Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Nigerian attacks closes oilfields

19 June 2008
Oil com­pa­ny Roy­al Dutch Shell says it has tem­porar­i­ly stopped pro­duc­tion at its main off­shore oil­field in Nige­ria, fol­low­ing a mil­i­tant attack.

Nigerian pipeline burns after attack19 June 2008
Oil com­pa­ny Roy­al Dutch Shell says it has tem­porar­i­ly stopped pro­duc­tion at its main off­shore oil­field in Nige­ria, fol­low­ing a mil­i­tant attack.

The raid took place overnight on the Bon­ga oil plat­form about 120km (75 miles) off the coast of the Niger Delta, the com­pa­ny said.

It is the first attack on the oil­field, which nor­mal­ly pro­duces about 200,000 bar­rels a day.

Attacks on the inshore Niger Delta have helped dri­ve up world oil prices.

Nige­ri­a’s valu­able off­shore oil­fields had always been con­sid­ered dif­fi­cult for most mil­i­tants to tar­get, the BBC’s Alex Last reports from Lagos.

But ear­ly on Thurs­day gun­men in boats reached the Bon­ga instal­la­tion, Shel­l’s flag­ship project, for the first time.

A Niger­ian navy spokesman con­firmed reports that mil­i­tants had kid­napped a US oil work­er from a sep­a­rate ves­sel on their way back from the raid.

The Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (Mend) claimed it car­ried out the attack in an email sent to jour­nal­ists, and named the Amer­i­can as Cap­tain Jack Stone.

They said he would be released “in the com­ing hours”.

Sophis­ti­cat­ed

The gun­men failed to get inside the plat­form, but attacked a key ves­sel used for pro­duc­tion stor­age and offload­ing, a Shell spokesman said.

Sev­er­al peo­ple were report­ed to have been injured.

Mend says it is cam­paign­ing for a greater share of the region’s oil wealth to be kept by local peo­ple, but the gov­ern­ment says they are crim­i­nals moti­vat­ed by the ran­soms they receive from oil com­pa­nies.

The shut­down has cut a tenth of Nige­ri­a’s total out­put in one go.

This comes on top of a reduc­tion of at least 20% in recent years fol­low­ing inland attacks.

Our cor­re­spon­dent says Bon­ga was new, expen­sive and work­ing well despite the dif­fi­cul­ties and repeat­ed attacks affect­ing the com­pa­ny’s inshore oper­a­tions in the Delta.

The mil­i­tants in the Delta are get­ting more sophis­ti­cat­ed and bet­ter equipped and armed, he says.

Now they have proven that in terms of dis­tance at least, all of Nige­ri­a’s facil­i­ties are with­in their reach.

Amnesties promised

Next month, a peace sum­mit organ­ised by the gov­ern­ment on the Niger Delta unrest is due to begin in the cap­i­tal, Abu­ja.

The gov­ern­ment has promised amnesties to any mil­i­tants who take part.

Mend has refused to attend unless Hen­ry Okah, one of their lead­ers cur­rent­ly on tri­al for trea­son and gun-run­ning, is also grant­ed amnesty.

But the gov­ern­ment has refused.

“We want every­one to be there to air their griev­ances,” vice-pres­i­den­tial aide Akilu Ind­abawa told the BBC’s Hausa Ser­vice.

“But in Hen­ry Okah’s case the issue is in front of a court and the gov­ern­ment can’t inter­vene because it respects the rule of law.”

Oth­er reports to bal­ance this -
Niger­ian mil­i­tants demand gov­ern­ment accept medi­a­tion by ex-US pres­i­dent Carter
Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta Declares War
Niger­ian mil­i­tants: We killed drunk­en sol­diers

—–

21st June 2008
Nige­ria oil pipeline ‘attacked’

US oil giant Chevron has halt­ed onshore oil pro­duc­tion at its Escravos oil­field after an attack on a pipeline.

The loss could equate to about 120,000 bar­rels per day, about 6.6% of Nige­ri­a’s total dai­ly crude pro­duc­tion.

The Niger­ian mil­i­tary said mil­i­tants blew up the Niger Delta pipeline, but the region’s main armed group blamed angry youths for the attack.

Ear­li­er this week, Nige­ri­a’s pres­i­dent ordered tighter secu­ri­ty in the Delta after an attack at a Shell facil­i­ty.

Accord­ing to the BBC’s Alex Last, in Lagos, sources in the west­ern Niger Delta believe the lat­est attack is the work of ille­gal oil “bunker­ers” — involved in the lucra­tive trade in stolen oil.

Sig­nif­i­cant loss

The ear­li­er attack on Shel­l’s float­ing oil plat­form at Bon­ga, which cut a tenth of Niger­ian oil pro­duc­tion in one go, was car­ried out by mil­i­tant group the Move­ment for the Eman­ci­pa­tion of the Niger Delta (Mend).

News agen­cies quot­ed Mend as say­ing that it was not respon­si­ble for the Escravos inci­dent, which occurred on Thurs­day night.

Mend said it had been con­tact­ed by angry youths who report­ed hav­ing blown up the pipeline, the Asso­ci­at­ed Press said.

The Escravos inci­dent high­lights the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the oil infra­struc­ture in Nige­ria, our cor­re­spon­dent says.

With the gov­ern­ment plan­ning to hold a big sum­mit of Niger Delta lead­ers and more mon­ey expect­ed to flow to the Niger Delta, per­haps the armed groups there feel it is a good time to show how rel­e­vant they are to any chance of peace, our cor­re­spon­dent adds.

While the loss to Niger­ian crude out­put is sig­nif­i­cant, it is a small frac­tion of the dai­ly glob­al oil out­put, of about 85 mil­lion bar­rels per day.

News of the Escravos attack comes ahead of a meet­ing in Jed­dah, Sau­di Ara­bia, of major ener­gy pro­duc­ers and users — where the ris­ing price of oil will be the key top­ic for dis­cus­sion.

On Fri­day the Niger­ian gov­ern­ment announced how it would spend a $10bn (£5bn) wind­fall from the ris­ing oil price.

It will spend just over $5bn fix­ing the coun­try’s pow­er sup­ply and the rest will be shared among the 36 state gov­ern­ments.

Protesters end blockade of Brazil mining railroad

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action update Australia

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak.

In May, a per­son­al let­ter was hand deliv­ered to the $10 mil­lion man­sion of Mike Smith, the CEO of the ANZ bank in Mel­bourne’s most afflu­ent sub­urb of Toorak. The let­ter, signed by the E.L.F., declared that his prop­er­ty, includ­ing his and his wife’s lux­u­ry cars, amongst a detailed list of oth­er per­son­al items, would not remain safe so long as ANZ con­tin­ued its financ­ing of the pro­posed Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill in Tas­ma­nia.

The pro­posed pulp mill, run by Gunns- Tas­ma­ni­a’s forestry cor­po­ra­tion which holds a vir­tu­al monop­oly over the state, would con­tribute great­ly to glob­al warm­ing, it would spew 64,000 tonnes of efflu­ent into the Bass Straight every day, bring the Tas­man­ian wedge-tailed eagle, the spot­ted tail Quoll, and the giant fresh­wa­ter cray­fish to extinc­tion, and would turn the ancient old growth forests of the Great West­ern Tiers, the North East High­lands, and the Ben Lomond forests into pulp.

The same night, veg­an piz­zas from numer­ous mul­ti-nation­al chains were deliv­ered unsus­pect­ed­ly to the doorstep of Mike’s fam­i­ly home.

By strange coin­ci­dence, the fol­low­ing week ANZ with­drew its sup­port for financ­ing the $2 bil­lion Gunns Tamar Val­ley Pulp Mill project.

This effec­tive­ly puts the pulp mil­l’s future in a dire sit­u­a­tion. Unfor­tu­nate­ly the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments of Aus­tralia still con­tin­ue their back­ing of the eco-cidal project.

9th June Noise Demo at UK Coal Head Office Protest — next one 14th July

UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

UK Coal 1st noise demo 1UK Coal 1st noise demo 2UK Coal is about to dev­as­tate a beau­ti­ful part of the Der­byshire coun­try­side by start­ing an open cast mine. So ‘Leave it in the Ground’ and Earth First! decid­ed to make some noise over it with peo­ple from Der­by, Not­ting­ham Leeds, Sheffield, Man­ches­ter and Brighton as well as oth­er places, all trav­elled to UK Coals Head office in Don­cast­er to make some noise.

On arrival the police were there as expect­ed, but did lit­tle to engage us and a lit­tle lat­er in the day a 2 police officer’s with a cam­era and a video did appear in a daft attempt to intim­i­date us. UK Coal had there own secu­ri­ty at the gate who just stood there more bored than the police.

The day was hot and very sun­ny at the bleak entrance of UK coals Head Office, a soul less place with noth­ing that said they were very proud of their com­pa­ny, no ornate plants, flow­ers or trees, just a big main­tained hedge for their pri­va­cy. It is no won­der they are hap­py to destroy beau­ti­ful coun­try­side for the dirty coal.

Every one was in high spir­its and chilled as we all made noise for the after­noon in the sun. The plod just looked bored and there faces were get­ting red­der by the hour under the fluro’ jack­ets and hel­mets.

We were fine of course, as we occu­pied the UK Coals sign for the only bit of shade while the plod kept roast­ing; we also sat around eat­ing cake, pasties and sausage roles all from Veg­gies in a take out form, while still mak­ing a din.

At times the noise sound­ed good and they delib­er­ate­ly had to try and play bad­ly just so it was annoy­ing, after all it was no pic­nic. Ban­ners were also hung and a police offi­cer told us we could tie them to a lamp post, not that we need­ed his per­mis­sion. Dri­vers com­ing in or out were also leaflet­ed and many motorists pass­ing the entrance beeped in sup­port (prob­a­bly ex min­ers who hate open cast­ing with a pas­sion)

It’s not just the local open cast, peo­ple are oppos­ing of course but also the UK pol­i­cy on coal that is now out­dat­ed as cli­mate change looms in front of our eyes. Burn­ing coal is threat­en­ing the glob­al envi­ron­ment and all our futures and UK coal are cash­ing in on cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion and destruc­tion. The Lodge House site in Der­byshire is just one of 7 sites and Lodge house will have 1 mil­lion tonnes of coal ripped out of a 122 hectare area in 5 years

Local media had turned out and radio inter­views were done over the phone and there is more stuff to fol­low check http://leaveitintheground.org.uk and http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com for the lat­est infor­ma­tion

derby@earthfirst.org.uk

Next event: noise demo out­side UK Coal on Mon­day 14th July 2008 — meet 3:30 at Don­cast­er train sta­tion, or 4pm at UK Coal

CANCELLED — Survival Picket in Solidarity with the Dongria Kondh Tribe — Stop Vendanta Mining Orissa, India.

The Don­gria Kondh tribe of India and the land they live in is threat­ened with destruc­tion by the UK com­pa­ny Vedan­ta. Vedan­ta wants to cre­ate a giant open-cast mine on the Don­gria Kond­h’s sacred moun­tain, destroy­ing the lush forests that grow there and pol­lut­ing the rivers.

Dongria Khonds in the State CapitolThe Don­gria Kondh tribe of India and the land they live in is threat­ened with destruc­tion by the UK com­pa­ny Vedan­ta. Vedan­ta wants to cre­ate a giant open-cast mine on the Don­gria Kond­h’s sacred moun­tain, destroy­ing the lush forests that grow there and pol­lut­ing the rivers. The Don­gria Kond­h’s lives will be com­plete­ly dev­as­tat­ed.

The Sur­vival demon­stra­tion out­side Coutts Bank pre­vi­ous­ly adver­tised on this web­site planned for the 10th June has been can­celled. In reac­tion to the planned pick­et Coutts has just informed Sur­vival that they no longer hold shares in Vedan­ta, the British-based com­pa­ny whose planned baux­ite mine will dev­as­tate the lands of Indi­a’s Don­gria Kondh tribe. More info to fol­low.

—-

WHERE? Out­side Coutts Bank, 440 Strand, Lon­don
WHEN? Tues­day 10th June 2008, 18.45 — 20.00

WHAT IS THE EVENT?

Coutts Bank hold shares in Vedan­ta. When Vedan­ta makes mon­ey, Coutts make mon­ey, so they are prof­it­ing from the abuse of the Don­gria Kondh.

On 10th June Coutts are host­ing the open­ing par­ty of Lon­don Jew­ellery Week, which they are spon­sor­ing. Sur­vival will be there, urg­ing Coutts to with­draw its shares in Vedan­ta, and to recog­nise the rights of the Don­gria Kondh to live inde­pen­dent­ly on their own land.

For direc­tions, please see the fol­low­ing link:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=530188&y=180575&z

Back­ground info:

There are 8,000 Don­gria Kondh liv­ing in the Niyam­giri Hills in Oris­sa, India.

The Niyam­giri Hills are an area of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beau­ty, rich in wildlife and dense forests. The Don­gria Kondh farm the hill slopes, grow­ing crops in among the for­est and gath­er­ing wild fruit, flow­ers and leaves for sale. Their lifestyle and reli­gion have pro­tect­ed the forests of Niyam­giri for cen­turies.

The top of the moun­tain, which is wor­shiped by the Don­gria Kondh as the seat of their god, has rich deposits of the alu­mini­um ore baux­ite.

The min­ing project would lead to dis­place­ment of thou­sands of trib­al peo­ple and destroy bio­di­ver­si­ty and water sources. Niyam­giri hills are the source of Vamshad­hara Riv­er and major trib­u­taries of Nagaveli rivers – sacred to the Khonds. A large num­ber of wildlife species includ­ing tiger, leop­ards, ele­phant and mouse deer also abode in Niyam­giri hills. Many of these species are endan­gered. In the past, efforts have been made by var­i­ous gov­ern­men­tal and non-gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies to declare Niyam­giri hills as sanc­tu­ary or reserve area to pro­tect its pris­tine nat­ur­al habi­tat.

The local resis­tance against the project start­ed with the land acqui­si­tion process but because of the poor eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal clout of Don­gria Kondhs, their voic­es and con­cerns are ignored by local and state author­i­ties. This is hard­ly sur­pris­ing giv­en the Oris­sa gov­ern­men­t’s thrust on ‘accel­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment’ by hand­ing over rich nat­ur­al resources to big pri­vate com­pa­nies, both domes­tic and for­eign, for a pit­tance. Pres­sure on the finan­cial back­ers of the scheme in Europe has already result­ed in sig­nif­i­cant dis­in­vest­ment is Nor­way and sim­i­lar action in the UK could real­ly stregth­en the tribes hand.

More Details can be found on the web­site of ‘Sur­vival — The Move­ment For Trib­al Peo­ple’:

http://www.survival-international.org/tribes/dongria

Noise demo against imminent open cast coal mine 9th June

A new open-cast coal mine site is about to get under­way in beau­ti­ful Der­byshire, unless we stop it now.

Derbyshire open-cast - beforeDerbyshire open-cast - after?A new open-cast coal mine site is about to get under­way in beau­ti­ful Der­byshire, unless we stop it now. Help us send the mes­sage loud and clear to UK Coal to leave it in the ground!

Noise Demo at UK Coal, nr Don­cast­er
Mon­day 9th June
Meet 12 noon at Don­cast­er train sta­tion.
There will be lifts to UK Coal’s HQ — but bring trans­port if you can.

UK COAL, Har­worth Park, Blyth Road, Har­worth, Don­cast­er DN11 8DB

Bring: ban­ners, things to make noise with, food, peo­ple, tents, room to give peo­ple a lift.

For more info phone 07852 460871 or email derby@earthfirst.org.uk

Down­load leaflet (includes map of pro­posed open-cast) – please print and cir­cu­late

What’s going on?
Lodge House site, which is east of the vil­lage of the Der­byshire vil­lage of Smal­l­ey, is one of sev­en
sites that UK Coal is to open-cast. The area is rich with wildlife and backs onto Ship­ley Coun­try Park. It is about to be dev­as­tat­ed, despite objec­tions from local coun­cils, res­i­dents and local envi­ron­men­tal groups. The Sec­re­tary of State grant­ed plan­ning per­mis­sion in 2007 and work is to com­mence any day now.

More destruc­tion to come?
The 122 hectare site will have one mil­lion tonnes of coal ripped out over five years and ‘returned back to its nat­ur­al state’ accord­ing to UK Coal. How­ev­er, they will not be able to replace ancient edges and mature trees, and they will be able to expand beyond the 122 hectares with­out need­ing fur­ther per­mis­sion. Res­i­dents were exclud­ed from parts of the plan­ning meet­ing on grounds of com­mer­cial con­fi­den­tial­i­ty, which sug­gests that the plans may be big­ger than UK Coal is let­ting on.

A dirty fuel, a chang­ing cli­mate
Coal is not clean ener­gy, and with the new onslaught of pro­posed pow­er sta­tions, UK Coal are look­ing to cash in on cli­mate dev­as­ta­tion and destruc­tion unless we stop them. Burn­ing coal to pro­duce elec­tric­i­ty is threat­en­ing the glob­al envi­ron­ment and all our futures..

To com­bat open-cast min­ing, a new action group “Leave it in the Ground” has formed, sup­port­ed by Earth First! and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal groups.

If you can’t make the demo then you could con­tact UK Coal direct­ly to let them know what you think: UK Coal Tel: 01302 751751 Fax: 01302 752420.

Links

Leave it in the Ground
Home­page: http://www.leaveitintheground.org.uk

Report on pre­vi­ous action http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/20727

For a bit of his­to­ry on protests against open cast min­ing see:
http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no7/23–32.html

More info on coal…
http://thecoalhole.org/

Leave it in the Ground’s Picnic in the Park trespass report

Around 70 peo­ple had set of to trav­el on a bank hol­i­day Mon­day which is no easy task as pub­lic trans­port has a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy not to run or has a lim­it­ed ser­vice on bank hol­i­days, for a pic­nic in a remote part of Der­byshire. The weath­er reports had all pre­dict­ed thun­dery show­ers for the day, which seems to be nor­mal for a bank hol­i­day out­ing, but this did not seem to deter the peo­ple who had gath­ered at the vis­i­tors cen­tre at Ship­ley Coun­try Park, Heanor, Der­byshire

trespass1trespass2
Around 70 peo­ple had set of to trav­el on a bank hol­i­day Mon­day which is no easy task as pub­lic trans­port has a nat­ur­al ten­den­cy not to run or has a lim­it­ed ser­vice on bank hol­i­days, for a pic­nic in a remote part of Der­byshire. The weath­er reports had all pre­dict­ed thun­dery show­ers for the day, which seems to be nor­mal for a bank hol­i­day out­ing, but this did not seem to deter the peo­ple who had gath­ered at the vis­i­tors cen­tre at Ship­ley Coun­try Park, Heanor, Der­byshire

The event had been organ­ised by a new cam­paign group called Leave it in the Ground and Earth First! to oppose new and exist­ing open cast min­ing in the UK and sol­i­dar­i­ty to inter­na­tion­al groups who are hav­ing their lives and land trashed in places like Phul­bari, Bangladesh by British com­pa­ny GMC Resources PLC http://www.gcmplc.com

After every one had fin­ished social­is­ing at the vis­i­tors cen­tre with cups of tea, they head­ed of through the park to the area of plush green fields and ripped out hedgerows, which is to be the area of the new open cast mine called Lodge house owned by UK Coal as we were fol­lowed by an evi­dence gath­er­er and a few oth­er police offi­cers who were mak­ing notes on how friend­ly and socia­ble we were.

UK coal had erect­ed new fences with­in the bound­aries of the fields declar­ing the 122 hec­tor site of destruc­tion wait­ing to hap­pen and activists out for the day just walked through the gap that will even­tu­al­ly have huge earth mov­ing vehi­cles and plant machin­ery tear­ing up the fields. There was no attempt by the police to stop us or ask­ing us not to go in, it was already decid­ed we were going to tres­pass, and there was no way they could keep us out any­way.

After a short breach of the bound­ary we came across a farm, com­plete with tree house, dog ken­nel with its bed­ding still inside and the odd toy in the gar­den that looked as if it had been aban­doned in a hur­ry from some pend­ing dis­as­ter. We gath­ered in the gar­den of the farm to hear a local per­son explain what was hap­pen­ing in the area.

We heard how UK Coal owns the land and that the locals in the sur­round­ing vil­lages of Smal­l­ey, Map­per­ly and West Hallem had been fight­ing against the com­pa­ny for the last 5 years against the plan to turn the area into an open cast site. Despite it being against plan­ning reg­u­la­tions the sec­re­tary of state gave the plan the go ahead in 2007. The fields we had just walked across is going to have its soil stripped in July and August of this year and the field to the south of the farm is going to be stripped this July, so it was a last look to see it in its nat­ur­al state, even though UK Coal are tak­ing the unusu­al step of return­ing the site back to green fields, not that the grass grows well or the hedgerows are replant­ed and the fields lack the nat­ur­al diver­si­ty of species.

More alarm­ing is that this is not just unique to Der­byshire; open cast­ing or strip min­ing as it is some­times known is on the agen­da of the gov­ern­ment and a change in pol­i­cy 2 years ago forced by pow­er sta­tions and coal com­pa­nies through lob­by­ing has forced it as a legit­i­mate way for them to make mon­ey, despite the fact it is seri­ous­ly dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate and the UK is not going to be able to cut its agreed emis­sions by burn­ing coal and that the Lodge House site is going to have 1 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon removed which means when it is burnt that’s 3,666,666 tones of car­bon diox­ide.

There was also a bit of brief his­to­ry of open cast min­ing in Der­byshire and the resis­tance to it in 1997 at the Tib­shelf site near Alfre­ton and how 250 activists from Earth First! NUJ and min­ers sup­port group had bussed there way to the site and caused an esti­mat­ed £375,000 to £4 mil­lion of dam­age with vehi­cles need­ing to be repaired on site as they were inca­pac­i­tat­ed!

We all moved off back into the fields with the fence an omi­nous mark­er in the dis­tance to the size and scale of what is to be lost and sat down to enjoy some food. Veg­gies had gone mobile and sup­plied us with veg­an pasties and their famous cake, so we sat in the long grass, drank some excel­lent Elder­flower Cham­paign that was being passed around while the police hid at the farm with­out refresh­ment keep­ing an eye on our activ­i­ty and social refine­ment. A kite flew over head and the chil­dren played foot­ball with the adults, all the usu­al accom­pa­ni­ments for a pic­nic.

We head­ed off through the south field and saw a bun­ga­low with its win­dows and doors sheet­ed up in steel, anoth­er vic­tim of the site I thought. Both prop­er­ties are the place most peo­ple dream of own­ing with the scenic views.

After a stroll on this bot­tom field we head­ed on to Bell Lane which divides the Lodge House site and head­ed into Smal­l­ey with anoth­er tea stop at the local Vil­lage Hall and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to use the toi­lets and more of Veg­gies cake and pasties. Some local peo­ple were there wait­ing for us and the group broke out into a meet­ing, in which we assessed the sit­u­a­tion over open cast min­ing in the UK and what we could do about it. The ener­gy and enthu­si­asm of which was enor­mous and in a very short time action plans had been drawn up. Small­er meet­ings in regions ensued so they could organ­ise into affin­i­ty groups. Peo­ple had trav­elled from Oxford, Cam­bridge, Man­ches­ter, Leeds, Not­ting­ham, Lan­cast­er, Nor­wich, Crew, Sheffield and Der­by as well as oth­er areas that I prob­a­bly missed and showed how much con­cern there was over the mat­ter of open cast min­ing

After a quick tidy up in the hall some set of back the way we came for the long jour­ney home while oth­ers decid­ed to take a slight­ly longer route over the fields of the site, just to keep the tres­pass going. We went into the main entrance of the site still unop­posed by the police after a slight nav­i­ga­tion­al error this all changed.

The local farmer had object­ed about us to our yel­low jack­et­ed escorts and we were being told we had to go back or face being arrest­ed and after check­ing the map, or not being allowed to go to the few steps more to the near­est foot­path we went back the way we came to join the foot­path at the back of the farm, again to be blocked by the police, one of which had led the farmer around the back and out of sight. One of the group decid­ed to go and have a word with the farmer and next thing we were being shout­ed to come this way; the chat with the farmer was obvi­ous­ly a suc­cess and we head­ed for the foot­path with a hap­py farmer and some of his fam­i­ly wav­ing us on like we were cham­pi­ons. This how­ev­er made us ques­tion what the police had said to the farmer?

For the lat­est infor­ma­tion on the next actions check Leave it in the Grounds web­site http://leaveitintheground.org.uk or blog http://leaveitintheground.wordpress.com

Or to get involved go to the Cli­mate Camp 3rd — 11th August at Kingsnorth http://www.climatecamp.org.uk and the Earth First Gath­er­ing 27th August – 1st Sep­tem­ber in Nor­folk http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk or find your local Earth First! group http://earthfirst.org.uk

BBC report on the tres­pass http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7420634.stm
Do or Die http://www.eco-action.org/dod/no7/23–32.html
Phul­bari Resis­tance, Bangladesh http://phulbariresistance.blogspot.com

Why not organ­ise a protest against one of these?
UK Coal http://www.ukcoal.com/home
GMC Resources PLC http://www.gcmplc.com

—–
BBC report:

Tres­passers oppose coal mine planDerbyshire open-cast coal trespass 126th May 2008
Peo­ple who do not want a new open­cast coal mine on land adjoin­ing a coun­try park in Der­byshire have held a protest.

UK Coal wants to extract a mil­lion tonnes over four years from Lodge Hill in Smal­l­ey, near Heanor.

But cam­paign­ers said this would have a dev­as­tat­ing impact on the envi­ron­ment. About 50 pro­test­ers marched on the land in a mass tres­pass on Mon­day.

UK Coal said the mat­ter had gone through a pub­lic inquiry, and been prop­er­ly approved by the gov­ern­ment.

It said Britain need­ed ener­gy, and it was bet­ter to get it local­ly than to import it.

Cli­mate cam­paign­ers from the groups, Leave it in the Ground and Earth First! joined local res­i­dents opposed the plans for the mine on land adjoin­ing Ship­ley Coun­try Park.

Oppo­nents of the plans claimed near­ly 70 acres of green­belt land would be destroyed if the plans went through and were also wor­ried about noise and pol­lu­tion in the area.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/7420634.stm (also go here for a bit of his­to­ry to the ini­tial refusal of plan­ning per­mis­sion, over­turned by the Sec­re­tary of State)

A report from peo­ple who went, plus pho­tos, to fol­low

Mexico: campesinos occupy Chihuahua gold mine

On May 24, campesinos from Eji­do Huizopa, Madera munic­i­pal­i­ty, in the north­ern Mex­i­can state of Chi­huahua, launched a protest occu­pa­tion of the Min­era Dolores com­pa­ny’s giant open-pit gold mine, which they say has been ille­gal­ly estab­lished on their lands.

On May 24, campesinos from Eji­do Huizopa, Madera munic­i­pal­i­ty, in the north­ern Mex­i­can state of Chi­huahua, launched a protest occu­pa­tion of the Min­era Dolores com­pa­ny’s giant open-pit gold mine, which they say has been ille­gal­ly estab­lished on their lands. The deci­sion to launch the block­ade was tak­en after two eji­do lead­ers, Enrique Tor­res González and José Arman­do González, were arrest­ed by Fed­er­al Pre­ven­ta­tive Police, lat­er released with­out charge. The local com­pa­ny direc­tor Car­los Gar­cía Droguett said the occu­pa­tion places at risk a $200 mil­lion invest­ment in the zone. (Excel­siór, May 29) Min­era Dolores is owned by the Minefind­ers Cor­po­ra­tion of Van­cou­ver. (GeoMex.com)

A state­ment from Eji­do Huizopa says Min­era Dolores used “tricks” to gain title to the land from “cor­rupt lead­ers” of the ejido—but nonethe­less received a per­mit from the Mex­i­can envi­ron­men­tal sec­re­tari­at, SEMARNAT. The state­ment says anoth­er of their lead­ers, Sal­vador Gai­tan, was the tar­get of an assas­si­na­tion attempt ear­li­er this year. Gait­ian, a direc­tor of the eji­do, is a vet­er­an of the 1960s gueril­la insur­gency in Chi­huahua led by Arturo Gámiz. (Received via e‑mail, May 30)

See our last posts on Mex­i­co, Chi­huahua and the min­er­al car­tel in Latin Amer­i­ca.

—

Min­era Dolores block­ade lift­ed

From CNN Mon­ey, June 9. Note repeat­ed and gra­tu­itous use of the word “ille­gal” to refer to the blockade—contrasting lack of any men­tion of campesino claims that the mine itself is ille­gal.

Minefind­ers Cor­po­ra­tion Ltd. (the “Com­pa­ny”) (TSX: MFL)(AMEX: MFN) reports ini­tial pro­duc­tion esti­mates for its Dolores gold and sil­ver mine in Chi­huahua, Mex­i­co, where the first gold and sil­ver pour is now sched­uled for mid July, 2008.

Man­age­ment expects gold pro­duc­tion from Dolores will be approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 ounces in 2008, 128,000 ounces in 2009 and 129,000 ounces in 2010. Sil­ver pro­duc­tion is expect­ed to be 1.0 mil­lion ounces in 2008, 3.0 mil­lion ounces in 2009, and 4.0 mil­lion ounces in 2010… Min­ing at Dolores is approach­ing a sus­tained rate of approx­i­mate­ly 100,000 tonnes per day with over 7 mil­lion tonnes of ore and waste mate­r­i­al mined at Dolores to date…

In late May an ille­gal block­ade was estab­lished on an access road to the Dolores Mine site. The major­i­ty of the indi­vid­u­als involved are believed to be from out­side of the region and include only a small fringe group from with­in the local 221-mem­ber Eji­do com­mu­ni­ty.

While Minefind­ers was on tar­get to achieve the first gold and sil­ver pour from Dolores in late June 2008, for safe­ty rea­sons the Com­pa­ny decid­ed to sus­pend con­struc­tion activ­i­ties and oper­a­tions until Mex­i­can author­i­ties safe­ly removed the ille­gal block­ade. On June 5, in response to meet­ings held with gov­ern­ment offi­cials, the block­aders re-opened the road and min­ing and pro­cess­ing oper­a­tions have recom­menced. The Com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sions with the state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ments and with the indi­vid­u­als respon­si­ble for the block­ade to come to a defin­i­tive long-term res­o­lu­tion. As a result of the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of oper­a­tions due to the ille­gal block­ade, the first gold and sil­ver pour is now expect­ed in mid-July.

“Despite the delay of the first gold and sil­ver pour due to the ille­gal block­ade, the com­mis­sion­ing at Dolores is pro­gress­ing well with con­struc­tion and oper­at­ing costs con­sis­tent with those report­ed in the Com­pa­ny’s Feb­ru­ary 14, 2008, eco­nom­ic fore­cast and reserve update,” said Mark Bai­ley, Minefind­ers’ Pres­i­dent and CEO. “We remain ful­ly fund­ed to com­plete devel­op­ment and com­mis­sion­ing of the Dolores Mine and con­tin­ue the Dolores mill pre­lim­i­nary fea­si­bil­i­ty study and 2008 explo­ration pro­grams at Dolores and else­where.”

CNN also seems not to know that “Eji­do com­mu­ni­ty” is redun­dant and does not tell the read­er the name of the com­mu­ni­ty, as “eji­do” means agri­cul­tur­al com­mu­ni­ty. The name of the eji­do in ques­tion is Huizopa.

Forest defender arrested as activists halt work on road to climate chaos in the Styx Valley, Tasmania

2008-05-20

South Styx action2008-05-20
This morn­ing, for­est activists halt­ed work on the con­struc­tion of a new ‘road to cli­mate chaos’ in the Styx Val­ley to high­light com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns with the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of Tasmania’s ancient forests. Activists are halt­ing road­ing oper­a­tions which, if com­plet­ed, will access sig­nif­i­cant tracts of giant euca­lypt for­est in close prox­im­i­ty to the Tas­man­ian Wilder­ness World Her­itage Area bound­ary. A female activist, who had been attached to road­ing machin­ery for over 9 hours was arrest­ed this after­noon. Police arrived at the site, locat­ed near Jubilee Road in the South Styx, around 9am. The activist was cut off the machine at approx­i­mate­ly 2pm and was arrest­ed and charged by local police offi­cers.

“Once again, Forestry Tas­ma­nia is using tax­pay­ers mon­ey to smash new roads through some of our most unique and irre­place­able ecosys­tems. This road to cli­mate chaos in the South Styx will enable wood­chip­ping barons Gunns Ltd. to dev­as­tate some of the island’s most car­bon rich old growth forests” said Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokesper­son Ula Majew­s­ki.

“The Rudd Gov­ern­ment must take deci­sive action and put an imme­di­ate stop to these envi­ron­men­tal­ly crim­i­nal acts, rather than stand­ing back and endors­ing the large scale wood­chip­ping and torch­ing of some of our most pre­cious nat­ur­al her­itage. In this era of increas­ing­ly dan­ger­ous cli­mate change, the destruc­tion of Tasmania’s ancient forests is a glob­al issue” said Miss Majew­s­ki.

For­est defend­ers will con­tin­ue to take peace­ful action against the con­tin­ued dec­i­ma­tion of Tasmania’s glob­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant old growth forests.

http://www.myspace.com/stillwildstillthreatened
http://campflorentine@gmail.com

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Get down to your local rad­i­cal social cen­tre or book­shop for these newslet­ters — if they aren’t there then print them out / pho­to­copy and take down there. If your near­est social cen­tre isn’t that local, then you now know where you can get all the lat­est pub­li­ca­tions with­out hav­ing to trawl the net for them.

We are always look­ing for newsletters/ zines/ pamphlets/ magazines/ arti­cles to host on our down­load page (prefer­ably as ‘imposed’ ready to be print­ed PDF) email us if you are involved in a pub­li­ca­tion.

* SchNews Week­ly — from their web site

* Rough Music — Issue 18 — May/June 2008 — Local Brighton ‘trou­ble mak­ing, dirt dig­ging’ newslet­ter

* Work­ers Sol­i­dar­i­ty — Issue 103 — May/June 2008 — Irish Anar­chist News

* No Pasaran — Issue 1 — May 2008 — New Antifa UK Anti Fas­cist newslet­ter

* Infos­hop News — Issue 1 — May 2008 — New 40 page roundup of news from the Infos­hop anar­chist news site

* Earth First! Action Update — May 2008 — anoth­er great new issue — a quar­ter­ly roundup of eco­log­i­cal and oth­er direct action from Britain and beyond

* Mesho — April 2008 — spoof news­pa­per made for the inter­na­tion­al days of action for squats and autonomous spaces

* Cor­po­rate Watch — Issue 40 — April/May 2008 — Iraq Inc., Euro­pean Invest­ment Bank, Arab-British cham­ber of Com­merce, West Papua, Review of Klein’s ‘Shock Doc­trine’, Diary + More

* Gagged — Issue 23 — April/May 2008 — South Wales Anar­chist Newslet­ter

* Resis­tance — Issue 102 — April/May 2008 — month­ly newslet­ter of the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion UK

* No Bor­ders — Issue 3 — Feb­ru­ary / March 2008 — No Bor­ders UK net­work newslet­ter

* Rup­ture — Feb­ru­ary 2008 — a great zine for and about free par­ties, squats and social cen­tres

* 325 — Issue 5 — Feb­ru­ary 2008 — an insur­gent mag­a­zine of social war and anar­chy

* Class War — Issue 93 — Win­ter 2007 — “Save the Plan­et — Get Rid of the Rich” get­ting straight to the point as always

* Organ­ise! — Issue 69 — Wnter 2007 — mag­a­zine of the Anar­chist Fed­er­a­tion

* Fire to the Pris­ons — Issue 2 — Decem­ber 2007 — Excel­lent new newsletter/magazine 30 pages of insur­rec­tionary anti-pris­on/­dom­i­na­tion news and analy­sis and pris­on­er sup­port infor­ma­tion

* Cross­ing Bor­ders — Issue 4 — Novem­ber 2007 — a newslet­ter on move­ments and strug­gles of migra­tion (this issue focus­ing on the No Bor­ders camp in the Ukraine)

* Front­line — Issue 6 — June/August 2007 — Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign quar­ter­ly mag­a­zine

* Direct Action — Issue 39 — Sum­mer 2007 — mag of UK anar­cho-syn­da­cal­ist Sol­i­dar­i­ty Fed­er­a­tion

* War­rior Wind — Issue 3 — May 2007 — a newslet­ter in sup­port of polit­i­cal pris­on­ers

* Incen­dio — Issue 1 — Spring 2006 — a bilin­gual (english/spanish) mag­a­zine on Latin Amer­i­can strug­gles and sol­i­dar­i­ty

* Rolling Thun­der — Issue 1 — Sum­mer 2005 — ‘an anar­chist jour­nal of dan­ger­ous liv­ing’

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