Action Reports – Page 254

Actions against the motorway through Tara, Ireland – reports and upcoming

This morning, monday 6th jan ’08 at 7 am, 11 of us split up into two groups. We went to the Ardsallagh Compound (site entrance 2.10) and Roestown (site entrance 2.1 ) . All the machinery was parked at these two sites for the past two weeks over Christmas.

Ardsallagh ; four of us went on site into the compund and blocked a lowloader in the gate, preventing any more machinery being brought off to other sites. They then headed across country towards the River Boyne at site no. 2.9 . While two held the gate, two followed them across the field ,stopping them before they reached the next stretch.Construction workers at the gate , trying to intimidate the protesters assaulted one man , dragging him to the ground and pulling out of the way allowing the lowloader past. In the mean time, off route down the road two of us were waiting to be picked up (help with transport needed), when we saw a digger coming towards us along the hedge line. The driver proceeded to drive up to us nearly kocking us over. when we stood our ground in front of the machine, he got out and verbally and physically asaulted us. The gaurds then arrived treatening arrest on anyone who stayed under the Miscellaneous Act2004 section 19c but were helpful and co operative when told about the assaults , taking the digger drivers name.

Roestown: As today was the first day of construction since before Christmas, we needed to blockade the machinery from entering the valley again. From the N3 we could see the machinery moving towards Trevet from the Roestown compound. We arrived there just as the first digger was approaching. There were 5 of us. We all went into the site and approached the digger. The driver complied with health and safety regulations and stopped his machine immediately. We made a blockade in front of the machine with traffic cones, poles and safety notices. Mark Cleary and his comrades entered the site, along with security. They filmed us and removed the blockade. One protestor was standing on the blockade, Mark Cleary pushed him off. A jeep coming from the Roestown direction passed us by, the digger driver had switched back on his machine. Another protestor on bail conditions stayed at the site entrance with banners on the public road, playing his tin whistle. Mark Cleary and this protestor had a cameral duel! The Gardai arrived and asked us to leave the site, quoting the Housing and Misc Act 2004, section C. We were told we would be arrested if we were seen again today on a M3 site. The Gardai followed us to the Ardsallagh compound. We held a banner protest there on the side of the road. The same Gardai were very interested in the Tara issue, and asked us questions about archaeology and Lismullen. Nobody was arrested.

Ogoni Day remembered as Shell fail to honour promise to halt gas flaring

Today is January 4th 2008.

On this day in 1993, 300,000 people in Nigeria marked the United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples by protesting against Shell’s activities and the environmental destruction of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta.

2008 was supposed to be the deadline for the ending of gas flaring by Shell in Nigeria, but the company now says that this deadline will not be met.

Letting the company have a taste of its own medicine

Today is January 4th 2008.

2008 was supposed to be the deadline for the ending of gas flaring by Shell in Nigeria, but the company now says that this deadline will not be met.

Letting the company have a taste of its own medicine

At just before 8.30 this morning, as staff were arriving for work at Royal Dutch Shell’s Irish headquarters in Dublin, they were treated to a taste of what life is like for those who have to live and work near Shell installations in other parts of the world.

Short version of video (45 seconds) here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=u4uZDvA5WY4

Long version (2 minute) here: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=597hkm9MuTo

More information on Shell in Nigeria here: http://www.foeeurope.org/press/2007/May3_DU_Flaring.htm

Gas Flaring is simply the releasing of excess gas and liquids associated with oil and gas production pipelines and refineries into the atmosphere. The main purpose of gas flaring is to protect pipelines and infrastructure from over-pressuring

The released gases are burned off, releasing any by-products into the air. These include nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds like xylene and hydrogen sulfide. Carcinogens such as benzapyrene are also released. People exposed to these substances can suffer from a variety of respiratory problems, which have been reported amongst many children in the Niger Delta but have but have never been systemically investigated. These chemicals can also aggravate asthma, cause breathing difficulties and pain, as well as chronic bronchitis.

Benzene, which is known to be emitted from gas flares in undocumented quantities, is acknowledged as being a causative agent for leukemia.

Gas flaring of course, also contributes to global warming and climate change.

Together with oil spills, gas flaring is seen as a major cause of environmental degradation. In Nigeria, the practice is supposed to be illegal, but there is no sign of the Nigerian government being able to enforce this law. Here in Ireland we know all about how Shell can manipulate the world of politics and the legal process to suit the needs of the company’s shareholders.

In Nigeria in 1995 however, it appears that Shell’s PR people slowly realised that their part in the hanging of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight other activists was a public relations disaster, and in the aftermath the company made various concessions to its critics, in a vain attempt to undue some of the damage it felt had been done to its brand. One of the promises made was the announcement of an end to gas flaring.

Shell of course, is not well known for living up to its promises, and so flaring is still going on today. In the year 2000, Shell formally announced that it would stop gas flaring by 2008. Interestingly, since 2000, gas flaring in the Niger Delta has actually increased (according to the 2005 Shell Sustainability Report).

In November 2005, the Federal High Court of Nigeria stated that Shell and other oil companies
should end gas flaring in the Niger Delta. In a case brought against Shell, the court ruled that the damaging and wasteful practice of flaring could not lawfully continue and must stop. Shell appealed against the decision.

At the demonstration on January 4th 1993, an Ogoni elder said:
“We have woken up to find our lands devastated by agents of death called oil companies. Our atmosphere has been totally polluted, our lands degraded, our waters contaminated, our trees poisoned, so much so that our flora and fauna have virtually disappeared”.

January 4th became known as Ogoni Day.

For more information see:

www.remembersarowiwa.com

greenwash guerillas hit shell hq

4.01.2008
at lunchtime yesterday, a small band of greenwash guerillas entered the lobby of the london shell hq to highlight the massive amount of toxic greenwash emanating from the building. once ejected they continued their work outside, warning the public of the dangers of greenwash

full greenwash film in mp4 format – video/mp4 8.2M
full greenwash film in wmv format – video/x-ms-wmv 8.8M

shell security got into quite a tizz over the four protestors and rather too many police arrived. the police (once the government security zone map was shown to them) “facilitated lawful protest” as long as it didn’t go too near the poisonous shell building. this may have been for the safety of the public or for other reasons.

the guerillas’ theatrics attracted quite a lot of public interest and loads of leaflets were handed out

greenwash guerillas are associated with rising tide and you can find out more about what they do and when, by getting in touch via their website at www.risingtide.org.uk

the vid is posted in quicktime mp4 and wmv formats and is 6’30”
quicktime can be viewed on any computer (any platform) with vlc player available for free download from videolan

London Rising Tide activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain (4 January 2008)

Activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain

Activists from London Rising Tide staged a ‘die-in’ in the BP sponsored Tate Britain this afternoon. Bob Jones from LRT said “we’re here to demand that the Tate cut it’s ties with BP, an art gallery is no place for an environmental hazard such as an oil company”. “BP are here to Greenwash their image and distract from the ecological devastation they’re causing around the world”. The protesters handed out lots of leaflets and urged patrons to demand the end of Oil Companies sponsorship of Art Galleries.

Activists ‘die’ in the Tate Britain

The ‘corpses’ were dressed in t-shirts dispalying the logos such as ‘art not oil’, ‘bp – fossil fools’ and ‘bp out of the tate’. Their epitaphs was fitting for the location. Once dead the staff on site took the precaution of shouting to everybody to leave which only attracted more people, and over 200 flyers were given out inside the building.

Several members of the public were very supportive and even told the staff to stop trying to move us ; “these people are making more of a statement than most of the art in this room” was something i heard being said.

After asking the TATE for a representative to discuss the policy of accepting money from social criminals, but they refused as all directors were ‘still on holiday’. A shame….and i bet they flew too!

All in all, a good day with excellent public response.
we will be back.

20080104_RT_GG_Tate_Invasion – video/x-ms-wmv 15M
20080104_RT_Tate_QT – video/quicktime 14M

Success for City Indians: 4WD targetted in Denmark

4th January 2008

Originally from Sweden a movement of “city indians” targetting large 4WD cars has spread widely in Denmark, while in Sweden a truce has been declared.

The number of attacks on high pollution 4WD city cars have been increasing steadily in Denmark since the city indians first began in Sweden some months ago. New year’s eve saw another wave of actions in Copenhagen.

4th January 2008

Originally from Sweden a movement of “city indians” targetting large 4WD cars has spread widely in Denmark, while in Sweden a truce has been declared.

Meanwhile in Sweden where the actions started a truce has been declared by the CI. “It seems our actions have had effect, the message that city jeeps have no place in our cities has gotten through. But if we don’t continue to see decreasing sales of the cars the hatchet is easily unburied”, the CI in Sweden said in a statement on their website.

The CI in both Sweden and Denmark have received countless death threats on their websites.

Rainforest chief killed in Borneo for his opposition to logging

January 3, 2008
Keleasu Naan, a Penan chieftain and longtime activist against logging, disappeared in October while checking animal traps. His
tribes’ worst fears were confirmed when they found what they believed to be Naan’s remains last month. According to the Associated Press, the chieftain’s nephew, Michael Ipa, has stated that the body had several broken bones, leading Ipa to believe that “he has been killed by people involved in logging”.

Keleasu Naan had been one of the key figures in the Penan community’s fight against logging. He was also a plaintiff and witness in a land rights claim that has been awaiting trial since 1998.

One-hundred Penan villagers walked sixty miles this week to lodge a report at the closest police station and demand an investigation into Naan’s death. This is not the first time that Penans involved in anti-logging activity have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Two activist Penans disappeared in the 1990s. In 2000, Bruno Manser, a Swiss environmentalist and champion of Penan rights, also disappeared in the jungle. No sign of him has been found, and some believe he was assassinated.

Logging in Borneo has been rampant since the 1980’s. In 2005 just over 50% of Borneo’s forest remained. More recently palm oil
plantations have increased pressure on the forests. Naan’s Penan community had managed to keep logging out of what the villagers claim is their ancestral land, but they now believe that several timber companies plan to resume logging. Aboriginal peoples of the Malaysia’s Sarawak region, the Penans number around 10,000. They currently live in settlements, but have not completely abandoned their traditional nomadic ways. They subsist off small gardens, hunting, and gathering. Since so much of the Penan’s resources come from the forest, its disappearance may mark their own.

http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0103-borneo_hance.html

Celebrating the end of the carbon economy

This afternoon, at 5pm. members of Groenfront will join together in the centre of capitalism in the Netherlands: the Beursplein in Amsterdam. Here they will bring out a toast to the record-high price of oil of $100 per barrel. Since 2003 the price of oil has sky-rocketed, with the rate sometimes climbing several dollars a day. GroenFront-activist Rogier: “What the earth needs is economic ‘shrinkage’. The climate crisis and the peaking oil production show us that we need to adjust to the limits of our ecosystem”.

Peakoil is the geologically determined peaking and – after that – shrinking of oil production. The remainder of oil becomes harder and harder to retrieve, demanding a still greater technological and financial effort.
It looks as if the worldwide production of oil has reached that peak. Every following year, the production will decrease. The decreased supply in combination with an ever increasing demand will push up the price of oil. Executives of, among others, Total, Conoco, Philps, Saudi Aramco and the Libyan National Oil Corporation have already stated that they are not able to meet the current demand for oil. The last few years have seen lower yields from oil fields in the US, Mexico and the North Sea. The International Energy Agency expressed its concerns over the ever growing gap between supply and demand in the global oil market.

Whether the record-high price of $100 is beneficial to the environment depends on the way the oil-addicted societies react. If the shortage in oil will be compensated for with pollutive replacements, like agrofuels, unconventional oil and synthetic diesel from coal and natural gas, the world still has not learned its lesson. This record-high price should be used as a wake-up call: fossil fuels are limited and already we are faced with the consequences.

Families in the United States are seriously concerned with the oncoming winter because of the greatly increased cost of petrol. Transport and fishing sector in Europe are anticipating protests against the risen price of diesel fuel. In Third World countries – where fuels are usually subsidised – governments are faced with a choice: an empty treasury or uprising. In Africa and Asia a growing amount of fishermen are forced to stay ashore because of the high costs of fuel. Farmers are not able to bring their products to the market place. Peakoil starts to rear its ugly head everywhere.

“The climate crisis and the depletion of fossile fuels show us that a radical change in our economic system is an absolute necessity,” says GroenFront activist Rogier. “Failing to do so means waiting for an economic recession which will hit the people who are already having difficulties to cope. A redistribution of wealth is necessary, but most of all a choice has to be made for a little less wealth. We can do that now, voluntarily and peacefully, or wait until both economy and ecology force us to do so.” In conclusion, Rogier states: “Economic shrinkage is the only real solution to the approaching economic and ecologic crisis.”

Hunger strike in France to protest gene-altered crops

PARIS: The militant French sheep farmer Jose Bove and as many as 15 of his supporters were expected to begin a hunger strike Thursday aimed at raising pressure on the French government to impose a long-term ban on growing genetically modified crops.

In a newspaper interview published Wednesday, the anti-globalization activist vowed not to eat again until a ban was in place.

Bove captured worldwide attention for helping to organize the ransacking of a McDonald’s restaurant nine years ago to protest the influence of multinational corporations. Since then he has served time in a French prison for damaging gene-altered crops.

While his campaigns have struck a sympathetic chord in many parts of France and Europe where gene-altered foods are widely mistrusted – and where Bove is something of a folk hero – the latest protest against altered crops comes as divisions over the potential benefits of the technology appear to be deepening across the region.

Some European Union officials remain wary of using products that could endanger insects and fish and disturb ecosystems, but others have redoubled calls to ease restrictions on altered seeds as a way of keeping farming globally competitive at a time of skyrocketing food prices.

The European agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel, warned farm ministers in November that Europe’s resistance to importing genetically modified products like livestock feed was contributing to the rising cost of raising pigs and chickens and could pose a threat to the meat industry.

In October, the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, disappointed supporters of a long-term ban by announcing a temporary freeze on genetically modified seeds pending the outcome of a review of the technology that is expected early this year.

Bove has said he is undertaking his hunger strike to push the French government into making a much longer-term commitment to end seed cultivation.

Genetically modified corn is already imported into several EU countries, including France and Germany, where it is used to feed animals like cows and chickens. But only one genetically modified crop is currently grown in Europe, a form of corn produced by Monsanto and nine other companies called Mon 810 that is the main target of Bové’s protest.

Austria, Hungary and Poland are among countries that already have banned the Monsanto corn.

A long-term ban ‘is the only thing that will put an end to this hunger strike,’ Bove told the French daily Sud Ouest in an interview published Wednesday. ‘Promises won’t be satisfactory.’

Bove told Sud Ouest that he would conduct the hunger strike in a well-known public location in Paris where he would not cause any security problems. He declined to reveal the whereabouts of the location before Thursday.

Bove began reducing his intake of alcohol, meat, eggs and cheese at the end of December to start accustoming his body to the fast, during which he said he expected to lose half-a-kilogram, or about one pound, of weight each day, he told another French newspaper, Midi Libre.

‘This hunger-strike is a well-considered commitment, not a suicidal act,’ Bove told Midi Libre.

By James Kanter International Herald Tribune, January 2 2008 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/02/europe/gmo.php

Shoshone Defenders of Mount Tenabo Constructing Encampment (occupied North America)

December 1, 2008
At some point today, several men will begin constructing a permanent arbor on the Southern flank of Mt. Tenabo, where they will camp and monitor the Canadian mining company Barrick Gold.

The encampment was called on during last week’s protest, where Shoshone Grandmothers and their supporters attempted to confront Barrick Gold and bring an end to the destruction of the pinion forest – which began almost immediately after the company got approval to go ahead with its ‘Cortez Hills Expansion Project.’

A massive cyanide heap leach gold mine, the project will ultimately destroy approximately 6,800 acres of land — fracturing along with it, the spiritual life and cultural practices of the Shoshone People.

“This is our treaty land. It was a treaty made with the federal government. It was not made with a foreign nation. And it is a foreign mining company that has come into our country and is destroying our mountain, our land, our food, our medicine and they have no respect,” stated one Grandmother at the protest.

“…It can’t go on. It’s perpetrating genocide against the Native American people. And we are not the only Native people suffering this distress,” said another. “It is happening world over; but we happen to be Western Shoshones and this is our land and we’re protesting the poisoned water, the destruction of the land, the road we’re standing on here, the big machines: everything that the mining industry stands for. They say they’re doing it responsibly, but they’re not because when they leave the Western Shoshone people will still be here and the land will be barren.”

To help make sure this doesn’t happen, the Western Shoshone Defense Project (WSDP) asks that you help by making any of the following the donations:

24 Nuts and Bolts (bolts need to be 1 foot in length with matching nuts)
Gasoline for saws and hauling costs.
Food items such as eggs, bacon, meat, potatoes, beans, etc. (including some sweets!)
Helpers — to assist with construction of arbor and for support in the encampment
Monetary donations for all of the above
Moral support and prayers

You can contact Joyce McDade for additional information, e-mail: EJMcDade20@wmconnect.com

Happy Valley Occupation Celebration – Two Years! (Aotearoa/New Zealand)

SAVE HAPPY VALLEY!
OCCUPATION CELEBRATION – TWO YEARS!
THE WEEKEND OF FEBRUARY 2nd-3rd, 2008

You are invited to the Save Happy Valley Coalition’s celebration of our SECOND successful year of occupying Happy Valley. We have been continuously occupying Happy Valley since January 28th 2006 in order to prevent Solid Energy from turning it into an environmentally devastating opencast coal-mine. Despite spies, 6000 snails from Augustus transferred in icecream containers, the destruction of a nearby mountain, Solid Energy’s plans for massive expansion, and the October 15th raids on activists, people have managed to keep Happy Valley safe so far! Yay for train track blockades, film nights, alternatives to minerals forums, demos, radio interviews, everyone’s actions, and the OCCUPATION!

The Save Happy Valley Coalition, and anyone who wishes to join us for the weekend celebration, will be meeting at Les Warren Park, in Westport, at 8am on Saturday 2nd Feburary 2008. (The majority of us will travel to Westport from Christchurch on the Friday night, car pooling can be arranged thru the coordinator).

You will need all of your own tramping/camping gear and food, enough for the duration of your intended stay and you need to be prepared for unpredictable weather; rain; sun; hot and cold. This means that you must have have suitable footwear, waterproof and warm clothing, a sleeping bag and a tent (unless you have arranged to share with someone else). An extended gear list will be made available to you when you confirm plans with the occupation coordinator. If you do not have the required gear we may be able to provide it for you, but please ensure that by the Friday you have the correct gear.

We will be leaving the valley / returning to Westport on Sunday the 3rd but it would be awesome if you are able to stay longer in the valley!! Please let the coordinator know.

We hope you can join us. Please RSVP so we can coordinate easily 🙂 Please let us know if you have any special needs that are of concern, we will be as accommodating as possible and we can provide you with as much information as you require.

For more information please contact the occupation coordinator.

Thanks for your support!

Frances Martin
Occupation Celebration Coordinator
frances.crayon@gmail.com
021 2037040

www.savehappyvalley.org.nz/occupation

If you cannot make it for this weekend but are able to visit the valley at another time please contact us! 🙂