Category: Action Reports

Demo against E.ON, 16th July, London

Join the Green­wash Guer­ril­las to show that E.ON’S green­wash won’t wash!
Wednes­day, 16th July, 8.15 AM, Lon­don

Greenwash Guerillas logoJoin the Green­wash Guer­ril­las to show that E.ON’S green­wash won’t wash!
Wednes­day, 16th July, 8.15 AM, Lon­don

With two weeks to go before the Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth, E.ON are spon­sor­ing a cli­mate sum­mit designed to help indus­try lead­ers ‘keep stake­hold­ers engaged’. Just like their plans for ‘clean coal’ at Kingsnorth, this is green­wash of the high­est tox­i­c­i­ty: a laugh­able-if-it-weren’t-so-trag­ic attempt to dis­tract us from the fact that E.ON are plan­ning to build the first coal-fired pow­er sta­tion in the UK for over thir­ty years. And that, in a time of unprece­dent­ed cli­mate cri­sis, is an unac­cept­able insan­i­ty.

This hot-air-fest can­not pass with­out a vis­it from… the Green­wash Guer­ril­las!

Don a white painter’s suit and come on down to the Busi­ness Design Cen­tre in Isling­ton to join a crack team of green­wash detec­tors. We will be cor­don­ing off the area and warn­ing sum­mit del­e­gates about the high lev­els of tox­ic green­wash leak­ing from the build­ing. (We sus­pect its source to be E.ON Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Bob Tay­lor, who’s got a top spot on the pan­el.) To get a sense of what the demo will be like, check out the Green­wash Guer­ril­las in action here: www.risingtide.org.uk/node/250

This should be a fun, sub­ver­sive demo, with the Camp for Cli­mate Action, Ris­ing Tide, Peo­ple and Plan­et, Earth First! and WDM all help­ing to spread the word. Join us and help show E.ON that our actions won’t be con­fined to Kingsnorth this August. Cli­mate Campers will go wher­ev­er we need to and do what­ev­er it takes to shut down Kingsnorth – per­ma­nent­ly.

Where: Busi­ness Design Cen­tre, 52 Upper St, Lon­don N1 0QH

When: Wednes­day, 16th July, meet 8.15AM in front of the Busi­ness Design Cen­tre

Bring if you can: a white painter’s/boiler suit and any home-made green­wash detect­ing devices you can think up (eg. part of an old hoover, a remote con­trol, a hair dry­er paint­ed green – get cre­ative!) If you can’t bring these things, not to wor­ry, extras will be on hand.

More info: info@climatecamp.org.uk / 07961 917 535
(Get in touch if you’re com­ing from out of town and need accom­mo­da­tion the night before)

Help spread the word — fly­ers (4 fit per piece of A4 — great on green paper) and poster avail­able at

»GGs Leaflet — Front
»GGs Leaflet — Back
»GGs Poster

www.climatecamp.org.uk
www.greenwashguerrillas.org.uk
www.risingtide.org.uk
www.stopkingsnorth.org.uk
www.peopleandplanet.org.uk
www.earthfirst.org.uk

Yorkshire GM trial sabotaged

The Tad­cast­er GM pota­to tri­al has been decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, accord­ing to the Sun­day Mir­ror!

The Tad­cast­er GM pota­to tri­al has been decon­t­a­m­i­nat­ed, accord­ing to the Sun­day Mir­ror! Accord­ing to the arti­cle, they were com­plete­ly destroyed, and the Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter isn’t hap­py. Mr Woolas said: “The peo­ple behind this should have the guts to go pub­lic and join the debate about GM foods. Their arro­gance appalls me.” The attack on June 5 leaves Britain with just one remain­ing field of GM crops, gov­ern­ment sources said last night. The news has not appeared any­where else.

The Long Good Friday — coal train protest eventually evicted — final update

5am, Sat­ur­day 14th June 2008
Police con­firmed all pro­test­ers had been removed from the train, and arrests went “into dou­ble fig­ures”.

Coal train eviction 1Coal train eviction 25am, Sat­ur­day 14th June 2008
Police con­firmed all pro­test­ers had been removed from the train, and arrests went “into dou­ble fig­ures”.

Twen­ty-nine cli­mate cam­paign­ers halt­ed a train tak­ing fuel to Drax pow­er sta­tion in North York­shire on Fri­day.

Those arrest­ed face pos­si­ble charges of con­spir­a­cy to obstruct trains, obstruct­ing trains and rail­way tres­pass, police said.

The train remains where it stopped, close to the vil­lage of Carl­ton, near Goole, ahead of an inspec­tion.

Up to 100 police offi­cers, some in riot gear, board­ed the wag­ons of the train in the oper­a­tion to remove the activists.

Supt Ter­ry Nichol­son of British Trans­port Police said: “It’s been a lengthy oper­a­tion but our pri­or­i­ty has been the safe­ty of the pub­lic and our offi­cers.

“We have been deal­ing with the pro­test­ers in a safe and pro­fes­sion­al man­ner and we have been arrest­ing peo­ple for obstruct­ing the rail­way.”

One of the par­ty of demon­stra­tors said they had chained them­selves to the train and would need to be cut free if police want­ed to remove them.

Speak­ing from the train, one of the pro­test­ers, called Natal­ie, said: “The police have moved into the hop­pers. They’ve start­ed tak­ing stuff. There must be about 10 of them on the train but loads more around it.”

Some of the pro­test­ers could be seen mov­ing on to the top of the steel arch of the bridge over the Riv­er Aire where the train is parked, a few miles from the vil­lage of Carl­ton.

The train was stopped in Raw­cliffe, on the bor­der of North and East York­shire, appar­ent­ly by a pro­test­er wav­ing a red flag.

The envi­ron­men­tal cam­paign­ers used an iron gird­er bridge and climb­ing equip­ment to scale the 12ft high truck.

“This was a com­plex oper­a­tion as many of those arrest­ed had to be cut free hav­ing attached them­selves to rail vehi­cles and the over­bridge,” the BTP state­ment added.

The pro­test­ers had hoped to stay on the train for sev­er­al days and had with them food and water as well as a portable lava­to­ry.

See orig­i­nal sto­ry at http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20894

Video of start of evic­tion attempt

—

Update:
At 12pm on Fri­day evening the last three coal train block­aders where evict­ed from the bridge above the block­ad­ed train. The occu­pa­tion had last­ed 16 hours and occu­piers had shov­elled around 30 tons of coal onto the tracks. 20 peo­ple where cut out of arm tube lock­ons and 9 were tak­en of the bridge, 29 were arrest­ed and charged with con­spir­cy to com­mit Unlaw­ful and mali­cious obstruc­tion of trains. Every­one was out of the police cells and account­ed for by 10pm Sat­ur­day evening. Every­one is bailed to return… you guessed it on the 31st of July and 4th 5th and 6th of August. The fires at Drax are still burn­ing but the move­ment to stop coal is grow­ing fast.

field trial with genetically modified wheat destroyed (zurich, switzerland)

the local press reports as fol­low­ing:
ear­ly fri­day morn­ing (june 13, 2008) around 35 per­sons entered the research area (“Forschungsanstalt Agro­scope Reck­en­holz-Tänikon ART in Zürich Affoltern”) close to zurich and destroyed near­ly the whole field tri­al with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied wheat by scyth­ing and tram­pling the plants.

the local press reports as fol­low­ing:
ear­ly fri­day morn­ing (june 13, 2008) around 35 per­sons entered the research area (“Forschungsanstalt Agro­scope Reck­en­holz-Tänikon ART in Zürich Affoltern”) close to zurich and destroyed near­ly the whole field tri­al with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied wheat by scyth­ing and tram­pling the plants.

the research is ini­ti­at­ed by Agro­scope, uni­ver­si­ty of zurich and ETH (poly­tech. uni­ver­si­ty).
the present secu­ri­ty agents were threat­ened and could­n’t stop the action.
the police arrest­ed 5 per­sons after the action in the sur­round­ing area, but it might be dif­fi­cult to prove they’ve been involved.

http://tagi.ch/dyn/news/zuerich/888308.html
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/zuerich/zerstoerungsaktion_in_gentech-versuchsfeld_1.759006.html

in 2003 a sim­i­lar, but small­er field tri­al was done by ETH in anoth­er vil­lage. dur­ing weeks green­peace tried to pre­vent oth­er activists destroy­ing the field so they could do an own spec­tac­u­lar action lat­er on: green­peace dumped dung on the field, but was stopped by the agents present.

Protesters end blockade of Brazil mining railroad

Jun 13, 2008
SAO PAULO — Hun­dreds of Brazil­ian pro­test­ers end­ed a block­ade of a rail­way line that trans­ports iron ore for min­ing com­pa­ny Vale, the com­pa­ny said late on Thurs­day.

It was the lat­est in a series of protests this week, some of them vio­lent, by land­less peas­ant groups tar­get­ing large com­pa­nies and multi­na­tion­als in Brazil.

Jun 13, 2008
SAO PAULO — Hun­dreds of Brazil­ian pro­test­ers end­ed a block­ade of a rail­way line that trans­ports iron ore for min­ing com­pa­ny Vale, the com­pa­ny said late on Thurs­day.

It was the lat­est in a series of protests this week, some of them vio­lent, by land­less peas­ant groups tar­get­ing large com­pa­nies and multi­na­tion­als in Brazil.

Pro­test­ers left peace­ful­ly after the Minas Gerais state’s jus­tice depart­ment ordered them to leave the tracks ear­li­er on Thurs­day or risk being removed by police or fined 30,000 reais ($18,000) for every day they remained, Vale said in a note.

“It start­ed around 6 a.m. this morn­ing,” a Vale spokes­woman said, adding more than 30 trains were delayed in the 10 hours that pro­test­ers had stopped traf­fic on the rail­way.

Trains on the line each car­ry around 14,000 tonnes of ore from the com­pa­ny’s net­work of mines in the state to ports but Vale could not imme­di­ate­ly con­firm how many were trans­port­ing the com­mod­i­ty. It said around 70 trains a day car­ry iron ore and oth­er car­go down the line.

One pas­sen­ger train was stopped by the protest as well as trains car­ry­ing goods for oth­er firms, Vale said.

The Via Campesina peas­ant move­ment said about 1,500 peo­ple were occu­py­ing the rail­way to pres­sure Vale to nego­ti­ate with 500 fam­i­lies who will be dis­lodged by the con­struc­tion of a hydro-elec­tric dam in which the com­pa­ny is involved.

Pro­test­ers occu­pied prop­er­ties of indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate Votoran­tim and a super­mar­ket belong­ing to the Wal-Mart group on Wednes­day.

The peas­ant groups are demon­strat­ing against the advance of one-crop farms they say harm the envi­ron­ment and small farm­ers. They are also protest­ing high food prices, the grow­ing use of bio­fu­els and the influ­ence of multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in Brazil.

Via Campesina said in a state­ment it was hold­ing anoth­er protest in front of Goias state’s elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­ny over price increas­es.

ALF target farming union offices over badger cull

The Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF) have sab­o­taged farm­ing union offices in protest against the Welsh assem­bly’s deci­sion to cull bad­gers, who are accused of spread­ing bovine TB, despite dairy cat­tle raised on inten­sive farms being the cul­prits.

The Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF) have sab­o­taged farm­ing union offices in protest against the Welsh assem­bly’s deci­sion to cull bad­gers, who are accused of spread­ing bovine TB, despite dairy cat­tle raised on inten­sive farms being the cul­prits.

The Car­marthen offices of both Nation­al Farm­ers Union (NFU) Cym­ru and the Farm­ers Union of Wales (FUW) were daubed with slo­gans includ­ing “no cull”, “cull farm­ers not bad­gers” and “ALF”.

The locks at the FUW’s office in the town were also glued shut, with slo­gans also paint­ed on four oth­er NFU Cym­ru build­ings, includ­ing those at Haver­ford­west and Swansea.

Source: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/401046.html

–
Stop the Cull!: Viva! Nation­al Ral­ly for the Bad­gers
Cardiff, Sat­ur­day, June 28 2008
1pm out­side the Welsh Assem­bly Build­ing (Debat­ing Rooms)

Info + poster: https://indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/06/400088.html

More info: http://viva.org.uk/badgers

Redecorated: McDonalds for Sean Kirtley & SUVs for Jeff Luers

“McDon­alds in South York­shire had their toi­lets redec­o­rat­ed with ‘Free Sean Kirt­ley’ posters and ‘McDonalds=McMurder’ (Sheffield & Barns­ley restau­rants)

Till all are free..

PS: Some SUVs at a garage on Eccle­sall Rd, Sheffield, need­ed their paint­work redo­ing after a lit­tle redec­o­ra­tion in red…free Jeff Luers!”

“McDon­alds in South York­shire had their toi­lets redec­o­rat­ed with ‘Free Sean Kirt­ley’ posters and ‘McDonalds=McMurder’ (Sheffield & Barns­ley restau­rants)

Till all are free..

PS: Some SUVs at a garage on Eccle­sall Rd, Sheffield, need­ed their paint­work redo­ing after a lit­tle redec­o­ra­tion in red…free Jeff Luers!”

Sean Kirt­ley: http://supportsean.wordpress.com
Jeff Luers: http://freefreenow.org

Source: http://directaction.info

Double supermarket expropriation (Athens, 13/6/2008)

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

“Today at 13:30 goods of basic neces­si­ty were expro­pri­at­ed from 2 super­mar­kets (Veropou­los and DIA) and hand­ed out in the open mar­ket of M. Voda. Fol­low­ing is the com­mu­nique dis­trib­uted at Veropou­los.

Thou­sands of super­mar­kets so full of goods, why don’t we just pil­lage them for our old age! ‑N. Asi­mos

Final­ly! the super­mar­ket and cor­po­ra­tion sharks frozen the prices of their prod­ucts! Some of them were even more gen­er­ous reduc­ing their prices, in order to raise the “pur­chas­ing pow­er” of the con­sumers. In sim­pler words: to gain more! As we can tell that no one takes into account this bull­shit about a so-called price reduc­tion, we put into action again our own “pack of mea­sures” against cost­li­ness, expro­pri­a­tiong foods and basic stuff from large super­mar­kets.

PS. As far as it con­cers our cov­ered faces, we say that: keep­ing in mind that soci­ety is yet unready and uneasy to lis­ten close­ly and sup­port these facts, so we think it’s nec­es­sary to adopt the basic mea­sures for our own secu­ri­ty, against the sys­tems of secu­ri­ty and repres­sion mech­a­nisms, in order to con­tin­ue live and act freely. THE ONLY MEASURE AGAINST COSTLINESS IS THE EXPROPRIATION. MASSIVE INVASION IN THE SUPERMARKETS TO TAKE BACK ALL THAT BELONG TO US.

Angry anar­chists against cost­li­ness”

From: http://athens.indymedia.org/front.php3?lang=el&article_id=880457

Vandalism at subway station (Athens, 13/6/2008)

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

From reports at http://athens.indymedia.org it seems that a group attacked Vic­to­ri­a’s sub­way sta­tion, break­ing down cam­eras and tick­et check­ing machines, throw­ing leaflets and spray paint­ing slo­gans against sur­veil­lance and con­trol and in sol­i­dar­i­ty to the detained M. Tsourapas-Chr.Kontorevithakis. A near­by bank on Patis­sion avenue was also attacked.

Protest halts Drax coal train as summer of discontent against coal continues…

Media — Inter­views are avail­able with pro­tes­tors: call 07944 367755 Pho­tos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/ Pro­tes­tors have halt­ed a coal train car­ry­ing fuel for Drax pow­er sta­tion in York­shire, the sin­gle biggest source of CO2 in the UK. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion … Con­tin­ue read­ing “Protest halts Drax coal train as sum­mer of dis­con­tent against coal con­tin­ues…”

Coal train stopped over river
Coal train banner
Coal train climber
Coal train stopped
Media — Inter­views are avail­able with pro­tes­tors: call 07944 367755
Pho­tos from the protest at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sitefeed/

Pro­tes­tors have halt­ed a coal train car­ry­ing fuel for Drax pow­er sta­tion in York­shire, the sin­gle biggest source of CO2 in the UK. The protest comes six weeks before the 2008 Camp for Cli­mate Action at Kingsnorth pow­er sta­tion — which will also high­light how using coal to sup­ply ener­gy will be a dis­as­ter for the plan­et.

Dressed in white over­alls and canary out­fits, they used safe­ty sig­nals to stop the train on a bridge over­look­ing the pow­er sta­tion, before climb­ing on board and dump­ing coal off onto the tracks.

The train has been stopped on a branch line used exclu­sive­ly for deliv­er­ing coal to Drax. Pro­tes­tors have used a net­work of climb­ing ropes to sus­pend them­selves under the bridge from the train — mean­ing any move­ment while the protest con­tin­ues is impos­si­ble.

Video 1
Video 2
Video 3

Updates at http://thecoalhole.org/

To find out what hap­pened next, go to http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20903