be exploit­ed to earn a few coins for their sub­sis­tence. Why is it that peo­ple are watch­ing the machines? Is it that the own­ers fear leav­ing them alone and the next morn­ing find­ing them unus­able, that their urban­ist project be delayed and thou­sands of pesos lost in dam­ages, like they have seen hap­pen in oth­er munic­i­pal­i­ties in Mex­i­co State?

This objec­tive was aban­doned and we decid­ed to car­ry out anoth­er; in front of the exca­va­tors, bull­doz­ers and oth­er machines was a large com­mand head­quar­ters of state police tor­tur­ers, the ASE (Agency of State Secu­ri­ty), vio­la­tors of the pris­on­ers in Aten­co, accom­plices in the killing of ani­mals in Jal­tenco, pro­tec­tors of the inter­ests of the multi­na­tion­als, killers of the earth, liv­ing with the impuni­ty that Mex­i­can jus­tice gives them, laugh­ing with their machine guns on their backs and con­fi­dant that they can destroy any protest with their repres­sion. They were there; maybe they did­n’t know that all vio­lence cre­ates counter vio­lence and for all who are struck down, soon­er or lat­er there will be a response.

Ded­i­cat­ed like wild wolves who have left their dens under the full moon, we placed an incen­di­ary device in one of the trucks, a small flame ignit­ed the engine and burnt the truck.

Our sab­o­tage was fast and effec­tive, the destruc­tion of social peace was immi­nent. What police would be expect­ing an arson attack in front of their very noses? How do those com­man­ders feel who boast of the fast effec­tive­ness of their sub­or­di­nates now that a group of eco-anar­chists have attacked their facil­i­ties? Do they feel hor­ri­ble because the raid they car­ried out after the fire was use­less; they could not catch those respon­si­ble who now write these lines of revenge against the anthro­pocen­tric state and its insti­tu­tions?

The war against this sys­tem is dead­ly seri­ous, if they order their police to sup­press, incen­di­ary self-defense will rise up.

We ded­i­cate this action to the fierce defense that is car­ried out in the Ama­zon in Peru; the peas­ants killed by the anthro­pocen­trist state have been avenged by their nat­ur­al instinct to defend the wilder­ness, killing, kid­nap­ping and also injur­ing the police.

Let’s defend the plan­et where we live!

Show your teeth!

Now no more pas­siv­i­ty!

ELF/FLT”

Protester erects fake phone mast

18 June 2009
A man has put up a fake phone mast in a bid to stop a real one being built next to his garage in Hamp­shire.

Sean Den­man reject­ed £4,500 from Voda­fone to erect a mast at his ser­vice sta­tion in Ever­ton Road, Hor­dle.

Fake phone mast protest18 June 2009
A man has put up a fake phone mast in a bid to stop a real one being built next to his garage in Hamp­shire.

Sean Den­man reject­ed £4,500 from Voda­fone to erect a mast at his ser­vice sta­tion in Ever­ton Road, Hor­dle.

The phone giant turned its atten­tion to a pave­ment adja­cent to the garage but was ini­tial­ly refused per­mis­sion.

How­ev­er, the plan was agreed on appeal but Mr Den­man has blocked con­struc­tion by weld­ing a pole and a box to a car which over­hangs the pave­ment.

Voda­fone said it was still look­ing to start work at the site, by the end of March 2010, and would take advice on any obstruc­tion at the site before work was due to start.

The firm said it would need a plan­ning agree­ment if it want­ed to move its mast to avoid Mr Den­man’s con­struc­tion.

In a state­ment, Voda­fone said: “The pro­posed radio base sta­tion… is required to improve the 3G cov­er­age to our cus­tomers in the area.

This loca­tion was cho­sen after con­sid­er­a­tion of 15 alter­na­tives as it pro­vides a back­drop of street fur­ni­ture, against which the pro­posed tim­ber tele­graph pole will not be visu­al­ly intru­sive.

“We are cur­rent­ly final­is­ing our build plans and it is our inten­tion to devel­op this site this finan­cial year.”

Mr Den­man said: “I had to get land sur­vey­ors to mark down where this con­struc­tion would go.

“Not hav­ing com­plete right of way, I decid­ed I can’t put any­thing on the pave­ment so took a car, weld­ed on a box and pole which over­hangs by the cor­rect amount cov­er­ing where the mast and box would go.

“They [Voda­fone] feel they can put their con­struc­tion any­where and make up any excuse.

“I am not against it, but not in this sort of place.”

‘Anten­nae need­ed’

New For­est Dis­trict Coun­cil and the parish coun­cil had pre­vi­ous­ly refused the plan­ning appli­ca­tion.

Chris Elliott, head of plan­ning at the coun­cil, said: “The coun­cil is con­cerned that so many phone mast appeals like this are being allowed by plan­ning inspec­tors because of the gov­ern­men­t’s com­mit­ment to 3G tech­nol­o­gy.”

The plan­ning inspec­tor had agreed the pro­pos­al, with a report stat­ing: “The appel­lant [Voda­fone] has demon­strat­ed the need for the anten­nae to pro­vide 3G cov­er­age in the Hor­dle area.”

The inspec­tor added that “giv­en gov­ern­ment tele­coms plan­ning pol­i­cy… the need for this facil­i­ty is suf­fi­cient to out­weigh the lim­it­ed harm to the char­ac­ter and appear­ance of the area.”

Manchester aviation conference & dinner both disrupted on same day

Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid dis­rupt avi­a­tion indus­try con­fer­ence

Manchester aviation conference protest 1Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid dis­rupt avi­a­tion indus­try con­fer­ence

Cam­paign­ers dis­rupt­ed an air­port indus­try con­fer­ence today using rape alarms tied to heli­um bal­loons . The pro­test­ers from the group Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid entered the Man­ches­ter Cen­tral con­fer­ence venue (for­mer­ly GMEX) and sent five bunch­es of heli­um bal­loons read­ing ‘Hap­py Retire­ment’ to the top of the ceil­ing where they remained with the alarms ring­ing. This occurred at exact­ly the time when the indus­try del­e­gates were pos­ing for a pho­to shoot for the launch of a new car­bon reduc­tion scheme at Euro­pean air­ports which will not include emis­sions from air­craft.

Tues­day 16th June 2009

Manchester aviation conference protest 2Out­side, pro­test­ers held a ban­ner out­side the entrance read­ing,
“Avi­a­tion Indus­try Con­fer­ence – Cli­mate Crim­i­nals Inside”.

The group were protest­ing against the avi­a­tion’s grow­ing con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change. Avi­a­tion cur­rent­ly accounts for around 13% of the UK’s green­house gas con­tri­bu­tion.

Megan Sims from Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid said, “The air­port indus­try is reck­less­ly push­ing ahead with expan­sion plans across the UK and Europe despite all the warn­ings about cli­mate change. We can­not pur­sue this growth agen­da if we are seri­ous about tack­ling glob­al warm­ing.”

“Their lat­est back-pat­ting exer­cise is yet more green­wash from the air­port indus­try. They pro­vide the growth of the facil­i­ties for air­craft to oper­ate and encour­age more flights, more emis­sions and more cli­mate change.”

The three day con­fer­ence was being host­ed by Air­ports Coun­cil International.[1] The con­fer­ence was sus­pend­ed whilst house staff strug­gled to remove the float­ing alarms from the ceil­ing.

[1] http://www.aci-europe.org/
[2] http://www.planestupid.com/
[3] http://www.stopmanchesterairport.blogspot.com/

———
Manchester aviation dinner protest
Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid dis­rupt avi­a­tion indus­try Gala Din­ner

On Tues­day 16th June 2009 cam­paign­ers from the group Man­ches­ter Plane Stu­pid tar­get­ed the avi­a­tion indus­try’s gala din­ner being held at the town hall tonight. Pro­tes­tors scaled two lam­posts and erect­ed a 15m ban­ner read­ing, “Avi­a­tion Indus­try Con­fer­ence — Cli­mate Crim­i­nals Inside”.

The ban­ner drop cre­at­ed a lot of atten­tion from the pub­lic and con­tin­ued the pres­sure on the avi­a­tion indus­try who are attempt­ing to green­wash the cli­mate issue. The Avi­a­tion con­fer­ence includ­ed the launch of a new ini­tia­tive to make air­ports car­bon neu­tral. How­ev­er, this does not include the emis­sions from flights which cur­rent­ly account for around 13% of the UK’s green­house gas emis­sions.

“It’s time for the avi­a­tion indus­try to wake up and to start a just tran­si­tion to replace avi­a­tion jobs with emerg­ing sus­tain­able indus­tries such as wind tur­bines.’ Vanes­sa Hall, for­mer city coun­cil­lor and Green par­li­men­ta­ry can­di­date for Man­ches­ter Cen­tral.

“There is no such thing as a ‘car­bon neu­tral’ air­port, ‘car­bon neu­tral’ is a term used for off­set­ting projects that rarely result in any real reduc­tion in emis­sions. This project is even more decep­tive as it won’t include the mas­sive emis­sions from planes.” James Alden, Green par­li­men­ta­ry can­di­date.

This was in con­juc­tion with a cli­mate action at the GMEX ear­li­er in the day where pro­tes­tors released rape alarms attached to heli­um baloons, dis­trupt­ing the avi­a­tion indus­try con­fer­ence.

[1] For pic­tures of cli­mate action at the GMEX:

(see above)
http://stopmanchesterairport.blogspot.com/
http://www.planestupid.com/

[2] Infor­ma­tion about the ACI con­fer­ence:

http://www.aci-europe-events.com/annual-general-assembly/
–
http://www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk

manchester@planestupid.com
http://www.planestupid.com/

Rossport Solidarity Group Take Action at Van Oord’s UK Offices

An account of todays (16/06/2009) action against Van Oord UK, own­ers of the dredgers oper­at­ing in Broad­haven Bay, and in Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Erris in their 10 year strug­gle.

ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY GROUP TAKE ACTION AT VAN OORD’S UK OFFICES

Van Oord protestAn account of todays (16/06/2009) action against Van Oord UK, own­ers of the dredgers oper­at­ing in Broad­haven Bay, and in Sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Erris in their 10 year strug­gle.

ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY GROUP TAKE ACTION AT VAN OORD’S UK OFFICES

Today (16/06/2009) at 2.30pm a group of ten activists arrived at the UK offices of Van Oord, in New­bury, Berk­shire. Van Oord own the dredg­ing ves­sels oper­at­ing in Broad­haven Bay, as part of the Cor­rib Gas Project.

Our inten­tion was to occu­py the offices and to deliv­er a let­ter to and speak with the UK head of oper­a­tions, explain­ing our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Erris and our objec­tions to Van Oord’s involve­ment in the project and demand­ing that they stop their oper­a­tions there imme­di­ate­ly.

We were met out­side by police; a local woman told us that they had been there, out­side Van Oord’s offices since 11am, with rein­force­ments arriv­ing at 2pm; at least half an hour before we arrived in the area. It was obvi­ous from the actions of the Police Offi­cers in ques­tion that they knew we were com­ing and had briefed Van Oord.

They refused to let us on to the fore­court and carpark, but were will­ing, how­ev­er, for us to stand and sit on the wall and pave­ment out­side.

We unfurled our ban­ners and demand­ed to speak to high­est rank­ing man­ag­er on the premis­es.

One of our group was allowed to approach the offices and even­tu­al­ly some­one claim­ing to be Van Oord’s UK Man­ag­er in charge of Irish oper­a­tions emerged to speak to her.

A let­ter and port­fo­lio of pho­tographs was then deliv­ered to him out­lin­ing the his­to­ry of the Cor­rib Gas Project, the oppo­si­tion of local res­i­dents, and includ­ing our demands.

Press releas­es were sent, a local paper inter­viewed some of the group, and at 4.pm we left peace­ful­ly.
Part of the let­ter deliv­ered to Van Oord UK

For the atten­tion of Van Oord direc­tors:

We are here today to demand that Van Oord stop all work on the Cor­rib Gas project imme­di­ate­ly. We have come in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the com­mu­ni­ty of Ross­port in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land.

Van Oord are cur­rent­ly car­ry­ing out dredg­ing works in Broad­haven Bay, Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC), in prepa­ra­tion for the lay­ing of the off-shore sec­tion of the gas pipeline.

The devel­op­ment has no con­sent from the local com­mu­ni­ty and the neg­a­tive impacts the project has made on their lives and envi­ron­ment are already huge.

In the last few months the sit­u­a­tion in the Ross­port area has become increas­ing­ly seri­ous. There have been sev­er­al major attacks on promi­nent cam­paign­ers against the project; these are almost cer­tain­ly linked to the secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny con­tract­ed by Shell, IRMS.

Van Oord state that “Safe­ty is a key indi­ca­tor of our suc­cess”. Recent events in Mayo demon­strate a com­plete dis­re­gard for safe work­ing prac­tise.

Van Oord must end its oper­a­tion in Mayo imme­di­ate­ly.

A busy week here in Mayo

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

Wednes­day 10 June

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

Wednes­day 10 June

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

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

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

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

Thurs­day 11 June

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

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

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

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

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

Ear­ly morn­ing water action:

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

Fri­day 12 June

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

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

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

Happy J18 — Ten Year Anniversary — Pics + Links

June 18th 2009
Ten year’s ago today and a glob­al Car­ni­val Against Cap­i­tal was erupt­ing across the world with co-ordi­nat­ed protests tak­ing place in over 40 coun­tries on June 18th 1999.

J18 flier frontJ18 crowd meets at Liverpool Street stationJune 18th 2009
Ten year’s ago today and a glob­al Car­ni­val Against Cap­i­tal was erupt­ing across the world with co-ordi­nat­ed protests tak­ing place in over 40 coun­tries on June 18th 1999.

Direct­ly tar­get­ing finan­cial cen­tres the J18 day of Inter­na­tion­al Action was stun­ning in its scale and ran along­side the G7/G8 meet­ing in Koln Ger­many. It fol­lowed the Glob­al Street Par­ty that had been held along­side the G7/G8 meet­ing in Birm­ing­ham in 1998 and co-ordi­nat­ed through Reclaim The Streets.

To remem­ber it, here’s a set of 23 pic­tures from Lon­don J18 cour­tesy of a pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was there for the morn­ing and the par­ty, but who missed the ensu­ing riot as police fought to regain con­trol of the City of Lon­don.

The rea­sons for strug­gle are greater now than then, and cli­mate change and eco­nom­ic melt­downs threat­en the lives and liveli­hoods of us all.

There’s too much to men­tion about J18, from the sheer joy of tak­ing the City to the full-on bat­tles, from the danc­ing and the masks to the spoof FT paper to pirate radio broad­casts, from the brick­ing up and storm­ing of the Lon­don Inter­na­tion­al Finan­cial Futures Exchange to the knock­ing out of CCTV cam­eras, from the elec­tron­ic dis­tur­bance actions to the begin­nings of Indy­media, from the exhaus­tion to the recrim­i­na­tions and the state back­lash against RTS and every­one else protest­ing for a bet­ter world.

But most of all it was GLOBAL: “Our Resis­tance is as Transna­tion­al as Cap­i­tal”

See this col­lec­tion of 2 pages of web links to orig­i­nal reports, web­sites, analy­sis, pic­tures and video:

http://www.delicious.com/directmedia/j18

Enjoy.

Trident Ploughshares Blockade at Aldermaston on 15th June 2009

It was a glo­ri­ous morn­ing as 5 sep­a­rate groups made their way towards Alder­mas­ton. At 6.30a.m.

Aldermaston blockade 1It was a glo­ri­ous morn­ing as 5 sep­a­rate groups made their way towards Alder­mas­ton. At 6.30a.m. the Muriel Lesters arrived at North Gate to find it had not been opened yet for the park and ride coach­es so they fur­ther locked it with their own chains and some super-glue and arranged them­selves as com­fort­ably as pos­si­ble in their lock-ons and hung their peace ban­ners.

There were 5 of them locked on, includ­ing one in a wheel chair plus a lone sup­port­er. A police­man soon arrived and asked them, in amaze­ment, why they had cho­sen that par­tic­u­lar gate (it being rather out of the way and not a usu­al tar­get for demon­stra­tors). They inge­nious­ly replied that they had nev­er blocked that gate before! They were then told that they were doing noth­ing ille­gal and could stay there all day if they wished! Well we know we are doing noth­ing ille­gal and that the real crim­i­nals are those build­ing ille­gal weapons of mass destruc­tion inside the fences. And the Muriel Lesters also knew, unlike the police, that they were an essen­tial part of an over­all block­ade and that oth­er gates were being block­ad­ed. They remained where they were.

Aldermaston blockade 2At 7a.m. women from the Alder­mas­ton Women’s Peace Camp pushed their heavy lock-ons into place at Home Office Gate, and three women locked on, slow­ing traf­fic down whilst the East Anglian group drove two cars into Tadley Gate com­plete­ly block­ing it. The two cars had been care­ful­ly pro­vid­ed with lock-on tubes fixed to the back-seat floors so that when the cars were posi­tioned the sup­port­ers in the front could get out fast and the two in the back seat just opened their doors and then sat in the road and put their arms in the tube. Thus 2 peo­ple locked-on to each car and the rest of the sup­port­ing group spray paint­ed CND signs on the cars and hung ban­ners say­ing ’Nuclear Weapons are State Ter­ror­ism’.

Aldermaston blockade 3Mean­while, two intre­pid cyclists man­aged to pad­lock shut both sets of gates at the Main Gate and then rush off with­out get­ting arrest­ed in order to sup­port the oth­er groups. They were soon joined by 2 oth­er cyclists and through­out the morn­ing not only gave good sup­port but also got lots of ideas about how to do some bicy­cle block­ades anoth­er time. They put up their ban­ner that said ’Bikes Block Bombs — No Tri­dent’ at the Tadley Gate.

Aldermaston blockade 4At 7.30a.m. two com­bined TP affin­i­ty groups call­ing them­selves the ’Birth­day Group’ (it was Alison’s 60th birth­day) manoeu­vred a car­a­van into the Boil­er­house Gate stop­ping the line of traf­fic that had been direct­ed around to that gate. There were 4 locked to each cor­ner of the car­a­van sit­ting on the ground with their arms in con­crete lock-ons that were fixed inside each cor­ner of the car­a­van. One oth­er block­ad­er locked him­self to the side of the car­a­van. Then the ban­ner went up say­ing ’No Tri­dent Replace­ment’ and the birth­day cake came around.

Streams of traf­fic were try­ing to get into the var­i­ous gates and hav­ing to move slow­ly around the base try­ing to find a way to get in. The base had been suc­cess­ful­ly blocked at 5 gates and although the locks were bro­ken with­in min­utes at the main gates and traf­fic trick­led in past the con­crete blocks at Home Office Gate nev­er­the­less 3 gates were blocked for between 2 to 3 hours. The hard­est to move were the two cars as it was dif­fi­cult for the cut­ting teams to remove the tubes with­in the restrict­ed space inside the cars. Once every­one was removed the cars and the car­a­van then had to be towed away.

Eleven peo­ple were arrest­ed and tak­en along to Lod­don Val­ley Police Sta­tion. The 5 at North Gate had been released last of all, cut out and then plonked on the grass and instead of being arrest­ed they were left free to join the sup­port­ers from the oth­er blockad­ing groups. We all sat down and shared food and drink and our expe­ri­ences of the day. We had had a kind ded­i­cat­ed press per­son who got out the press releas­es for us as he cycled round col­lect­ing people’s pic­tures and anoth­er sup­port per­son who had dri­ven me around to take pic­tures and to get an over­all pic­ture of what was going on. We were able to do a cou­ple of inter­views includ­ing one for the local radio. You can find local press accounts here at http://www.newburytoday.co.uk/News/Article.aspx?articleID=10297 and at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/berkshire/8101261.stm

You can also find pic­tures of the block­ades at http://aldermaston.net/media

In all eleven peo­ple were arrest­ed and tak­en along to Lod­don Val­ley Police Sta­tion. They were not kept inside too long and we were all re-unit­ed at around 4p.m. After more chat­ting and de-briefs we all set off home — tired but hap­py.

The 11 arrest­ed were all charged with wil­ful obstruc­tion of the high­way either with or with­out a motor vehi­cle and were giv­en rather stiff bail con­di­tions to stay well away from Alder­mas­ton and Burgh­field that some of them may chal­lenge in court. They have to appear at New­bury Mag­is­trates Court on the fol­low­ing dates:- 7 on the 25th June, 2 on the 26th June, 1 on the 30th June and 1 on 2nd July. If any­one lives near the court then some court sup­port would be wel­come for the actu­al court cas­es. You can con­tact me if you want to do this and I will let you know the dates.

Any groups read­ing this who want to be involved in the next hid­den block­ade do con­tact me.….…we need to keep the pres­sure on Alder­mas­ton and try to per­suade our Gov­ern­ment to ful­fil its promise to the world com­mu­ni­ty to dis­arm its nuclear weapons not make new ones.

Local Writer Stops Council Hedge Cutting

This small, local action was car­ried out on the spur of the moment, but worked and prob­a­bly saved the lives of hun­dreds of nest­ing birds and oth­er inhab­i­tants of the hedgerow ecol­o­gy. Just goes to show that any­one can do it if they care enough — you don’t always need chains and tubes.

———-

This small, local action was car­ried out on the spur of the moment, but worked and prob­a­bly saved the lives of hun­dreds of nest­ing birds and oth­er inhab­i­tants of the hedgerow ecol­o­gy. Just goes to show that any­one can do it if they care enough — you don’t always need chains and tubes.

———-

NATURE-LOVING Kei­th Far­nish stood in front of trac­tors to stop them get­ting to birds nest­ing in hedges.

And Keith’s defi­ance has man­aged to halt a coun­cil hedge-cut­ting project in his local park.

Kei­th, 38, sprung into action when he spot­ted coun­cil con­trac­tors lop­ping two foot off the top of hedgerows, as he walked home through Sweyne Park, Rayleigh.

It stopped work­ers in their tracks, and Rochford Dis­trict Coun­cil has now decid­ed to call off the whole project until the end of the nest­ing sea­son.

Writer and dad-of-two Kei­th, who lives in near­by Eastcheap, is delight­ed.

He said: “That’s bril­liant news.Obviously, the coun­cil needs to review its pol­i­cy so it won’t hap­pen again.

“It’s so impor­tant the coun­cil takes into accounts pat­terns of nature.

“It was about three miles of hedgerow they would have mas­sa­cred and it would have destroyed nest­ing birds. Sweyne Park is the only green lung that Rayleigh has.”

Kei­th said the hedges are used by spar­rows, black­birds and robins, and about 20 metres had been cut down by the time he arrived after drop­ping off his chil­dren at school.

He said: “It’s just pure chance I hap­pened to be there and saw them. I said to the con­trac­tors that I will just stand in front of your machin­ery until you go.

“These guys seemed OK though I got their goat a bit. The man­ag­er told me they will just have to pack up and go some­where else.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever stood in front of machin­ery. It’s just some­thing I had to do.

“I felt empow­ered because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t feel threat­ened at all.”

(from http://www.echo-news.co.uk/news/local_news/rayleigh/4431250.Keith_makes_a_stand_to_protect_bird_nests/)Hedge Protester