Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Rath Lugh Direct Action Camp Evicted

thurs­day 17th April
Eye­wit­ness account of todays events at Rath Lugh

Rath Lugh security guard in balaclavathurs­day 17th April
Eye­wit­ness account of todays events at Rath Lugh

Short­ly before 1 o clock today there was a peace­ful evic­tion of the Rath Lugh Camp. Four Pro­tec­tors who were on site were told by Gar­dai that they had to be out by 1 o clock and to gath­er up their belong­ings and leave. This was not done in an aggres­sive man­ner and was com­plied with by the Pro­tec­tors.

Once they had left the woods no one was allowed back in. There were 20 Gar­dai, 3 Gar­da Cars plus 2 Vans as well as about a dozen Con­struc­tion Work­ers at the entrance to the woods as this was hap­pen­ing. A steel fence has now been erect­ed sep­a­rat­ing the Rath from the pub­lic road. A mini dig­ger is busy cre­at­ing a path and a low loader is in situ.

In a sin­is­ter twist after the evic­tion, a female Pro­tec­tor was tak­ing pho­tographs from her car when she was approached by a man with an MD SECURITY yel­low vest on and wear­ing a Bal­a­cla­va! This was about 200mt from Gar­dai. He was harass­ing her about tak­ing pho­tographs even though she was per­fect­ly enti­tled to do so and parked on a pub­lic road. Amaz­ing­ly when she made a com­plaint to a Gar­da he denied that there were any men in bal­a­clavas in the vicin­i­ty. Just as he said that, 2 Secu­ri­ty men ran past them, both wear­ing bal­a­clavas! The Gar­da refused to do any­thing about this and threat­ened to arrest her under the Hous­ing and Mis­cel­la­neous Act!!!

Mark Cleary has just appeared with his cam­era.

There will be a video of this inci­dent and the evic­tion issued short­ly.

http://www.tarapixie.net

—

6:30pm — anoth­er update — the pro­tec­tor is still in the tree house and they are try­ing to knock him down.
The camp has been com­plete­ly thrashed and when some peo­ple tried to retrieve their belong­ings they were told that they would be arrest­ed if they entered the woods.
The mood of con­struc­tion work­ers and oper­a­tors is very threat­en­ing, bags of belong­ings being cut with stan­ley knives etc.
There is no one to doc­u­ment what is going on.
There is a dig­ger destroy­ing the round house appar­ent­ly …
They were told that no one is allowed into the wood any more.
They are not allowed to clean up — which was the inten­tion over the next num­ber of days.
What is real­ly wor­ry­ing is that one well known oper­a­tor flashed some doc­u­ments at the pro­tes­tors and said that SIAC had just bought the whole wood from Coillte.

Saving Iceland in Aberystwyth, May 7th

8pm, The Tree­house, Bak­er St — Talk & Film
A num­ber of heavy indus­try cor­po­ra­tions includ­ing RioT­in­to and ALCOA are invad­ing vast areas of unin­hab­it­ed wilder­ness in Ice­land for new smelters, refiner­ies and pow­er plants. Come and vis­it some of the most stun­ning places of beau­ty on earth, and help pro­tect them with direct action.
Despite of its green image, Ice­land is plan­ning a large num­ber of heavy indus­try projects, includ­ing a num­ber of alu­mini­um smelters and an oil refin­ery. If they con­tin­ue, every glacial riv­er in the coun­try will be dammed, vast areas will be destroyed by flood­ing and large scale geot­her­mal drilling. The sub­arc­tic tun­dra har­bours some of the most valu­able wet­lands and bird breed­ing areas in Europe, unique ecosys­tems with geo­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na and land­scapes that can not be seen any­where in the world.

8pm, The Tree­house, Bak­er St — Talk & Film
A num­ber of heavy indus­try cor­po­ra­tions includ­ing RioT­in­to and ALCOA are invad­ing vast areas of unin­hab­it­ed wilder­ness in Ice­land for new smelters, refiner­ies and pow­er plants. Come and vis­it some of the most stun­ning places of beau­ty on earth, and help pro­tect them with direct action.
Despite of its green image, Ice­land is plan­ning a large num­ber of heavy indus­try projects, includ­ing a num­ber of alu­mini­um smelters and an oil refin­ery. If they con­tin­ue, every glacial riv­er in the coun­try will be dammed, vast areas will be destroyed by flood­ing and large scale geot­her­mal drilling. The sub­arc­tic tun­dra har­bours some of the most valu­able wet­lands and bird breed­ing areas in Europe, unique ecosys­tems with geo­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na and land­scapes that can not be seen any­where in the world.

Alu­mini­um smelt­ing, even when pow­ered by geot­her­mal ener­gy, emits so much green­house gas emis­sions that Ice­land now pro­duces 18 tons of CO2 equiv­a­lent per capi­ta, com­pared to the Euro­pean aver­age of 11. If all the plans con­tin­ues, emis­sions will increase by at least 63% over 1990 lev­els.

May 7th, Sav­ing Ice­land will give a pre­sen­ta­tion of these issues in the Tree­house in Aberys­t­wyth, and we will tell you about the inter­na­tion­al direct action cam­paign that has tak­en place, and the plans for this sum­mer’s camp start­ing in July, includ­ing prac­ti­cal­i­ties. We will have a num­ber of vehi­cles going from the UK (incl. Wales) and Europe to the camp. We will also show some videos of recent actions and a slideshow of some of the threat­ened areas.

More info: http://www.savingiceland.org.

Giant Garrett pays a long overdue visit to the Upper Florentine valley, Tasmania

2008-04-14
Activists from Still Wild Still Threat­ened have wel­comed a 6 metre tall Peter Gar­rett to the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley.

2008-04-14
Activists from Still Wild Still Threat­ened have wel­comed a 6 metre tall Peter Gar­rett to the Upper Flo­ren­tine Val­ley. Activists took the ‘giant Gar­rett’ on a tour of coupe FO42F which is due to be burnt in the imme­di­ate future and high­light­ed their con­cerns with the con­tin­ued log­ging and burn­ing of some of Tasmania’s most car­bon dense forests. Old growth forests play an essen­tial role in the glob­al car­bon cycle, soak­ing in and stor­ing huge amounts of car­bon from our atmos­phere. The log­ging of FO42F last Sum­mer prompt­ed a num­ber of protests against the con­tin­ued destruc­tion of high con­ser­va­tion val­ue forests in the area.

“We are speak­ing out against the sys­tem­at­ic erad­i­ca­tion of some of our most sig­nif­i­cant car­bon sinks at the hands of local cli­mate crim­i­nals Forestry Tas­ma­nia and Gunns Ltd., and are call­ing on Peter Gar­rett to take imme­di­ate action and halt this ram­pant wood­chip­ping and burn­ing of our pre­cious old growth forests” said Still Wild Still Threat­ened spokesper­son Ula Majew­s­ki.

“It is an envi­ron­men­tal­ly crim­i­nal act to con­tin­ue dec­i­mat­ing and burn­ing these irre­place­able ecosys­tems Pro­tect­ing Tasmania’s ancient forests is a sim­ple, cheap and effec­tive cli­mate change solu­tion” said Ms Majew­s­ki.

It is rumoured that the ‘giant Gar­rett’ will be vis­it­ing a num­ber of threat­ened forests dur­ing the burn sea­son. The details of this tour will be made pub­lic in the near future. Stay tuned.

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

Bunbury — College Grove protesters stop machines for the day

14 April 2008 — Col­lege Grove pro­test­ers stop machines for the day: Pro­test­ers accuse police of using exces­sive force…
The fourth day of actions by pro­test­ers brought work to a halt for the day.

The bat­tle for the for­est at Col­lege Grove is set to con­tin­ue for some time to come…

Bunbury digger surrounded14 April 2008 — Col­lege Grove pro­test­ers stop machines for the day: Pro­test­ers accuse police of using exces­sive force…
The fourth day of actions by pro­test­ers brought work to a halt for the day.

The bat­tle for the for­est at Col­lege Grove is set to con­tin­ue for some time to come…

MORE: Pro­test­ers accuse police of using exces­sive force — 11 April 2008

Activists from the Col­lege Grove protest in Bun­bury have lodged a for­mal com­plaint to the Bun­bury police regard­ing an inci­dent in the for­est on 9 April 2008. STORY: http://www.radicalhack.com/gwfag/video/violence.htm

Many peo­ple have been shocked to wit­ness on both GWN and WIN news a police offi­cer hit­ting a none vio­lent pro­test­er sev­er­al times direct­ly in front of his super­vis­ing offi­cer.

Ques­tions remain to be answered. First­ly, whilst acknowl­edg­ing and respect­ing the pro­fes­sion­al­ism and respon­si­ble actions of the major­i­ty of police offi­cers present, it is only rea­son­able to ask; was this force applied by one of the police offi­cers in the news footage, nec­es­sary to main­tain law and order?

Sec­ond­ly, will the author­i­ties find ways to make this look like the police offi­cer was in the right or will these bul­ly tac­tics be prop­er­ly and ade­quate­ly addressed?

Click here to view the news footage — GWN at nor­mal speed and WIN in slow motion: http://www.radicalhack.com/gwfag/video/violence.wmv

White Cross­es bear wit­ness to bull­dozed bush­land — 12 April 2008:
http://www.radicalhack.com/gwfag/media/080412cross.htm

The Bun­bury com­mu­ni­ty has laid dozens of white cross­es on land at Col­lege Grove that has been bull­dozed by Land­Corp.

Simon Peterffy, a spokesper­son for the Col­lege Grove For­est Res­cue group said that the cross­es were a sym­bol of the death of the for­est. “The bush­land at Col­lege Grove was a high con­ser­va­tion area, home to the endan­gered West­ern Ring­tail pos­sum and loved by many peo­ple”, he said. “Land­Corp has destroyed some of the bush and are plan­ning to destroy more”. “We have asked the com­mu­ni­ty to ham­mer in a white cross as a sym­bol of respect for the bush”.

He said that peo­ple could bear wit­ness to the destruc­tion that had occurred to a valu­able part of Bun­bury’s nat­ur­al her­itage. ‘We must be able to show our respect’, he said.

Coun­cil­lor Bren­dan Kel­ly said that the effort by pro­test­ers to try to stop the destruc­tion was to be admired. “These rogue devel­op­ers must real­ize that they have to stop”, he said. Land­Corp has cleared about 3 acres out of 7 to date but are plan­ning to devel­op near­ly 100 acres.

Coun­cil­lor Kel­ty said that the world had changed and devel­op­ers need­ed to know that their activ­i­ties are no longer accept­able.

MEDIA Con­tact: Simon 0422540756 Bren­dan 0407219515

See pho­tos, video and more infor­ma­tion here:
http://www.globalwarmingfg.com/

Police Violence at treesit action in College Grove, Bunbury, Australia

April 10, 2008: Fol­low­ing a pre-dawn raid yes­ter­day at Col­lege Grove bush­land in Bun­bury, 2 activists were arrest­ed with one tak­en to hos­pi­tal after a force­ful and vio­lent push by WA Police.

Bunbury cops lash outApril 10, 2008: Fol­low­ing a pre-dawn raid yes­ter­day at Col­lege Grove bush­land in Bun­bury, 2 activists were arrest­ed with one tak­en to hos­pi­tal after a force­ful and vio­lent push by WA Police. A spokes for the Com­mu­ni­ty Inde­pen­dent Activists (CIA) group says it was the “most vio­lent dis­play by police in 15 years of for­est activism…”

The for­est res­cuers man­aged to stop heavy machin­ery for over two hours on the first day of native bush­land being cleared for the con­tro­ver­sial LandCorp/City of Bun­bury land release.

The CIA group are ask­ing for your help in the action. Bil­let­ing can be pro­vid­ed for any­one wish­ing to help out on the ground. Please phone 9791 5515 or 0422 540 756 to get in con­tact…

Almost one police per pro­test­er was sent to Col­lege Grove to ensure that indus­try got to smash down one of the few remain­ing areas of for­est in Bun­bury West­ern Aus­tralia.

The group of peace­ful activists had been occu­py­ing a tree in the Col­lege Grove bush­land near Bun­bury in WA’s south-west. At 5am on Wednes­day 9th April around a dozen police offi­cers sur­round­ed the tree.

A tree-sit­ter removed all ropes for climb­ing down the 30 metre tuart tree she was occu­py­ing and refused to come down. She had been part of a rota­tion of dozens of con­cerned local peo­ple tak­ing shifts up the old Tuart over the past two months. Accord­ing to the Bun­bury Mail, a cher­ry pick­er attempt­ed to remove her at 9am — pro­test­ers were told that they would be arrest­ed if they entered the “work­site.”

The CIA told Perth Indy­media today that after a call­out to the com­mu­ni­ty. Some 40 peo­ple — con­sist­ing of elder­ly peo­ple, chil­dren, moth­ers and those not at work — con­verged at the site and rushed an exca­va­tor, play­ing music and gen­er­al­ly mak­ing the most of the sit­u­a­tion. More police arrived bring­ing the num­ber to around 40.

A group includ­ing elder­ly and chil­dren broke the line and held up the heavy machin­ery that was clear­ing a path through the for­est to the tree plat­form.

They left when warned by police they would be arrest­ed, but ran back in front of the mov­ing machine a short time lat­er.

Pro­tes­tors climbed onto the machine, unfurled a ban­ner along one side and sung songs for almost two hours before police rein­force­ments arrived and cleared the group. One man used a lock­ing device to lock him­self to the grad­er.

CIA report that two of the group were arrest­ed fol­low­ing a vio­lent and unpro­voked attack by police after they refused to loosen their grip on the machine.

South West Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre spokes­woman Susan Hill told the West the major­i­ty of peo­ple in Bun­bury were opposed to the devel­op­ment. “At least 50 per cent of the com­mu­ni­ty of Bun­bury want this to remain here and this is our lega­cy,” she said. She said protests would con­tin­ue until the devel­op­ers backed down.

The Tac­ti­cal Response Group have since left, being replaced by new offi­cers and the CIA group have since reoc­cu­pied the tree and are con­duct­ing walk­throughs at the site.

Main­stream news cam­eras were at the scene and report­ed the vio­lent police actions on south-west tele­vi­sion last night.

Please phone 9791 5515 or 0422 540 756 to get in con­tact… “WA forests need your help”

—

VIDEO: Indus­try destroys more Aus­tralian her­itage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWu_5I9ZY2c

Police move in to Col­lege Grove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2FAA9B57rw

WAforests — Youtube chan­nel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/WAforests

Perth Indy­media Back­ground:
Col­lege Grove Tuart action esca­lates in Bun­bury
http://perth.indymedia.org/?action=default&featureview=618

Bun­bury Mail
The West
===================================

I’m about to give my own “report” for the events of the 10th (yes­ter­day).

[Reports are being post­ed by some­one else so I’m going to do a mini report in the hope that they will give a more detailed report (accord­ing to the needs and philoso­phies of the local crew)].

Yes­ter­day a per­son (not sure if I’m able to use his name yet) “locked on” to a machine all day at Col­lege Grove. He was allowed by the police to remain locked on, thanks to the out­come of a court case involv­ing anoth­er of our crew. The police admit­ted to being pow­er­less, thanks to the courts and “new laws”.

———————–End of report———————–

Recent­ly one of our crew was acquit­ted of charges laid against him for an iden­ti­cal action at Arca­dia For­est (near Col­lie) last year.

Well this does not auto­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate a “bind­ing prece­dent” as that hap­pens when a deci­sion is hand­ed down by a high­er court (where we’re con­cerned — high­er than the Mag­is­trates court) but myself, Roger and now Dave have been acquit­ted under sim­i­lar cir­cum­stances. Well it seems to have made an impact on the police, though we have not actu­al­ly affect­ed an actu­al prece­dent.

My PERSONAL feel­ing is that hav­ing lost three con­sec­u­tive for­est cas­es and accrued in excess of $10,000 of costs as a result, not to men­tion time wast­ed and bad pub­lic­i­ty, that the police have pos­si­bly con­sid­ered that the ben­e­fits of doing what they always do to stop us, is no longer viable.

PHEW! What does this mean? 1). Well we locked on and the cops, as the offi­cer admit­ted to us ‘Are dis­em­pow­ered” to do any­thing. 2).We can keep lock­ing on and there is noth­ing they can do about it.

HOWEVER! It’s still ear­ly days. It’s damn fine news but I would like to seek legal advice before rec­om­mend­ing a course of action.

In the mean­time, stay rad­i­cal.

From ‘The West’:
Police move on Col­lege Grove pro­test­ers — 11th April 2008, 16:00 WST

http://southwest.thewest.com.au/Regionals.aspx?MenuID=277&ContentId=67471

Police have issued sev­en move on notices to pro­test­ers at Col­lege Grove bush­land to keep peo­ple from enter­ing the Land­Corp hous­ing devel­op­ment site.

Yes­ter­day a man chained him­self under­neath a front end loader, halt­ing the move­ment of the vehi­cle for sev­er­al hours.

Act­ing Inspec­tor Eric Asjes said the pro­test­ers had to accept the demo­cat­ic process and allow police to devote their man­pow­er to oth­er caus­es.

“I don’t think the pro­test­ers are doing the right thing here, to cause so much grief and loss of man­pow­er is real­ly not the aim of the protest but it is affect­ing our abil­i­ty to attend oth­er jobs,” Insp Asjes told thewest.com.au

Solidarity with Tara in Ireland — trip reportback

A group of us from Brighton went over to Ire­land recent­ly to sup­port the Irish pro­test­ers attempt, to halt the work on the M3 Motor­way.

A group of us from Brighton went over to Ire­land recent­ly to sup­port the Irish pro­test­ers attempt, to halt the work on the M3 Motor­way.

The 50km, four lane stretch includes a huge, 53 acre inter­change, with two mas­sive orbits and 10 fly­over bridges, the con­struc­tion has already divert­ed gabhra rivers his­tor­i­cal water­ways, and heavy machin­ery have bull­dozed ancient tombs and graves with­in the sacred val­ley.

Whilst the mon­ey spin­ning, toll roads are being built by Dick Cheyneys’ Hal­libur­ton com­pa­ny, SIAC and Fer­rovial are the real crim­i­nal com­pa­nies respon­si­ble for most of the car­nage.

If the motor­way is not stopped or re-rout­ed it will destroy one the most impor­tant archae­o­log­i­cal land­scapes in Europe, and wipe out a huge amount of Ire­lands cul­ture, his­to­ry, iden­ti­ty and her­itage.

On the 15th of march we arrived at the direct action camp, which is sit­u­at­ed on top of the ancient mon­u­ment of Rath Lugh. This is one of 150 sacred sites with­in the Tara Com­plex, and one of the 43 that has been wiped out along the route of the motor­way.

The pro­test­ers have built a num­ber of walk­ways link­ing tree hous­es togeth­er, and built var­i­ous lock on’s, the secu­ri­ty have been heavy hand­ed in remov­ing the pro­test­ers from the Rath Lugh Site but oth­er camps are being set up along the route to con­tin­ue the bat­tle to save the Tara.

Equip­ment and peo­ple are urgent­ly need­ed!!

One of the first things I noticed when I got there was the intim­i­da­tion and the threats of vio­lence from the secu­ri­ty, they had met­al bars and lumps of wood and they were ready to lash out at any­one who tried to phys­i­cal­ly stop the con­struc­tion.
I still went dig­ger div­ing every­day, but because I had a cam­corder with me this act­ed as a deter­rent against their assault.

When we arrived Lisa Feeney AKA “Squeek” had just come out of a 20ft deep tun­nel, after being down there for 60hrs. Her father and uncle were guilt trip­ping her say­ing she was self­ish and she was going to die. So Lisa agreed to come out of the tun­nel but only if a 12 point agree­ment was signed between her-self and the Nation­al Roads Author­i­ty, the N.R.A rep­re­sen­ta­tive Kevin O’Rourke signed the agree­ment which stat­ed that all work would be stopped for one month, after Lisa came out the tun­nel the agree­ment was breached by the NRA with­in 24hrs, they lied and claimed no agree­ment made.

The pro­test­ers will now make an appli­ca­tion for an emer­gency injunc­tion at the supreme high court, because of the dis­crep­an­cies over the Com­pul­so­ry Pur­chase Order on Rath Lugh, which is cur­rent­ly break­ing the nation­al mon­u­ments act of 2004.

The N.RA. have admit­ted that they have been work­ing off inac­cu­rate maps since the plan­ning process, but still con­tin­ue to claim that they are not dam­ag­ing the 2000 yr old fort.

Archae­ol­o­gists have con­tra­dict­ed this by stat­ing that the motor­way will cut open the hill­side leav­ing it entire­ly unsta­ble, as it is built on an esker — this is a ridge made of small rocks left behind by the glac­i­er that formed the local hills and val­leys since the last age. It’s pret­ty obvi­ous that if you dam­age the foun­da­tion or the esker you will also dam­age the mon­u­ment.

Dur­ing the vis­it I went to anoth­er oth­er sol­i­dar­i­ty camp, which is on the foot of the hill of Tara. This is where a sacred fire has been burn­ing since sum­mer sol­stice 2006, peo­ple have come from all over the world to keep the fire burn­ing, although no-one lives there offi­cial­ly. Peo­ple take part in a rota-sys­tem, but recent­ly the O.P.W (office for pub­lic works) which is the gov’t body respon­si­ble for look­ing after Irish her­itage and the pub­lic land have giv­en a notice for the peo­ple to leave the area with­in sev­en days.

The peo­ple who real­ly care for the land are refus­ing to leave, they are a diverse group of local artists, musi­cians, and mem­bers of the pub­lic, that are tak­ing the respon­si­bil­i­ty to cre­ate a world her­itage park, their aim is to pro­mote the poten­tial of the area for edu­ca­tion, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and her­itage. The group cur­rent­ly holds talks lec­tures, and work­shops on crafts and his­to­ry.

An offi­cial pro­pos­al for the world her­itage park is being cre­at­ed, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it has to be your gov’t that nom­i­nates mon­u­ments for world her­itage sta­tus. The Irish peo­ple can not count on their gov’t to do that, so the peo­ple want to illus­trate this them­selves. In hope that peo­ple pow­er will demand that Tara gets the respect it deserves.

To Chk out up-dates on this cam­paign go to www.savetara.com or www.tarapixie.net
The pro­test­ers at Tara have asked me to call out for climbers and tun­nel­ers which are urgent­ly need­ed to share skills etc…

If you can’t get over to Ire­land to pro­tect Tara then you can tar­get the SIAC con­struc­tion companies,UK part­ners based in Glouces­ter­shire and Sus­sex.

Lanc­ing Busi­ness Park
Lanc­ing
West Sus­sex
BN15 8TY
Tel: 00 44 (0) 1903 755991
Fax: 00 44 (0)1903 755384
E‑mail: r.thomson@grahamwoodstructural.co.uk
Web­site : www.grahamwoodstructural.co.uk

To see films www.schnews.co.uk/schmovies
click on: “Tara tara tara” and “skul­dug­gery”

Sea Shepherd Crew Attacked By Mob Of Seal Hunters

6.04.2008
Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ship, the Far­ley Mowat, was attacked this morn­ing by a mob of 30–40 angry fish­er­men. The attack took place while berthed in the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The Far­ley Mowat was berthed in St. Pierre to trans­fer video footage of the Cana­di­an seal slaugh­ter onto shore and await the resump­tion of the slaugh­ter, which was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed after the death of four seal­ers.

Sea Shepherd ropes being cut6.04.2008
Sea Shep­herd Con­ser­va­tion Society’s ship, the Far­ley Mowat, was attacked this morn­ing by a mob of 30–40 angry fish­er­men. The attack took place while berthed in the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. The Far­ley Mowat was berthed in St. Pierre to trans­fer video footage of the Cana­di­an seal slaugh­ter onto shore and await the resump­tion of the slaugh­ter, which was tem­porar­i­ly sus­pend­ed after the death of four seal­ers.

Ten­sions quick­ly esca­lat­ed in St. Pierre as the grow­ing mob hurled rocks, threats, and insults at crew mem­bers of the Far­ley Mowat. Cam­era­man Sime­on Hout­man was assault­ed by an axe-wield­ing fish­er­man after step­ping onshore to film the inci­dent. “The fish­er­man raised the axe above his head with one arm and tried to knock Sime­on back with his oth­er. Sime­on jumped back onto the ship just before the mob threw our gang­plank into the water,” said Peter Ham­marst­edt, First Offi­cer of the Far­ley Mowat.

Relat­ed recent news from IMC newswire: Inter­view With Cap­tain Onboard Sea Shep­herd Ship On Cur­rent Seal Hunt | Cana­di­an Coast Guard Rams Sea Shep­herd Ship (twice) | Sea Shep­herd Moves In On Cana­di­an Seal Slaugh­ter

Cap­tain Alex Cor­nelis­sen request­ed assis­tance from the French police–at least half a dozen of whom were present at the scene–but they did noth­ing to defend the ship or crew against the mob. Instead, the police sug­gest­ed that Sea Shep­herd should leave St. Pierre imme­di­ate­ly. Cap­tain Cor­nelis­sen explained to the police that it would take some time to warm the engines in order to leave port safe­ly and avoid seri­ous engine dam­age. He request­ed pro­tec­tion dur­ing that time, but the police did noth­ing oth­er than stand by and watch as fish­er­men hacked at the moor­ing lines of the Far­ley Mowat with an axe and ripped the gang­plank from the ship, set­ting it dan­ger­ous­ly adrift into the har­bor. After the mob sev­ered head and bow-spring lines from the bol­lards, Sea Shep­herd crew mem­bers scur­ried to pull in lines and pre­vent them from drift­ing back towards the screw or into the bowthruster. “The mob respond­ed with a rain of stones and rocks that were thrown with the intent to injure,” said Ham­marst­edt.

With­out engine pow­er, the Far­ley Mowat drift­ed uncon­trol­lably in seri­ous dan­ger of crash­ing into near­by rocks and/or ships in the har­bor. Cap­tain Cor­nelis­sen had no choice but to start the engines cold–risking irrepara­ble damage–in order to avoid a poten­tial­ly lethal col­li­sion. Although the Far­ley Mowat was able to escape the hos­tile crowd at St. Pierre, the extent of engine dam­age sus­tained remains unde­ter­mined. For­tu­nate­ly, all crew mem­bers were on board dur­ing the attack, and no-one was injured.

http://www.seashepherd.org/

Humboldt Forest Defense Action Camp and Skillshare 2008

Pre­lim­i­nary announce­ment of the next For­est Defense Skill­share. We’ll be ren­dezvous­ing in the Ancient Red­woods here in Hum­boldt. More details will be out short­ly. Invit­ing old-timers and new­com­ers alike!

Maxaam out of HumboldtPre­lim­i­nary announce­ment of the next For­est Defense Skill­share. We’ll be ren­dezvous­ing in the Ancient Red­woods here in Hum­boldt. More details will be out short­ly. Invit­ing old-timers and new­com­ers alike!

We’ll be ren­dezvous­ing in the Ancient Red­woods here in Hum­boldt. More details will be out short­ly. Stay tuned at our blog http://humboldtforestdefense.blogspot.com/

Join us May 2nd through May 9th to share and acquire skills for non-vio­lent direct action focused on defend­ing our forests!

Newbury Bypass video archive (& other protest gems)

Near­ly 3 hours of neat­ly col­lat­ed video from the New­bury Bypass evic­tions in the win­ter of 1996.

Very last cen­tu­ry, but good for inspi­ra­tion…

http://www.kinokast.net/newbury.html
kinokast@gmail.com

There’s also lots of stuff:
var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal protests at http://www.kinokast.net/ecoprotest.html
RTSs at http://www.kinokast.net/reclaimthestreets.html

Near­ly 3 hours of neat­ly col­lat­ed video from the New­bury Bypass evic­tions in the win­ter of 1996.

Very last cen­tu­ry, but good for inspi­ra­tion…

http://www.kinokast.net/newbury.html
kinokast@gmail.com

There’s also lots of stuff:
var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal protests at http://www.kinokast.net/ecoprotest.html
RTSs at http://www.kinokast.net/reclaimthestreets.html
and Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass­es, G8 and much more, www.kinokast.net

Last chance for College Grove forest — Tree sit continues, Australia

30.3.08
Bun­bury res­i­dents turned out on Sun­day to a sec­ond pic­nic to show the pow­ers that be that they don’t want the for­est at Col­lege Grove to be destroyed by devel­op­ers.

Extinction is Forever College Grove treesit30.3.08
Bun­bury res­i­dents turned out on Sun­day to a sec­ond pic­nic to show the pow­ers that be that they don’t want the for­est at Col­lege Grove to be destroyed by devel­op­ers.

“We should all be aware of the impor­tance of this bush cor­ri­dor and the endan­gered species liv­ing with­in… Their ded­i­cat­ed actions have high­light­ed the impor­tance of the need to retain this area of for­est, which not only con­tains the unique tuart tran­si­tion zone, but is also the habi­tat of the threat­ened West­ern ring-tailed pos­sum…” — Bun­bury Mail
GW For­est Action: With few options left, Bun­bury res­i­dents turned out to a sec­ond pic­nic to show the pow­ers that be that they don’t want the for­est at Col­lege Grove to be destroyed by devel­op­ers.

Word has gone out on sev­er­al occa­sions that the bull­doz­ers were about to go in, but as yet noth­ing has hap­pened.

Mean­while pro­test­ers remain vig­i­lant and are deter­mined that they will stay on.

The tree plat­form in the for­est remains occu­pied and the bull­doz­ers can be sure they will be met with protest when/if they start the destruc­tion.”

===

A man known only as ‘Alan’ has been liv­ing on a plat­form at the top of a 30 metre tuart tree for almost two weeks. He has been joined by about five oth­er local res­i­dents who are tak­ing turns protest­ing up the tree.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Inde­pen­dent Action Group’s spokesman, Simon Peterffy, says the plat­form the men are liv­ing on will be expand­ed so more peo­ple can be up the tree at once. “Yes it is cur­rent­ly being altered a lit­tle bit to accom­mo­date more peo­ple, more space and I believe by the week­end it could be sig­nif­i­cant­ly devel­oped to accom­mo­date all the peo­ple who want to get up there and sup­port the sav­ing of this beau­ti­ful bush,” Mr Peterffy said.

“We want to expose Landcorp’s intent to destroy this vital sec­tion of the cor­ri­dor to all West­ern Aus­tralians”, he said. “This is more than just a piece of bush to be flat­tened. It con­tains the rare tuart tran­si­tion zone and pro­vides habi­tat to a pro­tect­ed species which relies upon the bush for its ongo­ing exis­tence”.