Category: Action Reports

Bradford Total Garage Blockade/London HQ in solidarity with Burmese protesters/Oxford demo/callout: London 5th & Cardiff 6th Oct

27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Bradford Total Burma 1
Bradford Total Burma 2
Bradford Total Burma 3
27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Total is in a joint ven­ture with the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship in the Yadana gas project, which earns the regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed leader of the Burmese gov­ern­ment under house arrest, says: “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime”.

A mix of stu­dents and locals stood, sat or drummed across both entrances to the fore­court for an hour and a half. Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Total­i­tar­i­an Oil-Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” they leaflet­ed and spoke to passers-by and motorists.

Staff at the petrol sta­tion threat­ened pro­test­ers with sticks, car and lor­ry dri­vers attempt­ed to run over pro­test­ers, but despite this things remained peace­ful. The sta­tion was closed almost com­plete­ly for over an hour whilst pro­test­ers played drums, gave out fliers, held plac­ards and ban­ners, and sat in the entrances to the fore­court.

A few dri­vers were not so sup­port­ive, includ­ing one truck dri­ver who car­ried on dri­ving into the pro­test­ers in the entrance way even as they banged fran­ti­cal­ly on the wind­screen. Even a local cop (who had pre­vi­ous­ly tried to shove pro­test­ers off the road) decid­ed to tell the dri­ver to back off. Most dri­vers how­ev­er were sup­port­ive and chose not to try and cross the block­ade. Although many peo­ple were aware of the sit­u­a­tion on Bur­ma they had not heard of Total’s involve­ment.

Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrPVltBMkA

http://www.bradfordcampaigners.co.nr

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Also sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at embassies in Lon­don

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Total HQ Burma protest 1Total HQ Burma protest 2Total Oil’s Lon­don offices tar­get­ed this morn­ing, 2nd Octo­ber

Total Oil’s Lon­don offices were tar­get­ed this morn­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment with Bur­ma’s regime. Total’s invest­ments have been earn­ing the regime mil­lions of dol­lars and have been marked by human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour. Activists staged a die-in and hand­ed out leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign UK to inform office work­ers going into the build­ing on what Total, Europe’s great­est finan­cial backer of the Burmese jun­ta, is real­ly up to.

As the streets of Burmese cities are patrolled by sol­diers and thou­sands of monks and pro­test­ers are still miss­ing after hav­ing been killed, beat­en up or arrest­ed dur­ing last week’s demon­stra­tions, sup­port for the Burmese people’s strug­gle is vital. With thou­sands tak­ing to the streets on Sun­day, it is also impor­tant to expose those who make the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship pos­si­ble – cor­po­ra­tions such as Total Oil. Aung San Suu Kyi, the most respect­ed fig­ure of Burma’s democ­ra­cy move­ment, has iden­ti­fied Total as “the biggest sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma”, earn­ing the jun­ta hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year. Total’s joint ven­ture with Burma’s rulers in the Yadan gas project in the south of the coun­try pro­vides cru­cial rev­enues to the regime and has had its own hor­rif­ic record of human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour and wide­spread tor­ture and rape against those who oppose the project.

On top of all this, Total Oil has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing the French gov­ern­ment to veto Euro­pean Union sanc­tions against Bur­ma in order to pro­tect its invest­ments, yet anoth­er exam­ple of cor­po­ra­tions show­ing where the real pow­er real­ly lies in world affairs.

Activists decid­ed to take this mat­ter to Total’s Lon­don offices, show­ing up ear­ly this morn­ing to talk to office work­ers as they made their way into work, and to inform oth­ers work­ing in the build­ing what their neigh­bours are real­ly up to. A ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTAL­i­tar­i­anOil Out of Bur­ma Now’ was unfurled, leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign hand­ed out, while three activists staged a die-in in the lob­by of the build­ing. Police forces showed up with­in 20 min­utes, demand­ing to speak to the ‘lead­ers of the demon­stra­tion’, and even­tu­al­ly force­ful­ly remov­ing those inside the build­ing. The pro­test­ers were not deterred, con­tin­u­ing the die-in out­side the doors. It was decid­ed by all to end the demon­stra­tion at 11am, after all leaflets were hand­ed out and traf­fic into the build­ing slowed down.

As the Burmese mil­i­tary con­tin­ues its repres­sion of dis­sent, we must keep up the strug­gle and con­tin­ue to tar­get those who finan­cial­ly back the regime, expos­ing them for what they real­ly are: cap­i­tal­ists who care about noth­ing but prof­it.

Press release:

Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTALITARIAN OIL: OUT OF BURMA NOW’, they are demand­ing that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma, includ­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Yadana gas project [1], and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

Tom Shapiro, one of those at the protest, said:

“As reports fil­ter out that thou­sands of peo­ple may have lost their lives in Bur­ma this week stand­ing up for their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights, we are here to say that TOTAL, which funds the regime, has blood on its hands — and these work­ers have blood on their desks. TOTAL’s finan­cial part­ner­ship with the Burmese jun­ta enables the oppres­sion of 48 mil­lion peo­ple. They claim this is an ‘eth­i­cal’ approach that oth­er investors would not repli­cate — rather, it’s an affront to human­i­ty. We urge every­one who sup­ports the monks in their protest to tar­get TOTAL in every way pos­si­ble until they leave Bur­ma.”

The demon­stra­tion lends strength to the grow­ing calls for con­sumer action against TOTAL over its role in Bur­ma, after calls by Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, Angli­can church groups and French trade unions this week for the com­pa­ny to be tar­get­ed [2]. It is also indi­cates the increas­ing­ly grass­roots nature of the sol­i­dar­i­ty protests that have spread across the world, with ordi­nary peo­ple tar­get­ing the com­pa­nies and embassies with most lever­age dur­ing the cur­rent cri­sis, rather than rely­ing on more con­ven­tion­al chan­nels.

Michelle Doyle, anoth­er of those at the protest, said:

“The For­eign Sec­re­tary, David Mil­liband, has been on tele­vi­sion promis­ing tough EU sanc­tions, but while bureau­crats talk, peo­ple are being killed in the streets. We could­n’t bear just to watch it hap­pen­ing on TV and trust the gov­ern­ment to make a dif­fer­ence. We are here to use peo­ple pow­er to tar­get the cor­po­ra­tions which are keep­ing the Burmese jun­ta in busi­ness — British tim­ber com­pa­nies, tourism providers, and above all TOTAL, the fourth biggest oil com­pa­ny in the world. It is these com­pa­nies that are pay­ing the wages of the sol­diers who are shoot­ing monks. We must make sure that not one more dol­lar of our mon­ey goes towards keep­ing the regime in pow­er.”

The demon­stra­tors describe them­selves as sup­port­ers of but not act­ing for Bur­ma Cam­paign UK. They met on Sun­day’s demon­stra­tion in cen­tral Lon­don and via social net­work­ing site Face­book, and intend to take part in the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Sat­ur­day [3].

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

1. TOTAL Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. See http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

2. Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and freeze all trans­fers: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

Mean­while, there have been demon­stra­tions and calls to boy­cott in Brad­ford, Bris­tol, and Not­ting­ham in the UK in the last week:
Brad­ford: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382211.html
Angli­cans call for boy­cott:
http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=11254
Not­ting­ham: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382268.html
Bris­tol: http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26882

3. This Sat­ur­day, 6 Octo­ber, will be A Day of Inter­na­tion­al Action for a Free Bur­ma — Free Aung San Suu Kyi & Sup­port the Monks in Bur­ma. Over 1,000 peo­ple have already con­firmed via Face­book that they will be attend­ing. See: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=4973307490

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Activists staged a protest at Total petrol sta­tion on Oxford Road in Oxford on Sat­ur­day 29th. They tried to block the access to the sta­tion but were low on num­bers and unfor­tu­nate­ly the imme­di­ate police pres­ence meant that they were moved to one side. Still, the large ban­ner sent out a clear mes­sage about Total Oil’s sup­port of the Burmese jun­ta to lots of motorists on the busy Sat­ur­day after­noon. Many indi­cat­ed to turn in before chang­ing their minds. Those who chose to refill their tanks were hand­ed leaflets and giv­en a lec­ture on the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and Total’s deci­sion to exploit it.

I’ve also noticed some anti-Total graf­fi­ti about.

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Protest Total Oil this Fri­day in Lon­don

CALL TO ACTION: ‘Die-in’ and demo at Lon­don TOTAL Oil HQ over Bur­ma links
FRIDAY 5 OCTOBER
8:30 — 10:30 am
33 Cavendish Square, Lon­don, WC1

Show your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro­tes­tors in Bur­ma — join the action!

A mass action has been called to take place at the head­quar­ters of TOTAL OIL in Lon­don on Fri­day Octo­ber 5th from 8:30 — 10:30 am. A demon­stra­tion and a mass die-in will take place out­side of the cen­tral Lon­don office to express our out­rage at Total’s involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma.

All are wel­come to attend — bring plac­ards, instru­ments, noise and props if you can. A sym­bol­ic ‘die-in’ will be hap­pen­ing. A sim­i­lar action hap­pened on Tues­day, Octo­ber 2nd at the same loca­tion with 20 activists (see above).

Across France and in oth­er parts of the UK pres­sure has been mount­ing against Total in a num­ber of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions.
It is impor­tant to con­tin­ue pres­sure on this com­pa­ny to demand Total’s with­draw­al from Bur­ma.

TOTAL Oil’s busi­ness part­ner­ship with the Burmese gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing vital fund­ing that enables the bru­tal mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in to oppress 48 mil­lion peo­ple.

An upris­ing against the jun­ta in Bur­ma, led by monks, has been met with vio­lent repres­sion. Secu­ri­ty forces and armed mil­i­tary troops have launched a vio­lent crack­down on demon­stra­tors, most of which is not being report­ed due to a state-imposed media freeze. Some esti­mates sug­gest that thou­sands could be dead and many more impris­oned.

We demand that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

This action is called by peo­ple who met at a Bur­ma sol­i­dar­i­ty march and decid­ed that we need­ed to do more by tar­get­ting the com­pa­nies that have blood on their hands.

Near­est tube: Oxford Cir­cus
Map:
http://tinyurl.com/2oardl
For more infor­ma­tion see:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on actions against Total Oil:

TOTAL Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year.

Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and
freeze all trans­fers:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

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Cardiff Burma/Total Protest Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber

DO SOMETHING ABOUT BURMA IN CARDIFF — SPREAD THE WORD!

French oil com­pa­ny Total is one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. It has been prop­ping up the vio­lent and oppres­sive regime there for years. It has even used army-imposed forced labour to con­struct a gas pipeline accross the coun­try.

Peo­ple in Britain have been protest­ing out­side Total garages and offices all week with demos in places like Brad­ford, Oxford, and Lon­don — now it’s our turn!

Protest at the Total Garage, Cathe­dral Road, Cardiff, 11am Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber.
Assem­ble: 10.30am out­side Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street to march on the garage.

As the medi­a’s atten­tion span wanes, and a spec­ta­cle-weary pub­lic grows tired of see­ing South East Asians get­ting bat­tered and shot on prime­time TV, a full-scale state and mil­i­tary back­lash against Bur­ma’s peo­ple is under­way. Demon­stra­tors are being rou­tine­ly round­ed up, put in prison, and quite prob­a­bly tor­tured, and more monks are being mur­dered and beat­en every day.

Let’s tar­get the com­pa­nies that prop up Bur­ma’s mur­der­ous mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship and let them know that they can’t get away with sup­port­ing despots with impuni­ty.

Bring ban­ners, plac­ards, and what­ev­er else you expect to find — wear saf­fron or dark red if you want to.

This demon­stra­tion is called by the South Wales Anar­chists — all are wel­come, and please spread the word to your net­works!

Get good and reli­able news about Bur­ma at:
http://www.burmanet.org/news/

hundreds descend on faslane for the big blockade

100 arrests so far as 600 actvists block entrances to faslane nuclear weapons base.

big Blockade 1Big Blockade 2100 arrests so far as 600 actvists block entrances to faslane nuclear weapons base.
600 Shut Down Faslane Nuclear Weapons Base to Mark Year of Protest
Alex Salmond sends pro­tes­tors mes­sage of sup­port
Octo­ber 1, 2007

600 pro­tes­tors from across the UK and Europe shut down road access to the Faslane nuclear weapons base on the Clyde this morn­ing.

At 7am pro­tes­tors non vio­lent­ly block­ad­ed the North­ern gate to the base with their bod­ies. Some have locked and super­glued them­selves togeth­er to make it more dif­fi­cult for them to be removed. At around 8.30am oth­er pro­tes­tors suc­cess­ful­ly block­ad­ed the South Gate. With both gates block­ad­ed there is now no road access to the weapons base, which is home to the UK ’s nuclear weapons-car­ry­ing Tri­dent sub­marines.

By 10.30 am Strath­clyde police had arrest­ed an esti­mat­ed 100 pro­test­ers, but as fast as they are removed more are tak­ing their place.

More pro­tes­tors are expect­ed and block­ades are planned to con­tin­ue through­out the day. Drum­mers, clowns and singers, includ­ing acclaimed folk singer Roy Bai­ley, are enter­tain­ing the pro­test­ers, cre­at­ing a car­ni­val spir­it to the protest.

Politi­cians from across the coun­try will join the demon­stra­tors lat­er this morn­ing, includ­ing six SNP MSP’s (Mem­bers of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment), an MEP, two Green Par­ty MSPs and at least one Labour MSP (1).

Scot­land’s First Min­is­ter Alex Salmond has issued a state­ment back­ing to the event. He sent his “best wish­es” to the pro­tes­tors and said he “shares” Faslane 365’s “objec­tive of remov­ing nuclear weapons from Scotland’s soil” (2).

Oth­er mes­sages of sup­port have come in from cler­ics includ­ing the Head of the Scot­tish Catholic Church and Bish­op of Read­ing Stephen Cot­terell who said, ‘Our nation is demeaned and com­pro­mised by the pres­ence of these weapons of mass destruc­tion on our shores. The Church of Eng­land and most of the Chris­t­ian church­es in these islands stand unit­ed in call­ing upon our gov­ern­ment to re-think its reliance on nuclear weapons for our secu­ri­ty’. (3)

Today’s Big Block­ade cel­e­brates the last day of the Faslane 365 year of peace­ful blockad­ing. Since Faslane 365’s cam­paign start­ed on Octo­ber 1, 2006, thou­sands of peo­ple have block­ad­ed the base and more than 950 have been arrest­ed. High pro­file par­tic­i­pants have includ­ed for­mer UN Assis­tant Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Prof. Sir Richard Jol­ly, Nobel Peace Lau­re­ate Mairead Maguire, Adri­an Mitchell, A.L.Kennedy, actor Roger Lloyd Pack and singer-song­writer Bil­ly Bragg.

Over the year of the block­ade the nuclear issue has been high on the polit­i­cal agen­da. In Feb­ru­ary 2007 the West­min­ster Par­lia­ment vot­ed for pro­duc­ing anoth­er nuclear weapons sys­tem to replace Tri­dent and tie the UK into hold­ing nuclear weapons for the next fifty years. The vote inspired the largest back­bench revolt since that over the deci­sion to invade Iraq. How­ev­er in a twist to the sto­ry in May 2007 the Scot­tish Nation­al Par­ty was elect­ed on a plat­form that includ­ed ‘kick­ing Tri­dent out of Scot­land ’. Lat­er this month the SNP are hold­ing a sum­mit with civ­il soci­ety groups to dis­cuss how to get rid of the UK ’s nuclear weapons. West­min­ster is vul­ner­a­ble to the strong Scot­tish oppo­si­tion to nuclear weapons (4) as Faslane is the only UK base suit­able for the mas­sive nuclear weapons car­ry­ing Tri­dent sub­marines.

NOTES:

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion on Faslane 365, the Tri­dent deploy­ments and the Big Block­ade, includ­ing back­ground and polit­i­cal con­text on the year long block­ade, see the full Press Brief­ing Pack on the web­site. www.faslane365.org/1oct/press

(1) Politi­cians attend­ing the Big Block­ade will include: Bill Kidd MSP (SNP), Gil Pater­son MSP (SNP), Bob Doris MSP (SNP), Bashir Ahmad MSP (SNP), Jamie Hep­burn MSP (SNP) and San­dra White MSP (SNP), Marlyn Glen MSP (Labour), Robin Harp­er MSP (Green) and Patrick Harvie (Green), as well as Jill Evans MEP (Plaid Cym­ru). For sup­port­ive quotes by these politi­cians vis­it the web­site www.faslane365.org/1oct/press

(2) Full Alex Salmond state­ment: Alex Salmond’s office sent a let­ter on behalf of the First Min­is­ter to the Faslane 365 orga­niz­ers con­vey­ing “his best wish­es for a suc­cess­ful event” and affirm­ing his full sup­port for “respon­si­ble and peace­ful protest against the replace­ment of Tri­dent”. The let­ter fur­ther stat­ed that Mr. Salmond “shares” Faslane 365’s “objec­tive of remov­ing nuclear weapons from Scotland’s soil” and affirmed that “He is com­mit­ted to doing what­ev­er he can to per­suade the UK gov­ern­ment to alter its posi­tion on nuclear weapons.”

(3) State­ments by church lead­ers:
Stephen Cot­trell, Bish­op of Read­ing (Angli­can): ‘I send greet­ings in the name of Jesus Christ, the friend of the poor and the lover of peace. On the night before he died he said these words to his friends: Peace I give you, my own peace I leave with you, not as the world gives peace do I give to you. These words con­tin­ue to chal­lenge the pow­ers and author­i­ties of the world where there is still such mis­placed con­fi­dence in a so called peace that can be secured by a so called deter­rence. But these expen­sive and dev­as­tat­ing­ly destruc­tive weapons can­not bring peace. They only encour­age oth­ers to depend on force. They add to the insta­bil­i­ty of the world. They leech finances away from so many oth­er things that could do so much good. Our nation is demeaned and com­pro­mised by the pres­ence of these weapons of mass destruc­tion on our shores. The Church of Eng­land and most of the Chris­t­ian church­es in these islands stand unit­ed in call­ing upon our gov­ern­ment to re-think its reliance on nuclear weapons for our secu­ri­ty. This is the peace the world gives and it is not work­ing. Let us turn instead to the peace of Christ who bids us turn our swords into ploughshares and our tri­dent sub­marines into hos­pi­tals and schools. And it is my plea­sure to send greet­ings and prayers to those of you who are gath­er­ing at Faslane today as you lament the mad­ness of the world and brave­ly bear wit­ness to the way of last­ing peace’.

Kei­th Patrick Car­di­nal O’Brien, Pres­i­dent, the Bish­ops Con­fer­ence of Scot­land (Catholic): ‘My dear friends gath­ered at Faslane, I wish to assure you that the posi­tion of the Roman Catholic Church with regard to weapons of mass destruc­tion is per­fect­ly clear and has been empha­sised by myself in recent years. The Roman Catholic Church is opposed to weapons of mass destruc­tion and has reg­u­lar­ly spo­ken out against the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the renew­al of the Tri­dent Nuclear Weapons sys­tem. I per­son­al­ly am hap­py to think that in the new polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the new Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, where a major­i­ty is opposed to Tri­dent, fur­ther pos­i­tive steps may be tak­en in Scot­land to ensure that the Tri­dent Nuclear Weapons Sys­tem is not renewed. With my kind­est regards and union of prayer

(4) An opin­ion poll car­ried out by ICM for Scot­tish CND on 26–29 Jan­u­ary 2007 found that 73 % of those polled were opposed to the gov­ern­ment spend­ing £50 bil­lion on a replace­ment for Tri­dent. http://www.banthebomb.org/newbombs/poll.htm.

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arrests mount at faslane…coulport also block­ad­ed

at 11.30 anoth­er 43 peo­ple were arrest­ed at the faslane base for non­vi­o­lent­ly blockad­ing the gates — brig­ing the total arrests to around 150. about 450 pro­tes­tors remain blockad­ing the base.

Pro­tes­tors have also suc­cess­ful­ly bloack­ad­ed the roads into The Roy­al Naval Arma­ment Depot (RNAD) at Coul­port, Loch Long — where Tri­dent nuclear mis­siles are stored

Camp Hope — 20/21st October vs Gloucestershire Airport expansion

Camp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Gloucestershire Airport sandwich boardCamp For Hope At Staver­ton Air­port, Glouces­ter­shire 20/21st Octo­ber. Inspired by the Camp for Cli­mate Action 2007 activists and local res­i­dents are organ­is­ing a camp to protest the expan­sion of Glouces­ter­shire Air­port at Staver­ton. “Camp Hope” will take place at a secret loca­tion near the air­port on the 20/21 Octo­ber.

Loca­tion is near the air­port and to be announced on our web­site on the evening of 19th Octo­ber.

Staver­ton Air­port want to extend their run­way and increase ser­vices. The extra noise and fumes will dam­age the local envi­ron­ment and the huge amounts of CO2 will add to glob­al warm­ing.

We need to put our chil­dren’s future and the envi­ron­ment before the prof­its of an air­port.

Sat­ur­day 20th Oct:

Learn about glob­al warm­ing, what it means to you and your chil­dren. Learn what you can do about it.

Work­shops and dis­cus­sions start at 13:00pm

Lead speak­er David Drew MP

Sun­day 21st Oct:

Peace­ful protest against the air­port’s impacts on noise, the envi­ron­ment, and the area’s image

The air­port claims “only a small minor­i­ty are opposed to the devel­op­ment,” Come and show them that you are not part of a small minor­i­ty by mak­ing your voice heard

You can come and camp for the week­end, or just come for the Sat­ur­day or Sun­day.

For pub­lic trans­port to the air­port, take the 94 bus to Staver­ton Bridge. Also, park­ing is avail­able. Stew­ards will direct you from the air­port entrance

Take a look at http://campforhopeatstaverton.blogspot.com or www.myspace.com/campofhope and http://kevsclimatecolumn.blogspot.com For more infor­ma­tion email CampForTheFuture@btinternet.com

If any­one has access to any of the fol­low­ing it could be very use­ful :

* Mar­quees, yurts, car­a­vans, tem­po­rary struc­tures, tents
* Wood for build­ing (espe­cial­ly 2x2, 3x2, 18mm ply)
* Nails, wood­screws etc.
* Wood for burn­ing
* Food (veg­an, local­ly pro­duced, organ­ic)
* Water con­tain­ers
* Water pip­ing
* Water
* Hay/Straw
* Vans and trail­ers
* Beer
* Scraps of mate­r­i­al (the big­ger the bet­ter)
* Banners/Banner mak­ing equip­ment
* Peo­ple to give workshops/speeches
* Enter­tain­ment
* Cable ties
* Tarpaulains
* Cara­bi­nas
* Solar elec­tric­i­ty (PV) pan­els
* 12v Bat­ter­ies
* Wheel­ie bins
* Buck­ets
* Rope
* Gaffa tape (what every site is built on)

We also need peo­ple to help to organ­ise and pub­li­cise the event. If you have any time which you can use to help out it would be great­ly appre­ci­at­ed.

Demo — in Solidarity with Miriam Rose and Persecuted Saving Iceland Activists

1PM Tues­day 2nd Octo­ber, Ice­landic Embassy meet at Sloane Square
Come and show Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Miri­am Rose, a Sav­ing Ice­land activist from the UK fac­ing depor­ta­tion from Ice­land where she lives for being: “a threat to pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty and fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues” also to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ola­fur Pall Sig­gurd­son an Ice­landic activist being framed for “Obstruct­ing a Police Vehi­cle” fol­low­ing an attempt to run him over by a senior police­man.

1PM Tues­day 2nd Octo­ber, Ice­landic Embassy meet at Sloane Square
Come and show Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Miri­am Rose, a Sav­ing Ice­land activist from the UK fac­ing depor­ta­tion from Ice­land where she lives for being: “a threat to pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty and fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues” also to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ola­fur Pall Sig­gurd­son an Ice­landic activist being framed for “Obstruct­ing a Police Vehi­cle” fol­low­ing an attempt to run him over by a senior police­man.

Full arti­cle about Miri­am’s Depor­ta­tion: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382239.html

Deportation Alert! Icelandic State Cracks Down on Saving Iceland Activists

The Ice­landic State has hound­ed and harassed Sav­ing Ice­land activists since the net­work was formed in 2004. In the lat­est episode of this sor­did saga; Miri­am Rose, an activist from the UK who lives in Ice­land is threat­ened with depor­ta­tion for being: “a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. She has only ever been con­vict­ed of ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ con­trary to the dra­con­ian ‘Police Acts’ for which she has served a short prison sen­tence; in soli­tary con­fine­ment in a men’s prison.

The Ice­landic State has hound­ed and harassed Sav­ing Ice­land activists since the net­work was formed in 2004. In the lat­est episode of this sor­did saga; Miri­am Rose, an activist from the UK who lives in Ice­land is threat­ened with depor­ta­tion for being: “a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. She has only ever been con­vict­ed of ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ con­trary to the dra­con­ian ‘Police Acts’ for which she has served a short prison sen­tence; in soli­tary con­fine­ment in a men’s prison.

On Fri­day 21st Sep­tem­ber, Sav­ing Ice­land activist Miri­am Rose was pre­sent­ed with a let­ter from the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion threat­en­ing her with pos­si­ble expul­sion from Ice­land. The let­ter claims that due to her par­tic­i­pa­tion in two actions at smelter sites she may be con­sid­ered a threat to ‘pub­lic order and secu­ri­ty’ and ‘fun­da­men­tal soci­etal val­ues’. The let­ter also claims that Sav­ing Ice­land pays activists for being arrest­ed, a claim repeat­ed­ly denied and proven to be false.

Sav­ing Ice­land is an inter­na­tion­al grass roots net­work that uses direct action to con­front the Ice­landic gov­ern­men­t’s Heavy Indus­try Pol­i­cy. The gov­ern­ment are intent on build­ing alu­mini­um smelters to exploit the coun­try’s geot­her­mal and hydro-elec­tric poten­tial, an eco­log­i­cal and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe sold as ‘green ener­gy’. Sav­ing Ice­land also pro­motes and prac­tices sol­i­dar­i­ty with strug­gles against the alu­mini­um indus­try world­wide, such as in Trinidad, South Africa and India.

Miri­am has already served 8 days in prison for protest­ing against the destruc­tion of Ice­landic wilder­ness, for which the UK Green Par­ty Prin­ci­pal Speak­er Dr Derek Wall accused the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment of polit­i­cal harass­ment and demand­ed her imme­di­ate release. In Radio 1 Ice­landic news pro­gram Spegillinn yes­ter­day, the police admit­ted that this was to be the first of many attempt­ed depor­ta­tions of activists.

Miri­am is now wait­ing for a deci­sion by the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, hav­ing sub­mit­ted her objec­tion to depor­ta­tion. ‘I am very shocked that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ue to pun­ish me, after already pay­ing so heav­i­ly for my actions and ideals. This seems to be an attempt to scare peo­ple from protest­ing here, and I find such treat­ment sur­pris­ing in a sup­pos­ed­ly devel­oped democ­ra­cy like Ice­land. I am a peace­ful and edu­cat­ed per­son and have nev­er posed a threat to the police or any oth­er per­son dur­ing my time here. I was intend­ing to set­tle in Ice­land, and have been mak­ing moves to learn Ice­landic and con­tribute to this soci­ety.’

In 2005 the Ice­landic Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion attempt­ed to deport 21 Sav­ing Ice­land activists. Activists were snatched off the streets of Reyk­javik by plain clothes police, held overnight with no food, water or even pre­tense of a legal process. An elder­ly aca­d­e­m­ic with no con­nec­tion to Sav­ing Ice­land was hos­pi­talised with seri­ous head injuries after he wit­nessed activists being bun­dled into an unmarked car. Plain clothes police also broke into build­ings in an attempt to get to activists on the ‘black­list’. The Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion, denied that there was such a list in an inter­view with tabloid paper DV, for­tu­nate­ly Sav­ing Ice­land was able to sup­ply them with a copy com­plete with the Direc­torate’s seal and Hildur Dun­gal’s (the Direc­tor’s) sig­na­ture. Even­tu­al­ly the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion admit­ted it had no legal right to deport any­one on the list.

In 2006 14 activists were tried and con­vict­ed for ‘Dis­obey­ing Police Orders’ and received prison sen­tences of up to 18 days a small group was also con­vict­ed of ‘Repres­sion of Lib­er­ty’ and sen­tenced to 2 months sus­pend­ed for 3 years on the false wit­ness of a man­ag­er at engi­neer­ing firm Hon­nen where they had attempt­ed to occu­py offices, the same man­ag­er punched and kicked pro­test­ers and slammed a door on some­one’s head.

Ear­li­er this year after Reyk­javik’s first Reclaim the Streets the Ice­landic police began to con­fis­cate pass­port of for­eign activists, some­thing they have no legal author­i­ty to do. The Ice­landic State have also had a long his­to­ry of harass­ing Ice­landic activists, in one case they have alleged­ly made false reports to Inter­pol accus­ing a Sav­ing Ice­land activist of trav­el­ing on a forged pass­port and attempt­ed to strip the activists Ice­landic Cit­i­zen­ship.

If the Ice­landic Police and Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can get away with deport­ing Miri­am, then they will use depor­ta­tions more fre­quent­ly to silence dis­sent and under­mine sol­i­dar­i­ty with Ice­landic envi­ron­men­tal­ists. They must be stopped!

The web­site of the Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion is http://www.utl.is/english

The direc­tor’s name is Hildur Dun­gal: hildur@utl.is

See also:
Report on Miri­am’s depor­ta­tion and state­ment from Sav­ing Ice­land:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/983

Report on Miri­am’s Incar­cer­a­tion in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment in a Men’s Prison:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/892

State­ment of Sup­port from UK Green Par­ty:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/985 and @ http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/3171

Report on Sav­ing Ice­land’s fund­ing:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/846

Report of Pre­vi­ous attempts to Deport Sav­ing Ice­land activists:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/144

Report on how the Ice­landic Immi­gra­tion Direc­torate can behave quite dif­fer­ent­ly if you are pals with a Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter:
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/759Police Brutakity at Reykjavik's first RTS this summerPolice Brutakity at Reykjavik's first RTS this summer

Report from Anti London Olympics/regeneration march and meeting plus comment

Sun­day the 23rd Sep­tem­ber was a sad day in the his­to­ry of gar­den­ing. It was the day the Manor Gar­dens Allot­ments were closed by the Olympic Deliv­ery Author­i­ty.

Manor allotments demoSun­day the 23rd Sep­tem­ber was a sad day in the his­to­ry of gar­den­ing. It was the day the Manor Gar­dens Allot­ments were closed by the Olympic Deliv­ery Author­i­ty.

It was also the day for­mer allot­ment hold­ers and many oth­er peo­ple decid­ed to march and demon­strate their con­cern over the way in which devel­op­ment and so called regen­er­a­tion is soak­ing up much need­ed green space. Mar­tin Slavin an Olympic researcher was on the march and com­ments “ … so called regen­er­a­tion projects like the Olympics are more about the careers of those involved in the Olympic indus­try, and the prof­its of devel­op­ers and con­struc­tion com­pa­nies than they are about improv­ing the lives of ordi­nary peo­ple”.

The Manor Gar­dens Allot­ments, were a lit­tle piece of the coun­try­side in Lon­don, and were giv­en to the gar­den­ers of East Lon­don by May­or Vil­liers, an old fash­ioned phil­an­thropist, he was ded­i­cat­ed to improv­ing the life of work­ing class Eas­t­en­ders by a trans­fer of resources from him (rich) to the peo­ple of East Lon­don (poor). As well as the allot­ments, the Olympic project has swal­lowed up a huge chunk of land in East Lon­don, most of it com­pul­so­ri­ly pur­chased. The acqui­si­tion of the Olympic Park land is vir­tu­al­ly a mir­ror image of what Major Vil­liers did all those years ago.

The com­pul­so­ry pur­chase of the Olympic Park­land has been fund­ed by pub­lic mon­ey, and as such it can be argued that it should stay in pub­lic own­er­ship, post Olympics, how­ev­er, exact­ly what will hap­pen to the land remains unde­cid­ed, but both Ken Liv­ing­stone and Ruth Kel­ly have pub­licly stat­ed that they plan to bank role the Olympic project by sell­ing off land with­in the park to devel­op­ers when the Games are over. Major Vil­liers would no doubt turn in his grave, as his beau­ti­ful allot­ments along with vir­tu­al­ly the whole STATE AREA site is bull­dozed for a project which will most like­ly result in a trans­fer of land from pub­lic to pri­vate own­er­ship. As the Olympic project runs fur­ther and fur­ther into finan­cial dif­fi­cul­ty the pres­sure will be on to claw back as much mon­ey as pos­si­ble. This will inevitably mean get­ting into bed with prop­er­ty devel­op­ers who, along with the con­struc­tion com­pa­nies, will be the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of a project that has been flawed from the very begin­ning.

An added tragedy to this sto­ry is that much what will form Olympic Park was pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able for use, on a non-income depen­dent basis, a cycle cir­cuit, allot­ments, social hous­ing, foot­ball pitch­es, lit­tle nooks and cran­nies, were all sorts of mar­gin­al busi­ness and artists had found a foothold. There was also a rave scene at Hack­ney Wick, with tired and dazed ravers leav­ing par­ties on Sun­day morn­ings whilst the well dressed con­gre­ga­tions of the many African Church­es filed by. It was an area that had grown organ­i­cal­ly over more thaan a cen­tu­ry and though it has some rough edges the area had an authen­tic­i­ty rarely found in 21st cen­tu­ry Lon­don. This has been lost to what will more than like­ly be an Olympic lega­cy of expen­sive flats with­in gat­ed com­mu­ni­ties, a ster­ile, pri­vate­ly owned area sim­i­lar to the dock­lands.

It would be impos­si­ble to sell the Olympics to the nation for 3 weeks of sport, it is sim­ply too expen­sive, so those mak­ing their liv­ing out of this project have mar­ket­ed it on the sup­posed ben­e­fits of a lega­cy which remains unplanned. One of the prob­lems is that New labour has con­trol of the project, it has cen­tral gov­ern­ment back­ing and with New Labour also con­trol­ling all 4 of the bor­oughs in which the Olympic Park is sit­u­at­ed, and with the Olympic Deliv­ery Author­i­ty award­ing plan­ning per­mis­sion to itself the Olympic project can be pushed through vir­tu­al­ly unchecked.

Sunday’s march from Hack­ney Town Hall to the new secu­ri­ty gates of the Olympic con­struc­tion site was a sign of the public’s mis­giv­ings over this deeply flawed project. After the march there was a meet­ing where dis­cus­sions were held relat­ing to devel­op­ment and regen­er­a­tion. One inter­est­ing point cov­ered in this dis­cus­sion was the way these large projects evolve. First plans are made, then a so-called con­sul­ta­tion takes place and then the work begins. How­ev­er the meet­ing agreed that the con­sul­ta­tions were gen­er­al­ly a pub­lic rela­tions exer­cise and that they made lit­tle dif­fer­ence to the out­come of projects, which are usu­al­ly forced through despite any pub­lic mis­giv­ings. The Olympics appears to be a case in point.

Tara frontline Action ‑avin it

On Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 24th, thir­ty brave cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists donned face paints and head­ed off on a route walk from the Rath Lugh direct action camp. Film direc­tor and actor Stu­art Townsend, fresh from the high­ly suc­cess­ful aer­i­al pho­to­graph on the hill attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 3,000 peo­ple on Sun­day, arrived with four mas­sive bags of shop­ping for Tara’s sol­diers before every­one set off. Stuart’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port is mas­sive­ly appre­ci­at­ed!

On Mon­day Sep­tem­ber 24th, thir­ty brave cul­tur­al con­ser­va­tion­ists donned face paints and head­ed off on a route walk from the Rath Lugh direct action camp. Film direc­tor and actor Stu­art Townsend, fresh from the high­ly suc­cess­ful aer­i­al pho­to­graph on the hill attend­ed by an esti­mat­ed 3,000 peo­ple on Sun­day, arrived with four mas­sive bags of shop­ping for Tara’s sol­diers before every­one set off. Stuart’s con­tin­u­ing sup­port is mas­sive­ly appre­ci­at­ed!

Once on route activists erect­ed bar­ri­cades along the paths of the dig­gers and bull­doz­ers to slow destruc­tion work. Activists pro­ceed­ed to Baron­stown where sev­en to eight dig­gers were occu­pied, climbed and danced upon. The walk con­tin­ued as our mer­ry band arrived at Col­lier­stown, an ancient Fian­na grave­yard. The two dig­gers work­ing when we arrived were quick­ly halt­ed with peo­ple climb­ing into buck­ets of dig­gers, onto roofs and onto their tracks. Songs were sung and peo­ple danced. Work was halt­ed for half an hour before scouts indi­cat­ed that machin­ery was work­ing up ahead at Trevet. We head­ed there and on the way occu­pied anoth­er dig­ger. The dri­ver of this dig­ger refused to turn off his engine despite the fact that activists occu­pied his machine, a clear vio­la­tion of health and safe­ty laws and a sack­able offense.

Our next stop was Trevet, where one bull­doz­er was pre­vent­ed from work­ing by activists. It was then that the Gar­dai made their appear­ance. Tak­ing some of our group aside, names were tak­en and no fur­ther action occurred. As our walk was slight­ly behind sched­ule, when Gar­da offi­cers approached we decid­ed to pick up the pace, keep­ing twen­ty to forty feet between our­selves and the law. Offi­cers con­tin­ued to fol­low us for anoth­er 100 metres before head­ing back the way they came. Hav­ing stopped work for hours it was near din­ner time so we head­ed back to base camp. Through­out the day as we passed the sacred sites in the path of the pro­posed motor­way short talks were giv­en about the his­tor­i­cal and archae­o­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of each site. No one was arrest­ed and a great day was had by all. The cam­paign to pro­tect Tara from the mon­ey mad mile con­tin­ues pick­ing up pace after the phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess of the inter­na­tion­al Harpists for Tara event and John Quigley’s stun­ning aer­i­al pho­tog­ra­phy. Every Mon­day route walks will con­tin­ue.

Com­ple­tion of the M3 through the Tara Val­ley is years away and there is every­thing to play for! Be at the Tara Sol­i­dar­i­ty Vig­il camp on the hill by 9.30 am or at Rath Lugh by 10.00am. Please come, please sup­port and net­work!

www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.tarawatch.org
www.indymedia.ie

Critical Mass and Carfree day in Brussels

What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brussels Critical Mass 1
Brussels Critical Mass 2
Brussels Critical Mass 3
Brussels Critical Mass 4
What a week­end for cyclists. Fri­day evening and the reg­u­lar Brus­sels Crit­i­cal mass was held one week ear­ly to coin­cide with mobil­i­ty week. Around 80 cyclists sprout­ed up at the Porte de Namur and reclaimed the streets of Brus­sels for an hour or two. This month there was a prac­ti­cal theme to cre­ate a DIY cycle lane. Recent­ly the Major of the city decid­ed that the cycle lane along the main boule­vard through cen­tral Brus­sels was a men­ace to traf­fic and even encour­aged cyclist to get in the way of hon­est car dri­ving cit­i­zens. What to do when that Major takes away the cycle path. A sim­ple ques­tion, you get togeth­er with your friends and paint it back again. Get­ting rid of the cycle hat­ing Major will prob­a­bly be the next step but that’s anoth­er action.

Brus­sels is a city of con­tra­dic­tions and for Sat­ur­day lunch time the city invit­ed cyclists for a sump­tu­ous nosh up. Any­one who was a cyclist was wel­come to help them­selves. A won­der­ful feast for non veg­e­tar­i­an wine lovers and the deserts were out of this world. Not so good on the cycle lanes but the free food almost makes up for it.

Sun­day was the car­free day and it real­ly was car­free in the whole city, not just one or two streets. It’s hard to describe the dif­fer­ence ban­ish­ing the cars can make to a city. Brus­sels, if only for one day became a place for peo­ple. Swarms of cyclists filled the streets peo­ple on foot could and did move about with­out risk of being run over by impa­tient dri­vers. The sun was shin­ing the air was clean for once and the angry honk­ing of car horns beau­ti­ful­ly absent. If only every day could be like this. The street is a place for peo­ple, city chil­dren need to play and a cup of cof­fee on a pave­ment café some­how tastes bet­ter when there isn’t traf­fic roar­ing by a few feet away. This might just be my opin­ion but the peo­ple of Brus­sels did seem to agree with me, well at least the ones who still remem­ber how to move about with­out a car.

Also for mobil­i­ty week the Brus­sels based envi­ron­men­tal group, Auto-nomie pre­sent­ed an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car, tru­ly an envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly car. Zero emis­sions is a thing of the past, this car has neg­a­tive emis­sions. If you care about the plan­et but still want a car that turns heads this is the mod­el for you and the con­ver­sion is cheap and easy. Take out the engine replace is with a few wheel­bar­rows full of good qual­i­ty soil and plant your favorite fruits and veg­eta­bles. Cruis­ing through the streets of Brus­sels in a cus­tomized car like no oth­er is the way to go. When your friends get tired of push­ing what bet­ter way of revi­tal­iz­ing them than a tasty car grown straw­ber­ry. The car was on dis­play in cen­tral Brus­sels all last week.

Join Big Blockade of Faslane Nuclear Base 1st October

Hun­dreds of peace activists will risk arrest on Octo­ber 1st when over a thou­sand peo­ple are expect­ed to join in a “Big Block­ade” of Faslane Naval Base. This will be the cul­mi­na­tion of the Faslane 365 year of actions against Tri­dent, Britain’s weapon of mass destruc­tion. Peo­ple and groups from all over Britain (and abroad) will use diverse non­vi­o­lent meth­ods to block the entrances to the nuclear base and dis­rupt the ongo­ing deploy­ment of Tri­dent.

Faslane 365 logoHun­dreds of peace activists will risk arrest on Octo­ber 1st when over a thou­sand peo­ple are expect­ed to join in a “Big Block­ade” of Faslane Naval Base. This will be the cul­mi­na­tion of the Faslane 365 year of actions against Tri­dent, Britain’s weapon of mass destruc­tion. Peo­ple and groups from all over Britain (and abroad) will use diverse non­vi­o­lent meth­ods to block the entrances to the nuclear base and dis­rupt the ongo­ing deploy­ment of Tri­dent.

As they have done over the past twelve months, the groups and indi­vid­u­als, who will include Mem­bers of the Scot­tish and Euro­pean Par­lia­ments and well-known singers and artists, will high­light the ille­gal­i­ty, inse­cu­ri­ty and waste of resources inher­ent in the deploy­ment and renew­al of Tri­dent. Through­out the day there will be colour­ful, cre­ative and dra­mat­ic actions at the gates, includ­ing many dif­fer­ent kinds of lock-ons and sit-downs.

“This Big Block­ade will be a car­ni­val of resis­tance to cel­e­brate Faslane 365’s achieve­ments in high­light­ing and dis­rupt­ing the ille­gal nuclear deploy­ments over the year,” said Dr Rebec­ca John­son from the Faslane 365 Steer­ing Group. “We will join togeth­er to mark the end of this year’s cam­paign­ing, and to make clear our deter­mi­na­tion to keep up pres­sure on the Scot­tish and UK gov­ern­ments to get rid of Tri­dent and to take the lead in mov­ing the world towards the total elim­i­na­tion of nuclear weapons, in accor­dance with the Nuclear Non-Pro­lif­er­a­tion Treaty and the wish­es of the major­i­ty.”

As diverse groups of activists block­ade the gates, folk leg­ends Leon Rossel­son and Seize the Day will be pro­vid­ing music, and the renowned Roy Bai­ley and David Fer­rard will per­form songs from a forth­com­ing album about the Iraq War. A twelve-mem­ber choir will sing the ora­to­rio Tri­dent — A British War Crime, by Camil­la Can­can­ta­ta, first per­formed at the Edin­burgh High Court in 2005. The Rev. Kathy Gal­loway, leader of the Iona Com­mu­ni­ty, will cel­e­brate a com­mu­nion ser­vice at 10am at the North Gate with Cler­gy Action and Chris­t­ian CND. Sev­er­al Mem­bers of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment, includ­ing Marlyn Glen (Labour), Robin Harp­er (Green) and Patrick Harvie (Green), as well as Jill Evans MEP (Plaid Cym­ru) have con­firmed their par­tic­i­pa­tion and will be avail­able for inter­views.

Since Faslane 365 start­ed on Octo­ber 1, 2006, thou­sands have par­tic­i­pat­ed and more than 950 peo­ple have been arrest­ed. Par­tic­i­pants have includ­ed elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Scot­tish, UK and Euro­pean Par­lia­ments and local coun­cils, Friends of the Earth, Green­peace, Bud­dhists, Chris­tians, ‘Uni­ty!’ union of asy­lum seek­ers, artists, writ­ers, aca­d­e­mics, stu­dents from the UK, Europe and Japan, atom­ic bomb sur­vivors from Nagasa­ki, teach­ers, lawyers, health pro­fes­sion­als and pen­sion­ers. Spe­cif­ic groups have come from many regions of Scot­land, Eng­land and Wales and from eleven oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, as well as Japan and the Unit­ed States. Promi­nent par­tic­i­pants includ­ed the Bish­op of Read­ing Stephen Cot­terell, for­mer UN Assis­tant Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Prof Sir Richard Jol­ly, Nobel Peace Lau­re­ate Mairead Maguire, Adri­an Mitchell, A.L.Kennedy, actor Roger Lloyd Pack and singer-song­writer Bil­ly Bragg.

NVDA train­ings and acco­mo­da­tion will be Sun­day after­noon and evening in Glas­gow. Coach­es leave from Edin­burgh at 4:30 am and Glas­gow at 5:30am
Mon­day. For details and to book see www.faslane365.org/1Oct

For fur­ther back­ground infor­ma­tion on Tri­dent, a sum­ma­ry of the polit­i­cal con­text of the cam­paign, and a selec­tion of pho­tos from the year­long block­ade see the full Press Brief­ing Pack on the web­site. www.faslane365.org/1oct/press

Con­tacts: 0845 45 88 365 / 07733 360955 / 07768 312 676
info@www.faslane365.org
http://www.faslane365.org

Playing with Fire: The Story of Daniel McGowan, “eco-terrorism” and the Green Scare

Grow­ing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pol­lu­tion fogged the air and fouled the beach­es in some of the city’s poor­est com­mu­ni­ties, set­ting him on a life­long path of envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice. But how he end­ed up drenched in gaso­line and set­ting fire to Oregon’s Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in 2001 and was lat­er tar­get­ed as a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” is the sto­ry of some­one who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Playing with Fire coverGrow­ing up in New York City, Daniel McGowan saw first-hand how pol­lu­tion fogged the air and fouled the beach­es in some of the city’s poor­est com­mu­ni­ties, set­ting him on a life­long path of envi­ron­men­tal and social jus­tice. But how he end­ed up drenched in gaso­line and set­ting fire to Oregon’s Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in 2001 and was lat­er tar­get­ed as a “domes­tic ter­ror­ist” is the sto­ry of some­one who cared too much and didn’t know what else to do.

Born in Brook­lyn and raised in Queens’ Rock­away Beach, Daniel McGowan grew up sand­wiched between asphalt and the sky, in a for­est of build­ings and buzzing streets. Until Dec. 7, 2005, the 33-year-old with a round face and a chip­munk smile was most­ly known in local cir­cles for his involve­ment in a vari­ety of activist projects. Today, after a near­ly two-year legal bat­tle that saw him labeled an “eco-ter­ror­ist” by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, McGowan is serv­ing a sev­en-year sen­tence at a fed­er­al prison in Min­neso­ta on 15 counts of arson, attempt­ed arson and con­spir­a­cy to com­mit arson against two pri­vate com­pa­nies in Ore­gon in 2001.

McGowan, whose arrest shocked his fam­i­ly and friends, and his case was lumped togeth­er with nine oth­ers as part of the Fed­er­al Bureau of Investigation’s Oper­a­tion Back­fire, which pro­duced 65 indict­ments for actions at 17 tar­gets, includ­ing pri­vate com­pa­nies, uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ment facil­i­ties across five states from 1996–2001, in what the FBI called a “cam­paign of domes­tic ter­ror­ism.” The actions were all claimed by the Envi­ron­men­tal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ELF) or the Ani­mal Lib­er­a­tion Front (ALF), an under­ground, decen­tral­ized move­ment of rad­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal­ists, which McGowan par­tic­i­pat­ed in between 1999 and 2001 while liv­ing in Eugene, Ore­gon.

“At a cer­tain point, I got involved in the ELF,” McGowan told The Indypen­dent at his Brook­lyn home in June, a few weeks before report­ing to prison. “At the time it seemed like a nat­ur­al pro­gres­sion, but it also coin­cid­ed with my increas­ing grief and rage I was feel­ing about the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion I saw. I went to Ore­gon and I couldn’t believe how okay peo­ple were with what was going on. We’d dri­ve to the edge of town and you saw the log­ging mills, or you went into the for­est and stum­bled upon a clear cut. It just blew me away. I had to find a way to chan­nel that grief and rage.” The dilem­ma McGowan faced has trou­bled activists for gen­er­a­tions. When you try every form of “accept­able” advo­ca­cy to make change with lit­tle suc­cess, what do you do?

“A Cam­paign of Domes­tic Ter­ror­ism” In the mid­dle of the night on May 21, 2001, McGowan found him­self in the vehi­cle shop of Jef­fer­son Poplar Farms in of Clatskanie, a small town in north­west Ore­gon on the Colum­bia Riv­er. He had just fin­ished lay­ing out soaked gaso­line sheets and tow­els con­nect­ed to a home­made incen­di­ary device, designed to set fire to a fleet of SUVs and the com­pa­ny office. The pri­vate­ly owned facil­i­ty had been select­ed as an ELF tar­get because McGowan and his accom­plices believed it was involved in genet­ic research by grow­ing a hybrid vari­ety of poplar-cot­ton­wood trees that would help tim­ber com­pa­nies replace the region’s old-growth forests with com­mer­cial tree farms.

“We torched Jef­fer­son Poplar because hybrid poplars are an eco­log­i­cal night­mare threat­en­ing native bio­di­ver­si­ty in the ecosys­tem,” the sabo­teurs wrote in a com­mu­nique that was released after the action. “Our forests are being liq­ui­dat­ed and replaced with mono-cul­tured tree farms so greedy, earth-rap­ing cor­po­ra­tions can make more mon­ey.”

“At some lev­el, I thought it [ELF actions] was effec­tive,” McGowan said. “If I would have writ­ten a state­ment that I think genet­ic-engi­neered trees are bad and old­growth log­ging is bad and sent it to every media out­let in the coun­try, it wouldn’t have been paid atten­tion to,” he explained. “There is some­thing real­ly strange about when you attach a state­ment to an arson it sud­den­ly becomes news­wor­thy … it is like pro­pa­gan­da with teeth.”

For McGowan, the actions were part of his search for the right mix of tac­tics to make pos­i­tive change.

“For me, the actions were not grotesque or not about destroy­ing things. I had a hard time get­ting into the mind set to destroy oth­er people’s stuff or even liv­ing [genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied] organ­isms,” he said. “I would get sick before actions, get ner­vous — it was real­ly dif­fi­cult. But I did it because I felt that the oth­er things weren’t work­ing, and that while there was a pre­pon­der­ance of oth­er tac­tics being tried, these tac­tics weren’t being tried and I thought that maybe there is some­thing we can do to help the issue.”

Between 1996 and 2001, an under­ground cell of activists based in Eugene, Ore­gon, called “the Fam­i­ly” in gov­ern­ment doc­u­ments, tar­get­ed fed­er­al and uni­ver­si­ty research facil­i­ties, meat and lum­ber com­pa­nies, a car deal­er­ship, wild horse cor­rals and oth­er “earth rap­ers,” as described by com­mu­niques released at the time.

Accord­ing to the FBI, the string of high pro­file actions that hit 17 tar­gets in the Pacif­ic North­west in the late 1990s caused near­ly $80 mil­lion in prop­er­ty dam­age. These actions are only a few of the more than 600 inci­dents claimed by the ELF and ALF nation­wide since 1996. “I think that’s real­ly what all these actions are about — is real­ly get­ting pub­lic atten­tion to some of these issues,” said Jim Fly­nn, a Eugene-based envi­ron­men­tal­ist in a July 2007 USA Today arti­cle. “If we were able to affect pol­i­cy change through more legal means, then cer­tain­ly that’s the way these peo­ple would go. Nobody enjoys being under­ground, and that lifestyle.”

TO CONTINUE READING ARTICLE, VISIT: http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/enemy-of-the-state/

SIDEBAR ARTICLES:

Why Green Makes the Right See Red
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/why-green-makes-the-right-see-red/

The Birth of a Buzz­word: “Eco-ter­ror­ism”
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/the-birth-of-a-buzz-word-eco-terrorism/
NOTE: See Ron Arnold’s response)

The Net Widens: Free Speech on Tri­al
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/the-net-widens/

Under­ground Eco-defend­ers
http://www.indypendent.org/2007/09/15/underground-eco-defenders/

Please leave com­ments on the arti­cles if you want!

THE INDYPENDENT is the news­pa­per of the NEW YORK INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER — www.indypendent.org

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For his address to write to, oth­er eco-pris­on­ers, tips for writ­ing etc, go to http://www.spiritoffreedom.org.uk