Category: Action Reports

Rebels raid mining firm in Southern Philippines and torch heavy equipment

April 5 2014 New People’s Army rebels on Sat­ur­day raid­ed a min­ing firm in the south­ern Philip­pine province of Agu­san del Norte, reports said.

April 5 2014 New People’s Army rebels on Sat­ur­day raid­ed a min­ing firm in the south­ern Philip­pine province of Agu­san del Norte, reports said.

Reports said the rebels swooped down on Philip­pine Alstron Min­ing Com­pa­ny on the vil­lage of Tama­markay in Tubay town and over­pow­ered the secu­ri­ty guards with­out fir­ing a sin­gle shot before they torched sev­er­al trucks and oth­er heavy equip­ment.

The rebels also seized at least 6 shot guns and short firearms from the company’s secu­ri­ty arse­nal. There were no reports of casu­al­ties.

The raid came fol­low­ing threats made by the NPA on min­ing firms oper­at­ing in the south­ern Philip­pines.

Just last month, rebel forces attacked a police base and gov­ern­ment troops in Davao del Sur’s Matanao as pun­ish­ment for their “reign of ter­ror” against indige­nous tribes and oth­er com­mu­ni­ties oppos­ing min­ing oper­a­tions in the province.

Den­cio Madri­gal, a spokesman for the NPA-Valen­tine Palamine Com­mand, said the dead­ly attacks were a pun­ish­ment for police and mil­i­tary units pro­tect­ing Glen­core Xstra­ta. He accused the min­ing firm of exploit­ing near­ly 100,000 hectares of ances­tral lands of indige­nous Lumad Blaans tribes, and peas­ants in the region.

Jorge Mad­los, a region­al rebel spokesman, also warned min­ing firms and fruit plan­ta­tions in the region, say­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions in Min­danao have esca­lat­ed and have become more exten­sive with the aim to thwart the ever grow­ing and wide­spread people’s protest against destruc­tive min­ing oper­a­tions and plan­ta­tions.

Mad­los said among their tar­gets are Rus­sell Mines and Min­er­als, Apex Min­ing Corp. and Philco in south­ern Min­danao; Dole­fil, Del Monte and Sum­ifru plan­ta­tions in north­ern Min­danao; TVI Resource Devel­op­ment Philip­pines in west­ern Min­danao whose oper­a­tions inside the ances­tral domain of indige­nous Sub­a­nen and Moro tribes are being opposed by vil­lagers.

NPA and Moro rebels had pre­vi­ous­ly attacked TVI Resources in Zam­boan­ga province.

“If one recalls, more than 400 fam­i­lies were forced to evac­u­ate their ances­tral lands because of TVI and the ruth­less mil­i­tary oper­a­tions that ensued to pro­tect it in Buug, Zam­boan­ga del Sur. In order to defend the people’s human rights and gen­er­al well­be­ing, the NPA launched tac­ti­cal offen­sives against TVI as well as against units of the AFP-PNP-CAFGU pro­tect­ing it, such as the ambush on Feb­ru­ary 2012 that hit ele­ments of the army intel­li­gence group oper­at­ing on the behest of TVI and the impo­si­tion of the local gov­ern­ment to allow TVI min­ing oper­a­tions on Sub­a­nen ances­tral lands is one of the bases the NPA raid­ed on April 9, 2012 the PNP sta­tion in Tig­bao, Zam­boan­ga del Sur,” Mad­los said.

NPA rebels also inter­cept­ed a group of army sol­diers who were using a bor­rowed truck from TVI and dis­armed them in Dipla­han town in Zam­boan­ga Sibugay province two years ago. The rebels also burned the truck before releas­ing the sol­diers.

“In view of these events, the NDFP in Min­danao calls upon the Lumad and Moro peo­ples, peas­ants and work­ers, reli­gious and oth­er sec­tors to fur­ther strength­en their uni­ty and their courage to oppose the inter­ests of impe­ri­al­ist mines and plan­ta­tions, which are exceed­ing­ly dam­ag­ing to Min­danao, to its peo­ple and to the envi­ron­ment. We call upon the units of the NPA in Min­danao to be ever more dar­ing in their defense of people’s inter­ests against the greed and rapac­i­ty of the local rul­ing class­es and their impe­ri­al­ist mas­ter,” Mad­los said.

TVI Resource Devel­op­ment Philip­pines has repeat­ed­ly denied all accu­sa­tions against them. It recent­ly end­ed its gold min­ing oper­a­tion in Mount Canat­u­an in Zam­boan­ga del Norte’s Sio­con town after sev­er­al years of oper­a­tions and now has a gold-sil­ver project in the town of Bayog in Zam­boan­ga del Sur province and a nick­el plant in Agu­san del Norte province. (Min­danao Exam­in­er)

Eviction of treehouse village on Hambacher Forst protest site

Ker­pen, 28.​03.​2014. Short­ly after 20:00 on last wednes­day the 28th of march the last of sev­en activists was evict­ed from a tree.

Ker­pen, 28.​03.​2014. Short­ly after 20:00 on last wednes­day the 28th of march the last of sev­en activists was evict­ed from a tree. The tree­hous­es were com­plete­ly destroyed and lots of tree were cut down dur­ing the 16-hour large scale oper­a­tion. While the police is still prais­ing them­selfes, the activists already plan the reoc­cu­pa­tion of the for­est.

Accord­ing to a press release of the police the claim of the evic­tion was made by the town of Ker­pen. The spokesper­son of the town declared build­ing reg­u­la­tions and the “dan­ger­ous” con­di­tions of the hous­es as rea­son for the police oper­a­tion. “The inter­ests of ener­gy com­pa­nies are con­stant­ly pre­sent­ed in the name of dif­fer­ent com­mit­tees or as pub­lic inter­est. At fed­er­al lev­el this mean sub­ven­tions for the most cli­mate-dam­ag­ing form of ener­gy; at region­al lev­el it means the local author­i­ties and the police make up rea­sons to clear the way for RWE. We do not expe­ri­ence this for the first time.” says An­ni­ka Schle­reth after the evic­tion.

Already while the evec­tion was still run­ning peo­ple from Bonn and Vien­na declared their soli­adri­ty through dif­fer­ent actions. Also today man­i­fes­ta­tions for sol­i­dar­i­ty will take place in Mün­ster, Essen and Frankfurt/Main. “Repres­sion can make peo­ple with­draw or weak­en a move­ment. But if we stand unit­ed then it will strenghen us and our resis­tance. Fol­low­ing the evic­tion in novem­ber 2012 a lot of peo­ple declared their sol­i­dar­i­ty and took action over month for the for­est and against RWE. The crim­i­nal­iza­tion of our legit­i­mate protest will not stop our fight.” con­tin­ues Anni­ka Schlereth.

For this rea­son we call for a reoc­cup­tion of the Ham­bach For­est on 26.​04.​2014 By then var­i­ous groups and indi­vid­u­als will be pre­pared to per­ma­nent­ly reoc­cu­py the for­est and to send a strong sig­nal to RWE. “We will not stand by and watch how forests, farm­land and vil­lages will be destroyed for the sake of min­ing. We will not sit back and do noth­ing while the cli­mate is killed by the burn­ing of coal. We will orga­nize, resist and be solid­ly unit­ed with all the peo­ple world­wide that fight against destruc­tion of their space!”

Hunt Sabs prepare for second year of badger culling

Badger-4751-300x204 27 March 2014 from HSA

 

Badger-4751-300x204 27 March 2014 from HSA

 

At our AGM in June 2012 a spokesper­son from the cam­paign group “Stop the Cull” addressed those of us present on their belief that the cull could only be suc­cess­ful­ly sab­o­taged with a lot of help from hunt sab groups. We were told that we’d have to do thou­sands of hours of prepara­to­ry sett sur­vey­ing, that we’d get no sleep for weeks when it start­ed, we’d lose all our hol­i­day time from work and to top it all we did­n’t even know if we’d be even slight­ly suc­cess­ful in find­ing marks­men with silencers at poten­tial­ly any loca­tion inside 100’s of square miles. “Look­ing for a nee­dle in a haystack” actu­al­ly sound­ed eas­i­er.

We were also told that there was a lot of press inter­est in the bad­ger culls and that it might be good for hunt sabs’ pub­lic pro­file. Con­sid­er­ing that for decades we have been por­trayed in the main stream press as “thugs” no one was par­tic­u­lar­ly enam­oured with the idea of a media make over.

As it turned out the press did­n’t praise or recog­nise us for our behav­iour or endeav­ours, but what did hap­pen is that tens of thou­sands of peo­ple came into con­tact with us. Whether that was via speech­es on demo’s, from reports on Face­book or in the flesh in the cull zone. Peo­ple learnt about us and they liked what they saw — groups of com­pas­sion­ate peo­ple who work hard in the field to pro­tect wild ani­mals from being hunt­ed.

It is this very fact that we have “gone viral”, not just on social media, but in the real world, where it counts, that makes us an unstop­pable force. Whether that’s new sab groups form­ing across the coun­try or small sab groups being over­whelmed with new peo­ple. The HSA mem­ber­ship has more than dou­bled in size in under a year and dona­tions have increased dra­mat­i­cal­ly.

 

When we got to the cull zones in 2013, it quick­ly became clear that we were mak­ing a mas­sive dif­fer­ence. Right from the start groups, work­ing close­ly with bad­ger patrollers, engaged, and repelled, the bad­ger killers. The HSA sup­port­ed the sabs on the ground by giv­ing grants totalling many thou­sands of pounds to help with trans­port, and cru­cial­ly, the very expen­sive Gen2+ night vision equip­ment that enabled sabs to spot shoot­ers from huge dis­tances.

 

Many peo­ple will be unaware of the lit­er­al­ly thou­sands of miles walked by sabs in the run up to the culls, as they mapped out all the setts over hun­dreds of square miles so they could defend them against shoot­ers. The rea­son that the culls were sab­o­taged so spec­tac­u­lar­ly is due large­ly to that work.

That sur­vey­ing work in Dorset this year won’t rely on a few sab groups sup­port­ed by a dozen or so locals. This year it’s total­ly dif­fer­ent. The British pub­lic has engaged with us en masse & we are con­fi­dent that with their help, we will have every sett mapped in that zone eas­i­ly by June 1st.

In 2012 we were told to expect a roll out to ten cull zones and then a fur­ther forty in fol­low­ing years. Here we are in 2014 with a cull pol­i­cy in tat­ters and a roll out to one more cull zone a small pos­si­bil­i­ty. We are pre­pared to take Dorset by storm and destroy any attempts to kill bad­gers

We will help “Stop the Cull”

 

That’s what we do.

 

Join us.

Eviction of Hambach Forest right now

The ham­bach for­est is under evic­tion right now. Hun­drets of police are try­ing to get the peo­ple down from the trees, but it can need some time. Media is talk­ing about lock-ons in the trees. Right now there are sev­er­al lift­ing ramps work­ing at sev­er­al tree­hous­es at the same time. The Police is block­ing roads and the motor­way in a big range.

The ham­bach for­est is under evic­tion right now. Hun­drets of police are try­ing to get the peo­ple down from the trees, but it can need some time. Media is talk­ing about lock-ons in the trees. Right now there are sev­er­al lift­ing ramps work­ing at sev­er­al tree­hous­es at the same time. The Police is block­ing roads and the motor­way in a big range.

The ham­bach for­est is occu­pied against the coal-pit from RWE close to Cologne (it’s the biggest coal-area in Europe and its biggest cli­mate killer!) The whole for­est will get cut for the coal-mine if we don’t defend it. The for­est was 5.500 ha once, and now there is less than 1000 left.

The activists call for a big re-occu­pi­a­tion at the 26. of april. More infor­ma­tion as they came.

 

More infor­ma­tion: http://hambachforest.blogsport.de/

Animal rights activist convicted as repression of activists in the UK intensifies

An ani­mal rights activist has been con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail after 5 weeks on tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court.

An ani­mal rights activist has been con­vict­ed of con­spir­a­cy to black­mail after 5 weeks on tri­al at Win­ches­ter Crown Court. Deb­bie Vin­cent of the Stop Hunt­ing­don Ani­mal Cru­el­ty (SHAC) cam­paign was accused of black­mail on the basis that SHAC pres­sured com­pa­nies to end their busi­ness rela­tion­ships with Hunt­ing­don Life Sci­ences, Europe’s largest ani­mal test­ing lab­o­ra­to­ry. The case is the lat­est devel­op­ment in the use of black­mail laws against ani­mal rights activists. In 2010 sev­en SHAC cam­paign­ers were hand­ed sen­tences of up to 16 years in prison for ‘con­spir­ing’ to black­mail com­pa­nies not to do busi­ness with HLS. Deb­bie was accused of being part of the same ten year ‘con­spir­a­cy’ as the pre­vi­ous defen­dants, from 2001-11, despite the fact that there was only evi­dence that she had been involved in the cam­paign from 2005. Police had bugged a house used by SHAC cam­paign­ers for an eight month peri­od in 2005 and put those going in and out under sur­veil­lance. Much of the case against Deb­bie was on the grounds of guilt by asso­ci­a­tion with the defen­dants con­vict­ed in 2010 and with unnamed peo­ple. The twist­ing of black­mail laws in this way has broad ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the right to express dis­sent in the UK. The law is being used to intim­i­date peo­ple who are attempt­ing to resist against cor­po­rate pow­er. The log­i­cal exten­sion of the use of the law in this way is that any cam­paign­er who pres­sures a com­pa­ny to end its prac­tices could be tar­get­ed. The pros­e­cu­tion argued that SHAC had post­ed details of com­pa­nies on their web­site and encour­aged peo­ple to protest against them. The CPS claimed that this amount­ed to black­mail, despite the fact that the SHAC cam­paign stip­u­lat­ed on its web­site that protests should be law­ful. In the sec­ond week of the tri­al, after the defence demand­ed that the Crown Pros­e­cu­tion Ser­vice (CPS) give full dis­clo­sure of the papers at their dis­pos­al to the defence, it was revealed that an under­cov­er police offi­cer, using the alias ‘James Adams’ had mas­quer­ad­ed as an exec­u­tive for Novar­tis and met with Deb­bie and anoth­er activist from the SHAC cam­paign to dis­cuss Novar­tis’ deal­ings with HLS. It seems that the police and Novar­tis were try­ing, unsuc­cess­ful­ly, to link the two activists to ille­gal direct action. Sev­er­al offi­cers from the Nation­al Domes­tic Extrem­ism Unit gave evi­dence at the tri­al. The NDEU is a spe­cial­ist police unit which aims to tar­get activists involved in direct action cam­paign­ing. For more infor­ma­tion on the UK’s polit­i­cal police units click here.

Deb­bie is due in court for sen­tenc­ing on April 17th. The CPS have indi­cat­ed they intend to apply for an Anti Social Behav­iour Order (ASBO) to come into effect on her release which will restrict her move­ments. In 2010 indef­i­nite ASBOs were grant­ed against four con­vict­ed activists ban­ning them from ever protest­ing against ani­mal exper­i­men­ta­tion. The case is part of an ongo­ing cam­paign of police repres­sion against the SHAC cam­paign. Sev­en SHAC activists have been charged with ‘con­spir­a­cy to inter­fere with the con­trac­tu­al rela­tions so as to harm an ani­mal research organ­i­sa­tion’ under Sec­tion 144 of the Seri­ous Organ­ised Crime and Police Act (2005). The charges relate to demon­stra­tions against com­pa­nies with busi­ness rela­tion­ships with HLS. They are due to appear in court lat­er this year A Stop UK Repres­sion cam­paign has been set up to sup­port ani­mal rights activists bear­ing the brunt of this lat­est state crack­down on anti-cor­po­rate dis­sent. The cam­paign’s web­site reads “In an atmos­phere of increas­ing repres­sion against activists and the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of effec­tive cam­paigns, it is impor­tant that we show our sol­i­dar­i­ty for those involved and form a strong net­work to sup­port the UK ani­mal rights move­ment.” More details at: www.shac.net
www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2014/03/515954.html
www.stopukrepression.org/?page_id=75#

Resisting Together event, Edinburgh, March 29th

Resist­ing Togeth­er is an event of many ideas focussed on a sin­gle aim – the dis­so­lu­tion of Indus­tri­al Civ­i­liza­tion through acts of resis­tance.

Resist­ing Togeth­er is an event of many ideas focussed on a sin­gle aim – the dis­so­lu­tion of Indus­tri­al Civ­i­liza­tion through acts of resis­tance. There are many activists – com­mu­ni­ty, polit­i­cal, rad­i­cal indi­vid­u­als, groups and move­ments – oper­at­ing both in the open and under­ground; we don’t agree on every­thing, but at our core we all seek to free human­i­ty from the yoke of the indus­tri­al machine, the hor­ror-play that the civ­i­lized world acts out every day, degrad­ing the nat­ur­al world and enslav­ing peo­ple in the pur­suit of mate­r­i­al wealth and pow­er.

Date: Sat­ur­day 29th March, 2014

Time: 1pm-7pm

Cost: by dona­tion at the event

Venue: The Canons’ Gait, 232 Canon­gait (Roy­al Mile), Edin­burgh, EH8 8DQ

A mix­ture of talks and dis­cus­sions, the launch of the book, “Under­min­ers” and prob­a­bly a bit of music too, Resist­ing Togeth­er will be a chance to share, exhort, emote and learn from oth­ers how we can move towards a world where we are in con­trol of our des­tiny, unfet­tered by the shack­les of the indus­tri­al machine. This unique event seeks to bridge gaps and find com­mon­al­i­ty between the var­i­ous strands of rad­i­cal thought and action that are seek­ing to pro­tect the future from eco­cide. The range of top­ics, groups and ideas rep­re­sent­ed is delib­er­ate­ly broad, and there will be ample oppor­tu­ni­ty for you to add your own thoughts to the mix. We need it all.

If you wish to come, please REGISTER via the web­site: www.underminers.org/resisting-together

Fight the Frack

Fight the Frack ral­ly this Sun­day March 16 near Chester, fit­ting a new rig at Farn­don — coach­es from dif­fer­ent towns avail­able — more info and here.

 

 

 

Fight the Frack ral­ly this Sun­day March 16 near Chester, fit­ting a new rig at Farn­don — coach­es from dif­fer­ent towns avail­able — more info and here.

 

 

 

 

New anti-frack­ing camp near Not­ting­ham, at Ret­ford.

 

See twitter.com/frackfreenotts

For more info on frack­ing see http://frack-off.org.uk

lock-on-tastic continues/eviction court case news & more at Barton Moss (4–12 March 2014)

11.3.14

 

11.3.14

 

4th March — anoth­er lock-on delayed trucks sig­nif­i­cant­ly — 4 hours! 

The Man­ches­ter Evening News — sen­sa­tion­al­ist par­rot­er of police and frack­ing PR — con­duct­ed a sur­vey that found that 73% of Man­cu­ni­ans opposed frack­ing.

 

6th March — two hour lock-on and book shields deployed to pro­tect against TAU (riot police) aggres­sion. 

9th March — 1,200 march against frack­ing in Man­ches­ter city cen­tre. 

10th March — evic­tion court case brought by Peel Hold­ings: judge con­sid­ered two days of evi­dence over the week­end, and decid­ed against the camp.  He’d pre­vi­ous­ly said Peel could­n’t evict part of the camp from a strip of agri­cul­tur­al land that Peel lease out to a ten­ant farmer.  On Mon­day he decid­ed it was­n’t agri­cul­tur­al enough!  Camp tak­ing appeal to High Court. 

11th March — anoth­er lock-on!

BREAKING THE FRAME

A GATHERING ON THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY

2nd — 5th May 2014

Unstone Grange, Der­byshire

YOU NEED TO BOOK ‑SEE BELOW

Organ­ised by Lud­dites 200, Cor­po­rate Watch, and Sci­en­tists for Glob­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty

A GATHERING ON THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY

2nd — 5th May 2014

Unstone Grange, Der­byshire

YOU NEED TO BOOK ‑SEE BELOW

Organ­ised by Lud­dites 200, Cor­po­rate Watch, and Sci­en­tists for Glob­al Respon­si­bil­i­ty

Tech­nol­o­gy can bring some ben­e­fits for ordi­nary peo­ple, but its devel­op­ment is almost entire­ly con­mtrolled by cor­po­rate, mil­i­tary and tech­no­crat­ic elites, so it usu­al­ly serves their inter­ests and rein­forces their pow­er.

The pol­i­tics of food, ener­gy, work, gen­der, peace, eco­nom­ics, health, etc are all shaped by choic­es about tech­nol­o­gy made by those elites. The whole way our soci­ety devel­ops is mas­sive­ly influ­enced by tech­nol­o­gy, yet ordi­nary peo­ple nev­er have a prop­er say in it.  We’re always left react­ing to the tech­nocrats’ lat­est plan, whether it’s drones, inter­net sur­veil­lance, GM food, frack­ing, design­er babies or nuclear pow­er.

We think all these issues are linked. So it’s time for a more joined up and more proac­tive approach, one which address­es the root caus­es of prob­lems and is not lim­it­ed by the dog­ma that tech­nol­o­gy equals progress.

  • We want to cre­ate a new pol­i­tics of tech­nol­o­gy based on bring­ing togeth­er the insights of dif­fer­ent move­ments and learn­ing from each oth­er.
  • We want a human-scale tech­nol­o­gy that serves real human needs, not cor­po­rate bot­tom lines.
  • We want demo­c­ra­t­ic con­trol of tech­nol­o­gy.

An world fac­ing envi­ron­men­tal melt­down and mas­sive inequal­i­ty ‑both caused byb 200 years ofn indus­tri­al cap­i­tal­ism- needs bet­ter solu­tions than more dan­ger­ous tech­no-fix­es such as cli­mate engi­neer­ing.

Whether you’re a tech­nol­o­gy pol­i­tics cam­paign­er, trade union­ist, envi­ron­men­tal­ist. altech devel­op­er, artist or just plain con­cerned, BREAKING THE FRAME IS NOT TO BE MISSED.

YOU NEED TO BOOK

www.breakingtheframe.org.uk      

email: luddites200@yahoo.co.uk

(020) 7426 0005

Accom­mo­da­tion is either in the con­fer­ence cen­tre OR camp­ing (which is cheap­er).  The con­ces­sion­ary rate for camp­ing is £36, which includes all meals for 4 days (it’s a bank hol­i­day week­end).

BUT if £36 is more than you can man­age, we’re com­mit­ted to mak­ing sure nobody is left out for lack of mon­ey.  So get in touch now.  Rich peo­ple can make extra dona­tions, of course!

lock-ons at Barton Moss

Lock-ons have been increas­ing — there’s been one today (2 peo­ple, 2 hour delay), Mon­day 3rd March; there was anoth­er last Fri­day (2 peo­ple in tubes, 1.5 hours), and last Tues­day — 2 peo­ple locked-on into a bar­rel full of con­crete, barbed wire and glass, to slow the police removal team down.

Lock-ons have been increas­ing — there’s been one today (2 peo­ple, 2 hour delay), Mon­day 3rd March; there was anoth­er last Fri­day (2 peo­ple in tubes, 1.5 hours), and last Tues­day — 2 peo­ple locked-on into a bar­rel full of con­crete, barbed wire and glass, to slow the police removal team down.

Apart from these days, there’s been con­tin­ued police vio­lence, a reduc­tion in time allowed for the slow lor­ry escorts, and the threat of evic­tion delayed till lat­er this month. 

See http://northerngasgala.org.uk/ or frack-off.org.uk/ for more info