More arrests in Tasmanian forest destruction

JAN 14, 2008: A camp set up by con­ser­va­tion­ists almost three years ago was bro­ken up by police on Mon­day morn­ing at the request of Forestry Tas­ma­nia which wants to start log­ging.

JAN 14, 2008: A camp set up by con­ser­va­tion­ists almost three years ago was bro­ken up by police on Mon­day morn­ing at the request of Forestry Tas­ma­nia which wants to start log­ging.

A pro­test­er who locked him­self in a spi­der­hole tun­nel for over 30 hours has been charged with tres­pass in Hobart. The activist was one of a group attempt­ing to stop Forestry Tas­ma­nia build­ing a road into a log­ging coupe in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley.

Two oth­er men have also been charged after try­ing to enter the same tun­nel. A Queens­land woman was also arrest­ed after evad­ing police ear­li­er by climb­ing high­er up a tree as they used a cher­ry-pick­er to bring her down.

Four pro­test­ers remain in tree-sits as more peo­ple arrived to sup­port activists who have been liv­ing in the area. Still Wild Still Threat­ened say 150 peo­ple have gath­ered for a com­mu­ni­ty walk through the area in sup­port of pro­test­ers who are try­ing to stop a log­ging road.

“The com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who are out in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley in defence of our old growth forests will be attempt­ing to get into this exclu­sion zone by any means so they can wit­ness the ongo­ing destruc­tion of our old growth forests…”

READ MORE/Comment…

MORE: Take Action || Police raid Tas­man­ian for­est block­ade || Spi­der-hole for­est pro­test­er arrest­ed || Still Wild Still Threat­ened

Protesters in Standoff with Power Company Over Swamp Access (Florida, USA)

Jan 6th, 2009

As part of their ongo­ing strug­gle against Flori­da Pow­er and Light (FPL), activists from Ever­glades Earth First! have set up an encamp­ment at the entrance to the Bar­ley Bar­ber Swamp, demand­ing entry to ensure that ancient cypress trees are not being killed by water pump­ing for the adja­cent Mar­tin Coun­ty Pow­er Plant. Fol­low­ing a com­bined protest/picnic, demon­stra­tors attempt­ed to hike in to inspect the swamp, but were pre­vent­ed from enter­ing by police. A stand­off has ensued.

Swamp protestorsJan 6th, 2009

As part of their ongo­ing strug­gle against Flori­da Pow­er and Light (FPL), activists from Ever­glades Earth First! have set up an encamp­ment at the entrance to the Bar­ley Bar­ber Swamp, demand­ing entry to ensure that ancient cypress trees are not being killed by water pump­ing for the adja­cent Mar­tin Coun­ty Pow­er Plant. Fol­low­ing a com­bined protest/picnic, demon­stra­tors attempt­ed to hike in to inspect the swamp, but were pre­vent­ed from enter­ing by police. A stand­off has ensued.


Swamp Stand­off Ends With 17 Arrests
Jan 12th, 2009

Sev­en­teen pro­test­ers from Ever­glades Earth First! were arrest­ed on Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 10, six of them for cross­ing into the Bar­ley Bar­ber Swamp, which is owned by Flori­da Pow­er and Light. This end­ed a 6‑day stand­off, in which pro­test­ers had camped at the entrance of the swamp demand­ing entry, accus­ing FPL of bar­ring the pub­lic in order to con­ceal the fact that its adja­cent Mar­tin Coun­ty Pow­er Plant was destroy­ing the swamp and its 1,000-year old cypress trees through exces­sive water pump­ing.

Ever­glades Earth First! has put out a call for finan­cial sup­port to help bail out those arrest­ed. “Direct action is a com­mu­ni­ty effort that goes well beyond the risk of arrest,” the group said. “It requires broad sup­port from those who wish to see grass­roots efforts suc­ceed.”

Watch videos of this and oth­er Ever­glades EF! actions at their YouTube page

Ex-oil exec’s luxury home burned down by molotovs

Edmon­ton, Cana­da — The lux­u­ry home of for­mer Syn­crude pres­i­dent and CEO Jim Carter was burned down by an arson­ist Sat­ur­day night. Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns may have been the motive.

Ex-oil exec's luxury home burned down by molotovsEdmon­ton, Cana­da — The lux­u­ry home of for­mer Syn­crude pres­i­dent and CEO Jim Carter was burned down by an arson­ist Sat­ur­day night. Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns may have been the motive. The build­ing was struck by two molo­tov cock­tails and was quick­ly con­sumed by flames, before fire­fight­ers had a chance to con­trol the blaze. Dam­ages were esti­mat­ed at $850,000. Carter who has ties to the oil and gas indus­try was out, as were his fam­i­ly mem­bers, at the time of the inci­dent which took place at approx­i­mate­ly 8:15 PM. No one was injured fight­ing the fire.

Manchester & Heathrow Climate Rush picnics

North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter Air­port

While 500 pro­test­ers occu­pied the domes­tic depar­ture lounge at Heathrow air­port at 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan, oth­ers tried a simul­ta­ne­ous occu­pa­tion at Man­ches­ter air­port.…

Climate Rush Manchester
North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter Air­port

While 500 pro­test­ers occu­pied the domes­tic depar­ture lounge at Heathrow air­port at 7pm on Mon­day 12th Jan, oth­ers tried a simul­ta­ne­ous occu­pa­tion at Man­ches­ter air­port.…

At the North­ern Cli­mate Rush at Man­ches­ter air­port between 50 and 100 peo­ple attempt­ed to occu­py the domes­tic depar­tures lounge but found large num­bers of police screen­ing entry at the doors. The police cor­doned off pro­test­ers in an area away from pas­sen­gers.

The group spelled out ‘fly­ing kills’ in coats, scarves and an umbrel­la on the floor. A man with a cel­lo and a woman with a vio­lin played music by the com­pos­er Han­del while oth­ers ate food from a pic­nic ham­per. How­ev­er, frus­trat­ed at being moved out of pas­sen­gers sight one of the pro­test­ers attempt­ed to breech police lines and was arrest­ed.

Supt Dave Hull said: “Despite repeat­ed attempts to con­tact the organ­is­ers, they failed to engage with us. There­fore, offi­cers did not know how many pro­tes­tors would attend so we had to pre­pare for a range of con­tin­gen­cies. One man was arrest­ed on sus­pi­cion of a pub­lic order offence.”

For VIDEO footage see
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1586371503/bctid6995110001

Around 50 cli­mate change activists gath­ered in Ter­mi­nal 3 of Man­ches­ter Air­port last night to protest against air­port expan­sion and domes­tic flights. The demo mir­rored the Cli­mate Rush ‘Din­ner at Depar­tures’ protest at Heathrow’s Ter­mi­nal 1 at the same time. ( http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/manchester/2009/01/418105.html)

There are around 32 flights a day between Man­ches­ter and the Lon­don hubs, despite the high speed rail con­nec­tion. ( http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1026945_plea_to_scrap_london_air_link)

The pro­test­ers dressed in Edwar­dian peri­od arrived to find Ter­mi­nal 3 locked down with around 70 police offi­cers, includ­ing For­ward Intel­li­gence Teams from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police. They were read parts of the Riot Act before enter­ing a ‘des­ig­nat­ed protest area’.

For­mer Man­ches­ter City Coun­cil­lor, Vanes­sa Hall, who attend­ed the North­ern Cli­mate Rush said:

“ With the speed of inter­ci­ty trains there is no longer any just or sen­si­ble rea­son to take domes­tic flights. All expan­sion plans, includ­ing those at Man­ches­ter and Heathrow should be shelved. Pas­sen­ger num­bers at Man­ches­ter Air­port have been falling for at least the last 6 months.”

She added, “In a time of reces­sion and cli­mate cri­sis, gov­ern­ment mon­ey should be spent on improve­ments to rail, trams, and bus­es, not on sub­si­dies and infra­struc­ture for the avi­a­tion indus­try.”

Avi­a­tion accounts for 13% of UK glob­al warm­ing emis­sions and is the fastest-grow­ing source of green­house gas­es. Air­lines pay no tax on avi­a­tion fuel, cost­ing the pub­lic purse an esti­mat­ed £10 bil­lion.

Man­ches­ter Air­port claims it intends to go car­bon neu­tral by 2015 — but this will not include the emis­sions from the aero­planes.

www.stopmanchesterairport.org.uk

————–
Climate Rush HeathrowHeathrow Ter­mi­nal One Cli­mate Rush Pic­nic a suc­cess!

I arrived at Heathrow ter­mi­nal one with alot of trep­i­da­tion and cau­tion. Not know­ing what to expect, I dressed in a suit and tie to avoid attract­ing inter­est. It did not work.

I entered the ter­mi­nal and when up to domes­tic depar­tures to see what was hap­pen­ing. I found a place to sit and enjoy a cof­fee whilst wait­ing. Being near the place where alot of BAA secu­ri­ty guards were gath­er­ing, I over­heard them try­ing to guess who was a pro­test­er and who was a passenger…it was very fun­ny know­ing I sat yards away and they had did not realise.…

The air­port was in a state of some con­sid­er­able alert. It seems that Cli­mate Rush and a dev­il­ish­ly crim­i­nal plan to have a mil­i­tant pic­nic (by most­ly women) in depar­tures had BAA on the run.

The cops were anoth­er mat­ter. FIT crews were on the upper gang­ways and over 100 police occu­pied the depar­tures lounge when i arrived about an hour before. Even more arrived as I sipped my cof­fee and read the Guardian.

After twen­ty min­utes, two cops saun­tered over to me and ask whether they could search me. I asked why. they said there is a protest planned and they were look­ing for cli­mate chaos extrem­ists. I said I was wait­ing for a friend. After find­ing noth­ing and believ­ing my sto­ry, they let me go. I decid­ed to move to Cafe Rouge where every­body was gathering…safety in num­bers I thought. soon as I got up there, there was anoth­er 30 cops watch­ing absolute­ly every­one…

As the min­utes count­ed down, I moved with under­cur­rents down into the depar­ture check in area and was joined by about 50 or 60 peo­ple who start­ed to lay out a ban­ner and a well stocked organ­ic and home cooked pic­nic. Ten min­utes lat­er, the bulk of pro­test­ers arrived and the depar­tures check in filled up fast. Real pas­sen­gers moved aside and the police moved in to encir­cle the pic­nic. By this stage close to 500 cli­mate rush pro­test­ers were spread­ing them­selves out in a ever widen­ing cir­cle. The strings Quar­tet began play­ing and a few peo­ple start­ed play­ing with a big ball which looked like the plan­et.

The BAA cor­po­rate media descend­ed and so did lots of TV cam­er­a’s hop­ing for an inter­view. at one such so many inter­views were being giv­en, it became dif­fi­cult to move around. Speak­ing with some of the orga­niz­ers, they claimed an enor­mous suc­cess in sus­pend­ing the oper­a­tion of ter­mi­nal 1. It cer­tain­ly looked like a suc­cess to me.

A while lat­er and after most of the food had been eat­en (flushed down with a lit­tle wine), every­one rose to their feet and start­ed chant­i­ng. After Stanstead, the gov­ern­ment, media and police were say­ing that every­one was an extrem­ist and pos­si­bly eco-ter­ror­ists. So the pro­test­ers, most­ly women (some in the 50 and 60’s) start­ed chant­i­ng ” do we look like ter­ror­ists?” and ‘down with BAA’

After one hour, the cops were clos­ing the cir­cle fear­ing a block­ade or a long-term occu­pa­tion. I feared we were all going to be hemmed in and arrest­ed so I decid­ed to retreat with my video cam­era intact and get back home.

Wor­ried about what I had walked away from, I rang a friend who said that every­thing was alright. the demo had fin­ished 15 min­utes after I left and there had been no arrests. In fact the cops relaxed and got quite bored as cli­mate-rush activists offered them food!

http://www.climaterush.co.uk/

Walk of proposed opencast site, NE, 18th Jan

The good folks from the NO OPENCAST TODAY OR TOMORROW cam­paign have invit­ed us along to walk the site that U:K coal are plan­ning to destroy with a sur­face min­ing ‘devel­op­ment’.

Stobswood opencastRed KiteThe good folks from the NO OPENCAST TODAY OR TOMORROW cam­paign have invit­ed us along to walk the site that U:K coal are plan­ning to destroy with a sur­face min­ing ‘devel­op­ment’. This walk will out­line the site that U:K coal plan to mine and we should hope­ful­ly see some of the wildlife that is under threat. Lunch will be pro­vid­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre after the walk.

When: Sun­day 18th Jan
Where: 9.45am Dip­ton com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl
Why: why not?
The n.o.t.t cam­paign has fought a long bat­tle with U:K coal to stop the open cast­ing of the Der­went val­ley. The polit­i­cal cli­mate is cur­rent­ly in favour of coal extrac­tion at any cost com­mu­ni­ty, ecology,climate. The appli­ca­tion is due to be heard around April by Durham/Derwentside coun­ty coun­cil.

Please help stop the need­less destruc­tion of the Pont val­ley sign the on-line peti­tion at www.pontvalley.net or even bet­ter write to coun­ty hall but best of all get out on the walk this com­ing Sun­day. Please for­ward this mail to pub­li­cise this

Florentine Arrests — Police raid Tasmanian forest blockade

JAN 12, 08 — Nine anti-log­ging pro­test­ers remain locked to a road in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley in south­ern Tas­ma­nia after refus­ing to leave their camp­site.

Styx tripodJAN 12, 08 — Nine anti-log­ging pro­test­ers remain locked to a road in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley in south­ern Tas­ma­nia after refus­ing to leave their camp­site.

Police are try­ing to break up the two-year-old protest camp so that Forestry Tas­ma­nia can begin road­works and log­ging. Forty mem­bers of the group ‘Still Wild Still Threat­ened’ were camped in the area this morn­ing when police arrived just after 8:30pm.

The immi­nent log­ging of the Upper Flo­ren­tine for­est is a nation­al dis­grace, Aus­tralian Greens Leader Bob Brown said today.
“The Upper Flo­ren­tine For­est has been deemed of World Her­itage val­ue. The immi­nent log­ging oper­a­tion there is a nation­al dis­grace. Claims by Prime Min­is­ter Rudd that native for­est log­ging is sus­tain­able are patent­ly stu­pid,” Sen­a­tor Brown said.

The con­voy report­ed­ly con­tains 12 police cars, includ­ing two small bus­es with an esti­mat­ed 30 police involved in the oper­a­tion.

Sen­a­tor Brown was fly­ing over the site in a heli­copter this morn­ing, which was recalled to base fol­low­ing con­tact from the police. A large ban­ner read­ing ‘Save our Forests’ can be seen from the sky.

Spokesman Chris­to Mills says police asked them to leave but they refused. Mr Mills says after a two hour stand-off 30 activists have now been removed, one has been arrest­ed and nine remain locked to a road, accord­ing to reports on the ABC web­site.

“For­est defend­ers are con­tin­u­ing to hold their posi­tions and will do so for as long as it takes,” he said.

Sen­a­tor Bob Brown says police had bet­ter pre­pare for a long fight. “I think it will take quite a while to remove these folk…”

——–

RED ALERT!!!! CAMP FLORENTINE HAS BEEN BUSTED

RED ALERT!!!! CAMP FLORENTINE HAS BEEN BUSTED AND THE BULLDOZERS AND CHAINSAWS ARE MOVING IN RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ear­ly this morn­ing, police stormed a peace­ful com­mu­ni­ty block­ade in the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley. Camp Flo­ren­tine, locat­ed in log­ging coupe FO044A, has been defend­ing the glob­al­ly recog­nised old growth forests of the Upper Flo­ren­tine for over two years.

This move by police is designed to allow Forestry Tas­ma­nia to build 4km of new log­ging roads into the heart of the val­ley. These roads will rip apart an ancient and glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant ecosys­tem, open­ing up the val­ley to indus­tri­al scale dev­as­ta­tion at the hands of wood­chip­ping barons Gunns Lim­it­ed.

THE BULLDOZERS AND CHAINSAWS ARE MOVING INTO THE PRISTINE FORESTS OF THE UPPER FLORENTINE VALLEY RIGHT NOW AND WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PEACEFUL COMMUNITY WALK IN THIS WEDNESDAY AT 10AM.

If you are liv­ing in Tas­ma­nia, please stand up and speak out against the destruc­tion of our pre­cious old growth forests. A com­mu­ni­ty walk in will be held this Wednes­day, 14th Jan­u­ary 2009 at 10am. Meet at Timbs Track carpark, Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley. To get to the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley, take the Brook­er High­way out of Hobart, take the New Nor­folk turnoff and fol­low the signs to Mt Field or Lake Ped­der. Con­tin­ue on through May­de­na. Camp Flo­ren­tine and Timbs Track are 20 min­utes past May­de­na on the side of the Gor­don Riv­er Road.

WRITE TO THE POLLIES AND THE NEWSPAPERS. CALL UP YOUR LOCAL MP AND TALKBACK RADIO STATION.

Politi­cians need to know about your seri­ous con­cerns with the destruc­tion of the glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant forests of the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley. Become an active cit­i­zen and exer­cise your demo­c­ra­t­ic right to let the gov­ern­ment know that old growth log­ging and the destruc­tion of ancient ecosys­tems is unac­cept­able, and that seri­ous changes to leg­is­la­tion and pol­i­cy need to hap­pen now!

Write a let­ter (every hand writ­ten let­ter is viewed as rep­re­sent­ing the opin­ions of 100 vot­ers, so it’s cer­tain­ly worth mak­ing the extra effort) or send an email to your local fed­er­al mem­ber and any (or all!) of the fol­low­ing mem­bers of par­lia­ment. Make an appoint­ment with your local MPs … they are your employ­ees and need to lis­ten to your con­cerns.

Write let­ters to the edi­tor of your local news­pa­per and call up talk back radio. Get the word out in the media!

The Tas­man­ian Gov­ern­ment.

THE PREMIER OF TASMANIA

David Bartlett, MHA

Lev­el 11. 15 Mur­ray St. Hobart, TAS 7000

david.bartlett@education.tas.gov.au

THE LEADER OF THE LIBERAL PARTY, TASMANIAN DIVISION

Will Hodg­man, MHA

Par­lia­ment House, Hobart, TAS 7000

will.hodgman@parliament.tas.gov.au

The Aus­tralian Gov­ern­ment

THE PRIME MINISTER

The Hon. Kevin Rudd MP

PO Box 6022, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Par­lia­ment House, Can­ber­ra ACT 2600

Email via the PM.s web­site . www.pm.gov.au

THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

The Hon Mal­colm Turn­bull MP

PO Box 6022, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Par­lia­ment House, Can­ber­ra ACT 2600

Malcolm.Turnbull.MP@aph.gov.au

MINISTER FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, HERITAGE & THE ARTS

The Hon. Peter Gar­rett

PO Box 6022, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Par­lia­ment House, Can­ber­ra ACT 2600

Peter.garrett.MP@aph.gov.au

tellpeter@petergarrett.com.au

MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND WATER

Sen­a­tor The Hon. Pen­ny Wong

PO Box 6237

Hal­i­fax Street, Ade­laide SA 5000

Senator.wong@aph.gov.au

MINISTER FOR AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FORESTRY

The Hon Tony Burke MP

PO Box 6022, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Par­lia­ment House, Can­ber­ra ACT 2600

Tony.Burke.MP@aph.gov.au

SHADOW MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE, ENVIRONMENT & WATER

Mr Greg Hunt

PO Box 6022, House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives

Par­lia­ment House, Can­ber­ra ACT 2600

Greg.Hunt.MP@aph.gov.au

Please con­tact us at stillwildstillthreatened@gmail.com for more info on what you can do to help us save the out­stand­ing forests of the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley.

Donate online or at any West­pac Bank to the cam­paign to save these pre­cious forests.

Account name: Tas­ma­nias South­ern Forests
BSB #: 737001.
Account #: 704815.

——–

“For the wood­chip­pers. immense pow­er threat­ens not only our for­est, but Tas­ma­ni­a’s future. Not con­tent with our great forests, their greed now destroys not only our nat­ur­al her­itage, but dis­torts our par­lia­ment, deforms our poli­ty, cows our media and stunts our soci­ety . Have courage, speak of love, take action your­self, stand up for what you believe, and our world will sure­ly change.”

Richard Flana­gan

Speech made at a Par­lia­ment Lawns forests ral­ly on 16 March, 2006. Hobart, Tas­ma­nia.

Blockade stops British company’s midnight entry into tribes’ land

7/1/09 — A block­ade mount­ed by more than 50 pro­tes­tors stopped British min­ing com­pa­ny Vedan­ta enter­ing the land of the Don­gria Kondh and oth­er Kondh tribes under cov­er of dark­ness last night.

Dongria Kohnd 1

7/1/09 — A block­ade mount­ed by more than 50 pro­tes­tors stopped British min­ing com­pa­ny Vedan­ta enter­ing the land of the Don­gria Kondh and oth­er Kondh tribes under cov­er of dark­ness last night.

The FTSE 100 com­pa­ny plans to mine baux­ite on the Don­gria Kondh’s sacred moun­tain in the state of Oris­sa, lay­ing waste to the forests they depend on for their sur­vival.

Last night’s action fol­lows high lev­el meet­ings at the week­end between Vedanta’s bil­lion­aire chair­man Anil Agar­w­al and Oris­sa Chief Min­is­ter Naveen Pat­naik, who backs the mine. After the meet­ing, Agar­w­al told jour­nal­ists that min­ing would start ‘with­in a month or two’.

India’s Supreme Court has approved Vedanta’s plans, but the mine is yet to receive the envi­ron­men­tal clear­ance required for it to go ahead.

The stand-off between local vil­lagers and Vedanta’s bull­doz­ers at the block­ade site con­tin­ues. Pro­tes­tor Ajun Chan­di, who has received a series of threat­en­ing phone calls from Vedan­ta, says, ‘You must let the whole world know what Vedan­ta is doing.’

The Don­gria Kondh have said they will mount armed resis­tance if Ven­dan­ta try to evict them and destroy the for­est cov­ered moun­tains they call home.

More info at: www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

rockwool polluting croatia

Rock wool, whilst sold as an eco-friend­ly prod­uct, is a dirty thing to make. In the USA, Erin Brokovich is inves­ti­gat­ing claims that a now-closed Rock­wool Group fac­to­ry is respon­si­ble for the high rate of can­cer local­ly. Mean­while, the res­i­dents of the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Pican, Croa­t­ia are protest­ing against a new fac­to­ry which was built ille­gal­ly. The fac­to­ry reg­u­lar­ly floods the val­ley with thick smoke.

Rock wool, whilst sold as an eco-friend­ly prod­uct, is a dirty thing to make. In the USA, Erin Brokovich is inves­ti­gat­ing claims that a now-closed Rock­wool Group fac­to­ry is respon­si­ble for the high rate of can­cer local­ly. Mean­while, the res­i­dents of the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Pican, Croa­t­ia are protest­ing against a new fac­to­ry which was built ille­gal­ly. The fac­to­ry reg­u­lar­ly floods the val­ley with thick smoke.

Read their press release below:

Stop Rockwool 2

URGENT APPEAL FOR HELP

In Octo­ber 2005, Rock­wool Adri­at­ic (part of the Dan­ish-based Rock­wool Group) bought land in Croa­t­ia for 1.98 Euro per m2 – a gift from the Croa­t­ian Gov­ern­ment, which was falling over itself in eager­ness to accept for­eign invest­ment, no mat­ter what the future costs would be. Rock­wool had already estab­lished a head­quar­ters in Zagreb before the land was bought! They do not have to pay ANY income tax for the next TEN YEARS!! The agree­ment states that Rock­wool will be made 10,000 Euros a month if for any rea­son they are pre­vent­ed from nor­mal pro­duc­tion.

But many facts point to an obi­ous con­clu­sion: The multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion moved in under false pre­tences. Local res­i­dents were ini­tial­ly told a blan­ket mak­ing fac­to­ry would be built (in the USA, build­ing insu­la­tion is labelled ‘insu­lat­ing blan­kets’). The site was pre­sent­ed as a green­field project and there is evi­dence that the EU is black­mail­ing the Croa­t­ian gov­ern­ment to this fac­to­ry. It is in fact being used to pro­duce rock wool, which is a fibrous sol­id (an amor­phous sil­i­cate to be pre­cise) man­u­fac­tured from slag met­al and used as insu­la­tion. Whilst unde­ni­ably safe as an end prod­uct, and iron­i­cal­ly enough, praised as an ecofriend­ly means of insu­la­tion, the pro­duc­tion process is a dirty one.

The fac­to­ry was built in Pican, which lies in a region at the top of a large penin­su­la called Istria (Istra in Croa­t­ian). Istria is next to Italy and is a pop­u­lar tourist loca­tion, but for how much longer? Pri­or to the fac­to­ry’s arrival, the state offered incen­tives for rur­al devel­op­ment and growth. The fac­to­ry itself is built in the midst of an agri­cul­tur­al area, on pro­tect­ed nation­al water reserves which are the only source of drink­ing water on the penin­su­la.

Rock­wool’s modus operan­di appears to be to pro­duce for 10 to 15 years and then movE on before encoun­ter­ing prob­lems, that is to say, before the con­se­quences of pol­lu­tion become visible.The impe­tus in Croa­t­ia may be a new EU law that pro­hibits the use of formalde­hyde. Rock­wool multi­na­tion­al con­tin­ues to use this chem­i­cal in Croa­t­ia, which is still not under EU laws. The fac­to­ry has trans­ferred parts from Poland, where rumour has it the work­ers have start­ed get­ting all sorts of dis­eases.

In 2007, a com­plaint was filled against the Rock­wool fac­to­ry by the Inspec­tor for Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion for using the emer­gency chim­ney (in con­tra­ven­tion of the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Law). In Sep­tem­ber 2007, a legal com­plaint was made for break­ing the Waste Man­age­ment Law for improp­er dis­pos­al of waste. Both of these legal actions have failed in the low­er courts.

In Novem­ber 2007, a legal com­plaint was made for emit­ting pol­lut­ing sub­stances into the air — SO2 and ammo­ni­um above the the lim­its pre­scribed by Croa­t­ian (and EU) laws.

Laws were bro­ken or bent to the max­i­mum to get the fac­to­ry run­ning. There were changes made to the loca­tion and con­struc­tion per­mit which fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the con­di­tions of fac­to­ry pro­duc­tion; but no new Envi­ron­men­tal Study was made (July 2008). The fac­to­ry has no legal agree­ment on water use – they need vast amounts of water and right now they buy it pri­vate­ly, lit­er­al­ly pump­ing water from an adja­cent aban­doned busi­ness site.

Activists have made inde­pen­dent mea­sure­ments. The results are shock­ing, but the state refus­es to ver­i­fy them. The mea­sure­ments: CO2, CO and methane por­tions in the air were way above the allowed lim­its. There was not enough oxy­gen, where­as CO2 and CO were way above the mea­sured num­bers on Rock­wool’s “offi­cial” mea­sur­ing sta­tions.

Zdravko Beric, sci­en­tist and a direc­tor of the firm that did a mea­sur­ing with a non-pilot fly­ing ves­sel (his licence is not acknowl­edged in Croa­t­ia although he is one of eight peo­ple in Europe that is qual­i­fied to make such mea­sure­ments), stat­ed: K — 40 (Kalij): lim­it­ing val­ue 3000 Bk/kg, val­ue mea­sured above Rockwool:11.730 Bk/kg, for Ra — 226 (Radi­um) lim­it­ing val­ue 300 Bk/kg, val­ue mea­sured above Rock­wool: 2.570 Bk/kg. He also found 7 hard met­als and 29 car­cino­genic sub­stances. Fur­ther on, salts of nitrates, sul­fides, sul­fates, acetates of mer­cury’s com­pounds anti­mone and cad­mi­um that fall on the earth con­t­a­m­i­nate the agri­cul­tur­al area 100%. Con­sump­tion of fruit and veg­eta­bles con­tain­ing these sub­stances at 0,53 gr/m2 caus­es health prob­lems, but WITH con­sis­tent expo­sure, can­cer is caused by 1.430 gr/kg of veg­eta­bles or fruit. [1]

Beric com­ments “With this amount of radioac­tiv­i­ty we guar­an­tee that in 10 years all the pop­u­la­tion will start get­ting ill from throat, thy­roid and bronchial can­cer, get­ting skin aller­gies, and for every month of the fac­to­ry’s pro­duc­tion 10 years of decon­t­a­m­i­na­tion will be need­ed.” [2]

Beric’s obser­va­tions are inter­est­ing in the light of the sit­u­a­tion in the USA where Erin Brokovich is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing a case to sue Rock­wool on behalf of 87 peo­ple with brain tumours who live near the site of a for­mer Rock­wool fac­to­ry in Cameron, Mis­souri. [2]

By any intel­li­gent stan­dard, every facil­i­ty of this type needs to be based on a legal-sci­en­tif­ic doc­u­ment — this study was done by the firm Ekon­erg, hired by Rock­wool and the Envi­ron­ment Pro­tec­tion Min­istry. It is full of false data, com­prised of incom­plete and esti­mat­ed mea­sure­ments. For exam­ple, the near­est set­tle­ments are said to be 3.5 km away, when in fact they are 300 to 500 metres away. The study says that the pop­u­la­tion resides in this area only tem­porar­i­ly. The data from the cost-ben­e­fit analy­sis are also false. The study was not done by qual­i­fied inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists who were famil­iar with atmos­pher­ic con­di­tions, geog­ra­phy and demog­ra­phy.

The local com­mu­ni­ty here is spon­ta­neous­ly resist­ing; the last big­ger protest was Novem­ber 30 (approx­i­mate­ly 1000 peo­ple) and before that August 31st (1500 peo­ple). The entire pop­u­la­tion of the imme­di­ate sur­round­ing val­ley and hill­sides is only 2,500.There are three eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions fight­ing against it, but it feels like we are fight­ing some­thing that is big­ger than us. The week after the last big­ger protest the fac­to­ry fumed like hell and smelled of urine, fire­crack­ers and sawn iron. The fac­to­ry works main­ly by night, since the smoke is less vis­i­ble. 200 pro­tes­tors spon­ta­neous­ly appeared in front of the fac­to­ry every night until the oper­a­tion was shut down. Heavy police escorts were deployed to pro­tect the work­ers and the poice also intim­i­dat­ed pro­tes­tors. Neigh­bour­hood fam­i­lies com­ing out in the mid­dle of the cold and rainy night prompt­ed politi­cians to rein­vent them­selves as ‘con­cerned’.

Stop Rockwool 3

WE NEED HELP URGENTLY!

An inter­na­tion­al cam­paign is just begin­ning, we can­not let Rock­wool get away with this!

Con­tact:

Croa­t­ia -
antirockwoolakcijaATgmail.com
narodprotivrockwoolaATnet.hr
istra.nasazemljaATgmail.com
00385/92–2317331 (Hele­na or Tihana)

Eng­land -
welovenatureATpressured.plus.com

Webin­fo:
Eng­lish infor­ma­tion: http://www.pressured.plus.com/

Face­book groups:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=39557279076
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6010983923

Online peti­tion — http://labin.info/10,9,stop-za-rockwool.aspx

NOTES

1
Zdravko Beric’; e‑mail: tzr@prvomajska-tzr.hr

2
http://www.glasistre.hr/?d5acf51e174775f956966b162325aa5c,TS,3952„19681„245390

3
Brock­ovich talks tumors in Cameron
http://www.stjoenews.net/news/2008/oct/28/brockovich-talks-tumors-cameron/
Erin Brock­ovich Brings Hope To Cameron
http://www.kctv5.com/news/17819947/detail.html
Test­ing Starts On Plant Sus­pect­ed In Tumor Cas­es
http://www.kmbc.com/health/16881894/detail.html

2008 campaign round-ups: Rossport, climate & anti-aviation

2008 overview of Shell to Sea cam­paign

An in depth account of sig­nif­i­cant events in 2008 from some­one involved in the com­mu­ni­ty led cam­paign in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land to pre­vent Shell build­ing a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in the region.

2008 overview of Shell to Sea cam­paign

An in depth account of sig­nif­i­cant events in 2008 from some­one involved in the com­mu­ni­ty led cam­paign in Coun­ty Mayo, Ire­land to pre­vent Shell build­ing a gas refin­ery and high pres­sure pipeline in the region.

2008 has been a year of ups and downs for the Shell to Sea cam­paign, how­ev­er gen­er­al­ly the last months of the year have been very pos­i­tive. This is a brief review of the year and a call-out for peo­ple to get involved next year when we expect a big push from Shell and the Gov­ern­ment to again try to force this project through. At the moment, we are plan­ning on the assump­tion that a pipe-lay­ing ship (Soli­taire or oth­er­wise) will be back any­time from spring next year, to try to final­ly lay the off­shore pipeline.

This year the area saw the switch of empha­sis away from the refin­ery at Bel­lan­aboy to Glen­gad where Shell wants to bring in the pipeline. While for about the first 6 months of the year peo­ple still turned up at the Shell to Sea trail­er to show their oppo­si­tion to the refin­ery, there was­n’t very much phys­i­cal direct action try­ing to stop the progress there. I think that after all the peat was removed from the refin­ery, peo­ple gen­er­al­ly resigned them­selves to the fact that the refin­ery would be built. Also some peo­ple had drift­ed away from the cam­paign, some think­ing that the out­come was inevitable, and oth­ers kept away because they were sick of being har­ried by Gar­daí at Bel­lan­aboy. Since I have come to area, a lot of peo­ple involved in the cam­paign imme­di­ate­ly around the pipeline area have always said that it would come down to the land and when Shell tries to come on the land. I always thought this was a risky strat­e­gy as if the refin­ery gets built; there would be even greater pres­sure on the gov­ern­ment to have it used, and not to allow a giant cor­po­ra­tion waste its mon­ey. How­ev­er, this is the sit­u­a­tion that we find our­selves in, but it has to be said that it is also a risky sit­u­a­tion for Shell and the Gov­ern­ment. They obvi­ous­ly thought that if they got the project this far, then the local com­mu­ni­ty would see the futil­i­ty of their fight and give up. This has not hap­pened and will not hap­pen for this next stage of the strug­gle at least.

Glin­sk Pro­pos­al

Around late April of this year, a pro­pos­al to move the refin­ery to a more remote onland loca­tion – such as Glin­sk — was backed by a num­ber of local Shell to Sea peo­ple. The pro­pos­al had been made the pre­vi­ous Novem­ber by the 3 priests of the parish to Min­is­ter Eamon Ryan but he had made no response. This move was seen by many Shell to Sea mem­bers as incom­pat­i­ble with what they had been cam­paign­ing for and it cre­at­ed sig­nif­i­cant dif­fi­cul­ties at the time. Pobail Cill Comain was formed by the local peo­ple who sup­port­ed the Glin­sk pro­pos­al and they have worked close­ly with Pobail Le Ceile which is a local busi­ness group work­ing against the cur­rent project.
While this devel­op­ment cre­at­ed some ten­sion at the time, I feel that a lot of peo­ple in the area now think that over­all it has ben­e­fit­ed the cam­paign against the Cor­rib Gas Project. The fact that there are 3 groups now work­ing local­ly against Shell might at times seem like overkill, but it has added new direc­tions and dynam­ic to the cam­paign too. It is inter­est­ing to see how the main­stream papers have tak­en to the new groups and now nor­mal­ly add Shell to Sea com­ments at the end of arti­cles in the “also said” sec­tion of the arti­cle.

Glen­gad

The big action of the year all occurred in the vicin­i­ty of Glen­gad where Shell & Sta­toil were plan­ning to lay the off­shore sec­tion of their pipeline. It is worth not­ing that this is the third attempt — and fail­ure — to lay the off­shore sec­tion. At the first attempt Enter­prise Oil pulled out because of pres­sure local­ly, then in 2005 Shell & Allseas pulled the plug under pres­sure of a High Court case in the pipeline. This year, just before the pipe-lay­ing was sup­pos­ed­ly about to com­mence, a large sec­tion of the stinger broke off and the Soli­taire even­tu­al­ly limped home for repair. How the stinger was dam­aged exact­ly remains a mys­tery.

What we do know is about the great resis­tance that took place around Glen­gad.

Mau­ra Har­ring­ton went on a hunger strike from when the Soli­taire entered Broad­haven Bay until it left Irish waters. This was a tough time for every­one involved in the cam­paign with a 24 hour vig­il held for the 11 days out­side the gates in Glen­gad where Mau­ra stayed in her car while on hunger strike. Thank­ful­ly this end­ed with a hap­py out­come and Mau­ra returned grad­u­al­ly to full health. One aspect that remained with me since this was the line from Mau­ra let­ter to Allseas in which she stat­ed the “peo­ple come and go in nano sec­onds; Place endures”. I feel that this state­ment rep­re­sents a lot of why Shell and the Gov­ern­ment have not got their way so far with this project.

Oth­er great heroes of this episode were undoubt­ed­ly Pat and Jonathan O’Don­nell and Kevin McAn­drew who in their small fish­ing boats defied the world’s largest pipe lay­ing ship and sup­port ves­sels in-order to defend their liveli­hoods, prop­er­ty and area. Pat sought the assis­tance of Gar­daí to pre­vent their lob­ster pots being dam­aged by the Soli­taire, but instead the fish­er­men were arrest­ed twice in 24 hours from his tra­di­tion­al fish­ing ter­ri­to­ry, and then released with­out charge. Pat and his son Jonathan lost approx­i­mate­ly 150 pots to dam­age from the Shell fleet. It is worth not­ing that the fish­er­men had a legal right to fish in Broad­haven Bay, but in this instance the Gar­dai hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly aban­doned the prin­ci­ple of “people’s right to go to work” so often used to break up peace­ful protest at Bel­lan­aboy.

Instead the Navy were draft­ed in along with the Gar­da Emer­gency Response Unit, Gar­da Water Unit and Kent Police (yes that’s Eng­lish police) to stop the row­dy fish­er­men, locals, nation­al and inter­na­tion­al sup­port­ers.

One inter­est­ing point was how some of the media seemed will­ing to accept that when it was fish­er­men fight­ing for their liveli­hood then the protest was in some ways accept­able but (implic­it­ly) oth­er mem­bers of the local com­mu­ni­ty have less of a right to protest unless they are as direct­ly affect­ed.

In the mean­time, mem­bers of Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and inter­na­tion­al sup­port­ers took to the seas and began harass­ing the Soli­taire while it was up in Killy­begs and dis­rupt­ing Shel­l’s oper­a­tions around Glen­gad. Again on at least two occa­sions we were extreme­ly lucky that some­one did­n’t get seri­ous­ly injured or killed when a dig­ger oper­a­tor con­tin­ued work­ing and end­ed up drop­ping tonnes of debris with­in feet of 2 pro­tes­tors. Lots of oth­er resis­tance around the time includ­ed lock-ons and reclaim­ing access to the beach (albeit tem­porar­i­ly) which was ille­gal­ly being blocked by Shell fenc­ing. Also a load of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions hap­pened all around the world at Shell sta­tions and Irish embassies, in places such as Gal­way, Dublin, Belfast, Eng­land, Nether­lands, Bel­gium, Spain and Aus­tralia. In the US, I heard of a lady who went on a 3 day fast in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Mau­ra Harrington’s hunger strike.

On the 22th of July, 13 peo­ple chal­lenged the work that Shell were car­ry­ing out on the land just over the cliff-face to the beach on a Spe­cial Area of Con­ser­va­tion (SAC). They asked to see the legal per­mis­sion for the work being car­ried out. Instead of show­ing any per­mis­sion how­ev­er Supt. John Gilli­gan had the 13 arrest­ed and brought to Bel­mul­let Gar­da Sta­tion where they were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charge. How­ev­er while in the Gar­da Sta­tion, one of the 13, Naoise O’Mon­gain was injured and sub­se­quent­ly mis­han­dled by Gar­daí and is still on crutch­es to this day from the inci­dent. These 13 arrests were the among the first of about 50 arrests that hap­pened in course of the next 2 months in Glen­gad, every sin­gle one of whom were sub­se­quent­ly released with­out charge. In some cas­es the peo­ple involved weren’t even told they were arrest­ed or what they were being arrest­ed for.

Regard­ing the per­mis­sions for the land work that took place in Glen­gad, it turned out that on the 27th of June, Min­ster for Ener­gy (& for­mer Shell to Sea sup­port­er) Eamon Ryan had giv­en per­mis­sion for the work in Glen­gad and exempt­ed the first 100 metres or so (up to the valve sta­tion) of the on-shore pipeline from the plan­ning process. How­ev­er this per­mis­sion had not been made avail­able to the pub­lic, an omis­sion Min­is­ter Ryan called an “over­sight”.

A few days lat­er, local peo­ple were pushed off a sec­tion of the Glen­gad beach by about 50 Gar­daí and about 70 of Shel­l’s new­ly employed secu­ri­ty force IRMS. Shell then pro­ceed­ed to fence off about a 100m wide of the sec­tion of the beach and so the beach remained split in two for about 4 months. In spite of Shell claim­ing in their work method state­ment that they would allow pedes­tri­an access across this zone, no mem­ber of the pub­lic was per­mit­ted through the fences for about a 4 month peri­od.

At first the secu­ri­ty force IRMS (Inte­grat­ed Risk Man­age­ment Ser­vices) ini­tial­ly took to film­ing every­one who went down on the beach includ­ing young chil­dren and swim­mers, how­ev­er the bad pub­lic­i­ty that this caused result­ed in them being a bit more sub­tle after­wards.

The works on the site have now all been removed although sig­nif­i­cant dam­age has obvi­ous­ly been done to the SAC (water pol­lu­tion, grav­el & silt remain on the beach and churned up soil on land, but this has been total­ly ignored by Nation­al Parks & Wildlife (NPWS) and the Dept of Envi­ron­ment. Hun­dreds of tonnes of placed mate­r­i­al fill were washed away, and the pol­lu­tion could be seen, the fish­er­men say, for miles out to sea at times.

One moment I remem­ber down on the beach was when I tried to point out to one of the Gar­daí there, how both he and all the Shell work­ers were basi­cal­ly get­ting paid from the same purse. He seem to think that I was sug­gest­ing that Shell was pay­ing him too. What I meant was that the tax­pay­er is pay­ing both him (direct­ly) and the Shell employ­ees (indi­rect­ly). Because of changes made by Ray Burke in 1987, oil & gas com­pa­nies can write off all their explo­ration & devel­op­ment cost against tax. So the tiny per­cent­age of the Cor­rib Gas field­’s worth that is to come back to the Irish Exche­quer is being less­ened by the amount that Shell are spend­ing on secu­ri­ty and com­mu­ni­ty bribery funds.

Polic­ing and the Courts

The deci­sion not to pros­e­cute any­one in con­nec­tion with the resis­tance in Glen­gad this year pre­sum­ably has to do with the shaky legal ground that Shell are on with some of their oper­a­tions down there. Obvi­ous­ly for the fish­er­men, their arrest was total­ly unlaw­ful as they were defend­ing their prop­er­ty and if any­one should have been arrest­ed it should have been the per­son­nel on the Shell ves­sels. Also it was nev­er made clear to the kayak­ers or swim­mers who were arrest­ed and in some cas­es ille­gal­ly detained on the water what exact laws they were break­ing oth­er than not obey­ing a police offi­cer. Also there was the case where peo­ple used sledges, car jacks and pipes to take down a num­ber of sec­tions of the fence along the beach in full view of the Gar­daí and secu­ri­ty. No pros­e­cu­tion has ever come out of this, also pre­sum­ably because of Shell breach­ing their exempt­ed per­mis­sion reg­u­la­tions.

In the courts, it has been a tor­tu­ous­ly slow progress of the cas­es dat­ing back to 06 & 07. When you see oth­er cas­es in the Dis­trict Court being dealt with fair­ly rapid­ly, it seems like­ly that part of the pun­ish­ment for being arrest­ed for a Shell to Sea protest is that the case will be dragged out sig­nif­i­cant­ly. How­ev­er it should be not­ed that this is not always to do with the Judge and some­times equal­ly to do with delays sought from the defence side. Among some the cas­es heard this year, John Mon­aghan who had been found guilty of assault before Judge Mary Devins was found not guilty of assault on appeal. Ed Collins was found not guilty of an assault on a Gar­da from an inci­dent from which he still has sig­nif­i­cant injuries. Pat and Jonathan O’Don­nell and Enda Carey were found guilty on appeal of a Sec­tion 2 assault with sen­tenc­ing being car­ried out in the New Year. Michael Healy was recent­ly found guilty of obstruc­tion, while he and 3 oth­ers who received sig­nif­i­cant injuries on the day in ques­tion were found not guilty of assault.

Also this year, Mau­ra Har­ring­ton took a Judi­cial Review of Judge Devins’ deci­sion not to allow Ms Har­ring­ton to have her own stenog­ra­ph­er present to record her court case. The High Court found that Ms Har­ring­ton had a right to have a stenog­ra­ph­er present at her own expense to record pro­ceed­ings. Anoth­er Judi­cial Review was tak­en against Judge Devins’ by a Shell to Sea mem­ber which secured the right to get a copy of a court tran­script from the hith­er­to unprece­dent­ed pro­vi­sion of stenograpy ser­vices at Dis­trict Court by the Court Ser­vices (just for Shell to Sea cas­es).

Over­all I think it’s fair­ly obvi­ous that the judi­cia­ry are not act­ing inde­pen­dent­ly and that Shell to Sea pro­tes­tors are get­ting total­ly dif­fer­ent treat­ment in front of the courts than if they had been arrest­ed as indi­vid­u­als.

Road to Glen­gad

One suc­cess that Shell seem to have had of late is that the road to Glen­gad seems to be com­ing togeth­er for them. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil (MCC) has real­ly exposed them­selves in the man­ner in which they have pushed this through though. They have resort­ed to brib­ing, threat­en­ing and bul­ly­ing peo­ple and will now have a rea­son­ably good road for Shell come the spring. They have been work­ing on this 8km sec­tion of road for over 6 months now and bit by bit they have tak­en inch­es here and there. Recent­ly they (both Shell & MCC) have also suc­ceed­ed in turn­ing one of the local landown­ers who had been against the road, with both threats and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of mon­ey. On the road the Road Safe­ty Author­i­ty, EPA, Fish­eries Board, NPWS, NRA, Min­is­ters for the Envi­ron­ment and MCC them­selves, were all made aware of breach­es that occurred both in plan­ning and lay­ing of the road but each turned their back on these breach­es.

Onshore Plan­ning Appli­ca­tion

The man­ner in which the onshore pipeline plan­ning appli­ca­tion has been han­dled by both Shell and RPS (pipeline plan­ning con­sul­tants) to me illus­trates both arro­gance and incom­pe­tence in equal measure.Recently RPS with­drew Shel­l’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion under the Strate­gic Infra­struc­ture Act for the onshore sec­tion of the pipeline say­ing that they will need to seek minor realign­ments to the pipeline route. RPS and Shell have been work­ing on this plan­ning appli­ca­tion for well over a year now and the fact that they had to with­draw it at the final hour must have been some kick in the nuts for them. Basi­cal­ly my read­ing of the sit­u­a­tion is that Shell still hasn’t man­aged to sur­vey the approx­i­mate­ly 3km sec­tion of the pro­posed pipeline route which lies on Ross­port com­mon­age. I believe that An Bord Pleanala were try­ing des­per­ate­ly to accept Shel­l’s plan­ning appli­ca­tion (illus­trat­ed by the fact that they were will­ing to receive fur­ther infor­ma­tion from Shell on the 18th of Novem­ber), but sim­ply could­n’t because of the huge holes that exist­ed in the appli­ca­tion. These holes would no doubt have been exposed in an oral hear­ing by the moun­tains of knowl­edge that now exist in this area regard­ing pipeline sit­ing.

In recent weeks Shell employ­ees and AGEC (Applied Ground Engi­neer­ing Con­sul­tants Ltd) geol­o­gists have been try­ing to get access to the Ross­port com­mon­age to do sur­vey work but they have been pre­vent­ed from doing so by vig­i­lant Ross­port res­i­dents. The fact that it is present­ly ille­gal for Shell to do sur­vey work on the com­mon­age does­n’t seem to deter Shell from try­ing — they have been caught red-hand­ed on at least one occa­sion. In Novem­ber 07, Shell sought per­mis­sion to car­ry out the sur­vey work on the com­mon­age in Bel­mul­let Dis­trict court; how­ev­er Judge Mary Devins found that the notice giv­en by Shell was inad­e­quate and so dis­missed Shel­l’s appli­ca­tion. The fact that Shell still went ahead with try­ing to car­ry out the sur­vey work is sure­ly con­tempt of court; a sim­i­lar rea­son saw the Ross­port 5 spent 94 days in jail.

Forums

Towards the end of the year Min­is­ters Ryan & O’Cuiv organ­ised a Forum for Devel­op­ment in North West Mayo, which want­ed to link the Cor­rib Gas Project with the local devel­op­ment of North West Mayo. Shell to Sea chose not to part-take in the Min­is­ters’ Forum for one because the Forum refused to dis­cuss the sit­ing of the refin­ery, the forc­ing of a raw gas pipeline on the local com­mu­ni­ty and the great gas give­away. Also the Minister’s Forum is only open to select­ed groups; there­fore any indi­vid­ual who has ques­tions about the Cor­rib Gas Project can­not attend just to rep­re­sent their con­cerns. A sep­a­rate Peo­ples Forum, (which was open to all and ful­ly record­ed) was held along­side the Minister’s Forum and was a sig­nif­i­cant suc­cess, with local peo­ple voic­ing their con­cerns.

Con­clu­sion

The main rea­son for this arti­cle is to try to encour­age peo­ple to get involved. Even though Shell has made progress on the refin­ery in Bel­lan­aboy, they still face var­i­ous sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems in even get­ting the legal per­mis­sions from the more than com­pli­ant author­i­ties to fin­ish the project.

How­ev­er I believe that the only way that this project will be stopped is if peo­ple get involved and make it unwork­able for both the Gov­ern­ment and Shell. This is still pos­si­ble and the cur­rent reces­sion gives us more oppor­tu­ni­ties to high­light the day­light rob­bery of our nat­ur­al resources. When you hear local Fine Gael TD, Michael Ring start­ing to rail against the give­away gas deal, I sense he’s guess­ing which way the wind is blow­ing.

Indi­ca­tions at the moment are that there will be anoth­er fourth push by Shell to lay the off-shore sec­tion of the pipeline next spring. At that time we real­ly will need peo­ple to come and help us here in Erris but also to put as much pres­sure on the Gov­ern­ment and Shell wher­ev­er they are.

Last August & Sep­tem­ber, even amid all the ten­sion and wor­ry regard­ing the Soli­taire and Mau­ra’s hunger strike, there was a real­ly good pro-active atmos­phere in Glen­gad and in par­tic­u­lar at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, whose mar­quees appeared once more and attract­ed many peo­ple back to Glen­gad. The Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp organ­is­es from a per­ma­nent house and office at Glen­gad where peo­ple are always wel­come to come and stay and lend their sup­port. We intend to set up camp again in spring as a sol­id base for action against Shell and any new attempt of theirs to progress their doomed pipeline lay­ing efforts.

I feel it’s always good to end an arti­cle with a quote from a wise per­son. So in this case the wise per­son is Trevor Sar­gent (cur­rent Min­is­ter for Food & Hor­ti­cul­ture) and the quote is from when he addressed the crowd assem­bled on the day that the Ross­port 5 got out of jail.

“At this point I’d like to pay trib­ute to my par­lia­men­tary col­leagues in the oth­er small­er par­ties and inde­pen­dents who have kept pres­sure on this FF/PD/Shell — like — Gov­ern­ment and who con­tin­ue to stand firm with the peo­ple of Ross­port. We’re unit­ed in fight­ing the good fight. And it feels good. Because we’re going to win.”

http://www.shelltosea.com

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What did the UK Cli­mate Move­ment do in 2008?

With­out a doubt, 2008 was an incred­i­ble year for the UK cli­mate move­ment. There’s been a diverse dis­play of incred­i­ble actions from Scot­land to Ply­mouth through­out the year, as more peo­ple than ever before are real­is­ing its up to us to pre­vent cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe as no one’s going to do it for us!

In Jan­u­ary, the actions got off to a cre­ative start when 30 Pen­guins from Plane Stu­pid invad­ed the BA spon­sored ice rink at the Nation­al His­to­ry Muse­um. A few days lat­er, up in Scot­land, 20 activists block­ad­ed the entrance to Greer Avi­a­tion, a pri­vate jet com­pa­ny at Edin­burgh Air­port.

Then at the start of Feb­ru­ary bio­fu­els took cen­tre stage as protests and actions took place at Tescos across the coun­try in protest at their pro­mo­tion of gross­ly unsus­tain­able bio­fu­el use. It was back to avi­a­tion at the end of the month when 3,000 peo­ple attend­ed at ral­ly against Heathrow Expan­sion, organ­ised by HACAN ClearSkies and NoTRAG and sup­port­ed by 14
coun­cils in the Heathrow area. It was on this same day that 4 Green­peace pro­test­ers man­aged to climb on top of a short haul flight parked up in Ter­mi­nal 1, reveal­ing a ban­ner across the plane’s tail­fin. To top it off, two days lat­er 5 activists from Plane Stu­pid unfurled large ban­ners from the roof of the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment, achiev­ing angry remarks from the
Prime Min­is­ter down in the cham­ber! Up north flood vic­tims from York­shire and Hum­ber­side block­ad­ed coun­cil offices in protest at their con­tin­ued sup­port for avi­a­tion expan­sion.

In March, activists from the UK trav­elled to Brus­sels to block­ade almost all the entrances to the World Bio­fu­els Mar­ket. It was all excite­ment a week lat­er when the Press Com­plaints Com­mis­sions upheld a com­plaint from the Camp for Cli­mate Action that the Evening Standard’s cov­er­age of the Heathrow protest was inac­cu­rate because it was fab­ri­cat­ed. It relat­ed to
accu­sa­tions that activists planned to leave hoax bomb pack­ages lying around air­port ter­mi­nals. Keep­ing with avi­a­tion, the sham­bles that was the open­ing of T5 at Heathrow was greet­ed by a not so sham­bol­ic flash mob of activists all reveal­ing bright red T‑Shirts with the words “Stop Air­port Expan­sion”.

The 1st of April was indeed Fos­sil Fools Day, see­ing actions against those fool­ish­ly med­dling with fos­sil fuels take place across the coun­try. E.ON’s offices were block­ad­ed in Not­ting­ham, the Ffos-y-Fran open cast coal mine was shut down in Wales; the UK’s largest off shore gas ter­mi­nal was block­ad­ed in Nor­folk; there were protests against RBS in Cam­bridge; petrol sta­tions shut down in Southamp­ton and Ply­mouth; jesters sur­round­ing the
Depart­ment for Busi­ness, Evil and Reg­u­la­to­ry Reform (DBERR); Peo­ple and Plan­et at West­min­ster; 34 SUVs and sports cars sab­o­taged in Edin­burgh; plus many more excit­ing actions and events too numer­ous to men­tion.

Yet, after all that ener­gy dis­pensed, the move­ment failed to show any signs of weari­ness. Two days lat­er Aberthaw Pow­er Sta­tion had its mul­ti­ple entrances block­ad­ed by activists from Bath, Cardiff and Oxford. Then came the news that a spy, work­ing for C2i Inter­na­tion­al, had been attempt­ing to infil­trate Plane Stu­pid. Plane Stu­pid activists weren’t hav­ing any of it, how­ev­er, and exposed him to the world. Then with one Par­lia­ment clear­ly not enough, on the 14th April activists scaled the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment roof, drop­ping a ban­ner read­ing: “Choose a Future: Say no to air­port expan­sion”. The fol­low­ing month, over 50 peo­ple took part in a mass tres­pass in Der­byshire. They were tres­pass­ing on land set aside for an open cast coal mine, owned by UK Coal and back­ing onto a coun­try park.

June saw anoth­er nation­al day of action, this time on Food and Cli­mate Change. The day saw actions and events across the land, such as free veg­an food give aways and the occu­pa­tion of a GM lab. Then the spot­light shift­ed back to coal on the 13th June in a spec­tac­u­lar action that saw 29 activists halt a train car­ry­ing coal to Drax Pow­er Sta­tion. The activists
occu­pied the train for 16 hours while shov­el­ling coal from the train onto the track. On the 17th June Plane Stu­pid Scot­land unveiled a five metre high ‘avi­a­tion ele­phant’ at a trans­port and cli­mate change con­fer­ence in Edin­burgh. Then activists showed they weren’t going to let the land in Der­byshire be destroyed for new coal with­out a fight. They occu­pied what became known as Bodge House for sev­er­al weeks, due for demo­li­tion to
enable the open cast min­ing to pro­ceed. Also dur­ing this time two tun­nellers spent a week under the ground on the Der­byshire site.

July brought with it a sec­ond ‘Stop Heathrow Expan­sion’ flash mob, this time out­side the Depart­ment for Trans­port where flash mob­bers gath­ered to hurl paper planes at the then Trans­port Sec­re­tary Ruth Kel­ly. On the 16th July the ‘Green­wash Guer­ril­las’ tar­get­ed the Guardian’s Cli­mate Change Sum­mit in Isling­ton, protest­ing against E.ON’s spon­sor­ship of the event. Mean­while, across the oth­er side of Lon­don activists simul­ta­ne­ous­ly occu­pied Edel­man PR, the world’s biggest PR Com­pa­ny, hired by E.ON ear­li­er in the year (after the Camp for Cli­mate Action’s announce­ment to go to Kingsnorth “coin­ci­den­tal­ly”). The month also saw the dis­abling of 32 SUVs in Oxford, and a Plane Stu­pid Activist super­glued him­self to the Prime Min­is­ter at 10 Down­ing Street!

The end of July saw the Camp for Cli­mate Action draw­ing near. To kick things off a con­fer­ence was held near Heathrow Air­port, the loca­tion of last year’s camp, which brought togeth­er groups opposed to the airport’s expan­sion. The fol­low­ing day the Cli­mate Car­a­van set off on its 60 mile jour­ney from Heathrow to Kingsnorth. The course of this jour­ney saw many events take place, such as the Put­ney Cli­mate Change Debate that took place in the same church as the his­toric Put­ney Debates of 1647. There were also a vari­ety of work­shops, talks, tours, and dis­plays along the way, with the car­a­van join­ing the Cam­paign Against Cli­mate Change for a march to the camp for the final hur­dle.

After months of plan­ning, 100s of activists took the site for the Camp for Cli­mate Action on the 30th July in broad day­light. The camp saw a gigan­tic and repres­sive police pres­ence, far worse than any camps gone pre­vi­ous­ly. Yet despite dra­con­ian use of stop and search pow­ers and vio­lent police incur­sions onto the site with large amounts of equip­ment seized, it was the campers who tri­umphed with bril­liant dis­plays of resis­tance through­out the week. This meant the camp proved to be yet anoth­er huge­ly suc­cess­ful week of edu­ca­tion, sus­tain­able liv­ing, and direct action attend­ed by a record num­ber of par­tic­i­pants.

The camp’s Day of Mass Action saw marchers, climbers, and rafters head from all direc­tions towards the pow­er sta­tion. Some of the marchers chose to block­ade the front entrance, while the Green Bloc scaled perime­ter fences. At the same time many par­tic­i­pants joined the Great Rebel Raft Regat­ta, which sailed its way down the Riv­er Med­way. One raft report­ed­ly caused the pow­er station’s water sup­ply to be cut off.

But the Mass Action was only one of many actions tak­ing place dur­ing the week. There were ban­ner drops at Gatwick, stu­dents tar­get­ing RBS head­quar­ters, a block­ade of Vopak Bio­fu­el Depot in Thur­rock, a naked glue-on at DBERR, an office occu­pa­tion of min­ing com­pa­ny BHP Bil­li­ton, and final­ly a group of tiny activists climbed on top of the Lego Kingsnorth
Pow­er Sta­tion at the E.ON spon­sored Legoland.

The 10th Sep­tem­ber saw a his­toric ver­dict when 6 Green­peace Pro­test­ers, who had scaled the tow­er at Kingsnorth and paint­ed it with slo­gans caus­ing an esti­mat­ed £30,000 dam­age, were found Not Guilty after argu­ing the defence of ‘law­ful excuse’, hav­ing act­ed to pro­tect prop­er­ty around the world in imme­di­ate need of pro­tec­tion from the impacts of cli­mate change.

Octo­ber saw The Cli­mate Rush, with a thou­sand demon­stra­tors gath­er­ing in Par­lia­ment Square to com­mem­o­rate the 100th anniver­sary of the Suf­fragette Rush. After con­gre­gat­ing in full suf­fragette cos­tume the demon­stra­tors made a rush for par­lia­ment.

E.ON, BP, Shell, and RBS were among the cli­mate crim­i­nals who had their chances of recruit­ing grad­u­ates wrecked at uni­ver­si­ties across the coun­try through­out the career fair sea­son. Stu­dent activists mer­ci­less­ly dis­rupt­ed stalls and events across the UK by a vari­ety of cre­ative means. Things got so bad for E.ON that they just stopped turn­ing up halfway through their cam­pus tour.

The end of Novem­ber saw 48 hours of action against E.ON, bring­ing about immense­ly visu­al actions in many towns and cities. One such action fea­tured two minibus loads of san­tas occu­py­ing and super­glue­ing them­selves to E.ON’s head­quar­ters in Coven­try. The san­tas’ only presents for E.ON were lumps of filthy coal. Then, as an ear­ly Christ­mas present, came the
news (via The Times) that an intrud­er had bro­ken into Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion and turned off one of the gen­er­a­tors. This meant that 500 megawatts of coal-pro­duced pow­er was lost from the grid, enough the pow­er a city the size of Bris­tol. Nice one!

Despite the cold, Decem­ber saw the actions keep on rock­ing. There was the annu­al cli­mate march in Lon­don, attend­ed by thou­sands and tak­ing place simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with march­es in 70 oth­er coun­tries. Then, in the ear­ly morn­ing of the 8th Decem­ber came the won­der­ful news that Plane Stu­pid had suc­ceed­ed in shut­ting down Stanst­ed air­port. 57 activists breached
secu­ri­ty at the air­port and man­aged to pre­vent over 50 flights from tak­ing off. On the 15th Decem­ber 30 activists from Coal Action Scot­land block­ad­ed Raven­struther coal ter­mi­nal, oper­at­ed by Scot­tish Coal, for 9 hours.

So what a year it was, but with time run­ning out to tack­le run­away cli­mate change, we can only afford to make 2009 even bet­ter. Hope­ful­ly these reminders will give us all some inspi­ra­tion and ideas for what we might get up to in the com­ing months.

Come to the Camp for Cli­mate Action New Year Gath­er­ing to get involved:
31st­Jan-1st­Feb in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come! Every­one is need­ed!
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/node/471

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A fly­ing start to the new year for anti-avi­a­tion cam­paign­ers

Cam­paign­ers against avi­a­tion expan­sion are hav­ing a hec­tic start to the new year. Half of those arrest­ed for blockad­ing Stanst­ed air­port last year have now been sen­tenced and all are under threat of being sued for dam­ages. Mean­while, air­port oper­a­tor BAA have man­aged to get the Plane Stu­pid web­site tak­en down and are prepar­ing for the Cli­mate Rush action on mon­day the 12th by threat­en­ing MPs who have said they will attend the events at Heathrow and Man­ches­ter air­port. To cap it all, the gov­ern­ment is set to announce the go-ahead for Heathrows run­way three this com­ing week.

Twen­ty Two Plane Stu­pid mem­bers were sen­tenced at Har­low mag­is­trates’ court on Wednes­day for their part in blockad­ing the run­way at Stanstead air­port last month. Most were ordered to do between 50 and 90 hours of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice each after delay­ing 52,000 pas­sen­gers.

A Plane Stu­pid spokesper­son, Leo Mur­ry said, “The sen­tences were sur­pris­ing­ly harsh but we went into it with our eyes open and we are ready to take the con­se­quences.”

Dis­trict Judge John Perkins said, “Sub­stan­tial loss was caused to the author­i­ties that were car­ry­ing out law­ful activ­i­ties. I accept there is an hon­ourable tra­di­tion of peace­ful protest in this coun­try and long may it con­tin­ue, but that does not jus­ti­fy the sort of activ­i­ty that you were involved in.”

More than 50 Plane Stu­pid activists now face being sued for dam­ages by Ryanair who have begun a £2.2 mil­lion com­pen­sa­tion claim for loss of rev­enue after being forced to can­cel 57 flights. They are also seek­ing almost £500,000 for “rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age”. At the moment the claim is against Stanst­ed oper­a­tors BAA but the air­line has refused to rule out suing indi­vid­ual pro­test­ers in the civ­il courts at a lat­er date.

The place stu­pid web­site has been tak­en offline by the ser­vice providers after pres­sure from BAA.

Actions against consumerism and capitalism in Greece

Christ­mas trees placed in cen­tral squares across the coun­try for Chrit­mas cel­e­bra­tion were burned as sym­bol­ic acts against the apa­thy and so that peo­ple won’t for­get the mur­der of young Alexan­dros.

12/29 Athens: Protest inside the biggest and ille­gal­ly built mall. 150 pro­test­ers with ban­ners took the isles of the shop­ping mall and shout­ed slo­gans.

The slo­gans on the ban­ners read: “what will be the next sale on our lives”, “work, vote, and shut up”, “shut up and shop”, “I shop there­fore I exist”, “work, buy, con­sume, die” and more.

Greek anti-consumerism actionChrist­mas trees placed in cen­tral squares across the coun­try for Chrit­mas cel­e­bra­tion were burned as sym­bol­ic acts against the apa­thy and so that peo­ple won’t for­get the mur­der of young Alexan­dros.

12/29 Athens: Protest inside the biggest and ille­gal­ly built mall. 150 pro­test­ers with ban­ners took the isles of the shop­ping mall and shout­ed slo­gans.

The slo­gans on the ban­ners read: “what will be the next sale on our lives”, “work, vote, and shut up”, “shut up and shop”, “I shop there­fore I exist”, “work, buy, con­sume, die” and more.

28/12 Athens: On Sun­days the stores are closed in Greece but since it was the last Sun­day of the year, some shop own­ers decid­ed to keep them open, demand­ing their employ­ees to go to work. Some hun­dreds of anar­chists and left­ists gath­ered out­side stores in down­town Athens to keep the stores, if not closed, then with no cus­tomers. They shout­ed slo­gans and pre­vent­ed peo­ple from going in.

1/3 Xan­thi and Kavala: Big chain gro­cery shops were attacked by anar­chists who filled carts with food, cook­ing oil and oth­er goods, left and gave them away to peo­ple shop­ping in near­by peo­ple’s mar­kets (farm­ers mar­kets)

More pho­tos at: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=959200
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=959215
http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=959228

Con­tin­u­ing cov­er­age of Greek protest & resis­tance, plus UK sol­i­dar­i­ty, at https://www.indymedia.org.uk